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.

It would be nice to go to my usual coffee shop and not have to shoot up a friggin' flare to get a second cup of coffee...talk about feeling neglected...

Some younger waitresses act like you're coming onto them if you smile when you sit down and say "How are you today?" They're friendly to all the dotty old ladies and limp-cocked old men, but God help you if you can still look at a girl with a gleam of appreciation in your eye but you're not Brad Pitt. Then you can sit there all night with an empty water glass and coffee cup until they finally wander over again and ask if you want anything else...

"Yes, BITCH! A second goddamn cup of coffee!!!!"

Only in my dreams would I actually say that...although I might rattle the spoon a little in disgust.

I met my writer friends Moe and ZP last night in the East Village and we went to Dallas BBQ at St. Marks Place and 2nd Avenue...this place is one of the best food bargains in the city. $7.99 for a half chicken, baked potato, and cornbread--and everything tasty and well-cooked. If you come to New York as a tourist, try out Dallas BBQ...they have several locations, including a very big one on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. I like their Texas-sized 20 ounce mugs of beer, too...an unpretentious, convivial place to eat.

After dinner we stopped at an art gallery/bar on 2nd Avenue and saw a show of some striking drawings and paintings that touched on both the demonic and religious...some strange imagery of creatures and odd people mixed in with various spiritual symbols...it was the typical East Village countercultural "thumbing of the nose" to convention, but interesting and worthwhile, and more proof that there are a lot of very talented people out there whom you and I have never heard of, who practice their creative skills in relative obscurity in a world that worships $250 million dollar baseball player contracts and the Monday morning lists of the top five moneymaking movies...

After this art appreciation session, Moe, ZP and I stood at the corner of St. Marks and 2nd Avenue in front of the Gem Spa (a candy store and newsstand) and chatted and watched the girls go by in the pleasant summer air...my oh my, what wonderful pie. It both heartens and saddens me to see that females have finally caught up with Sir Cranky's aesthetic sense of how they should look and dress, only thirty-five years too late for Sir Cranky to savor it...where were these girls when I was a young man and had a whisper of a chance with them? Alas, they weren't born yet...

I think one reason I got into strippers (and, back in the 70s, hookers) was that they dressed the way I thought a woman should: in provocative outfits and high heels. Nowadays, "good girls" have co-opted the erotic look that used to be the province of the prostitute...

Yes, we saw an unending display of cleavage as girls paraded by in low-cut dresses and high heel pumps...so many gorgeous bobbing boobs, and cleavage so deep you could plant a tree in it...indeed, this is the way I wish women dressed when I was a young man, but they didn't. No, the gals of my generation were too busy changing the world, growing hair on their legs and underarms, telling their boyfriends not to be "male chauvinist pigs," and in the end making it possible that the young female generations of today (those born after 1980) would be able to dress like tarts but still demand respect from men...

Actually, I don't much respect women who show off their cleavage in the street, even though I do kind of enjoy looking at them--and kind of don't, because I know I'm not going to be able to plant my bald, graying head in the middle of those racks to kiss, fondle, and suck. They say guys who gawk at women who flaunt their bodies are "creepy," but in fact it is the women who do the flaunting who are creepy...they are the strolling emasculators of the streets.

I know an otherwise intelligent woman close to my age who once "explained" to me that women don't dress for men, but purely for themselves; and that any residual "torture" that I as a spectator on the street might feel is only coincidental, and not intended. To this opinion of hers, I say "Phooey!" Women can't dress in a narcissistic vacuum, but rather they display their charms in a swarming human context that includes the restless eyes of Sir Cranky, and those of millions of other men...

In other words, girls, IF YOU SHOW IT, WE WILL STARE. IF YOU TORTURE US, WE WILL SQUIRM. And if you give us enough material for fantasies, well, we will contemplate your charms in the privacy of our chambers with mucho zeal!

On the other hand, I do respect women who confine their exhibitionism to stripclubs. Ironic, isn't it? I find the females whom society considers disreputable to be the true ladies, and the so-called "nice" girls who display their cleavage for free to all-and-sundry to be the sleazy ones.

I know I'm bitter and frustrated because I'm too old and un-suave to enjoy those kinds of twentyish beauties (except if I start going to hookers again), but I still think that my musings on this subject are worthy of consideration. The fruit of bitterness can indeed be a kind of stunted truth!

Lately I don't feel much like blogging. I guess I feel obligated to do it, because I've done it so constantly for so long (almost two years) and I enjoy the ego satisfaction of seeing that a steady batch of people visit this blog everyday...not a huge amount of people, only about thirty to forty daily, but that's still nice. Yet I rarely get comments, so I wonder if many of those readers are still entertained anymore...

I started out always trying to have a "point" to my entries, not a message or moral but just an angle that gave the reader something of valid interest; but of late I've used this more like a diary, and sometimes the points elude me other than just my using the blog to depict my state of mind...

Maybe I'm not in the mood to blog partly because, in addition to my paying freelance work, I tired myself out writing and revising a psychological suspense novel over the last two months...a 225 page tome which is still due for one last polish before I try to sell it. If I can sell it...if it's any good. But I guess my disinclination to blog also is because I'm up against an old feeling that never stops nagging me: that what I write about here just isn't very interesting, or at least the way I write about it. And I also don't feel my life is very interesting to me...

For awhile I felt that my deliberately presented curmudgeonly persona of cinematic and literary quasi-erudition, combined with goggle-eyed, rubbernecked drooling over strippers and every other passing skirt on the street, was amusing, but perhaps I've played out that hand. I mean, it is really who I am to a degree, but lately the curmudgeon seems to be curdling into an increasingly bitter misanthrope...I frequently write complete entries that I feel are too glum to post, and I delete them.

You only see Sir Cranky when you choose to visit this blog. I have to see him everyday in the mirror...and hear his dissatisfactions and rants nonstop in my head.

Isn't that funny? It's as if I'm separating myself from Sir Cranky, as if he is someone else...but he is not. It's not my real name, obviously, but it is pretty much me...

And yet, not really the way I want to see myself right now.

Maybe my self-imposed exile from the stripclubs (for reasons of tighter finances) has finally made me stop seeing myself as a bon vivant of the scantily clad demimonde, which was a counterpoint to my view of myself as a grumbling crank. Without the fun to balance out the gloom, I'm just left feeling pissed off at the world, and myself...so therefore my psyche seeks a new persona, the contours of which are only vague in my mind. But one thing I would like to be able to say is that I successfully sold a novel, and that I am on my way to a new direction in my career which will bring me a measure of satisfaction that has eluded me my entire life.

Is "Sir Cranky" but a cocoon for the butterfly within? I know that sounds kind of effete, but I've never been strong with metaphors...or maybe I'm just too lazy to come up with something else. Anyway, this one gets my point across.

But you think I should change "butterfly" to "colossus"?