Babe in Toyland

Elite Boutique is located above a Real Estate Agency, next to a café, in a trendy little section of the South End. Despite its wooden sign on the sidewalk out front, it’s a rather concealed shop. I always felt that Elite was the family nobody wanted in the neighborhood, the one people whispered about using words like pervs and freaks. Although businesses in the area were cordial face to face, there was always a hidden element of disapproval. The door to the shop was covered in yet another wooden sign, this one a bit more colorful, but large enough to curtain what lurked inside.

Upon entering, one is met with a carpeted staircase, poorly painted glossy walls flanking the steps, and a huge sex swing hanging from the vaulted ceiling above. When exiting, a neon yellow banana occupies the archway, an illuminated phallus, bidding farewell.

Directly at the top of the stairs,to the right, sits a small table which holds assorted flyers for S&M clubs,as well as free local magazines and brochures.

A water cooler. A small television jutting out of the the wall playing Fetish Fashion Shows for 6 hours at a time. The glass display case is the focal point of the DEN. Filled with devices for cock & ball torture, stainless steel chastity belts, rhinestone collars, leashes, speculums, and anal probes. Hanging from large metal hooks above the case are black leather ankle & wrist restraints.

The remainder of the shop is long and narrow, jammed with chrome clothing racks,filled to capacity with rubber chaps,thongs, dresses and adult diaper shorts with tubing. The far right wall holds a multitude of sex toys. Vibrators, dildos in every size,shape and color. Lubricants in more flavors than Baskin-Robbins, butt plugs ranging in girth from a pinky finger to a football players clenched fist. The opposite smaller wall panel accommodates more intricate goods, bondage gear.

Handcuffs covered in fuzzy pink faux-fur, leg spreader bars, paddles, whips, penis and ball gags, and various other manacles are on display for the choosing. On one end of the division hangs a $425 latex rubber Cape. At the other end, a translucent white body bag, suspended from a tarnished  hasp.

The adjacent fitting room lives in the corner. A tiny cavity, cloaked in heavy crimson drapery, tied back with ochroid tasseled ropes. A spray-painted semi-lustrous silver stool anticipates it’s next customer. Foggy glass tiles glued together to form a mirror. And..the hooks to hang ones clothes, gilded golden DICKS, nailed loosely, so that each time an article of clothing was hung, they’d wobble, as if they were reacting to touch!

The space was always fetid, like there was a block of greek cheese curing in a bucket of daisy water, secretly hidden behind the wall.

There were windows along the front, but were never to be opened. They almost touched the floor, so you’d have to crouch or kneel down to look out.

I spent many a day gazing out onto the bustling street, watching cars and busses pass. Looking into the upscale restaurant across the street, smiling at the waiters as they prepared for the hungry dinner crowd.
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Everything about Tracy was deliberate. Rehearsed. Nothing came naturally, although she wanted you to believe it did. Her speech patterns always threw me for a loop. When Tracy would initially see you, she whispered her greetings like a drunken cartoon mouse. As the day progressed, the voice slightly changed, depending on the scenario. In just general conversation, she became a tad bit louder, but her mouth seemed to be full of bullshit, in the literal sense. She had an annoying, yet I believe, premeditated way of repeating everything she said, up to 10x consecutively. It was as if she wanted to make sure whatever sick & twisted story she told would be imbedded in your psyche for years to come.

When she answered the phone, the coy slut was her character of choice. She could also be harsh. She displayed that side to Lenny most often, but it actually seemed like she did it for her own personal amusement.

Although Tracy was not super pretty, she did have some potential. She downplayed her looks as part of her act. Before the baby was born, she weighed 120 on a 5”8” frame. But even four months after Justin, her weight still remained in the high 160’s. This was a serious issue for Tracy,who created her own diets. There was the” Bacon,Egg & Cheese Melt and Nothing Else All Day” approach. That lasted a week. Next came her champagne & Black Beauties Diet, the one she bragged about the most, until she discovered she could lose even more weight by munching on low fat Good & Plenty candy, and washing them down with fruity wine coolers.

Tracy had perpetual crotch itch which sickened me. She picked “down there” several times a day blatantly… as if to say: “My cunt needs to be scratched, and YOU should be the embarrassed one for watching!”

I always turned my head. After all, I was getting used to her quirks. Taking the elastic band out her ponytail several times a day and putting it back up again. Or the ongoing sentence repetition.

Before Tracy opened Elite Boutique, she was a stripper at a highly frequented tittie bar. A joint in the heart of the combat zone but very close to the financial district. All walks of life came into the Pink Palace to get drunk and see some snail.

It took me working for Elite for 2 months before Tracy felt comfortable enough to give me details about her 8 years there. She discussed it without feeling, just the facts.

“You know, I never wore a stitch of makeup & I always put on the same dull outfit- a turtle neck and a skirt!” Tracy began telling me one afternoon. “All the other strippers wore platform shoes, red glossy lipstick, skanky dresses… one girl even rollerskated as part of her act. I did the complete opposite. I wanted the customers to think I was “normal”- someone they could have as a girlfriend. I played it to the hilt”, she added dryly. “I barely danced, I would just talk to the guys,make them feel they could confide in me, give them false hope that one day they could be my boyfriend. I complained about not having enough money, the reason why I dressed so poorly. They felt bad for me, and.. That was the way to GOOD tips”, she deviously concluded.

Tracy also had a business degree. She attended a very prestigious college and graduated with honors. She began stripping her senior year. It was quite obvious she was computer literate with a great business mind, but her head was severely messed up in regards to day to day living.

Frank was somewhat of a customer when Tracy met him ten years ago.

He was involved in illegal transactions with the owners of the adult book store next to the Pink Palace. He was going thru a divorce at the time. I believe there is someone for everyone. Frank and Tracy are the ultimate duo!! They are NOT in love, and never were. It was an arrangement silently agreed upon by them both! A match made in HELL.

“Who needs love? It’s for high school kids!” Tracy told me one morning while I was dusting off the Kama Sutra Gift boxes. “It’s about money. I could care less about sex or being in love. Money is what it’s all about, don’t ya agree??, she questioned me without caring about my answer. I nodded while she repeated herself three more times.

Tracy is the most calculating person I have ever met.  She was born with a heart that never quite defrosted. She gets her kicks by scheming. Life is NO FUN for Tracy unless she has a troupe of fucked up people around her. She seeks out scum, the more offensive and warped, the better. Her sense of humor borders on the insane.

Her reason for a having a child was distorted. She said she only wanted to have someone take care of her when she was old. She envisioned herself at the age of sixty, dialing her sons phone number. The receiver is cradled against her shoulder as she presses the buttons. In the other hand, she holds the infamous pacifier of her life, an $80 bottle of champagne. “Justin? Hey hon, it’s me- your mother. I need you to go to the boutique to lock up. And could ya stop over here on your way? I need an Enquirer and another bottle of bubbly, hon. I seem to have run dry!”

It’s not like she turned out this way by accident. My guess is that she WANTED her life to be filled with seedy characters. Hustlers,exotic dancers, street punks, even pedophiles. They gave her an escape from the reality of being Tracy Shay.

“I had an amazing fantasy,” Tracy blurted out one day at the shop. “ I went into a coma for a year. When I finally came out of it, my feet were a mess. The skin had grown and callused over. My toenails were several inches long with unsightly cuticles. The first thing I did was schedule a pedicure. There I was, reclining back in the oversized massage chair. My feet were covered in crocodile epidermis, submerged in that whirlpool of sanitizer and jasmine oil. I could hardly wait for the pedicure to begin, she explained to me in an almost orgasmic manner.

“Ling pulled out her tools. The “utensils of love” are what I called them. I could barely contain myself when the silver razor grazed my heel. The notion of that blade shaving away layers and layers of hardened turf was the best way to experience JOY. The scissors, the files and the buffers!!! Ling began gently, as I watched the curled yellow particles fall to the dusty linoleum. They looked like tiny pieces of uncooked macaroni. The part of the experience I enjoyed the most was to SEE the ruins of my flesh!!! I begged Ling to scrape and cut as much as she could. I told her I needed to see more rind, to make my soles raw! Ling obeyed, like a submissive I once knew who reeked of cat piss and had an affinity for computers.” “It was the best dream I ever,ever had!”

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When I first met Frank Shay, Tracy’s husband, I felt as if I had seen him before. Not specifically HIM, but he had that unmistakably, identifiable Wiseguy look. Someone you’d see in a tiny Italian Restaurant, after hours, devouring a plate of sausages & peppers, white napkin tucked in neck.

Frank was a lumbering, bowl-legged presence of bulk. At 6’4” and an easy 300 pounds, he was a walrus on dry land, free to roam the streets of South Boston. At the age of 53, he wore his years, and then some. His face was sizable, draped with leathery jowls. His eyes expressionless, drooping and jaundiced. Neglected teeth.

Within minutes of our first introduction, Frank Shay began recounting his life story me as naturally as an accomplished actor. The chronicles were complex,detailed accounts of his personal life, but somehow lacked any emotion. It seemed, sometimes, that he was at confession and I was his priest. I would sit uncomfortably on a wooden stool near the cash register. Frank stood next to the Fetish magazines. He buzzed about drugs, smuggling, women,guns and even murder. Sometimes, I spaced out. I heard the words but refused to believe them. I always knew deep down that his accounts were stone-cold facts. But the manner in which he relayed them seemed rehearsed, like he practiced each dialogue on the way over in his Cadillac.( Tracy displayed the exact same trait).

I only saw Frank once a week, a few hours at a time. It always seemed like an eternity. He spoke to me like I was one of the guys. He never worried about profanity or getting too explicit.

The only way for me to receive the information was turn half my brain OFF.

To this day, I only recall about 30% of what he told me.

Selective memory, I suppose.

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Did you see last nights episode of All in the Family? It was great. It was when Archie found out that Lionel was dating his neice!” Hershel Berkowitz, Lenny for short, managed to spark up a conversation that day, in the little dark and cruel hole we called “work.”

Sporting filthy black jeans, hand-me-down sneakers with dingy laces wrapped around the pant cuffs, a bright yellow T-shirt,( oil-stained mid chest), Lenny was a sight to behold. Puffed and squinty from his evening beer ritual, his matted raven hair resting down his back like a horse’s mane, he was in a class by himself. He belched. Then he expelled gas over in the corner near our PVC gloves. He was laughing. I hadn’t said anything funny…. Maybe it was the Julie Ashton blow up doll??

Lenny and I spent the next full hour or so in silence. No customers. I read the Improper Bostonian, while Lenny dangled his feet back & forth in the red Dominatrix chair, grunting and snarling periodically, like a wild boar in captivity.

Elite Boutique did have its way of making one feel like a prisoner. Painted black walls, low ceiling, non-existent ventilation. Tracy liked to think of her business as an upscale adult boutique. Who was she kidding?? Body bags, strait jackets and latex diapers from Europe, sure. But it was a raunchy sex shop, when it came down to brass tacks(which we should have sold,actually,along with our other torture devices).

My boredom grew increasingly worse. Finally, the phone rang. I turned down Madonnas Ray of Light CD playing on  the stereo. “Elite, may I help you?” I answered. “Hey hon, it’s Tracy”, she slurred, barely audible. “Is Lenny wandering around somewhere?” “Yup, I said, hang on a second.” I motioned to him as he stood a few feet away in deep thought near the spiked face masks.

I was always a bit curious about their phone conversations. Lenny jumped to attention whenever Tracy called, like a Marine would do for his commanding officer.

“Pretty slow, yeah, I know…well earlier I sold a tube of Anal-Ease, but nothing since!” Uh, Ok..goodbye” Lenny hung up, reached in his bag and took out one of 3 hard boiled eggs he had packed. He walked over to the wastebasket, peeled it, and in two bites, it was gone. Now the shop had a stench of sulfur, body odor and mildew.

“Tracy wants us to keep a close eye on every customer. One person at the end of the store at all times!” Lenny slyly barked at  me seconds later, with useless authority.

“I know, Lenny, you told me the same thing yesterday”, I managed to say while looking up from the latest issue of Adult Video Magazine. “Well, Darci, she mentioned it again. I am just doing what I was told!”, he raised his voice submissively. 

“Ok, Lenny.. Sure, no problem”, I answered. My response had about as much sincerity as the porno stars I was reading about have when they fake their orgasms.

“Hello, how are you today?” I pleasantly asked the man climbing the stairs of the boutique. “Pretty good”, he mumbled with his chin to chest.

Lenny proceeded to jump to his feet, smooth his rats nest of a ponytail and adjust his protruding gut. He acknowledged our first customer in 2 hours with an aggressive gesture. He immediately told him we were offering 10% off our pocket pussies for today only. Working commission on a slow day always made Lenny edgy and desperate.

The man, in his 40’s, wearing an expensive taupe overcoat and Armani shoes, shot a blank expression back at Lenny. He then headed for the nipple clamps. Picking up the package, he caressed it, and replaced it lovingly. He then fingered the flavored lubricants, taking a closer look at the Pumpkin and Cherry Twist. He purposely brushed by the latex rubber catsuit, which is our best seller at $350, and then left without uttering a word.

Lenny pouted, and peeled his second egg.

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