by Robin Talley
“Hmm—I think your hand needs to be lower down...” Abby carefully adjusted the position of Linh’s hand on her thigh and brushed her hair forward over one shoulder, trying to act as if her intentions were solely artistic. As if touching Linh didn’t activate any still-in-love-with-her segments of Abby’s brain, or other body parts. “Pout your lips more. There, that’s perfect.” Abby lifted her phone and snapped a photo.
“You do one next.” Linh pointed her chin toward the laptop screen.
“Okay!” Abby scrolled until she found a cover she liked. The book was called Woman Doctor, and the cover showed a woman, a psychiatrist apparently, sitting in a chair taking notes on a pad while a younger woman with curly blond hair lay on a couch behind her. The whole design seemed to be some bizarre male fantasy, because the patient appeared to have gone to her therapy appointment wearing an old-fashioned slip and nothing else.
Abby’s hair was brown, straight and boringly plain instead of blond, thick and curly like the woman on the cover’s, and she was wearing a green shirtdress instead of a tight-fitting slip. Still, she tried to imitate the patient’s pose, throwing herself facedown on the couch and twisting so that her butt and her boobs were angled toward Linh at the same time. “Ow. This is not a natural position. Ow.”
“That’s awesome, though. You’ve almost got it, but you need to pull your hair over your face more.”
Abby pulled. “How’s that?”
“Better.” Linh laughed and reached for her phone. Abby laughed, too, lifting her head from the cushion. “Hey! You’re breaking the pose. I didn’t get a photo yet.”
“I can’t help it. I’m a warped woman!”
Linh was still laughing, but when she sat back down she moved to the other couch, putting two armrests between them. Abby sat up, trying not to let her disappointment show, and tugged the hem of her dress back down.
“I want to read one of those books.” Linh pointed to Abby’s computer. “I bet they’re hilarious. Plus, those covers are pretty hot.”
“The covers are basically just ads for cleavage.”
“There are worse things to advertise.”
“True.” Abby flushed. “Let’s find an ebook.”
She balanced her computer on her knees and turned so Linh could see the screen, then ran a search for lesbian pulp fiction. While the results loaded, Abby drummed her fingers on the edge of her laptop and tried to think of a good excuse for her to move to the other couch, too.
“Huh, okay, so there’s like five million results.” Linh pointed to the screen. “Here, that one has a list.”
Abby clicked through and skimmed the article. “I was right about the censors. This says the books basically always ended with someone either turning straight or dying. Otherwise the publishers could’ve gone to jail.”
“Whatever, I don’t care. I just want to read the sex scenes.”
Abby laughed, delighted, and scrolled down. The article had a list of books at the bottom, with more of those ridiculous covers. “These titles are so weird. Strange Sisters. In the Shadows. Voluptuous Vixens.”
“Voluptuous Vixens?” There was so much glee in Linh’s voice that Abby giggled, too.
“Edge of Twilight. The Third Sex. A Love So Strange.”
“Boring. See if you can find that Warped Women one.”
“Hey, wait, the article says this other one’s good. And it’s free to download.” Abby cleared her throat and read.
“The classic and enduringly popular novel of two young girls coming of age in Greenwich Village. The story’s heroines, Paula and Elaine, stand alongside such classic lesbian pulp characters as Beebo Brinker and Leda Taylor.”
Linh cracked up. “Beebo? What kind of names are these?”
“Fifties names. Here, get this—the author’s name is ‘Marian Love.’ So cheesy. Her book came out in 1956. It’s called Women of the Twilight Realm.”
“Why do so many of these books have Twilight in their name? Is there lesbian vampire subtext?”
“Well, I’m downloading it, so I guess we’ll find out. Wow, check it out, this cover is cheese-tastic, too.”
The image on the screen had rips running through it, as though someone had taken a photo of an old, beaten-up copy of the book and uploaded it as the official cover. The picture didn’t have as much cleavage as some of the other books, but Abby could tell it would still have been shocking by fifties standards. It showed two women sitting on a bed together, one with short brown hair and one with long blond waves. The blond one, dressed in a filmy nightgown, was crying onto the brown-haired woman’s shoulder. The brown-haired woman was smoking, wearing a necktie, patting the other woman’s shoulder and staring at her boobs. Above the title a tiny line of type read “They were women only a strange love could satisfy. A daring novel of the third sex.”
“I didn’t know people were allowed to smoke on book covers,” Linh said, studying the screen.
“Everyone smoked everywhere in the fifties. They didn’t know it was gross yet.”
“Whatever. Turn to the beginning. I want to read about the strange love these two ladies get up to.”
Abby clicked into the text and read the first line out loud.
“Elaine had already had her heart broken once. From now on, she was keeping it wrapped up in cellophane.”
Abby stopped reading. “What’s cellophane?”
“You don’t remember that song from Chicago? ‘Mr. Cellophane’?”
“Oh, right.” Abby and Linh had both done theater in middle school, before their schedules got so packed. “Well, is cellophane bulletproof or something? Why would you wrap your heart in it?”
“How would I know? Come on, find the sexy parts.”
“Here, you can look.” Abby passed her the computer.
“Okay...” Linh clicked through the pages. After a minute, she frowned at the screen. “This is all just talking so far. Everyone’s sitting around in a bar with all their clothes on.” She clicked again and again, still peering down. “And...that’s the end of chapter one already. What kind of porn is this? These covers are false advertising.”
“Keep going. Maybe the porn’s in chapter two.”
While Linh clicked, Abby turned to her phone to look up cellophane.
The characters on the cover of Women of the Twilight Realm didn’t look that much older than Abby. She wondered who’d broken Elaine’s heart so badly that she needed to protect it.
And would that even work? Wrapping your heart in metaphorical armor? Maybe you could keep yourself whole just by concentrating hard enough.
Before she could find anything, her class-reminder chime popped onto the screen.
“Shit!” Abby’s panic bubbled, wiping away all thoughts of vintage lesbians. She snatched the computer from Linh and shoved it into her backpack. “I forgot. I’m supposed to meet with Ms. Sloane in three minutes. Shit, shit!”
“Ms. Sloane?” Linh didn’t get up, but there was alarm in her eyes. “Isn’t she your project advisor?”
“Yes. Shit, shit!”
“Wait—is this your meeting about the project proposal? The one you still don’t have a topic for?”
Abby pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”
“Abby, this is serious! You could get in real trouble!”
“I know, I know. I’ll figure something out on my way there.”
Abby threw open the door without waiting for Linh to say anything more and charged down the hall, ignoring the sophomores who turned to stare from the doorway of the art room.
She tried, desperately, to come up with an idea. Any idea.
Maybe she could write fanfic after all. She’d posted a Flighted Ones story back in middle school that had ninety-seven chapters, and some of them had even been good. Maybe she could pull out some of the chapters, change the names and rework them into so
mething Ms. Sloane would find acceptable.
It wasn’t a great idea, but it was all Abby had. She raced across the hall and down the stairs to the third floor, her platform Mary Janes thundering on the tiles. She’d probably have to take the story offline before she turned in her project, in case Ms. Sloane ran one of those plagiarism searches. It would suck to lose all those reader comments, though.
“Abby?” Ms. Sloane stepped through her classroom door. Abby came to an abrupt halt. “Are you all right?”
“I’m great.” Abby tried to smile, but she could barely catch her breath.
“What were you doing? Did you go for a run during your free period?”
“Um, yes.” Abby cursed inwardly as Ms. Sloane peered down at her Mary Janes. Her creative writing teacher was an old-school lesbian, and Abby should’ve known she’d have strong opinions about sports attire.
Ms. Sloane was Indian-American, and in the wedding photo she kept on her desk, her dark curly hair was striking next to her wife’s sleek blond chignon. The effect made their matching cream-colored wedding dresses look that much more practical-lesbian-chic. It was obvious they’d planned every last detail to maximize the striking visuals while also making sure there would be no long trains to trip over or bobby pins poking their ears. The two of them probably shared a whole closet full of affordable yet top-quality and carefully coordinated running shoes.
“All right, well, come on in.” Ms. Sloane held the door open. At least she wasn’t dwelling on Abby’s feet. “I’m excited to see what you’ve got for me. The rest of the seniors have already started their projects, so we’ll have to play some catch-up. I was surprised you signed up for the last advising slot. Last year during our workshops you always tried to be ahead of the game.”
Abby tried to breathe evenly as she followed Ms. Sloane inside. This classroom was her favorite place in the whole school. It was narrow and cozy, with a long, oval-shaped table where everyone sat for their discussions. Abby used to relax the second she entered this room, but today it was having the opposite effect.
“Um, well.” She tried to think of what to say. Teachers never understood that homework couldn’t always be priority number one every second of every day. When you were deep in postbreakup withdrawal, were you seriously supposed to work ahead in every single class? “Nothing to fire up the creative muse like tight deadlines, right?”
“Wrong, in my experience. Nonetheless...” Ms. Sloane smiled and sat at the head of the long table, gesturing for Abby to sit beside her. She’d always been easy to talk to, and she was the main reason Abby had stuck with creative writing, even when the boys in last year’s workshop had made her roll her eyes into the back of her skull when she was forced to critique their pretentious wish-fulfillment hetero foreplay scenes. “So, let’s see your proposal.”
Ms. Sloane held out her hand. Abby stared at the outstretched brown palm.
Riiiiiight. She’d somehow forgotten she was supposed to turn in a written proposal.
Shit.
“Um, well...” Abby tried to act as if this was all going exactly as she’d planned. “I wanted to ask if I could have until Monday for the written portion. My computer had a meltdown last night when I was going to hit Print.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Ms. Sloane didn’t blink, but she glanced down at Abby’s backpack. A corner of her laptop poked up through the zipper. Shit, shit. “You know, I’ve been told I’m talented with computers. Why don’t you let me take a look. I’ll see if I can get the file to load, and then we can review it together here on your screen.”
Shit shit shit shit shit.
Abby tried to think rationally. What was the adult thing to do in this situation? Whatever it was, she should do that instead of freaking out.
But Ms. Sloane was wearing her you-won’t-fool-me expression. No matter what she said, Abby was going to disappoint her.
Abby gave up on being an adult and just focused on not crying. “I... I’m sorry, Ms. Sloane.”
“You’re sorry,” her teacher repeated. After a moment of pained silence, she sighed. “Abby, this isn’t like you. Last year, you turned in all your assignments early. You always came to class prepared, even eager, to join the discussions. Is anything wrong? Maybe something going on at home?”
“It’s nothing. I’m sorry. It’s senioritis, that’s all.”
“Senioritis comes in May, not September.” Ms. Sloane’s expression was so serious it was making Abby’s head hurt. “You can talk to me, Abby. If there’s a problem, I want to help.”
Ugh. Adults could seriously be the worst. If they weren’t ignoring the fact that you existed, they were falling all over themselves acting like they knew better than you.
As if Abby couldn’t be just plain heartbroken. Of course, in Ms. Sloane’s mind, there had to be “something going on at home.”
When, in reality, nothing was going on at home. That was kind of the definition of Abby’s home, in fact. She could barely remember the last time anyone in her family had voluntarily interacted with anyone else.
“No. There’s nothing.” Abby shook her head forcefully. “Can you please just take points off my grade, or whatever?”
“That’s not how senior projects work. It isn’t about earning points, it’s about creating something worthwhile. It’s about coming out of the year with a concrete result that’s meaningful to you on a personal level.”
“I know.” Abby wished desperately that she were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Words like worthwhile and meaningful always made her want to hurl.
“All right, well.” Ms. Sloane leaned back in her chair and frowned. “We’ll talk through your plan today and you can email me your formal proposal over the weekend.”
“Okay.” Abby began to frantically rework her Flighted Ones story in her head.
“I must say, I’m already looking forward to reading your new work,” Ms. Sloane went on. “I know you’ve been struggling to break away from the fanfiction you used to write and create something wholly yours. Not that there’s anything wrong with fanfiction, of course—I always tell my younger students that it can be a lot of fun, and a great way to develop your writing skills—but this new project is a real opportunity for you to force yourself out of your comfort zone so you can mature as a writer. You’ve been on the verge for quite some time, and I hope that with this project you’ll truly allow your creativity to take hold.”
Shit. Ms. Sloane had seen through her again.
Abby tried to think fast, but the only story on her mind just then was Women of the Twilight Realm.
“I—um, well. I’ve been thinking lately about lesbian pulp fiction,” Abby heard herself say. “You know, those books from back in the fifties.”
“Have you?” Ms. Sloane’s eyebrows shot up. As though Abby had genuinely surprised her for the first time today.
“Yes.” Abby tried to figure out where to go from here. She’d always been good at bullshitting. “I’ve been researching the genre, and I thought it might be interesting to try to reclaim it from a modern queer perspective. I mean, apart from the gorgeous clothes the fifties were basically awful, especially for marginalized communities, so I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the books from a contemporary point of view.”
“Well, the genre’s already been reclaimed, of course.” Ms. Sloane’s usual I’m-an-expert-in-everything tone had already returned. “Although surely you came across that in your research. Lesbian-owned publishers have been rereleasing the pulp classics specifically for queer audiences since the eighties.”
“Of course.” Abby hoped she didn’t look as thrown as she felt. If that was true, she had to switch tactics fast. “Well...what I want to do is write one of these books that’s genuinely, you know—good. I want to break away from the gay tragedy trope.”
Ms. Sloane nodded. “Some would argue that many of the books from that era a
re already good, if that kind of value judgment is possible with literature, but I understand your perspective. It’s an unusual proposal, but I think it has a lot of potential. My concern, though, is that this could wind up simply being another fanfiction exercise for you. It’s important that your senior project be written entirely in your voice. That it be unique, not simply following a formula or imitating an existing style.”
“Oh, I agree. Ah...” Abby tried to think of what else Ms. Sloane might want to hear. “I was thinking I’d invert the formula. Take a critical look at the conventions of the genre and turn them on their heads. Examine the notions of romance and oppression and come up with something unique. Particularly in light of the election, and how so many people’s opinions on social justice seem to have started regressing in the past year or so.”
Abby only had a vague idea of what she was talking about, but it must have sounded as if she did, because Ms. Sloane raised her eyebrows again.
“All right, you’ve sold me.” Her teacher held up her fingers and began ticking things off. Abby took the hint and reached for her pencil. “You’ll still need to submit your formal proposal, and since you’re writing historical fiction, you’ll need to research the period as well as the genre. Which of the pulp books have you read so far?”
“Women of the Twilight Realm, by Marian Love.” She’d read a few sentences, at least.
“Only one? Okay, then you’ll need to read at least three more before the end of the semester. Aim for a wide range—no two books by the same author. One of the books you read should be The Price of Salt, but you can get that from the public library. Patricia Highsmith had a lot of terrible beliefs, but the writing itself is unparalleled. You’re familiar with the conventions of the genre already?”
“Totally.” Abby tried to remember what the article had said as she jotted Ms. Sloane’s instructions into her binder. “Lesbian romance novels that ended with the characters dying or turning straight.”