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Book: Spread Read Free
Author: Barry Malzberg
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show, meaning that I would have won $1260 for my $200 if I had only been cautious as I had been the first time. It is, however, too late for considerations of this sort.
    I begin to wonder why I am at the track. I decide to leave. I have forgotten the woman already but passing the Stevens cigarette stand I see her by herself, casting darting glances through the crowd, her hands fluttering as she reaches into her handbag for a cigarette, a certain fine beam of despair in her glance. I find that I have no stomach to leave her there and instead go over and tell her that I am now ready to leave but have lost several hundred dollars on a bad tip and am therefore unable to entertain her.
    She gives me a complex look of bitterness, pain, and communion and says that I have obviously had the situation all wrong. That she is not that kind of person at all. That she would not permit herself to go around with a person who saw her in that way. That I have done nothing less than cheapen her in such a way that she literally is ashamed of herself for ever having spoken to me.
    She moves to slap my face but I dodge agilely enough and move quickly down the stairwell and to the ground level, then out to the parking lot. My stride is loose, easy, a certain space seems to lay between my feet and the asphalt; unforeseen, a strange, manic tune begins to burble out of my throat. If I did not know better — but surely by this time I know better — I could almost swear that I have had a good time at the races and that like everyone there, I have found exactly what I was looking for.

X
    Not since our fifth issue have we run pictures showing couples actually engaged in the act of sexual intercourse. The law of the land, as interpreted through the Supreme Court, seems clear enough: nothing that has socially redeeming value may be denied the rights of publication and mass distribution and all published materials have this socially redeeming value since they are an expression of certain phases of the culture, social obsessions, so to speak, and an index of the taste of thousands. Despite this, the District Attorney of Kings County, through his minions, seized several thousand copies of our fifth issue, the centerfold of which showed a man and woman lying side by side, his erect penis in the act of penetrating her vagina. The contention of the District Attorney was that this picture was pornography
per se
and unentitled to the protection of the First Amendment, and the efforts of our attorneys to block the action at the level of the first hearing were unsuccessful. The case went on appeal to the next highest court, but in the meantime the District Attorney carried an injunction enjoining all newsdealers in his borough from carrying further issues of our newspaper since the offending publication indicated that we were likely to print pornography in the future. Because of this, several of our outlets in the other boroughs became panicky and substantially cut down their orders for issues, while all hopes of out-of-town distribution were lost. Our attorneys stated that the action of the District Attorney was illegal and the case, when it got into the higher courts, would certainly be decided in our favor, but in the meantime we were faced with the possibility that the actions of the District Attorney could put us out of business. Sales of our sixth issue were off 75 percent from those of the fifth and of the seventh were even worse, and the clearest projections showed that we would hardly last another month unless the pressure on us was removed.
    Our attorneys, then, worked out an agreement with the District Attorney whereby he would withdraw his injunction if we in return would promise not to run offending material in the future. We were not to show couples in the actual act of intercourse, we were not to show manipulation of the genitals and we were not to depict any acts which in the opinion of the District Attorney could be labeled an incitement to riot.

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