Martin, Della. Twilight Girl. 1961. Cleis Reprint, 200x. Excerpted in Forrest's anthology.
"Lorraine was different - but was she bad? The savage story of a pretty teenager enticed into forbidden practices by older girls! We sincerly believe this the finest novel ever to treat of the third sex!"
SUMMARY:
Very butch 16 year old Lon Harris feels like a total outsider. She has a fantasy world that she has written about, an island somewhere where everyone xxxx. She has written her teacher a love letter, and her teacher tells her to eff off. Disillusioned, she even plans to kill her teacher's dg by feeding it ground up glass – thankfully, she doesn't follow through on that plan, but instead meets Violet, a purple (way way before it was cool) haired car hop at a fast food drive in. The car hop assumes that Lon is butch and knows it and takes her to the bars where Lon discovers butches and femmes. At the bar she meets Maves, a black femme and her wealthy butch lover, Sassy (who suffers from serious gay guilt and sleeps with a loser rich boy so she can think of herself as bi – their sex scene is disturbing).
OPINION:
This book has a strange juxtaposition of honest insight into the young butch's experience with asides that attempt to explain the pathology of lesbianism. It's almost as if the writer wrote a sympathetic honest story and then had to go back and insert proselytizing about the evils of the homosexual. It is one of the few pulp novels to address racism. Lon's family is lower middle class. The town that Lon lives in is small and depressing. Lon herself ends up losing her sanity. Nothing seems to be known about the writer.
CONTENT:
Violence, drug use, homicide, insanity, f-f sex, m-f sex. Written in the second person. Above average writing.
c2007 melodie morgan frances
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