Reviving Skittles, Part 4: Victorians vs Ludacris in TKO!

In Liverpool in days gone by,
For ha’pence and her wittles,
A little girl, by no means shy,
Was settin’ up the skittles.

If you could hear the words above, set to music, you’d know that’s the way they used to sing back in those old-timey days. Our bad girl Skittles’ time. Huh. Those suggestive words were meant to shock people. Are you shocked? I’m trying to imagine the modern-day equivalent.

How about Ludacris' “One Minute Man:”
A hard head make a soft ass, but a hard d**k make the sex last
I jump in pools and make a big splash
Water overflowin, so get your head right
Enough with tips and advice and thangs
I`m big dog, havin women seein stripes and thangs
They go to sleep, start snorin, countin sheep and s**t
They so wet, that they body start to leak and sh**t

The old-timey song was written in tribute to how Skittles got her name because when she was a teenager, Catherine Walters apparently had a job setting up nine-pins in the back alley of a pub near the Mersey River docks of Liverpool. The customers were men only, so Skittles was a very popular girl. So popular that she earned extra money on the side turning tricks. Well, that’s what I imagine, anyway. I couldn’t find anything about the mechanics of her sex life in the few biographies I found on Skittles. Nothing about how her body started to leak and s**t.

And isn’t that a shame? Here I am, a serious student of history’s bad girls, and yet I can tell you it was dismayingly hard if not impossible to find any smut or porn related to them. And trust me, I’ve spent hours looking for the dirty parts in old books. As a result of my fruitless labor, I find that I’ve had to make stuff up just to keep the stories entertaining.

For example, let’s talk about Skittles’ sex life. Sometime in her teen years, Skittles lost her virginity for the right price. Why do I know this? Because Liverpool at the time had “beer brothels” with private rooms for prostitutes and their customers. And Skittles was a poor serving wench. And she had a drunk party animal for a dad who didn’t care about her chastity. And a weak mother. And Skittles was very, very sassy and bold, liked men better than women, etc. It says in one of those old books that Skittles earned the devotion of a gang of drunken soldiers when she warned them: “If you don’t hold your bloody row, I’ll knock you down like a row of skittles.”

So here’s the story: Skittles was a modern girl who didn’t value her virginity, and she forgot her first time easily because she just wanted to get it over with. Who was her first? One of the drunk soldiers, let’s say, and he was a terrible lover. Like a fermented frat boy on spring break. But Skittles did like sex, oh yes she did. How do I know this? Because she had other income to support herself, i.e., serving beer and setting up skittles. Clearly, she chose when to prostitute herself, and this allowed her to choose only men she was attracted to--good training for a proper courtesan. Sometimes, I’ve decided, if she liked a chap who had no money, she gave it away for free, and the ones she was most drawn to were her opposite, gentle and shy. Skittles may have been tough, but she was a genuinely feeling girl, and the gentle lovers brought out her sympathetic understanding. With the sensitive poets, unlike with the drunk soldiers, she could let down her guard and be girlish.

As a lover, Skittles was not easily forgotten. She was no innocent, but her simple sweetness shone from her dark-lashed eyes. As much as men might tease her and talk dirty about her fine figure and delicate features, they were powerfully attracted to her and thus protective. And considering the degree to which she was comfortable in her father’s company, each one of her men got the feeling that he was the special one. Naturally, this would provoke jealous scenes (good for business), and around the same time she lost her virginity, Skittles learned about men’s vulnerability.

Versions of Skittles’ young life vary because few people really knew where she came from, and with her steely core of dignity, Catherine Walters preferred it that way. Nobody really knows how she got her nickname, for example. The stories about the nine-pins and the drunk soldiers were made up by now-dead "biographers." My favorite story comes from A Biography of a Fascinating Woman, attributed to William Stephen Hayward, London: George Vickers, 1864.

In this version of events, a dandified London aristocrat named Trevellian walks into the “Merseyside pothouse” where Kitty is setting up skittles. Trevellian is enchanted by the girl's clever impudence, and she is equally taken with his foppish sophistication.

“Ah! My little Skittles,” he says, upon hearing her speak. “I wasn’t aware that you could talk decent English.”

“My name’s not Skittles; and I daresay I can talk as well as you any day in the year,” she responds.

Trevellian invites Skittles to run off with him to London, and she accepts. Taking on the role of mentor, he warns her: “Publichouse ways, my child, are not my ways, nor should they be yours; and your allusion to mixing it rather stiff is evidently more calculated to please a tap-room audience than myself, or those in whose society you ought to, and will most probably move [and s**t].”

So how did Skittles really get to London? Considering her tough self-confidence, chances are that she left Liverpool on her own strength and refined her publichouse ways on her own terms. She would have come across many Trevellians in the early days. And she was never in such desperate straits that she would have been forced to be a common prostitute. More likely, she was set up as the mistress of some kindly yet forgettable gentleman, who provided her with comfortable room and board while she learned to navigate London society.

If you really want to know the mechanics of sex in Victorian England, you must read The Pearl, a filthy, smutty book if ever there was one. I found it on somebody's bookshelf one day years ago, and oh boy, was I shocked! (And titillated.) Here’s a taste, from a poem titled "A PROLOGUE. Spoke by Miss Bella de Lancy, on her retiring from the Stage
to open a Fashionable Bawdy House. (Written by S. Johnson, LL.D.)"

When c**t first triumphed (as the learned suppose)
O'er failing pr**ks, Immortal Dildo rose,
From f**ks unnumbered, still erect he drew,
Exhausted c**ts, and then demanded new;

Dame Nature saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting pr**ks toiled after him in vain;
The laxest folds, the deepest depths he filled;
The juiciest drained; the toughest hymens drilled.

Our story has only just begun. Find out in the next episode just how Skittles became the most fashionable whore to ride a horse on Hyde Park's Rotten Row.

Reviving Skittles, Part 3: Living with Drunks

In our story thus far, we've met Catherine Walters, or "Skittles," Victorian London's favourite courtesan, and we've learned that she liked to outrage the bourgeoisie at their fox hunts and that her finest accomplishments were the men who loved her. These included at least one nobleman, a politician and a poet. We also learned that I have a big crush on Skittles, even though she probably would have hated me. She preferred men; women just got in the way. Here, in Part 3, we learn about drunk fathers, drunk husbands and just what it was in Skittles' formative years that made her become a bad girl.

Born in Liverpool on June 13, 1839, two years after Queen Victoria claimed the throne, Catherine Walters actually managed to live through her early childhood years. This was a good sign that she was tough enough to survive Victoria's England, whose city slums suffered shamelessly high rates of disease and infant mortality.

I know this because I read a book on the subject: Blyth, Henry. Skittles: The Last Victorian Courtesan. The Life and Times of Catherine Walters. London: Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd, 1970. I mention Blyth's biography because I'm going to quote him now. I love quoting other people's books! I often feel they have an authority that I don't have. Take, for example, Blyth's description of the circumstances of Skittles' early years: “Beauty does not flower readily amidst squalid surroundings, and a young girl does not long retain a good figure, a clear eye, a fresh complexion and pearly teeth ...where malnutrition, inadequate ventilation, lack of even the most elementary medical attention, dirt, disease, ignorance...combine together to drag her down. If she escaped a disfiguring or crippling disease, and if she avoided at least one unwanted pregnancy she was lucky indeed; and luckier still if she could retain whatever prettiness and gaiety that she had enjoyed in youth after she had reached womanhood.”

See? I would never talk about pearly teeth and gaiety.

The point is, Catherine Walters, who also went by the nicknames Kitty, Skittles and Skitsie, was indeed a lucky girl. Part of her good fortune came from having a relatively intact family. Her father, Edward, was a customs officer who became a captain in the merchant navy, and he earned a reliable living, even if he was a drunk. He was a functioning alcoholic, as they say in AA.

Not much is known about Skittles’ mother, Mary Ann. Though again, if you read the AA literature on living with an alcoholic, you can probably guess what she was all about: "In the years of active drinking, the wives of compulsive drinkers have to take on many extra responsibilities. They have to provide for the care of the children, take care of the home and get the meals. Wives of compulsive drinkers often have to work to supplement the skimpy budget or do without many necessities, as well as doing the man's chores around the house."

I imagine that Edward Walters also had an eye for the ladies, and that he and his wife had a non-existent sex life.

My guess is that Skittles watched all this going on at home, and she learned that: 1) men have more fun than women; 2) women are doomed if they get married and have kids; and 3) a woman's best bet is to retain her financial independence and shun alcohol personally but to hang around with men, drunk or sober, because they're fun.

We know that Skittles' mother was not buried next to Skittles’ father, and one biographer conjectures that she died in childbirth. Another suggests that the couple eventually separated because the marriage was an unhappy one and that Mary Ann died by the time Skittles was a teenager. Regardless, when Catherine was young the Roman Catholic family of five children were clothed, fed and educated to some degree.

Edward Walters is believed to have eventually left the merchant navy to keep an inn in Cheshire, where young Kitty took up an interest in hounds, hunting and horses. She loved to follow the hounds as they chased after foxes in the English countryside, and when the day’s excitement was finished, she served the huntsmen and their grooms in the inn parlor and heard their tales of the hunt. It was the perfect training for a courtesan.

Catherine’s relationship with her father also provided excellent training. Both had steady and direct personalities. They didn’t shock easily and in fact liked a good joke—the dirtier the better—and getting jostled in pub brawls. Seeing her father drunk as often as she did, Skittles didn't fear outrageous behavior. If she’d had enough of his rough flamboyance, she’d slap him down with some coarse talk of her own. And the next morning all would be sunny. Life was better when it was uncomplicated.

I don't think I've mentioned it on this blog before, but my first husband was an out-of-control drunk, not a fun drunk, but a classic dysfunctional AA grade drunk. An out-of-control drunk with anger issues. Now, I grew up as a child of divorce, so my home life wasn't perfect, but I didn't grow up around drunks, so living with one as his wife really freaked me out. I never learned to see the fun in it, so eventually I ran away forever.

Plus, the drunk in my life wasn't like Skittles' dad, I'm sure. And we weren't living in Liverpool in the 19th century, either, and my frame of reference as a nice, educated late-20th century girl from the suburbs of Chicago didn't help. My idea of "fun" is going for bicycle rides in the park, petting my cats, reading and enjoying a civilized gin and tonic with lime at sunset before sitting down to a home-cooked meal.

That previous statement doesn't do much to establish my own Bad Girl credentials, but the point is that I'm trying to enjoy life more, as Skittles did. I'm a work in progress.

Next time, in Reviving Skittles, Part 4, we'll learn the lyrics of a street ballad from Skittles’ heyday and what her initial forays into prostitution were like.

I Invent the World

Did you know that you can take a picture with your new digital camera, download it immediately to your laptop computer and then post it on your blog in a matter of seconds? Here's a sample of my new invention, showing a nearly real-time picture of my desk:

Dave spotted the desk in the basement of our building after a neighbor had thrown it away, and we scavenged it. The Peters World Map above my laptop represents countries accurately according to their surface areas. My coffee has gone lukewarm. I'm reading Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman and listening to You Are Here, a Banco de Gaia CD. The poster in the top left corner is a picture of Christo's wrapped bridge in Paris, and the picture taped to the wall is of me, Dave and our cat Henrik. Scattered about is all the stuff I haven't done yet: ideas for blog posts, articles, people I want to contact, more photos for posting.

What a mind-blowing new invention! I have even more work to do now.

King Fish

I learned how to snorkel in Mexico. It's easy. You just put on the fins, walk backward into the sea, spit into your mask, rinse, put it on your face, snuggle the snorkel into your mouth, and off you go.

It's so easy that one day I decided to snorkel into the sea alone, heading southeast a few hundred meters from shore along the coral reef. I was looking for schools of little fish, coral fans and other plant life.

As I swam out, I noticed that the sea floor was growing farther from me. Lovely. I now had a panoramic view of all sorts of colorful fish, busily streaming around the coral banks. The steady sound of my breath flowing in and out of the snorkel tube was musical accompaniment to the tropical kingdom laid out below me.

And then I spied something to the right in my peripheral vision. What was it? Whatever it was, it was floating along with me, on my level. I took a closer look. Could it be? Yes, wow. A big silver fish. A long silver...so long...maybe two, three...how the hell long was this fish? Four feet? Five? And why was it swimming up near the water's surface with me, when it should have been down there with the cute little fishes on the sea floor? Why was he (I'm sure it was a he) staring at me with those big, gaping fish eyes? Why was his snout so pointy?

"What are you looking at?" I seemed to hear him say as I spied him from the corner of my eye. I think he was smoking a cigarette, but I was too afraid to make direct eye contact.

"Glub blug," I burbled through the snorkel. Something wasn't right about this. "I have to leave now," I said.

I turned tail and swam. Swim swim swim. Suck suck suck, sucking air through my snorkel, headed as fast as I could go toward shore. Thank god I was wearing fins. Puff puff pant pant, drinking in seawater. There was something not right about this.

I poked my head above the water's surface. Damn. Damn damn damn. Still a couple hundred meters to shore. I turned my head to the left, to see if I'd lost the fish yet.

"Goin' somewhere?" he sneered.

Oh help. Surely I would have outrun him by now? But here I was, swimming like the panic-stricken fool that I was, and this evil-minded silver fish was traveling alongside me, with plenty of breath to spare and laughing in his sinister, fishlike way. What had I ever done to him?

"What have I ever done to you?" I said. Well, would have said, if I wasn't flailing my arms and legs as I hyperventilated and slurped up saltwater at a dangerous rate.

"You're in over your head, estupida gringa," he said. "Go back home to your subways and Chinese restaurants that deliver."

"I'm trying to go back home," I sobbed in a glubbing sort of way. "Or back to my little cabaña, anyway, where I can lie on the swing bed and sip a rum y coca con limón."

His menacing laughter sloshed around in my ears as I swam. Swim swim. Pant pant. Swim swim swim. Pant pant pant. I needed air and tore the estupido snorkel from my mouth. What's the onomatopoeia for "hyperventilate"? Har har har? GHARGHie GHARGHie gargle snorf snorf...huck huck huck...

I looked back. Fish still there. Still silver, still four feet long, same gaping eyes and long pointy snout. He kept up with me so easily I thought I was standing still.

Eventually, as you may have guessed, seeing as how I'm writing about it now at leisure, I did make it to dry land. And obviously, at some point, I did manage to lose the fish, probably as I got closer to the shallower, warmer waters just off shore. Having swum to land in a direct line, I landed on jagged rocks and slippery sea grass rather than soft sand, but I didn't care.

I may be amused now in the telling of my tale, but at the time, my panic was so fresh and pure that I could barely think. Strangely, though, even then there was a little corner of my brain, the distant observer, that was watching me and finding this scene very funny. I was laughing at myself along with the fish. I hope I also have that laughing distant observer with me at the moment of my death, helping lessen the pain of my demise.

Later, at the bar, a guy from Florida said it sounded like my fish was a kingfish.

Kingfish?

I googled kingfish when I got back to Brooklyn, and learned that its habitat includes both Florida and the Caribbean coast of Mexico. The kingish is a type of mackerel that can grow up to five feet long, weigh up to 150 lbs, and swim at speeds up to 60 mph. Oh, and another thing: "King mackerel are constantly feeding carnivores that can attack with high speed, powerful jaws and razor-like teeth. They feed on all and any available food but favor jacks, sea trout, sardine like fishes, ribbonfish, herring, shrimp and squid."

What about human limbs? I bet human limbs are on the list of favorite foods, too.

Now I keep expecting the kingfish to visit me in my dreams, but I haven't seen him yet. Or maybe it was a her--a bad-girl fish, since kingfish can also be female.

Or maybe my fish was a wahoo, also called a queenfish, which enjoys eating flying fish, bonito, squid, tuna, and again, possibly human limbs. According to the website: "A common feeding tactic when taking larger fish is to shear off the tail, then return to gulp down the head as the bleeding fish spirals downward."

Huh. That could have been me, rubber fins snapped off cleanly with the queenfish's razor-like teeth, spiraling downward into the briny deep and the queenfish's open, glittering jaws.

How to Eat a Mango

The etiquette books won't tell you this, but the best way to eat a mango is to go to Tulum on the Caribbean coast of Mexico and find a little cabaña to stay in. Once you're a bit sunburnt and have sand in your hair, take a taxi into town, 40 pesos plus 2 to 5 pesos tip, and ask the driver to drop you off in front of the frutería that has a mural of Adam and Eve painted out front.

Pick one or two of the nicest, ripest mangos you can find. The flesh should give in generously to your thumb when you press it, and the color should be a blushing orangey apricot. A bruise here or there is a mark of character and will do no harm to your experience.

Once you've made your way back to your cabaña, find a sandy spot in the sun or shade, as you prefer, but close to the water so you can hear and see the waves. Be sure to wear a swimsuit or less.

Then take any kind of knife that comes to hand—the Swiss army knife that always travels with you, or a sharp chef's knife or a dull-edged butter knife you stole from the last hotel you stayed in—and plunge it into the point where the mango has been snapped from its stem. Run the blade all around the fruit's circumference, creating two halves, and cut into it deeply enough so you make contact with the pit of the mango. Allow the juice to cover your hands and drip down your arms into the sand, where a little family of ants awaits any bits of pulp you might share with them.

In whatever sloppy way you can manage, split the mango in two and give one half to a friend so you can laugh at how messy your faces have become as you suck up the sweet mango flesh. Scrape up any remaining flesh on the inside peel with your teeth and never mind if long stringy bitrs get caught between your teeth. When finished, pat your hair back into place with your sticky fingers, walk to the water's edge and dive in.