March Hastings - Three Women

In 1950, Fawcett founded the Gold Medal imprint, inaugurating the era of lesbian pulp fiction. These were the books that small town lesbians and prurient men bought by the millions—cheap, easy to find in drugstores, and immediately recognizable by their lurid covers. For lesbians, here was the confirmation that they were not alone and that darkly glamorous, “gay” places like Greenwich Village existed. In the over-heated prose typical of the genre, these books document the emergence of a lesbian subculture in postwar America.

March Hastings

www.spice-books.co.uk

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Excerpt In 1950, Fawcett founded the Gold Medal imprint, inaugurating the era of lesbian pulp fiction. These were the books that small town lesbians and prurient men bought by the millions—cheap, easy to find in drugstores, and immediately recognizable by their lurid covers. For lesbians, here was the confirmation that they were not alone and that darkly glamorous, “gay” places like Greenwich Village existed. In the over-heated prose typical of the genre, these books document the emergence of a lesbian subculture in postwar America.

Title Page Three Women March Hastings www.spice-books.co.uk

Part One Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two

Chapter 8

Part Three

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Endpages

Copyright

He lurched at her from the doorway. Flakes of snow glistened on his straggled eyebrows. She smelled the stench of whiskey in his clothes.

“Go on, mister. Keep moving.” Paula jostled him away with her free hand and hurried along First Avenue. The freezing streets were slippery beneath her boots but she plunged forward, splashing into lakes of snow and ice gathered at the curb. She hated these winter nights worse than the steaming nights of summer. The wind tore savagely at her face. It seeped in past the woolen scarf and settled bitterly around her neck beneath the chestnut hair. As far as she could see the Avenue was black and lonely. But she knew that men huddled in corners, some asleep and not feeling the cold, others alerted by wild visions more fantastic than the freezing, howling night around her.

With the container of milk hugged close, she hurried into the entrance of the tenement and through the narrow hall strewn with garbage the kids had pulled out of cans. She clomped up the three flights lighted by weak bulbs and let herself into the apartment. This wasn’t home to her. It was the place where Ma and Pa and Mike and she happened to live because it was cheaper for everyone to live together there.

She set the package on the small table in the foyer and hung up her coat and scarf on the hook beside Mike’s leather jacket.

“That you, Paula?” Her mother called from where she stood at the stove, moving a big wooden spoon in a pot of rice.

You could see the kitchen from the foyer. You could see the bedroom beyond the kitchen where Mike sat cross-legged, reading an airplane magazine like he was in his own private library on Fifth Avenue.

“I just made it,” Paula said, breathing on the tips of her fingers to get out the sting. “He was just about closing when I got there.” She brought in the paper bag and pulled out the container of milk.

Why did her Pa always have to get his attacks late at night? Why didn’t he stop drinking so he could eat meals like a normal person? She wanted to respect him but it was hard not to get angry at a man who insisted on killing himself, eating away his stomach with poison that didn’t even give him pleasure anymore. She poured milk into a saucepan and set it on the stove beside the rice.

“I wish we could keep some extra around for times like this,” Paula said. She didn’t want to tell her mother about the nastiness with that man outside. When a girl gets to be eighteen, there’s no excuse for being afraid. You comb your hair down long around your shoulders and wear the kind of clothes that show off your body so that men will look at you. And you just hope they’re the right kind of men. If it happens to be the other kind, you fight your way through and hope for better next time. Because, she guessed, that’s life.

Paula took a bowl from the cabinet on the wall and held it while her mother spooned in a mushy helping of rice, straining the starchy water out against the side of the dented pot. Then she spilled the warm milk on top and set the bowl on the checked oilcloth that covered the kitchen table.

‘Your father’s in the bedroom. Why don’t you go see if he wants to eat?”

For the first time, Paula smiled. She knew her mother was thinking the same thing she was thinking. But Ma was the kind of woman who never told her husband what to do.

“Sure, Ma,” she murmured with sudden softness. Her mother had black hair that she wore braided and coiled on the back of her head. It was the one really neat thing in the whole place and Paula liked to look at it sometimes. It made her feel ladylike and uncluttered and gentle to look at her mother’s shining hair.

In the bedroom her father lay on his side, knees pulled up almost to his chin. He bit his lip and squinted at the wall, mute with pain. Heavy flowered curtains at the window made the room seem smaller and warmer. The silver crucifix above the bed glowed with half-reflections from other rooms. Paula sat down beside her father and put a hand lightly on his arm.

“Pa,” she said softly. “Pa, you want to come in and have something? You’ll feel better.” She didn’t know why she should feel sorry for him. For that matter, Paula didn’t know how she could hate and love him at the same time, but she did.

Pa didn’t say anything. He looked at her and squeezed her hand. The sleeve of his long underwear had a ladder-like run in it. Pale skin showed through, strangely smooth like a baby’s. Her own skin had that same delicate quality so she could never get really tan in the summer.

Maybe she loved him because she remembered how they used to play at Coney Island and those white arms would hold her safely above the huge and thundering waves that rolled in.

“Maybe, if I brought it in here,” she continued, “you could take a few spoonfuls?”

“No.” The voice was a grunt. “I’ll come inside. In a minute.” His body twisted suddenly in pain.

She waited for the spasm to pass then helped him sit up. Iron grey bristles on his chin made him look older than forty-five and he breathed heavily like a very old man, clinging to the edge of the bed with trembling hands.

Her arm around his waist, his weight full against her, Paula helped her father out of the room. They passed the dresser near the door, and she noticed for the thousandth time her parents’ wedding picture. It looked almost like new, the faces smiling and proud. For the thousandth time she thought: This will happen to me too. It happens to everybody.