Lucy & Mickey

by Red Jordan Arobateau

LUCY & MICKEY 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 1950’s 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. "In the bar life, Mickey & Lucy were Lord & Lady. Back in their own environment amid this gay wild crowd, wrapped in music they couldn’t slow-dance to; buying drinks for herself & the redhead from their welfare money, and feeling healing waves--internal vibes pass thru them from being with their own people again. It was a gay girl/gay boy summer. Shorts. Tans. Gym shoes.---- Gee! You two look so PERFECT! Where did you meet? Down here?" A blond guy asks. Mickey gulps-- it’s hard to think-- but answers quickly; "We met in New York. We knew each other there first." Smoke from cigarettes, chitchat, revolves under the stars of a Van Gogh print. So that’s how the lie of Mickey & Lucy meeting started & circulated around the ever-changing gay bars for months, when in reality Lucy had seldom been on the gay Village scene, but had hung out in Washington Square Park with the park bums, and, in the protection of their company frequented the Lower East Side cheap-shot brewery & winery halls on the fringes of the Bowery, deeply enmeshed in the liquid fingers of alcohol---drink. And was down and out and knew no gay kids at all. "Is she any good in bed?" "She wants it bad--from me. & me alone." Mickey says coolly, examining her short fingernails. Then hitches up her pants, thumbs in the belt, and adds, flatly, like she don’t care one way or the other; "I see the begging look in her eyes, and I give it to her." And combs fingers thru her dark hair. This virile, gallant butch stud, Mickey Leonardi. 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 "Phyllis came gliding into the tavern wearing a short skirt, & white plastic vinyl boots with toes curled up elflike. Mickey is startled, turns to see her as though she was a ghost. Lucy’s head snaps around immediately; all smiles & reaches out to touch Phyllis as she does with people she loves. Phyllis endures this touch with gritted teeth; stands there like a shirt on a hanger; spooky, silent. Drugs have taken over her body & possessed her. She hovers, in the way heroin junkies do; it’s their chemistry-- dope re-creates their vibes, restructures them with its own metabolism, like a chemist. "Come by the apartment sometime; you’re invited." A cold smile spreads on her face. An underseas junkie. ---Phyllis hovered, feet in plastic boots almost unconnected to the cigarette butt-littered wino floor of rough boards. "We just need some money. We can cop again." Phyllis says sweetly. "I have a foil package." She smiles. "You know what’s in it Lucy. Would you like a cut? Huh? Just a little cut, with me---for free? Shall we go in the bathroom? Is it safe here?" 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! "And time passed. Life was a hard motherfucker riding them down. Low-class dykes-- some go straight. Others are dead. Others are brave, live gay life in the open. So at the 169 Club they would meet again. It was the weekend, after a long unendurable panic of daily days. Braved the dangers of the streets of night to get there. Hustled a beer from a dyke as poor as them." Near the end of the starving times in Chicago, 8 months into stormy hair-pulling lo...

Genres: Butch Femme

448 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

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)

Reviews

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book!!!! An awesome butch/femme oriented historical romance novel.