Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats by Iain McIntyre

Author:Iain McIntyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2017-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

Biker (Essex House, 1969)

The book ends with Elaine unsure what to do.

Elaine slumped against the seat. She wished she had settled for what she had, never found out that all men were not like Randy. If she had met Charley a long time ago … but it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. Charley was such a heavy looking, beautiful person that when he gained a little self-confidence, he was going to be shooing the chicks away like flies. The only thing she had to offer him was a temporary remedy.

Should she take Charley up on his offer to ‘shack up’ with him? Should she stay with Randy and the kids? Is a more radical departure from her old life needed? These questions are left hanging.

A slew of books and films depict middle-class America’s attempts to deal with the shifting sexual and social mores of the late 60s and early 70s. These include Sue Kaufman’s Diary of a Mad Housewife (1969), made into a movie in 1970, Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls (1966), released as a film following year, the 1966 film movie adaption of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 book, The Group, and the 1969 comedy, Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice. It’s easy to dismiss Stoned as a low-rent, smuttier version of these. It does indeed have some first-class sex scenes, including a couple of great descriptions of sex under the influence of various hallucinogens. But the book is unique in some other respects.

Stoned is about a working-class couple. Their decision to embrace aspects of the counterculture feels authentic, with a lot more at stake than there would be for an affluent, middle-class couple. Stoned never veers into the heavy-handed morality parable territory of later books exploring drug use, like Go Ask Alice. There’s no sense Elaine is going to start taking smack and become a hooker to pay for her habit. Drugs open doors to new experiences, as well as throwing up challenges and questions. Elaine can fuck someone or have another joint, but she’s still got to deal with the basic inequality between the sexes. While the book has an explicit feminist orientation, it avoids being didactic. Randy is not a particularly sympathetic character, but neither is he a caricature. He is as much a victim of their circumstances as she is.

In addition to Biker and Stoned, Gallion’s letter mentions two other novels she did for Essex House: The Phoenix Business (publication date unknown) and an erotic science-fiction novel called Going Down, which was sold to them but which it appears they didn’t publish (it is now available in digital format). In terms of payment, her daughter recalls it was “anywhere between six hundred to one thousand or twelve hundred per book. Depending on length. They always gave her a bump up front to buy things like typewriter paper and supplies, which were very expensive.”

Gallion also worked as an in-house editor for Essex House and Brandon House from 1968 to 1971. In the late 60s she

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