One thing that makes the world endlessly fascinating is that at any given moment, what we know is just at the tip of the iceberg of what is really going on.
This is especially true when we learn that what often seem like unassuming people actually have a wealth of riveting life experiences rich enough to fill a serious page-turner.
But as surprising as these stories can be to hear in the moment, it’s also true that the more curiously sordid eras of the past only achieved their level of infamy because enough people were around to make them significant.
And New York City-based Instagram account @humansofny was lucky enough to meet one of those people.
For this unidentified woman, it all began when her mom kicked her out at 17 for getting pregnant.
Worse yet, she said her mother had her arrested when she came back to get her clothes.
From there, she alleged that her mom slept with the “head of parole” with the intention of keeping her in jail.
As she put it , “She was some prime p***y back then. But the warden did some tests on me and found out I was smart, so I got a scholarship to go anywhere in New York. I chose the Fashion Institute of Technology, which I hated.”
But while she may not have liked her time at that school, the opportunity to hone her skills did open some doors for her.
As she said, “I was already getting work making costumes for the strippers and porn stars in Times Square. All my friends were gay people, because they never judged me. All I did was gay bars: drag queen contests, Crisco Disco, I loved the whole scene.”
In particular, she loved the outfits that she saw, some of which were apparently stolen by her friend Paris in the days before store sensor tags were developed.
She would deck herself out in mink coats, five-inch heels and stockings with seams at the back.
She described her style as seeming like a drag queen, which she claimed gave a Hasidic rabbi the impression she was transgender when he tried to pick her up.
As she told him, though, “Baby, this is real fish!”
When @humansofny returned to hear more about this woman’s life, she revealed that she used to dance under the name Tanqueray.
She went on to say , “Back in the seventies I was the only black girl making white girl money. I danced in so many mob clubs that I learned Italian. Black girls weren’t even allowed in some of these places. Nothing but guidos with their pinky rings and the one long fingernail they used for cocaine.”
Although she once did a set in the club where *Saturday Night Fever* was shot, the woman said she made her real money on the road.
Some trips would make her as much as $3,000, with the military base at Fort Dix, New Jersey proving especially lucrative. There, she said she was often introduced as “Ms. Black Universe.”
As she said, “I had this magic trick where I’d put baby bottle tops on my nipples and squirt real milk, then I’d pull a cherry out of my G-string and feed it to the guy in the front row.”
No matter how titillating her show was, however, she said that sleeping with booking agents and clients was not allowed.
This didn’t deter one dancer from sneaking off with a big tipper, however, so Tanqueray and her coworkers thought of a surprise for her.
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As she put it, “So the next night we put a little itching powder in her G-string. Boy did she put on a show that night. Didn’t see her again until ‘The Longest Yard’ with Burt Reynolds. So I guess she finally f***ed the right one.”
During her third meeting with @humansofny, the woman mentioned that the money made by New York strip clubs at the time went to someone named Matty the Horse.
She said , “Honestly the mob guys never bothered me. They were cool, and I liked how they dressed. They wore custom made suits. And they went to hair stylists, not barbers.”
She mentioned that these men wouldn’t even let sexual partners touch their hair, not that she would know from experience. After all, she didn’t engage in sex work…except for this one time.
She then described accepting a job from a woman named Madame Blanche (not pictured).
As the woman said, “She controlled all the high dollar prostitutes back then. She was like the Internet– could get you anything you wanted. And all the powerful men came to her because she never talked.”
Madame Blanche asked her to fulfill the needs of a department store magnate who wanted her to dress like a maid.
As she put it, “I thought I could do it. But when I got to his hotel room, he wanted to spank me with a real belt. So that was it for me. I was done.”
She also claimed that Madame Blanche frequently arranged for liasons between her best friend Vicki and a President of the United States.
Although she apparently shared which one it was, she made @humansofny promise not to name this man due to potential legal repercussions.
Still, she did intimate that, “He’d always spend an hour with her. He’d send a car to pick her up, bring her to his hotel room, put a Secret Service agent in front of the door, and get this: all he ever did was eat her p***y!”
Hopefully, these snippets of this woman’s stories make it clear why @humansofny’s followers still clamor for more tales of Tanqueray.
h/t: Instagram | @humansofny
