SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: I WORE THE BRASSIERE OF DOOM

 "I Wore the Brassiere of Doom" by "Sally Theobald"  (Robert M. Price)  (from Lurid Confessions #1, June 1986; reportedly some French tranlators had mistakenly included the story  -- re-titled as "The Enchanted Bra" -- in a French anthology of stories by H.P. Lovecraft; I don't know if this story is true, but it would be a hoot if it were)

Let's start off Halloween month with a "true confession"-type story about an innocent and naive small-town girl who (against the advice of her home-town minister, who feared what the evils of the city might do to her) moved to New York to open her own hat shop with money saved from babysitting and quilting.  Soon she found an affordable storefront with an attached small aprtment.  Knowing that her inexpensive and plain snall-town wardode would not be suitable for the type of businesswoman she intended to become, Sally travels to Macy's to buy a complete new wardrobe, from the inside out.  Shyly, she entered the lingery section and was deciding between two brassieres when an old crone, whom she mistook for a sales clerk, approached and offered her advice: the more daring, somewhat low-cut, and sexier bra would flatter Sally's figure better.  Sally was convinced.  The new bra was a bit unusual -- there was stitching across each cup of a five-sided star with an oval or eye shape in the center.  Perhaps this unique designe explained how comfortable the brassiere seemed when worn...

When she wore the new brassiere, more customers came into her shop, more customers bought, and many of them were men who stared at Sally's figure.  Sally's small-town, secluded upbringing seemed to go by the wayside.  Soon she was dating men; men who brought her to strange places such as museums with odd exhibits, and men who brought her to lectures where strange experiments with electricity were being held.  And Sally, who had been the three-time winner of the Women's Christian Temperance Union's annual quilting bee, began drinking alcohol!  At times she would have a small glasse of wine at dinner, and sometimes TWO!  Sometimes she would invite men  up to her apartment and they would smooch.  Once, one man reached for her breast, but stopped his hand just before it touched her brassiere, and the man would begin to gesture and chant strange words.

And then there were the dreams.  She would dreram that the old crone was in her bedroom, urging her to get up and put on her new brassiere.  When she awoke, she would be in her bed, wearing that piece of lingery.  At times the image of the old crone in her dreams would vanish to be replaced by a hideous monster -- "a towering, barrel-shaped thing with what seemed to be starfishes sprouting from either end of its vertically ridged trunk"..."the crinoid thing  (or was it an echinordern?  High school biology had scarcely prepared me for this!)"

Then came the dream in which the crone and the monster were both there, urging Sally to put on the brassiere.  And brassiere then moved on its own and fitted itself comfortably on Sally's body and fastened itself.  That's when the Sally in her dream fainted.  But it was no dream!  Sally woke up plunging through a void, completely naked, falling into the gigantic cups of the brassiere which had grown to outlandish proportions.  More happens, but it's just too hideous to describe...

A spot-on parody of Lovecraft, with the addition of mild, puritanical sex (it's Lovecraft, after all), complete with some of HPL's many prejudices ("An odd lookinf fellow with swarthy skin" "[New York] that Babylonish burg had become a brothel" "a city popuolated by rat-faced mongrels and ruffians").

The cjhoice of "Sally Theobald' as a pseudonym was delibrate.  Lovecraft himself often used the name "Lewis Theobald, Jr." as a pen name, nmost often for poetry.  Price also used the pseudonuym "Lewis Thoobald III" for a short story the following year.  

Robert M. Prcie is a theologian and New Testiment scholar who now considers himself a "Christian atheist," and who supports the "Christ Myth Theory." that the hostorical Jesus Chrst did not exist.  He has published over 25 books on religioous matters.  Price has been a major figure in H. P. Lovecraft scholarship and fandom for many years; he has wriiten or edited over 45 books on this and related subjcts.  He was also the editor of various Lovecraftian and weird fiction  magazines, such as Midnight Shambler, Eldrich Tales, Crypt of Cthulu, and various one-shots such a Lurid Confeesions.  

Lurid Confessions #! (there was no #2) is available to be read at Internet Archive.  Also included in this 48-page magazine is a short story by Carl Jacobi, four pieces by Robert E. Howard, and an aticle by pulp historian Will Murray about the merging of weird fiction and confession years in such old pulps as Ghost Stories and True Strange Stories.