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.
April 15, 1865: After being in a coma for eight hours, Abraham Lincoln dies from the bullet wound inflicted on him by John Wilkes Booth.
April 15, 1888: English poet Matthew Arnold dies. He has suffered a heart attack while chasing after a streetcar.
April 15, 1912: The HMS Titanic sinks into the Atlantic Ocean, having struck an iceberg shortly before midnight. Of the approximately 2,200 people on board, 1,500 die.
April 15, 1989: Nearly 100 spectators die in a crowd crush at a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.
April 15, 2013: In a terrorist attack by two brothers from Chechnya at the Boston Marathon, two pressure cooker bombs detonate, killing three people and injuring hundreds of others. The older brother of the two terrorists is also killed while trying to evade police. The other is tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.
For fans of historical fiction and readers of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, this vampire fantasy features fictional versions of blues singer Bessie Smith and composer George Gershwin. Vampire Bessie senses that George is not long for this world and offers to pass on her dark gift to him.
September 1, 2019: Spanish dancer Joana Sainz Garcia is killed while performing during a music festival when a pyrotechnics display malfunctions. A faulty cartridge strikes the 30-year-old in the abdomen.
September 2, 1900: A tropical hurricane formed over the Atlantic Ocean makes landfall in the Dominican Republic. This storm is among the deadliest in U.S. history, with a large number of fatalities coming from Galveston, Texas. Meteorologists of the time, and in particular Isaac Cline, didn’t believe that a significant hurricane was possible in Galveston, and so rejected requests from the townspeople that the city should build a sea wall. As many as 8,000 people in the Caribbean, the U.S., and the Maritime Provinces of Canada are thought to have lost their lives in this storm, including Cline’s wife and some of his children.
September 2, 2004: A fire at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, destroys 12,500 irreplaceable books and damages an additional 62,000 materials, including Friedrich Schiller's death mask and 35 oil paintings of historical significance.
September 2, 2018: An air conditioner short circuits, causing a catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil. The museum loses an estimated 92.5% of its collection.
September 3, 1991: Fire breaks out inside the Imperial Food Products chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. Some workers are unable to escape due to locked doors, including one door labeled as a fire exit. The building had no sprinkler system or fire alarm. Of the 90 workers in the plant at the time of the fire, 25 died and an additional 54 were injured. Plant owner Emmett Roe pleads guilty to manslaughter and serves nearly four years in prison.
September 4, 2006: Wildlife expert, zookeeper, and filmmaker Steve Irwin is filming a dive in shallow water near the Great Barrier Reef. He is struck in the chest by a stingray’s tale. The barb of the tale pierces his heart, killing him.
September 5, 1983: Canadian stunt performer Ken Carter is killed when the rocket car he’s using to jump over an Ontario pond overshoots the landing ramp, flips, and lands on its roof.
September 6, 1951: Joan Vollmer is shot and killed in an American-owned bar in Mexico City by her husband, William S. Burroughs. Both were intoxicated. Vollmer is alleged to have placed a glass on top of her head, and Burroughs was supposedly trying to shoot the glass off her head with a pistol. Instead he shot Vollmer in the head and killed her instantly.
This is portrayed in the film Beat (2000). Vollmer is played by Courtney Love and Burroughs by Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland.
September 7, 2018: Rapper Mac Miller, aged 26, dies of an overdose of alcohol, cocaine, and fentanyl.
September 8, 2016: 59-year-old performer The Lady Chablis, who’s featured prominently in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt and played herself in the 1997 film based on it, dies of pneumonia at Candler Hospital in Savannah, Georgia.
September 9, 1898: French poet and literary critic Stéphane Mallarmé dies suddenly while suffering from what had been a relatively mild case of tonsillitis. While being examined by his doctor, Mallarmé has a coughing fit so severe he dies of asphyxia. He is 56 years old.
September 11, 1987: Reggae artist Peter Tosh and two friends are shot and killed when Tosh’s home is invaded by a street gang demanding money.
September 11, 2001: The World Trade Center, Pentagon, and a third target are attacked by commercial jets hijacked by terrorists. Nearly 3,000 people are killed.
September 12, 1977: Poet Robert Lowell dies of a heart attack in a taxi cab on his way to see his ex-wife, writer and literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick.
September 13, 1996: Rapper and actor Tupac Shakur dies from gunshot wounds in Las Vegas.
September 14, 1899: Real estate developer Henry H. Bliss becomes the first person killed in the U.S. from a motor vehicle collision. The previous day, he had stepped off a trolley car and been struck by an electric taxi cab, knocking him to the ground and crushing his chest.
September 14, 1927: Dancer Isadora Duncan is killed in Nice, France, when her scarf becomes entangled in the open-spoked wheel and axle of the car she’s riding in, breaking her neck.
Photo of Isadora Duncan by Arnold Genthe (1869–1942), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
September 15, 1958: A commuter train traveling from Bay Head, New Jersey, to Jersey City ignores warning signals and falls into Newark Bay through an open bridge lift. The crash kills 48, including Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s brother-in-law James Carmalt Adams.
September 16, 1977: T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan, who never learned to drive, is the passenger in a Mini 1275GT automobile when it crashes into a fence post and then a tree, killing Bolan instantly.
September 16, 1985: Aerobatic pilot Arthur “Art” Scholl crashes his plane and is killed while filming spin footage for the movie Top Gun. He crashes into the Pacific Ocean; his aircraft is never recovered.
September 18, 1961: United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others die when their Transair Sweden DC-6 aircraft crashes in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjöld had been traveling to Katanga, a disputed state that broke off from the Congo after Congo gained its independence from Belgian colonial rule. The cause of the crash is disputed. It may have been caused by pilot error, although some have speculated that it was shot down to assassinate Hammarskjöld.
September 18, 1970: 27-year-old Jimi Hendrix dies of asphyxiation at St. Mary Abbots Hospital in London. He appears to have aspirated vomit after taking an overdose of barbiturates, presumably his girlfriend’s sleeping pills.
September 18, 1988: Poet/filmmaker Kathleen Collins dies of breast cancer at the age of 46.
September 19, 1902: One hundred fifteen members of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, are killed in a stampede after one of them called out “Fight!” and this was misheard as “Fire!”
September 20, 1989: The last fluent speaker of the Kamassian language, Klavdiya Zakharovna Plotnikova-Andzhighatova, an approximately 105-year-old woman, dies. Kamassian is one of the Samoyed languages of the Ural Mountains. In fact, it was the last of the Samoyed languages to go extinct.
September 20, 1997: Musician Nick Traina, the son of author Danielle Steel, passes away from an overdose of the prescription medication lithium. He is 19 years old.
September 22, 1978: Stunt performer A.J. Bakunas dies from his injuries after a failed stunt fall from Lexington, Kentucky’s Kincaid Towers the previous day. Bakunas lands on the air bag as planned, which splits, allowing his body to hit the ground at approximately 115 miles per hour.
September 23, 965: Al-Mutanabbi, a courtly poet of the Abbasid Caliphate who wrote in Arabic, dies in what is now Iraq. His birth date is not known, but he was thought to be about 50 years old at the time of his death. He died in a fight with a group of assailants who were insulted by one of his poems.
September 23, 1939: Sigmund Freud dies of cancer of the jaw. He had been diagnosed with epithelioma of the mouth in 1923, and although the tumor had been surgically removed, the surgery was incomplete. By 1939, the cancer that had spread to his jawbone was so painful, and also inoperable, that Freud asked his personal physician to give him a life-ending dose of morphine.
September 23, 1973: Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and is in his fifth day of hospitalization. He calls his wife to let her know he isn’t feeling well and dies a few hours later, officially of heart failure.
Some have speculated that Neruda may have been poisoned in the hours before his death. Chile’s coup d’etat that ended the term of democratically-elected socialist President Salvador Allende had happened on September 11th. Neruda had been Allende’s ambassador to France and his home had already been searched by the military forces of coup leader General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda famously told Pinochet’s troops that the only dangerous thing they would find was poetry.
September 23, 1994: Psycho writer Robert Bloch dies of cancer of the esophagus and kidneys at the age of 77.
September 24, 2007: Camera operator Conway Wickliffe is killed while filming stunts for the movie The Dark Knight. He is the passenger in a pickup truck driving parallel to a stunt car; the driver misses a turn and the truck crashes into a tree.
September 26, 1937: Blues musician Bessie Smith dies of traumatic injuries she suffers in a car accident. She was the passenger in a car driven by her boyfriend Richard Morgan. Morgan, driving along U.S. Route 61 toward Clarksdale, Mississippi, misjudges the speed of a truck he’s coming up on and swerves at the last moment to avoid rear-ending the truck but sideswipes it instead. Since Smith is in the passenger seat and possibly has her hand and/or forearm sticking out of the passenger-side window, she sustains severe crush injuries to the right side of her body and a partially amputated arm. Surgeons at Clarksdale’s African-American hospital surgically amputate Smith’s arm. She never regains consciousness following surgery.
September 27, 1986: Metallica bassist Clifford (Cliff) Burton dies in a tour bus accident in Sweden. The bus skids off the road while members of the band are sleeping in their bunks. Burton is thrown out of his bunk and through the window; the bus falls on top of him.
September 29, 1902: French writer Émile Zola dies of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney flue in his home. The manner of his death may have been accident, assassination, or suicide. He’s 62 years old.
September 29, 2010: A 24-year-old man whose family says he suffers from mental illness pours gasoline on himself and sets himself on fire near the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. The man is critically injured but survives. Coincidentally, the date the statue was unveiled to the public was also September 29th, in 1888.
September 30, 1962: Paul Guihard, a journalist for France’s Agence France-Presse, is in the U.S. covering African-American student James Meredith’s attempt to enroll in the whites-only University of Mississippi. White students on the campus start a riot, during which Guihard is shot through the back, piercing his heart.
His shooting is never solved. Guihard is considered the only journalist to have been killed during the U.S. civil rights movement.
September 30, 1997: Post-modern writer Kathy Acker, age 50, dies of breast cancer while undergoing alternative treatment in Tijuana, Mexico.
September 2, 2004: A fire at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, destroys 12,500 irreplaceable books and damages an additional 62,000 materials, including Friedrich Schiller's death mask and 35 oil paintings of historical significance.
September 2, 2018: An air conditioner short circuits, causing a catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil. The museum loses an estimated 92.5% of its collection.
September 8, 2016: 59-year-old performer The Lady Chablis, who’s featured prominently in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt and played herself in the 1997 film based on it, dies of pneumonia at Candler Hospital in Savannah, Georgia.
September 9, 1898: French poet and literary critic Stéphane Mallarmé dies suddenly while suffering from what had been a relatively mild case of tonsillitis. While being examined by his doctor, Mallarmé has a coughing fit so severe he dies of asphyxia. He is 56 years old.
September 12, 1977: Poet Robert Lowell dies of a heart attack in a taxi cab on his way to see his ex-wife, writer and literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick.
September 15, 1958: A commuter train traveling from Bay Head, New Jersey, to Jersey City ignores warning signals and falls into Newark Bay through an open bridge lift. The crash kills 48, including Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s brother-in-law James Carmalt Adams.
September 18, 1961: United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others die when their Transair Sweden DC-6 aircraft crashes in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjöld had been traveling to Katanga, a disputed state that broke off from the Congo after Congo gained its independence from Belgian colonial rule. The cause of the crash is disputed. It may have been caused by pilot error, although some have speculated that it was shot down to assassinate Hammarskjöld.
September 18, 1988: Poet/filmmaker Kathleen Collins dies of breast cancer at the age of 46.
September 20, 1989: The last fluent speaker of the Kamassian language, Klavdiya Zakharovna Plotnikova-Andzhighatova, an approximately 105-year-old woman, dies. Kamassian is one of the Samoyed languages of the Ural Mountains. In fact, it was the last of the Samoyed languages to go extinct.
September 23, 965: Al-Mutanabbi, a courtly poet of the Abbasid Caliphate who wrote in Arabic, dies in what is now Iraq. His birth date is not known, but he was thought to be about 50 years old at the time of his death. He died in a fight with a group of assailants who were insulted by one of his poems.
September 23, 1939: Sigmund Freud dies of cancer of the jaw. He had been diagnosed with epithelioma of the mouth in 1923, and although the tumor had been surgically removed, the surgery was incomplete. By 1939, the cancer that had spread to his jawbone was so painful, and also inoperable, that Freud asked his personal physician to give him a life-ending dose of morphine.
September 23, 1973: Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and is in his fifth day of hospitalization. He calls his wife to let her know he isn’t feeling well and dies a few hours later, officially of heart failure.
Some have speculated that Neruda may have been poisoned in the hours before his death. Chile’s coup d’etat that ended the term of democratically-elected socialist President Salvador Allende had happened on September 11th. Neruda had been Allende’s ambassador to France and his home had already been searched by the military forces of coup leader General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda famously told Pinochet’s troops that the only dangerous thing they would find was poetry.
September 23, 1994: Psycho writer Robert Bloch dies of cancer of the esophagus and kidneys at the age of 77.
September 24, 2007: Camera operator Conway Wickliffe is killed while filming stunts for the movie The Dark Knight. He is the passenger in a pickup truck driving parallel to a stunt car; the driver misses a turn and the truck crashes into a tree.
September 26, 1937: Blues musician Bessie Smith dies of traumatic injuries she suffers in a car accident. She was the passenger in a car driven by her boyfriend Richard Morgan. Morgan, driving along U.S. Route 61 toward Clarksdale, Mississippi, misjudges the speed of a truck he’s coming up on and swerves at the last moment to avoid rear-ending the truck but sideswipes it instead. Since Smith is in the passenger seat and possibly has her hand and/or forearm sticking out of the passenger-side window, she sustains severe crush injuries to the right side of her body and a partially amputated arm. Surgeons at Clarksdale’s African-American hospital surgically amputate Smith’s arm. She never regains consciousness following surgery.
September 29, 1902: French writer Émile Zola dies of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney flue in his home. The manner of his death may have been accident, assassination, or suicide. He’s 62 years old.
September 29, 2010: A 24-year-old man whose family says he suffers from mental illness pours gasoline on himself and sets himself on fire near the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. The man is critically injured but survives. Coincidentally, the date the statue was unveiled to the public was also September 29th, in 1888.
September 30, 1962: Paul Guihard, a journalist for France’s Agence France-Presse, is in the U.S. covering African-American student James Meredith’s attempt to enroll in the whites-only University of Mississippi. White students on the campus start a riot, during which Guihard is shot through the back, piercing his heart.
His shooting is never solved. Guihard is considered the only journalist to have been killed during the U.S. civil rights movement.
Want near-daily posts? Follow me on Ko-Fi. It's free to sign up and follow me. You never have to buy anything unless you want to.
Today is the birthday of Rhetta Akamatsu, a fellow author I first met on Gather.com. In addition to writing nonfiction, Rhetta is an online journalist, a paranormal investigator, and a lover of the blues. Rhetta didn't ask me to write this blog post - or solicit a blog post from me in any way - but since it's her birthday, I thought it might be nice to share some of her books with the reading public.
Her latest is , subtitled "Women in Photography and Film." The blurb reads:
"Since before the invention of photography, the female form has been used in art and various forms of entertainment because, after all, scantily clad women attract attention. Sex Sells takes a look at women in photos and on film. The book contains no nudity, but is intended for adults and mature young people. From piquant hand-colored "naughty" pictures to biographies of photographers, strippers, pinup girls and movie stars, this lavishly illustrated work will enlighten, amuse and entertain you."
'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do, named for a song performed by Bessie Smith (among other great blues women), is about female blues singers of the past and present. Rhetta is the Atlanta Blues Examiner online, and it was from her that I first read about the passing of Etta James.
In last year's Epic Easter Post, I brought up a certain book. That book was A Woman's Journey to God, written by Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. I love this book, and I recommend it for any female reader with spiritual leanings. (Atheistic women can safely skip this one, unless interested in reading it from a sociological/folklorical point of view.)
Part of what Borysenko does in this book is create for herself - and for anyone else who's willing to play along - a matriarchal women's mythology to complement the traditional patriarchal religious stories passed down through the Bible and other Judeo-Christian sources. Borysenko's inspirations include Margaret Starbird's The Woman With the Alabaster Jar, as well as non-canonical gospels, historical research and Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent. It's mostly Borysenko's storytelling from her own imagination, though.
"Jesus and Mary Magdalene: Partners in the Heiros Gamos" inside of A Woman's Journey to God isn't exactly a short story, but more of a long summary of the myth as Borysenko imagines it. I didn't own my own copy of the book last year when I wrote my Easter post, but I've acquired one since then, so I can share an excerpt:
"On the evening of the Sacred Marriage, Miriam was bathed in herbs from the ancient temple gardens, anointed with precious spikenard ointment, dressed in a simple shift of white silk, and left to her prayers. As the moon rose over the perfumed cloister, the Holy of Holies in the center of the temple, she knelt to pray. 'May this ancient act of Sacred Marriage, the holiest sacrament, repair the rift between God and Goddess. May the universe be made whole, and love restored to every human heart in our joining.'
"Yehoshuah, also dressed in a simple white shift, entered the walled garden and knelt before Miriam. Both were nearly breathless, shaking with anticipation of a ritual they had only dreamed of. Yehoshuah reached out, palms up, and took Miriam's small hands in his. A bolt of electricity ran through them as, looking into one another's eyes, they prayed.
"Together the Bride and Bridegroom poured seven crucibles of perfumed oil into an alabaster bowl. Each crucible represented a note of the scale that, when the notes came together, sings the universe into being. As Miriam and Yehoshuah sang each note, their voices rose through the still desert air, answered by a chorus of wild creatures...
Seven various vegetable oils - photo by Rasbak. Creative Commons license.
"...Dipping their fingers into the bowl of perfumed oil they had consecrated together, each anointed the other in all their secret, holy places until the boundaries separating them disappeared, and flesh, once again, vibrated as primal energy.
"Miriam's lips whispered praises of God as she ran them over Yehoshuah's face, his neck, and his lithe brown body, hardened by physical labor in the desert sun. Yehoshuah's lips whispered praises of the Goddess as he kissed her delicate ears, the rose-petal tips of her breasts, the lips of her womanhood that are the portals of life. In the total joining of their hearts, minds, intentions, and bodies, the stars seemed to dip closer to earth...
"...Miriam brought her small hand up to the face of her beloved, brushing the wet strands of hair from his eyes. 'Tomorrow you must leave the temple,' she whispered. 'The time of your mission is upon us. For a moment the world was made whole through our love. Now you will teach people how to find their way back to that moment...The years of your ministry will be trying and short, my beloved, but I will always be there with you, by your side. Every pain is made bearable through love and understanding.'
"The two lovers were quiet, resting in both the joy and the sorrow of Yehoshuah's mission. The trees above them swayed gently in the warm breeze, breaking the moonlight into tender shafts that played over their naked, oiled bodies. Yehoshuah gathered Miriam's small form into his arms and loved her once again, the music of their joining spread throughout creation. Still inside her, he nuzzled her hair and sang to her from the Song of Songs, the ancient Scripture of the Sacred Marriage. 'Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold you are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely. Our couch is green; the beams of our house are cedar, our rafters are pine.'"
The Song of Songs in the Bible (traditionally read in its entirety on the Passover Sabbath in some Jewish communities) is one place that this ritual poetry of the sacred marriage is recorded; other Near Eastern examples also exist. Pasted into one of my scrapbooks, I have a clipping from a magazine called Common Boundary dated March/April 1994. (Common Boundary, a magazine of the intersection of psychology and spirituality, doesn't appear to be published anymore, but the library catalog website OCLC WorldCat shows some libraries have it in their collections.)
The clipping reprints an English translation of the text of a hymn written by or at least sung by a priestess of the goddess Inanna to her reigning (Sumerian) king, whose name was Shu-Sin. The priestess's name may have been Kubatum. The hymn reads, in part:
"You have won my soul,
I stand now trembling before you,
Lion, carry me now to the bed...
In the bed that is filled with honey,
Let us enjoy our love.
Lion, let me give you my caresses,
My sweet one, wash me with honey...
The place sweet as honey, put in your sweetness--
Like flour into the measure, squeeze in your sweetness--
Like pounding dry flour into the cup to be measured,
Pound in, pound in your sweetness--
These words I sing for Inanna."
The clay tablet on which this poem, sometimes considered the world's oldest known love poetry, is written in cuneiform resides in the Istanbul Museum of Archaeology. Shu-Sin is a historical king of Sumeria and Akkadia who was known to have reigned from about 2037-2029 BCE, during the third dynasty of Ur. Since the Sumerians celebrated the sacred marriage of their king to the goddess Inanna at the spring equinox, that would make the sacred marriage - and its poetry - at least a 4,000-year-old Easter/Passover/Ostara tradition.
The baking metaphor, the pounding of flour and honey into a vessel - why does that sound so familiar? Ah, yes...
Are you an author? Would you like to share a little bit about a current work in progress on a future WIP Wednesday? If so, please e-mail Erin O'Riordan (erinoriordan AT sbcglobal DOT net).
Today is the deadline for submitting to Vampyres: A History Written in Blood. I'll be submitting my Bessie Smith/George Gershwin vampire story, which I've decided to title "Rhapsody in Blood." Here's another short excerpt:
Bessie was glad to be inside, away from prying (blue) eyes that might accuse her and Rita of being where she had no business being. She was even happier when Rita pressed a tall glass of clear liquor into her hand. It was gin – not the shine was used to – but it would do in a pinch. It helped her make it through the round of how-do-you-dos she had to endure before her host would shut up and let her at the piano.
Taking steady sips of her drink, Bessie looked over at the piano. She didn’t recognize the white man on the bench, lazily vamping an up-tempo melody; he hadn’t introduced himself to her at the door. He had Benny’s slicked-back black hair – maybe a little longer, a few more curls tucked behind his ears. He didn’t have Benny’s milk-pale skin. He wasn’t Josephine Baker-brown like Rita, but he had a little color, like he’d just come back from vacation in Mexico. His cheeks blushed pink, and his eyes shone a vivid hazel.
The other white folks in the room, Benny included, were dressed to the nines, but not the piano player. His style was as laid-back as his piano playing, casual and flashy at the same time. The high shine of his black leather shoes said he had money, but his attitude said anything but stick-up-the-ass.
One glance at the piano player and she knew two things: he would be with her for the rest of her unnatural life, however long that would be, and he was, at the moment, slowly dying.
***
On a loosely related topic, there are some very cool sales happening now at MYHABIT. Today and tomorrow, you can still get a DODOcase for your Kindle Fire. These handmade covers, built to resemble an old-fashioned bound book, come in seven solid colors and a peacock pattern. This is the sky blue:
The other really cool thing at MYHABIT right now is the collection of wall art inspired by Andy Warhol and his unique pop art style. I've always loved Andy Warhol: his drawings of cats, that banana he designed for the Velvet Underground album cover (I have the boxed set with the peelable banana), his oft-parodied Marilyn Monroe image, his insane movies - even Lili Taylor in I Shot Andy Warhol. Warhol died when I was 9, but he remains a source of endless fascination and inspiration.
Stopping by from the Romancing the Valentine Giveaway Hop? Leave a comment on Monday's post HERE for a chance to win.
Are you an author with a current work in progress? Share about it with us on a future WIP Wednesday. Send an e-mail to erinoriordan AT sbcglobal DOT net.
This is actually a false start, but I'm nonetheless working on writing at least 4,000 words of a speculative story in which Bessie Smith is a vampire. In this scene, she's canoodling with Benny Goodman (not just a pun on her song title; they actually toured together), but soon she will hook up with George Gershwin. She'll pass her immortal gift to him to save him from the brain tumor that, otherwise, will kill him. Its intended destination is the anthology Vampyres: A History Written in Blood.
A good man is hard to find, Bessie thought, chuckling. Leaning back against the cheap headboard, she watched Benny pour whiskey into a chipped tumbler. On the stage and in the sack, Benny was pure passion. Everywhere else, he looked so stiff and square he might’ve had a fireplace poker up his ass. Benny knew how to show a girl a good time, but this could never be a permanent thing.
“Get you another drink, doll?” he asked her.
She bristled at the overly-familiar nickname. The other boys in the band called her Miss Bessie, and she liked it that way. “Sugar, you got no idea how thirsty I am.”
He filled the other tumbler and brought it to her in bed, then sank into the uncomfortable chair in the corner. He sipped his whiskey steadily; Bessie downed hers in quick swallows. It hadn’t had an effect on her since ’29, the year she crossed over, but she could keep a secret.
Bessie had learned to keep the secret well. She hadn’t kept it from Jack, but then, Bessie’s late husband hadn’t had the decency to keep it in his own pants before he called out Bessie for her trysts. Jack had known about her back-alley fling with the Romanian, the one who’d taken her blood and given her the unasked-for “gift” of immortality. He brought it up that day – the last day of their marriage, the last moments of Jack’s life – to start one of their knock-down, drag-out fights. He hadn’t expected Bessie’s new strength…or her fangs.
She still smiled when she remembered the look on Jack's face right after she drained the life out of him. Whatever the Romanian had given her, she hadn’t passed it on to Jack. In nearly eight years, she hadn’t passed it on to anyone, as far as she could tell. She also hadn’t aged a day and hadn’t been sick once.
Benny reached over and fiddled with the knob on the radio. It crackled and groaned before he settled on a jazz station. Bessie recognized the instrumental. “Gershwin,” she said.
He bobbed his head enthusiastically. “From Girl Crazy – ‘Treat Me Rough.’ Not one of the best numbers in the show.”
“I don’t know,” Bessie said. “That one sounds truer than all those June-moon I-love-you songs I couldn’t sing with a straight face.”
As I'm researching this beautiful and immensely talented woman, I'm reading A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them by Buzzy Jackson. It gives me more good information about the recently deceased Etta James. Part of the James chapter reads:
"For a seventeen-year-old, she certainly sounded like a woman. Just as the early blues queens such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey had brought sexuality, humor, and sass to the new world of blues recording,Etta James was bringing the same qualities to early rock 'n' roll. Sex was always one of James's favorite topics, from 'Roll With Me, Henry' on. Like Bessie Smith's 'I'm Wild About That Thing' (1929), James's songs were evidence that women enjoyed sex and were comfortable asking for what they wanted. They also depicted sex as an integral part of the romantic experience, something to be approached with humor and passion, as opposed to something a 'good girl' denied her partner, a concept popular among mainstream moralists that had been sold to women since the nineteenth century. Up until the feminist movement of the 1960s, women's blues were one of the few sources providing a counter-argument to the idea that sexual enjoyment was reserved for men only."
There you have it - blues women are the spiritual ancestors of erotica writers.
The other women's music book I read this week was a children's book I received free of charge from the Amazon Vine program: Jazz Age Josephine by Jonah Winter (words) and Marjorie Priceman (illustrations). Marjorie Priceman's illustrations are beautiful, especially the two-page spread of the Eiffel Tower.
The words don't completely impress me. The scat-singing parts aren't easy to read. The truncated story of how Miss Baker partially overcame racism and couldn't overcome loneliness, while it may indeed be true, is not a very emotionally satisfying read. I have a hard time imagining that the intended audience of children 4-8 will care very much about jazz or about Josephine Baker. Some noble parents or educators might display this one in February for Black History Month or in March for Women's History Month, but I doubt many children will count it among their favorites.
I hope I'm wrong, though. Josephine Baker is a fascinating and inspirational figure.
.jpg)
, subtitled "Women in Photography and Film." The blurb reads:
