Zorita was adopted at an early age by a family in Chicago. To make some money and get out of an increasingly bad home situation, she started manicuring at a barbershop. She was 15 years old, with “big knockers” when a colleague asked her if she wanted work at stag parties. This meant stripping for bachelors to phonograph records or an accordion. “It’s hell trying to dance to an accordion,” she tells me. From stag parties she went to work at a nudist’s colony at the San Diego World’s Fair as “Miss England.” Here she befriended a geek who charmed snakes among other talents. As a parting gift, he gave her two snakes, Elmer and Oscar, which she kept in her closet, in a canvas sac. Zorita then found work in a burlesque theater and fell upon her own gimmick — the snakes. She came up with a number called “the consummation of the wedding of the snake.” A synopsis: “a gorgeous young maiden is going to be sold into slavery to an ugly old man. Instead, she dances with a snake, gets bitten and dies.” This dance, she re-enacts for me with full candor, replete with grinding and orgasm moans as the “wedding” is consummated. I can only imagine what kind of response she got.

Zorita shows me page after page of glamorous photos of herself — black hair with platinum streaks, men’s suits with sexy lingerie underneath — a real spitfire. She thinks I am prude and overly fascinated with her sexuality. I don’t know how I can help but be fascinated by this woman who presents a picture of complete control and confidence. She stripped for men but loved women. After all, she tells me, men are “hairy” and “only good for getting what you want out of them.”