When you live near Times Square in the twenty-first century, as I do, New Year's Eve is not a picnic.

The metal barriers are in place the night before, and on the actual Eve, there are hordes and swarms of people for many hours. The city expects a million folks this year. It gets very noisy, and unless I'm fortified by a drink or two, it feels intimidating to amble on the asphalt.

Open containers of alcohol, bags, and backpacks are not allowed on the streets.

Police keep watch from the rooftops.

Since I don't have a driver's license, I have to carry my passport around for ID on a night like this. You never know in today's world when or where you might have to prove who you are.

Obviously, it wasn't always so intense...

Many years ago, back in the "bad" old days when New York was more financially down in the dumps (the mid-80s) I actually lived IN Times Square, and the New Year's throngs didn't get up much past 45th St and Broadway.

Now they extend as far up as Central Park and Columbus Circle, which is about eighteen blocks from 43rd St. and Broadway, where the ball drops.

One New Year's Eve when I lived in Times Square, I turned off all the lights and stayed in my apartment at midnight to experience this weird effect: I switched on the television to watch the ball drop, but turned off the sound. I could hear the roar of the crowd a couple of blocks away, as if my 13-inch television had gigantic speakers out on the street. It was strange but kind of cool.

Then I went out on the streets to mingle. In those days, it wasn't so regimented and you could walk more freely.

Now there is an army of cops regulating the flow of human traffic, which is understandable with the size of crowds these days. The cops do a great job, incidentally.

Even back in the 70s, if you were right on 42nd Street at midnight, it could be nerve-wracking.

My friends and I went to a movie on the "Deuce," as 42nd Street was nicknamed then, and the flick let out shortly before midnight. The film was The Murder on the Orient Express, which came out in 1974, which tells you how long ago this was. Anyway, when we got out on the street, it was wall to wall humanity, everybody waiting for the midnight countdown. You definitely wanted to keep an eye on your wallet. You couldn't move. Somebody started an argument which was frightening for a few minutes until they calmed down. Then midnight came, the ball dropped around the corner, and a huge roar went up as everybody cheered.

The crowd quickly dispersed after that. My friends and I went to a coffee shop for a burger.

I guess I'm just an old fogey now. I've planned on staying in tonight. I certainly have enough movies to watch. Although you never know. I might get antsy and wade out into the crowds and take a subway downtown. Once out of the neighborhood, I'd stay away until after midnight. There are stripclubs open downtown tonight, after all. It might be nice to have somebody on my lap at midnight...

Then again, I have the feeling I would end up spending money like water in a club on a night like this. It would be hard to avoid. I'd feel like a wet blanket, pinching pennies. But I'd blow my budget to hell.

Weighty decisions...

However YOU spend your New Year's Eve, I hope you enjoy it!

It's interesting how the mind accommodates itself to altered circumstances.

I can't spend a lot of money nowadays, so I've had to cut back on lapdancing to almost zero (meaning, maybe I'll splurge for one this weekend to welcome in 2007 if I go out on New Year's Eve).

And in the absence of lapdancing and the satisfaction of the sense of touch which comes with it, my other senses have gone into higher gear. Like sight, smell, and hearing.

A girl I like at my favorite club, Veronica, whom I tip onstage but have not recently gotten a dance from, gave me a hug and kiss yesterday and wished me a Happy New Year on her way to seduce a more deep-pocketed customer into the champagne room. I can almost still inhale the fruit-like scent of her perfume, see (and feel) the soft sway of her hair against my face, and hear her slightly accented, friendly voice in my ear.

Or take another dancer, whom I'll call Anita. She has an incredible body, and I also tip her when she's onstage but without springing for a private dance later. I watch her with close attention as she goes through her moves, and in the dim light of the stage which is only broken up by the occasional shimmer off the mirrored walls, I can see that her flat belly is exceptionally well-toned--still smooth, but with the faintest hint of well-developed abs. If she had a full six pack, I would find that a turn-off; but seeing its potential glimpsed in this way is erotic; it's sexy that she clearly goes to a gym and takes great care of her figure. The subtle but not overt inference that she is strong is also arousing to me; but anything more obvious (like bulging muscles) would make her seem masculine to my way of thinking.

I have a female acquaintance in her late thirties who is into boxing; she is a very kind and interesting person to be around, but I doubt I could ever find any woman who liked boxing to be sexually attractive, and I don't care whether it was sheerly for exercise or for self-defense. I see boxing as a masculine pursuit, and a woman's doing it makes her seem like a kind of transvestite to me. I don't like seeing women wearing male clothes, either. Marlene Dietrich has never struck a chord with me, except in the movie Rancho Notorious wherein she dressed like a frontier hooker and rode on a man's back as if he were a horse. (Figures I'd like that, no?) I mean, women will obviously do whatever they want without waiting for my cranky and condescending approval, and I wouldn't cast any votes on laws based on these prejudices of mine, but this is just the way I feel about women acting like men when it comes to my sexual preferences. I just like traditionally feminine women.

Not that the world is going to conform to my fantasies any time soon...

All this is undoubtedly why stripclubs, which are retro in their very nature--women all dolled up and performing for men--so appeal to me.

Anyway, this is the kind of philosophical entry I come up with when I haven't had anything to eat in almost seven hours. I was still belching from last night's Chinese food, so I passed on lunch...

Still haven't heard from Lindsay Lohan about the Sir Cranky Challenge (see my previous entry)...

Maybe it's better this way. The holiday season has been exhausting enough for this old boy...

Anyway, I saw two pictures of Jessica Biel in the papers this week, one which showed her fine bottom in a tight dress, and the other which showed her costumed like a mermaid...and I think I'd rather offer Jessica the opportunity to give Sir Cranky a lapdance...

Wink.

Anyway...

I can't believe the four days since Christmas have zoomed by, just evaporated...

I'm only halfway done organizing my receipts which I hold onto for tax purposes as a freelancer. I want to finish this task before the new year, because then I have to start a whole new pile...

I'll do more tomorrow...

I dropped off my laundry at the wash-n-fold today, stopped in at the stripclub for a couple of beers, ate a roast pork egg foo young dinner over which I still haven't stopped belching, and watched an old British movie called The Rattle of a Simple Man from 1964. One of the stars was Diane Cilento, playing the role of Cyrenne, a feisty blond prostitute who brings home Percy, a thirtysomething male virgin and soccer fan. The "rattle" refers to the noisemaker Percy shakes in the stands at the big championship which brings him to London, where he meets Cyrenne in a stripclub after the match. He is goaded by his pals into trying to pick her up, and they figure he won't succeed because he's so shy. But to irk the guys, and to satisfy her own curiosity about Percy, Cyrenne invites him to her flat.

I read about the movie on the Internet and hunted it down. It wasn't great, but Cilento was memorably saucy and energetic, with penetrating, mischievous eyes, apple cheeks, and low-cut blouses.

In 1963, when I was twelve years old, my parents took me to see the bawdy movie Tom Jones, wherein Cilento had a famous eating scene with Albert Finney, in which they humorously play out their lust for each other over a heaping table of food.

Dressed in standard and revealing 18th century wench attire, Cilento made the role quite vivid. Not only was she nominated for an Academy Award, but her performance probably set my expectations way too high about what women were supposed to be and how they were supposed to act. She was incredibly sexy and playful and desirable...

A year or two later I saw Cilento's then-husband, Sean Connery, in Goldfinger, another film with female imagery that was both exhilarating and unnerving--for instance, Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore (accompanied by her Flying Circus of lesbian pilots), and Shirley Eaton, almost nude and painted gold from head to toe. Yes, these films played right into my over-active imagination and profoundly affected my view of sex, fantasy, and seduction.

Helping to make me the crank I am today...

But back to The Rattle of a Simple Man. Percy is so overwhelmed by Cyrenne (as well as being shy from the git-go) that he can barely take his clothes off in front of her. At this point, Cyrenne is stripped down to bra, panties, and pantyhose (or "tights," as they are called in Britain), so in a stunning move she puts her clothes back on in a sort of reverse seduction--tight black pants, high heel black leather boots, and a white form-fitting top which shows off her breasts in a bullet bra. Then she lifts up her legs and starts doing bicycling motions in front of his face...!

Ah, it takes the entire film, but the guy finally gets over his shyness and befuddlement and repression and goes to her, in a manner of speaking. Percy was played by the late Harry H. Corbett, who was famous in England for starring in the original British sitcom on which Sanford and Son was based here in America.

Anyway, I read about The Rattle of a Simple Man on a site called www.womwam.net, which is a tremendously colorful archive of images and information about actresses and female erotic archetypes in mid-century cinema. I've cited WOmWAm before in previous entries when writing about other 1960s actresses who made deep incisions in my psyche, like Chelo Alonso; WOmWAm stands for Women Overwhelming men, Women Attacking men--the upper and lower case spelling being deliberately chosen on the site.

Click the link below, and you can see why I hurried out to dig up a copy of The Rattle of a Simple Man!

WOmWAm

So I read in the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column this morning that Lindsay Lohan went to the stripclub Scores West the other night and danced onstage with the other girls. Page Six didn’t specify if Lindsay took off her top--glaring omission on their part. Did she or did she not strip like the other dancers?

Page Six said she got lots of lapdances from the strippers in the VIP room, which is, like, sooooo boring...girls dancing for girls? YAWWWWWNNNN...prop my eyelids open with toothpicks...because hey, what we want to know is if she had the balls to dance for customers! Penis-bearing individuals!! Page Six reports that Miss Lohan is taking “stripper classes” to prepare for her role as a topless dancer in a new movie called “I Know Who Killed Me.” What a world. Stripper classes! Better she should read this blog! Now, maybe such classes are good for aerobic exercise--but the only real way a woman can learn to be a stripper is by working as one, and doing hours of lapdances for, and hustling expensive drinks from, the most rigorous and picky tittie-bar customers of all: balding middle-aged men disappointed in how their lives have turned out and who seek the solace of the flesh emporia for some badly needed escapism! (That wouldn’t include anybody I know!)

If Lindsay were up to the Sir Cranky Challenge, I would gladly show up at a club where she is slated to perform FOR REAL (boobs exposed), in order to reward her stage sets with my heartfelt if meager tips, and to slip her a hard-earned forty dollars later for two lapdances. I would also be willing to buy her a moderately priced cocktail (just one) and ask about her life in the same well-meaning fashion with which I chat up all strippers. In this way Miss Lohan would get the experience of a true aficionado of the jiggle joints, and perhaps she could then add my melancholy face (my erstwhile favorite stripper Lily used to say I have big sad puppy dog eyes) and the knowledge gained from my company to the bank of emotional memories upon which she will undoubtedly draw to limn her performance as a topless dancer.

However, this being said and posted upon my blog, I won’t be checking my private messages every few minutes. Lindsay Lohan I can’t count on; but I have a feeling the lovely Veronica will be onstage today at my favorite club, and on that I can count.

A man needs broads he can count on!

More and more I wish I were a visual artist, a painter or a photographer, to relay through images the feelings I have. A beautiful cashier in a Chinese restaurant...a dancer with gorgeous legs on a stripclub stage...the particular pinkish blue light of the sky as it fades in the evening over the bulky clutter of the midtown skyline...yes, sometimes I feel myself going round and round with words, when I want you to see EXACTLY what I am seeing.

A picture.

Words have always been my thing. But I guess sometimes I feel frustrated with words; often they do capture what I want to say, but sometimes I just don't want to say anything--I just want you to see along with me...to show you the sights I see.

Or maybe I'm just feeling tired from all the work and worry and words, and really need to relax these next few days as I have been trying to...but you know how it is: it's not good when you have to work at relaxing!