Down The Rabbit Hole

This is for my challenge at Real Toads, where I've asked people to imagine that they've gone through a portal in time and into September of 1958.

Reds are the big bogeymen here.
"Russians, yanno, they got no freedoms, not like we do here."
Pardon my unladylike snort.

I spend most nights at Gracie's.
It's a club, but you have to know where it's at.
There's no neon sign, no Yellow Pages ad.
It's tucked away off the main street
and looks like a warehouse from the outside.
Martha Stewart would take one look and have kittens.

When I walk in, the bartender says, "Hey, sister."
She's wearing a man's white tuxedo and it never looked so good.
Women dance together or sit at tables in the low light and talk, 
while holding hands or wrapped together kissing.
It's a sweet place, where a girl can let her hair down,
or tuck it up under a fedora.

Like I say, it's a sweet place, but every few weeks,
the cops raid, and we get our names printed in the morning paper.
Last week, Elaine lost her job because of it;
she was really tired, I could see it in her face.
There's nothing like a long bath to restore a girl's spirits,
but she took a pack of razor blades in with her,
and we won't be seeing her here anymore.

Nights I don't go to Gracie's, I stay home and read.
I can only find two books--
The Well of Loneliness, that they banned in England, stupid Brits,
and The Price Of Salt by "Claire Morgan."
Claire Morgan is really Patricia Highsmith.
She published Strangers On A Train under her own name.

I want a job doing something more than waitressing,
but it's not easy.
I applied to Disney as a cartoonist, but they sent me a nice letter back
that said they only hire male artists.
Straight movies, straight people, straight world, and a man's world besides;
a girl could lose her mind.

Oh well, sugar, after three more years fly by,
I'll have Laura Petrie in her capri pants to lust after.
My cup runneth over.

One nation
Til then, I'll spend my time at Gracie's
under God
as a sister of the Order
indivisible
a Twilight Girl running under the apple pie radar
with liberty and justice
until John Law raids again to satisfy the national morals
for all
but I can't stop thinking about Elaine,
her life's blood slowly leaving her,
a sacrifice for the lukewarm tap water she couldn't survive in.
________