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Penance Penitentiary

Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block

Pervert Purgatory

7/16/2020

I’ve spent twenty-eight years in this fucking hellhole. Now, they tell me I can memoir-map my misadventures and write my way out.

All that religious shit I disdained and disobeyed has played out true. There’s Heaven for the good folks, Hell for the beastfully baaaaaad. There’s Purgatory for guys like me — caustic cads that capitalized on a sicko system and caused catastrophe. I’ve sizzled in my sins for two decades plus. I’ve relived my earthly life in dystopian detail. My cunning keepers are currently dangling a deal:

Record your jaundiced journey. Trumpet the truth, triumphant. Hop to Heaven, and hit that high note.

Baby, it’s time to CONFESS.

Purgatory is shitsville. You’re stuck with the body you had on Earth when you died. You eat nothing but coach-class airplane food. There’s no booze, no jazzy intrigue, no wilt-your-will women. Violated victims bop by my cell. They remind me of my many misdeeds and jab me with red-hot pokers. Gay gauchos hurtle down from Heaven and scold me for outing them back in the homo-hate ’50s. It was my job. I entrapped soiled celebrities and putzo politicos, and cornholed them in Confidential. I sold my soul to that maladroit magazine. Now, I’m sordidly SORRY.

So what?

Sorry’s for limp-dick losers. Confession salves the savage self and rips it to righteous redemption. Hear my plaintive plea, O watchful world:

Get me the fuck out of here!!!!!

My keepers have poised me with pen and paper. They’ve compiled a complete run of Confidential. My synapses soar with a million malignant memories. Freddy Otash, 1922–1992. I’m a rogue cop, a private eye, a shifty shakedown artist. I’m the demonic deus ex machina of my tattered time and place. I’m the hellhound who held Hollywood captive. I’m the man with the sex-scorched secrets you irksome earthlings want to hear.

Confidential presaged the infantile Internet. Our gobs of gossip were repugnantly real. Today’s blowhard bloggers and their tattle texts? Pussyfooting punks all. We stung the studios. We popped the pooh-bahs. We hurled the hurt, wholesale. We voyeur-vamped America and got her hooked on the shivering shit. WE CREATED TODAY’S TELL-ALL MEDIA CULTURE. We crazily crafted a lurid language and made it our own.

It’s the lexicon of the lowdown. It’s the dialogue of the dish. It’s the slithering slur and the thrill of the threat. I think and write in algorithmic alliteration. Language must lambaste and lay on the lash. Language liberates as it offends. Confidential taught me that. My confession will make this dizzy dialect divide you in two. There’s Sin and Atonement, fuckers — there’s nothing else.

Purgatory’s a punitive proposition. Montgomery Clift pitchforked me yesterday. Confidential labeled him “the Lavender Lilliputian” and “Princess Tiny Meat.” JFK followed Monty. I dumped the dish on his dope habit and call-girl cavalcade. Marilyn Monroe penance-poked me next. Marilyn was a snout trout. She dispensed head to rogue pharmacists, XXX -exclusive. They dispensed noxious Nembutal back. Maybe I shouldn’t have tattled the tale — but I was within my First Amendment rights!!!!!

I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW.

Beverly Hills

8/14/92

I was working Hollywood Vice in ’51. We got word on a fuck pad, operating out of a crib at the Villa Elaine. I hotfooted it over there.”

We’re bopped back in my booth. There’s my audience: four showbiz machers in worse shape than me. Walkers, canes, and oxygen tanks clog the aisles to the kitchen. Fractious Freddy O.’s holding court.

It’s late summer, ’92. I’m seventy and in baaaaad fucking shape. I’ve consumed scads of scotch and sucked three packs a day since I shot out the chute. I’ve got emphysema and a bum pump. I’m aching to make eighty. It’s a lunar-looped long shot.

Sol Sidell said, “Get to it, Freddy. You roll to the pad, and then what?”

Sinful Sol. A jailbaiter from jump. He produced beach-blanket flicks in the sick ’60s. I pulled him out of the shit, circa ’66. He was reefer-ripped and poking two underage twists.

I said, “Okay, I roll to the crib and peep a side window. Shit — there’s Sam Spiegel, the cat that produced Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai. He’s muff-diving a three-hundred-pound chick. That was a boss beef, back in ’51. I told Sambo it’s dues time. It’s a morals bust, or a monthly donation to the Fred Otash Retirement Fund.”

My pals yukked. I wrapped into my Reuben sandwich and felt a twisted twinge in my chest. I downed digitalis. I saw Jules Slotnick suck on his oxygen mask and light a Camel Light. Julie produced turgid turkeys about farmworker strife. Call him Mr. Guilt for Gelt. He made all his live-in maids blow him. He held their green cards as a hedge against their refusal to bestow daily head.

Sid Resnick said, “Give us another one, Freddy.”

The Sidster was Mr. Holocaust Heartache. He produced schlock umentaries for Islamic TV. He was the King of the Chubby Chasers. He longed for it laaarrrge.

I cruised my cranium cracks for a story. Two elderly gay cats sashayed by the booth. That fed me my cue.

I pointed to them. “I got tipped to an all-male pajama party, back in ’56. I paid some LAPD hard boys a yard apiece to bust it, and brought my camera along. Those cats were piled up in a five-way with Rock Hudson, Sal Mineo, and a dude with giant acne cysts. Confidential wrote it up. Universal paid me ten g’s to keep the Rockster’s name out of the story.”

The booth roared and re -roared. Julie Slotnick gasped for breath. Al Wexler yukked out a bagel chunk. It flew and flopped to the floor.

Alky Al owned six porno bookstores and nine nose-job clinics. He plowed a truck full of migrant Mexicans and left six dead. I got it mashed down to a Mickey Mouse misdemeanor. Al owed me, laaaaarge.

I killed my sandwich. Alky Al blew a faux fanfare. I laid out my lifelong credo: “I’ll do anything short of murder. I’ll work for anyone but the Reds.”

My boys clapped and guffawed. A bad twinge hit my heart. I downed digitalis and deep dips of scotch.

Corned beef and sauerkraut socked my system. I got floaty and deep dyspeptic. I brought up a bread crust. It popped on my plate.

The booth tumbled. My pals vaporized. My vision blurred black. Calendar sheets shot backward. Decades disappeared and devolved. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe I’m just dreaming this shit—

LAPD Detective Bureau

City Hall

2/4/49

There I am. I’m fetching fine in ’49. I’m beefcake, boss, and bangin’ them bonaroo bitches, three at a pop.

I’m handsome and heavy-hung. I’m a lustful Lebanese. Call me a camel cad from the get-go. I’m an ex-Marine. I trained troops at Parris Island and sent them off to Saipan, savvy. I joined the LAPD in late ’45. I went on the grift faaaaaast.