Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir by Lillian Faderman

Author:Lillian Faderman [Faderman, Lillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Non-fiction
ISBN: 9780299200145
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2004-05-15T05:00:00+00:00

L e f t : Lil and Wendell: “Once in a

while I ‘dated’ gay men . . . ‘You

have to bring a wife or girlfriend to

those things.’ ”

B o t t o m L e f t : “Beverly Shaw, Sir”

B o t t o m R i g h t : Nicky (in the

1960s)

Kicked Out

183

knee, her lipsticked mouth was open in song, and she held a microphone in her hand as though she were romancing it. I stared. I hadn’t seen anyone so gorgeous since I’d last laid eyes on Irene Sandman. But there was something more: The woman in the picture projected a kind of power

— not masculine exactly, but certainly not at all feminine. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was mesmerized.

“Let’s go in,” Wendell nudged at my back, but I couldn’t stop looking at the picture. Was this really a lesbian?

Once inside, I was sure Wendell had made a mistake — this couldn’t be a lesbian bar. There were straight-looking couples sitting in the black upholstered booths and at the sleek white piano bar. There were a lot of women with other women too, but almost all of them wore tailored dresses and high heels and makeup, and to my untutored eye they all appeared to be executives or lawyers or journalists. “Are these people gay?” I whispered in Wendell’s ear.

“I promise you,” he laughed at my open-mouthed bumpkin look.

“Maybe a few are straight tourists who like to watch the scene, but trust me, there’s mostly gay girls here.” I felt the way my mother must have at the Café de Paris when she’d sighed, “Take it all in.” I was drunk — with Beverly Shaw, the elegance of the Club Laurel, the beautiful lesbians in beautiful clothes! I could see that Nicky too was having a fine time, her cheeks pink with pleasure, gazing in wonderment.

“I love youuu, for sentimental reee-sons, ” Beverly Shaw sang. She sat on top of the piano bar, as in her picture, crooning a caress to the microphone. The songs were the ones my mother and I used to hear on “Your Hit Parade,” and Beverly Shaw now seemed to be looking right at me as her lips formed each entrancing word. Her voice was low and sultry.

The rest of the world dropped away as she held me in the palm of her splendid, manicured hand. I felt her to the root of my spine. I studied the tanned skin on her neck and felt my lips there, then at her breast. I would kiss her belly, worshipfully; I would go down farther to feast on all her secret places. I’d never done that to anyone before. To touch her like that, to taste her, to devour her — would that break open for me the secret of her magical force?

I tried to listen to her singing, to pay a little attention to Nicky and 184

n a k e d i n t h e p r o m i s e d l a n d

Wendell, but my fantasies spun themselves out, beyond my control.

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