Eros & Capricorn: A Cross-Cultural Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Techniques (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 1)

by John Warren Wells

  On a par with the French-tickler approach is the purposeful self-mutilation indulged in by many African savages. The penis is systematically mutilated by placing small rounded pebbles inside incisions made in the skin. When the skin grows back together, the pebbles form lumps beneath the surface and act in a manner identical to the ridges and bumps on a French tickler. Infection is a frequent result, needless to say; furthermore, constant irritation of the penis in this fashion can provoke anxiety, priapism, and a good many other unpleasant complaints.

  It is highly unlikely that many persons in contemporary Occidental society would find any of these mechanical devices of any particular value. The reaction is more likely to range from amusement to disgust than to manifest itself in heightened passion. The physical skills of Eastern culture may well be beneficial to many of us in the sphere of sexual activity, but the hedgehog and the silver clasp, the French tickler and the golden ball, are far too alien to the fabric of our sexual feelings to render much service.

  Eros and Capricorn

  Extracoital Copulation

  The normative mores of Western culture have long held that the only proper repository for the penis is the vagina. Those sexual acts in which another orifice of the female body receives the male organ, or in which another portion of the male is employed in stimulation of the vagina, have generally been prohibited by either law or custom or both. Including but not limited to anal and oral intercourse, these extracoital methods of copulation have generally been lumped under the category of sodomy. In many states, they are specifically cited in the criminal code as illegal even when performed privately by husband and wife. It goes without saying, of course, that enforcement and legislation need not go hand in hand; it is a rare day indeed when a man is sentenced to jail for performing cunnilingus upon his own wife in the privacy of his own home, for example. But the law is not entirely irrelevant. It indicates the depth of feeling involved, the extent of repression in respect to extracoital intercourse.

  The very word “sodomy” is many things to many people. The most usual definition is “unnatural intercourse” one of those beautiful answers which asks a more beautiful question. The term is often used synonymously with bestiality to designate sexual relations between humans and animals. In other usage, sodomy is a label to be applied exclusively to anal copulation, whether homosexual or heterosexual. The legal sense of the term generally follows the “unnatural intercourse” line, and its meaning, while variable, is such as to embrace any of the many modes of lovemaking in which either the penis or the vagina is stimulated to climax in such a manner that the one is not within the other immediately prior to and during orgasm.

  The word “sodomy,” of course, derives from the city of Sodom, destroyed by Jehovah because of the sinfulness of its inhabitants. Most biblical interpretations suggest that the Sodomic sin was homosexual anal intercourse, and when one comes upon the term “sodomite” in eighteenth-century erotic literature, this meaning is most often indicated. To avoid confusion, we might better employ the term “extracoital copulation” to designate all these forms of “unnatural” sexual intercourse.

  One of the most notable effects of the modern sexual revolution has been its impact on our attitude toward extracoital copulation. If the revelations of Freud and Kinsey initiated the sexual liberation of the female and sounded the death knell for American puritanism a few decades ago, the current stage of the sexual revolution has been manifesting itself in the increasing acceptance and use of oral, anal, and manual copulatory methods as a means of varying the sexual relationship and heightening sexual excitement.

  Contemporary sexologists generally approve of extracoital copulation, provided it is not objectionable to either party and remains secondary to coitus in the sexual relationship. The first qualification is comprehensible enough; the second is a more subtle distinction, implying that an act that replaces or supercedes coitus as the main force in a sexual relationship is perverse, while the same act in another relationship would not be so designated. Dr. Morse has suggested that any extracoital act transcends the bounds of normal sex when it becomes the sine qua non of a sexual relationship.

  Occidental pornography has long persisted in glorifying extracoital copulation, often suggesting that it is more exciting and delightful than coitus itself. Part of this is no doubt attributable to the lure of the forbidden. Acts that are specifically taboo are always so portrayed in hardcore pornography; they appear to excite the reader both because they are likely to be outside the range of his own experience and because the forbidden is invariably enticing. But this equating of forbidden sex with more enjoyable sex is by no means limited to pornographic works. The pornographer merely mirrors the average individual’s impression of these extracoital acts.

  The taboo attached to extracoital copulation is probably due largely to the fact that such modes of sexual congress are part of the repertoire of homosexuals. To be sure, mutual masturbation and cunnilingus are the chief practices of Lesbians, while mutual masturbation, fellatio, and anal penetration are common resorts of male homosexuals. There is little in these practices, however, that is intrinsically homosexual in nature, although an identification of the acts in the individuals mind with homosexuality is not without effect. It is with the heterosexual application of extracoital copulation, however, that we are here concerned.

  The erotic manuals that have been our most often cited guides in determining the sexual ways and wisdom of the Middle East and the Orient have generally reflected what we might call an extremely liberal attitude in respect to coital techniques. One might expect a similarly permissive attitude from these sources in respect to extracoital copulation, but this is not universally the case.

  Some of these sources maintain the principle that all roads lead to Rome—‌or Istanbul or Calcutta or Peking or Shimbashi, as the case may be—‌but others tend either to ignore or to condemn sexual congress via mouth or anus. The edition of The Perfumed Garden most frequently encountered limits its remarks strictly to coitus, and this single-mindedness has occasioned criticism by the book’s anonymous translator, who lamented the omission of material on male and female homosexuality, bestiality, and “lastly, the Sheikh does not mention the pleasures which the mouth or the hand of a pretty woman can give, or the cunnilingus.”

  Another edition of the same book includes an extended chapter treating all these matters in considerable detail. It is an open question which of these editions is most likely to represent the original Arabic work or is more in keeping with Arabic sexual mores. The literary underground of Western culture has for centuries pirated erotic texts, cutting and expanding them at will, creating texts out of whole cloth and passing them off as original Oriental material, and similarly creating havoc for bibliographer and researcher alike. The text of The Perfumed Garden that is most often recognized, however, treats not at all of extracoital copulation; whether this is a case of post facto censorship or bowdlerization is another matter.

  Vatsyayana does not ignore extracoital practices. On the contrary, his Kama Sutra is quite lucid in respect to the techniques of oral copulation. His attitude is not permissive, however; fellatio is first described as a practice of male eunuchs, generally in return for financial favors, and is thus equated with homosexuality. Then the author adds that there are some women who also practice fellatio, states that the practice should be forbidden to married women and restricted to prostitutes, and discusses at some length the morality of a male’s having oral connection with a prostitute in this fashion. Such an attitude is surely less approving of oral congress than is the attitude displayed by the majority of contemporary sexologists.

  —♦♦♦—

  Fellatio

  Fellatio, defined as oral stimulation of the penis, is at once the sexual practice most thoroughly taboo and with the most persuasive appeal of any physical technique. (Taboos against incest are stronger, or at least more universal, but incest implies a taboo relationship rather than a taboo act. Nor does th
e appeal of incest seem to be nearly so strong.) In his study of call girls, Dr. Harold Greenwald points out that “Most of the girls estimated that between seventy-five and ninety per cent of their clients did not wish normal intercourse but preferred oral sex. They wished the call girl to address herself orally to them.”

  In The Cradle of Erotica, Edwardes and Masters stress that Arabs share this predilection for fellatio, and comment as follows upon the male Arab’s desire to play the passive role in the act.

  The average Muslim male lives only to have his penis suckled by a beautiful female or a handsome male. Indeed, fellatio is to the Muslim the most exquisite voluptuous experience in all the world, ranking far above anal or vaginal coition. To watch Arabs being fellated will verify this belief. The woman need only run her tongue up and down the sensitive underside of the glans penis, and the man’s erection is dynamic and ecstatic…

  The appeal of fellatio is rooted in antiquity. Indeed, the modern use of lipstick derives from the ancient custom, probably Egyptian in origin, of painting the mouth in an attempt to make it resemble the vulva. Women who so rouged their lips were in essence advertising their willingness to perform fellatio. Cleopatra in particular is said to have had both a fondness for the sport and a notorious ability at it, and her triumphal entry into Rome, so celebrated in history and legend, was accompanied by a spree in which she fellated the greater portion of male Roman nobility in the space of a single night.

  The temptation to interpret history in a sexual light is usually as misleading as it is provocative, but one can scarcely avoid it in this instance. “Age can not wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.” The Shakespearian phrase, and indeed the whole eternal triangle of Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, acquire new significance if one supposes that her “infinite variety” was comprised largely of her skill at oral copulation. It may well be that the Egyptian queen held the destiny of an empire not in the palm of her hand but at the tip of her tongue.

  Several considerations, both psychological and physiological, help to explain the appeal and fascination of fellatio. On the psychological side, one need possess no particularly keen degree of Freudian orientation to draw an association, for example, between fellatio and the image of a babe at a breast. Oral impulses in general may find gratification in oral sexual contact. (The desire to consume, as with food, and the corresponding desire to be thus consumed, are similar emotional bases for the appeal of oral sex. The doting mother who tells her toddler, “You’re so cute I’d like to eat you up,” is expressing a fellatory impulse, however unconsciously. This element, no doubt, leads a great many males to attach singular importance to whether or not their partners swallow the seminal discharge. There is certainly no physiological element involved in such post-fellatory behavior. The male’s physical response is not affected—‌and yet a great proportion of men find fellatio more wholly satisfying when the partner ingests the discharge.)

  On a purely physiological plane, fellatio has considerable attraction for the passive partner. No work is involved; the male may be completely motionless and inert and need not even sustain an erection in order to experience both pleasure and orgasm. Furthermore, the mouth is capable of a wider range of caresses than is the vulva. The opening may be expanded or contracted at will, the tongue and teeth may be brought into play, and a wide variety of movements and technical skills may be in one way or another employed.

  Although Vatsyayana is inclined to take a dim view of oral copulation, he does provide a good analysis of its technical aspects. He is discussing contact between a eunuch and a male, but the same regimen might as well be followed by a female fellatrice. The scheme discussed is marked by the high degree of ritual one expects to find in the Kama Sutra but offers an interesting account of fellatory practices.

  The following eight things are then done by the eunuch one after another… At the end of each of these, the eunuch expresses his wish to stop, but when one of them is finished, the man desires him to do another, and after that is done, then the one that follows it, and so on.

  (1) When, holding the man’s lingam with his hand, and placing it between his lips, the eunuch moves about his mouth, it is called the nominal congress.

  (2) When, covering the end of the lingam with his fingers collected together like the bud of a plant or flower, the eunuch presses the side of it with his lips, using his teeth also, it is called biting the sides.

  (3) When, being desired to proceed, the eunuch presses the end of the lingam with his lips closed together, and kisses it as if he were drawing it out, it is called the outside pressing.

  (4) When, being asked to go on, he puts the lingam further into his mouth, and presses it with his lips and then takes it out, it is called the inside pressing.

  (5) When, holding the lingam in his hand, the eunuch kisses it as if he were kissing the lower lip, it is called pressing.

  (6) When, after kissing it, he touches it with his tongue everywhere, and passes the tongue over the end of it, it is called rubbing.

  (7) When, in the same way, he puts the half of it into his mouth, and forcibly kisses and sucks it, this is called sucking the mango fruit.

  (8) And lastly, when, with the consent of the man, the eunuch puts the whole lingam into his mouth, and presses it to the very end, as if he were going to swallow it up, it is called swallowing up.

  Striking, scratching and other things may also be done during this kind of congress.

  A distillation of this ritual reveals four major technical elements of fellatio—‌kissing, sucking, licking, and biting. A woman performing the act may employ any or all of these. Some fellatrices restrict themselves to licking the male organ and applying surface kisses while hastening orgasm through digital manipulation of the shaft of the penis. Others may receive the male organ wholly into their mouths, tonguing and sucking the penis until orgasm is reached. Prostitutes in Western culture often attempt a sort of fellatio interruptus, withdrawing the penis from their mouths immediately prior to the male climax. Most males seem to find this significantly less satisfying

  The female’s reaction to playing the active role in fellatio is extremely variable, ranging from extreme dislike for the act to a great predilection to it. Both Greenwald and Theodore Isaac Rubin cite the widespread rumor that the performance of fellatio has a detrimental effect upon a woman’s teeth—‌that it causes tooth decay or makes the teeth fall out after an extended period of time. It hardly seems necessary to state that there is no demonstrable validity to this myth. On the other hand, Ernest Hemingway imparts as incidental intelligence in A Moveable Feast that prostitutes in Kansas City took pains to swallow semen in fellatio on the theory that ingestion of sperm tended to prevent tuberculosis. This charming notion is just as false as the other.

  Western hardcore pornography has long capitalized on the appeal of fellatio, and scenes in which it is prominently featured are an inevitable feature of pornographic literature. Until recently even the suggestion of oral copulation was censorable in legitimate fiction; recently, however, this taboo has been considerably relaxed. The reader may easily find references to and descriptions of the practice in many contemporary novels, and the attitudes and overtones to be found regarding the act shed much light on the special significance of this form of extracoital copulation in our sexual thinking.

  It is certain that fellatio has assumed much more quantitative importance in the sexual lives of most Americans than it enjoyed a decade or two ago. The sexual cross-pollination effects of two world wars has often been “blamed” for the increasing incidence of fellatio, and of cunnilingus as well. A widely held theory holds that American servicemen learned to appreciate oral copulation in France, where both fellatio and cunnilingus have long received more acceptance than has been the case on this side of the Atlantic. Upon their return to America, these servicemen have been inclined to expect oral sex as a part of a marital sexual relationship.

  The general liberal trends in our sexual orientation have
no doubt made as much of a contribution. This is particularly noteworthy when one considers the case of college age youth, none of them exposed to the life of a GI in Paris. It is interesting to note that fellatio and cunnilingus, so long forbidden, have incredibly enough become acceptable substitutes for coitus in some college circles. Girls intent upon preserving their technical virginity will engage in such extracoital practices, all long taboo even for married women.

  Gael Green’s Sex and the College Girl makes this point at some length. The author observes that mouth-genital stimulation is more common on college campuses than one might expect and that is a common part of the “Everything but” school of heavy petting. She adds the following interesting quote.

  An interesting regional propensity was described by a young Mississippi novelist with great experience in the field: “From experience, intuition, firsthand knowledge, trustworthy hearsay and inclination,” he writes, “I can assure you that the Southerner loves nothing more than oral activity. I guess this is because there is no oral hymen: I’ve been to weddings where the bride can really walk down the aisle with her placid smile of virtuous readiness, when meanwhile she has gone down on most of the male guests. There are times when you feel like kissing the bridegroom, too, the feeling being that he is doing more for you by proxy than either you or he might wish.”

  —♦♦♦—

  Cunnilingus

  Although the attitude of the contemporary marriage manual is more or less the same in respect to fellatio and to cunnilingus, a majority of authorities place somewhat more emphasis upon stimulation of the female genitalia. Although both practices may be similarly permissible as long as neither party finds them personally repugnant, the virtues of cunnilingus are constantly extolled, the inhibitions surrounding it assuaged, and the practice generally provided with genuinely wholehearted endorsement. Fellatio is usually dismissed rather promptly, while stimulation by oral means of the female sex organs is extensively ballyhooed.