A man falling head over heels in love with one of Mattie Silk's whores wasn't the most unusual thing in the world. The fact of the matter was that it was something that happened to most men who walked through the door of her whorehouse, as predictable as a pair of crooked dice coming up seven in a craps game. The only problem was that someone forgot to explain those odds to Reverend Albert Bell.
That morning Reverend Bell kissed his wife and seven children goodbye, left his house, paid his five-cent fare, and hopped on the elevated train headed for the notorious South Dearborn street in downtown Chicago.
It was 1906, and Chicago boasted a self-image of American industrial optimism. The windy city was awash in technological marvels: electric dishwashers and automobiles to fluorescent lamps and Ferris wheels. But this image was just a facade.
The city had been in the throes of an unprecedented crime wave: a burglary every three hours, a mugging every six hours, and at least one murder every day. But as far as the Reverend was concerned, strong-armed crimes like that were matters for the police to handle. Bell considered himself placed on earth for a higher calling, something more like a prophet than a run-of-the-mill Sunday preacher.
To him, the true enemy to civilized society wasn't thieves and murderers. The real culprits were the madames and harlots (and their lack of Christian values), who plied their trade in the red light district. The red-light community was where God-fearing men and women needed to wage war. He intended to bring the battle personally to every last prostitute, criminal hotel, dive, saloon, and dance hall littered the area.
Bell preached a sermon to his spellbound flock on the exact subject a week prior. Wailing to the heavens with righteous anger, he said:
"Women are a thousand times safer if no such Hell as South Dearborn street exists. To not be allowed to manufacture degenerates. And men who consort with vile women lose their respect for all women."
His train came to its stop. He exited the platform and lost himself in the late morning crowd, marching with the fierce determination of a knight off to do battle in the crusades. The holy bible was his weapon of choice, and he carried it the same way a hardened gangster packed a loaded revolver.
He shuddered at the abject filth that lined the street as he strode down the sidewalk. The smell, a toxic blend of piss, horse manure, and puddles of day-old vomit, made his stomach want to bring up his morning toast and hard-boiled egg. If anyone needed Jesus, he thought, it was the residents of this squalid district. After turning onto South Dearborn street, he searched for number 441, the sporting house owned by Mattie Silks, the most well-known madame on the block.
It was already 11 am when a series of deep thunderous booms woke the Dearborn street madame from her catatonic stupor. Only six hours ago, she and her girls had crawled underneath the warm covers of their soft and inviting beds after a long night's work catering to every kink and perversion imaginable. Now some ignorant son of a bitch was waking her up from her only pleasure in life.
Mattie cursed like a drunken sailor as she tossed the blankets off her naked body. She threw on her butterfly embroidered kimono and stormed down the mirror-lined hallway to answer the door.
The overworked madame was still half asleep as she peeked her tired eyes through a slit in the velvet front window curtains. Albert stood on the front stoop, clutching his bible and prayer tracts to his chest, waiting patiently for someone to answer the door. In his head, he rehearsed the speech he had prepared for the fifteenth time since catching his train into this heart of darkness. The Reverend stood up straight as the sound of unfastening chains and deadbolts filled his ear. The moment of truth had arrived.
The heavy mahogany door swung open. Mattie Silks stood there, disheveled and falling out of her robe. She was a large woman with a rambling body that went on for miles, flesh bulging in all the wrong places. Albert was suddenly tongue-tied, his entire spiel vanishing like a silver dollar in a magic trick.
Neither one spoke a word as their eyes locked, sizing each other up like two prizefighters about to go twelve rounds. The Reverend lowered his eyes, looking at his shoes instead of the well-fed woman standing before him.
Mattie's temper flared as Albert began glowing beet red before her.
"Well! Spit it out, buster. No need to be shy with any gal at this house. Besides, It's cold as a witch's tit out here, and you're letting all the heat out," she said.
"I-I-I'm Reverend Albert Bell, and I've c-c-come to s-speak to Mattie Silks," he sputtered, breaking his awkward silence.
In a flash, Mattie's demeanor changed from heated hussy to syrupy southern belle. A broad smile gripped her face, revealing a row of teeth fit with inlaid diamonds gleaming in her mouth. She might have been tacky, uneducated, and unrefined. Still, God blessed her with enough natural charm to melt the stiffest prude like a pat of butter on a hot July afternoon.
"You're looking at her sport," the madame said in a thick Georgia accent, "but we don't start receiving gentlemen here until later this evening. Me and my girls are still getting our beauty sleep, sugar."
She gave the Reverend a lascivious wink as she tightened up the belt on her robe to keep her boobs from falling out. If the stranger wanted to see some titties, then he'd have to pay for it like all the rest. She wasn't about to give him a free show.
Albert continued to stand silently in front of the bosomy madame, shifting uncomfortably about in his brown patent leather shoes. Her uncouth manner had knocked the wind from him.
He took a deep breath, mustering up the courage to speak. If he were planning to walk down the mean streets of Sodom to spread the word of Jesus Christ, his Lord and Savior, then he would have to strengthen his moral fortitude. He'd have to stand tall and proud, not whimper away like a kicked dog before this scantily clad harlot. He opened up his mouth and let the words whoosh out:
"The wage of sin is death. We earn wages. We sin, and we earn death. But life is a gift. Eternal life is a gift from God, but only if we leave our sin and come to him. They shall bring the girl to the doorway of her father's house so the men of her city can stone her to death for committing an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house. Thus, you shall purge the evil from among you. Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they can't turn to God. Only the proud, greedy, and self-righteous are in that danger."
Albert handed her a three-fold pamphlet highlighting the thrills and chills of a syphilis infection to push home further his point. The brochure explained that God didn't want any members of his flock to suffer the horrors of an STD. It went on to say that even a fallen woman could join the congregation of Heaven upon renouncing their wicked, wicked ways.
Mattie took the pamphlet, reading over it carefully while examining a gory picture of genital warts. She handed him back his pamphlet, saying:
"They might call what we do an act of folly in Israel, but here in Chicago, we call it old-fashioned hospitality. You run the madames out of business, and you'll have a street full of hungry whores peddling their asses out in public. Stomping out every last cockroach in Chicago would be an easier thing to do than stomping out every last whore working this neighborhood, even for Jesus," she said.
Bell clutched at the bible he held in his hands until his fingers began to cramp. He was at a loss for words. He countered Mattie's argument with a verse of scripture.
"Corinthians 6:15-16!" Albert bellowed, waving his finger in the air like a symphony conductor waving their baton: "Don't you realize that your bodies are parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don't you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, 'The two are united into one.'"
Mattie slumped her shoulders, let out a loud, exasperated sigh, and said:
"You aren't going to leave my porch until you get to tell me about how wicked I am, are you? Well, don't just stand there freezing your ass off. You can save no souls if you're dead from hypothermia. Come on in and make yourself comfortable. Every other man in this city has, so why not you? Just because this is a sporting house doesn't mean that whores don't stand for decency and uplift."
With a slow-motion wave of her arm, she stepped aside, welcoming the Reverend Bell to continue the conversation inside of her gaudy wonderland.
Albert sat in a chair in the front parlor, staring in disbelief at all the erotic art crammed onto the parlor's walls. It was filled with oil paintings full of naked bodies contorted and having sex in the most unhuman positions imaginable.
The smell inside was almost unbearable, a heady mixture of incense, gin, and cheap perfume. It was beginning to make the Reverend want to retch.
Mattie flitted around the room as he spoke, tidying up the half-full tumblers of liquor and pouring the remains into one large glass. As Albert's stomach turned from the smell, he continued to explain, in great detail, how every whore in Chicago's soul was doomed. How they were going to burn for eternity if they didn't renounce their animalistic ways.
The Reverend's preaching was fraying Mattie's nerves, and she needed a stiff drink. She placed the concoction of liquid swill she had collected up to her lips and swallowed the drink in one long gulp, as quickly as a child guzzling a glass of milk. She saw the look of haughty disdain in the Reverend's eyes as she wiped her mouth clean, suddenly becoming embarrassed at her lack of refinement.
"Long night Reverend. Need a little hair of the dog," she said with a sheepish smile. Mattie pointed to the bottles of expensive liquor that adorned the well-stocked bar.
"Would you care for a drink? I never met a priest that didn't go in for a tipple now and then."
"No. Thank you," Albert said indignantly. "I wouldn't allow a thief into my mouth to steal my brains and good sense. The works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."
