by Robin Talley
The following books mentioned in Pulp were also real, but you may not be able to find copies of them as easily. Many of the best ones are excerpted in the terrific compilation Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965, edited by Katherine V. Forrest, which is a great place to start if you’re interested in exploring this genre. Also check out Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction 1949-1969 by Jaye Zimet, which collects many of the best lesbian pulp covers.
I Prefer Girls (1963) by Jessie Dumont.
Warped Women (1956) by Janet Pritchard.
When Lesbians Strike (1965) by Frank G. Harris.
My Wife the Dyke (1965) by Rick Lundeen.
Dormitory Women (1954) by R. V. Cassill.
Woman Doctor (1962) by Sloane Britain.
Strange Sisters (1962) by Robert Turner.
In the Shadows (1962) by Joan Ellis.
Edge of Twilight (1959) by Paula Christian.
The Mesh (1951) by Lucie Marchal.
Satan Was a Lesbian (1966) by Fred Haley.
Acknowledgments
My first encounter with lesbian pulp fiction came when I stumbled across a magnet featuring the gorgeous cover of I Prefer Girls in a gay bookstore in the 1990s. I was thoroughly captivated by the image, so much so that I bought the magnet without having any idea of what it actually represented and proudly stuck it on my dorm-room fridge. It wasn’t until years later that I learned lesbian paperback fiction had been an actual literary genre, and that it had been incredibly significant in the lives of many queer women in the middle of the twentieth century.
When I finally read my first lesbian pulp novel, Spring Fire by Marijane Meaker, I was astonished. I’d known, of course, that queer women lived in this era—we’ve been around since the dawn of time after all—but I’d had no sense of what life was actually like for lesbians in the early 1950s. And it wasn’t until very recently that I learned much about the mass expulsion of gay, lesbian and bisexual employees from the federal government, a long-running purge that became known as the Lavender Scare.
The height of the Lavender Scare also came in the 1950s, coinciding perfectly with the rise of lesbian pulp fiction, which tells you a lot about the many contradictions of that era. It was a time when no one talked about “coming out,” since for the vast majority of LGBT people, living openly simply wasn’t an option. It was a matter of course that your relationships would never be legally recognized, that having children with a same-sex partner was next to impossible, and that you could be fired or evicted for your sexual orientation (you still can today, by the way, in twenty-eight states—and in twenty-nine states, you can be fired or evicted because of your gender identity). In the 1950s, being queer meant constantly looking over your shoulder and coming up with new cover stories, just in case anyone got too curious about your life.
And yet, during this same period, lesbian pulp novels sold millions of copies, and the queer bar culture thrived. The longing for community, for developing connections with people who understand you, has always been powerful. So it’s no surprise that so many of the queer women who stumbled upon the scandalous covers of paperbacks like Spring Fire and Odd Girl Out in drugstores, bus stations or newsstands latched on to these books. In many cases, they were the only representation those readers had ever seen of women like them.
I learned so much in the process of writing Pulp, both about the tremendous challenges this era presented and about the long and vital tradition of queer authors and publishers creating stories about queer characters. It was wonderful to immerse myself in this story. But I knew from the beginning that I couldn’t do it on my own.
The legendary pulp author Ann Bannon was kind enough to read an early draft of Pulp and offer her feedback, and I’m more grateful to her than I can express. Her notes on my draft were a true gift, and I only hope the finished book honors her work and that of the other authors who defined this genre. Thank you, Ann, for everything you’ve done for queer readers.
Thank you to Katherine V. Forrest, the incredible author, editor and educator whose anthology Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965 was enormously helpful to me in the writing of Pulp. I was also lucky enough to have Katherine as the faculty member for my genre fiction workshop at the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices several years ago, and her insights into the writing process were infinitely valuable. Thank you, Katherine, for connecting me with Ann, and for sharing so much wisdom with me and other newbie writers.
Thank you to my editor extraordinaire T. S. Ferguson, who’s believed in my work from the beginning, and who always encourages me to push myself. And thank you to the rest of the team at Harlequin TEEN/Inkyard Press for helping to put this book out into the real world: Laura Gianino, Nicole Rokicki, Gina Macedo, Linette Kim, Bryn Collier, Evan Brown, Krista Mitchell, Kathleen Oudit, Shara Alexander and so many more. Thank you, too, to Chris Arran, the immensely talented illustrator behind that gorgeous portrait of Abby on the cover.
Thank you so much to my amazing agent Jim McCarthy (no relation to the late senator, fortunately) for saying “YES, please. Do that one!” when I first told him about my idea for Pulp, and for being with me every step of the way in this odd and awesome journey. I honestly have no idea how I’d do this otherwise.
Thank you to my astonishingly helpful fellow authors who read early versions of Pulp: Nicole Overton, Katherine Locke, C. B. Lee and Kaitlyn Sage Patterson, this book is so much better because of your savvy. Thank you so much for digging into the drafts and helping me figure out what worked and what didn’t. And thank you to Lindsay Smith, who drove through a pounding rainstorm while helping me brainstorm a detailed subplot involving Russia that ultimately wound up on the cutting room floor (though someone who isn’t me should totally write that book—hint, hint, Lindsay!), and to the rest of my wonderful DC writing community for commiserating over drinks and panels and movies and general awesome writerly social-ness.
Thank you so much to all the heroic librarians, teachers and booksellers I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and talk to over the past few years. You guys are the ones putting books into the hands of the young readers who need them, and we’re all so grateful to you for it.
Thank you to the fabulous team behind Autostraddle.com, without whom this book would not exist. (Literally. The premise of Pulp was directly inspired by an Autostraddle post from 2013.)
Thank you to my family for always encouraging my love of literature and history, and for creating a household where reading was always the number-one leisure activity, whether it was The Baby-Sitters Club or Jane Austen.
Thank you to Darcy, for providing constant creative inspiration via your frequent song compositions, whimsical sentence structures and impossibly sunny smile. I hope you still love doing your penguin walk and making up lyrics about ceiling fans when you’re old enough to read this book.
And finally—I set out to write a book about the joy of the writing process, but somewhere along the way it also decided to be a book about the nature of love. So thank you to my wife, Julia, for listening patiently every time I sat down at the dinner table and said, “Can you believe this bizarre thing I learned in my research today about vice squads/pomade/the history of carbon paper?”, for entertaining our toddler while I reoutlined this book for the seventieth time (and the seventy-first and the seventy-second...), and, most of all, for being the reason I know enough about love to write about it in the first place. You’re my very favorite.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley.
Our Own Private Universe
by Robin Talley
CHAPTER 1
The stars above me danced in the cool, black Mexico sky. So I started dancing, too.
My body buzzed with the lingering vibrations from all those hours of f
lying. The music poured through my headphones and straight into my soul. I twirled, I soared, my head tipped back as I watched the stars.
I’d never seen a sky like this one. All my life I’d been surrounded by cities. Lights had shone on every side of me, drowning out the world.
I never realized that before. Not until I came here.
Here, in the middle of nowhere, all the light came from above. The sky was pure black with a thousand dots of white. Millions, actually, if I remembered Earth Science correctly. The air above looked like one of those lush, incomprehensible oil paintings my mother was always staring at whenever she dragged us to a museum back home.
I wanted to float up among those stars.
Nothing to think about. Nothing to do but soak it in and watch them shine.
The song’s beat pulsed through me. It was my favorite—well, one of my favorites. It was the one I’d never told anyone about because I didn’t want to deal with the looks I’d get.
Listening to it without dancing was impossible.
With my headphones on and my eyes on the sky, my body in constant motion, I was oblivious to the world on the ground. So I didn’t know how long Lori had been trying to get my attention before I felt her sharp tug on my arm.
“Hey!” I lowered my gaze to meet my best friend’s. She winced.
“You don’t need to yell.” Lori rubbed her ear. “I’m right here.”
“Sorry.” I pulled off my headphones.
“You always shout when you wear those. One day you’re going to do it in the middle of church and get kicked out.”
“I never wear headphones in church. Mom would slaughter me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to slaughter you right now if you keep acting so antisocial. What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
“Oh, uh.” I glanced back across the darkness toward the courtyard I’d abandoned. The house where the party was being held was on the far edge of town, backing up into the empty hillside. Behind me I could hear the sounds of voices and laughter and faint faraway music floating out over the walls. “Sorry. I guess I forgot.”
Lori laughed. “You’re lucky you’re hot, because you can be a total weirdo when you want to be. Come on, we should mingle.”
Right. I was supposed to be trying.
I followed Lori across the hills and through the courtyard’s tall, swinging wooden door. We passed a few people gathered along the back wall and went up to a table where some chips were set out next to flickering decorative candles.
At least half the party was gathered around the table, talking and rubbing their eyes. We hadn’t all taken the same flights, but everyone had been on at least two planes today, and most of the group looked like they still felt dizzy.
Someone had set up their phone to play music through its little speaker. The melodies were tiny against the open dirt and dotted sky beyond the courtyard walls.
I said hi to the people I knew from church. Lori chattered at everyone, flirting with the guys and fiddling with the bracelet that dangled from her wrist. It was one I’d made. Our allowances were pathetic, so Lori and I made jewelry to sell at school.
I wasn’t sure if saying hi to people and following Lori around officially counted as trying. Maybe it was something close, though. Something closer than dancing by myself under the stars.
But, God, those stars. I had to fight not to let my gaze drift back out into the open air.
Trying wasn’t optional, though. Not this summer.
Because, well. I had this theory.
Granted, all I ever had were theories. That was the whole problem. My life, all fifteen years of it, had been all about the hypothetical and never about the actual.
I was a hypothetical musician (I hadn’t played in more than a year). I was a hypothetical Christian (it wasn’t as though I’d tried any other options). Despite the age on my birth certificate, I was essentially a hypothetical teenager, since real teenagers did way more exciting stuff than I ever did.
But as of this summer, there was one particular theory that was taking up way more space in my brain than I had to spare.
To be honest, my theory was mostly about sex. But it applied to life in general, too. If I wanted to have an interesting life—which I did—then there was no point sitting around debating everything in my head on a constant loop.
If I wanted my life to change, then I had to do something. Or at least try.
And it was now or never. This summer, the summer we’d come to Mexico, was the time to test out my hypothesis.
The problem was, I was really good at sitting around and debating things in my head. Trying stuff? Actually doing it? That wasn’t really my jam.
Lori was different, though. She wasn’t any better than me at doing things, but she sure loved trying.
“We’ve got to go to the welcome party tonight,” she’d whispered to me that afternoon, seconds after the bus dropped us off at the church. “How else are we going to meet all the new guys?”
“I am absolutely not in the mood for a party,” I whispered back as I helped her haul her stuff inside. I’d already decided that, due to jet lag, my theory could wait at least one more day for testing. “I’m all woozy. Like I’m still on that plane, the one that kept shaking around.”
It had taken three different planes followed by a four-hour bus ride to get from home, in Maryland, to this tiny town somewhere way outside Tijuana. I’d never flown before, and now that we were on steady land all I wanted to do was put on my pajamas, go to bed and sleep until noon.
Except it turned out we didn’t have beds. Just sleeping bags lined up on the cement floor of an old church.
I didn’t have pajamas, either. The airline had lost my suitcase.
So I gave up fighting it. My theory was getting tested, jet lag or no jet lag.
“The new guys are going to be incredible,” Lori had whispered to me as we walked to the party with the others.
“They’re going to be exactly the same as the guys we already know,” I whispered back.
“Not true. These guys are way cooler. Much less boring.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Look, I’m an optimist, okay?”
For the next month, the youth groups from our church and two others would be working together on a volunteer project. All Lori cared about was that we’d be spending four weeks with guys who weren’t the same seven guys we’d been hanging out with since we were kids.
I didn’t see what was so bad about the guys at our church. Sure, most of them thought of me as a dorky, preacher’s-daughter, kid-sister type, but, well, that was pretty accurate. And I’d never been great at meeting people. I wasn’t shy or anything. It was only that sometimes, with new people, I didn’t know how exactly to start a conversation. I liked to listen first. You could learn a lot about someone that way.
The welcome party was at one of our host families’ houses. The local minister’s, maybe. But all the adults—my dad and the other ministers and chaperones, plus our Mexican host families—spent the whole time in the living room, which meant the forty-or-so of us from the youth groups had the outdoor courtyard to ourselves. That was a good thing, since whenever the adults were around I could hardly understand what anyone was saying. I’d gotten an A in freshman year Spanish, so I thought I’d be able to get by in Mexico all right, but we hadn’t even made it out of the Tijuana airport before I’d found out the truth. The woman at customs had asked me a question and the only part I understood was por favor. So I stared at her with my head tilted helplessly until Dad whispered for me to unzip my purse so the woman could check it for bombs or whatever.
Along the back wall of the courtyard, where the adults couldn’t see them from inside, a handful of people had started dancing. I turned back to Lori and stole a chip out of her hand. She pushed her long, curly blond hair
out of her face and raised her eyebrows at me.
“See, aren’t you glad we didn’t skip this?” Lori lowered her voice. “The guys on this trip are already way more interesting than our usual crowd.”
She meant that they were older. Lori and I were the only two sophomores who’d been allowed to come on this trip. The others were mostly going to be juniors or seniors in the fall. Some, like my brother, Drew, were already in college. Lori and I got special permission because my dad was our church’s youth minister, and he and Lori’s aunt Miranda were both chaperones on this trip.
“Why are you so into meeting new guys, anyway?” I asked Lori.
“I don’t know. I just want to expand my horizons. Have something new, something that’s all mine. You know what I mean?”
I nodded. It sounded like Lori was testing a theory of her own.
We fell into silence. A new song had come on, one of the big songs of the summer that had been playing in every store back home for weeks. Half the group was up and dancing. One of the guys from our church and his girlfriend were swaying slowly with their arms wrapped around each other, even though the song was a fast one.
“Do you want to go dance?” Lori asked.
I gave her a weird look instead of answering. Lori knew very well I never danced in front of people.
I tilted my head back to get another look at those stars. They swam dreamily in the sky.
“Stop looking up so much,” Lori whispered. “Your neck is already freakishly long. People are going to think you have no face.”
“My neck is not freakishly long,” I said, but I lowered my chin anyway.
Two white girls I didn’t know were half dancing, half standing in the darkest corner of the courtyard. One girl had hair so short you could see her scalp and leather cuffs with silver buttons on both wrists. The other girl had dark hair that curled around her ears, heart-shaped sunglasses perched on her head, a tiny silver hoop in her nose and a quiet smile that made me want to smile, too.