Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
July 31, 1703: Daniel Defoe is locked in a pillory as a punishment after being found guilty of seditious libel. He has criticized church officials in a pamphlet.
July 31, 1964: Country musician “Gentleman” Jim Reeves takes his Beechcraft Debonair aircraft and his manager Dean Manuel on a flight from Arkansas to Nashville, Tennessee, so that they can negotiate a real estate deal. The aircraft encounters a severe thunderstorm. Reeves, who is flying the plane, is thought to experience spatial disorientation. The aircraft crash-lands nose-first into the ground in a wooded area near Nashville International Airport. The wreckage is discovered two days later with the bodies of Reeves and Manuel inside.
July 31, 1988: A passenger at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal in Malaysia collapses, killing 32 people and injuring 1,600 others. The passengers had arrived in Butterworth, Penang state, to celebrate the Kuan Yin Goddess Festival. The platform hadn’t been built to accommodate such a large number of people.
May 21, 1703: Under the reign of Queen Anne, novelist and political pamphleteer Daniel Defoe is sent to prison for seditious libel on the basis of his satirical writings. He’ll spend six months in prison before the Earl of Oxford helps get him released in exchange for Defoe supplying the Earl with intelligence about his political rivals.
May 21, 1956: Léo Valentin attempts a dive using a wing suit at an air show in Liverpool. Among the 100,000-person crowd that day are George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and 3-year-old Clive Barker. Valentin’s wing suit malfunctions after it makes contact with the plane as he jumps. He attempts to land using a backup parachute, but it fails, and he falls to the ground to his death.
May 21, 1976: Yuba City (California) High School sends its choir students to a nearby high school for a Friendship Day event aboard a chartered bus. The bus’s air brakes fail. With no ability to brake, the bus strikes a rail, leaves the highway, and falls 21.6 feet. It lands on its roof. One adult faculty advisor and 29 students are killed. All 24 survivors, including the bus driver, are seriously injured.
Here in Indianapolis, we have a saying: This is May. By this we mean, it's May, so it's time to obsess over the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, held every Memorial Day weekend. So I'm going to include some info about the Indy 500. It's not literary. I'm simply an author who lives in Indianapolis.
Trigger warnings: Death, cancer, murder, car accidents, plane crashes, corporal punishment, body horror, mention of Nazi Germany.
ICYMI, this post is the latest in a series highlighting one of my two current books in process, The Almanac of Bad Days (tentative title). Past installments:
May 2, 1981: Antiques dealer Jim Williams shoots 21-year-old Danny Hansford at Williams’s historical home, Mercer House (formerly owned by composer Johnny Mercer), in Savannah, Georgia. The lovers had been in an argument; Williams argued the killing was self-defense. After four trials, Williams was acquitted. The homicide is the basis of John Berendt’s book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
May 5, 1994: American Michael Fay, age 18, receives four lashes with a bamboo cane after being convicted of vandalism in Singapore. Fay attended the Singapore American School and lived with his American mother and Singaporean stepfather. This is believed to be the first time an American was sentenced to corporal punishment in another country.
May 7, 1896: Serial killer H.H. Holmes (real name: Herman Webster Mudgett) is executed by hanging at Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia after his conviction for 27 murders and attempted murder of six other people. His neck does not break when his body is dropped, and it takes over 15 minutes for Holmes to strangle to death.
Erik Larson wrote the nonfiction book Devil in the White City about Holmes. A fictionalized version of Holmes was played by Evan Peters on American Horror Story: Hotel.
May 8, 2012: Children’s book illustrator and author Maurice Sendak dies in the hospital of complications from a stroke.
May 9, 1977: American novelist James Jones dies at age 55 from congestive heart failure.
May 10, 1933: Led by Joseph Goebbels, a crowd of 40,000 Germans gathers at the State Opera building in Berlin to watch the German Student Union burn approximately 25,000 books that they’ve decided are “un-German.”
May 10, 1943: Fire destroys the grounds of the National Library of Peru in Lima, taking it with numerous irreplaceable historical artifacts.
May 12, 2010: Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 leaves Johannesburg, South Africa, bound for Libya. A series of errors by the flight crew causes the aircraft to crash into low terrain, killing 103 of the aircraft’s 104 occupants. Among the dead is novelist Bree O’Mara, an Irish and South African dual citizen.
The sole survivor is a 9-year-old boy from the Netherlands. Both of his legs are broken, but he sustains no life-threatening injuries. His parents were killed in the crash, so he is adopted by his aunt and uncle.
May 13, 1988: American jazz musician Chet Baker dies of an apparently accidental fall from a window in Amsterdam, Netherlands. If you're like me, you recently heard this story on the "Sunflowers" episode of Ted Lasso.
May 14, 1998: Frank Sinatra dies of a heart attack. He's 82 years old.
May 15, 1886: Poet Emily Dickinson dies of kidney disease at her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. She’s 55 years old. Dickinson has not left the home since 1865.
May 15, 1953: Chester “Chet” Miller dies in a car crash during practice for the 1953 Indianapolis 500. He is 50 years old.
May 16, 1940: During World War II, the library of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, rebuilt after German troops burned it down in the First World War, is shelled by the Nazis. The rebuilt library catches fire again, and approximately one million books and other materials are lost.
May 17, 2012: Singer Donna Summer dies of lung cancer. She's 63 years old.
President (1981-1989 : Reagan). White House Photographic Office. 1981-1989 (Most Recent), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
May 19, 1935: Thomas Edward Lawrence, a.k.a. “Lawrence of Arabia,” dies of his wounds six days after a motorcycle crash. He is 46 years old.
May 21, 1703: Under the reign of Queen Anne, novelist and political pamphleteer Daniel Defoe is sent to prison for seditious libel on the basis of his satirical writings. He’ll spend six months in prison before the Earl of Oxford helps get him released in exchange for Defoe supplying the Earl with intelligence about his political rivals.
May 21, 1956: Léo Valentin attempts a dive using a wing suit at an air show in Liverpool. Among the 100,000-person crowd that day are George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and 3-year-old Clive Barker. Valentin’s wing suit malfunctions after it makes contact with the plane as he jumps. He attempts to land using a backup parachute, but it fails, and he falls to the ground to his death.
May 25, 1895: Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and taken to Newgate Prison for processing. He is later transferred to Pentonville Prison, where he is sentenced to hard labor, is malnourished, and is only allowed to read either the Bible or The Pilgrim’s Progress.
May 25, 1979: American Airlines Flight 19, bound from Chicago to Los Angeles, loses an engine shortly after takeoff due to improper maintenance. It crashes less than a mile from the end of the runway. All 271 people on board are killed, as are two people on the ground.
Author’s note: My mother’s first cousin, James Zielinski, was one of the passengers killed in this incident.
May 26, 1991: Lauda Air Flight 004, flying from Bangkok to Vienna, breaks apart mid-flight and crashes into a national park in Thailand. All 223 people on board are killed. The bodies of victims who could be recovered were taken to a hospital in Bangkok, where they were stored without refrigeration; as a result of decomposition, 27 victims were never able to be identified.
Lauda Air belonged to Austrian Formula One driver Andreas “Niki” Lauda, who himself had suffered severe burn injuries and almost died in a racing accident on August 1, 1976, at the German Grand Prix.
May 30, 1955: William John Vukovich Sr., who won the 1953 and 1954 Indianapolis 500s, dies in a car crash during the 1955 Indy 500. Vukovich’s car went over a wall, sailed through the air, flipped several times, and struck a low bridge. Vukovich is partially decapitated and dies instantly when his car struck the bridge. His grandson, William Vukovich III, will die during racing practice in 1990. Metal roll bars installed in vehicles and safety-certified driver helmets were mandated starting with the 1956 Indy 500.
May 30, 1958: Pat O’Connor is killed during the last lap of the Indy 500 amidst a 15-car pile-up. O’Connor’s car strikes Jimmy Reece’s car, sails through the air, lands upside-down, and catches fire. His death is due to head trauma from the car’s upside-down landing.
On
account of reading and writing so much about prostitution lately, I
threatened HERE
to write this blog post, and now I did. I don't judge people for
non-monogamy or for having jobs in sex work, but just for the record,
I categorically oppose human trafficking, forced prostitution of any
kind and the sexual exploitation of minors.
The
two former prostitutes I've known in my life were both recovering
drug users, and their sex work was directly related to their
addictions. This doesn't apply to any of the five characters you'll
read about below - obviously, for artistic purposes, there's a bit of
a disconnect between reality and fiction.
I
warn you, a spoiler is coming up for Mockingjay,
so don't continue unless you've finished the entire Hunger Games
trilogy.
Prostitutes
in Literature I've Read Recently
1.
A Hu-Li, The
Sacred Book of the Werewolf by
Victor Pelevin. A Hu-Li is a supernatural kitsune,
a fox shape-shifter. Owing to her supernatural ability to influence
human minds, she never actually has to physically touch her clients.
Until she starts falling in love, A Hu-Li is, paradoxically, a virgin
prostitute, at least in the sense that she’s never had intercourse
in her unnaturally long life.
2.
Lorene (Alma Schmidt), From Here to Eternity by James Jones
(currently reading). Lorene is Alma Schmidt’s “house name” at
the Honolulu brothel The New Congress Hotel. She’s a native of
Oregon who told her mother she was going to Hawaii for a few years to
work as a secretary. Alma has a legitimate reason for wanting to earn
her own money: she doesn’t want to have to depend on a man. The
first night Robert E. Lee Prewitt meets her, he’s in love. She
won’t marry him because, in order to preserve her reputation to the
extent that no one would ever believe she’d been a prostitute, she
intends to marry a high-status husband.
3.
Finnick Odair, Mockingjayby
Suzanne Collins. Mockingjay is a war novel, and many outrages happen
therein, but few upset me as much as Finnick’s fate as a
17-year-old Hunger Games victor. In Catching
Fire,
Finnick’s flirtatious nature made him seem like he was overly
confident, cocky and proud. In Mockingjay,
we learn his sexualized way of relating to other people is the result
of exploitation from the Capitol – he was literally pimped out to
wealthy male and female clients. Unlike Alma, Finnick gets to marry
his true love, Annie, who is pregnant when Finnick is killed in
battle.
Sidebar:
What do Katniss Everdeen and Robert E. Lee Prewitt have in common?
They look somewhat similar - tall and slim, with an olive complexion.
They both come from a coal mining area, and both had coal miner
fathers. Prew drinks like Haymitch, though.
4.
Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris.
1,100-year-old French teen Sophie-Anne Leclerq is a recurring
character in Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries series, until her
true death. Definitely Dead is the book in which the heroine
Sookie Stackhouse hears Sophie-Anne’s tale. As a mortal human,
Sophie-Anne was the sole survivor of a wave of plague that destroyed
her village. When she met up with other human beings again, they
exploited her and put her to work as a prostitute. Her callous
treatment by other humans is some of the reason why the vampire queen
of Louisiana is so cold and calculating, a terrifying and powerful
woman.
5.
Myrtle,The
Seven Descents of Myrtle(also
known as Kingdom
of Earth)
by Tennessee Williams. I didn't actually read this one; via Kala's
(TheDorkMistress') Tumblr,
I heard this recordingof
the short story/dramatic monologue being read by Tom Hiddleston. Tom
Hiddleston is one of the stars of Tumblr, beloved by fangirls
everywhere for his portrayal of the comic book villain/Norse
god Loki in the movies Thor
and
The
Avengers.
Hiddleston narrates the story as "Chicken," the character
who steals his half-brother Lot's new wife, Myrtle.
(This
is an odd image of Loki, but it resonates with the "seven
descents" in the title - Dance of the Seven Veils, get it? But
then again, in Norse mythology, Loki is sometimes female. He/she
gives birth - the wolf-monster Fenrir, who may or may not appear as a
character in The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, is one of the
offspring of which Loki is the mother.*)
Myrtle
and Chicken have a long, philosophical talk in which she describes
being sexually harassed and then raped by her boss as a young teen.
Despite the violence of her experience, she learned that she liked
the sexual act itself* and became a prostitute as well as a showgirl
before marrying Lot. Lot, afflicted with tuberculosis,is a pathetic
figure; Myrtle married him largely out of pity. Lot calls Myrtle’s
name all night while she’s up in the attic making love to Chicken,
and in the morning the two come down to find Lot dead.
Prostitutes
in Literature I Haven't Read
For
this, I've enlisted the aid of the trusty New York Public Library
Literature Companion. I feel as if there should be some character
who comes immediately to mind when I think of literary prostitutes,
and I’m having a brain cramp and just not thinking of him or her.
Help me out here, blogosphere – who else belongs on this list?
--
Moll Flanders, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll
Flanders by Daniel Defoe. Being a prostitute is counted among
Moll Flanders’ misfortunes. Later in her life, she becomes rich,
repents, and dies an honest woman. Stupid Flanders.
--
Lulu, Pandora’s Box by
Frank Wedekind. Lulu is the classic literary femme fatale – she
literally causes the deaths of those around her. Like Moll Flanders,
she grew up on the streets. In her declining years, Lulu is reduced
to prostitution, and her final client is Jack the Ripper. Louise
Brooks played Lulu in a 1929 silent film.
--
Maureen Wendall, Them
by
Joyce Carol Oates. Maureen is the daughter of Howard and Loretta
Wendall, a working-class couple. Howard, a police officer, is once
busted for taking money from prostitutes. After his death, Loretta
relies too heavily on her young daughter to take care of her, and
Maureen works as a prostitute to build an escape fund. Her stepfather
finds out and beats her, resulting in a nervous breakdown. Maureen’s
older half-brother, Jules, sexually abuses and pimps out a woman. So,
typical Joyce Carol Oates: heavy, depressing dysfunction all around.
I do
not volunteer to read any of these things. 'Specially not J.C.O. I'm
still traumatized by "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been."
