In Praise of Indecency

by Paul Krassner

  I’ve become obsessed with it. I’m seeing a psychiatrist twice a week now. She practices hypnotic age regression, and she took me all the way back to when I was being breast-fed, and my mother wore glasses, and that became associated with sensuality. And now that I understand the cause of my fixation, I can begin to wean myself from it.

  Q. What’s next for you, then ?

  A. Well, I’ve learned that digitalized pornography on cell phones is a huge business overseas, and it’s coming to America. Cingular Wireless, the country’s largest cell phone service, has quietly launched filtering devices and password-enable blockers that will help thwart underage consumers from buying adult content. But what we’re more concerned about is a new trend where adult film stars make groaning and moaning noises for cell phone ring tones. It feels like the whole world is getting completely out of control—our control.

  REMEMBERING PUBIC HAIR

  REMEMBERING PUBIC HAIR

  Okay, call me old-fashioned, but I still like pubic hair. Internet porn sites now present several choices—completely shaved, vertical landing strips that look like exclamation points, heart shaped, the Charlie Chaplin with just a little patch above the clitoris, and a tiny triangle that serves as an arrow pointing to the clit—yet, for pubic follicles one has to search the Web for “hairy” sites that are considered as “specialty,” “kinky” or “fetish.”

  Retired porn stars have commented on this phenomenon. Gina Rome, retired after six years, shaved every day. “It was part of getting ready for work.” When she switched from acting to film editing, she stopped shaving and let her pubic hair grow out. “Shaving was work. I don’t have to do it any more, so I don’t.” And Kelly Nichols says, “I was a Penthouse model in the early 1980s, and I posed with a full bush. No one in adult entertainment shaved back then. Now everybody does.”

  Although Martha Stewart is back on TV, you can be sure that she’ll never give any suggestions on what to do about those big red razor bumps that result from shaving your vagina, so here’s a helpful hint I’d like to pass along—they can be largely eliminated with, of all things, Visine eye drops.

  The porn industry has played an important part in shaping pubic styles. Jordan Stein writes in an article titled “Has Porn Gone Mainstream?”: “Consider the near icon status the female pom star has achieved. She is so mainstream that even good girls are imitating her various styles of undress, disappearing hair and all. Pom chic? You bet.”

  However, Julia Baird writes in Celebrity Porn: “The idea that the fashion industry can strip, then exhibit women in the name of ‘porn chic’ is a bit silly, frankly. But, ‘flesh is the new fabric’ could be the new catchcry. Americans call their bush George W. It’s fashionable—the curious fact is that it is fueled by the pom aesthetic that celebrities love to love.”

  Among Hollywood actresses, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kirstie Alley have both admitted favoring Brazilian wax jobs, where most of their pubic hair is removed, leaving a small tuft that remains hidden under a thong bikini. Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Carrie Bradshaw, had her pubic hair removed during the third season of Sex and the City. Presumably, it’s now in the Smithsonian museum along with Archie Bunker’s chair and the Fonz’s jacket.

  On ABC’s Women’s Murder Club, a medical examiner directs her gaze to the crotch of a female corpse and says, “That’s not your mama’s bikini wax.” On The View, Joy Behar said, “No pubic hair creates a wind tunnel.” And in a hysterical episode of HBO’s dark comedy series, Curb Your Enthusiasm,, former Seinfeld producer Larry David performed oral sex on his wife, and in the process he sort of swallowed one of her pubic hairs. The next day, he was still choking on it, like a cat trying to get rid of a hairball.

  A psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, Nancy Etcoff, writes that “There’s also an erotic, sexual component to hairlessness because your skin is more sensitive when it’s more exposed. Women today are emulating porn stars who have no pubic hair, and I think men like it.”

  My own resistance to the plethora of bald pussies stems from my preadolescent days when pubic hair was such a big taboo that I became obsessed with it. In those pre-bikini days, I would go to Coney Island and stroll around the sand, sneaking glances at ladies in the hope of finding a few stray curlicues of forbidden pubic hair peeking out from their various and sun-dried crotches. And if I was able to discover any, why, it felt as though I had experienced a really productive afternoon.

  Betty Dodson, sex educator and producer of Viva La Vulva, says, “I think we have changing ideas about what’s public and what’s private. And now that nudity is more public—nude beaches, routine nudity in film, and the enormous amount of exhibitionism and porn on the Web—I’m not surprised to see a trend toward pubic shaving. I think it’s probably here to stay.”

  As for men, California Governor and former actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was only joking when he announced that he was going to get a bikini wax, but actually, Beverly Hills skin care and waxing expert Nance Mitchell has about fifty regular male customers that come for pubic waxing who “are not gay and they are not porn stars. Some go totally bare, some just do the shaft and up around the pelvic area.” She explains that “It depends on what their wives and girlfriends want. Men go along because removing the hair makes the whole package look bigger.”

  Yes, the illusion of size does matter.

  THE TASTE OF SPERM

  THE TASTE OF SPERM

  Online sexology columnist Sandor Gardos was asked, “How do I increase the amount of my ejaculate? I’ve noticed pom stars seem to ejaculate copious amounts of fluid, and I’d like to be able to wow my partner.” Dr. Gardos points out that “the actors in pom films are professionals. Even they often don’t ejaculate that much—sometimes movie makers will supplement with synthetic semen shot from a small tube.”

  Well, I’m just shocked to realize that somewhere in America there must be a group of scientists in a laboratory who earn their salaries by manufacturing fake semen.

  Meanwhile, ManNotIncluded.com has become the first cyberspace sperm bank for lesbians and single women who want to become pregnant. They are matched with anonymous donors who have the desired race, eye color, height and weight, then sent instructions on how to inseminate themselves. John Gonzalez, founder of the website, hopes this service will overcome the hurdles presented by bureaucracies and fertility clinics who are prejudiced against same-sex couples.

  “Lesbians hook up with gay men all the time,” he says, “either friends or guys they’ve met through personal ads. We are now simply allowing them to do so safely and without discrimination.”

  On the other hand, in the movie, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic—a performance by one of the best and raunchiest female stand-up comedians—she describes a sure method of birth control: “coming all over her face.” Of course, that punch line is derived from the ever popular image on Internet porn sites, where I look in vain for the small print with messages warning, “Do Not Try This Particular Money Shot At Home” and “This Is Not Exactly What She Means When She Says She’d Like To Get a Facial For Her Birthday.”

  Furthermore, in Chelsea, Michigan, Book Crafters has refused to print Baboon Dooley, Rock Critic, a collection of John Crawford’s comic strip, because his protagonist accidentally drinks from a glass of semen. He spits it out upon learning the content, only to be called a sexist, and challenged: “You’d expect a woman to drink it, right?” However, on CNN, author Hugh Prather was a guest, and the subject was couples. A caller revealed his problem: “The trouble is, when I come in her mouth, she can’t really swallow it all.” The anchor quickly hung up on this premature ejaculation.

  Cartoonist Mary Lawton depicted a character saying, “I just found out that alfalfa sprouts smell like sperm. Does this mean I should practice safe salad?” But humorist Jacqueline Shtuyote confides in me, “Sperm is basically tasteless. The truth should be out about this. Men seem to think that their white stuff
is a culinary delight, yet I know of no culinary courses extolling the flavor of sperm. And if, as rumored, Jack in the Box cooks occasionally spill their cum on an irritating customer’s hamburger, how many of us would be pleased with the added ingredient?

  “Why can’t we find something that changes the flavor of cum? Then men could squirt red stuff that is raspberry flavored, or brown stuff that is chocolate flavored. Shy women could finally delight in swallowing their lovers’ cum. No sperm would ever be spit out again. There could be a pill to make cum taste like fast-food hamburgers. Maybe then we wouldn’t mind if we found out that the secret sauce on top of Jack in the Box hamburgers is, after all, sperm.”

  But let’s not forget those who don’t eat meat. They face an ethical dilemma—whether or not it’s an acceptable practice for a vegetarian to give a blow job, and if so, is it all right to swallow? The general practice is that, yes, it’s definitely okay to give a blow job because no animal is harmed in the process. And, yes, it’s also okay to ingest the sperm because it’s a good source of protein, something that’s often lacking when meat is removed from the diet.

  Finally—and this could possibly be an urban legend—in a biology class at Harvard University, a professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen which give the sperm all that energy for their journey. A female freshman raised her hand and asked, “If I understand you correctly, you’re saying there is a lot of glucose, as in sugar, in semen?”

  “That’s correct,” replied the professor. The student asked,

  “Then why doesn’t it taste sweet?”

  “It doesn’t taste sweet,” he answered as she realized what her question implied. She blushed, picked up her books and headed for the door as he continued, “because the taste buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not the back of your throat. Have a good day.”

  DISINFORMATION PORN

  DISINFORMATION PORN

  This is the story behind the postings of a few chapters from Trance Formation of America that can now be found on the Internet. The book was written by Cathy O’Brien, who claims to be a victim of the CIA’s MK-Ultra mind-control, child-sex-slave program, Project Monarch. Her husband, Mark Phillips, claims that, having worked for the CIA, where he learned hypnosis, he rescued Cathy, deprogrammed her and collaborated on their book.

  At the age of thirteen, Cathy met the man “who would become my owner”—Senator Robert Byrd. “I undressed and climbed into his bed as ordered,” she writes. “I was momentarily relieved to find that his penis was abnormally tiny—so small it didn’t even hurt! And I could breathe with it in my mouth! Then he began to indulge himself in his brutal perversions. The spankings and police handcuffs I had previously endured were child’s play compared to Senator Byrd’s near-death tortures....”

  Gerald Ford—“my first president”—also “brutally, sexually assaulted” her, as did Ford’s chief of staff, Dick Cheney. After she was hunted down and caught in Cheney’s game of “human hunting,” she stood naked in his hunting lodge office as he paced around her and gave her this choice: “I could stuff you and mount you like a jackalope and call you a two-legged deer. Or I could stuff you with this [he unzipped his pants to reveal his oversized penis] right down your throat and then mount you. Which do you prefer?”

  Apparently, Cheney’s oversized penis balanced out Senator Byrd’s undersized penis.

  Cathy specialized in political figures (although she was also thrust upon by country singers such as “CIA operatives” Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson). Here’s my favorite scene: “When Bill and Bob Bennett together sexually assaulted my daughter Kelly and me at the Bohemian Grove in 1986, I had already known Bill Bennett as a mind control programmer for some time. He apparently found perverse pleasure in whipping me....”

  Cathy’s first competitor was Brice Taylor, whose book is titled Thanks for the Memories: The Memoirs of Bob Hope’s and Henry Kissinger’s Mind-Controlled Slave. She asserts that Walt Disney raped her on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, that she had sex with all three Kennedy brothers—plus JFK, Jr. when he was twelve—and has cavorted with public figures ranging from Prince Charles to Alan Greenspan, from Elvis Presley to Neil Diamond, from Johnny Carson to Ed McMahon, not to mention a threesome with her 13-year-old daughter, Kelly, Sylvester Stallone, who filmed them in Dolphin Porn, videos of dolphins penetrating women in the ocean.

  “Perhaps there is a deeper conspiracy involved here,” Robert Sterling, editor of an online publication, The Konformist, told me, “an attempt to discredit legitimate research into CIA dirty deeds. The most effective form of disinformation is that which blurs truth with fiction so effectively that they become impossible to differentiate. At the time Cathy O’Brien hit the lecture circuit, some powerful research was starting to circulate in alternative circles involving Satanic pedophilia operations. The end result of O’Brien’s and Taylor’s public ravings has been to trivialize this research by association. The CIA itself could be behind the plot. Both Cathy and Brice had the ‘help’ of self-described ‘renegade CIA operatives’ in the recovery of their memories. It’s quite possible those operatives weren’t renegades. Their help might have involved implanting bogus tales.”

  Remember when the Bush administration announced that there would be an Office of Disinformation—and then, as its first official act, the Office of Disinformation announced that there would not be an Office of Disinformation after all? And now there’s disinformation porn.

  Cathy O’Brien’s book has sold over 20,000 copies. Her following is heavily right-wing Christians and patriot groups. An online review posted by Jaye Beldo suggested “grabbing a copy of Trance Formation of America and heading to the nearest bathroom with a jar of Vaseline. Why not infuse new life into your worn-out sexual fantasies by envisioning some of the scenes spelled out in Cathy O’Brien’s supposed exposé of the pedophile shenanigans of our government officials? I mean, how could you not get excited over picturing Hillary Clinton going down on the author’s deformed vagina like a starved wolf?”

  Mark Phillips responded with a threatening e-mail to Beldo because he had attacked the book’s “integrity.” The irony is that if you surf the Web, under the category of bondage you will eventually come across those chapters downloaded from Trance Formation of America.

  HOBO SEX AND

  CRACK WHORE CONFESSIONS

  HOBO SEX AND CRACK WHORE CONFESSIONS

  When I was a kid, I wanted to be a hobo. It seemed like an exciting life, fueled by freedom. Of course, grown-ups tried to discourage me. They thought I wanted to be a bum. I wasn’t interested in panhandling, though. I just figured that it would be fun to travel in a boxcar, visit different cities, cook my mulligan stew—whatever that is—over a campfire and sleep outdoors under the stars. In my mind, it was a romantic fantasy, not something I planned to do in order to make all my relatives feel ashamed. I even subscribed to the Hobo News.

  I was reminded of this recently when I read about the death of Maurice “Steam Train Maury” Graham at the age of 89. In hobo jargon, he “caught the west-bound train.” Graham began hopping freights when he was only fourteen years old. At the National Hobo Convention in 2004, he was anointed Grand Patriarch of the Hobos. He once said, “A hobo is just a guy who went camping and never came home.” In his book, Tales of the Iron Road: My Life as King of the Hobos, published in 1990, he described how such a carefree lifestyle has changed:

  “It used to be that a hobo had to be a good naturalist—he had to know all the roots, berries, grasses and weeds that are edible, and how to catch small game without weapons and how to be a good fisherman. But to survive as a hobo today, you practically have to be a pharmacist. They’re hauling things in freight trains, like chemicals and pesticides that weren’t even invented five years ago.”

  Since then, boxcars have been sealed, and the prosecution of trespassers has been intensified. But, from my adolescent days, I’ve wondered about the sex lives of hobos. There was something both glamorous and
unattractive about them, something both exciting and unappetizing, as revealed in the media. The New York Times obituary repeated Graham’s story of the Pennsylvania Kid, who shaved with a piece of glass from a Coke bottle. When the Washington Post asked him if it was true that some hobos used deodorant, he replied, “It’s a shame, but I don’t know what we can do about it.” And the Los Angeles Times review of his book wondered if it neglected “a darker, hard-drinking, womanizing, gambling side” of his nature.

  Do modern hobos have access to the Internet, and if so, is there online porn available for them? Seattle Weekly sex columnist, Judy “Bad Advice” McGuire, published a reader’s question: “You once wrote that there is ‘nothing that doesn’t get somebody off.’ What about poverty? I searched Google for pornography depicting the homeless or otherwise poverty-ridden as objects of lust, and found nothing. Oh, and just to clarify, I found nothing depicting poor, foul-smelling bums and bag ladies as objects of lust. I found a few sites that specialized in homeless gay men, but these men were hygienic, in decent shape, and they were not portrayed in a poverty-stricken environment or state.”

  “It’s days like these,” McGuire responded, “when I find myself typing in phrases like ‘foxy naked homeless ladies’ into assorted search engines, that I really start to wonder about my life choices. But let’s get down to the business at hand. As there are folks who consider dining on feces the ultimate erotic experience and still others who get off on jamming metal rods up their urethras, it’s hardly shocking that there are those who find the desperately poor and/or hopelessly (and homelessly) drug-addicted wank-worthy. Sigh. Don’t these tragic types have enough problems without being turned into fodder for some control freak’s masturbatory fantasies?” But she did discover “one of the more ‘authentic’ sites”—hobosexual.com—which I checked out and linked on to several “Hobofoot” websites.