Sin Professor by Frank Peters (Bedside Books #1225)

Frank Peters is quite an obvious pen name.  As I was reading, the style seemed familar…then a character named Anton Plotnik showed up…but this was not Art Plotnik, it’s Hal Dresner (aka Don Holliday) — it has Dresner’s whacky, playful style throughout.

Makes sense since Nightstand and Hamling purchased Bedstand in 1961, and after book # 1201 (Don Elliott’s Woman Chaser) many Bedstands were penned by Nightstand writers.

The sin prof is Boris Marholt, libertine English teacher, philopsher, and roustabout who has devised the theory of The Whole Man: a man who does as he pleases, takes as he pleases (women, wine, song) without a care for society, decorum, or the law.

He’s been fired from his teaching post for growing his beard long and shaggy.  Seems the university has an anti-beatnik policy, and no men can wear long beards. A student, Anton Plotnik, had previously been expelled.

Boris refuses to shave his beard. He leaves, but before he goes, he whisks off with an 18-year old student, Lydia, who was tormenting him in class with her mini-skirts, flashing him in class.  She falls for him, but can’t go to New York City with him until the semester ends.

Boris heads to Manhattan to look up his ex-girlfriend, Lisa, whom he lived with before.  She’s not home so he breaks in and helps himself to her scotch.  When she comes home with a man, Boris frigtens the man off and Lisa finds this delightful. They rush to bed. She says he can move back in with her.

Boris wreaks havoc across the city, picking fights in bars, picking up women in the streets, sleeping with his friends’ wives, and getting his heart broken by a vixen named Rosemarie.

Then Lydia shows up…he is living with a woman, having several affairs, and now he has this lovelorn teenage hottie to contend with…

A crazy, short and fun novel about a man spiraling downward after losing his job and his way, living in denial and masking his fear in a nutty philosophy of life…when in the end, Boris is just a loser who needs a good woman to steet him right.

Gay Scene by Joan Ellis (Midwood Books, 1962)

Ah, another delighfully fun Joan Ellis sex story with another great Paul Rader cover.

The Gay Scene opens up almost like an Orrie Hitt novel: small town scholl teacher Elise is a bombshell who seems to like married men. She is having an affair with the husband of her childhood best friend. They are caught, and the husband commits suicide.  To escape pain and scandal, Elise leaves and heads for New York and a new life.

She also considers her deep secret yearnings for women. Maybe she’s a lesbian and was only sleeping around to deny her twilight desires?

On her way to New York City, she stops off at a small town motel to get some sleep, and winds up trying her hand as a bar girl to make a few extra bucks.  When  she gets raped, she decides she hates men for good.

In the Big Apple, she meets Carol, a bar model, who gets her a job in that biz.  Carol is bi-sexual and they have an affair — her husband waks in on them and freaks out that his wife is with a lesbian.  Here Elise is doing it again: breaking up marriages.

But Carol leaves her husband so she and Elise can model bras and live together.  Carol introduces her to “the gay scene” in Greenwich Village, and meets Jo, a lesbian she gets a crush on.  Carol is freaky and possessive, and Elise leaves her for Jo, and then leaves Jo for Lorna, the daughter of the old man who runs the brassiere company. Loran is 19 and has a temper problem — here we get a good look at lesbian domestic violence.  Afraid she may one day kill Elise, Lorna leaves New York.

In the end, Elise finds that reltaionships are complicated and painful with either sex.  She and her gay male buddy, Zeth, decide to get married and be each other’s beards.

Probably the best Joan Ellis I’ve read yet.

Reprinted as No Men Allowed.