Women In The Shadow

Women In The Shadow
Ann Bannon

The classic 1950s love story from the Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction, and author of Odd Girl Out, I Am a Woman, Women in the Shadows, Journey to a Woman and Beebo BrinkerA guarded look across the room was all she dared—and this was Greenwich Village where almost anything goes…Following on from classic novels Odd Girl Out and I am a Woman, Women in the Shadows picks up with Beebo’s relationship with Laura, as both women become caught in the cultural tumult (gay bar raids, heavy drinking, gay rights advocacy) that anticipates by ten years the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969. New introduction explains the book’s evolution, including the role Bannon’s divorce played in shaping the lesbian protagonist’s outrage.New Introduction by Ann Bannon“Originally published in 1959, Women in the Shadows broke from the formula of 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. The women in this novel were tied to convention, but they were still ahead of their time. In its proper historical context, Women in the Shadows is a masterpiece” Hélène CixousPraise for Ann Bannon“Bannon’s books grab you and don’t let go” Village Voice“When I was young, Bannon’s books let me imagine myself into her New York City neighborhoods of short-haired, dark-eyed butch women and stubborn, tight-lipped secretaries with hearts ready to be broken. Her books come close to the kind of books that had made me feel fatalistic and damned in my youth, but somehow she just managed to sustain a sense of hope. And of course, there was her romantic portrait of the kind of butch woman I idealized. I would have dated Beebo, no question” Dorothy Allison“Called trash by the literary world and pornography by the commercial world, Ann Bannon’s books were hidden away on drugstore pulp racks. To pick out the book, carry it to the counter and face the other shoppers and the cashier was tantamount to coming out. But all across the country, lesbians were doing it” Joan Nestle“Little did Bannon know that her stories would become legends, inspiring countless fledgling dykes to flock to the Village, dog-eared copies of her books in hand, to find their own Beebos and Lauras and others who shared the love they dared not name” San Francisco Bay Guardian“Ann Bannon is a pioneer of dyke drama” On Our Backs“Shameless tales of wanton dyke lust are finally unveiled!” Out magazine

Women in the Shadows

Ann Bannon

www.spice-books.co.uk (http://www.spice-books.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u3c694c6b-fdd6-5f69-ab4e-21ee7c5f00fe)

Title Page (#u2f5a03ee-a25c-5e93-9165-1145ced71b39)

Chapter One (#uc44ca827-291c-52bc-ae40-935cd8a12ec5)

Chapter Two (#u1d111a5b-7f96-5f16-90dd-2a8b8be36380)

Chapter Three (#uaae6cdf3-bb95-5681-90f0-c6325138fb22)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)

Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#ulink_ae50bb6c-6e15-59f9-8675-04150600dc9b)

JUNE 8: God help me. God help me to stand it. Today was our second anniversary. If I have to go on living with her I’ll go crazy. But if I leave her—? I’m afraid to think what will happen. Sometimes she’s not rational. But what can I do? Where can I turn?

That damn party was awful. Anniversaries are supposed to be happy affairs, but this one was more like a wake. Everybody got drunk and sang songs, but there was always that corpse there in the middle of the room … the corpse of that romance. Jack got terribly drunk, as usual. There’s another one. If he doesn’t crack up it won’t be because he hasn’t tried. What’s wrong with us all, anyway? What’s the use of living when things are like this all the time?

Laura shut her diary with a sudden furtive gesture, her pen still poised, and strained her ears at a sound. She thought she heard the front door open. It would be Beebo coming back. But it was only the dachshund, Nix, scratching himself on a stool in the kitchen. Laura sighed in relief and turned back to the diary. She ordinarily kept it locked in a little steel strongbox on the closet floor, and she wrote in it only when she was alone, in the evenings before Beebo got home from work.

Beebo had never read it—or seen it, in fact. It was Laura’s own, Laura’s aches and pains verbalized, Laura’s heart dissected and wept over, in washable blue ink. If Beebo ever saw it she would tear it up in a frenzy. She would make Laura swallow it, because it did not say very nice things about Beebo. And Beebo always did things in a big way, the good along with the bad.

Laura opened the notebook once more and wrote a last brief entry: Jack asked me to marry him again … but I could never marry a man, not even him. Never.

Then she closed it quickly and took it back to the closet and locked it in the strongbox. She sat down from sheer inertia on the closet floor and picked up a shoe. It was one of her pumps, rather long and narrow—too large to be really fashionable. But it had the proper shape and the newest styled heel. Beebo liked to see her smartly dressed. She cared more about that than Laura did herself. Laura had worn these shoes to the unfortunate anniversary party two nights before.

Beebo was still hungover from that long night of dreary festivity. Jack was always hungover, so he didn’t count. As for Laura, she had learned from Beebo to drink too much herself, and she was learning at the same time how it feels the next day. Bad. Plain bad.

It had been a strange night, with moments of wild hilarity and stretches of gloom when everybody drank as if they made their living at it. Laura remembered Jack arriving ahead of everybody else with a couple of bottles under his arm. “Thought I’d better bring my own,” he explained.

“Jack, you’re not going to drink two fifths all by yourself!” Laura had exclaimed. She always took things at face value at first, a little too seriously.

“I’m going to try, Mother,” he said, laughing, his eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses sparkling cynically at her.

Beebo had been in a sweat of preparation all day, and the apartment ended up looking almost new. A fever seemed to have gotten hold of her. This had to be a big party, a good party, a loud, drunk, and very gay party. Because this party was going to prove that Beebo and Laura had lived together for two whole years, and in Greenwich Village that is a pretty good record.

Friends were invited, to admire and congratulate. Oh, to get drunk and live it up a little too, on Beebo and Laura. But mostly to stand witness to the fact that the girls had been together two whole years. Or rather, Beebo had hung on to Laura for two whole years.

Maybe that’s a hard way to say it. Maybe it isn’t fair. After all, Laura stuck with Beebo, too. But Laura stuck because she didn’t have the courage to let go, because her life was empty and without a purpose, and living with somebody and loving—or pretending to love—seemed to bring some sanity into her world. But for a long time she had begun to squirm and struggle under Beebo’s jealous scrutiny.

Laura let Beebo make most of the arrangements for the party. She felt almost no enthusiasm for it. The whole thing had been Beebo’s idea in the first place. Laura felt almost as outside of it as a late-arriving guest. She ran a few errands, but it was Beebo who planned and organized, who put up streamers and cleaned the apartment, who called everybody, who picked up the liquor and the ice cubes, and even made hors d’oeuvres.

She treated Laura with unwonted gentleness and attention all day. She wanted her in a good mood for the party. They had quarreled so much and so bitterly lately that they were both a little sick over it. Beebo wanted to have a good day behind them, a day full of good will and even tenderness.

There wasn’t much time to foster tenderness, though, with the vacuum going, the kitchen upside down with food in various stages of readiness, the dog barking, and the phone ringing in an endless hysterical serenade. But still, Beebo tried. She touched Laura’s hair softly when she passed her or brushed her hands over Laura’s face. And once she stopped to kiss her, so carefully that Laura was touched in spite of herself and submitted, though without returning the kiss. Beebo went away flushed with success. Laura had not suffered herself to be kissed for nearly a week.

So when the guests finally started arriving, Beebo greeted them with high color in her cheeks and almost too much heartiness. Everything had started out so well, it had to end well.

It was a weird group that assembled to fete the anniversary. Beebo had wanted a big party. “Jesus, honey,” she complained. “How many people down here stick it out this long? We have something to be proud of, for God’s sake. Let’s advertise it.”

“What have we got to be proud of?” Laura said sarcastically. “We’re just a couple of suckers for punishment. We just happen to enjoy beating each other’s heads in.”

Beebo had risen to the occasion with her quick and awful temper and left Laura crying. And she had had her way. They invited just about everybody in the neighborhood: the ones they knew, the ones they knew by sight only, and the ones they didn’t know at all, male and female. Beebo did all the calling, so it came as a shock to Laura to see two of Beebo’s old flames among the guests. But she said nothing about it. There would be time to shout about it afterwards. And shout they no doubt would.

Jack came early because he liked the chance to talk to Laura by himself now and then. He liked to be with her lately, since his own life had taken a sickening dip into loneliness and frustration. They were old friends; sometimes they thought of one another as each other’s only friend. They were very close. It could never be a question of physical love between them, only deep affection, a mutual problem, a sort of harmony that sprang from sympathy and long acquaintance.

They were both homosexual. And if Laura could never understand why a man would desire another man, she at least knew, very well, how it was to love another woman. And so she could build a bridge of empathy on that knowledge and comfort Jack when some lovely boy was giving him hell. And he could do the same when Beebo raked her over the coals.

The party went along well enough for the first hour or so. Every time Beebo came near Laura she pinched her or bussed her. It was a part of her advertising campaign—a way to say, “She’s still mine. And it’s been two years. Hands off, the rest of you!” And she would look around at the guests a little defiantly.

But for Laura it was tedious. It scared her and bored her all at once. The fierce passion for Beebo that had boiled when they first knew each other flared up rarely now. And when there was no love there was nothing but fighting between them. She hated to be put on exhibit like this. And yet she kept her peace and let Beebo kiss her when she felt like it. After all, it was a party. Have a good time. If you can. Forget. If you can. Everybody drink up and laugh. Laugh, damn you all! If you can.

It was when Lili (she would spell it that way; she was born plain Louise) was well plastered that the party took a downward curve from which it never recovered. Lili was a former amour of Beebo’s; Lili of the ash blonde hair and carefully blackened lashes; Lili of the lush, silk-draped body; Lili with the lack of inhibitions. Laura hated her with a good healthy female jealousy. It had been intolerable at first when she was still in love with Beebo and Lili had tried to manage their lives for them. Now it was just an exasperation to Laura to have her around.

Lili got high in a hurry. She believed in getting things done efficiently, and getting drunk was one of the things. She began to saunter from group to group around the small apartment, flirting, feeding sips from her martini to interested parties, telling tales. She came upon Beebo in the kitchen, getting more sandwiches from the refrigerator. The kitchen was crowded with people waving empty glasses and looking for refills. Jack was pouring them as fast as he could and sampling them all.

“Important to get it just right,” he said. “Takes a good concentration of alcohol or you don’t get fried till three in the morning. Terrible waste of time.”