Tiny Twatland

Tiny Twatland

1.) The colloquial name for a house of prostitution located at 43rd St. and 6th Ave. in Manhattan run by the infamous early 20th Century courtesan Madam Francine "Flo" McGuillicuddy. So-called because of the stocking of the house with underage girls that had flocked to New York City seeking a career in show business on Broadway.

2.) A later bawdy house located in a walk-up tenement building located in the 400 block of 42nd St. between 9th and 10th Avenues. This humpty dump (low-grade whorehouse) earned the sobriquet in the immediate post-World War II period, allegedly as it featured female midgets from the nearby entertainment establishment Hubert's Dime Museum, which closed in 1957. According to the book "Ghosts of 42nd. St.", while there never was a documented case of there actually having been midget prostitutes on the Times Square police blotters, the second incarnation of "Tiny Twatland" did offer a special rate to performers at the Dime Museum, which featured freaks made famous by the photographs of Diane Arbus.

"Let's go over to Tiny Twatland and get us a peice o' ass," Shorty said.

"No thanks," I replied after locking the door beind me.

"Wassa matter, Paco," the midget said. "Don't you have any loose dollars in your jeans?"

"I need my tip money to pay the rent."

"Come on," the Lilliputian performer said. "I'll spring for you -- but just this once."

As quick as a dose of the clap, his saucer-sized countenance corkscrewed, his yellowed celluloid eyes clenched half-closed, cracking the smooth baby face into massive fault lines of wrinkles. It was if a cheap China doll had fallen from the shill's shelf, now held at an arm's length for inspection, broken. Shelling out actually pained him, seared his pocket-size soul, even the idea of it. Like all freaks, money was God, the only thing between him and a cardboard coffin slung into an unmarked, unmourned, and even worse for a performer -- unremarkable grave in the wet clay of Hart's Island.

-- Henry Chinaski, "The Piss-wild Horses of Perdition" (Black Sparrow Press, 1973)

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