"Tattoo of a Naked Lady"
by Randy Everhard
(as told to B.D. Kwiatek)
A Review by Java
In order to get the right perspective
of "Tattoo of a Naked Lady," you have to think of it this way: it’s John
Waters meets Russ Meyer meet Jim Thompson’s "The Grifters" meets "Debby
Does Dallas." "Tattoo of a Naked Lady" hearkens back to a time when sleaze
was the king of paperback fiction where if you didn’t deliver dirty, dirty
sex every dozen pages your readers got downright pissed. It’s one of those
books that makes you feel as dirty and sweaty as if you just ran a marathon
in a peep show booth.
The hero of the book (if you consider the hero as
the one who gets laid the most) is a character by the name of Randy Everhard.
He’s an allegorical Everyman with a perpetual hard-on. He’s a carnie grifter
looking for the next big score and/or the next set of double-D breasts.
He efforts, as well as that of the book, are a subtle as a double-wide
in the middle of Buckingham Palace.
Here’s an example of the sleaze-o-matic style of
the book. In this scene, Randy has tried to go "legit" by running a wet
T-shirt version of the classic dunk tank. We hear his play-by-play of this
event.
"High and dry," she drawled into the microphone as pitch after pitch
missed the target. "You bozos couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, much
less the side of a broad! Let’s get a real man up here!"
This little skinny guy finally nailed her, dead-on. Owoooo-ga! squealed
the horn as the hinged bench swung away, dropping poor Cutie ass-first
into the Plexiglas tank.
The crowd exploded into hooting cheers of eyeballing ecstasy. They
finally got what they’d paid for. She really knew how to deliver, too.
She went under in slo-mo. The impact drove her T-shirt up baring her
bounty of boobs. They were milky white orbs that floated up like big balloons.
You could almost feel them in your hands. The soft flesh against your
fingers, the rosy nipples between your lips. There was more wood than a
lumberyard inside the joint.
A million white bubbles swirled around her kicking limbs. As her ass
hit the bottom of the tank, her legs spread apart in a shameless spectacle
of sex. The fluorescent pink crotch of her string bikini was no bigger
than a postage stamp.
Waves of long blonde hair drifted off her head. Her eyes were wide
open. You could almost hear her shocked squeal. She jumped back up and
resurfaced, gasping for breath.
"That water’s ice-cold!" she squeaked.
Her T-shirt was still pushed up over her tits. Those pink nipples went
in soft but came out hard as 24-carats. Goose-pimples rose on the naked
flesh.
She scooped them up in her hands, displaying them to the crowd like
loving cups on a trophy shelf. And then, just as quickly, she tugged her
shirt back down. If they wanted to see them again, they’d have to pay.
Cutie was no dummy. She knew she was working on percentage. Half of
the take from the balls went into her pocket. She worked that crowd for
all she was worth.
Compared to the rest of the book, this passage is G-Rated.
It’s a hot and fast read that lets you know that there is at least one
over-sexed writer who doesn’t mind that you have to use all your fingers
and toes to keep count of all the book’s sex scenes.
What sets this book apart from you run-of-the-mill
Penthouse letter is the inclusion of a "Double Indemnity" murder plot.
But instead of the sophisticated patter of a noir classic, you get the
"do me" panting of every bad 70’s shag carpeting and wha-wha guitar porn
flick. The violence is a literary tip-of-the-hat to all the tough-guy stories
that make pulp paperbacks such an enduring read.
And we can’t forger the femme fatale of the story,
one Bunny LaFever--the hot-to-trot unhappy wife of carnival owner O.B.
Krass. When she meets Randy, she sees him as her ticket out of carnival
life and out of her hapless marriage. And in the tradition of all great
sleaze novels, once Randy and Bunny get it on, each subsequent conquest
for Randy is a pale imitation of the fireworks he shared with Bunny. Once
the two are finally together, this truck stop Bonnie and Clyde find themselves
on the run from drug dealers, angry carnies, and (thrown in for good measure)
an unstoppable nymphomaniac.
Although the language of the book sometime gives
away the real author of the book, it is none the less a great homage to
all the sleaze that went before and, hopefully, all the sleaze that is
left to come.
To find out more about "Tattoo of a Naked Lady," check
out their website.
Go here to read a special
interview with the author!
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