Lover. Bertha Harris
Читать онлайн книгу.
watch until it was time to go home.
Once we were back in New York, June asked me never to bring up the matter of the FBI in the cornfield again.
Not all of the FBI hysteria bounced off Angel Dance or snaked its way out of the partners’ delusions of grandeur. Shortly, in the fall of 1977, one of June’s favorite “sister” presses, Diana, in Baltimore, would suffer a devastating break-in and subsequently get the fervent attention of every woman in the feminist press movement. The grapevine was hot with rumors: did Casey Czarnik and Coletta Reid, the founders of Diana, do it to themselves? Was it men? A rival press? The FBI?
Parke and June certainly favored the FBI as the villains. Along with Angel Dance it made for an airtight conspiracy theory. June’s frustration and anger grew more intense. She envied the attention Diana Press was getting. Eventually, Parke would arrange for Daughters to be threatened by my lover, J. Edgar Hoover. Throwing me out of the building was also a good way to get even with me for sleeping with somebody besides her.
With Women in Print under control, June, who thought of herself, and Texas, as southern, announced that it was time to take the South. She had by then published her third novel, Sister Gin, whose story was designed to persuade younger women that in spite of the author’s privileged upbringing and wealth, she was not only as politically correct as they were, she was more so: now she was menopausal, she was old. The older the woman (according to Sister Gin), the less the older woman had to lose; therefore the older the woman, the more the older woman was inclined to embrace lesbianism, which is what the older woman had wanted to do all along but when she was young, men had stopped her.
The novel is set in the South. June arranged readings in Atlanta and in North Carolina for her and me. As usual, when on company business, I paid all my own expenses. There was an unacknowledged understanding between me and the partners that because of June’s very generous handouts to feminist presses and other enterprises, I was responsible for picking up the slack. It was only right: they had paid me ten grand for Lover and Lover wasn’t earning back the advance.
The southern sisterhood (the few of them who showed up for the readings) fell hard for June. One extremely attractive sister fell hard for me and the fall was mutual. Parke efficiently blocked every move we made to get an hour in bed together.
In Atlanta, while she was reading to an audience of twelve in somebody’s front parlor, June (rather like Luciano Pavarotti) became suddenly overwhelmed by the sound of her own words in her own voice and began crying. Pavarotti weeps, but goes on singing. June wasn’t so professional. By then, I too craved success for June; my motives were base: anything to shut her up. Without a break in the reading, I put one arm around her shoulder, swept up Sister Gin, and replaced her voice with my own.
Our small audience was deeply moved by what they saw. What they thought they saw was sisterhood in action, a feminist bonding and twinning, one woman taking up where another woman must leave off, an emotional correlative of the political. What they saw in fact—on my part—was a purely theatrical gesture, a professional move deeply instilled in me by my interesting childhood.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.