Dance of the Sun Goddess

[Lucius]

You could if you like edit in some icb blocks explaining those words and places making it educational too:

He sat in his

fiacres

then put a blurb here about what that is and its history and maybe link to more information

smoking his

cigarette

a product of tobacco that many cultures used to burn and inhale the smoke of to relax and get some extra clarity of mind and pleasure, they sometimes had a filter and was usually a white cylinder of paper held between index and middle finger or in lips, and sometimes placed in a long narrow decoratibe tube holder for style and to get the ember of fire away from flammable hair and clothes

.

You can quote the post to see how it works if you want

I see. I might give it a try with another story.

[chloevee]

History and consent stories are usually not my cup of tea, but I enjoyed this one. It was beautifully written and surprisingly sweet.

I agree with @Claire that for someone ignorant of the history, a lot of the story was lost. Luckily I share @Vela Nanashi's habit of skimming over things I don't get, so I could still enjoy the story.

I liked both Jo and Spally as you portrayed them, and their contrasting perspectives were entertaining--and impressively done.

This part cracked me up:

But wasn't having the tight bum that wiggled at least 120 times per minute more important and admirable than having white skin?

Would that today's racists were so polite and open-minded!

[Lucius]

History and consent stories are usually not my cup of tea, but I enjoyed this one. It was beautifully written and surprisingly sweet.

That was some strangely flavoured oolong tea I brewed, I know. Glad you've liked it!

I agree with @Claire that for someone ignorant of the history, a lot of the story was lost. Luckily I share @Vela Nanashi's habit of skimming over things I don't get, so I could still enjoy the story.

I liked both Jo and Spally as you portrayed them, and their contrasting perspectives were entertaining--and impressively done.

Good to know! It took a lot of work to make them (remotely) believable, and I'd like to reuse Spally and Jo later. I tried to keep their narration in character and their expressions appropriate -- say, 'death warmed over' was first attested in 1931, but I think four years here and there is acceptable.

Getting 1927 Paris right was another thing -- Spally almost ejaculates prematurely while being driven along the Avenue Ferdinand Ier de Roumanie which existed for 10 years only, from earlier in 1927 to 1937 when the Trocadéro district was rearranged.

This part cracked me up:

But wasn't having the tight bum that wiggled at least 120 times per minute more important and admirable than having white skin?

Would that today's racists were so polite and open-minded!

[Claire]

Ok, I made the decision to come back bere and to push through. And I have to say, once I got through the exposition heavy opening, it got easier to follow what was actually happening. I also liked how you leaned a bit more into the conversation between Spally and Jo after the first round of sex. I really wish you had given us more of that earlier in the story. And as with other stories of yours, this reads to me like the opening to a longer tale, like the introduction to the setting and main characters before the actual plot gets going. I could see this go into several different directions. I'm not sure whether this would be historically accurate, but Spally getting into trouble for having slept with a black woman could be one fun development I could see coming out of this. But if you were to spin this into a longer narrative, any idea what would be the inciting incident that gets the events rolling? I really would like to see how you write a story with a conflict to resolve.

I think it's a shame that @HistBuff never commented on this.

[Lucius]

Ok, I made the decision to come back bere and to push through. And I have to say, once I got through the exposition heavy opening, it got easier to follow what was actually happening.

Happy to know that!

Do you think the opening should be made lighter, i.e. shorter?

I also liked how you leaned a bit more into the conversation between Spally and Jo after the first round of sex. I really wish you had given us more of that earlier in the story. And as with other stories of yours, this reads to me like the opening to a longer tale, like the introduction to the setting and main characters before the actual plot gets going.

I hope the sex was good too.

I could see this go into several different directions. I'm not sure whether this would be historically accurate, but Spally getting into trouble for having slept with a black woman could be one fun development I could see coming out of this. But if you were to spin this into a longer narrative, any idea what would be the inciting incident that gets the events rolling?

Getting in trouble -- no, not really, back then the 'a dead girl or a live boy' standard for establishment figures reigned in the UK.

Prince George having an affair with Florence Mills wasn't much.

Writing love letters to boys WAS.

Okay, let's see... Spally and Josephine getting into a fight with Americans from Dixie, all of them ending up in a police station, is a possibility. But then we lose sexy time.

A longer story? RL constrains us with Josephine, so she can get beaten by her 'husband'-manager and swear off prolonging her career of dancer-cum-courtesan at the Folies. Learning about the spectacular death of Isadora Duncan -- she has been dead for a few hours by the time Spally meets Josephine, her death'll make the morning papers -- can push Josephine to rethink certain aspects of her art and to consider what she wants to do when the Folies season ends.

Spally is fictional, but he has no reason to change at the moment, hence he's less interesting. Spally collects women, and that's it.

I really would like to see how you write a story with a conflict to resolve.

Right, Josephine's and Spally's conflicts are all internal -- and pretty much irresolvable. They'll have to step away from their hedonistic pursuits and make a stand against the swastika. It'll require some serious inner struggle. But it'll happen twelve years later.

Conflict? We'll see.

[Claire]

Do you think the opening should be made lighter, i.e. shorter?

Yes, but length is not the main issue, it depends on what you do with... ok, I'll stop. But seriously... First, I would in general not start with that much exposition, at least not in a short story. The short length of the story alone tells me already that this can't all be important. And since I naturally have no reason to care yet about Spally or anybody else, why should I care about all this surrounding information? And then it is just overkill in terms of details. I did something interesting to confirm a suspicion I had. I suspected that you name dropped at least something like 20 people in what I would consider the introduction to the story:

► Show Spoiler

Spally gently tapped his fingers against the walnut strip running under the window of his Rolls-Royce. As if answering the call, one of the raindrops from the shower that had just left off slithered down the glass, meeting others, merging with them in a flurry of encounters, speeding up. His eyes followed the watery path until the thin streak reached the bottom and disappeared.

It was well past midnight. She was taking her time.

The stage door swung open, a silhouette breaking the tall rectangle of electric light. Not even a chorus girl—just a stage underling who stopped to light a cigarette before disappearing down the dimly lit Rue de Saulnier. Spally shifted, stretching his long legs, glanced at Jules the chauffeur who sat impassively behind the wheel.

How many times did Spally see Josephine dance—four? Once in the Revue Nègre that made her famous, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, when he was most awfully drunk. Thrice here, at the Folies Bergère. He had already seen the ‘hyper-revue’ Un Vent de Folie last spring, when on his way to Berlin to take his mind off the grim subject of death duties and taxes.

Tonight was the second time. In the plantation scene Josephine danced with that familiar bent-kneed sway, her movements deliberately awkward, clad in a variation of the ragamuffin costume she’d worn in the Revue Nègre. Elsewhere, she kicked through a Charleston in a skirt of billowing marabou feathers. Then came the metallic bathing suit, its rhinestone straps tracing the curves of her beautifully formed bare breasts. The banana skirt returned, too—this time more glittering, more severe, as if the fruit itself had hardened over time, sharpening into something closer to spikes. And for the finale, diamond balls dangled like dewdrops from the tips of her red-gloved fingers—

The door opened again, and he cocked his head expectantly. A showgirl this time. The young woman hurried past the Rolls-Royce without looking, her heels clattering loudly on the wet cobblestones. The clear-cut profile, the straight fine nose—a thrill of recognition ran through him.

La Nicolska! Last March it was the Russian ballerina he was waiting for here, sitting in a motor-car. A little farther down the street, perhaps.

The dancers of the Folies Bergère had always been available—for a high price. Paris had the best bordellos in the world, but bedding a Folies showgirl was the glamorous pinnacle of carnality offered by the City of Light. Every evening, after the show was over, long sleek cars were lined neatly along the Rue Saulnier, their owners—bankers, politicians, aristocrats—sitting in the back. Waiting for the dancers to emerge. Spally knew that in the times of fiacres Father used to wait here too.

Lila Nicolska was welcomed by someone looking like a millionaire from the Argentine—which he probably was—and stepped daintily into the waiting Hispano-Suiza. Six months ago it was Spally who enjoyed the beauteous body of the Russian, giving her body joy in return. He recalled her green eyes, glassy with lust. Daughter of a tsarist general, Lila spoke good French. However, their inter-coital chitter-chatter took an ugly turn when Spally mentioned Josephine. Classically trained Lila had her ballet number, ‘Une hostellerie sous Louis XIII’, juxtaposed with Josephine doing her magic in the ‘American Bar 1927’. In no time the Russian was spitting venom—cette sauvagesse, cet singe noir, cette bête fauve! Cette salope was a bit rich given the circumstances. Spally silenced the angry, naked Slavic votaress of Terpsichore with a long kiss and took her again, saying to himself that he ought to bed Josephine next time.

Sensualism was one of the family traits of the Trusbut-Parr-Cossingtons. Was it the fault of Sir William Cossington, a faithful supporter of Henry VII? He took to wife Eleanor Peever, the heiress of the notorious family descended from Roger, the Bishop of Salisbury in the times of King Stephen, and Maud of Ramsbury, his harlot? Spally recalled the thrill of discovering that in his family tree.

Marrying heiresses was another family trait. It helped the Cossingtons acquire lands and noble titles—seven of the latter, actually. Spally’s nickname was derived from the courtesy title Marquess of Spalding that he had borne until the last year when Father died and he inherited his dukedom. Now Spally was the tenth Duke of Evesham, the proud owner of 125,000 acres, a string of country houses, including the great Italianate palace of Frith, a town residence in Mayfair, a villa on the French Riviera and a fine collection of Old Masters.

Spally inherited a certain weakness for dancing-girls as well. His father almost married Edith George, a stunning Gaiety girl, before his betrothal to the only daughter and heiress of the last Earl of Nuneaton. It was Lady Alice who became the Duchess of Evesham and Spally’s mother. Edith George had to settle for Lord Pangbourne.

As for Spally, in the stuttering, fervid days of the last autumn of the War—Father far away at Salonika, Mother at Frith, turned into an Army hospital— he dipped his toe in the hedonistic waters of the Chelsea artistic world on the rare days when he contrived to leave Eton. A bit of an aesthete, he loved music and played the piano as often as he could. In London on an exeat, he was lucky to be relieved of his virginity by Margaret Morris the modern dancer. To borrow a Tacitean phrase, the beautiful and venturesome Margaret became his magistra libidinum.

Post-war promiscuity suited Spally well—he had become a notorious petticoat-hunter. The King was wont to say marrying too young was a bad thing, and Spally wholeheartedly agreed with his liege lord’s sentiment, even if he regarded George V and Queen Mary as insufferably dull. His father once sought to win the attention of Princess Victoria, and it was rumoured that Bertie could well accept the ninth Duke of Evesham as his son-in-law. The Princess of Wales, however, raised an adamantine wall around her beloved Toria.

His views upon the subject of marriage notwithstanding, the young grandee became the butt of every ambitious debutante’s arrow during his first London season after taking his seat in the Lords. Spally was glad to have made his escape from the little ladies and their unbearable mothers drawn by his strawberry-leaved coronet, first to his Yorkshire grouse moor and then to Venice.

Making his way home, Spally decided to spend a few days in the City of Light. He stayed at his uncle’s hotel particulier in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, Lord John having abjured Paris, unbearably rainy that summer, for Capri. Spally availed himself of Lord John’s Rolls-Royce along with Jules the chauffeur. It was he who was paying Lord John’s generous allowance now, was he not?

Now Spally was to spend the night with the coloured dance hall star. He saw no reason not to sate his sexual curiosity. His ducal title, next to the Crown itself in degree, placed him well above every other subject of the British Empire, black or white. He knew that mentally the Negroes were inferior to the whites—that’s what anthropology taught and the Encyclopaedia Britannica said. But wasn’t having the tight bum that wiggled at least 120 times per minute more important and admirable than having white skin?

Carter, his Johannes factotum inherited from Father, had made all necessary arrangements. Yesterday ten crisp thousand-franc notes changed hands, and half an hour ago Carter took care of delivering a bouquet of roses, a diamond bracelet tucked between the petals.

The door flew open.

Josephine Baker dashed out—Jules sprung out and managed to open the door for Spally in time, but only just.

‘I am delighted to welcome you, Miss Baker,’ Spally shook the warm hand of the coloured star.

‘Hey there, Duke!’ Josephine eased her lithe body onto the back seat with a broad grin, flashing her large white teeth. Spally followed her, Jules closing the door behind them with a soft thud.

‘Sho’ is nice to meet ya—oh, and call me Jo!’ Josephine shoved the bracelet down along her wrist until the diamonds flashed from under the sleeve of her lamb coat. ‘Much obliged!’ She planted a hearty smack on Spally’s cheek. ‘Let’s get rollin’—how ’bout Le Boeuf?’

‘Let’s go… Jo,’ Spally gave a small nod of assent, his smile widening. Her fingers drummed at the glass partition. ‘Le Boeuf, vite!’ they said in unison and laughed.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Two hours later, she was devouring her favourite spaghetti with red pepper at her small cabaret, Chez Joséphine, from time to time glancing across the table at the plain face of the Duke bathed in the cool light of blue chandeliers, his cheeks flushed bright pink from all that alcohol and dancing. Jimmy Walker, the Prohibition-floutin’ Mayor of New York, at her club last night, the Duke tonight—little Josephine was comin’ up in the world!

She liked what she saw. The Britisher had a good build—tall and lean and fine-boned, even if his shoulders could of been broader for her liking. Pleasant smile too—shame ‘bout that long thin nose of his. There was lust burnin’ in his green eyes, but real warmth could be glimpsed there from time to time. The Duke couldn’t keep up with her Charleston moves—shoot, no surprise there! Leastways he tangoed well.

His golden hair had looked just swell in the warm gold lighting of Le Boeuf sur le Toit, Josephine having taken him there first. Le Boeuf was a chic boîte de nuit filled with men in tuxedo jackets and women in Chanel, Lanvin or Vionnet, mixing with a few poets, painters, and—how did the Duke call ’em boys?—‘muliebrous pederasts’, that it! Whatever ‘muliebrous’ meant.

The American Legion was about to hold its convention in Paris, and former doughboys were filling the city. They were there at the Folies, quite a few of them drunk and ogling her bare breasts with half-insane leers. There’d be many more of them in the coming days. Tonight she just didn’t want to hear ‘nigger’ and ‘nigger-lover’ from the lips of a cracker. Didn’t want the Duke to hear that neither. Shoot, no good ole boy from Podunk, Alabam would dare to get a drink at the Boeuf’s bar with Picabia’s Cacodylic Eye hanging above it, staring right at him outta a welter of scribbles, nossuh!

Josephine and the Duke danced and bantered and danced some more—Le Boeuf had a brilliant jazz pianist and a great horn player, too. The Duke drank champagne—Josephine demurred, never drinking anything stronger than beer. She didn’t smoke neither. The spindly, pale Jean Cocteau came to greet her and the Duke, his eyes awful red from all that opium he smoked like it’s his job. Cocteau was with Louis Aragon—tall, dark, slim and looking oh so fine, his eyes keen and bright.

There was that wicked thought of flattin’ her Britisher and leaving’ with Aragon right there and then, but the French swell was with that awful Nancy Cunard from England—her hair the colour of ash, her face slathered thick with white greasepaint, her thin arms covered from wrists to shoulder with African ivory bracelets.

Sho’ ’nuff the Duke knew Nancy. He knew the Boston Crosbys, rich and crazy as bedbugs, too. Harry Crosby looked like death warmed over—Caresse said he’d just gotten over a bad spell of fever. Josephine figured by the looks exchanged between the Duke and Caresse that there’d been something between those two. Not Jo’s business, that.

Long ago in Saint Louis little Josephine was fascinated by a kaleidoscope, the colourful shards of glass flicking into new patterns with each twist and turn of the tube. The conversation that folded and unfolded at the bar was a kaleidoscopic one. Her French much better lately, she followed it, taking little part. The wrecks of planes lost in the Atlantic—so many valiant flyers dying in the last few weeks!—drowned in the memories of Lucky Lindy’s great success, and then the ocean suddenly splashed across Boston, the waves rolling to the stop against the sturdy legs of the electric chair that killed Sacco and Vanzetti last month. His Ballet Mécanique a big succès de scandale last year, the squished-nosed George Antheil and his Hungarian wife, Boski, joined them the bar, both tanned and smiling, just back from Tunisia, and the parched bleakness turned into hot African desert.

Another click of the kaleidoscope—out of the desert sand sprung the head of Ambassador Rakovsky, who had called on the workers and soldiers in the capitalist countries to rise up and defend Soviet Russia in the case of war. Aragon, nigh in a frenzy—Nancy been making eyes at the young Comte Armand de La Someplace—declared himself a Party member.

Josephine’s Duke tore up the patch. The red star in the kaleidoscope dissolved into the Imperial red on the map, which turned into the blood of Count Nardini, the Italian vice-consul shot and killed here in Paris on Monday. The Duke held forth on his hope and belief that the British Empire was on increasingly good terms with Italy. Praised Mussolini into the bargain too. A dark-haired, olive-skinned gal passing by glared at him—one of them exiled Italian anarchists, like as not.

Josephine didn’t care about Mussolini.

Louis Aragon did.

Be that as it may, before the Communist heart-throb, now beet-red in the face, could speak his mind, Cocteau—his eyes the only thing red about him— deftly swerved the conversation towards the alcoholic butcher Sadilleck who had gone on a stabbing spree in the Paris–Boulogne express, killing one—only to die of D.T.’s in his cell. Aragon talked jailhouse murder.

‘We were all part of Eternity. Sun-Eternity! And we gave the Sun all the gold. I must plunge into the black Sun—naked and alone…’ Harry Crosby switched to English. By Josephine’s lights, he’d better not go on. White men sure were odd creatures.

It was high time to leave for Chez Joséphine anyhow. She dragged the Duke away from Aragon wishing for the guillotine on Trafalgar Square.

Jules took them to Rue Fontaine. It was a quarter past one o’clock when she burst through the doors of Chez Joséphine amid a fanfare from the stage, her white maids, her goat, her pot-bellied pig and the Duke in tow. Inside she mingled with the patrons, white and black, men and women, exchanged a few words with the amazing Colette, then Charlestoned and tangoed with the Duke, watching their reflections in the many cut-glass mirrors around the stage, watching and feeling his tender fingers on her naked brown skin, displayed in the deep V-shaped cut at the back of her green dress.

Familiar warmth pooled low in her stomach. No backing away tonight.

She knew that Pepito, her manager and lover, was looking at them. His stare was pricking her skin. He managed all her contracts, papers, business proposals. He had full control of her finances and of everything she owned. Lately Pepi had become tight as a tick, doling out an allowance so meager that Josephine, one of the highest paid stars in Europe, often ran short and had to lean on credit.

Ten thousand francs was good money. Good enough to sleep with a man who’d never hit a lick, whose life was all owning and not doing. Must have been nice battenin’ on all that lands of his—she had to hoof it for every franc she got.

Pepito was gonna be spittin’ like a goose a-shittin’ later. Hurt her, perhaps. She loved Pepito, but to hell with him tonight. Au diable!

‘Jo, your dancing is unique. You possess a certain… uninhibited quality that is quite startling,’ the Duke’s eyes sparkled. Josephine reckoned that wearing a midnight blue tux instead of black, like this time, was his idea of ‘unhibited’.

‘That’s just me, honey. Can’t help it,’ Josephine answered, her mouth full of spaghetti. ‘Gotta shake what your mama gave ya, right?’ She finished chewing and leant back, letting the fabric of her dress pull taut across her breasts. ‘Ain’t nobody back home ever thought I'd be dancin’ on no big stage in Paris. They said I was too skinny, too loud. Too much.’

‘Yet here you are. The talk of Paris.’ The Duke went for another crêpe with caviar. At Chez Joséphine, they were the bee’s knees—she took care of it.

Josephine snorted lightly. ‘Honey, I just like to dance. Turns out folks here like to watch a girl havin’ fun.’

‘’Tis true, they certainly do.’

At last her fork clattered onto the empty plate. She recalled how here in Paris she had tasted spaghetti for the first time in her life—eatin’ with her fingers! She almost laughed at the memory.

‘Shall we go?’ The Duke looked at her, then at the mural covering one wall, depicting a painted Josephine dancing. ‘I’m at a small house in La Muette,’

‘Sho’ ’nuff, Duke. Sho’ ’nuff,’ she said, giving him another toothsome smile. ‘Yours for the night, ain’t I?’

I gave that excerpt to chatGPT and asked it to list all named people to see whether I was right. And I have not checked whether the list it created is complete or maybe confuses some characters, but here is what it spit out:

• Spally (the tenth Duke of Evesham; formerly the Marquess of Spalding, "the Duke")
• Jules (the chauffeur)
• Josephine Baker ("Josephine", "Jo")
• Lila Nicolska ("La Nicolska")
• Sir William Cossington
• Henry VII
• Eleanor Peever
• Roger, Bishop of Salisbury
• King Stephen
• Maud of Ramsbury
• Edith George
• Lady Alice (Duchess of Evesham)
• Lord Pangbourne
• Margaret Morris
• George V
• Queen Mary
• Princess Victoria ("Toria")
• "Bertie" (the Prince of Wales)
• Lord John
• Carter (Spally’s factotum)
• Jimmy Walker
• Francis Picabia
• Jean Cocteau
• Louis Aragon
• Nancy Cunard
• Harry Crosby
• Caresse Crosby
• "Lucky Lindy" (Charles Lindbergh)
• Sacco and Vanzetti (Nicola Sacco; Bartolomeo Vanzetti)
• George Antheil
• Boski (Antheil’s Hungarian wife)
• Ambassador Rakovsky
• Comte Armand de La Someplace
• Count Nardini
• Benito Mussolini
• Sadilleck (the butcher)
• Colette
• Pepito ("Pepi"; Josephine’s manager/lover)
• The Princess of Wales (unnamed; referenced by title)

I think these are 39 people. That excerpt is (according to wordcounter.net) 2817 words long. That means you throw a new character at the reader roughly every ~72 words. And ultimately, except for 2, they are all irrelevant. And throughout this entire introduction, I get that Jo and Spally will have sex, but I'm constantly wondering what else will be relevant. And I think the honest answer is: nothing.

For example, before I finished the story, I would have bet that the central conflict that the story revolves around will be the rivalry between Josephine and Lila Nicolska and that Spally will get caught in the middle of this as he has an affair with both of them at the same time. The story gives me all this characterization for Lila the diva: speaks french, daughter of a general, hates Josephine, has a temper, classically trained, ballet dancer, green eyes. My brain that's looking for meaning thinks she must be important... and then she's just not.

And don't get me wrong, not every named character needs to play a major role in the story. But if I were to name drop Jules the chauffeur, then the story would include a shown, not told, interaction between him and Spally. And I would use that to communicate to the reader how Spally treats him for example. Does he look down on him? Are they friends? What's their banter like if there is any? Maybe Spally asks him for advice on how to impress Josephine, thus communicating to the reader that getting her to come with him is his goal and that this is what the story is about? In the text as it is now, it feels like Jules is mentioned because realistically there would be a chauffeur. So it's there for authenticity, which is good, but it's authenticity without meaning. And the sheer volume of inclusions like that turns all those carefully and lovingly crafted details into... Let me put it like this. Either, this flood of information overwhelms the reader trying to make sense of it all like it did for me, or it becomes white noise just rushing past the reader like it did for Vela and Chloe.

And I get that this is partially on me. I have a hard time just skimming through a section like this and telling myself that 90% is not important anyway, so if I don't follow all of it, it's not that bad. @Vela Nanashi and @chloevee are both clearly better than me when it comes to just rolling with it and enjoying the sexy time that ultimately follows even if they don't fully understand how they got there. That is a skill I clearly lack. But in general, even if readers can do that, I think you don't want them to do that.

So I guess my recommendation would be:

• Less exposition
• Give me exposition after you made me care about what the exposition is informing me about
• Reduce the name density (or more general: reference density) drastically.

I hope the sex was good too.

Yes, but I felt a bit mentally drained when I got there.

[Vela Nanashi]

Well I am not sure if this has as much name density as silmarillion or less or more. I was not really confused about the names, I could tell most would not feature in the story, and I know nobles can talk names gor hours as if it matters to most folks, that he knows his driver's name does tell me he is not totally horrible though, some nobles see the common folk like driver, butler, maid, not caring for names.