tales from the freakboy zone…: booking freakboy: ABNORMALS ANONYMOUS by Stella Gray

I haven’t been this disappointed in a book since DOROTHY MUST DIE by Danielle Paige. The terrific “Real Princess of Oz” trailers promised readers a campy-bitchy fun trip down the Yellow Brick Road…

…but we ended up with a painfully long and tedious prologue disguised as a novel. I wasn’t even aware DOROTHY MUST DIE was going to be a series when I wasted my time with it, so the non-ending sent me through the emerald roof! Hey, I know what you’re thinking, but at least I called my debut ebook “DARK EXCURSIONS: first set” so readers would expect and/or dread more installments!
As for my latest dive into Vintage Gay Pulp Fiction…

The cover of abnormals anonymous by Stella Gray shows a man wearing a skirt while knitting. A brunette woman dressed in pants and a man’s shirt. A blond woman leans against a television set while wearing pants and a sweater while smoking a cigar. Text reads, Never had so desperate a group of human beings banded together ... abnormals anonymous.

1964, National Library Books

From the potentially offensive alliterative title and the gender nonconformity of its cover, I thought ABNORMALS ANONYMOUS by Stella Gray was going to be a fun, wildly crazy, non-pc look at LGBTQ+ life in the mid-1960’s. It sure as hell started out as I imagined and I was loving it! Two siblings, Kurt and Bill Rockne are causing Clint, their conservative, strait-laced father, grief by their “abnormal” desires. Kurt is allegedly hetero-centric, but allows his family to believe he’s queer after he was seen in one gay bar. He perpetuates this supposed ruse by hanging out with drag queens. The author never really explores the character, but it seems like there is more going on with Kurt. I mean, would a straight man in 1964 pretend to be attracted to men for no real reason? I think not! Bill, a more fully realized character, is all masculine swagger with new wife Prissy, a voluptuous firecracker of a woman. The thing is, Bill and Prissy had one of those “Gay Village Weddings” because Prissy is bisexual and Bill is biologically a woman.

I did not see that gender-bending twist coming and then things got wilder and crazier! Kurt and Prissy have the hots for each other and Bill agrees to let them sleep together if it means Prissy will “cure” Kurt of his homosexual tendencies. While Kurt and Prissy are getting busy, a drag queen named Leslie arrives and demands to see Kurt. Bill won’t allow Leslie to interrupt Kurt’s chance at straightness, so the solid sibling physically struggles with the determined drag queen. With Bill dressed in traditionally male clothing and Leslie all dolled-up as a feminine woman, the struggle turns to passion.

Clint couldn’t be happier that his offspring have finally tasted the “normalcy” of hetero love, even if Bill’s experience was still kinda bent. Their step onto the straight and narrow path inspires the siblings to take their father’s advice and start an “Abnormals Anonymous” meeting. Bill agrees to head the meeting and the agenda is ostensibly to help the queer community act straight in front of biological family and at their workplaces. As I said, it’s 1964, so really the ultimate goal is to make heterosexuals out of all of them. The first meeting is spectacular with various LGBTQ+ representation. A highlight is when several members brazenly call out the meeting’s bullshit and proudly leave in all of their queer glory! 🏳️‍🌈

Teaser page of abnormals anonymous by Stella gray reads, The first meeting.... "... Girls-of both sexesand fellows of both sexes. Gather round and listen to me a minute. I've got a cool idea I think you're going to dig. You see, we're starting this club— and we want to welcome all of you as members. "Sounds marvellous," Sidney gushed. "I'm all for it." "There are fifteen of us," Bill told the assembled group, "three butches, four fems, two swishes, two misters, a pair of chums, and a pair of pals. This club is not going to force anybody to change. The idea is to help members only as much as they want to be helped. If you're only interested in learning to act straight in public, nobody's going to twist your arm to go further. But if you want to switch to the opposite sex, we'll help you there, too. It'll be a kind of group therapy." "But I don't want to change!" shouted the beautiful Roberta, a notorious Lesbian. "I’m happy the way I am!" All at once there were fierce arguments all over the room. The gray-haired Clint Rockne looked on in deep despair. He was footing the bill for Abnormals Anonymous for just one reason-his own children, the worst abnormals in the lot!...

Teaser page at the beginning of the book.

That is pretty much the last enjoyable moment in the book. It suddenly becomes all about random hetero strangers showing up to the meetings with kinks and fetishes as their “abnormal” issues. Bill and the gang help a sexually frustrated Peeping Tom, a masochist and a borderline necrophiliac who needs the woman to remain perfectly still during sex. All of this was sort of interesting but seemed more like a distraction from the real plot and was not what the cover promised! However, if I had read the back of the book, I would’ve realized what I was getting into.

The back cover of abnormals anonymous by Stella Gray shows the front cover tinted in red, with an excerpt from the book that reads, "Don't turn on the light. If she looked this way and saw us sitting in the window, she'd draw her blinds," Prissy said. “There she is, Tom. She’s getting up. She’ll be getting ready for bed soon.” "Wonderful," he said. "It's much closer than I thought it'd be. I've never had such a splendid view. This is a peeper's paradise.” "I know. Isn't this exciting? Just wait, you will see how beautiful she is without all those clothes." “Gosh, prissy, I believe you're enjoying this as much as I am.” "Naturally. Remember, I'm a Lesbian. The club hasn't yet changed me enough to keep me from getting a kick out of watching a good-looking woman taking off her clothes..."

Anyhoo, after all the kink freaks are dealt with, Bill decides to continue to dress an act in a traditionally male way, but Leslie has forsaken his drag persona and is now a “real man.” Then, in the most horrifically disturbing part of this book, Bill and Leslie fight it out over who will be dominant. To add to this already triggering scene, Clint, Kurt and Prissy are cheering on Leslie to beat Bill into womanly submission and he does. Bill agrees to wear dresses again and be called by the previously discarded birth name “Billie.” To add insult to injury, there is a triple straight wedding ceremony between Kurt & Prissy, Billie & Leslie, and Clint & Mattie, the gorgeous family cook. I was hoping the cook would be revealed as a biological male, but nope, she’s a woman. Then the very last page made me wonder if the author was ultimately trying to show how straight people are just as “abnormal” and sex-hungry as queer people. If that is what it’s supposed to mean, I say, too little too late!

The final page of abnormals anonymous by Stella gray reads, "I love you, Mattie." "And I love you, you great big red-blooded hunk of normal manhood. You're right, Clint, it's great to be straight." Clint was too busy tearing the last shreds of the cotton dress from her body to answer. THE END

In conclusion… I won ABNORMALS ANONYMOUS through an overpriced eBay auction, and no, I won’t tell you the amount of my accidental winning bid. Let’s just say it had been a long time since I actually had to compete at an auction and I thought the price was far lower as I clicked the button which adds a dollar to the current highest bid. So the double moral for today is…

Be careful what you bid on, because you just might win it…and…don’t judge a book by its awesome cover!

Freak Out,

JLH

P.S. click a pic ⤵️ to read about far superior Vintage Gay Pulp Fiction…