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| College life is the pits, according to Ed Wood. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "College Cherries." Originally published in Fantastic Annual (Gallery Press), 1974. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "The day of the goldfish eating, the crowding of as many bodies as possible into telephone booths, even the panty raids seem to have disappeared into history to be replaced by pot-sex orgy parties. Taking any kind of survey would prove that few students have escaped the vapors of pot . . . and it was reported recently that the grass smoke was so thick in one dormitory that even nonsmoking visitors were enveloped and sent to their own rewards simply by being there . . . or guilt by association."
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| Another of Ed Wood's explorations of college life. |
Reflections: Ed Wood was part of the so-called Greatest Generation, i.e. those Americans born between 1901 and 1927 who lived through the Great Depression and fought in World War II. I'm guessing many of Eddie's readers in the 1970s were also members of this fabled generation. But the Greatest Generation was middle-aged or older by this time, long past the days of having wild, uninhibited sex with multiple partners. As a result, most of the articles in When the Topic is Sex tend to focus on the erotic escapades of the younger generation. In a more general sense, then, you could say that this book is Ed Wood's critique of the Baby Boomers—their manners and morals.
"College Cherries" purports to be an exposé of what was happening on America's college campuses in the early 1970s. Namely, the students were screwing each other's brains out in every possible combination. Now, what Ed Wood didn't know about college life you could almost squeeze into the Hollywood Bowl, but he paints a pretty vivid picture in "College Cherries" anyway. He's essentially a sci-fi writer imagining what life must be like on a distant planet.
Above all, Ed wants us to know that the days of virginal college girls are over. "A cherry in the student body is something that's few and far between," he writes. So, then, why is this article called "College Cherries'? I'll chalk it up to administrative oversight. Or maybe Ed just didn't think these things through. Anyway, according to this article, the modern college girl wants to have as many sexual partners as possible. Ed also takes this opportunity to disparage the missionary position once again. (He writes about this so often that it seems like a personal vendetta.)
Before college girls started to "put out," Ed Wood informs us, college boys had to resort to whorehouses or homosexuality. "After all when a male reaches college age his sex stimulation has become very important to him," Ed writes. I have no idea if this is true. Did straight college boys used to hump each other in their dorm rooms? This article implies that they did.
At least for the purposes of this story, Ed sides with the youngsters and their attempts to undermine or sidestep the "ancient rules" imposed upon them by the prudish, old-fashioned college administrators. These include curfews and the segregation of men and women in the dorms. Eddie even seems to approve of the students having marijuana-fueled orgies and switching partners every few weeks. At the article's conclusion, he writes:
If anything is being done to stop the forward sex motion of these young people, either by parents or the faculties, it is being done in entire secrecy . . . secrecy from the students and themselves as well. So far little harm is being felt by these sexual friendships, and in none too few cases it is said that the sexual freedom movement has done a hell of a lot more good than bad . . . it might be a mind stopper to some, but it is a tremendous mind builder to others.
A pretty forgiving attitude, wouldn't you say?
Compare this to Ed Wood's script for The Class Reunion (1972), in which the twentysomething characters express nothing but contempt for college kids and their immoral ways. Then again, those same twentysomethings wind up having an orgy in their hotel room, so who are they to judge? Maybe Ed mellowed a bit between The Class Reunion and "College Cherries." Or he was in a grouchy mood when he wrote the former.
Incidentally, "College Cherries" is another article that I had already reviewed. If you want to know what I thought of this story back in 2019, I invite you to read a blog post entitled "Ed Wood Goes to College."
Next: "Head—Heaven and Hell" (1973)