The New Sexual Underground: Crossing the Last Boundaries (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 10)
Page 18
I lean forward on the couch, very much involved with the thought. I wonder for a moment if perhaps not only orgies but a great deal of life in the sexual underground is not simply a matter of subjecting the libido to precisely this sort of shock treatment. Even the word swinging suddenly rings out with a special new meaning—I see the sex drive, knocked loose from the moorings that have been constructed bit by bit during the gradual process of sexual masturbation, knocked loose now and swinging like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, swinging—
• • •
The train of thought, rendered particularly gripping both by my own emotional state and through the effects of the dextroamphetamine, serves to counterbalance my feelings of revulsion toward the party. I relax again, mingle with other guests, participate in a few desultory conversations. Later I even find myself sexually aroused again, though to a far less rabid state than before. I end up in a sexual tangle with two other men and three women, including the hostess, but stop without reaching climax.
A few of the guests leave. I find Evelyn and we both find our clothes, dress, say quick goodbyes and leave. We hardly talk at all on the way back to her apartment. I tell her I will call her, but privately doubt that I will.
I sit here now, dictating this, attempting to assess last night’s impact upon me. I am, on the one hand, very glad that I attended the party. I had wanted to go for a long time, and there is nothing so persistently nagging as an ungratified desire. And the party, certainly, was everything I had hoped it might be and more.
I doubt, though, that I will ever want to go to a party like that again . . .
The End
About the Authors
Lawrence Block has been writing best-selling mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. A multiple recipient of the Edgar and Shamus awards, he has been designated a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and received the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the UK’s Crime Writers Association. His most recent novels are A Drop Of The Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, and Getting Off, starring a very naughty young woman. Several of his books have been filmed, although not terribly well. He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit, and The Liar's Bible. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television: Tilt! and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.
John Warren Wells emerged in the mid-1960s as a writer of sexological nonfiction, and produced twenty books in the ensuing decade. His works, in the main, consist of compilations of case histories selected to illuminate a particular theme, and topics range from female bisexuality (Women Who Swing Both Ways) and troilism (Three is Not a Crowd) to the evolving lifestyles of a decade of sexual liberation (The New Sexual Underground and Wide Open: The New Marriage). His groundbreaking work, Tricks of the Trade: A Hooker’s Handbook of Sexual Technique, was especially successful, and may have inspired Xaviera Hollander to write The Happy Hooker.
One particularly noteworthy book, Different Strokes, consists of his screenplay and production diary for the pornographic feature film of that name, which he seems to have written and directed, in addition to playing a key role. His column, “Letters to John Warren Wells,” was a popular feature in Swank Magazine. The dedications of several books would seem to indicate that Wells carried on an extensive on-again, off-again relationship with Jill Emerson, herself the author of Threesome, A Week as Andrea Benstock, and, more recently, Getting Off. All of JWW’s books have been out of print for thirty-five years; that they are now available to a new generation of readers may be attributed to the technological miracle of eBooks and the apparently limitless ego and avarice of their author.
Contact Lawrence Block:
Email: lawbloc@gmail.com
Blog: LB’s Blog
Facebook: LB's Facebook Fan Page
Website: www.lawrenceblock.com
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock
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John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Ebooks
3 Is Not A Crowd
Beyond Group Sex: The New Sexual Life Styles
Come Fly With Us
Different Strokes: Or, How I (Gulp) Wrote, Directed & Starred in an X-Rated Movie
Doing It!
Eros and Capricorn
The Male Hustler
Older Women and Younger Men: The Mrs. Robinson Syndrome
Sex and the Stewardess
The Sex Therapists
Sex Without Strings
The New Sexual Underground
The Taboo Breakers
Tricks of the Trade: A Hooker’s Handbook of Sexual Technique
Versatile Ladies: Women Who Swing Both Ways
Wide Open: The New Marriage
The Wife-Swap Report
Doing It!
John Warren Wells, Lawrence Block
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Excerpt, copyright © 2012, Lawrence Block
All Rights Reserved
Introduction
A LETTER FROM JOHN WARREN WELLS
Dear Bob:
I’ve been going over my published columns with the idea of preparing an introduction for their publication in book form. This is the first time I’ve read them in a body, and I found it an interesting experience. I was especially struck by the way the column very definitely evolved from month to month, taking its shape from the particular correspondence received during that time. Certain themes spring up, weave in and out for a time, then resolve themselves one way or another. The end result is unplanned, a creature of organic growth in a way a book could never be . . .
It seems to me that an introduction for such a book should be consistent with the book itself, random and informal, deriving from specific time and circumstance. I thought at first of coaching it in the form of a letter to the reader, then thought I’d rather structure it as a letter to your estimable self. Since the readers will throughout be reading other people’s mail, why not let them begin in that fashion, reading this introduction over your shoulder, as it were.
Ah, Bob, I just hope it doesn’t make you nervous to have people reading over your shoulder . . .
• • •
As I re-read the columns, I was strongly tempted to do a little editing prior to publication in book form. There are certain phrases which recur, certain themes constantly reiterated. The constant exhortations to readers to write letters themselves, for example. But I’ve decided to leave things as they were, so that the readers can see the columns en bloc just as they appeared from month to month.
It might be worth explaining how the column managed to change titles in midstream. When it first appeared in the October ’70 issue of Swank, it ran under the title of “Group Grope.” This seemed to me, as I explained in the introductory column itself, to convey something of both the tone and purpose of the column as I foresaw it, an open forum in which readers could share their sexual experiences, ideas, and concerns so that all of us, as a group, could grope toward an understanding—of our own selves, of others, and of sexuality in general. Further, the word play of the title was suggestive of the sort of happy irreverence toward the theme which I felt quite essential if we were to avoid the dry and depressing aura of stuffy scholarship.
After a couple of appearances, wiser heads prevailed; “Group Grope” turned itself into “Letters to John Warren Wells.” It’s so gratifying to have one’s name in the title that I could no more have objected to the change than I could have suggested such an ego trip for myself in the first place. I might add that the title change was absolutely the only editorial intervention to which the column was ever subjected. Herman Petras, Swank’s editor, has throughout been both an amiable man to work with and a conscientious man with a blue pencil, often going to great lengths to refrain from cutting my columns. The sole cut consisted of the deletion of the Things Worth Reading paragraph in the second column, which was cropped because of space limitation
s and which has been restored here. No one has ever been better served by an editor, and this seems an appropriate time and place to thank Herman. Similar thanks are due—and are hereby extended—to Janice Rubin, who sees to it that mail gets to me promptly. Her ornamental effect is equaled only by her disarming efficiency.
Magnanimous moods come upon me infrequently, as you may know. While I’m in one, let me offer proper acknowledgement to Irwin Stein, the farsighted young publisher of both Swank and Lancer Books. The idea for the column grew directly out of several conversations between us. But for Irwin’s vision and courage, my correspondence would remain unsung, unhonored, and (shudder!) unprofitable.
Of course the idea of a correspondence column with a sexual theme was not blindingly original. Several magazines have offered something similar in the past, and in some cases such columns have been a fairly transparent device for printing erotic material with little purpose beyond titillation (Not that I have anything against titillation, but I don’t see why it has to masquerade as science.) In at least one case, it’s fairly obvious that the letters are either written as pure fiction or rewritten heavily for erotic effect. Furthermore, the bulk of these columns simply print letters and let it go at that. I felt an interchange between myself and my correspondents would be valuable for reasons of continuity and perspective . . .
In all my books, I owe a great debt to the men and women who have been willing to reveal themselves to me, either through correspondence or interviews. Nowhere is the debt more apparent than in this present volume. Without letters from readers, there very simply would have been no column, and hence no book. My anonymous correspondents are literally the authors of Letters to John Warren Wells and I only hope I have given them something in return. Naturally enough I like to think the column has performed a service beyond that of keeping me out of debtor’s prison and in Scotch and cigarettes. And I’m fairly certain it has, Bob. I receive a great many letters which never see print. Some are requests for information, but many others simply express their approval of the column and say in one way or another that it has helped them understand their own sexual predilections better and deal more capably with the problems of their own lives. And I would think that my correspondents are helped by the simple act of writing, of confiding in a sympathetic stranger. The confessional impulse is a very valid one, and not everyone can conveniently employ a priest or a psychiatrist in this capacity. So I’m able to assure myself that perhaps I do a little good in the world to offset the space I occupy.
You asked me the other day if I thought all of the letters I’ve printed are legitimate. Oh, I suppose there are a few phonies in the bunch. I’ve engaged in correspondence of this nature for quite a few years before the column got underway, and I think I’m fairly good at detecting fraudulent letters, and periodically refrain from printing a letter because I have reason to doubt its authenticity. But a couple of letters which I’ve printed strike me as somewhat dubious. I won’t say which ones they are but will let the readers form their own conclusions. As far as that goes, a false letter is often quite as revealing as a true one. Freud was once at the point of scrapping some of his theories when he discovered that many of his patients were lying to him; then he came to the realization that fantasies and evasions were as significant in their own way as truth.
• • •
How quickly the months have gone by! If Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, I’ve measured out the past year in magazine columns. I remember preparing the first columns last summer, sorting through letters received in response to my books during the past few years, anxious for the column to appear on newsstands so that it could feed itself with letters from its own readers. I was enthusiastic about the project from the start, and no doubt bored the hell out of my friends on the subject.
Some of them, I recall, were more amused than enthusiastic. I remember one young lady who raised her eyebrows and made the face one makes when suddenly surprised by an unpleasant odor. “Then you’ll be writing a sort of Playboy Advisor for perverts,” she said. “How fascinating.”
I like the image—a Playboy Advisor for perverts would no doubt concern itself with intriguing questions, such as what do you wear to an orgy and what wine goes with cunnilingus . . .
The whole concept of perversion bothers me, and I think one of the happier aspects of the New Morality is a disinclination to apply the label as indiscriminately as in the past. So many of the people who write to me are concerned that they are perverted, that they are not “normal.” I’ve given up trying to figure out what the hell normal is. But I’ve managed to define “perversion” to my own satisfaction. The definition is wholly subjective, which is perhaps the point. That is, a pervert is someone who does something he’s ashamed of.
Thus masturbation and fetishism and transvestism and oral sex and whatever can be perverted, if the person practicing them is at once guilty over their performance and incapable of desisting from performing them. If he can engage in them with a clear conscience, then they’re normal.
I tried out this definition on a few acquaintances and one offered the objection that a man might expose himself on the subway or molest children or hack women’s breasts off without any guilt feelings whatsoever, and that my reasoning would refrain from labeling him a pervert. But I see no need to pin such a label on such a person. There are others in abundance—lunatic, criminal, or that old standby sonofabitch. I prefer the idea that a pervert is someone who thinks he’s a pervert, that sexual normality is in the eye not of the beholder but of the performer himself. It is our mirrors that show us up as perverts.
• • •
Is that enough, do you think? I always have mixed feelings about introductions, wanting to get the hell off the stage and let the book present itself, yet reluctant to leave out anything which might aid the reader in approaching the subsequent material. There are other points I might touch on, but I think I’ll let things stand as they are. Each column is cluttered with introductory material enough.
So it goes. In a few days it will be time to start putting another column together, and in not too many months it will be time to package another batch of columns between book covers . . . Take care, and all the best.
Jack
Doing It! is Available on Amazon