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| Dick Trent scores again! |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "Climax Needed." Originally published in Goddess (Gallery Press), vol. 1, no. 2, November/December 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "Sex is the most natural of all the human elements going right along with food and water in importance. The animal world certainly makes no bones about their demands. If a bitch dog is in heat the male dogs will break down fences to get at her."
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| Ed Wood's creative process? |
Reflections: "Climax Needed" is another article in When the Topic is Sex that seems to consist solely of tropes from other Ed Wood articles. I sometimes suspect that Eddie constructed these articles using a prefabricated kit, sort of like Ikea furniture. When an article was due, he'd dump the parts out on the floor, then assemble them with an Allen wrench. Let's see here. We have all the usual suspects:
- People used to believe sex was strictly for procreation, not pleasure.
- The missionary position can become awfully boring after a while. But people may not be familiar with anything else.
- America's young people are more sexually adventurous than their elders, trying out different positions and different combinations of partners.
- Couples with unsatisfying sex lives often get divorced.
- Group sex is more common than you'd think, and it's getting more popular all the time.
- Books about sex used to be written in technical language that only doctors understood. Thankfully, this is no longer the case.
- We're all discussing sex more openly these days.
- Due to uptight censors, movies used to show married couples in double beds. Can you believe that?
- Oral sex was once shunned by society but is now more accepted.
- Sex is a natural, healthy, and necessary part of life.
Throw in a couple of Ed's pet phrases, the ones he'd been using since Glen or Glenda (1953)—stuff like "behind locked doors" and "strange as it may seem"—and you've got another sexology article ready to send to publisher Bernie Bloom.
What sets Ed's articles apart from each other is that, generally, each one will have its own specific gimmick or hook. For instance, "Climax Needed" stresses the importance of climaxing during sex. (I'm pretty sure Ed has used the word "orgasm" in other articles, but he doesn't use it here.) According to Ed Wood, America's youngsters are unhappy with old-fashioned orgasms and want newer, better ones:
The young have become unsatisfied with what they have been taught as to what a sex life is all about. They have felt the climax and know that it brings them to the very edge of life itself. But they also felt that the climax should be stronger . . . perhaps it could even last longer. In the locker rooms of the schools they have heard sketches of conversations which tell of other sexual happenings . . . sometimes actions they had never heard about before . . . and because they are of the enlightened age they want to get out, try it on for size, and see what it's all about. They are finding out rather quickly that they like what they have witnessed and experimented with.
Cancer? Heart disease? That stuff can wait. The hippies demand more satisfying sexual climaxes. To them, a bedroom (or, just as likely, the back of a VW Microbus) is a science lab for all kinds of erotic experiments. You're welcome, America.
In their quest for that fabled new-and-improved orgasm, America's youngsters are engaging in what Ed calls "oral copulation." Or what we commonly call today "mouth stuff." Which brings me to another distinguishing feature of "Climax Needed." Ed has often discussed the stigma that society once attached to fellatio and cunnilingus—it's a topic that comes up fairly often in his books and articles—but I don't know that he's ever done so with quite so much panache as he does here:
Years ago when one was heard to have practiced such an affair they were shunned by society as something dirty, a specimen which had crawled out from under a rock and one that most certainly shouldn't be permitted to contaminate the rest of society . . . the good people . . . the good people who steadfastly practiced the missionary position and in general, went unsatisfied. It is well known that when one is unsatisfied in their sex life, they are going to come up with a troubled mind whereby even their jobs can become influenced . . . influenced toward the down-side of the ledger. The unsatisfied sexual partner or partners will also become irritable at the slightest word or action. Naturally with such a situation the divorce court becomes the only out. Lawyers have become rich on the malfunctioning sex lives of others.
This, frankly, is the kind of passage that keeps me reading When the Topic is Sex. If I'm following Ed's logic correctly here, a lack of oral sex will lead to poor workplace performance, increased irritability, and even divorces. That's what I'd call a slippery slope.
Next: "Let's Swap Spits" (1972)