End of the Dream

by Wylie, Philip;

Premarital sex was happening. Many examples had parental consent. All sorts of married couples were fucking in sixty postures, for the sake of variety. And about then, some one of those trivial Supreme Court handouts apparently opened the so-called floodgates of pornography. The Court had said, more or less, that an adult or group of agreeing adults can read what they please, look at any snapshots or paintings they select, including movies.

  Erotica, called “pornography” (and nobody drew distinctions or seemed able to try—when the distinction was easy), swept Europe and homed on USA. Only Soviet Russia and Red China resisted, Russia being sexually much like the Christians and their church as described here. The Chinese may have been too busy carrying hods. Japan, interestingly, alone took the erotic deluge calmly.

  Having obliquely required it of myself, I shall define the difference between erotica and pornography. Would that the Supreme Court had had the discernment—they might then have altered destiny!

  Erotica is any treatment of sexual acts, and related acts or material, which gives rise in a beholder (who is not anti-sexual either consciously or subconsciously) a sense that what is presented shows how sex enhances his species in a special or in many ways. Beings who do that, he or she feels, are truly elegant, wonderful, and not just animals but the best of animals, for what these have added to this display that lesser creatures cannot achieve, or cannot in that degree. That quality of an erotic work need not give every beholder any intense reaction of that sort. But, minimally, it should have some elevating or enhancing effect however meager, but above the level of indifference.

  Obviously, good taste is mandatory here. The quality of our erotic bodies and imaginations requires every quality in its artistic expression.

  What is pornographic, then, is whatever concerns sex that is debased and debases the viewer, by vulgarity, by presenting sexual behavior as nasty, dirty, or brutal, sadistic, masochistic. To be sure, many contemporary people were most “aroused” by that very sort of pornographic display, violence, sadism, masochism, et al. Those were, all, sick—and the church made them that sick, as is evident from the above exposition of church practices.

  We know and knew, truly, the difference between erotica, which is a glorious thing, and pornographia, which is anything less. But most Americans, most people in “Christian” nations, were so brainwashed in the dirtiness of sex and its wickedness (with the accompanying demand for punishment), that they could not accept the erotic, since it was beautiful, uplifting, a scene in praise of humanity and one that had no punitive result nor did it require brutality as the price of pleasure. Nor was it vulgar.

  That much could be said about sexual entertainment.

  But America fell beneath an avalanche of sexual movies and magazines, books and private pictures, public acts of sexual relations, private acts by entertainers, in all of which no such discernment was made. The great bulk of the material was, indeed, vulgar, debased, and much of it was sado-masochistic, a vast amount involved female homosexuality and, some, male action of the same sort. Very little was imaginative, the actors were in general unskilled, ordinary, without pride in their achievements and, if proud, then of the wrong aspects of their work.

  In the midst of this, the young and their sex revolution were hard put to find anything they could rebel against, with force and novelty. They tried “unisex,” that is, pretending no sexual differences existed, dressing alike, with long hair for both, and engaging in floor parties where males and females crawled about copulating or orally locking in with either sex at random. This effort usually involved drug-taking but so did many other revolutionary activities, such as rapping, trashing, identity search, seduction of others to the cause, boredom-flight, cramming, and, perhaps above all, “belonging”—to non-others of like non-mindedness.

  Alienation was the regular alibi for much the rebel young did—or refused to do—and it now seems surprising that so many youths deceived themselves, each other and a large fraction of the adult world by that pose. For all men are born alien, live as aliens and die alien. They all have some opportunity to find what they can of themselves and the world, reality as it is known in their time, and a meaning in life, if they try for that ferociously and unrelentingly; even, failing there, they all can abet the need they felt and failed to fulfill. They can and must, if honest, devote their lives to making the best chance possible for the next generation or some beyond, to try where they failed—but with the better chance they made for others. Myth? Self-sacrifice? Unrewarding? What else is there to do?

  The mind of man is for that end. The more he uses it properly the more clearly he will ascertain that he will never find a final answer in his days. But he will also know that way is the fact which matters: if he tries he has a chance of finding some small, new step nearer to one of the final answers. To expect more is to identify the self as God, plus the universe and all time. To think the effort can be jettisoned and that a human being with a brain has used it properly, used it at all, by concluding the universe is absurd, senseless, without point or meaning, is to abdicate mind absolutely, it is to imagine one has become God and cosmos by saying what these are not (as if one knew that!) and by mere self-inflation to be judge of all time and space, by anti-thought and non-thought, becoming, then, a hollow skull before the fact, and preaching to skeletons who, alone, can be said to hear non-sound, if you get people that near to brained bone.

  Not all but all the more popular forms of “existentialism” are examples of such metaphysical ways to refuse to learn or think, while giving out as final nothing-answers, to nothing-hearers, an intellectual impossibility as it is a physical impossibility, too. One makes no headway against alienation by starting with the counter-cartesian premise, I am absent.

  But such diffuse forms of non-thought pervaded the seventies. Young people became students, so called, of astrology Tarot, with other superstitious copouts; they took up superficially mystical philosophies of the East and the Orient—and called all our proven knowledge, science, irrelevant, and said reason was a trick of the establishment.

  With such people engaged in a sex revolution, anything could be expected—except improvement of our understanding of human sexuality. Almost everything occurred. There was a surge of “Women’s Lib” based, it first seemed, on the real, vast and unbearable injustice of humanity to women. But this decent effort soon turned into a simpler war against males on all counts, thus debasing both sexes.

  Nobody knew, in 1970 or 1980 or 2000, what the ideal for human sexual behavior might be, was meant to be, or, say, what “morals” would match our biology and our meaning as a species of a somewhat novel and very experimental sort.

  Nobody really had any clear and demonstrable idea of how to rear children, as sexual beings, or adolescents, so no one could possibly imagine what would be right and what mistaken for adult sexual behavior. No one knew what was normal, its limits if any, and if any, why!

  The idea that this ought to be inquired into till the correct answers came in hardly entered a modern head in a million. Instead of trying to learn who we are, sexually, America and the world simply withdrew from any effort to give our sexual behavior any guidance, restraint or purpose, supervision or even an aesthetic; in sum, the hands of man were washed of the problem.

  For those readers of the future who might enjoy a long and detailed chapter on sex in USA from 1975 to 2000, I feel the facts would disappoint. It ought to be sufficient to note the highlights, or low, if you prefer, of what followed.

  With “pornographia” a “gold mine” for movies, by 1970, the next “gold mine” was obvious: home movies, cassettes, or, later and better, cable TV.

  The corporations soon got the message. Cable TV and 3D-TV could be transmitted on home-selected channels; what the viewers wanted to view could be provided as selected. The next and, again, obvious program shift involved “live” sex. Nothing ever made a swifter hit: live sex acts, via cable, became a multibillion-dollar business in a year. And, by the later eighties, another
inevitable shift was occurring, also predictable by history.

  The fifty-odd millions wired for cable X-raters tired of the ordinary casts of sex shows even though they had favorites of both sexes, as well as favorite “combinations.” But soon they asked for “real” people, personalities of the non-erotic TV companies, celebrities of the stage, notables outside show biz—and, of course, they gradually got their wishes.

  The result of a successful appearance on a sex show became fame of a truly fanatical sort. When a popular lecturer on science, a personable man whose genuine claim to fame as an astrophysicist rose from several new concepts of his origin, and also produced a Nobel prize, one night, masked, and introduced only as a great scientist who would take on both his secretaries, very artistically and positively brought two (masked) but elegantly designed lasses to multiple orgasm, he became the most famed man of science ever, by whisking off all three masks at the finale, and, while helping dress the girls, telling the viewers who he was, news to most of them but not all by any means. He was thrown out of several scholarly societies for the act—but also made a top man at Du Pont with a salary of $500,000 for the first year, escalated beyond.

  Then a hard-pressed candidate for the Senate in a Wisconsin race, a Democrat to be sure, with a wife who had not long before been “Miss Lakes and the Cheese Princess,” after great soul-struggling, went before network cameras set around their bedroom. He gently brought in his wife, not masked and recognized by millions, and made love to her with élan, passion and considerable show of athletic prowess. Shocked politicians held their breath till the election count. The man who so thoroughly enjoyed his ecstatic wife on TV, apparent loser by polls of a few days earlier, took all the votes of his party and ninety-five per cent of those expected to go to his opponent.

  This made presidential hopefuls nervous.

  They were saved by Congress, which ruled their sort off the air in such ploys.

  After a little rioting, high schools began to construct erotic rooms for students with parental permits and, soon, some of these rooms were provided with viewing galleries. Societies that had been furtively forming in the sixties to practice their belief that boys and girls of eight or more should have sexual lives as a right, with complete freedom as to partners—moms, pops, siblings, other adults, other kids—began to get air attention. Watching a nice-looking and (masked, unnamed) daddy have his first intercourse with his cute, nine-year-old Olivia was new—and big.

  What ruined that TV geyser of gold, after it had become the fourth business enterprise in the land, was the Gardner-Gibson Love-O-Mat. A technological combination of various old and a few new scientific findings made the Love-O-Mat an instant marvel, a public passion, for all its high cost in the early years.

  In effect, the Love-O-Mat patron entered a perfumed, dusky bed-centered chamber with a dim dome crowded with many unguessable bits of equipment. There the patron, his fee paid, undressed, with opposite-sex aid if wished, a live being, who also inquired what the client would like, in the form of a “love affair,” without anything but casual enthusiasm for any choice and the same degree for all.

  Then came an even more alluring part. From dozens of albums—if need be—the male, in this example, was asked to pick the lass he wished as co-celebrant in that special erotic rite. At no time did these albums lack choices among the most lofty picture and TV stars; Broadway actresses abounded, too, and a staggering number of merely well-known, well-dressed swingers of the jet routes, often married and not even between divorces or even planning divorce.

  The weekly demand for these women had become a higher symbol and more sought by many than “best-dressed winners,” “most elegant,” “best hostess,” etc. Fees for this role soon reached six figures, but playing the roles required months of very hard drill, rehearsal and acting, with and without partners, depending on the fantasy being computerized. For it amounted to that.

  Once a damsel or matron had registered on tape every erotic act she was willing to perform, and had performed it in all the variations writers and directors felt would suit the oddball element enough for a profit, a woman might feel her fee earned. But since no poor performances were used, though paid for, the ladies who were Love-O-Mat choices gathered fans in myriads, great men, nobility, but not all welcome at close range. The studios took care of such problems.

  The gentleman client when stripped took his place, prone, on a plastic-sheeted table. He was carefully and completely sprayed with a pleasant-scented, silver-hued, elastic material that dried but did not stiffen. He turned over and was re-sprayed. No part of him expected to function, or even liable to, unexpectedly, was left uncoated. As he dried, music of his choice began to play softly. The plastic sheet was whisked away. The table became part of whatever sort of bed (or other love-support) he had selected. Lights died down and then, slowly, the lady of his choice appeared, dressed, nude, or however semi-accoutered he had noted on the list tendered to his real maid-aide. The damsel would have three dimensions and be very solid-appearing, too. When she took his hand, exchanged a first kiss, or merely talked, as she touched him here and there, she felt real, warm, alive, herself. She was scented as he wished—or as she did, if he asked it that way. Her voice was hers. He could feel her breath. For now the Gardner radiation-responsed phenomenon was in operation.

  She was a creature of light but also one around whom and within whom several million Gardner radiation-propagation units were activating the sprayed skin of her lover, inducing exactly the same sense the action by a real female would produce. When she lay across him, he felt her weight, where it would press on him, in the right places and degrees.

  What led to his reactive motions was also monitored and a light-swift feedback made adjustments of both to match. Her kisses were as deft or wild, as ranging or limited to thrust, as his responses to them indicated his wants. And when they had spent whatever time he had wanted, or paid for, in mutual excitation, the road to orgasm was as real, living, as actual relations, and often far more uninhibited and joyous. For here, he had no inhibitions and here, too, the lady, perhaps a great screen star he’d never seen in the flesh, was completely subject to his desires.

  My first experience with this long-established device was done on a dare and I discovered, not with complete surprise, my wife was electronically available. It occurred to me to ask if it was possible to see other chosen persons with partners. It was, for a fee. I found Nora had been recorded with another man and decided not. The other man is a friend. I understood the situation—Dr. Jason Smythe had, by then, made considerable progress with his initial thesis that if incest were not taboo, but optional, no oedipal or electra complexes would arise. His supporters were now producing evidence to show he was at least often right.

  But a thought followed. Jason’s second wife, Pat, and her daughter Zillah, had always made it much too clear to me, after I met the family, that either one would adore to have me sleep with her any time I stayed with Miles, which was often. I had resisted even when Nora was away—just to have something of my own, I think, at their palatial residences, even if it was only a reluctant, negative and often ball-burning and sole “own” possession.

  Zil was in an album. So I had Zil. Three ways, three times. It seemed a decent way to deal with a still red-blonde sex engine who still beckoned.

  It amazed me. It felt real, looked real, sounded real and was real—except it was reality projected by a machine that materialized dreams. I went out ready to tell Nora and even to insist she try one of the ladies’ suites. But I postponed that confession because it dawned on me that, through our teens, while I never fell an inch away from my fall for Nora, she’d often watched me shake free of Zillah, but, for sure, with visible reluctance. She might not think I’d make up for that long self-discipline and sometimes undesired fidelity. And I wouldn’t want Nora to think I was cheating, testing the evaded fire—even this way.

  Such, then, was the Love-O-Mat, widely regarded as America’s top scientific marvel.
The machines spread worldwide save for the USSR. The Politbureau’s final refusal to import them was the lit match that blew the powder keg. Without that puritan vote there might never have been the next People’s Revolution that tore the USSR to wisps and shreds, to acreages that showed the earth’s curve, where only weeds stood in former grain fields, and anything on a horizon would be a ruin with long-unfound and buried dead.

  What the Love-O-Mat did to the American public, God knows. The birth rate shrank, collapsed, frightened all sorts of people who thought America needed another hundred million or so, but the babies actually born were, beyond doubt, wanted, a new thing. And maybe the Love-O-Mats provided joy where there was not much left outside their scented doors. Perhaps to possess any movie star or other public libido-goddess you desired, any way you wanted her, or, maybe, to love someone old, for the novelty, or one of the grade school kids, really did provide sex with a fresh, new, young and natural sensation. I don’t know. That much of our original curse may stick in me because I still feel I’d all but die of shame as my adult organ entered that of a girl of eight, however sure I was she’d adore it, would not feel any distress, was, in fact, giving love to get it from a big cock like her uncle’s, dad’s, grandfather’s but not mine. I cannot change in all ways.

  Finally it should be said that the Love-O-Mats changed sexual mores, conversation, the American mood. People agreed they didn’t debauch them or increase sex crime—on the contrary. Sex, and a very dandy form, seeming real as reality in every way, save for instants spent on button-adjusting, would have had a far more varied and deep and perhaps somehow harmful final effect, had it been available long enough.

  Some discussion of the devices occurred at a recent meeting of Faraway Committee for Sexual Studies. One of those present, a teacher, a cute, bright holder of an M.A. and a Ph.D., a Phi Beta Kappa key-wearer, who is no more formidable than girls as chic and taunting who lack high school diplomas, summed the matter up: