Betty Field

            I drink three glasses of water every morning during song practice. I think a hair somehow got into my first glass as I could feel it in my throat until I was done singing.

            I started memorizing “Help camionneur” by Serge Gainsbourg and I’m already one quarter finished.

            I used the last of my Murphy’s Oil Soap to rewash the part of the living room floor that I'd started cleaning in the first place before I'd bought the wood soap. Now it's evened out and about half of the visible floor in that room is done.

            I had chickpeas with flax seed oil and garlic powder for lunch.

            I did my sciatica exercises in the afternoon and took a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas. On the way back I stopped at Freshco where I bought three bags of cherries, two bags of grapes, two pints of strawberries and a jar of honey. I also hot a whole chicken for $6.25 and a sirloin to steak for $6.00.

            While I was paying for my items my cashier was talking to another employee about one of the other cashiers having worn hoop earrings to work. I asked if that was against the rules and she said there is a rule against all big jewellery because it might get caught on something and cause an injury. It’s always especially interesting to learn something new about a familiar place like the supermarket.

            I made some more notes for my review of David Jure’s “The Patient English”.

            I did a little more work on the second stanza of  my poem “Mooning the (M)(P)atriarchs":

But if you find a wer or wyf

after the wolf comes out to bite

they’re not as strangled by the tangle of brain

If they sniff you on the wind

they might just let you be a friend

until they’re chained down in the oubliette again

            I had a potato, steamed broccoli, two drumsticks and some gravy while watching an episode of The Untouchables called “The White Slavers”. The title is a misnomer since it would only be white slavery if the sex trade workers were working entirely against their will and were specifically being marketed because they were white. In general white slavery would only take place in non-white countries. This story was really about Al Capone’s prostitution ring, which continued on after Capone was in prison. The man in charge is Mig Torrance and he is under pressure from the feds on one side and from Capone’s men on the other. He is told to let former Madame Mrs. B run the operation because she was the best in the business and the sex trade workers trusted her. Having served five years in prison, Mrs. B is now retired and refuses to get back in the game. Mig doesn’t like being told “no” and so he instructs his brother Ernie to rough her up. But Ernie instead asks her for a favour. He had been in love with one of the workers that had recently died of an overdose. He doesn’t want her to receive a generic burial from the city but he can’t step forward to claim her body. He asks Mrs. B to make the arrangements. She works it out with Eliot Ness and he attends the service along with some of Mig’s sex trade workers. One of the women is Alice, whom he tells that there is strength in numbers. This compels Alice to form a prostitutes’ union that would meet at Mrs. B’s place. Meanwhile Mig tries to bring in more workers from Mexico but when he finds out that Ness plans on stopping the truck at the border he orders his men to take the women to the woods and kill them. Ernie wants out but Mig says he’ll have to deliver Ness as payment. Ernie brings Ness to the trap but he senses that’s what it is. His men arrive and there is a shootout. Mig tries to take shelter among the women but they surround and beat him to death.

            Alice was played by Nita Talbot.

            Mrs. B was played by Betty Field, who began her career on stage and had a respectable career in film and television. Her first big movie role was in “Of Mice and Men”. She preferred a wide variety of roles to stardom.

            There’s something fucked up about calling prostitution “white slavery”. It just adds to the stigma that contributes to the danger of the sex trade. As long as the sex trade and its market are treated as criminal or illegitimate it puts the workers in danger.