I wanted to post here tonight but I can't really sit at my desk now, I have to sit on the couch and elevate my foot...yes, had to return to the podiatrist late this afternoon for a little work. I went to a different podiatrist last fall, but the problem returned, so I went back to the first one I visited two years ago...this really isn't that interesting, I'm sorry...so spank me...anyway, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I have a big bandage on my big toe and I must walk gingerly and keep it up for a day or so...

Anyway, didn't want anybody to think I'm slacking off here...before I went to the doctor, I was cranking on my freelance work and polishing my novel manuscript too...now I must endure a little forced leisure...fortunately I got a cool 1962 burlesque magazine from one of my memorabilia pals, so that will aid me in my convalescence...

I'm only exaggerating for comic effect, I suppose, but it's a darn truth that the bandage on my toe is so big I can't even get my slippers on!

I'd like to see a cartoon with Bugs Bunny visiting a podiatrist...

And I'm writing all this without any drugs...

See ya later.

I've noticed a strange fashion phenomenon on the streets lately. Women dressed up in pretty frocks--often with plunging cleavage to accentuate the thrust of their womanhood; sexy high-heeled sandals or pumps; hair and makeup done; but their accompanying men attired in t-shirts, shorts, sandals or even flip-flops! In the old days of twenty or thirty years ago, I can't imagine a woman who was nicely dressed not saying to her man, "Put something else on. I'm not going to be seen with you when I'm sharp like this and you look like a slob."

It seems to me an odd lowering of the expectations of women today that they would look as if they're dressed for a cocktail party, but allow themselves to be accompanied by men who look like they're going to wash the dog.

I don't get it. I would be embarrassed to dress down like that when my woman was all spiffy. I would feel childish in comparison.

What is wrong with young guys today? This is just one more way they give up their dignity and surrender their power to women. One day they're going to wake up and discover that females are giving all the orders. It's not going to be a happy day for guys, or gals either.

Equality--okay.

Matriarchy--BAH!!!

The "kaddish" is the Jewish prayer of mourning.

Yesterday, August 18th, was the thirtieth anniversary of my father's death. Yes, he died in 1977, two days after Elvis Presley. While the world was making a big deal over Elvis, my family and I were dealing with my father's passing, the conclusion to his ten months of terrible suffering. He had a neurological disease that rendered him immobile, and he also developed dementia that cut him off from who he had been, and from communicating with his loved ones. He was 49.

Today is the anniversary of his death according to the Hebrew calendar, and I said a prayer for him, in my fashion. I spent some time recalling all his good points, his sense of humor, his generosity, his honesty, his dedication to his family and his work. He paid my tuition to a good college that put me on a lifelong journey of curiosity and learning, and although he didn't like New York himself despite having grown up in Brooklyn and Staten Island (he moved to Chicago when he went to graduate school), he helped me get a foothold in New York in 1971 by using a personal connection to get me a summer job here after my sophomore year. So he did a lot for me even though my permanent move to New York didn't seem to make him very happy. He always seemed to suggest that he wanted me to move back to Chicago.

The sudden onset of his illness in 1976, and his rapid deterioration, were a shock that I have never quite gotten over. It sent me into a confused emotional spiral for several years. We were at odds at the time of his sickness, as sons and fathers sometimes are, and any chance at coming to terms with each other before his death was made impossible by his dementia. The awfulness of his fate influenced my already morbid cast of mind...

Anyway, he took care of my mother, my sisters, and me, and he was admired and loved by the people he tended to (he was in a health profession). I just wish he had been warmer towards me, less addicted to the rigid model of "I'm the father, you are the son, so listen to what I say because I know best, period." The negative fallout of that attitude made it hard for me to feel gratitude for the good things he did. He was a distant sort of person in some ways, at least toward me (we rarely did things together as father and son), but as I said he was generous and attentive and helpful in other ways. He did his best, and I do my best to remember him with respect and love. Yet even as I write this, I feel somehow that I am letting him down...

Talk about how things have changed for the better. Lesbianism is just one more mundane element in the day's news (at least in New York), whether the story is about Angelina Jolie or Rosie O'Donnell or Ellen DeGeneres. But it wasn't always like this; fifty years ago, lesbianism was viewed as a dark and shameful stigma, as vividly portrayed in Fletcher Flora's 1954 paperback novel Strange Sisters, which I just finished reading. It's the story of Kathy Galt, a young lesbian driven to murder and madness by her guilt over her sexuality. And she's not the only one twisted by shame and fear: her lovers, too, educated and beautiful women, seem corrupted to the core by their anxiety over exposure as sapphists.

The book opens as Kathy attempts to date a man to prove to herself that she can be "normal." But when he coarsely makes a pass, she rejects him out of revulsion at the idea of going through with hetero sex. Her attitude makes him violently angry, and she stabs him to death with an icepick. Although her killing him is an extreme response given what he actually does (he pulls her hair, and then she kills him), she's incapable of seeing it as self-defense in any degree, and assumes all the guilt in her mind. She can't accept her lesbianism, which to her is a crushing aberration that sets her apart from everybody "normal." In flashbacks we see the confusion and guilt she experiences over her first teenage crush (for her glamorous aunt) and then in two subsequent affairs with haughty but secretive women who (the book discreetly suggests) use her pretty much like a plaything, then discard her when she becomes troublesome.

Author Fletcher Flora was a man who specialized in pulpy crime fiction, but this novel was well-written in a kind of metaphysical prose that puts Kathy's thoughts and actions under a powerful but compassionate microscope. It was as if Flora decided he couldn't get inside a twentyish woman's skin so much as observe her and her thoughts and actions from a viewpoint of sympathetic, almost scientific, omniscience. His literary strategy worked. All through the novel's well-paced 128 pages, I knew the outcome was going to be bad--after all, she kills the man in the first few pages--but I kept reading because Fletcher Flora's descriptions made me care about tormented Kathy, a lonely soul broken by the repressions of a society built on rigid rules, ignorance, and shame.

Kathy really goes nuts by the end of the book, in a fashion suggested by a haunting poem she loves, and the emotions stirred in the reader are great pity and sadness. I wanted to reach out to Kathy, take the ever-present glass of rye out of her hand, and pull her back from the abyss of her guilt before it was too late. The melancholy and empathetic bachelor police detective investigating (and intuitively understanding) her crime feels the same way. Likewise the middle-aged bartender who serves Kathy on her last binge of drinking to forget her pain. The irony is that she's beyond help from the beginning of the book, not only in the true noir fashion, but in the eyes of the extremely judgmental society of the time.

Vintage copies of Strange Sisters can readily be found on the Internet, but maybe someday an enterprising publisher will reprint it. Author Fletcher Flora died in 1968, but his book holds up as a nightmare of the buttoned-up 1950s.

If you click on the link below, you'll go to an interesting site actually called StrangeSisters.com, about the history of lesbian paperback fiction, and complete with a beautiful gallery of the bookcovers. I've linked to the cover for the edition of Strange Sisters that I read, but the rest of the site is worth checking out.

What struck me about the painting on the cover of the book was the gracefulness of the hands--how the woman's right hand loosely clasps the man's, and how her left hand seems not quite relaxed, but almost ready to gesture to the woman in the distance. This is the kind of artful, suggestive detail that makes reading vintage editions so pleasurable.

StrangeSisters

With all the remembrances of Elvis today on the anniversary of his death in 1977, let's recall that it's also the 51st anniversary of the death of the great Bela Lugosi in 1956!

His Dracula in the classic of that name; Dr. Vollin in The Raven; Igor in Son of Frankenstein; Dr. Benet in The Invisible Ray; Dr. Paul Carruthers in The Devil Bat, and Dr. Eric Vornoff in Bride of the Monster will live in eternity just like Mr. Presley's Blue Suede Shoes!

BELA, YOU ARE AVENGED!!

Somewhere in heaven, I like to think Bela and Elvis are enjoying a couple of fine cigars...

I don't know if Elvis ever smoked cigars, but I'm sure Bela could convince him to try a good blend.

Meanwhile, back on earth, Sir Cranky enjoyed a tasty Japanese meal last night with his writer/bodybuilder/streetfighter friend Rexx...

We went to a Japanese pub in Times Square, under the street level, and sat at the counter and enjoyed duck on a skewer, short ribs, and pork dumplings basted in wasabi (Japanese mustard), along with two bottles of cold and very reasonably priced sake! The restaurant is called Hagi and it's at 152 W. 49th Street, right down the street from Rockefeller Center, and coincidentally down the block from an apartment building where, about fifteen years ago, I had a most pleasant afternoon tryst with a hooker from Colombia! I remember she had extremely dark and prominent nipples underneath her pale blue baby doll nightie.

Anyway, Rexx had heard about Hagi on a food show, which said the place got very crowded at dinner time, and they were right. There was a line waiting to get in. We got there just in time to get seats at the counter, about 6:30.

Two attractive Japanese girls were seated on our left. I began to chat a little with one, and I got a hearty laugh out of her, but then I went blank. I felt too much pressure to be clever and witty after my good opening, and it seemed like too much work. It's ridiculous but true: I feel less pressure to impress women when I pay for their company, like strippers or, back in the day, call girls. Oh well, I disappointed myself a little, because the girls were cute, but maybe the next time I go there and sit at the counter I'll manage to carry the ball further if I sit next to another babe.

Rexx made the observation that while all the Americans were drinking sake, the Japanese in the restaurant seemed to be drinking beer. Indeed, the girls next to us were pouring themselves Kirin out of a huge pitcher. In fact, they had a real feast in front of them: everything from sushi, to calamari over noodles, to rice, to edamame beans. They were slender dames, but they were packing it away!

One important aspect of this place were its very reasonable prices. I had a cold and hefty bottle of delicious sake for five bucks. Can't beat that in Gotham!

I'm sorry I didn't talk more to that girl...she had a sweet smile and a demure laugh. Actually, yesterday was a day of erotic contrasts for me. I saw a thirtyish Latina on the bus going out to New Jersey who got me very turned on. She was a big strapping girl, not heavy, but tall in her high heels, curvy, and she had a smoky voice and bracelets jangling on the wrists of her bare arms in a summer dress. She was talking to a friend and there was such a feeling of vitality in her. I was both aroused and scared of her. Aroused, in that it would be fun to have a gal like that clambering over me in bed, and scared in that she just seemed too, too much, like she could swallow me up in all possible ways, and with my full approval.

Attractive women are just sometimes too, too much for me. I often feel small and powerless around them, which is absurd but true nonetheless. I fight this feeling, but I know it underlies my personality and my view of the world. I want their approval, but on some level I feel they should scold me...

Or maybe I just think too much, which sends me scurrying back into my safety zone of inaction. I'm afraid it takes a lot of sake to bring out the tiger in Sir Cranky, but I'm always reluctant to risk the hangover.