SPINE INTACT, SOME CREASES
REMEMBRANCES OF A PAPERBACK WRITER
VICTOR J. BANIS
Edited and Introduced by Fabio Cleto
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
BORGO BIOVIEWS #6
ISSN 0743-0628
Copyright © 2004, 2007, 2012 by Victor J. Banis
Introduction Copyright © 2004 by Fabio Cleto
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
I am deeply indebted to my friends, Heather and Dave Datta, for all the help they have given me in getting these early works of mine reissued.
And I am grateful as well to Rob Reginald, for all his assistance and support.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The Index has been omitted from this ebook edition, but is available in the Borgo Press print edition.
INTRODUCTION
American History XXX, by Fabio Cleto
Let us go then, you and I, and let us browse a little in America’s cobwebbed garrets. Among discarded rocking chairs and creaky hobby-horses, dusty dolls and moth-eaten dresses, tarnished primers, newsmagazines and grandma’s recipebooks, we may run into a half-concealed cardboard box full of timeworn 4”-x-7” paperbacks, little books with campy, thrilling covers, titles and taglines. Look at these! “Passions and Debauchery Explode in History’s Most Wicked City” (tagline for Paul Ilton’s The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah, Signet Books, 1957); “Twilight Lives of Talent & Torment, Man-for-Man in the World of Dance” (Ronn Marvin’s Mr. Ballerina, Regency Books, 1961); “Her Twisted Passion Drove Her to Evil Deeds as She Sought Pleasure in the Arms of Women” (Del Britt’s Flying Lesbian, Brandon House Books, 1963). And what about these? “The Uninhibited Story of a Free-Loving, Free-Wheeling Nympho!” (Victor Jay’s The Affairs of Gloria, Brandon House, 1964); “One Love Was Natural. The Other Was Forbidden—and Dangerous!” (Paula Christian’s The Other Side of Desire, Paperback Library, 1965); “He Burned with a Lusty Passion as He Soared into the Ecstasy of Love—but This Time His Partner Was a Man” (Victor Jay’s So Sweet, So Soft, So Queer, Private Edition Books, 1965). Well, they get more and more outrageously camp! Now, guess what? “For a Price, He Performed Any Act of Degeneracy That Appealed to His Perverted Mind! Sex Hungry Men and Women Offered Their Bodies for His Pleasure!” (Victor Jay’s AC-DC Lover, Private Edition, 1965); “Lancer Knew Damned Well He’d Married a Woman—but the World Refused to Believe Him!” (Stark Cole’s The Man They Called My Wife, Brandon House, 1968); “It Was a Haven for Oddballs…Sex Weirdos in Search of Offbeat Thrills” (Lou Morgan’s Hangout for Queers, Neva Books, 1965). And talking about campy stuff, there you are; “Yoo Hoo! Lover Boy!” (Don Holliday’s The Man from C.A.M.P., Leisure Books, 1966). Oh my, where does all this come from? Who are these authors, what are these publishers? And who on earth read this stuff? Bringing as they did the unbelievable to the spotlight, covers, taglines and titles cried it loud and clear; fifties’ and sixties’ queer pulps emerge from the realm of obscenity.
Named after the poor quality of the pulpwood paper they were printed on, and the queer offspring of late nineteenth-century dime novels and early twentieth-century detective or science fiction magazines, pulp novels and “social inquiries” capitalized, among other factors, on the sensation first created by surveys such as Alfred C. Kinsey’s 1948 landmark Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (followed five years later by the equally shocking Sexual Behavior in the Human Female) and as William Masters & Virginia Johnson’s Human Sexual Response (1966), unapologetically charting the field of human sexual practices, so as to disclose an astonishing variety of experiences and desires that radically undermined America’s wishful self-image of “normality.” The queer, shadowy world was hardly believable, and it needed to be addressed if one wanted to avoid unpredictable consequences such as the tagline for Don Holliday’s Stranger at the Door (Late-Hour Library, 1967) ambiguously squealed; “He Came to Camp!” While Jordan Park’s Half (Lion Books, 1953) and Eve Linkletter’s The Gay Ones (Fabian Books, 1958) wondered “What Was His Body’s Dark Secret That Made Him Neither Man Nor Woman?” and “Were They Pranks of Nature? Or Were They the Third Sex?”, others simply cried that homosexuals were “A Problem That Must Be Faced!” (W.D. Sprague, Ph.D., The Lesbian in Our Society, Midwood Books, 1962). Pulps did face such varied threats indeed; in Anthony James’ America’s Homosexual Underground (Imperial Books, 1965) “An Ace Reporter Covers a World of Vice and Intrigue”; March Hastings’ The Unashamed (Midwood Books, 1968) provided a heartbreaking explanation for such downfall from virtue (“After What Men Did to Her, She Found It Easy to Turn to a Woman For Love”); and Ray Train’s Miss Kinsey’s Report (Chevron Books, 1967) unveiled an appalling backstage to Dr. Kinsey’s intellectual heritage; “It Was Absolutely Unthinkable! To Collect the Money That Her Uncle Had Left Her in His Will, She Had to Make a Survey of All the Townspeople…and Question Them about Their Sex Habits”. Tawdry sexual practices deserved adequate investigation, indeed.
As howled by eyecatching garish covers and taglines, queer pulp promised sordid deeds and baffling passions (“One of the Three…a Sister…Who Strongly Opposed the Basic Convention and Taboos Against Incest”—Louise Sherman’s The Strange Three, Saber Books, 1957), bizarre geometries of desire (“A Lover and His Lady…and His Laddie!”—J. X. Williams’ AC-DC Stud, Greenleaf Classics, 1967) and tales of sheer self-love (“No One Could Admire Him More than Himself!”—J. X. Williams’ Pretty Man, Sundown Reader, 1966). Queer pulp promised to introduce the reader to the strangest of creatures; nymphos, hustlers, swappers, drag queens, ultra-femme vixens from this and other worlds (Frank Belknap Long’s Woman from Another Planet, Chariot, 1960, had “The Body and Passions of a Woman—but the Soul of a Demon”), transvestites and serial killers, hookers, junkies, tramps, luscious beefcake bodybuilders (“Most Men Fall In Love with Women, But Some Men Fall in Love with Themselves!”—Bud Clifton’s Muscle Boy, Ace Books, 1958), psychopaths and freaks of all confessions, “Scandalous Women from Society Dames and Suburban Sinners to B-Girls, He-Girls and Call Girls” (Lee Mortimer’s Women Confidential, Paperback Library, 1961), “strange Sisters” and “Odd Girls Out,” leather-clad lesbians, gay cowboys and detectives, transsexuals, fetish lovers and alien gender-benders. A weird throng indeed, confessing the underground Sin Scene, giving vent to the twilight, sorrow and doom shadowing the sleek façade of mainstream America (J. X. Williams’ Goodbye, My Lover, Sundown Reader, 1966, claimed that “Their Life Was a Sad Song Entitled ‘Good-Bye, My Lover’”). As rumors had been insinuating for years, the sancta sanctorum of the American pursuit of happiness, its dream-factory Tinsel Town, hosted lust and perversion; the shocking truth emerged in novels devoted to “A Hollywood Heyday of Dark Desire!” (Don Holliday’s Home of the Gay, Adult Books, 1968) and to “The Hollywood Scene—the Way It Really Is; Wanton, Luscious, Lusting Hunks of Woman Flesh Who Will Do Anything for Anyone for Fame…and Sensual Thrills!” (Marion Archer’s Thrill Chicks, Bee-Line Books, 1969). Pulps were, in other words, America’s favorite mass-marketed obscenity show before The Jerry Springer Show, webcams and reality shows peopled our night entertainment with freakish case-histories, petty plots, and lingerie show-offs.
Just like many late-night talk shows, these publications pivoted on a voyeuristic fascination for the creepy and ill-regarded. It was an “educational” experience, after all, and one had to face reality, however distasteful; “Never Had So Desperate a Group of Human Beings Banded Together…” (Stella Gray’s Abnormal Anonymous, National Library Books, 1964). One really had to read about them, to keep evil forces at bay; “The Girls Taught Each Other About Love! Every Parent Should Read This Shocking Novel of Adolescent Girls Who First Tolerated Vice—Then Embraced It—Then Could Not Live Without It!” (J. C. Priest’s Private School, Beacon Books, 1959; and please do pay attention to the grossest feature of this book; its author’s name). Of course, there were those fated to reach the gay spell, as it happened to the protagonist of J. X. Williams’ Born to Be Gay (Sundown Reader, 1966); “Fear Drove Him into the Third-Sex Shadow World!” But in case you could read about it beforehand, well, you might even consider