Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Annie. The Queen Of Do Lang Boulevard

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

As she dusted off his portrait for the hundredth hundredth time Annie, Annie Lament (her street name, not her real name, that name is not important to the story so don’t press if you are curious. Something about maybe certain statutes of limitation not having run out and so don’t blame me I am just the messenger on this one.), Queen of the Do Lang Boulevard as she has been more recently, and affectionately, become known, let out another hundredth, hundredth sigh and lamented also for the ten thousandth time that she missed her late Harry Hopper, her walking daddy. Yes, Harry had, in his time, turned her into a street trick whore, and in the process a junkie too, but he, they had had their love moments and that was all that counted for Annie now that Harry was gone, had been gone for over ten years now, found face down in a tide pool over by Point Of Pines, ODed, hell, calcified with some run off horse in his veins. The police never made it clear whether he had done it to himself or some parties, third parties that he had welched on, that he had forgot to pay had a part in his demise. She hoped the former. She always wondered what it was like for Harry in those last blood rush moments when he was probably seeing the face of god coming hell-bent to take him home, to take him to junkie heaven, take him to a place where he could always make a connection, could always get a fix.

In those lost walking daddy moments, she had never called him her pimp, never, although others had, lots of others, but she, all country fresh when she met him, had refused to believe that he had turned her out that first time for some crass motive after he said they needed dough, needed dough quick. She knew pimp daddies, knew badass pimp daddies like Loretta’s, and called them pimps with no qualms but not her Harry, not her sweet-talking walking daddy, a daddy that never once hit her, scolded her, or said many unkind words to her, except, and maybe when she thought about it now a big except, when he was hungry for a fix, hungry needing a sweet walking daddy fix to get well. Annie, just turned thirty-five and still turning street tricks with the best of them, under new management, her own courtesy of the latest media innovations that eliminated that badass pimp middle man, remembered back to those days, those late 1960s days, when she first meet walking daddy and she would kind of retreat back into that world, retreat back into the time before she became the Queen of Do Lang Boulevard, the time when she had Harry’s love.

Those were crazy times, those late 1960s times, when the whole world seemed to go topsy-turvy, when the young, and she was young, just sixteen and with wanderlust in her eyes (and other lusts too although she didn’t know them then until Harry brought them out, brought those wanting habits out wild and strong) and tired of school, of home, of freaking North Andover, the works. Her home such as it was in a trailer park just off Riverbank Road near the river, near the Merrimack. She was just too confined for the times and so one day, on a lark , she and a girlfriend , Emmy, who later drifted west on some yellow school bus caravan hitchhike trip and died one night after absorbing some LSD, acid for the squares or the clueless, had a bad reaction and thinking she was Icarus or something fell off the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn, Poor Emmy, skipped school (she wasn’t going so frequently anyway and at that point nobody at home was stopping her from not going), and headed to the amusement park at Revere Beach. (That amusement park has long since been replaced by high- rises and condos for those who want to know. And for those who want to know something else the street in front of those buildings has been nicknamed Do Lang Boulevard, the very place where Annie first worked the streets and does still in her capacity of queen. Her apartment, her real apartment not her work apartment, her place where her portrait of Harry resides is located just off that dream boulevard.)

After a few hassles finding parking spot in the hectic June sun Emmy and Annie walked the boulevard for the first time. Amazingly though the amusement park and adjoining beach were less than an hour away from home neither girl had been there before (and they were just girls then, Annie, like she said, was sixteen, Emmy had just turned seventeen). They immediately got caught up in the rush of rides, ferry wheel, roller coaster, whips, and the like, and the smells of pizza, hot dogs, sausages, beer, salt water taffy and one thousand and one other smells to make your mouth water. They decided to take a break after a while and found a park bench, empty, in front of the penny arcade (the pinball machines, Skee ball lanes, win a kewpie doll places). That is where she spied Harry holding forth to some guys, some corner boy guys from the look of them if her North Andover sense applied in Revere, about the way to rack up points at Skee. Naturally a place like an amusement park then, now too probably, is where the young seek each other out. Both Annie and Emmy being more that passably pretty and with good figures showing long legs in their short, shorts and thin blouses were bound to attract the attentions of ambling young men, especially corner boys endlessly eyeing the fresh country girls. They had been given the once over more than once as they walked around. But Harry was the first time Annie had given the boys a once over that day. Harry, long and thin like she liked them, a mass of long hair as was the style then, a light beard just coming into style, wearing an army jacket and jeans and wearing Chuck Taylor sneakers looked to her like the Adonis of the world.

Somehow Harry sensed that Annie was looking at him more than somewhat, and he headed in her direction with a couple of his corner boys (one took an interest in Emmy and she, thrilled, walked off with him as the mating ritual of the young started. The other guy drifted off somewhere). He walked right up to her and asked whether she would like him to win a kewpie doll for her. Never having owed such an item, never having a boy (really a man since Harry was twenty-two at the time) offer to win her anything , or even thought of such an idea she said yes. (All her beaus were looking for something between her legs or for her to put something of theirs in her mouth and that was okay, she was okay with sex having started at thirteen with a cousin when they were both curious about how sex worked and they found out, found out accidently almost just fumbling around.) And so Annie found her walking daddy, found him good, found him through thick and thin. Would come to love him too, loved him good and loved him bad.

Of course Harry won the kewpie doll for Annie, they walked around and finally wound up down at the far end, the secluded end of Revere Beach where as the sun went down they made love for the first time, made mad love, according to Annie since that was the first time she had an orgasm or the first time she thought she had had an orgasm. Eventually that night Annie found Emmy (who had had her own little tryst with Harry’s friend and they both laughed on the way home about their sexual escapades Emmy telling Annie about a couple of tricks she had learned to keep guys going after they were depleted. Annie would remember and use those techniques later on Harry when he had a hard time when he was junked up and with her johns). Annie could hardly wait for Friday night when Harry said he would pick her up at her home since he had some business in Lawrence a town nearby. What clueless (then) Annie did not know was that Harry’s business was that of a small time dope dealer, at that time mainly pot, grass, marijuana ,then the rage. What clueless (then) Annie also didn’t know was that Harry was just beginning to be in the throes of cocaine habit, sister, girl, then on the fringes of the respectable drug culture.

Of course, small time anything, but particularly small time drug dealing means you have to hustle like crazy to keep from having to work for a living (Harry, and Annie made no excuse for him on this hated work, nine to five work, even the thought of it). More so when you have those demon wanting habits on. And so Harry was always hustling for the first couple of years that they were together. But Annie didn’t care, had dropped out of school (nobody really stopped her), and was living with Harry not far from where Annie lived now on Do Lang Boulevard (that moniker came from a song, a doo wop, by the Chiffons, He’s So Fine, that Annie would sing the chorus of which contained the do lang line when she was happy and when she thought about Harry in those days. It stuck.

Then, after a while, the other shoe dropped as it must in the deep end of the drug night. Harry wasn’t getting kicks from coke anymore, and being an intense guy, needed something to level him off, something to take world hurts away (Annie never really did learn Harry’s whole story, and eventually didn’t care anyway, she just wanted to save him), and so he slid down the horse trail, H, boy, heroin, the magic fix. And he got fixed bad, and fast. Worse he couldn’t make his connections and if he did he was in such as stupor that he couldn’t make enough money to maintain his growing habit. Worse, worse as far as Annie was concerned he was slipping away from her. And so he did two things, first he put her pretty please to work out on the trick streets, just once in while at first, then every freaking night, and two, he convinced her, convinced her hard, that they would get along better, much better if she became his boy soul-mate (really soulless mate). She bucked at first, didn’t like it, then liked it a little when Harry became more sociable with her, liked it a lot when she found it was easier to do her trick work, especially with some of the traffic that was coming her way then, when she was high, high and in her own world. And so it went until that night a few years later when they found Harry face down. Then she went clean, went drug clean (although every once in a while that siren call would hit her veins the first few clean years), and tried to take a job as a waitress in bar but that was too tempting. So she went back out into the streets under her own power, as her own boss. And on more than one night, one sultry night she, the queen of the do lang boulevard, could feel the hot breath of Harry Hopper in her ear and she would begin to tear up….