Gypsy Rose Lee: The G-String Murders: New York: Feminist Press; 2003.

Robert Kirby and David Kelly: The Book of Boy Trouble: San Francisco: Green Candy Press: 2005.

This time, I have two reviews apiece, one for each gender.

In 1995, two young alternative gay men stapled together a zine called Boy Trouble,  intended to deal with the lives and loves of teenage and twentysomething gay men who were alternatively bent. A decade later, the result was The Book of Boy Trouble, incorporating the best of the zine in question.

However, it doesn’t just appeal to Generation Y, for that matter. The stories are about first time cruising, gay fanboys, cute bi-curious punks, sororal Barbie envy, ideal men of various types, cross-cultural encounters on an Amazonian riverboat, on a Japanese subway train, and in an Indian restaurant, bad hair choices, Kurt Cobain and Ben Affleck worship, meeting attractive men in unlikely places, and gay kissing in front of an elderly (and then deceased!) storeowner and other items of fabulosity.

I suppose we’ve all had some version of those experiences (as in yours truly with cute bi-curious punks, even if they were not so straight straight edgers in my case). However, there are some important generational differences. As with the indomitable Maxxie on Skins, Generation Y is doing these things younger than we did them, and manage to have a relatively normal teenage set of lifespan experiences like falling in love, dating and first time sex- which probably wasn’t possible until the last decade or so. As for bad hair choices, one can recall the seventies or eighties with appropriate horror, but be sure to burn the photographs to avoid later embarrassment. Apart from the issue of cross-cultural relationships between gay men of different cultures, there’s little else explored beyond relationships and the obligatory bad attitudes toward authority (and older-generation gay men) displayed.

Personally, I’d like to read about other Boy Trouble experiences. For example, what happens if you and an Iraqi War bound gay soldier fall for one another just before he ships out? And what if you’re opposed to that war? What about falling for a cute Muslim guy? What if you are that cute Muslim guy? Methinks there needs to be a second Book of Boy Trouble to explore such themes, if indeed they did appear in that zine- or others.

As for Feminist Press’ The G-String Murders, Gypsy Rose Lee originally wrote this in 1941. As I’ve noted in an earlier blog on drag and burlesque, Gypsy Rose Lee was a raconteuse as well as a highly popular burlesque artiste.

What led Feminist Press to reprint this work? For one thing, it’s full of strong female protagonists, who are worldly and nobody’s fools. Gypsy Rose Lee was a well-read woman, casually dropping references to Spinoza and Marx into conversations. However much one saw of her body (and given the restrictions of the time, she only stripped down to her lingerie), she had an incisive and inquisitive mind to go with it.

G-String Murders is set in 1941, and the performers are forbidden to show too much, involving the use of net pants and lingerie, as well as strategically placed props and curtains. As well as that, courtesy of the (Christian Right and Catholic) “Legion of Decency,” there were often police raids. It all sounds rather similar to experiences that many lesbian and gay bar habituees had before Stonewall.

Gypsy shares her performances with LaVerne, Sandra and (Polish) Princess Nivena, until someone starts bumping off the performers. The item of their demise is the eponymous ‘g-string,’ a contrivance used to obscure one’s lower thigh, which usefully housed a ‘grouch bag’ to collect tips from punters. The men are incidental characters, and the women are portrayed as similar to female factory workers of the same historical period. Burlesque is an industrial process, even if it isn’t sex work as yet (in fact, it’s all rather chaste!) The men are incidental characters- it’s the female performers who are better-drawn, the involvement of organised crime isn’t glossed over, and the police are useless when it comes to resolving the mystery. Indeed, Ms Lee herself puts paid to the attacks of the predator in question. It’s a vivid, intriguing and polished work- no wonder it was a pulp best seller in the early forties in the United States.