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drinks. The gig coincided with 1982’s first serious snowfall, and a wholesome, Christmas spirit had fallen upon 48th Street, in the upper Square. A horse and buggy trotted by the Pussycat Cinema, outside which jolly pedestrians were molding snowballs. Long Jean Silver didn’t go for it.
    “I hate this shit,” she said, clutching my arm.
    “A little tighter,” I suggested, taking advantage and further remarking that it felt like she was holding me up.
    “Does it really feel that way?” she whispered, steering us out into traffic as the light changed to green.
    Long Jean Silver probably never got to frolic in the snow, skate, or make snowmen when she was a little girl, which wasn’t all that long ago. Now, at Bernard’s when she removes her new coat—made from “about ten foxes”—she’s frightfully gorgeous and I’m tempted to choke on my Adam’s apple. She says she needs to join a health spa, tone up her ass and belly. Claims she never exercises and eats like a pig, even though she’s in smashing condition. She’s got fluffy dirty-blond hair and a majorette face that once earned her extra tips from tricks who thought she was a nice girl and should give up hooking.
    Doing four shows a day for a week at the Avon 7 is tiring. The shows she likes, but the three-hour intervals bore her silly: “I wish they’d let me work Mardi Gras at the Melody in between.” Mostly, though, she just wishes she could get a new apartment, lie around with her dog, watch TV, fuck—things of that nature. She has to do this porn stuff to make money, and frankly, she hates it.
    For the time being, nevertheless, Jeanie says she’d like to drop the “Long” from her title—to make a clean break, I assume, from namesake Long John Silver, the peg-legged pirate. Likewise, she’ll try to play down the stump, which first brought her fame as a special Cheri magazine centerfold five years ago.
    “Please don’t show any pictures of it. I don’t want that as my image anymore.... Well, maybe just one.”
    Do booking agents stipulate that she flash the leg?
    “No. I still like to freak people out. But I only do it for a minute onstage, at the end.”
    Jeanie Silver was raised on an Arizona air force base, and in small, dry towns across that state. Her stepdad is a colonel in the armed forces. She tells me he builds missiles.
    “Nuclear ones?”
    “Yeah. He may get a job at the Pentagon, in which case I’ll quit porn. I don’t wanna get kidnapped.” The lore of Jean’s early years, in a nutshell, goes something like this: She was born with a missing fibula, so doctors amputated the bottom of her leg. Coming home from her twelfth birthday party, she was raped and beaten by five blacks who jumped her in the park. Only one balked when he saw the leg. She learned to walk and dance quite normally on an artificial attachment, even enough to become a professional house burglar. She entered reform school at fifteen, came out a pross, studied child psychology and hitchhiked like mad until ending up happily ever after as a “porn star” in New York.
    She pushes a half-eaten cheeseburger aside and starts pouring freshly melted wax from Bernard’s candles on her hands. As it hardens, she becomes entranced by the sensation, pouring even more into her hands. Several gals from the Melody Burlesk stop by the table to inquire how she’s doing “around the block.”
    “It sucks,” says Jeanie, without looking up or bidding them farewell as they pat her on the back and leave. “All right, so I’m strange,” she says, looking up at me lopsidedly, breaking a long silence. Then she retreats back to the wax, molding something with quiet determination. She has a glazed look, like a beautiful blond disturbed child. She’s molding a snowman, a one-armed fellow.
    The Avon 7 is packed for the late show, rows of horny heads watching Mistress Electra , a new film starring the “Unforgiving” Long Jean Silver. The dressing room is a long walk from