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| Ed Wood returns to one of his favorite professions. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Angora Fever: The Collected Short Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (BearManor Bare, 2019).
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| An issue of Pussy Willow. |
Synopsis: Shirley is a virginal 19-year-old who has come from Nebraska to Hollywood in order to make it in showbiz. She's had no luck so far and can't even pay the rent on her crummy apartment. Her lascivious landlord suggests she pay him in sexual favors, but Shirley slaps him and walks away. Suddenly, as she ponders her situation, she feels the urge to masturbate in public and ducks into a gas station lavatory. Once finished, she decides to sell her body on the street for $10 a pop. Her first client is a pleasant looking young man who takes her to a sleazy hotel. After she undresses, the man reveals himself to be a cop. She faints. When Shirley awakens in a jail cell, she is being tended to by an "old butch" who promises to solve all her problems.
Wood trademarks: Naive actress coming to Hollywood (cf. Hollywood Rat Race, The Sinister Urge); character named Shirley (Wood's own drag persona and the name of many of his characters, cf. Necromania, Orgy of the Dead); prostitution (cf. "The Whorehouse Horror"); problems with landlords (an issue in Ed's own life, cf. Ed Wood); "pink clouds" (cf. Devil Girls, Take It Out in Trade); anti-men rant (cf. The Class Reunion, Drop Out Wife); sweaters (cf. Glen or Glenda); predatory lesbian (cf. Fugitive Girls).
Excerpt: "There were very few people on the street that time of day… but those, especially the men, who passed her couldn’t help but turn their heads. She wore a brassiere which made definite separations of her breasts and the red sweater featured them with exotic overtones… the buttons went directly up the middle and sunk deeply between each of the breasts. It was like accentuating the positive."
Reflections: "Stay home!" That's Ed Wood's oft-repeated advice to wannabe starlets in Hollywood Rat Race (circa 1965) when it comes to moving to Los Angeles. And, once again, Wood gives us a cautionary tale about a young female character who starts out as an untouched ingenue but ends up as a "street mess." By the early 1970s, Eddie himself must have been having second thoughts about his move to L.A. What could his life have been like if he'd stayed in Poughkeepsie? Maybe he would have written for the local newspaper or gotten involved in community theater while holding down a day job at the post office. I don't know that he could've been satisfied with that kind of life.
Wood wrote so many pornographic stories in such a small amount of time that he had to describe the same basic situations—intercourse, stripping, masturbation—over and over again. How do you do that and keep it interesting for yourself, let alone your readers? One strategy might have been experimenting with new vocabulary terms to describe breasts, penises, and vaginas. (How many synonyms for these body parts do you know?) In "The Hooker," Wood's euphemism du jour seems to be "boobies," as in: "Slowly, sexily she thought, she slipped out of the brassiere and her lovely boobies stood out firm and young and ripe." Like "dork," it's such an absurdly unsexy word that it negates any sense of eroticism.
Where Ed often comes to life as a writer is when he describes women's clothing and underwear in loving, sensual detail. In Ed Wood, Mad Genius, Rob Craig accused biographer Rudolph Grey of sensationalizing Eddie's transvestism, but I don't think there's any way of overstating this man's all-consuming obsession with feminine apparel. "The Hooker" is just another vivid example. In the very first sentence, Wood describes Shirley's sweater, pants, and shoes. In a sense, then, he introduces her outfit before he introduces her. That's how much he cares about clothes.
Next: "Bums Rush Terror" (1972)