Fiction by Allan Converse
Download “City of Women” by Allan Converse.
The sun died as I crossed 14th, and the girls came out under the soft cloak of night. I was back in Lezztown now, a town of long legs and atomic breasts, tight pants and short skirts, wet lips and eager eyes.
A pair of hatchet-faced butches in windbreakers slouched past me, muttering f— this and f— that around their cigarettes.
A trio of well-dressed young femmes stood on a subway grating outside the Loew’s. They broke into laughter as a train passed beneath them and blew their skirts skywards.
I wasn’t the only one watching them. “I see you seein’, Snowy gal,” a bosomy Colored girl in a black skirt said to me. I kept walking.
Allan Converse graduated from Vassar College in the 1980s and holds degrees in history from Northeastern and Brandeis universities; he teaches history at several colleges and universities in the Boston area. He is the author of Armies of Empire: The 9th Australian and 50th British Divisions in Battle 1939–1945, published by Cambridge University Press.