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| Being a housewife isn't all bake sales and PTA meetings. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "The Housewife/Lesbian." Originally published in Gemini (Gallery Press), vol. 2, no. 1, March/April 1973. Credited to "Ann Gora." Ed Wood's resume claims he wrote this in 1972.
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| A Letnze book from Pendulum. |
Excerpt: "So far my husband suspects nothing, but I have been tempted to come right out and tell him. Since Clara and I have been making it with each other, we've met several other women, housewives like us, who have similar outlets for their homosexual desires. A few of them have even organized clubs that meet on Saturday afternoons, while others sneak off to a lesbian bagnio a few blocks away. What's really amazing though, is that many of these women have actually told their husbands what they're doing and their husbands are not upset."
Reflections: With this article, we leave behind the topic of sadomasochism and embark upon the portion of When the Topic is Sex devoted to lesbianism. Specifically, "The Housewife/Lesbian" is about women who experiment with same-sex love affairs despite being involved in heterosexual marriages and having children. Keep in mind, Ed Wood is writing this for a straight male audience, so his version of lesbian love is the kind most likely to fuel men's fantasies—think bored, big-boobed housewives rubbing suntan oil on each other while their husbands are away at work.
In fact, Ed Wood attributes many of these lesbian dalliances to sheer boredom. Even with their housework and child-rearing duties, these women simply don't have enough to do all day while the menfolk are making money to support their families. So the gals inevitably turn their attentions toward each other. Hey, you have to do something after Match Game '73 goes off the air.
Tonally, "The Housewife/Lesbian" reminds me somewhat of Ed's script for Steve Apostolof's Drop Out Wife (1972). In that film—and other Apostolof softcore romps—women complain to each other about how useless men are, especially as lovers. This article echoes that sentiment: "The lesbian feels that men simply don't know how to make love." When it comes to pleasing a woman in the bedroom, who knows better than another woman?
In the interest of fairness, Ed Wood presents the cases for and against lesbian housewives. One woman reports that her marriage has never been better. She explains in detail:
Since Clara and I began having our sexual affairs it has affected my marriage marvelously. It's been like a shot in the arm. I feel much more intimate with Tom and our sex life is better than it's ever been. In fact, most of the time he has to hold me off, instead of the other way around. I don't know how a psychologist would explain it, but I think that, by having an outlet for my homosexual needs I have somehow lifted a great weight off my heterosexual nature.
Uh huh. But Ed immediately follows this with testimony from a woman who is wracked with guilt and shame for the way she treats her husband and children. She wonders aloud where her lesbian tendencies come from. Genes? Chromosomes? She even suspects she may be a product of an anxiety-plagued age, saying that "the bomb-laden, fear-ridden environment" is possibly to blame.
One thing that briefly flummoxed me about this article is that Ed Wood repeatedly cites a book called The Gay Girls that he attributes to someone named "P.M. Vd. Leinze, Ph.D." I couldn't find any author, pornographic or otherwise, named Leinze and thought Ed must be making this up. But, no, the last name is just slightly misspelled. It's actually P.M. Vd. Letnze, Ph.D. This Letnze person is the author of such adult paperbacks as The Cherry Pickers (Impact Library, 1967), The Ultimate Orgasm (Impact Library, 1968), Oversexed Broads (Pendulum, 1968), and, yes, The Gay Girls (Erika Press, 1970). That last one is subtitled Scalding Case Histories of the Fiery Passions That Roil.
Incidentally, changing "Letnze" to "Leinze" is something Ed Wood did in his original article. Here's the relevant portion as it appeared in Gemini magazine:
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| The article erroneously cites Leinze rather than Letnze. |
You'd think, since Letnze had at least one book out from Pendulum, there might be more of an effort to make sure the author's last name was spelled correctly.
Next: "Lesbian Understanding" (1973)