"The Girl with the Horizontal Mind" by Harlan Ellison (originally published as by ""Price Curtis" in Mermaid, Vol.1 No. 6, 1958; reprinted in Ellison's collection under the name "Paul Merchant," Sex Gang, 1959; reprinted under the the pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" in Adam, September 1963; reprinted in Ellison's collection Getting in the Wind, 2012)
Sex Gang was a notorious collection of (mainly crime) stories written for the lesser men's magazines and pubished in paperback by Lawrence Hamling's Nightstand Books in 1959. Hamling pressured Ellison at a tome when he (Ellison) was desperate for money into compiling this collection of the cruddiest of the crud that he had written until then. The book was published under a pen name -- reportedly, Ellison wanted the pen name to be something like "S. X. Merchant," but even that went a bit too far for Nightstand. Anyway, Sex Gang had, I believe, two printings, and Ellison immediately wiped it fro his mind and from his catalog, going for years without acknowledging it. (Currently, htree copies of the original paperback are listed on Abebooks, going from $757.39 to $950.00, plus shipping.) And so things sat. Until Miriam Kinna, silver-tongud editor of Bad Seed magazine and Kicks Books, convinced Ellison to finally allow Sex Gang to be reprinted, with a difference. The original content was to be divided into two books, with some of Ellison's original j.d. and men's magazine stories. The books would appear under titles that indicated Ellison's disdain for the original book -- Pulling a Train and Getting in the Wind. And here we are.
It is foolish to expect great literature here. Or even great eroticism. What you get is a bare-bones sex story that is barely literate. You have been warned.
Walt Tucker is a twenty-one-year-old college student who is working as a window washer during his vacation. One of the windows he is washing has a shade pulled partially down. Through the part of the window that is not blocked by the shade he sees a fantastic pair of bare legs. He reaches i and pulls the shade all the way up, exposing a beautiful, voluptuous girl who is entirely nude. "they were full and round and using the standard measure, three and a half milliboobs per handful." (Yucky! you see where this going.) The girl does not try to cover herself but tells Walt to go away. He moves to the next window, which happens to be her bedroom window, just as she walks to the bedroom in all her glory. Walt climbs through the window and a typical porno movie scene plays out.
Her name was Julie and she was kinky. She liked to expose herself during sex and soon insisted they couple in open and public places. Soon wAlt has had enough of this and breaks it off before they end up copulating in Macy's store window.
The end.
Huh?
A number of Ellison's contemporaries made their bones with early stories like this, incuding Robert Silverberg and Lawrence Block. It was a way for them to earn a few shekels while they were honing their craft. These early stories are of interest to those who wish to trace a writer's development and for those who are completists.
For all others, there is no there there. I did warn you, didn't I?
And even these tend to (slightly) outclass "true" "men's adventure" fiction in the likes of SAGA and TRUE(!) and their competitors...written, some of the time, by the same folks you cite and others making their youthful-career rent.
ReplyDeleteDamn, Jerry, my first comment has been Vanished from your blog, too (as on Patti's on several occasions this week)...clearly, I can't use the term that looks like Eroica on ?any Blogspot blog...or something Like that.
ReplyDeleteNo eroica? Beethoven must be pissed at Blogspot..
DeleteMakes one want to compose a Sad Waltz. As it happens, I get autocensored on TracyK's blog, too. It's a trend, using that E word (and who knows which others).
ReplyDelete