Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Trucking's a Ball" (1974)

Ed Wood wrote about truckers? That's a 10-4, good buddy.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Trucking's a Ball." Also known as "Truckin's a Ball." Originally published in Fantastic Annual (Pendulum Publishing), 1974. Credited to "Dick Trent."

Excerpt: "The girls will stick out a thumb on the highway, but it will not be directed at the comforts of some late model automobile with the neatly dressed, freshly shaved driver behind the wheel. In fact, the girls won't even put a thumb out to those men. It is only when the roar of the truck comes along that their thighs begin to quiver and their titties begin to rise and fall rapidly under their sweaters or blouses."

Only in the 1970s: C.W. McCall.

Reflections: Are you old enough to remember trucker-mania? In the 1970s, the long-haul trucker briefly became a pop culture icon in America, inspiring movies, TV shows, toys, and even pop songs. When else could "Convoy" by C.W. McCall have topped the charts? The timing of this phenomenon actually makes some sense, if you put it into its proper historical context. In the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, we Americans were deeply distrustful of authority, and truckers seemed like antiestablishment heroes we could root for. They lived by their own rules, often enraging the cops in the process, but they weren't wimpy, peace-loving hippies. They were rough, tough dudes who could handle themselves in a fight.

It's only natural that Ed Wood wrote an article about truckers, but as usual, he had his own particular spin on the subject. "Trucking's a Ball" is not really about truckers, per se, but about the women who obsessively follow truckers around for sexual reasons. Ed has given this matter a lot of thought and pinpointed the exact reason that the ladies love trucker drivers: the smell. As he writes: "It's the man smell. The tough, rough man smell that seems to come off to them as all male . . . and these girls want only that . . . all male." This is one of those days when I'm glad When the Topic is Sex isn't a scratch-and-sniff book.

There's an odd double standard at play here when it comes to personal cleanliness. Ed had nothing but contempt for hippies and wrote often about how filthy they were, both in their clothing and their bodily hygiene. (It's almost never a good sign when a character in one of his novels is wearing dirty jeans.) But he lionizes those same exact qualities in truckers, even pointing out that truckers will wear "the same underwear" for days on end. Why is it okay for truckers to be slobs but not hippies? Maybe it's because truckers are at least contributing to the economy, while hippies probably aren't.

Going into more detail than anyone might want, Ed writes that a tucker's feet "are encased with grime in the heavy socks and boots he's worn for hours on end." That reminded me of a line from Glen or Glenda (1953). "His feet encased in the same, thick, tight-fitting leather that his shoes are made of." That must be one of Ed Wood's weirdest motifs: "encased" feet. 

Speaking of motifs, Ed Wood often used the curious term "pink clouds" to describe the pleasurable sensations that a woman might experience while having sex or taking drugs (or both). I first encountered it while reading his 1967 novel Devil Girls. He uses it here, too, in a passage about what it's like to have sex in a truck while it's actually in motion! Naturally, this requires two truckers: one to make love, another to drive. Ed's imagery is almost hallucinogenic: 

And as they will tell it, this is one of the really great sensations of intercourse . . . when the roar, the throb, the rhythm of the motor comes tearing through every fibre of their bodies, that's when they have intercoursed themselves right up onto pink cloud number nine . . . and it is strange when you hear all these girls telling about the smelling man, the worst of the lot, they have had, yet at all times when they speak of reaching their climax they refer to it as some sort of pink . . . cloud . . . heaven . . .blanket . . . surf . . .always pink . . . and pink in any other terms might be thought of as all the clean things in the world.

Along with those references to pink clouds, Ed makes sure to mention the odor of the truckers, too. He really thought this was a major selling point for women. Maybe there should have been a cologne for men who wanted to smell like a trucker. Eau de Diesel Fuel or something.

Incidentally, "Trucking's a Ball" is yet another article that I had already reviewed on this blog. I first discussed this article back in 2020, just weeks before the pandemic began. And now here we are, finally emerging from the shadow of COVID-19 after two brutal years, and I'm still writing about this  ridiculous Ed Wood trucker article. The more things change, huh?

Next: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (1971)