Cease to Blush

by Billie Livingston

  “Over my dead body,” her mother had said.

  Her stepfather had whispered, “Don’t waste yourself on the warm-up act, honey. You’re going to be the star.”

  “After that,” my mother told me as I lay on the couch watching Charisse in her shredded green skirt, “I tacked every picture I could find of her to my bedroom wall.”

  I rolled my eyes at the computer screen now. Most of the Rat Pack and two Kennedys—Christ, why not Jacqueline too? Why not the Pope? People and their boring little lives; all they want to do is sit around and extrapolate about who’s screwing who.

  The next URL put me into a mob Web page. Johnny Rosselli, aka Filippo Sacco, right-hand man of Chicago’s Sam Giancana, overseer of L.A. and Las Vegas crime scenes, and mob liaison to the CIA in the government’s attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro … An illegal Italian immigrant … Though stripper-turned-FBI informant Celia Dare disappeared before she could testify against Rosselli, he was nevertheless convicted and went on to serve … In 1976, Rosselli’s decomposed body was found in 55-gallon steel drum floating in Dumfounding Bay, Florida.

  “Jesus Christ,” I whispered to the room. “That can’t be right.” Suddenly her rants about my dating habits took on new meaning. She told me she thought Frank looked like a hood when she met him. “You think it’s sexy, glamorous, this bad-boy bullshit? You think it’s attractive to go down in the muck and shit with low-lifes? Because that’s where you’re going.”

  I gulped more coffee. A bio link took me to a copy of the mobster’s business card. John Rosselli, Strategist, and an address in Los Angeles. The story that followed detailed his work with Sam Giancana, the Kennedys and the CIA. No mention of Celia Dare. Only Judith Campbell Exner, a socialite who dated him as well as Sinatra, Giancana and JFK. Campbell was later forced to testify in court about her simultaneous relationships with Giancana and Kennedy. In the seventies, she’d hauled off and written a book to set the record straight. “Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent,” Sinatra was quoted as responding.

  Then I was into an interview with an old B-movie and pinup babe who said she was Marilyn Monroe’s roommate as well as a lover of John Rosselli’s. Of course Bobby and Monroe were lovers, she says, he was crazy about her. She often joined the two of them on trips to a nude beach out past Pepperdine. When Monroe died, she claims Rosselli called her and told her she’d better get out of town, that Marilyn had been murdered by the mob as another warning to Bobby Kennedy, who was Attorney General at the time.

  I cocked my head. Everybody’s got another version.

  Another site detailed Kennedy Sexcapades. Lists of women streamed down the page: Kennedy Conquests in Film: Kim Novak, Marilyn Monroe, Lee Remick … Kennedy Conquests in Striptease: Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm, Eden East, June Day, Celia Dare …

  Only one site in the Googled results yielded anything more: the neo-burlesque DevilDoll Dance Troupe. The site gave their past and upcoming performances. A sidebar with the words Heroines of Burlesque featured a small hive of snappy dancers’ names buzzing in and around the caption. Celia Dare was one of them. I clicked on it to find a publicity photo of my mother in black tights, kicking so high she was doing the vertical splits. Her tights ended at the hips with a jewelled thong, while a matching blouse flounced around her waist and wrists. Born Cecilia D’arelli in Pennsylvania, 1943, Celia Dare studied voice and ballet from the age of six and first hit the entertainment world as a chorus girl and fill-in chanteuse for girl shows in Las Vegas. Some say her big break came when she took an ill Keely Smith’s place onstage with Louis Prima. Others say it was a one-night comedic performance with her pal Sammy Davis Jr., during the infamous Rat Pack shows at the Sands Hotel in 1960. Either way it was the day our girl showed up in a San Francisco coffee house and made local headlines with her hilarious performance as a drunken Rosemary Clooney that Ms. Dare performed her first-known striptease. Arrested for indecent exposure, Ms. Dare was quickly released and went on to play packed houses at the Coconut Grove and the 500 Club in Atlantic City, where she burlesqued such luminaries as Peggy Lee and Julie London, took chances with blackface renditions of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, and knocked ’em dead by boy-dragging Neil Sedaka and Wayne Newton. Even Marlene Dietrich wasn’t safe. Dare kept the era alive into the late sixties and we’ll always love her for it!

  The phone blasted me out of my trance.

  “Hey, baby, what’s up?” Frank yelled into his cell. It sounded as if he was surrounded by screaming kids again. “You sleep last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  He laughed. “Sounds like you’re still sleeping. We on for tonight?”

  I looked at my watch. “Shit. It’s two o’clock?”

  “I’ll be out of here by seven-thirty at the latest. They’re only shooting daylight. You want to meet me at Nevermind? I told Brian we’d see him at eight-thirty.”

  My teeth clenched. My hands were shaky. Probably just hungry. I tilted my coffee cup and slurped back the dregs. “All right.”

  “What’s wrong? You want me to pick you up?”

  “No.”

  There was a sigh at the other end. “Okay, I’ll pick you up at quarter after.”

  “I have some things to do. I’ll meet you there.”

  Phone down, I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, closed it and turned to the cupboard. Dragging out crackers and peanut butter, I slathered a few of one with the other, paced the living room and crunched and paced some more. I looked into the trunk, the red glass heart. My heart is wax moulded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain. B.

  “B. Bee Bee Bee,” I said, sputtering crumbs. Snippets of Internet gossip mosquitoed through my head. “Buhhh … Bobby Darin. Bobby Kennedy? You did not sleep with Bob Hope,” I said, scowling at her picture. “Or Bobby Kennedy either, the bucktoothed bastard.” I stuffed the last cracker in my mouth, and wandered back to my computer. Five new e-mails: Three offers for Viagra and one for penis enlargement. And something from Richard. Richard? The subject line was empty. I clicked. The body of the e-mail read: “Celia Dare? How wonderful! If you’re interested in chatting, please call anytime. (360) 441–2720. Drop by the shop!”

  That’s it? I paced up and down the living room past the coat and trunk. I couldn’t tell anymore what was nerves and what was coffee. Picking up the phone, I tried to think where area code 360 would be and finally dialed.

  A raspy voice answered, “Glenda’s.”

  “Hello, ah this is Celia—I mean, this is Vivian Callwood.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Celia Dare’s daughter.”

  “Oh, goodness! Hello! Isn’t this exciting. I love to hear from old friends.”

  “This is Celia Dare’s daughter. You remember my mo—”

  “Where are you calling from, sweetheart? New York? That’s fun.”

  “Vancouver. Canada.”

  “Really!” the gravelly singsong at the other end said. A deep cough followed. “Excuse me—filthy habit—I’m not far from you, Celia, or ah … ah, I retired in Point Roberts.”

  “Washington?”

  “We’re neighbours! I have a little shop here. We have everything—all the pasties and feather panties and that type of thing. Are you a dancer? You must come down to my shop. Girls come from Seattle and Vancouver … they all come see me. Burlesque is very big again.”

  “Where did you meet my—where did you meet Celia Dare?”

  “Meet her? Well, Sherman’s. Sherman’s She-show. I practically was the She-show, you know. I have a Web site that tells all about that, sweetheart. Why don’t you come down to my shop and have a look around. I’m here till six, all year-round but January and February.”

  I looked out the window. “All right, I w—” The phone clunked down at the other end and I heard Richard/Glenda rasp, “Can I help—” before the line went dead.

  Point Roberts is only a forty-minute drive from Vancouver. I went back onto the computer and clicked on Glenda’s
carnival site again. The banner at the top of the home page read: Come Visit Glenda’s Gilded Lily in Beautiful Point Roberts, Washington. All things Burlesque and Boudoir. Pasties, G-strings, Fans and Feathers!

  I got dressed and put some makeup on. I took a little time to curl my lashes and line my lips. The idea of paling by comparison to Celia Dare didn’t sit right.

  Point Roberts is B.C.’s tiny American tip, so small that hospital emergencies are brought over the border and kids are bussed back and forth through B.C. for school. The border crossing is usually quiet and lax, though they say reports of kids smuggling through knapsacks of pot on the school bus have tightened things up.

  “Hi there, where you headed this afternoon?” the guard inquired.

  “Glenda’s Gilded Lily.”

  He smiled and winked. “All right. Have fun. Spend lotsa money.”

  Thick trees line the road into town for the first quarter mile or so. The Point Roberts population couldn’t be much more than a thousand but the main road is infested with gas stations, luring Canadians in with cheap fuel. Not far in the distance is Boundary Bay, its pleasure boats sitting in the marina. I spotted the shop on the left just up from TJ’s Restaurant.

  Glenda’s was actually a small house that had been painted hot pink. The sign over the veranda sparkled with gold lettering against a rainbow backdrop. Two 1940s-style pin-ups hugged either end of the rainbow. Next to the other establishments, the shop looked a bit like a streetwalker in a convent.

  The bell jangled as I came through the door. A small man dressed in Katharine Hepburn chic—wide-legged trousers and a silky white blouse—stood up from the stool where he’d been perched. “Can I help you?” The same raspy voice I’d heard on the phone earlier. His shoulders were slightly stooped and his hair was white and short with boyishly long bangs swished to one side. He wore no makeup and everything on his face was upturned and pleased with itself.

  “I’m Vivian Callwood,” I said, hand extended.

  We shook. His grip was firmer than I expected.

  “Vivian, how nice to meet you. Are you a dancer?”

  “No, no. We spoke on the phone earlier today about Celia Dare?”

  “Celia Dare. Uh-huh, see!” He pointed to the black-and-white publicity photos of carnival acts and burlesque dancers that covered the upper walls. The photo of my mother on the piano was next to a picture of Tiffany Torch. Fabric flames shot up across Tiffany’s butt as she glanced over her shoulder into the lens. “Celia Dare once worked with me on the other side of the tent as SheRa, the Wildgirl of Borneo.” Richard/Glenda grinned. “Not many people know that.”

  “Celia was my mother. I wrote to ask about her, remember?” I paused and glanced around at all the shelves of shining kitsch. “Do you recall much about her?”

  “Your mother? Oh, for goodness’ sake. Isn’t that something.” He set his bottom back on the stool and pinched at his chin. “Yes, yes.”

  I took the envelope with the eight-by-tens out, showed him both the photos of Celia first.

  “Look at that,” he said. “I’ve never seen this one … she had very dark hair when I met her. It was almost black.” The word black pounced out of his mouth as though he were telling a ghost story. “Black hair and those violent eyes. Violet, I should say. But that’s showbiz: they like a girl blonde. Always been that way. I was a dancer once, you know. I was Glenda.” His eyes twinkled now. “See, there’s me, up there.” I looked up at a small poster of Glenda.

  “I saw that picture of you on your Web site.” He looked pleased so I leaned in conspiratorially. “Did you get silicone?”

  “No, that was before implants. We used to get what we called water tits.” He laughed. “I went to the doctor once a month or so and he’d inject water into my chest and that would make my breasts. It hurt like the dickens the first couple times, but after a while your skin stretches out and it’s all right. They looked good. Not now. Looks terrible now, all loose and wrinkly. But who sees them now. Back then they looked very nice. Very real. Nobody talked about the boy-girls much then, so when fellas came in to see you dance, they just thought you were all ladies. At the Herman shows, they used to bring me right out on the bally—you know what a bally is? That’s the little stage out front that the barker uses to call up a crowd. Anyway, that’s how good I looked. I was the bait! The barker would stand there beside me and he’d say, You gotta be between eighteen and eighty years of age to go in this tent cuz this is red-hot hoochie-coochie. If you’re under eighteen you won’t understand it and if you’re over eighty you couldn’t stand it. All you fellas with your hands in your pockets, take a gander here at Gorgeous Glenda.”

  I laughed and leaned against the glass counter beside him. My eyes drifted down. “I guess you just kept your G-string on so there wouldn’t be a riot, eh?”

  He giggled. “Not always. Sometimes I flashed.” He spoke more softly. “I used to take a rubber band and loop it around my business and tuck it all back. The elastic was attached to a rubber ball and you just take the ball and stick it right up there.”

  “Up where?”

  He smiled.

  “Oh!” I laughed again. “Well, who knew!”

  “Hardly anybody,” he said with his sly grin.

  “Do you remember when you first met Celia Dare?”

  “Sure,” he said with the pride of a name-dropper. “Cecilia we called her. Cecilia D’arelli. She started up in the spring with us down in West Virginia.”

  “Do you remember what year that was?”

  “Oh golly. I was probably about twenty-nine by then. No, I was thirty. I remember because, well, never mind, but that would put it in ’59 I think. Anyway, she showed up one day. Lot of carnies got picked up along the way and she had ID but she was as twenty-one as I was. She looked about fifteen. Very fresh-faced kind of girl. The kind that probably came from money, probably had her own horse. We figured her for a runaway. For some girls it’s better to be in the carnival than where they came from. And she did have ID. Anyway she was there to be a tap dancer or some crazy thing. Torch singer, something like that.” He coughed deeply, reached for his cigarettes and offered me one. We both lit up. “I guess she thought it was a variety show. And some shows were. But this one—” he leaned into me again and whispered “—was a cooch show.”

  “A what?”

  “She got pretty upset when she realized the only job was stripping. We always said, what’s the big deal, you practically show that much at the beach, and if you want to be a star, this is a springboard. Look at Peggy Lee. ’Course, she was a barker not a stripper.” Balancing the elbow of his smoking hand on the opposite wrist, he took a pensive drag and looked past my shoulder to the street.

  I glanced behind me. A couple cars passed but no one was stopping. “So, did you get her to dance?”

  “Mmm. She had to or she’d have been out on her derrière. I could be very persuasive. I gave her a couple stiff drinks and a little massage with baby oil. Lots of baby oil makes a girl all shiny and special. And it looks good under the lights. With the new ones I’d say, Just dance the one song down to your panties and run off the stage. I remember this night she started, though, because it was a nasty one. We were just outside Quantico where the marine base is. Henry put the fix in with the cops like usual but a couple of them came into the tent that night and stood at the back.”

  “Why? Didn’t you have a licence?”

  He stared at me a second. “This was a cooch show. You couldn’t do that back then—always pasties and G-string. So, we would strip down to our skivvies and go off and then I’d come onstage and ding the boys for another dollar if they wanted to stay and see the girls in their altogether.”

  “So my moth—Cecilia agreed to that?”

  “No, she was just going to go down to her undies. But, it got rough that night.” He tamped out his cigarette and folded his arms.

  “How do you mean rough?”

  “The crowd, those marines were hairy and we were thin
king maybe we should skip the penlights.”

  “Penlights?”

  “Oh yeah. At the end, I used to come out there and announce Sasha. I’d say, boys we got a lady back there who can do something with a cigar that’ll give you a nicotine fit from the waist down. And I’d sell them penlights for a buck apiece—two bucks if it was busy—and she’d come out with nothing on below and spread her legs and smoke her cigar. Just regular, puffing on her cigar. But the guys, every one of them, would line up to look at her business with their light. One of the other girls would ring a little bell when his time was up and then I’d get my penlight back.” He blinked toward the front door and I couldn’t tell if he was bored or wistful or what.

  “So, what happened Cecilia’s first night?”

  “Well, at first it was like usual. One at a time, we came out and took it off. She was very nervous though, so we called her, uh, something virgin … Virginia. Sweet Virginia. Something like that. ’Course, the guys loved that. I think it was true too, she was pretty virginal. Then it got time for the first ding.”

  He lit another cigarette and stood up, strolled over to the front door. “It’s slow today. It’s very slow.”

  My cigarette had burned down to the filter and I tossed it in the ashtray. I watched Richard’s back a few moments, then, pushing the ashtray to one side, I looked down at the pasties under the glass. “I love these gold ones with the blue feathers. How much are they?”

  He glanced back, the smoke of his cigarette curling up across his folded arms. “Those are thirty.”