The Harlot’s Pen Read online

  San Francisco in the roaring 20s.

  After World War I, San Francisco is a wild town. Abandoned by her lover, Violetta is swept up in the new, freer ways and becomes America’s first embedded journalist. She finds work in a brothel that caters to San Francisco’s most powerful men, to write her epic story on the conditions of working women. But federal agents looking to clamp down on both vice and workers’ rights don’t take kindly to her modern views. Shorter dresses, fair pay for women, and the dark and frightening world of sex and politics give Violetta a learning experience of a lifetime.

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  The Harlot’s Pen

  Copyright © 2014 Claudia H Long

  ISBN: 978-1-77111-807-1

  Cover art by Carmen Waters

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Devine Destinies

  An imprint of eXtasy Books

  Look for us online at:

  www.devinedestinies.com

  The Harlot’s Pen

  By

  Claudia H Long

  Dedication

  To my sister Francesca, a real Sheba, and to Helen Crosby Lewy, a brilliant writer who actually lived through the 1920s.

  “‘Tis a pity she’s a whore.”

  John Ford (approx 1629)

  “Most likely, this attack has been a punishment for our Red Square performance of the song, ‘Putin Has Pissed Himself.’”

  Pussy Riot (2011)

  In 1904, my father, Judge Ebenezer Stone, ruled that California Dressmaker, the largest sweatshop in the west, had to pay its female workers the same for piecework as it paid the men. “If you purchase a garment at the shop, you do not pay less for it because it was made by a woman. Nor should she be paid less for her labor if it is as good as a man’s.”

  Two weeks later, he was called out to a meeting late at night. His body, punctured by bullet holes, was found in this very bay the next morning, the bay our ferry was about to cross.

  November 10, 1919

  I clutched at the small fur hat I had bought on Market Street the week before. The sun sparkled on the San Francisco Bay, giving an illusion of warmth, but the wind was quite fierce on the water, and Leticia, her arm linked through mine, shivered as the wind cut through her cloth coat. I generously pressed her close. I was glad that I had worn the little beaver hat and the fur muff. There was no sense in being cold, even on the way to a Progressive Labor Party rally.

  The stiff breeze whipped our skirts against one another. Standing apart, Jacqueline laughed, her exquisite wool dress a sheath of coral clinging to her legs, her head thrown back to disclose an aristocratic throat and a string of perfect pearls. I could see yet another advantage in the modern style, and considered Jacqueline’s perfect ensemble with an eye to reproducing it on myself on another day, when we were not going to support a call for Worker’s Rights and the Minimum Wage for Women.

  As the pristine, white buildings of the San Francisco hills receded, the more quaint and industrial red brick of Oakland came nearer, a study in contrasts of color, wealth, and attitude. San Francisco had grown more fashionable and grandiose as the end of the War had brought men and money pouring in, while Oakland remained its solid, stolid self, the working man polishing the Grand Gentleman’s white shoes.

  The three of us walked from the ferry landing up almost to the Tribune offices as its clock tower chimed the hour. Flyers announcing Anita Whitney’s Progressive Labor Party Rally lay scattered along the side of the street, the wind tossing them into little whirling spirals of paper progressiveness that swirled and caught at my shoes, then dispersed to be trodden upon by the following boots. The crowd grew larger with each block, men in long coats and women clutching somber hats with black-gloved hands.

  On the corner of Fourteenth Street and Telegraph Avenue, a woman in a tight red dress stood against the breeze, coatless, hatless, and rubbing her gloved hand against her running nose. “A bit early to be looking for work,” Jacqueline remarked, reaching into her little bag.

  I glanced at the woman, and then stopped. I had seen prostitutes before, of course, but there was a fury in her eyes that arrested me. The woman looked cold, her rouged lips and cheeks reddened further by the wind. “Lovely hat, ma’am,” the woman said to me, her watering eyes fixed on my fur. Impulsively, I started to pull off the fur hat, but Jacqueline was quicker, handing her a dollar. The whore sneered, but pocketed the coin.

  “You’re looking for commerce in the wrong place,” I said. “The men going to this meeting aren’t going to have the money to spend on you. Come with us. This meeting is for you.” I reached out to her, and she recoiled.

  “Get away,” she muttered. “Keep your stinkin’ hands off of me.”

  I stifled the laughter that rose in my throat. My stinking hands?

  “Come on, Violetta,” Leticia said, pulling at my arm. “Talking won’t change her life. It’s a plaster on an abyss.”

  Rejoining the crowd I felt almost pushed into the hall. I was far and away the tallest of the three of us, and I looked over the sea of heads, searching unsuccessfully for a gap in the solid mass of people where we could sit together. Surprised by the press of bodies, we climbed up to the gallery to try to find seats where, despite the cool weather outside, it was beastly hot.

  I held the fur muff close against the malodorous steam of the galley. Inside the muff, dampening from the moisture of my hands, were the printed copies of my poem, The Rape of the Working Woman. I had intended to present a signed copy to Anita Whitney, imagining the rally to be like the ones I had attended in the past, twenty or so enthusiastic supporters surrounding a fiery speaker. But I, along with Leticia and Jacqueline, had been shunted far from the stage, even to a higher level, but with the fortune of being pushed to the very front of the balcony where I could look around the entire hall. I was unable to estimate the size of the crowd, but I could see it easily exceeded five hundred people. Every chair of row upon row below was full, and the gallery was filled with standing bodies, indiscreetly pushing upon one another for a view below.

  An assistant to the speaker came to the podium, and the crowd murmured expectantly. Other assistants wearing large PLP badges edged around the room, quieting the crowd, and as one passed near the balcony, I quickly took my pamphlets of the poem from the muff and leaned as far over as I dared. A tall man below reached up, took my pamphlets, and passed them to the assistant. The assistant looked up at me, and I shouted, “For Anita!”

  “Thank you, comrade,” he replied, and slipped them into his jacket pocket. A murmur of approval from the closest part of the crowd made me flush with pleasure, and I watched as the assistant slowly made his way back to the small stage where he placed the pamphlets on the podium.

  “What on earth?” Leticia said.

  “My poem,” I replied. “There’s no other way to get it to
her.”

  Leticia shook her head. I had not warned my two good friends of my intentions for the very reason that I anticipated Leticia’s disapproval. I pressed my lips together to keep from saying more, but Jacqueline patted Leticia’s arm and whispered loudly in her ear. “Think how dull it would be without her.”

  At last a short, energetic woman emerged from a curtain, and stepping up on a well-placed box, commanded the podium. The crowd roared its welcome to the intense leader. Mrs. Whitney was surprisingly old. “She must be fifty if she’s a day,” I whispered, eying her hair shot with gray. Leticia nodded, her eyes glittering as she focused on the speaker below.

  Mrs. Whitney raised her hands in command, and the crowd silenced. In the expectant hush, she looked up at the gallery and in a resonant voice, called out, “Women! Workers! Arise!”

  We leaned into her words, thrilling as she decried the disastrous working conditions of workers everywhere under the thumb of the bosses, calling for workers’ rights, applauding when she spoke for the minimum wage for women.

  “For it is our birthright, our right to work! And not as slave labor, not forced to sell our bodies so our children can eat, but at a decent wage, a living wage! Our dignity, our morals, our meals—all depend on the living wage!” Most of the crowd cheered, though there were a few boos, and a man shouted, “Quit stealing our jobs!”

  “Yes, there are a few men who still believe that women work because they want to. Pin money! Ask the girl in the cannery, on her feet twelve hours a day so her babies can eat! Ask the whore on her back,” there were titters of discomfort, “cast out of the brothels by the moralizing politicians seeking to save their own skins, now with no home but a straw pallet in a crowded room. Look to Moscow! Help us fight! Our future depends on the union of laborers! Come together, Comrades! Workers of the world unite!”

  A roar of applause shook the very floor of the gallery. I felt the tremors, not just of the sound, but the thudding in my own heart. I could feel the pull into Anita Whitney’s magnetism, and grasping Leticia and Jacqueline by the arms, I was ready to devote myself to her cause.

  Then, from my vantage point up in the gallery, I caught sight of movement below, well before Mrs. Whitney and her assistants noticed. It was the oddity of their clothes, I thought later, that first drew my eye to two blocks of men dressed in dark, fine suits, not at all in keeping with the tone of the crowd. They were moving steadily down either side of the room. The controversy of the fur hat notwithstanding, and excepting Jacqueline’s modern stylishness, no one was really dressed for business, but rather most affected or embodied working-class garb of dull-colored cloth and full, shapeless cuts. Despite the press of bodies and their incongruous dress, the men made their way relentlessly forward without seeming to push or struggle against the masses. I pointed them out to Leticia.

  “We should go,” Leticia whispered immediately.

  There was a moment in which we could have left, but Jacqueline and I were riveted to the action below. When they reached the podium, two of the men flanked Mrs. Whitney, each one grabbing an arm and pulling it roughly behind her back. I flinched as Mrs. Whitney’s arms were wrenched, and I cried out, “Hey!” My voice echoed in the stunned silence of the crowd. One of the men looked up at the balcony, searching for the source of the cry. I bent my knees to mask my height, lowering myself to blend with Leticia and the other women in the front, and I held my breath as his eyes seemed to skate over me and beyond.

  They handcuffed Mrs. Whitney, and the other men surrounded her. One, who appeared to be the ringleader, turned to address the crowd. “The party’s over.” His henchmen laughed, and he went on. “The Communist Party is over. Go on, get out of the building unless you also want to go to jail!”

  Being up in the gallery, the three of us could not join the panicked rush to the door. We stayed where we were, hoping not to be noticed. But to my eyes, Mrs. Whitney didn’t seem panicked at all. She stood there, immobile, as her attendants hovered around the men, all fussed and agitated. Then, over the hubbub and the commotion, Mrs. Whitney’s strong voice rang out. “I demand to know who is arresting me, and on what charge!”

  The ringleader stepped back, and for a moment it seemed that perhaps he would give way to Mrs. Whitney’s commanding voice, but it was only to get a better angle to address Mrs. Whitney and the crowd as well. “You are being arrested by officers of the United States Department of Justice, along with the Oakland police, for criminal syndication in violation of the California Criminal Syndication Act, as well as for acts against Americanism and for your support of the overthrow of the American government through violent and unlawful means. And as for the rest of you,” he added, to the audience, “names will be taken. You will be found.”

  He looked up at the balcony, once again intensely scanning the entire population of the upper seats, committing their faces to memory. For a moment his eyes met mine, and it seemed he narrowed his glance at me, an eyebrow raised. But it could have been an illusion, for he then turned back to Mrs. Whitney.

  At the first opening in the crowd, we finally took our advantage and fled. I turned back once more, to see Mrs. Whitney still standing proud, her hands cuffed behind her back, surrounded by men in dark suits with darker intent.

  We took the next ferry back to San Francisco without any further thought of lunch. I stood on the deck of the ferry as the crisp hills of San Francisco came closer, the other two having taken refuge in the seating cabin. The wind pushed back my hair, and I put my hand up to hold my hat. The fur was soft against my fingers. I had a vision of myself flinging it into the waves.

  Ravenous upon my return, I wrote feverishly in my journal, detailing the day quickly before Sam came home.

  * * * *

  November 14, 1919

  “The women of the Y.W.C.A., the Associated Charities, and the San Francisco Center of the California Civic League, who worked so hard to relieve the distress of women thrown out of employment when the Barbary Coast was cleaned up in 1913, probably will not go into relief work in the present cleanup campaign.

  “The results in 1913 were discouraging, even though Mrs. Genevieve Allen, executive secretary of the Civic League Center says her organization spent about $600 in the campaign.” San Francisco Chronicle, 1918

  Where had all the prostitutes gone? My memory of the woman on the corner in Oakland on our way to the rally, the sneering, longing look at my hat and muff, still haunted me.

  Several days after the rally, Leticia and I walked down Market Street after a grand outing of shopping at The Emporium for a warm winter coat. Hard as winter was to imagine on this typically glorious fall day, we knew that rain and darkness were only weeks away, and the best styles and colors would soon be gone. So Leticia, who so rarely bought anything, and I, using Sam’s money, took the day to stroll Market Street in search of finery and bargains.

  Every day the streets seemed to grow more congested, cars and horses battling for the supremacy of the road, and we pedestrians had to be constantly on our guard. The Policettes, as the lady traffic cops were called, had been ambulance chauffeuses during the war, and though they did their best to keep the walkers safe and the vehicles in some sense of order, those drivers of automobiles had convinced themselves that they were the true modern kings of the road.

  The sun was shining, the sky was absurdly blue, and the dust of six months without rain, kicked up by the endless parade of vehicles, wearied our eyes and made us thirsty as the desert. We turned off of Market Street to stop at a teahouse on Ellis, and that was when I asked the question: where were the dancing girls and harlots of Ellis, and of Mason, and of… all the streets of the unappetizingly-named Tenderloin?

  Leticia and I settled into the teahouse, and while we waited for the waitress to bring us some seltzers and cake, I asked that very question again. For it was only eighteen months ago that the Barbary Coast and Tenderloin houses had closed for good and this fragile atmosphere of wholesomeness had been est
ablished. They’d tried before, as I remembered from the battles and skirmishes so vividly reported in the Chronicle, the fiery editorials by Mr. William Hearst, and the polemics by that horrible preacher against the poor women. But this time they had driven a stake in the heart of the red-light business and turned out a thousand women, at least, into the streets.

  “Well,” Leticia said, in her measured, thoughtful way, “if they had been turned out into the streets, then they would be in the streets, no? They certainly aren’t being taken in by the Associated Charities or the Civic League. I’m sure they’re still out there, selling themselves for enough to keep body and soul together. Unlike that unfortunate girl in Oakland, here we simply don’t see them.”

  The Chronicle had run an article the previous year about the Civic League’s decision not to help the displaced girls. Evidently, the last time they’d helped, back before the War, the Civic League hadn’t gotten the humble thanks they’d expected. I quoted the article to Leticia.

  “Six hundred dollars!” I did not try to keep the disgust from my voice. “The Civic League’s largesse! The girls said they could make more selling soft drinks at the old Barbary Coast establishments than they could make at the paltry wages the businesses were offering.”

  We sat in silence, contemplating our seltzers. In my days before Sam, before I found myself limited to the occasional society column ditty, I would have written a scathing article for the Bulletin on the fate of the women. But I was retired from public employment, as suited the consort, if not officially the wife, of a rising businessman, and I chafed against the limits to my pen.