Take poor "Fire," whose recent dismal hook-up with "Cynthia" began with the admonition that she didn't kiss and "I don't like my hair messed with." By-the-numbers sex included "no sounds except to say ouch it hurts occasionally and can I move my leg down." Then she had the nerve to ask for a tip. Yikes.
It seems, though, that there's a level of debauchery below which even Johns and their advocates won't sink. Neil, the board's Ashcroftian overseer, has now prohibited the use of words like "whore" or "slut."
"Publishing degrading remarks gratuitously is wrong and shouldn't be allowed," Neil stated in an announcement last month. Then on January 1, a dictum was issued. A new "warning system" can result in participants getting banned from the board.
Grumbling from the outlands. "Sounds like Germany under Hitler!" noted one regular John.
No one pushes the board's envelope more than "Dirty Sanchez," who regales readers with torrid tales of his own exploits -- like the one about engaging in anal sex with a crack-smoking prostitute in an alley behind a Burger King. The Broward resident, who told the tube he has teenage kids and "lives a double life," complained recently that he had been kicked off the Indiboard.
"Dirty Sanchez is not banned," Neil argued recently. "Just some of the words he uses."
A free spirit who's more comfortable nosing through back alleys than lying up in the Hallandale Beach condos that many escorts favor, Sanchez shrugs off the ban. For the moment, he's got other things on his mind. "I haven't even been driving the last week or two," he says. "Streets are DEAD! Although the skagged-out regulars are always there."
But all the sex chat got Tailpipe to thinking. Even in the most liberated and unregulated behaviors, there are mores. So how do you address -- or talk about -- a woman who provides sexual services for money? Fortunately, somebody slipped the 'Pipe Emily Post's long rumored missing chapter, "The Ho' Question." See a sample below.
No-no's
Whore (also ho)
Slut
Blow job
Felching
Yes-yes's
Working girl (also bawd or, for the MBA crowd, provider)
Lady libertine (also wanton, charity girl, sperm burper)
Rhythmic labial stimulation of the male member (also going French)
Slurping the Cadbury Creme Egg
Switcheroo
Milton Weiss publishes an advertising tabloid called the South Florida Real Estate Guide, which he distributes free in south Palm Beach County. This fall, his white, plastic dispensers, worth about $90 apiece, began disappearing. At times, he found stacks of the Digest of Homes, a competing paper, inside his dispensers. So he carved his initials in the boxes and even bought several GPS tracking devices and hid them inside some boxes. He didn't get a bite.
Then, just after Christmas came a break. He looked into a Digest box and noticed the company name C and C Publications, which is based in Central Florida and owned by Gil Condinho.
Following a hunch, Weiss and his wife drove to Polk County over New Year's Eve weekend and began checking C and C's dispensers. "I found 16 of my boxes," Weiss says. "They took our boxes and put them in Polk County, and took their boxes and put them down here, and they figured we were too stupid to figure that out." He reported this to police, who are investigating.
Still no explanation from either Condinho or Digest owner William Keeler, former executives at the scandal-plagued Syndicated Food Service International New York. Both were fired from that company in 2002 because of alleged audit irregularities. The Securities and Exchange Commission accused them this year of being involved in a scheme to defraud investors.
Phantom Punch
For months now, James S. Henry has been portrayed in the media the world over as a martyr for the First Amendment. Back on Halloween day, Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy Al Cinque arrested Henry outside the Supervisor of Elections office for refusing to stop taking pictures of lined-up voters. In a story the following day, the Palm Beach Post reported the deputy tackled Henry, punched him, and threw him around like a discarded ballot. The Post's article was picked up by the international media, and the fourth estate rushed to Henry's side.
But four witnesses of the arrest -- few were actually quoted in the Post article -- now question the newspaper's version of events. The witnesses, whose names were included on recently released court files, say Henry wasn't tackled but actually fell on his own as he was fleeing Cinque. They also say he wasn't punched.
The witnesses include two deputies and two poll watchers, one Republican and a Democrat. Paul Weinberg, a left-leaning lawyer from Massachusetts, says he's not the type to take up the cop's side. "It's appalling for me to be the witness for the police," Weinberg says, "but what's been reported about this isn't right."
According to the witnesses, Cinque told Henry, a freelance journalist from New York, to stop taking photos of voters. Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore had recently ordered that voters were to be protected from photographers as they waited in line. When Cinque ordered Henry to stop, the journalist fled. The witnesses say Henry tried to make a quick left turn to lose Cinque and as he did, he slipped. Henry wasn't tackled, recalls retired Marine Lt. Col. Frederick Peterson from Virginia. "Police officers in my estimation acted with restraint and entirely properly," says Peterson, a frequent commentator on Fox News.
Henry says the discussion is beside the point. "It's hard to disentangle the fall from the fact that he was pursuing me," Henry said from his office in Sag Harbor, New York. "What I know is that when he landed on me, he started pummeling me."
The only witness to confirm that Henry was punched is Henry's friend George Wilson, a retired minister. From his home in East Hampton, New York, Wilson says he watched horrified as his friend was assaulted. "There were several punches from the policeman to him," Wilson says.
The author of the Post's story, former Pulitzer finalist Jane Daugherty, did not return a phone call for comment.
Henry, meanwhile, has vowed to fight the disorderly conduct charge. He recently turned down an offer from prosecutors, who agreed to drop the charges if Henry agreed not to sue for wrongful arrest.
Cinque blames the Post. He spoke recently at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, where he works in security. "The Post hates cops," Cinque said. "Everybody knows that."
Strong-arming Salvo
Hollywood's Police Officer of the Year can't seem to stay out of trouble. Last month, 27-year-old Boca Raton businessman Michael Kleopa sued 43-year-old Officer Pete Salvo and the city of Hollywood, alleging the lawman roughed him up, then falsely arrested him.
It's the third lawsuit against the high-profile Salvo. The city settled a previous brutality case involving Salvo, who won the city's top cop honor last year after a successful investigation of a marijuana ring. The cost to Hollywood? $42,500. A wrongful death lawsuit is currently pending in federal court; it involves 31-year-old Vincent Del'Ostia, who died following an altercation with Salvo and other officers.
In the most recent instance, Kleopa alleges that on the evening of April 27, 2002, a valet parked his silver Mercedes in a handicapped spot at Giorgio's Grill on Hollywood Beach. Salvo noticed the illegal parking job. As the officer was writing a ticket, Kleopa confronted him. Salvo allegedly roughed him up a little, then arrested him for disorderly conduct. Kleopa said loudly, according to Salvo's report: "My Jewish lawyer will take care of everything."
And he did. Dan W. Moses had the charge dismissed in August 2002. Two weeks later, Kleopa returned to Giorgio's. "As he walked in the door," Moses tells the 'Pipe, "Salvo grabbed him and said, 'Now I got you, motherfucker!' " Salvo, a squat, barrel-chested man with an unswervable sense of entitlement, charged the man with trespassing -- a crime the Broward State Attorney's Office refused to prosecute.
Add this to Salvo's police résumé, which already includes two dead bodies, a sexual battery allegation, and a host of Internal Affairs complaints.
Unappealing
Speaking of the Hollywood cops, there's also the sad story of Donald Baker. A 52-year-old Hollywood man who spent five years in prison on a robbery and assault charge, Baker hasn't had much luck with the justice system. On December 28, 2004, Judge Michael Gates sentenced Baker to another five years in prison after he was convicted on potentially fabricated evidence.
In April 2004, a jury convicted Baker of battery on a law enforcement officer after Hollywood police provided a grainy black-and-white surveillance tape that seemed to show the man strike and push to the ground Officer Francis Hoeflinger. Then video expert David Bawarsky found that some versions of the tape appeared to show police officers beating Baker without provocation.
But this evidence became available only after Baker's conviction, meaning that his hopes for freedom now rest in the appeals process. Baker's mother, Dolores McNamara, recently sent an e-mail to Hollywood city officials, asking for greater scrutiny of the police department. "This has to be the case to put an end to the brutality," McNamara wrote.
But Tailpipe is still scratching his rusty noggin, wondering why, if there's clear evidence that Baker was convicted on trumped-up charges, he has to sit in jail.
-As told to Edmund Newton