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| This is a real, solvable word search. Get to it! |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "Did You Ever Know...?" Originally published in Party Time (Gallery Press), vol. 2, no. 3, 1973. Credited to Dick Trent.
Excerpt: "Now supposing you're already for your sexual PARTY TIME and you've had the sexual heats all week thinking about it. You've even selected the partner you want to make the whole scene with . . . and what are you going to say to her (him)? The bet is two to one it will be the same old four letter words which have been written over and over again in all the books and on the crap-house walls."
Reflections: Do you remember that song "Big Time" by Peter Gabriel? It was on his 1986 album So, along with "Red Rain," "Sledgehammer," and "In Your Eyes." Man, that album was a monster for Peter Gabriel, huh? Anyway, "Big Time" contains a verse that applies itself very well to today's article:
The place where I come from is a small town.
They think so small. They use small words.
But not me! I'm smarter than that! I worked it out.
I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out.
Now that I think of it, that entire song describes Ed Wood's mindset fairly accurately. With a population of 30,000, Eddie's birthplace of Poughkeepsie, NY is not exactly a "small town," especially by the standards of the United States Census. That is, until you compare it to Los Angeles, CA, where Eddie moved in 1947. Then, Poughkeepsie seems very small indeed. And I'll bet, when Eddie was growing up, he didn't know most or any of the obscure sexual terminology in "Did You Ever Know...?"
He certainly knew them by 1973. This article is all about "big words," specifically those that pertain to sex. (And some of the acts they describe would stretch a person's mouth out considerably.) These are some polysyllabic tongue twisters he's lined up here: "amor lesbicus," "coitus per rectum," "scrotilinctus," "frenulum preputii," "climacterium," etc. I was reminded of those Latin names that would pop up onscreen during the Road Runner cartoons.
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| Latin names were a running (!) gag in the Road Runner cartoons from Warner Bros. |
The difference is that the Latin words used in those cartoons were made up, and, as far as I know, the terms that Ed Wood uses in "Did You Ever Know...?" are all real. At least the medical ones are. I can't vouch for the slang terms. I'm skeptical about some of them. For instance, Eddie defines "lingerie lass" as "a girl who likes to have intercourse with all or part of her undies or stockings still on," but to me, "lingerie lass" sounds like a forgotten member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'm also dubious of "haytit," "chubbies," "gallop the antelope," and "nixies." And has anyone besides Ed ever used the word "geography" to describe the female genitalia?
As usual, though, this article did provide some interesting fodder for research. One of the terms Eddie includes in this glossary is "Agaemone," which he defines as "a Free-Love group; an institution or establishment of men and women who practice Free-Love and swap mates regularly. This word derives from the name of a community established at Spaxton, England, in 1849, in which immorality among some of its members was rampant." Ed has the spelling slightly wrong, but the Agapemonites were very real and existed as late as 1956!
Next: "Sex is Not a Hazard" (1972)