Elton & Betty White
Hard Deep Sex Explosion

THE REVIEW

"Oh, I’ve been around just about everywhere/and I’ve tried them all,/big dicks and small dicks/and I’ve loved them all./But there’s something about my body’s nature/that makes me prefer the small ones,/because I can jump around and wiggle/without getting stuck in bed." (Little Dicks Fit Me Best)

Along I-40 cutting through Arkansas from East to West, a car speeds on with no apparent destination; in that old wreck lies what’s left of Betty Crandall’s life: her 36 years of marriage to Sergeant White, photos of her son Sammy, a military fighter pilot, a heap of bright, colorful clothes thrown into a couple of suitcases and a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia my ass, that was just the easiest label. Really, something inside had just broken, after 36 years of boredom, dreariness, and lousy sex with Sergeant White. Then Sammy left too, looking for a war to fight, and Betty, one morning in the year of our Lord 1982, finally!—decided to leave it all behind. No more pills, no more crabby, pain-in-the-ass mother-in-law, no more bigoted, stinking respectability of Mabelvale. So, in exchange for a divorce blessed by both spouses, she got the car and ten thousand dollars, but she kept that last name: White. She would always be Betty White.

Because Betty was like that: she never looked back.

In the end, the car breathed its last puff of diesel in Little Rock—not that there were many other places to go in Arkansas—and the ten thousand dollars vanished soon after. Betty got a job in a parking lot, but got thrown out for insisting on wearing bright pink spandex and beaded headdresses.

Because Betty was like that: she had to bring a burst of color wherever she went, especially in that fucking drabness.

So Betty ended up sleeping in a van near the barracks, then in assorted abandoned houses. She delivered newspapers. But she didn’t care. Her fifty-five years of “good manners” had gone to hell and she was free, finally, even if freedom smelled of dust and loneliness.

“I have taken off my robe;/how could I put it on again?/I have washed my feet;/how could I dirty them again?" My beloved put his hand by the latch of the door, and my heart yearned for him. I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh;/my fingers with flowing myrrh,/on the handles of the bolt.” (Song of Songs, V, 3-5)

Betty had already been Sergeant White’s proper, bored wife for over twelve years when Elton was born, in ’58, in Dumas, Arkansas, three square miles of cotton fields and small businesses in the Mississippi Delta.

Elton White was destined: he was born to play basketball. He had that skill that lets you feel like a god among mortals, a speed that sliced through the air straight toward nothing. In ’76 he was the king, the MVP, best player at Dumas High School, so good he earned a place at the High School All-Star Game. He was still just a kid, looking up to Julius Erving and Bob McAdoo, David Thompson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but watching him with the ball, it was clear to everyone Elton would become one of them. Then came college, the records—335 rebounds, 181 free throws—numbers he repeated like a rosary on his way to Atlanta for the tryout with the Atlanta Hawks. He was there, one step from paradise, so close he felt he could touch it, the heavens of professionalism.

But Fate is a bastard god who loves playing dice. So, suddenly and apparently for no damn reason, something broke. In his case, a knee.

Elton wouldn’t be Julius Erving or David Thompson, but just one of so many—too many— “who didn’t make it.”

He came back to Arkansas, to Little Rock, and gradually, he began to get lost. One night, he often said, someone “put something in his drink” and Elton lost—permanently—the path home. He started working as a day laborer and, after a while, ended up living in his car.

But even with that screaming knee, he couldn’t stay away from the hoop. He invented a street trick: using his upper body to lift himself above the rim, touching the backboard with his feet. He practiced every single day and eventually perfected the move, opening arms and legs at just the right moment, so he could land on his feet instead of falling. Hundreds of hours of practice for a moment of pure, useless perfection.

“Afterwards, we like to shower/I want the water hotter/than she wants it/and her face is gentle and serene/First she washes me/she soaps my balls/lifts the balls/squeezes them/then washes my cock/“Hey, it’s still hard!”/then she soaps the hair/the belly, my back/my neck, my legs,/I smile, smile, smile/and then it’s my turn to wash her/another kiss/and she’s the first to step out/she dries herself/sometimes she sings/while I stay inside/turn on the hot water/and savor the miracle of love/Linda, you gave it to me./When you take it from me/do it slowly, with skill/like I was dying in my sleep/and not awake./And so be it. (Charles Bukowsky, The Shower)

And then, one evening—one night when “we were both so lonely we could have died”— the two of them met while waiting for a meal at the Union Rescue Mission, there among plastic trays and the mumbling of the vanquished, Elton said to her: "I’ll walk you home."

They walked and talked. All night long.

About shelters, about dead-end jobs, and about that name they shared, a little joke of fate in a world that had stopped laughing. They talked about how the soul exiles itself from the world, one step after another, until you become a walking ghost, until you can’t even remember what longing is, the heat rising in your belly, until someone reminds you and your heart trembles.

The next night, he was there again. And the night after that they already had a room together.

Because Betty was like that: despite her broken life, her broken mind, and her hair sometimes red, sometimes green, sometimes purple, her body could still be a warm refuge. Only inside her could Elton forget his shattered knee and dreams. And those thirty years between them didn’t matter at all.

“Oh, what a ridiculous situation, Catullus, so funny/that you should listen and laugh loudly./Laugh for my sake:/it’s a comic and truly bizarre thing./I ran into a young man in the act of screwing/a girl: and I, so Venus willed,/with my shaft hard, in a moment, I buggered him too. (Catullus, Poem 56)

Now you might say: but shouldn’t this whole story be leading to a review?

Yes, in fact, because now the music enters, and for me, who is a little crazy, it was immediately clear that, for these two, public performance was the natural outcome.

Because this story has two things that make it so necessary to tell: music and sex (now you’ll say: and love? But here love is only a secondary ingredient. Without music and sex, this would be just another ordinary story, pathetic as needed, remembered—maybe—only by some bum in Little Rock). Music and Sex are the elements of redemption, rebirth.

These two meant it. They cleaned houses, delivered newspapers, and made love three times a day, every damned day, and every day, they went to play in the streets. She in provocative bikinis, colored beads, and enormous sombreros; he in tight costumes with his package always in plain sight. Anyone who lived in Little Rock back then remembers them playing by the river, with their matching ukuleles slung on their backs. Sure, they were “weird” but for a small, passionate circle of fans, they were something more: the creators of the most innocent and vulgar music ever heard.

“Oh, I’m so glad I can’t get pregnant/when I take one inside./When all the hugging and kissing is done,/there’s nothing to spoil the fun./ But I really prefer not to have oral sex/It chokes me/It scares me/It makes me want to puke." (Menopause Mama)

Then, one Jerry Colburn, a DJ at KABF, saw them, heard them, and realized they were the Next Big Thing in the local underground. He brought them into the studio. And when the notes of "The Best Love-Maker in the World" started, Jerry understood this could blow up and decided to produce it, first “The Best of Elton and Betty,” followed by “Sex Beyond the Door,” and finally the explosive “Hard Deep Sex Explosion” (which, by the way, is the subject of this “review” only because it’s the only one I managed—miraculously—to get).

Bill Egerton, who knew and sold a lot of records down in Little Rock, couldn’t believe it: "I can’t keep them in stock. They’re selling ten to one compared to any other Arkansas artist." They were invited to open for concerts and at the “important” parties. The two sang to each other, with a disarming innocence. Did people laugh at them? Maybe. But Elton and Betty didn’t care. They kept going. And if there was ever a punk or indie scene, or whatever you want to call it, down there in Arkansas, people like Econochrist, Rwake, American Princes—they themselves will tell you—it was also thanks to Elton and Betty.

“ (...)No one would have seen us./But we were already so aroused/as to abandon all caution./Our clothes opened wide – not many of them/because it was a splendid, burning July./Carnal delight/among half-open clothes;/a quick stripping of the flesh – the sight of which/twenty-six years have crossed, and remains/in these verses.” (Kostantinos Kavafis – Erotic Poems)

They even ran for office—twice!—their political platform amounted to “we want people to learn how to be happier.” To promote their cause, they simply sang in a shopping mall, held a press conference where Elton performed his song "Thank You Media (for Coming to Our Press Conference)," and waved signs from a pedestrian bridge above the highway. They gained a few hundred votes with a campaign that cost about thirty-six dollars.

But they got those votes away from a certain Bill Clinton.

Betty remembered that guy well: in her previous life she had worked as a secretary at Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, the law firm that employed Bill Clinton. That young slacker spent all his time peeking up the secretaries’ skirts and she—Betty—let him look.

Because Betty was like that: she was always generous.

“Baby, when you walk/and your butt goes up and down,/my nose dances and wiggles./Baby, when you walk/and your butt jiggles like jelly,/my head goes crazy./And you drive me mad (I’m in Love With Your Behind)

Then, in the early '90s, they set off in their 1970 Chrysler Imperial for Los Angeles; someone told them people had seen a few videos of them and were ready to place bets. But when they arrived, no one from the show returned their calls. They quickly burned through most of their money and went back to street performing at Venice Beach among street preachers, psychics, and sword swallowers. They slept in the car. Then they found a small apartment with a view of the sea.

“Oh, we are God’s sweet basketballs./Sometimes we feel three meters tall./The world tries to push us down,/but we never fall./We come bouncing back, jumping up like basketballs./God is with us in all that we do and/ just when we think we’re finished, He lifts us up and we don’t fall./We come bouncing back, jumping up like basketballs.” (God’s Basketballs)

But you can never knock down those two. In the following years, their fame started spreading again. They ended up hosting a TV show, “Husband and Wife Time.” LA Weekly called them “the sexiest couple in Los Angeles.” Their show was reviewed in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Variety; even the Agence de presse photographe française ran a piece about them, highlighting their “sunglasses that would make Karl Lagerfeld look ordinary” and Elton’s “apocalyptically bulging Speedo.” They appeared on several TV talk shows: Maury Pavich, Sally Jesse Raphael, and The Dairy Show. Elton wanted to make a kids’ show because he was convinced his music was perfect for children. You might have thought they were about to make it big, but it was clear fame was just a game. Just looking at them, you knew that “all that mattered was each other, nothing else.”

Because Elton and Betty were like that: they were truly beautiful, inseparably united and always horny.

“ (...)Candy came from out on the Island/in the backroom she was everybody’s darling/But she never lost her head/even when she was giving head/and she said, hey baby/take a walk on the wild side/she said, hey baby/take a walk on the wild side/and the colored girls go/doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo/doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo.” (Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side)

And then, on August 20, 2003, at age seventy-six, Betty died after a brief illness.

Elton has remained in that house overlooking the sea. He has not performed on the seafront since Betty died, and if he owns a phone, he doesn’t answer it.

And there would be more to tell, but I’ve already—really!—gone on too long (I think this is the longest thing I’ve ever written here, on DeB). But Elton and Betty deserved it, believe me.

And how I would have loved to meet Betty, she who fell so many times and just as many rose again. I cry every day for my scraped knees… “We are God’s basketballs,” she would have told me, “the world tries to push us down, but we bounce back.”

Because Betty was like that: so colorful, so crazy, so bright, so horny.