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| Could this be Ed Wood's most disturbing work? |
How far are you willing to go in your pursuit of Edward D. Wood, Jr.? I've asked this question several times before, and I'll ask it yet again this week. At what point do you say, "No, Ed, I will not follow you down this path"? People have limits, standards, lines they won't cross. I appreciate that.
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| The Ed Wood you signed on for. |
Most Ed Wood fans, including me, got to know him through his endearingly wonky 1950s movies, like Glen or Glenda (1953), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). This is the Ed Wood we signed on for: Bela, Tor, Cris, Vampira, plywood cemeteries, angora sweaters, toy UFOs, etc. When you start exploring the rest of Ed's career, especially his adult-oriented films and books from the 1960s and '70s, you do so at your own risk. Much of this stuff ain't pretty.
Over two decades ago, for instance, I remember being appalled by Ed Wood's softcore feature Love Feast (1969) when it was released under the title Pretty Models All in a Row by Rhino Video. I was too embarrassed to return it to the store or resell it at a secondhand shop, so I believe my copy went right into the garbage. I later had to repurchase that DVD for this project, probably at a higher price than I'd paid for it originally. Today, Love Feast seems relatively tame to me, even though it features a bloated, drunken Ed Wood on all fours being led around on a leash like a dog.
But The Oralists is something else, maybe the ultimate test of any Ed Wood fan. On the surface, it seems relatively harmless—a book-length treatise on oral sex, attributed to the fictional husband and wife duo of Roger West and Jean Spenser. What could go wrong? If you've read the first half of my review, you know the answer is: plenty. Although ostensibly marketed as an erotic book and presumably aimed at horny straight men, The Oralists veers into some decidedly anti-erotic, off-putting material. And we'll encounter the worst of that when we delve into the book's final four chapters.
CHAPTER FIVE
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| Pico Blvd. in the 1960s. |
Specifically, Jo relates a harrowing story that happened to her when she was 15. Like too many of Ed Wood's characters—especially gay and female ones—Jo was raped but did not report the incident to the police. Unreported rapes are a motif in the films Ed made with Steve Apostolof in the 1970s, and such an event drives the plot of his novel It Takes One to Know One (1967). Why Ed Wood kept returning to this theme, I don't know.
Back in high school, Jo was a goody-two-shoes until she started running with a troublemaker named Jane. After Jane convinced Jo to cash a bad check for $20, the two went on an ill-advised road trip to Las Vegas with three fully-grown biker types named Dick, Burt, and Tommy. Here, Ed gets to comment negatively on the clothes, hair, and music preferences of these dirty, rotten counterculture types. He does seem genuinely impressed by the Cadillac they've procured, however.
Once they were on the road, Dick almost immediately turned into an aggressive monster and forced poor Jo to perform oral sex on him in the backseat of the Caddy. This caused her to vomit and try to escape, but Dick was not deterred. Jo was expected to continue servicing him even when he started driving! Ultimately, Jo punched her rapist in the crotch and managed to escape back to Los Angeles and the safety of her home. She confessed forging the check to her mother but did not talk about what happened between her and Dick. Needless to say, that was the end of her friendship with Jane.
Jo reports that this horrifying incident did not turn her off from men and that she began a romantic relationship with a man named Darren in college. I suppose that qualifies as a happy ending, but I again have to wonder what this material is doing in a book like The Oralists. I mean, are readers supposed to identify with Dick? If so, you'd think Ed would have skipped the vomiting and crotch-punching parts. This chapter could also be considered a warning to young women, but how many of them were buying dirty paperbacks in 1969?
CHAPTER SIX
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| Communication is vital in a relationship. |
Much like Jo from Chapter Five, Karen started out as something of a goody-goody. The fact that she didn't have sex almost caused her to lose Mike to another girl, Elaine. One night, Mike took Karen to a popular teenage makeout spot that I pictured being something like Inspiration Point on Happy Days. Since Mike didn't have a condom that fateful night, he instead performed oral sex on Karen. Like many Ed Wood characters, Karen experienced sudden sensations of hot and cold. (No, really, this is a motif in both Ed's films and writing.)
Karen soon learned to return the favor, and she performed oral sex on Mike whenever she had "the curse." Unfortunately, she and Mike drifted apart after high school and met other people. Karen eventually met and married Edward, who is now a very young high school principal. He's a nice guy and all but perhaps too "conventional"—another of Ed Wood's pet adjectives—when it comes to sex and initially rejects the idea of any mouth play. ("Oh, Edward, why do you make it so difficult?" Karen laments.) Ultimately, Karen was able to convince Edward to incorporate oral sex into their marriage.
What's interesting or notable here is the degree to which Karen fixates on this one particular sex act, almost to the exclusion of everything else. It becomes as much a part of her identity as cross-dressing was to Glen (Ed Wood) in Glen or Glenda (1953). Wood even writes that oral sex "became an obsession" to her, which is very similar to a line from Glenda. In that film, Dr. Alton (Timothy Farrell), tells us a story about Glen and his girlfriend Barbara (Dolores Fuller):
Then, there was the time Barbara was wearing the sweater Glen had always wanted to feel on his own body. It was becoming an obsession to him. He must have it.
In both Glen or Glenda and The Oralists, the solution is the same: the person with the obsession or fetish must convey that to the other person. Open, honest communication is the key to a healthy relationship. That message makes Chapter Six one of the more positive, uplifting sections of The Oralists.
Well, here we are. This is, so far, the most shocking and upsetting passage I've encountered in any of Ed Wood's written works. I hope I don't find anything worse than this as I explore his work further. Remember that warning I gave you at the beginning of the article? This is why. If ever there were a reason to retreat from Ed Wood and never look back, Chapter Seven of The Oralists is it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
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| A lonely sailor. |
This part of the book is presented as a conversation with a young man who is a self-confessed "muff diver." Eddie doesn't bother giving this character a name, as if the acts described in these pages are so shameful that even a fictional character shouldn't admit to them. At the time this book was published, oral sex itself still carried a stigma, especially men performing cunnilingus on women. It was viewed (by some) as unmanly or even perverse. This is a theme I've encountered repeatedly in Ed Wood's books and articles. This kind of thinking has even persisted into our times, as evidenced by the infamous Breakfast Club interview with music producer DJ Khaled from 2014.
Our interview subject tells us that he was introduced to oral sex by his sister when he was only seven years old. So right away, we have incest and child molestation in this story. Certainly these events affected—or warped—our storyteller in ways that affected him later in life.
Eventually, his sister went away to college (another motif in The Oralists), and he signed on as a sailor on a cargo ship. On an unnamed island in the South Seas, his sex life took a dramatic, troubling turn. There, he was offered sex with a six-year-old girl for some small amount of money. He took the girl to a secluded beach, and there they performed oral sex on each other. He later had a similar encounter with a 12-year-old on another beach. This started a pattern in his life, centering around sex with young girls, whom he calls "urchins," in hidden locations.
Happily, our interview subject decided to turn his life around. He got a boat of his own and went into business for himself. After a few years, he set his sights on marriage and family, vowing never to treat his own children the way he'd treated those he'd encountered as a sailor. But he had a problem. At 26, he'd never had normal sex with a grown woman and worried that he could not perform. Luckily, he found a kindhearted, red-haired prostitute named Linda who guided him through some rough patches and even agreed to stay the night at no extra charge. (This part of the story almost qualifies as science-fiction.)
Eventually, he did find a wife, Kathy (yes, her name is the same as Ed Wood's real-life wife), and even had a picture perfect wedding. But he ran into another snag on his wedding night when Kathy refused to let him perform oral sex on her, declaring cunnilingus to be "not normal." After an argument that nearly ended their marriage on its very first day, he eventually talked her into it, and now they have an enjoyable sex life. The sailor and his new wife have a son, and the sailor tells us he wants to raise the child to have good morals and lack the sexual hang-ups of his father.
Look, I'm glossing over a lot of this. Chapter Seven is way, way more explicit than you'll want it to be. If there's an upside to this part of the book, it's that the main character recognizes his dangerous perversion and wishes to change it. I'm sure he hopes that his wife and son never find out about his past. But, at the same time, he displays a gallingly insensitive attitude toward the underaged prostitutes he molested in the South Seas. Here's how he justifies his past:
I guess that’s pretty disgusting to you, isn’t it? That a guy like me will take a kid into an alley or some place and get his kicks in that way. Well, maybe you’re right and maybe you aren’t. These kids don’t get hurt, ya know… and I give ’em a couple bucks. That’s bettern’ they get from some people. I’m at least not rapin’ ’em… not hurtin’ ’em any.
I don't really know how to respond to a passage like that.
Perhaps the best we can say here is that the cycle of sexual abuse will (apparently) not continue with the next generation of this family. Our interview subject was abused as a child and grew up to become an abuser himself, but hopefully his son will escape this depressing fate.
CHAPTER EIGHT
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| Franklin Ave. in Hollywood |
Eventually, Nat went to Del's home "off Franklin, behind a garage and across a small secluded patio." There, predictably, they engaged in some oral sex. This is still The Oralists, don't forget. By this point in the book, Ed Wood's incredibly graphic sex scenes were old news to me, so I was more interested in his use of geography. Franklin Avenue is a well-known thoroughfare on the north side of Hollywood. Like many of the big streets in L.A., it passes through residential sections as well as major commercial areas. The Magic Castle is there, as is the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre. It did not escape my attention that Ed Wood's first residence in Poughkeepsie was on Franklin Street, but I think this is largely coincidental.
Via Facebook, Bob Blackburn commented:
Interesting the mention of Franklin Ave. which is the street I live on and the same as where Kathy Wood landed after Ed's passing. It is actually only one block north of Yucca, but this book was written before [Ed and Kathy Wood] moved to Yucca, but Franklin is a well-known arterial a couple blocks from Hollywood Blvd. and does have some interesting places along it, including like you mentioned in the article, The Magic Castle, but right near there the Landmark Motel where Janis Joplin od'd also the Scientology building on Franklin and Bronson, which was originally called The Chateau Elysee, originally built by the widow of Hollywood film maker Thomas Ince, who died on William Randolph Hearst's [yacht]. Some claim he was mistakenly murdered by Hearst, who thought he was another guest on the boat, Charlie Chaplin, said to be having an affair with Marion Davies his mistress, all grist for the Hollywood rumor mill.
After all the trauma and depravity of this book, this final chapter is somewhat of an anticlimax. This fairly standard account of a healthy, consensual lesbian relationship is the kind of story that really would appear in a book of this nature if "Spenser and West" were actually legitimate sex researchers and not a whiskey-soaked pornographer using a pseudonym. Even here, though, Ed Wood's language remains... let's say, colorful. I liked, for instance, that Nat referred to one of Del's breasts as a "marshmallow puff." And when it comes to describing the sex acts, Ed really lets passion overtake him. An example:
I extended my tongue, hard and flat and swabbed her cunt. She screamed loud and sharp, banged down hard and went into a long and turbulent pumping… doing a double time. It was perfect. I naturally dug in and chewed like a mad woman. She continued to yell as I continued to suck. Rocking, clawing and twisting her body gyrated all over the bed as I followed along. We wound up squarely on the floor, both gasping for breath, both panting for rest.
Can't you just imagine Ed Wood hammering away at his battered old typewriter when he thought of that? Maybe I'm underselling this chapter. Nat's story is not terribly unusual, but Nat proves herself a gifted storyteller. And she's a philosopher, too, in a way. Ed Wood ends The Oralists with this little soliloquy from Nat as she ponders her relationship with Del:
At times it’s good. At other times… not so… because…well, both of us realize as much as we enjoy each other, man was not made to be a monogamous creature… women, too… I think. Oral sex is our way of life. I don’t have anything negative to report about it. I enjoy it much more than having a large shiny cock shoved up me… personally speaking, that is… for I know a lot of gay chicks who really groove on being entered. That’s great as long as I do the entering.