This past weekend at the immortal TorDope a group of us went to a used bookstore.
Gay history is one of my idle hobbies, and so I was very thrilled to find copies of the scare pulp novels from the 1950s and 1960s. They’re lurid, exploitive, and predictable, and damned if they’re not wonderful fun to read.
My collection thus far, which will hopefully be expanding in the future:
Beebo Brinker and Odd Girl Out by Ann Bannon. These two are interesting because although they follow the “cannot end happily” formula, they were written by a lesbian. Bannon is certainly kinder to her characters than most of them, and her novels among this genre were particularly popular among the queer community.
The Silken Underground by Vicki Spain. “Her honeymoon became a torrid tour of Europe’s dens of depravity!” “Her love for Eliot was strong- but her flaming, unsatisfied lust for a blissful climax was even more overwhealming. So she fled from her husband’s impotent arms into the vilest, most evilly immoral slums of Europe… and into the hypnotic clutches of women who hungered for her seductive flesh.”
This one has to be my favorite of the bunch. High body count, every stereotype in the book, and sex scenes that make the baby Jesus cry. “Her rippling creamy buttocks rose…”
A Shameless Need by Barbara Brooks. “The scented gown was a sensuous reminder of what had happened the previous night… and of what she wanted to happen again and again and again!”
Not as good as Silken Underground, but it’s still got vampy lesbians and lots of hot lesbo love.
We, too, must love by Ann Aldrich. This one is “nonfiction” and goes into amazing details about “Lesbian life in New York City- as I have known it!”
I learned a lot from this one- how many lesbians are alcoholics because they have to steel themselves to make love for a woman, for example. And I learned so much about how The Elusive Lesbian really lives! It’s torrid, simply torrid!
I simply must find more of these.
