B-Girls

        by Vern Fein

My Father, Uncle and Aunt, periodically, soared south from Chicago like chicken hawks to snatch young teen girls, bored with their rural small town lives. They found them by swooping into drug store soda counters, hanging out, chatting, telling them of the glittering opportunities to make big money in bars they owned in our area. They were right about the big money, mind-boggling compared to the nickels and dimes for babysitting or even working in the general store for these pretties. And glitzy compared to the high school barn dances where the local yokels stepped on their feet more than won their hearts. Eighteen was legal and enough of them got into the fancy cars and headed north to become what was illegal in a few years and earned a lot of dollars for my relatives.

It was a strange, but effective concept. The girls would dress up as sexy as they could, but being young and pretty was enough. When male customers came into the bar, lonely single and  lonely married men, the B-Girls would sidle over with a come hither look, ask if they could sit down so the customer could buy them a drink, and began a series of knee fondles, slight back rubs, maybe even a bit of mild kissy-face as the hopeful and enthralled men, like fat flies in a web, would gladly buy drink after drink, fondle back to the degree they could, and proposition to take them to a motel. That was the cut-off point though. My Father, the impresario, the main spider, would fire any girl who went home with a customer. Propositions were off limits as it was prostitution and could get you jail. The only rule, not born from any morality, just the survival of a cultural anomaly.

I was a child of about twelve when I first became aware of the role and function of these young ladies, who were always very nice to me and called me a cute kid when they saw me and tousled my hair. Off the bar area was a kitchen, downstairs from where my family lived. When weather prevented outside play, I would hang out at the kitchen table, pretend to study and engage these pretty girls in conversation. Even at my young age, my hormones already had me noticing a difference between me and them and I liked to bask in that nascent sexuality.

One day when I was home sick, I was sitting at the table when Annie came in carrying several bottles, some full liquor bottles and some empties. She made several trips as there were quite a number of bottles. Finally the counter area and part of the sink was full of them and she began to pour most of the contents into a pitcher, one bottle at a time. Then she took a small funnel and poured about a third of a bottle into one of the empty bottles, filling it the rest of the way with water from the sink tap. As soon as she finished, she restored the cap and took a marker and put a large red B on the back of the bottle.

Finally, she had two sets of bottles—some with a little liquor and a lot of water and a red B on the back, and some full of whatever liquor was left.

As she was doing this strange task, which I had not seen before, I asked her, always wanting to make conversation with those lips: “Annie, what are you doing that for? Why do you pour water in some of the bottles?”

“To save lives.”

“To save lives?”

A bit recovered, Annie explained: “Your Dad doesn’t want people drinking too much and driving and getting killed on the way home to their families.”

It made sense to me, made me feel good towards my Father. I didn’t ask why only some of the bottles were watered down. Annie’s explanation was enough for me.

Just then my Father came through the swinging door, looked hard at me and turned on Annie. “What are you doing! I thought I told you not…” 

“I didn’t know he was going to be home from school.”

Dad,” I explained, “Annie was just…”

 “You’re sick. Get upstairs and in bed right now. I don’t want you missing another day.” You didn’t argue with my Dad. I sprinted up the stairs, but could not distinguish the angry words spewed at  Annie below.

My Father never brought the subject up and I knew not to ask. But years later, I found out what Annie said was untrue. My Dad sold the real liquor to the customers. As the B-Girls sat by and nookied with the men, the drunker the victims got, the more willing they would be to buy the girls more and more drinks. The bartender, easily seeing the red B in the dim bar light would pour the girls drinks from those bottles and the suckers or “live ones” from the bottles with the real booze. As the men got drunker and drunker, spending money like water, the cash register dinged and dinged.

Eventually the law began to notice and pressure was applied. Ways to cover up were devised. Sometimes an extra number was given to each girl so that it could be added to the register receipt and tallied later as all earnings were on commission. Another time the ruse was covered by each girl having a different colored swizzle stick—Annie was red, Sally was green, etc—put in her own glass on the back of the bar to be counted after they closed, making sure each was paid the right amount.

But time and tide waits for no man, as Scrooge opined. In a few years, the fuzz began to  arrest tavern owners and my Dad went to jail a few times. It was no fun at school the day after the local paper posted a front page picture of him behind bars. He told me that they were just trying to hassle him because they were jealous of his success.

I found out the details above and all the other seaminess the night of my twenty-first birthday.  I was very young looking for my age and a sure mark for any cop in a bar so that same Aunt, the chicken hawker, went out with me and we got happily drunk together.

A sloppy drunk and extremely talkative even when sober, my Aunt “spilled the beans.” Over and over as she regaled me with the sordid details, she kept apologizing to my dead Father, who had a heart attack and died at 51, for “spilling the beans.”

I am in my late seventies now and spilled a lot of my own beans as all others have, but I made a lot of different choices and, secure in my later years, with a wonderful wife, three successful grown children, and four adored grand boys, I am glad I decided not to live a watered-down life.

Bio:  A recent octogenarian, Vern Fein, mostly has published poetry, but has several non-fiction pieces and short stories published on various sites, such as Duende, Phenomenal Literature Magazine, Fewer Than 500, Quail Bell, and River and South.