The Cocktail Bar

Memories of Evenings Past



NOTE: This conversation runs backwards! For the benefit of regular readers the newest comments are put at the top.

Music playing: Miss Marychild's Dance Orchestra with Moonlight and Shadows

Dateline: 28 January 1952

The Vicky Book

Hi Pettes,

 Miranda here, with my report on the Vicky book. I will give it to Miss Featherington tonight, but wanted to show you all first, in case I missed anything that you might catch and then I could correct my report before that librarian reads it. You all will help me, won't you? I know you will 'cuz you're all such swell pettes.
 
 

A Report on The Vicar of Wakefield by Miranda Blonde

Well, there is a family and the Brunette Mommy is a Doctor named Dr. Primrose and the Blonde Mommy is named Deborah and they have six children, but the most important one is Olivia who is abducted and tricked into a false marriage and then deserted, and that starts a whole chain of bad luck. My best friend Ariadne says bad luck comes in groups of three, that if one unlucky thing happens to you, watch out, because two more are coming. But for the Primrose family, bad luck comes in a lot bigger batch than just three. I would say they definitely do not walk down Primrose Lane, if you know what I mean. I love that song, don't you? It goes something like, "Primrose Lane. Life's a holiday on Primrose Lane. Just a holiday on Primrose Lane with you." Well, that song is not about these Primroses, I can tell you that.

 So, lots of bad things happen to them, but everything is all right in the end, with true love happening in all the right places to all the right people. But the really important thing is that one hundred years after Olive Goldsmith wrote about the Primroses, her book was made into a Victorian play, with great costumes, I'm sure. And the play's name was Olivia, just like the movie that was shown at the Odeon last spring. I can't tell you much about the movie 'cept that there were pretty costumes and all the girls fell in love with all the other girls. I mean brunettes fell in love with blondes and the other way around too, of course. But it was a swell night at the moving pictures, I can tell you that, especially since we each got to eat two choc ices so they wouldn't melt, and we were all quite willing to do our bit for the Empire.

 THE END

 Girls, do you think I should spell out the word "except" instead of just using 'cept?

Love,

 MIRANDA

That Librarian Again!

Golly, Girls! The way Miss Katherine (and, indeed, Miranda herself) described Miss Featherington, we expected to find a Very Severe Brunette when we leafed through Miss Leslie's album. But we looked at all twenty pictures, and not a one of them showed a girl even the teensiest bit severe-looking, or even a girl wearing a suit! So we were constrained to call Miss Barbara for an explanation, as we were certain we heard Miss Leslie tell us she had gotten a picture of "that Librarian!"

Well, here she is, girls, behold the formidable Miss Featherington herself! It seems that after three champagne cocktails and a bit of dignified dancing, Miss Featherington removed her suit jacket and relaxed a bit: underneath she was wearing this gorgeous sleeveless silk shantung blouse with delicate beadwork round the collar. Miss Featherington's long, almost black hair is done up in high Kadorie style and her dark eyes are so forgivingly soft that we should feel quite weak-kneed ourselves were they directed at us. Is this the face of an implacable martinette, a stern disciplinarienne? We suspect that Miranda might be exaggerating just the slightest smidge; perhaps she does not want the Library to become as popular as the Aphrodite Cocktail Bar. Can't say we blame her!

"Is this the face of an implacable martinette, a stern disciplinarienne?" asks our Photopette. Well we think it might well be! What a gorgeous, glamorous, but undoubtedly self-possessed and no-nonsense brunette. We have known brunettes just like this to be terribly strict. So don't you pettes get lulled into a false sense of security (though actually the attentions a strict brunette can make a blonde feel very secure).

Appreciating Flora and Nora

How grand to see two pettes who have found the inner soul of intuition and use it to enhance each others beauty. I for one would gladly pay the extra fare just to learn more of such unjealous nature. I'm sure the experience would be totally captivating. That's why I've grown so fond of Aristasia. I hurry home from work each day to learn something new from the real world. Thank you for adding Flora and Nora to my pit escape. A girl needs all the pette power she can get to dream lovely visions of fragrant lands in these cruel, competitive times. On that note I recross my legs, hand over hand on my knee, and lean a little forward to listen to some more stimulating conservation.

 LYCRESS

And Again!

Flora and Nora thrilled me like anything. They reminded me of a delightful Trentish musical comedy film I saw a few months ago set in a theatrical boarding house (I love films about theatrical people, don't you? I am going to be an actress when I grow up). Well, there were some lovely theatrical girls and two of them were Siamese twins. they went everywhere arm-in-arm, sat down together, stood up together, even spoke together often. Then, towards the end of the film some one in a great hurry pushed between them and separated them. Of course they joined up again immediately. but, you see they weren't really Siamese twins at all, it was just their act and they carried their act into every moment of life.

 For me (although they were only the minorest of characters) they were the most important thing in the film. I adored them all along, and the moment when they were briefly separated was the most magical moment in the photoplay. It was charming that their unison was an affectation and not an affliction, and wonderful beyond words that they made every moment of life the Theatre for their delightful Act.

 Shouldn't we all do that - make of life a gorgeous, glamorous Theatre? Isn't "life-Theatre" the very soul of Aristasia?

 With a heart overflowing with love and delight,

 I am your,

 WENDY

Redheads

Oh Genna I'm a redhead too. New to Elektraspace I've had my problems projecting myself as blonde or brunette. I feel neglected, as if red is not accepted as any form of of femininity. I realize it's just a state of mind, blonde or brunette. I'm still red no matter which road I take. I loved your note on posture and agree, it is a delicate, delicious delight to all who once feared up-to-date undergarments. I feel wonderful, all satiny and silky. Not pantyhosed, rolled down saggy itchy yecch. It's so nice to have you on my journey, Genna. I look so forward to exploring these lands with a friend who has the same fears yet curiousity. I hope to see you in the cocktail bar often.

CHERRYLLE

We do know how you new pettes feel. It is difficult to dissociate blondeness from hair-colour at first. The present writer is so blonde in character that at first she wondered about golden wigs and hair-colouring, so worried was she by what some one was sweet enough to call my "Dark, Exotic Looks", pigmentally about the opposite of blonde. But light hair really does not suit my colouring at all. However, I soon realised that a blonde is a blonde whatever the colour of her hair, and if she is as blonde a blonde as I am, she cannot possible hide it. If I pretend to be a brunette, girls just laugh kindly and (if they are brunettes) pinch me to prove I'm not. "There," they say, "What a blonde squeak!"

Another Angel Song

Here is another Angel song for our collection. Perhaps the most charming of all, though I don't know if you can tell that from the words alone. The tune is just exquisite and marries with the words to make a whole that is infinitely greater than the sum of the jolly old parts. Did you hear the heart-stopping Miss Jessie Matthews sing it to her blonde Princess in the pantomime Aladdin? Oh, you'd have died. Laconic sort of sentiment really, but when married to that tune - oh, pettes, if you haven't heard any Trentish dance-band music you're missing a colour from the spectrum. Really you are.
 
 

I'll String Along with You

You may not be an Angel,
'Cause Angels are so few,
But until the day that one comes along
I'll string along with you.

 I'm looking for an Angel
To sing my love-song to
But until the day that one comes along
I'll sing my song to you.

 For every little fault that you have,
Say, I've got three or four.
Those little human faults you do have
Make me love you more and more.

 You may not be an Angel,

 But still, I'm sure you'll do
And until the day that one comes along
I'll string along with you.

 Oh, darlings! I am melting!

 ANNALINDE

Music playing: Miss Marychild's Dance Orchestra with Time on my Hands

Dateline: 27 January 1952

Lingerie and Redheads

Firstly, let me lend my support to Blanche's endorsement of real lingerie. If you are anything like me, you were brought up with bongo propaganda saying how lucky we are to be 'liberated' from the restraining garments of our foremothers. You will have heard horror stories of pinched waists, cruel bones and other painful anecdotes of breath-squeezing corsetry. This entirely one-sided description always left me wary and unwilling to try anything with more than three hooks at the back! But I grew curious, and a deep-seated fascination finally got the better of me. And what a surprise I had! My posture improved immediately and instead of feeling clumsy whenever I wore heeled shoes there was a grace in my movement that was new and strange but felt entirely natural. To any other new pettes out there, let me encourage you to explore those lingerie stores. After all, you'll never really know until you try.

 My second reason for writing is more serious. (Please feel free to exclude this from the bar conversation if you think it inappropriate.) From my understanding of Aristasia, there are Blondes And Brunettes, the distinctions based in nature and personality rather than physical appearances. Though I have tried to reconcile my thinking to this outlook it refuses to give way and I continue to feel as if something were missing; a void which inevitably takes the shape of a Redhead. I have tried to carve up my ideal Redhead into the shape of a fiery Brunette or mischievous Blonde, but to no avail. Something intrinsic always seems to be lost in the process. Please help. I love Elektraspace, yet it feels as if I'm partially blind; I can see red and blue but not yellow, so I can't make all the colours. Are you absolutely sure this duality is a true reflection of the real world? Any response would help. Thanks for listening,

 GENNA

This is a touch complicated, so hold on tight. First of all we must understand that there are two Aristasias - 1) the pure, ideal Aristasia in which men have never existed and 2) the Aristasia we create on earth. This latter is called Aristasia-in-Telluria.

 Now, in the ideal Aristasia hair-colour is a secondary sexual characteristic. Blondes are born with light hair and brunettes with dark hair (actually some brunettes are born with light hair, but it darkens during early childhood). Despite the amusing modula of Strangers in Paradise entitled "Red-Headed Love", it is not really true that in the ideal Aristasia red hair denotes ambisexuality. Actually both blondes or brunettes may have a distinctly red tint to their hair, but they are still unmistakably blonde or brunette.

 Now, in Aristasia-in-Telluria it is quite different. Hair colour is not a secondary sexual characteristic. A blonde may have dark hair, light hair or red hair and it makes no difference at all to her sex. A brunette may have platinum hair without being any less brunette. The present writer is, in fact, a raven-tressed blonde.

 Don't worry if this feels a little strange at first. You'll get used to it - we all do.

Flora And Nora

Sunspots permitting, we will now try to show you a few of the pictures in Miss Leslie's photo album, taken at the Cocktail Party last week. Here is a lovely shot of the McFadden twins, Flora and Nora, seventeen-year old redheaded blondes going on twenty-eight! That's Flora on the left... No! Sorry, that's Nora .... well, maybe it's Flora after all, one can never be sure with these two. Flora and Nora eat together, sleep together, get dressed together, go to class together... They make their own clothes, fix one another's hair (they spent the entire day before the party doing these swell home permanents). They speak either in unison, or else in tag-team fashion, where one will start a sentence and the other will finish it: they may pass the baton back and forth several times for long, gossipy sentences, at which they excel. Flora does most of the adverbs, Nora is better at adjectives. Though their timing is perfect, their cooperative speech has a most unusual (and pleasing) lilt to it because the one thing where they are different is in their voices - Flora's is a little higher than Nora's.

 Flora and Nora are as inseparable as Siamese twins, so a girl does not date Flora or Nora, but Flora and Nora, which can be rather an expensive proposition, particularly as the both have very hearty appetites. Aside from the extra expense, it is almost like dating one girl. No one has yet quite figured out how to dance with them, though if you take them to the movies, they will let you sit between them, a hand in each of yours, which they will squeeze at the very same moments in the film, with identical pressure and duration, accompanied by identical squeals. They even sob in unison at the sad parts. The other girls are always looking for a pair of brunette twins to set them up with - that might be the only way to separate them. Do you know of any?

Exquisite femininity

First a toast to all the silky pettes that found their way to this safe haven. A playful wink to Candida. I notice Blanche out the corner of my eye. My, what a figure she brings to adorn these elegant stools. I must confess I too have found a real love for the proper foundation. Although a bit pricey, I believe every pette should own and wear at least one corset or basque. I have three, all six garter type with lovely little satin covers. I'm especially fond of my red satin basque. From the delicate lift of my bosom to the firm pull of the stockings I'm compelled to be in every way a most charming lady. When I don my black and scarlet, chiffon-lace cocktail gown and accent it with red 4" heels I'm in a world of tranquil fragrant bliss. I feel myself rotating in three directions when I walk. And when I sit I'm automatically urged to cross my silky legs. Mostly I sit with my left hand on my knee showing off my long red nails. I notice Blanche prancing to the powder room. Maybe I'll touch up my makeup a bit.

 LYCRESSE

Charades

You all knew, of course, that Sweet Little Miranda, blonde, was at Miss Barbara's party, too. Now Miranda, it seems, is a whizz at charades, a skill infrequently found in blondes, who usually spend all their allotted time simply blushing and giggling and waving their arms about as if to coax the syllables from the players as a conductress coaxes notes from the orchestra. Miranda has quick, expressive gestures, sometimes almost mime-like. Here's Miss Leslie's photo of Miranda doing the second syllable of her assigned word: Envelope, which took her all of two seconds!
Well that surprised us! We felt sure Miranda would be pretending to pour washing-up powder into some one's hand or holding up the box with a winning smile, like the lovely Quirrie girl on those charming television commercials who says "VEL - it's marVELous.". Yes, even in the old world we see Culverian television commercials - they seem to be the only ones that come through the Iron Curtain.

Hello

My name is Dana and I've managed to gather the nerve to actually drop my first comment to all of you. I live in California and have just started to learn what is out here in Elektraspace. I'm still young enough to remember first hand when the free world and the real-world were nearly the same.

 I'm so glad I found you. For years I thought I was the only one (other than my husband) who tried to live life as it is intended. Clearly defined ideas and roles. I have been fortunate enough to have not gotten too lost in the changing times. For instance, in our family, I am definitely NOT the one who wears the pants.

 I've taken to opportunity to back read the comments posted here to attempt to get the feel of the group. I have found it to be both most interesting and informative. I have also printed out the welcome message and traveller's Guide. Until I have had a chance to read and absorb the information, I have decided not to try and use some of the unfamiliar terms (to me anyway).

 I am happy to say that my husband fully supports my feminine outlook and never argues over the costs involved. Since we live in a VERY large city, he even helps me shop. Often, he discovers items which seem to be overlooked by the pit (am I using this right?) inhabitants. This has included a specialty store which carries girdles (with stocking tabs) and a major department store which actually has garter belts for everyday wear (Not just the "Anniversary or Birthday" junk). Since I have the ability to wear "Real Clothes" to my office, these are extremely welcome. And, I know my hubby appreciates them as well.

 In closing, just let me add a comment to Angela as to my opinion of how one wears her garter belt. Panties on the outside is much more convenient for practical and aesthetic reasons.

 I am looking forward to further exploring Femmeworld and have written for access into the Aphrodite area. I can hardly wait.

 Until next time,

 DANA

Music Playing, The Quirinelles singing: April Love

Dateline: 26 January 1952

Party Pictures!

Hi, Pettes! I'm Leslie. You remember, Leslie, the brunette Sweet Little Angela met at Miss Barbara's cocktail party last week. I am a student at the School of Journalism at the same university Sweet Little Angela attends. Oh, I keep saying "sweet little," but Angela, though she's certainly sweet, is not really little in the physical sense, she is actually quite a large blonde. Well, you have all seen her sketch. But, in my book, all good blondes are "little," if you know what I mean. So Angela is actually quite little as well.

 But that's neither here nor there. What is, is that Miss Barbara insists everything be just so at her parties: you know, invitations done in that gorgeous copperplate hand of hers, hors d'oeuvres right out of the most up-to-date Fannie Farmer cookbook, only real clothes, real music, real dancing, real party games. And so forth. So Miss Barbara asked me to bring my Kadorian Speed Graphic camera to her parties. You know, the 4-by-5 press camera that all Trentish and Kadorie newspaper photographerettes use? So I took at least ten plates, that's twenty photos, and the pictures are just back from the lab! There is a great one of the little blonde McFadden twins, Flora and Nora, trying to act Very Grown Up, and another of the Three Bongo Girls in the dressing room engrossed their own particular transformation into storybook Kadorian blondes, one of Miss Featherington looking rather un-librarian-like (is this a face that launched impositions of hundreds of lines?), one of Miss Barbara... Well, why go on? I'll just show them to you!

LESLIE

[Due to sunspots or something, we were unable to show you Leslie's stunning photos today - Elektraspace diffies - but we will try to post one each day from now on until you have all seen the whole photo album! All we could manage is a photo of Leslie looking over the album and having a giggle.]

Girdle Display!

Oh, Blanche, I liked your picture very much! Thank you for showing it to us. We have been spoiled, haven't we, girls? First Angela, and then Blanche, displaying their girdles for our delectation!

 CANDIDA

Being Naughty by Being Good

Hello Friends,

 Angela and I spoke after the party about how she felt wearing new clothes and trying on a new persona. After she told me that coming to the party was the best thing she ever did, I encouraged her to write down her feelings about it for you pettes here. She hadn't told me the bit about feeling waves of naughtiness, though, and that was the part of her story I found the most interesting.

I think I know just the sensation she means, and for me it is the pleasure of defiance coupled with a sultry sensuality that comes from expressing my innermost femininity all of the time. The greatest irony, though, is that when we put on our girdles and stockings, and when we don our hat and gloves, we are about the least naughty pettes in the world! Still, we are disobeying Daddy Octopus, aren't we, so perhaps that is where those feelings of being naughty come from.

Which puts me in mind of something Susan B. Anthony once said. Yes, she was playing on the wrong team, but this little thing she said was still spot-on I believe. She said that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. And it is true, isn't it? Resist the Octopus and you are obeying Dea. Be the fluffy feminine girl you already are on the inside, the innocent little thing outlawed in the Pit, and you are resisting its tyranny and giving your obedience to the Light.

All my naughty, but in the right way, love,

MISS BARBARA

Music Playing, The Harmonettes singing: Lullabye of the Leaves

Dateline: 25 January 1952

The Bells

Hello Pettes

 I was just sitting here thinking about bells. Yes, bells. Stop to think a minute about bells and you'll realize that they are everywhere in the Free World: church bells, school bells, ringing triangles calling ranch hands to chow, bells on their toes, The Miracle of the Bells, The Bells of St. Mary's, The Three Bells, Serenade of the Bells, The Liberty Bell, and so on.

 Now, I don't have the foggiest idea why bells are everywhere in the Real World, and nowhere in the Pit, but, may I try to be terribly clever and guess? My guess is that bells have an important metaphysical meaning, and that though the Real World was not aware of that meaning, it was still rooted enough in Tradition to use bells as symbols. Am I right, fair sagette? Or am I just hitting a wrong note?

 Love,

AMY

But of course you are right. As right as ninepence! The sound of a bell is traditionally the audial equivalent to the rays of the Sun. The sound links us together, even as does the thread of the Solar Spirit Herself. Bells call us to be together, whether at learning or at worship, or at the simple daily ceremony of dining together at table (note how this ceremony too is under attack in the Pit). In the Old World, bells were always mounted on police cars, fire engines and ambulances, and it is significant that these were replaced first by blaring klaxons and then by wholly unnatural electronic bleeps devoid of any possible human significance and symptomatic of the ethos of the Pit, at once inhuman and clownish.

 On our ordinators at the Embassy we have recorded the sound of a bell and installed it into the system, so that the machines ring at us in a civilised manner (rather like real typewriters) rather than bleep.

Every aspect of Pit anti-culture is designed to poison our souls, and the attack on the golden or silvery ring of bells which has linked human beings together from time immemorial - their replacement by cold, dead alien electronic noises - is all part of the same pattern.

Why Kadorie Fashions Look Perfect: The Secret Revealed

Have all you New Girls been wondering just how all those Kadorie pettes manage to fit in to their slinky, clingy dresses, frocks and gowns? The kind Miss Norma has been showing on these pages for the last several weeks? I'll bet you have! 'Cause I used to wonder as well, until I discovered what every Kadorie girl knows: for that confident, self-contained Myrna Loy-Virginia Mayo look (and feel), a solid, um, foundation is needed.

 Well, I thought I was going to reveal a great secret, but then one of the New Girls, Angela, went and spilled the beans, let the cat out of the bag, stole my thunder! Well, by Dea, I'll tell you the secret just the same, as if Angela hadn't even uttered a peep. So here's the secret, Darlings, straight from Norma's own maggie, McCall's. This is the actual picture and copy from an up-to-date Kadorian ad:

Anybody can have a better figure! Anybody can look better, feel better, wear clothes better, get around better, do bigger and better things, all by placing the body under the slimming, trimming, soothing, smoothing influence of a girdle or panty-girdle, which nowadays come in light-as-air, pleasant-to-wear, elastic yarn fabrics ... they stay up at the top, down at the bottom without pinching, binding or twisting ... they're as flexible as your young bones ... and they're at most stores!

 "But, but..." you New Girls will say, "We cannot find such things where we live, so why do you show them to us at all? You will only make us envious of our Kadorian sisters." Ah, but Darlings, don't overlook the miracle of Fleeming, which, as Miss Barbara and Mrs. de Culver have pointed out on numerous occasions, spirits Real things across the Iron Curtain to us here in Aristasia-in-Telluria.

 I have shown you a true Kadorian ad, and now I shall tell you a true story about Fleeming. I live in an isolated part of Pit-america where fleeming may be good for up-to-date bulldozers, blowtorches and pipe wrenches, but there is precious little in the way of Real feminine clothing to be had - there is hardly anything from Infra-Quirinelle, even. Moreover, since I am a very tiny pette, only five feet one inch tall, it is hard to find clothing of any kind that fits me, even bongo clothing.

 But, by the good fortune of visiting this very Aphrodite Cocktail Bar every night for six months, I met a kind pette who lives in that part of Pit-america where there is a Mother Lode, so to speak, of up-to-date feminine fashions. And guess what! This wonderful Aphrodite Cocktail Bar patronette took down my measurements over Elektraspace, went "custom-fleeming" for me, and mailed me the most adorable up-to-date fashions which fitted me perfectly! Best of all was a baby-blue, six-gartered Kadorie girdle, - the very same hue as the one Angela found in the Changing Room, (what a quincie!), which I told you all about last summer right here in the Cocktail Bar [See Archives 32-35], when four ounces of elasticized yarn transformed me from Brenda, brunette career girl, to Blanche, Kadorian houseblonde.

So I can vouch that sweet little Angela is telling the holy truth: clothes make the woman! Put on these garments and the same will happen to you, I promise! But I was so newly a blonde at the time, and so blondishly shy, that I dared not show you my picture, taken just after the Fleeming package arrived, showing me pulling on new brand-new Real stockings. But now, after seeing Angela's rather, um, steamy account and her lovely self-portrait, my picture seems really quite tame and modest, because all you can really see of my new six-gartered girdle is one satin garter tab! >Tee hee.< So here it is. If it helps just a single one of you switch to Real fashions, it will have been worth it!

 BLANCHE, KADORIAN HOUSEBLONDE

But darlings, if you would like such a garment right away in your exact size. Pop to this delightful girdle emporium.

Slow Boat

Guess What Girlies?

 I know a very up-to-date Kadorie song that begins without a verse at all. In fact, the first lines are bragging about that very fact. You might not have heard this song yet, because our wireless just began playing it regularly last week (it's that up to date)! We get real good reception from Kadoria, y' know. Songs from Vintesse come in a bit scratchy, but Kadorie songs are as clear as if they were coming directly from our very own Quirrie station, just down the street! Well, anyway, here is the song, and I hope you'll like it. I know you will. Who wouldn't?
 
 

On a Slow Boat to China

by Kay Kyser and Her Orchestra

 There is no verse
to this song
'cause I don't want to wait
a moment too long to say that

 I'd love to get you
on a slow boat to China
all to myself alone.

 Get you and keep you
in my arms evermore.
Leave all your lovers,
leave them on a far away shore.

 Out on the briny
With that moon big and shiny,

melting your heart of stone.
Honey, I'd love to get you
on a slow boat to China
All to myself alone.

 [Instrumental] I'd love to get you
on a slow boat to China
all to myself alone.

 A twist in the rudder
and a rip in the sail,
drifting and dreaming,
Throw the compass over the rail.

 Out on the ocean,
far from all the commotion,
melting your heart of stone.

 I'd love to get you
on a slow boat to China,
all to myself,
(with nobody else, yes,)
all to myself alone.

 Love,

 JUNE

Let's Drink to the Right Things!

My goodness, a Tequila Sunrise! Thank you, Lycress. I must say that I think your shoes and coat are lovely. Yes, the Pit-mentality is consuming, isn't it? It would consume all if it were permitted, like Moloch. Let's toast the Cocktail Bar and all who sail serenely in her, safe from the horridness down there, and drink to elegance, normality, wit and wisdom. Cheers!

 CANDIDA

Continue to the Next Archive

Return to the Index