I Could Have Been A Happy Hooker

Note: I removed this post a couple of weeks ago because someone was offended by it. I have now decided that I cannot be censored in this way.

I could have been a Happy Hooker. Some kids want candy. Some kids raid their parent’s liquor cabinets. I snuck dirty books. My mother had a copy of Love Story. It was in the book case in our living room but up on top of a row of books and turned sideways so you couldn’t see what it was. I wanted to read it badly. I snuck a flash light into my room off the wooden workbench in the garage. That was when I started shutting my bedroom door at night. My door also had a lock on it, but I knew that would be pushing it.
I remember in the third grade we had a club that met out in the ditch next to the road that our school sat on. It was a cussing club. We said Fuck and shit and whore. Okay, maybe we didn’t say whore. But we said fuck a lot. And bitch. Andy Kernoodle (his name was really Theodore, but he couldn’t spell it) said Mother Fucker one day and I was in love.
When I babysat for the people up the road I read True Romance magazine and True Crime. Their names were Don and Val. Their kids were Angie and Baby Johnnie. I used to go there about 5 p.m. They stayed out late. Usually past 2 a.m. Don would walk me home down the road about four houses. He used to put his hand on my back. I hoped he wasn’t a murderer like the guys in the magazine. When I got home from babysitting I lay in my bed kissing the back of my hand pretending it was Don.
At one of my babysitting jobs they had all of the "Happy Hooker" books. On the first page of The Happy Hooker in the second paragraph it says, “Hey bigshit madam bitch, bet you ain’t got no black cunt turnin’ tricks in your high-class fuckin’ house!”
The only time I ever head anyone cuss was when my dad would say damn or my mom would say shit or hell when she couldn’t get her sewing machine to work properly.
Now, at age 49, I just found a copy of Valley of the Dolls in my mom’s bookcase. How could I have missed it? Big Black letters and pills on the cover. The inside jacket says:

“From Broadway to Hollywood, this is the fastest-selling most whispered about novel of the year. And no wonder! It reveals more about the secret, drug-filled, love-starved, sex-satiated, nightmare world of show business than any other book ever published.”

I’ve got some reading to do.