Of Hollywood
I set off for Frederick's playing Lawrence Ferlinghetti's underwear poem, taking notes on the flip side of a book xeroxed and sent to the boys for option – rejected and recycled -- an extended single joke on The Rules, how to lose a man, illustrated with stick figures, one page a bra, "32D", the bra that should be left behind, as quickly as possible, in his apartment. Frederick's of Hollywood is Hollywood Boulevard, the desolate stretch east of Vine. Many of the sidewalk stars there are blank, next to Little Jack Little and June Havoc, Jack Palance and Fleetwood Mac. While Lana's soda shop may have been there, Hollywood High, at Sunset and Highland, is now considered too far to walk from here. Nearby copy cat lingerie stores sell tawdrier lingerie, the shortest schoolgirl get up, American flag print thongs. Frederick's pink awnings are flanked by Hollywood Toys and Costumes, which stocks wigs, and St. Pierre's Magic Supply, a real magician shop with, in its vitrine, Dlx. Top Hat Table, Dagger Head Chest, a dusty wrist guillotine with a rubber hand stuck in it, signs decorated with stick figures, like those opposite these notes, hopefully drawn but probably not drawn by a child, Mirage the hologram maker my Theory of Knowledge professor used, realistic thumb tips, angel wings, and various manacles that read from stage – not those manacles in vitrines farther west. Frederick's lingerie museum has stage and screen underwear plus a brief historical overview. In von Stroheim's Silk Stockings, Cyd Charisse's bustier had more than 100 garter clips attached since the silk "stockings had to be pulled from every angle so that at no time would [they] wrinkle or show creases." Lana Turner, from The Merry Widow, Greta Garbo, The Gorgeous Hussy, Pamela Anderson in an old Frederick's catalog during her modeling days. Joan Collins was in a movie called The Red Velvet Swing, which reminds me that when my Mom worked for The Chicago Tribune, she went undercover at a lounge called The Velvet Swing, although I had always pictured the velvet as black or purple velvet, with a friend. It was a bar waitressing job except the girls took turns swinging on a swing over the bar. I have always recognised Frederick's for their 70's shoes, specifically the five-inch stilettos with real spikes in the catalogs my parents occasionally had, since Dad bought Mom a joke lingerie item each Christmas for her stocking. While the shoes are like those in the 70's again, the spikes are disappointingly encased in lucite. I have always wondered about the "no bra" bra, and see it comes with Sexi-Set adhesive. Bras with nipples and nippled pads for stuffing bras "have that 'cold weather' look at all times", or in slang used by the boys -- my fiancé and his writing partner, former lead phone salesman at Victoria's Secret catalog -- "turn on your headlights." My favorite, in theory, is the underwire alone -- although there is no comfortable underwire, women have a rib there -- with two strategically placed netting daisies, although the newest technology is the water bra, or "liquid dream". Why get implants? Since I locked my keys in my car, I have the special treat of standing on Hollywood Boulevard in front of Frederick's, looking at Musso & Frank's, where Fitzgerald hung out during his final decline, home of the overpriced food from the 20’s and old style martinis -- a shot and a half of gin and an olive to cling to like a life raft. A real school girl with a regulation-length plaid skirt -- never more than three inches above the knee, they make you kneel in the principal’s office and they measure from the floor to your hem -- walks past with her arms xed across her chest, her fists near her shoulders as I am clutching my notes to myself and smearing ink all over the front of my white t-shirt, waiting for AAA.PorciumculaThey zoned the miasma into Vernon, divided speakeasies and the slaughterhouses' stench -- beef lung, fish cheeks, pumpable meats, everything but the squeal -- from Anglos. Ravenous rats like traffic flow past Beaux Arts bridges. Naiads lift rusted lanterns trailing raveled and unraveled wire, illuminating the Taylor Yard's streaming steel parallel the Porciumcula River. Over roads rutted by heavy loads and tracks to abattoirs shuttle human resources, tax dodges commodified like pork bellies. Freight trains dice early from late shift.
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