Odd Girl Out

But not for long. Barbara and her partner, Donna McBride, wanted to bring out the five books which had to do with Laura, Beth, and Beebo. It was my first inkling that my stories had been valued and preserved by a whole generation of women; that despite the crumbling condition of the old pulp paper and fading ink, they had survived on many bookshelves in many homes.

Barbara and I arranged to meet at a public appearance she had scheduled at Old Wives’ Tales Women’s Bookstore in San Francisco, where she introduced me to a cheering crowd. It was a wonderful, if confounding, re-introduction to the lesbian world. I met her and Donna again at a conference of the National Women’s Studies Association at Humboldt State University, where I signed the contract that resulted in the Naiad Press re-issuance of the books. First came a pocket book edition in 1983; then a trade paperback edition in 1986. I held my breath, fearing an indifferent reception from the public. But women all across the country embraced these stories of a now far-off generation of sisters. It was not just history; it was their history.

I have always been gratified that the books sold so well and rewarded the confidence that Barbara and Donna placed in them. The debt I owe them has been frequently acknowledged over the intervening years, but it bears repeating. They really brought Beebo back to life, and in so doing, gave Ann Bannon a presence in the community that she would not otherwise have had. It was a remarkable gift, and one for which I will always be thankful.

As a direct result of the Naiad editions, I was featured in the documentary movie, Before Stonewall, in the mid-1980s; and subsequently in the Canadian-produced film of lesbian lives made in the early 90s, Forbidden Love. Imagine coming back from the dead after more than twenty years and discovering that scholarly articles have been published about you, that there are master’s theses dealing with your work, and university literature classes teaching it.

In time, the Naiad Press editions ran their course while I labored in the groves of Academe. Almost a decade after the trade paperback edition came out, and as the remaining copies of that edition were being depleted, lightning struck again. This time it was the Quality Paperback Book Club, a subsidiary of Book-of-the-Month Club, which wanted to publish an omnibus edition of four of the books as part of their Triangle Classics: Illuminating the Gay and Lesbian Experience.

It seemed to me that nothing more could possibly happen to these books. They had enjoyed an unprecedented run. They had given me access to a vibrant young community, a whole new generation of men and women who listened as I lectured in venues across the country, and gave me an affectionate reception. They could have been judgmental and dismissive of the picture my books provided of “the way we were.” By and large, however, they were generous. They knew it hadn’t been easy, that we ourselves had been victimized back then by the very biases we denied, that somebody had to get the ball rolling. And those of us who had survived those days were taken to their hearts. They are fighting new battles for respect and acceptance, and it is good to know that there is an historical foundation to build on, that it wasn’t just the bad stuff happening “before Stonewall”; there was good stuff, too, and it had a far-reaching influence.

Now, Beebo is extending her welcome into the lives of yet another generation, thanks to the enterprise and faith of Cleis Press in San Francisco. It’s surprising to think that the 80s already seem distant to many young gays and lesbians, but to those entering adulthood today, they do. The old Naiad editions are themselves collector’s items. I have attended conventions of vintage paperback book collectors, and there they are, along with the really ancient Gold Medals, which seem like antiques now even to me.

Perhaps the longevity that I and my work have enjoyed is more a matter of endurance than any other quality. They say if you live long enough, the world will circle back around to have another look at you. It’s called “re-discovery,” and it’s an interesting process. As part of it, I have seen the butch/femme opposition, so potent in the 50s, rejected by women in the first excitement of the Women’s Movement, when strict equality was the order of the day; then accepted again as one of many possible models through which women may relate to one another. I’ve seen the Dream Machine in Hollywood go from the good-natured tolerance of gays in the early days, to gays as degenerate thugs in the 60s and 70s, to gays as romantic leads in our own time. There’s a long way to go, but we’re picking up speed, and the popular culture reflects the strength and confidence of an energized community.

When I lectured at the Eureka/Harvey Milk Branch of the San Francisco Public Library a year ago, I thanked a large, friendly audience for coming out in force to support me that evening. Every writer, every craftsman, every artist knows how much it means. And I closed with this little quote from British philosopher J.M. Thornburn, which should fire the creative spark in every heart:

“All the genuine deep delight in life lies in showing others the mud pies you have made. And life is at its finest when we confidingly recommend our mud pies to one another’s sympathetic consideration.”

Thank you, Gentle Readers, for your sympathetic consideration of my own mud pies, these stories of another age. May you forgive Beebo and her friends their faults, and enjoy them for their guts and humor.

Ann Bannon

Sacramento, CA

June 2001

The Beginning …

“Mmmm …” Beth murmured as Laura’s hands began to trace the curves of her back. “Oh, that’s marvelous.” She shivered a little and Laura trembled with her. “Under my pajamas, Laur.”

Warily, Laura lifted the pajama shirt and groped for the ripe smooth warmth beneath.

“Oh, yes …” Beth sighed.

And Laura’s hands descended to their enthralling task again, caressing the flawless hollows, the sweet shoulders. She was lost to reason now. She parted the hair that hid Beth’s neck and drew her fingers lightly over the white nape. She leaned closer, hardly aware that she moved. With a swift thrill of necessity she bent and kissed the softness for a long moment.

Then sudden fear pulled her up. She put her hand to her mouth and stared in terror at Beth. Beth lay perfectly still, a faint smile on her lips.

“Beth?” said Laura. “Beth?” The whisper quailed. “Oh, Beth! Say something! Forgive me! Say something! Are you mad at me?”

Beth whispered softly, “No.”

A wash of heat flooded Laura’s face. She bent over Beth and began to kiss her like a wild, hungry child, pausing only to murmur, “Beth, Beth, Beth….”

Beth rolled over on her back then and looked up at Laura, reaching for her, breathing hard and smiling a little, and her excitement consumed the last of Laura’s reserve. Her lips found Beth’s, and found them welcoming….

One

The big house was still, almost empty. Down the bright halls and in the shadowy rooms everything was quiet. Upstairs a few desk lights burned over pages of homework, but that was all.

There was one room in the sorority house, however, where no reading was going on. It was a big, warm room, meant for sprawling and studying and socializing in, like the others. Three girls shared it and two of them were in it now on this autumn Sunday night.

One was a newcomer. Her name was Laura and she had just finished moving all of her belongings into the room. It was a scene of overstuffed confusion, but at least she had somehow succeeded in squeezing all her things in and now there remained only the job of finding a place for them. Laura sat down to rest and worry about it. She tried to ignore the other girl.

Beth lay sprawled out on the studio couch with her head cushioned on a rambling pile of fat pillows at one end and her feet dangling over the other. She was drinking a Coke, resting the bottle on her stomach and letting it ride the rhythm of her breathing. She wore slim tan pants and a dark green sweatshirt with “Alpha Beta” stamped in white on the front. Her hair was dark, curly, and close-cropped.

Laura sat by choice in the stiff wooden desk chair, as if Beth were too comfortable and she could make amends by being uncomfortable herself. She was nervously aware of Beth’s scrutiny, and the sorority pledge manual she was trying to read made no sense to her. Beth seemed like all good things to Laura’s dazzled eyes: sophisticated, a senior, a leader, president of the Student Union, and curiously pretty. She had a well-modeled, sensitive face with features not bonily chic like those of a mannequin, but subtle, vital, harmonious. She wasn’t fashionably pretty but her beauty was healthy and real and her good nature showed in her face.

Laura flipped nervously through her pledge manual, not even pretending to read any more. Finally Beth saw that she wasn’t reading and smiled at the ruse.

“One hundred and thirty-seven pages of crap,” she said, nodding at the manual. “All guaranteed to confuse you. I don’t know why they don’t revise the damn thing. I’ve passed an exam on it and I still don’t understand it.”

Her attitude embarrassed Laura, who smiled uncertainly at her new roommate, thinking as she did so how many times she had smiled in the same way at Beth, not sure of how she was expected to react.

She had never known quite how to react to Beth from the first day she had seen her. It had been shortly after Laura’s arrival at the university, when everything she saw and felt excited her to a high pitch of nervous awareness. Even the sweet smoke of bonfires in the early-autumn air smelled new and tantalizing.

Laura walked around the university town of Champlain, down streets chapeled with old elms; past the new campus with its clean, striking Georgian buildings and past the old with its mellow moss-covered halls; past that copy of the Pantheon that passed for the auditorium; past the statues; past the students walking down the white strip of the boardwalk, sitting on the steps of buildings, stretching in the grass, and talking … always talking.

It thrilled her, and it frightened her a little. Some day she would know all of this as well as her home town; know the campus lore and landmarks, the Greek alphabet, the football heroes, the habits of the campus cops. Some day she wouldn’t have to ask the questions—she would be able to answer them. It made her feel a sort of grateful affection for the campus already, just to think of it this way.

She had been in school a week when she went up to the Student Union to join an activity committee. It seemed like a good way to meet people and get into the university’s social life. Laura had an appointment for an interview at three o’clock. She sat in the bustling student activities center on the third floor waiting to be called, clearing her throat nervously and sneaking a look at herself in her compact mirror. She had a delicate face shaped like a thin white heart, with startling pale blue eyes and brows and lashes paler still. A face quaint and fine as a Tenniel sketch.

She waited for almost half an hour and the sustained anxiety began to tire her. She stared at her feet and up to the clock, and back to her feet again. It was when she glanced at the clock for the last time that she saw Beth for the first.

Beth was standing halfway across the room, tall and slender and with a magnetic face, talking to a couple of nodding boys. She was taller than one of them and the other acted as if she towered over him, too. Laura watched her with absorbed interest. She tapped the smaller boy on the shoulder with a pencil as she talked to him and then she laughed at them both and Laura heard her say, “Okay, Jack. Thanks.” She turned to leave them, coming across the room toward Laura, and Laura looked suddenly down at her shoes again. She told herself angrily that this was silly, but she couldn’t look up.

Suddenly she felt the light tap of a sheaf of papers on her head, and looked up in surprise. Beth smiled down at her. “Aren’t you new around here?” she said, looking at Laura with wide violet eyes.

“Yes,” Laura said. Her throat was dry and she tried to clear it again.

“Are you on a committee?”

She was strangely, compellingly pretty, and she was looking down at Laura with a frank, friendly curiosity that confused the younger girl.

“I’m here for an interview,” Laura said in a scratchy voice.

Beth waited for her to say something more and Laura felt her cheeks coloring. A young man thrust his face out of a nearby door and said, “Laura Landon?” looking around him quizzically.

“Here.” Laura stood up.

“Oh. Come on in. We’re ready for you.” He smiled.

Beth smiled, too. “Good luck,” she said, and walked away.

Laura looked after her, until the boy said, “Come on in,” again.

“Oh,” she said, whirling around, and then she smiled at him in embarrassment. “Sorry.”

The interview turned out well. Laura joined the Campus Chest committee and turned her efforts toward parting students from their allowances for good causes. Every afternoon she went up to the Union Building and put in an hour or two in the Campus Chest office on the third floor, where most of the major committees had offices.

It was nearly two weeks later that Beth stopped in the office to talk to the chairman. She sat on his desk and Laura, carefully looking at a paper in front of her, listened to every word they said. It was mostly business: committee work, projects, hopes for success. And then the chairman told her who was doing the best work for Campus Chest. He named three or four names. Beth nodded, only half listening.

“And Laura Landon’s done a lot for us,” he said.

“Um-hm,” said Beth, taking little notice. She was gathering her papers, about to leave.

“Hey, Laura.” He waved her over.

Laura got up and came uncertainly toward the desk. Beth straightened her papers against the top of the desk, hitting them sideways the long way and then the short way until all the edges were even.

“Beth, this is Laura Landon,” the boy said.

Beth looked up and smiled. And then her smile broadened. “Oh, you’re Laura Landon,” she said. She held out her hand. “Hi, Laur.”

Nobody had ever called her “Laur” before; she wasn’t the type to inspire nicknames. But she liked it now. She took Beth’s hand. “Hi,” she said.

“You know each other?” the chairman said.

“We’ve never had a formal introduction,” Beth said, “but we’ve had a few words together.” Laura remained silent, a little desperate for conversation.

“Well, then,” said the chairman gallantly, “Miss Cullison, may I present Miss Landon.”

“Will Miss Landon have coffee with Miss Cullison this afternoon?” said Beth.

Laura smiled a little. “She’d be delighted,” she said.

They did. And she was. An occasional fifteen- or thirty-minute coffee break was traditional at the Union Building. Beth and Laura went down to the basement coffee shop, and came up two hours later because it was time finally to go home for dinner. Laura couldn’t remember exactly what they talked about. She recalled telling Beth where she was living and what she was studying. And she remembered a long monologue from Beth on the Student Union activities and what they accomplished. And then suddenly Beth had said, “Are you going to go through rushing, Laur?”

“Rushing?”

“Yes. To join a sorority. Informal rush opens next week.”

“Well, I—I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Think about it, then. You should, Laura. I’m on Alpha Beta and, strictly off the record, I think we’d be very interested.”

“Why would Alpha Beta want me?” Laura said to her coffee cup.

“Because I think it’s a good idea. And Alpha Beta listens to Beth Cullison.” She laughed a little at herself. “Does that sound hopelessly egotistical? It does, doesn’t it? But it’s true.” She paused, waiting until Laura looked at her again. “Sign up for rushing, Laura,” she said, “and I’ll see to it you’re pledged.”

“I—I will. I certainly will, Beth,” Laura said, hardly daring to believe what she’d heard.

Beth grinned. “My God, it’s nearly five-thirty,” she said. “Let’s go.”

After that it had been easy. Beth spoke the truth; Alpha Beta did listen to her. Laura had signed up for rush, with the secret understanding that she would pledge Alpha Beta. But even at that, it was a thrill when Beth called her two days after rushing was over and said, “Hi, honey. Pack your things. You’re an Alpha Beta now. Officially.”

Laura had cried over the phone, and Beth said, “You don’t have to, you know.”

“But I want to!”

Beth laughed. “Okay, Laur, come on over. You just joined one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. And you have a new roommate. In fact you have two.”

“Two?”

“Yes. Me. And Emily.”

Emily had spent the day with them, helping Laura bring things in and put them away. Laura was so tired now she could hardly recall Emily’s face; all she remembered was a warm, ready laugh and the vague impression that Emily was fashioned to please the fussiest males: the ones who want perfect looks and perfect compliance in a woman.

Beth had called a halt to their work early in the evening.

“We’ve done enough, Laura,” she had said, dropping down on the studio couch. “We’ve even done too much.”

“It was wonderful of you to help me, Beth.”

“Oh, I know. I’m wonderful as all hell. I only did it because I had to.” She grinned at Laura, who smiled self-consciously back. Beth liked to tease her for being too polite and it made Laura uncomfortable. She would have gone to almost any length to please Beth, and yet she could not abandon her good manners. They struck her as one of her best features, and it puzzled her that Beth should needle her about them. She knew Beth could carry off a courtesy beautifully at the right moment; Laura had seen her do it. But Beth was much less formal than her new roommate, and furthermore she liked to swear, which Laura thought extremely unmannerly. Beth made Laura squirm with discomfort. And in self-defense Laura tried to build a wall of politeness between them, to admire Beth from far away.

There was a vague, strange feeling in the younger girl that to get too close to Beth was to worship her, and to worship was to get hurt. As yet, Beth made no sense to her, she fit no mold, and Laura wanted to keep herself at an emotional distance from her. She had never met or read or dreamed a Beth before and until she could understand her she would be afraid of her.

Laura had been thinking about this that afternoon while she filled the drawers of her new dresser with underwear and sweaters and scarves and socks, and had resolved right then that she must always be on her guard with Beth. She didn’t know what she was trying to shield herself from; she only felt that she needed protection somehow.

Beth had suddenly put an arm around her shoulders, shaking the thoughts out of her head, and said with a laugh, “For God’s sake, Laur, how many pairs of panties do you have? Look at ’em all, Emmy.”

And Emily had looked up and laughed pleasantly. Laura couldn’t tell if she was laughing at the underwear or at Beth or at the look on Laura’s face, for Laura looked as surprised as she was. She stood there for a minute, feeling only the weight and pull of Beth’s arm and not the necessity to answer.

In a faint voice Laura answered, “My mother buys all my underwear. She gets it at Field’s.”

“Well, she must’ve cleaned them out this time,” said Beth, smiling at the luxurious drawerful. “I’ll bet they put in an emergency order for undies when she leaves the store.”

Emily laughed again and Laura shut the drawer with a smack and cleared her throat. She hated to talk about lingerie. She hated to undress in front of anyone. She even hated to wash her underwear because she had to hang it on the drying racks in the john or in the laundry room where everyone could see it. It was no comfort to her that everybody else did the same thing.

“Of course, I don’t believe in underwear myself,” said Beth airily. “Never wear any.” She swept a stack of sweaters theatrically off the table and handed them to Laura, who gazed at her in dismay, reaching mechanically for the sweaters. Beth laughed. “I’m pretty wicked, Laur.”

“Don’t you really wear any—any underwear?” Her whole upbringing revolted at this. “You must wear some.”

Beth shook her head, enjoying Laura’s distress and surprised at how little it took to shock her. Laura looked at her with growing outrage until she burst out laughing and Emily intervened sympathetically.

“Beth, you’re going to make your poor little roommate think she’s fallen in with a couple of queers,” she said with a giggle.

Beth grinned at Laura and the younger girl felt strangely as if the bottom had fallen out of her stomach.

“She has,” said Beth with emphatic cheerfulness. “She ought to know the dreadful truth. We’re characters, Laura. Desirable characters, of course, but still characters. Are you with us?”

Laura wished for a moment that she were all alone in a vacuum. She didn’t know whether to take Beth seriously or not; she felt as if Beth were testing her, challenging her, and she didn’t know how to meet the challenge. She transferred a sweater nervously from one hand to the other and tried to answer. Nobody was a more rigid conformist, farther from a character, than Laura Landon. But the bothersome need to please Beth prompted her to say weakly, “Yes.”

She put the sweater in a drawer, turning away from Beth and Emily as she did so, and silently and secretly scraped the white undersides of her forearms. It was an old gesture. Whenever she was disappointed with herself she bruised herself physically. The sad red lines she raised on her skin were her expiation, a way of squaring with herself.

Beth, who could see she had gone far enough, confined herself for a while to friendly suggestions and answering questions. It was a great relief to Laura. She was almost herself again when Beth suggested a tour of the sorority house.

The two girls went first up to the dormitory on the third floor, where everybody but the housemother and the household help slept.

“Does anyone ever sleep in the rooms?” Laura asked as they mounted the stairs.

“Oh, once in a while. In the winter, when the dorm is really cold, some of the kids sleep in their rooms. The studio couches unfold into double beds. They can sleep two.”

They had entered the big quiet dorm with its dozens of iron bunks beds smothered in comforters and down pillows and bright blankets. Laura shivered in the chill while Beth pointed out her unmade bed to her.

“We’ll have to come back and make it up later,” she said.

Beth had then led Laura down to the basement. She was enjoying this new role of guide and guardian, enjoying even more Laura’s unquestioning acceptance of it. They found themselves playing a pleasant little game without ever having to refer to the rules: when they reached the door to the back stairs together, Laura stopped, as if automatically, and let Beth hold the door for her. Laura, who tried almost instinctively to be more polite than anybody else, readily gave up all the small faintly masculine courtesies to Beth, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if Beth expected it of her. There was no hint that such an agreeable little game could turn fast and wild and lawless.

In the basement Beth showed her the luggage room, shelved to the ceiling and crowded with all manner of plaid and plastic and leather cases. In the rear of the room was a closed door.

Beth turned around to go out and bumped softly into Laura, who had been waiting for an explanation of the closed door.

Laura jumped back and Beth smiled slowly and said, “I won’t eat you, Laur.”