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| Don't let the title fool you. This article has nothing to do with Rome. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "When in Rome." Originally published Goddess (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 2, no. 3, August/September 1973. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "I suppose there comes a time in everybody's life that they get a little bored with the same old thing. Maybe that's why the Peeping Tom goes out looking in windows . . . he's like maybe tired of doing the same old thing with the same old broad so it's like he's right in there with the couple he's watching. He's getting his jollies . . . his good time."
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| The Onion's "American Voices." |
Reflections: Remember the days of actual physical newspapers, the kind printed on thin, cheap paper and delivered to your doorstep (or driveway or roof) by some kid on a bike? Sure you do. It wasn't that long ago. After you read the sports and comics and skimmed the headlines, you could always use 'em to line your birdcage or train your puppy. A million and one uses, those things.
Anyway, a regular feature of newspaper editorial pages was the "question of the day" that they'd pose to four or five average nobodies they happened to find on the street. They might ask something like, "Should the speed limit be lowered to 55?" and then you'd read what these yahoos had to say about it. I'm not sure what journalistic value these articles had, but it was a way to get your name and picture in the paper. My own high school newspaper, The Blazer, ran its own version of this feature. More famously, The Onion has been parodying these articles for decades with its recurring "American Voices" feature.
"When in Rome" is Ed Wood's take on the "question of the day" article, and he predictably drags it right down into the gutter. We would expect and accept no less from him. The question he poses to several (imaginary) passersby is: what would you think of having an extra person at your sex session? Boy, Eddie sure was into group sex back in the day, huh? Or, I guess, it's what his editors were asking for. Threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, as they say. That must've been what was selling in 1973.
Writing as Dick Trent, Eddie doesn't even pretend to take this article seriously. He's in full-on goofball mode here. There are those who think Ed Wood took himself and his work extremely seriously, but this is not strictly true. Sure, there are many times throughout his career when Ed is quite earnest, even preachy—When the Topic is Sex has its share of pleas for tolerance—but he definitely had a playful, silly side to his personality as well.
There's a naughty, almost schoolboy-like quality that emerges in pieces like "When in Rome." The article's standard joke is that the men practically salivate at the thought of these group sex scenarios, while the women seem to be quite offended at first but cannot help being curious. Here's a typical quote:
"For the life of me I don't know anybody who would be interested in such a question. I'm a perfectly respectful suburban housewife. . . . I'm thirty and I love my husband. . . . Would I really be interested? . . . why I . . . well I never heard of such a thing, I'm a suburban housewife, and things like that simply don't happen in modern day suburbia . . . I don't think so anyway . . . (giggle) . I wonder if any of my friends? . . . you know, sometimes . . . now that you speak of it, they do have those weekend card parties that last all through Friday night and sometimes through Saturday, and the doors are always locked, and I don't remember seeing many lights on in the house. . . . I have wondered how they could see their cards in such a dim light . . . certainly they will all need glasses before many years, those who don't have them now . . . I wonder . . . ? No it's too silly . . . they are simply playing cards as they say. . . . Such things as you suggest simply don't happen in modern day suburbia."
I think that, half a century ago, there was a much more defined double standard when it came to sex. Women had to feign being prudish in public, just to keep up appearances, but they were expected to be sexually adventurous in private. "A lady in the streets and a whore in the sheets," as the saying goes. Men were allowed to be openly lustful and lewd.
Stylistically, "When in Rome" is the kind of piece that any Ed Wood fan should be able to identify even without consulting his writing résumé. His tropes are woven all through this. For instance, Ed (writing as "Dick Trent") stops the article dead in its tracks on multiple occasions to describe in detail what the female respondents are wearing. That's something he does in both his fiction and nonfiction. No points for guessing that one of these ladies is wearing an angora sweater. But, for me, the most blatantly Wood-ian passage arrives right near the end, when a hippie-type dude gives this response, coincidentally the one that gives the entire article its title:
"I say everybody's got a right to do their thing the way they want to do it ma'an I'd go the whole scene. I'd blow the place apart, that's what I'd do . . . smoke a little pot, and blow it right up the cavern, make it all hot with smoke. Ohhh, daddy I just got to meet up with some of them people you are asking about . . . ma'an, that's cool . . . real cool with all that heat . . . if you get what I mean . . . ma'an . . .When in Rome . . ."
Ed Wood writes his hippie characters with the same authenticity you'd expect to find on Dragnet 1967.
Next: "Interview with the Man on the Street About Censorship" (1972)