this. I mean, there aren’t even books like this today, as far as I know. Plus, they had censors in the fifties. That’s why all the movies sucked.”
“Here, let’s make a new one. For your senior project.” Linh leaped to her feet and grabbed the cement column that stood next to the couch. She pulled down the neckline of her T-shirt, stuck out her chest, lifted one knee onto a cushion and tilted her head forward, imitating the woman on the cover of the last book on the page, Dormitory Women. “Did I get it right?”
All Abby could think was that there should be a law banning your ex-girlfriend from doing sexy poses in front of you before you’d officially gotten back together. Seriously, this had to be a legitimate form of torture.
But she did her best to keep acting nonchalant as she held up the computer screen to compare. Linh did look kind of like the woman on the painted cover, with her dark hair and thick eyebrows, even though Linh’s warm eyes and inviting smile were a thousand times prettier than the cover model’s. Not to mention that Linh was wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs, and the Dormitory Women model was in a tight white blouse and severely belted skirt.
“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
