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Dirty Words and How to Use Them
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Dirty Words and How to Use Them front cover
By Alfred Ellison
Published in 1969 by Pendulum Books
This book has a slightly misleading title. When I began reading I hoped that this book would be either a dictionary or style guide for dirty talk and profanity.
While I think that I do fairly well left to my own devices, I would much enjoy a guidebook for dirty talk. Even William Shakespeare would quickly run out of imaginative ways to call his lover a nasty little slut whilst doing the deed, and I know that my dirty talk is far more repetitive than I would like to admit. Sex itself is largely repetitive, so that doesn’t seem like the end of the world. Still I would like to have new things to say when necessary.
Of course, just having new things to say isn’t enough. It’s just as important to have the right words for that special moment. Here too a guidebook would be useful. If Reader’s Digest® had an adult version of “It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power” I would be a regular subscriber. Alas, I am left to my own devices for such things.
Dirty Words and How to Use Them is another of the great faux sociological novels that were prevalent in the 1960s. This particular book examines various types of sexual fetishes driven by the written and spoken word.
Several things stand out about this book. For one thing, it introduces a number of clinical words for dirty things such as coprolalia (defined in the glossary as “sexual pleasure derived from sexual or scatological language.”), erotolalia (same as coprolalia but limited to spoken words), erotographomania (a condition where someone derives sexual pleasure from writings and drawings about sex), and others. Pull those out next time you play Scrabble® – just don’t expect them to be in The Official Scrabble Players® Dictionary.
That said, I would strongly advise against using them if you teasing your lover about you have in store for them later. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would be filled with an overwhelming passion after you told them about your plans to tie them up and engage in an intense round of erotolalia. Then again, perhaps there is such a person out there and I just don’t know them. If that’s you, do drop me a line.
Another thing that stands out about this book is that it is very well written. Even though most of the sex is rather tame compared to many of its contemporizes, the fluid style makes this a fun and easy read. Even though reading about someone who gets their sexual thrill from writing dirty words on the bathroom wall doesn’t sound that interesting, it is.
This is a good read and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
The Sexual Fetish in Today’s Society
02 years ago
The Sexual Fetish in Today’s Society front cover
by Hugh Jones
Published in 1965 by Brandon House
This early representative of the pseudo-sociological exposé is a tough one to review for a couple of reasons. First, unlike many books of this genre that followed, this book does a fairly good job of selling the notion that it is reporting the unvarnished truth. Second, it somehow manages to straddle the imaginary exploitation line of simultaneously condemning and glamorizing the people it mentions.
The first clue that the “facts” we’re about to be introduced to may not be on the up and up, is that the foreword was penned by the imminent pseudo-psychiatrist Dr. Leathem. The appearance of a byline featuring the extraordinarily prolific Dr. Leathem is fair warning that you’re leaving the hallowed halls of the academia to peer through the glory hole in the men’s room stall.
Jones begins by explaining what a fetish is. Surprisingly, rather than suggest that having a fetish is in and of itself clear evidence that one is pathological, Jones takes the position (notably progressive for its time) that a having a fetish may or may not require psychiatric intervention.
Each chapter is devoted to a particular fetish and the book is devoted to the most common fetishes. Oddly, even though this book covers 15 or so fetish categories it is notably thin on lurid details, kinky or otherwise.
The standout chapter in this one is the one devoted to a tight jeans fetish. I’ve read about lots of fetishes (including some that make even me – and likely Jones too if he were familiar with them – cringe) and have never encountered a fetish for tight pants. Don’t get me wrong, there’s likely no bigger booster of hip huggers worn on the right hips than myself, I just never contemplated them as fetish wear per se.
That isn’t why I found this chapter so interesting though. Rather what made it fun to read was that rather than relay accounts from the perspective of a man that enjoyed tight pants, Jones wrote this chapter from the perspective of girls who enjoy the attention they get as a result of wearing them. As the story goes, a certain manufacturer sends out samples of the newest styles to select clubs of girls around the country. The girls then sit around and discuss the merits of the pants and report their thoughts back to the manufacturer. I suspect that the dynamic was supposed to mimic Beatles fan clubs and the like. It’s priceless at any rate.
At the end of the book, Jones includes a selected bibliography that lists most of the famous psychological books about fetishes. This was a nice touch that helps sell the notion that the book is reporting the facts. Unfortunately, I’m still not buying it.
Given the year when this book was published, it’s not too surprising that the book plays coy. Publishers had to be careful to keep their material above board lest they face jail time. Still, this book plays it too safe and fails to either educate or titillate.
If you want vivid, heart pounding erotica, this is not the book for you. But as an early time capsule of erotica disguised as educational material, The Sexual Fetish in Today’s Society is a winner.
Perversion and Beyond
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Perversion and Beyond front cover
by Robert H. Sheldon
Published in 1968 by Viceroy Books
I approached this book with a bit of trepidation and uncertainty that I’d be able to finish it. Not because I don’t like perversion. Those who know me well would vouch for my deep affinity for perversion. My uncertainty arose because the back cover features the word “incest” in large type and that is one of the few perversions I cannot abide by. However, only the first chapter is devoted to that topic and it is thankfully short.
I had hoped the book would take me for a shocking journey into the recesses of the depraved sexual mind. Instead, I journeyed back in time, specifically San Francisco in the 60s at the height of hippie culture.
Having been born after the 60s, and having parents who were anything but counterculture, it’s sometimes hard to relate to the turmoil and confusion of the Vietnam era. While I often hear people who lived through 60s talk about sweeping social revolutions and the incumbent fears that they produced, it usually comes across as self-aggrandizement. Old hippies can claim that they ended the war in Vietnam all they want, but they’re full of shit. I’m certain the Vietcong weren’t sitting around in their tunnels hoping that the next “Love In” was going to be the one that put the peace movement over the top.
But I digress. Good exploitation takes the worst fears of the middle class and puts them on garish display. By that standard, this book is an example great exploitation. (The implied bestiality didn’t hurt matters either.) Most of the tales follow the sexual exploits of outsiders, be they bikers, hippies, the young, blacks, and so on. I can imagine the various exploits of sex and drugs would make the average middle class Midwestern hausfrau flip her wig.
Readers with modern sensitivities may find themselves shocked by some of the racist language in the book. While I learned a new slur “ofay” (a slang term for crackers like myself), it’s not one that I’m likely to ever use. Oh, there’s a lots of uses of the “nigger” thrown in the mix too, and their use is particularly humorous when it’s used immediately before touting someone’s virtues.
If you want an accurate historical document of sexual outsiders, I can’t really recommend Perversion and Beyond, but if you want perversion and/or insight into the fears of the middle class during the end of the 60’s, you can’t go wrong with this book.
The Bisexuals
02 years ago
The Bisexuals front cover
by George Bishop
Published in 1964 by Century Books
As I read The Bisexuals my depraved thoughts returned obsessively to one thing: typesetting. Why typesetting? Because The Bisexuals is so riddled with typesetting errors that I sometimes wished for a “Rosetta Stone” to help decipher it.
I debated rearranging this review so that it would be as poorly presented as some passages in the book. But since I’m the only one who would get the joke and no one else would realize the errors were intentional, I decided to spare everyone the torment that I suffered through in trying to decipher this book – there are limits to my sadistic streak.
Were this book printed overseas, I could have excused the typesetter on the theory that English wasn’t his native language. Unfortunately, in what is likely the only valid claim in the whole book, the title page says that the book was printed in the USA – shooting in the foot the notion that Americans used to take pride in their work.
Claiming to be “actual sex case histories collected by … the Western Adult Institute in its nationwide study on Sexual Incompatibility,” The Bisexuals crudely attempts to trace bisexuality through time and apply a “scientific” psychoanalytic approach to bisexual “deviation.” But beware, this book is to scientific inquiry what alchemy is to chemistry.
Still, there are a few good things about this book that kept me reading. For one, the prose flows easily and provides the requisite amount of salacious detail.
The chapter devoted to the Succubus was particularly interesting. Whether the tale of Carmen d’Angelo is historically true, I don’t know (a fast internet search turned up nothing), but the image of a repressed young man taking refuge in a cave and tying a leather thong to his cock to keep his sexual urges at bay was quite an entertaining yarn either way. Also interesting is the crime spree of Marcel Bonaventure (again, searching the internet turned up nothing). This passage proved un-arousing, but interesting all the same.
My favorite passage in the book is this quote credited to E. Burns Clarke (another likely fictitious source):
“An extreme form of this perversion (bisexuality) Burns Clarke continues, “is found when the woman watches a man have sexual intercourse with another woman and then, immediately following the orgasm, rushes to orally embrace his partially erect member, thus, in effect, performing the lesbian and heterosexual functions simultaneously by vicariously making love to the woman as well…”
How this man anticipated my fantasies several years before I was born, I don’t know. That he characterizes them as “an extreme form of this perversion” only serves to warm my little twisted heart.
Other highlights (or lowlights depending on your perspective) include bestiality, finger fetishism, and others.
Even though this book suffered from its poor printing quality and is an obvious work of fiction, I still enjoyed it and you may too.