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Lucy and Mickey

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The opening scene to LUCY & MICKEY, Red Jordan Arobateau's classic Old World Dike Novel is at a freak show, where young butch Mickey meets her problematic lady---half breed, high fem, occasional prostitute; alcoholic Lucy. Mickey, just turned 18, is fresh out of juvenile detention in New York City, and has skipped town for Chicago, Illinois. She's starving, can't find legitimate work because of her dangerous transgendered presentation; and soon she's at this trick freak show-- doing it for money with a redhead woman, several years older. This story's set in the late 1950s on Chicago's near north side; Rush street nightlife zone and alternately, skid row.

So many memories are contained in this book that if you're over 60, you will remember. The police harassment. Queer bar raids & crazy street scenes.---Prior to the liberated air of today.

Yes, LUCY & MICKEY is loaded with sex! This is an Old World Dyke novel with all inhibitions stripped away by modern times. So you can read what those dykes were actually doing back then-- it's not just polite guessing games like much of that passed literary genre-- & between us honey, some old gals here at RED JORDAN PRESS remember they were doing Plenty Of It!

Love affairs, love triangles, clashing personalities, survival strategies of these very poorest of American society---well described by Arobateau. Drugs make their nasty intrusion....

Cops crisscross the scene-- likewise violent queer-hating punks.---This is from a day before the words "queer" & "freak" had been claimed back by gay people & used as a badge of courage & solidarity. Back In The Day when these shouted epitaphs were an overture to beating, rape or murder. Those times---often glorified now---when gays and anyone not fitting the gender norm were criminalized outcasts. Read about the real thing from Master Author Red Jordan, who, himself was on the scene!

Some final words the original intent of the author was to use the original cultural spelling of the word "dike"---not "dyke"---as other of his unspellchecked manuscripts, but as this is one of Red's New York Published novels (Richard Kasak's MASQUERADE BOOKS) it probably got turned into the bourgeoisie "dyke" by an unknowing typist.

Provided by RED JORDAN PRESS, 2005.

448 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

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About the author

Red Jordan Arobateau

195 books9 followers
Born to a Honduran father [in 1943] who came to Chicago and married a light-skinned Black woman, [he] lives in San Francisco, describing [him]self as "a [...] born-again christian, mongrel [the Mongrels are a group [...] born of mixed heritage], & witness on the sea of life".

(from Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby)

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32 reviews8 followers
April 25, 2008
I LOVED this book!!!! An awesome butch/femme oriented historical romance novel.
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