Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Head—Heaven and Hell" (1973)

Today, Ed Wood wants to discuss oral sex with you.

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

The article: "Head—Heaven and Hell." Publication data unknown. Listed on Ed Wood's resume as having been written in 1973. Credited to "Dick Trent."

Excerpt: "Oh, the pleasures of it all . . . the dynamic thrills that builds in the scrotum and travels along the shaft to that final explosion and a willing partner gobbling it all down. It is the pleasure of all pleasures, and it isn't only the young who practice such affairs . . . prostitutes have been professionals at both fellatio and cunnilingus for centuries. Many specialize in the art."

"When I said I wanted a little head..."

Reflections: There's a little game I play whenever I'm reviewing an article from When the Topic is Sex. It's called Let's Guess How Drunk Ed Wood Was When He Wrote This Thing. Answers can range from "not drunk at all" to "completely bombed out of his mind." In the case of 1973's "Head—Heaven and Hell," my guess is "pretty goddamned drunk." Why? Because this article captures Eddie at his Eddie-est, flitting from topic to topic in a rambling, florid, stream-of-consciousness style rife with his trademark ellipses. It reads like the transcript of someone else's dream. There are days when Ed does not write as much as babble onto the page. This is such a day.

At the basic molecular level, "Head—Heaven and Hell" is Ed Wood's essay about the pleasures of oral sex. He says he'll discuss both fellatio and cunnilingus, but the former gets more attention since Eddie's audience was overwhelmingly male.  Wood seems at first to want to detail the history of this practice, mentioning the popularity of oral sex in Ancient Rome. But then he goes off on a weird tangent about how paintings from that era tend to depict "the elite of society" rather than "the rabble," probably because the latter had no money with which to pay the artists. He then adds:

But is it this way today? Not by the tail feathers of a cockatoo. The entire situation is in reverse. The elite have gone into hiding and the masses have come to the foreground . . . to have their pictures taken, painted and whatever . . . and fellatio and cunnilingus stands well out in the foreground.

See what Ed just did there? He remembered that this article was supposed to be about oral sex, so he somehow managed to steer himself back onto the main road. I'm not complaining, mind you. I like when Eddie takes the scenic route, especially if it means we'll get phrases like "not by the tail feathers of a cockatoo." This is not a common English idiom, by the way, but Ed uses it as if it were.

At several points throughout When the Topic is Sex, Ed Wood has discussed whether or not oral sex is normal and healthy. It seems that, half a century ago, this common practice was more controversial and less accepted than it is today. "Head—Heaven and Hell" repeats most of Ed's main talking points on the subject. As usual, Eddie assures us that "the psychiatrists and men of science" have given it their approval, no matter what the moralists might say. And, yet again, the author takes this opportunity to disparage the old-fashioned missionary position, comparing it unfavorably to oral intercourse. 

With all these side trips, it takes a while for Ed to arrive at his thesis statement: "Fellatio and cunnilingus can actually send a person to Heaven or Hell, as the case may be." As what case may be, Ed? What the hell are you talking about? 

The paragraphs that immediately follow offer little in the way of explanation or illumination. Ed says that oral sex is convenient for those couples who want to get romantic at movie theaters or parks without getting caught. He also says that fellatio is commonly offered to customers at "health spas and massage parlors," leading to some recent police raids. Then, he switches gears dramatically and starts describing "fleabag whores" giving blowjobs in dank alleyways. Okay, at least now we're back on familiar ground. Many of Ed's short stories in Blood Splatters Quickly and Angora Fever deal with hookers, alleys, or both.

But we still haven't gotten to why oral sex can be heaven or hell. Ed finally addresses this burning issue near the end of the article. You see, fellatio and cunnilingus can cause people to experience tremendous pleasure. That's the "heaven" part. But there's a downside. Remember those "fleabag whores" we talked about? Many of their clients, according to this article, have "dropped dead on the spot." And if you think that's an undignified way to go, Ed offers a final anecdote about a "young fellow" and his girlfriend who decided to have a little oral fun during a car trip. To say the least, they ended up regretting it.

Next: "A Look at the Nymphomaniac" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "College Cherries" (1974)

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."

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)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "The A.C.A.R. Revisited" (1973)

Can you guess what A.C.A.R. stands for?

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

The article: "The A.C.A.R. Revisited." Originally published in An Illustrated Study of Erotic Love (Calga Publishing), vol. 4. no. 1, January/February 1973. Credited to "Dick Trent."

Excerpt: "Rubber or not rubber (to quip) the skin of the animal is still used. These devices, much more expensive, are produced from a finely processed animal intestine. Of course the claim from those men who use this type, is that even the thinnest rubber can't compare. They claim the feeling is all there . . . and too there is a certain amount of status involved . . . costing much more, that perhaps makes them feel they are in a higher lovemaking position."

"That's the way it was and we LIKED it!"

Reflections: If you're in the mood to read a brief history of condoms, you're in luck. The Ed Wood article I'm reviewing today is "The A.C.A.R. Revisited" from 1973, and it'll tell you more about the development of the humble but useful prophylactic than you probably ever wanted to know. I'm not sure why Eddie or his editors thought that the readers of An Illustrated Study of Erotic Love would care about any of this, but there it is nevertheless. This is already his second article about rubbers, so there must have been some demand for this material.

The titular abbreviation stands for "always carry a rubber," and Eddie starts the article with some rambling nonsense about what he calls the A.C.A.R. Club:

The story of the A.C.A.R. Club has been told before, but that was a long time ago. Perhaps you've read it . . . if you were in that particular generation gap. But if you haven't read about the A.C.A.R. Club then you don't know what the A.C.A.R. Club is all about. Actually it's a very clinical club; a very practical club; one to which the boy scouts motto, Be Prepared, is also their motto.

That excerpt suggests to me that Ed Wood had a shaky grasp on what the term "generation gap" actually means or how to use it in a sentence. He is correct, however, that  Be Prepared  is the motto of the Boy Scouts of America. Tom Lehrer had a whole song about it.

Ed Wood begins his history of the condom in the 1500s with the early, not-quite-successful efforts of Gabriel Fallopius and Hercule Saxonia. Legend has it that it was an associate of England's King Charles II, a "Dr. Condom," who gave the device its name in the 1600s. Eddie repeats this story in "The A.C.A.R. Revisited," although there is no evidence to suggest that "Dr. Condom" was a real person. But that's easy for me to say. I have Google and Wikipedia; Ed Wood didn't. He was doing his best for 1973.

Regardless of who invented or named them, the earliest condoms were made of sewn-up linen. But these leaked too much to be effective and were replaced by sheaths made from sheep guts. Better but still not perfect. Prophylactics weren't actually made of rubber until the 1800s, when Charles Goodyear (yes, the namesake of the tire company) and Thomas Hancock developed the process of vulcanization. Modern condoms are made of latex, though Ed informs us that some connoisseurs still use animal-based condoms. This, too, is accurate, even today.

Just as "Youthful Boobs" was Ed Wood's all-purpose thesis statement about brassieres, "The A.C.A.R. Revisited" is a repository of random information about condoms. Ed quotes French aristocrat Madam Sevigne (1626-1696), who expressed her dissatisfaction with the early condoms: "The device is armor against love, complained the good lady, and gossamer against infection." Isn't that a lovely way of putting it? Ed also tells us that condoms are (briefly) mentioned in James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) and even gives us an early example of an advertising slogan (or "ad-poem") for prophylactics. Towards the end of the article, Ed discusses French ticklers and lubricated condoms.

So "The A.C.A.R. Revisited" starts out as a history of condoms and then degenerates into a grab-bag of (possibly dubious) information about them. Is there any point to it? Yeah, a little. Ed Wood wants modern readers to appreciate "that convenient aluminum foil packet with the life-saving (or life preventing) little balloon." All through this article, as I read about the early attempts at prophylactics, I was thinking of Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man character and his reactionary views on condoms:

In my day, we didn‘t have these thin latex condoms so you could enjoy sexual pleasure. In my day, there was only one kind of condom. You took a rabbit skin and wrapped it around your privates and tied it off with a bungee cord. And you couldn‘t feel nothing. Half the time, you didn‘t even know if your partner was there. And we used the same one over and over again because we were morons, just a bunch of hairless head kabobs standing around with rabbit skins on our dinks and that‘s the way it was and we liked it.

Comparatively speaking, Ed Wood is at least more progressive than that.

Next: "College Cherries" (1974)

Podcast Tuesday: "We Can't We Be Friends?"

Tom Bosley and Ron Howard on Happy Days.

Something very unusual happened to me when I screened the March 1980 Happy Days episode "Father and Son" recently: I cried. In three and a half years of reviewing this sitcom for our podcast, no Happy Days episode had ever moved me to tears, but this one did. And it's not a sad episode at all. It's as goofy as most of the installments of this lighthearted series. Much of it is devoted to childish pranks and novelty store gimmicks like whoopee cushions and chattering teeth. But a particular aspect of this story hit too close to home.

The plot has middle-aged hardware salesman Howard Cunningham (Tom Bosley) trying to bond with his college-aged son Richie (Ron Howard). He misses the days when they were "buddies" and wants to spend quality time with the lad before Richie moves away and starts living his own life. So he guilts Richie into attending a convention of the Leopard Lodge in Chicago with him. Richie had planned on spending the weekend with his own friends, Ralph (Don Most) and Potsie (Anson Williams), but he dutifully attends the convention with his father. Once at the convention, Richie ditches his dad to cozy up to Margo (guest star Nyla Rogers), a woman who jumps out of cakes for a living.

My dad was never a member of any fraternal organization like the Leopard Lodge, and neither he nor I ever attended a cornball convention like the one depicted in this episode. I've never even met anyone who jumps out of cakes at parties. But I do know what it's like when your dad wants to spend quality time with you and you'd rather do something else. When my father died in 2018, I was wracked with guilt because I had not spent enough time with him in his final years. He'd want to go to some concert or event with me, and I'd give him some excuse. Then, suddenly, he was dead, and I felt like I'd made a terrible mistake that could not be corrected.

All these awful feelings came flooding back when I screened "Father and Son." I was a wreck by the end of it. I didn't even know if I could review it for the podcast. But I did, and the results can be heard in the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Youthful Boobs" (1972)

Ann sure knew a good title when she saw it.

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

The article: "Youthful Boobs." Originally published in Young Beavers (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 6, no. 2, July/August 1972. Credited to "Ann Gora."

Excerpt:" The girls like to feel the material rubbing up against their breasts. It gives them a feeling of sexiness at all times . . . the soft wool . . . the tickle of the angora . . . but they are smart enough . . . most of them . . . to know that without their support it will only be a few short years until their breasts are down around their belt line."

A 1964 Bali bra ad.

Reflections: When you think of feminists from the 1960s and '70s, you probably picture women burning their bras at protest rallies. That's what all those kooky women's libbers did back then, right? Torched their Maidenforms as a show of strength against the patriarchy? Well, here's the thing: they didn't. Yep, surprising as this may be, bra-burning is largely a myth. It's been debunked over and over and over. This urban legend seems to have started with media coverage of a protest at the 1968 Miss America pageant. One woman at this event was photographed throwing her bra into a trash can, along with other symbols of traditional femininity such as lipstick, and somehow that spawned a myth about feminists burning bras that persists to this day.

Ed Wood definitely believed it. A devoted cross-dresser, he was deeply obsessed with women's underwear, including bras. He must have been horrified by the prospect of these precious undergarments being lit on fire by angry feminists, so he wrote the 1972 broadside "Youthful Boobs" in response. Think of this as Ed Wood's official position paper on bras. He used his "Ann Gora" pseudonym this time around, possibly because readers would be more likely to believe a female writer on the subject of brassieres. 

Eddie seems to believe that feminists burn their bras because "men are more interested in a girl's set of boobs than anything else." He also posits that radical feminists deemphasize their bustlines and affect a mannish appearance because they "want to do men's work," a la World War II icon Rosie the Riveter. There's no need to panic, though, because most women, aka "girls who are real girls," want nothing to do with this bra-burning nonsense. "Coming right down to it," Ed writes, "most girls like their brassiere."

I previously described "Youthful Boobs" as Ed Wood's position paper on bras, and he has a lot to say on the subject, beyond the mere "bra-burning" kerfuffle. He addresses, for example, the issue of women going braless. This requires women to have breasts that are just the right size. If they're too small, "there certainly can be no swinging to the action." And if they're too big, the breasts become "like the smashing of two trains on a one-way track." Better stick to wearing bras, ladies.

But what about those women who want to accentuate their nipples and don't want them hidden under brassieres? No problem. Today's lingerie manufacturers now produce platform bras or nude bras that leave the nipple unencumbered. There are also bras with built-in nipples for those unfortunate ladies whose own nipples are inverted. At this point in the article, Eddie just starts naming brand names of bras. One company he mentions repeatedly is Bali, a lingerie manufacturer that is still in business in 2022! The company's prominence in this article may simply come from the fact that Ed Wood saw one of their ads in the December 5, 1971 edition of The Los Angeles Times West magazine and decided to pilfer a lot of the ad copy. 

Eddie looked far and wide for resources when assembling "Youthful Boobs." He also quotes from Ann Landers' December 28, 1971 column in which she talks about the infamous "pencil test." That's when a woman sticks a pencil under her breast to determine whether or not she needs to wear a bra. (If your boob is big enough to hold up a pencil, you need a bra.) Ann has been credited with devising this test herself, but Ed's article seems to imply that the idea came from a reader and that Ann simply publicized it. Eddie further supplements his research with an article called "Bouncy Boobies" from The National Close-Up. This is yet another of those obscure tabloids that Ed Wood must have read obsessively in the '70s. I'm sure he loved their motto: "Daring Enough to Print the Facts."

Eventually, after naming even more bra brands and discussing women whose breasts are so saggy that they look like turkeys (???), Ed/Ann delivers these closing thoughts:

And there you have it, girls. The brassiere is here to stay and once you get used to it . . . the guys never will . . . they've got to drool when what they are looking at is just the right thing. You don't see the male attracted to the cow's udder do you . . . except the Farmer at milking time? Besides if the brassiere manufacturers went out of business . . . what would the transvestites do for putting up their front? 

Finally, he gets to the heart of the issue, the real reason he wrote this article. Ed Wood may not give a damn whether or not women wear bras, but the lingerie companies have to keep making bras so that men like himself can wear them!

Next: "The A.C.A.R. Revisited" (1973)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Let's Talk About It!" (1972)

Reminds me of The Morton Downey, Jr. Show. (Illustration from Switch Hitters)

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

The article: "Let's Talk About It!" Originally published in Switch Hitters (Calga Publishing), vol. 3, no. 3, November/December 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."

Excerpt: "Unisex has made it rather difficult to tell the girls from the boys at times. Then why must it be so different in their sex lives. Does a transvestite dressed in the clothing of a girl as he goes down on a girl make him a lesbian? Of course not; no more than it does a girl going down on her husband for oral intercourse make her some form of a homosexual or a freak which she might have been thought to be so short a time ago."

Ed Wood was like a filthy Cliff Clavin.

Reflections: In late 1972, possibly the most prolific year of his life, Ed Wood wrote an article for Switch Hitters called "Let's Talk About It!" But what was the "it" about which Ed was talking? Uh, that's tough to say. I mean, at the most basic level, this article is about the importance of discussing our problems, especially those of a sexual nature, openly and honestly with each other. As Eddie reminds us, "It's never any good for anyone to keep everything walled up inside of them." 

At first, it seems like the rest of the article is going to build on this strong central idea. But, really, "Let's Talk About It!" is one of Ed Wood's disjointed, rambling essays about nothing in particular. He's like some drunk at the end of the bar pontificating woozily about whatever comes into his mind, regardless of whether it makes any sense. He's a smutty Cliff Clavin, in other words.

In a way, this article was a stroll down memory lane because it contains some of the ideas that kept turning up over and over at the beginning of When the Topic is Sex. Eddie tells us once again, for instance, that the missionary position used to be the only acceptable sex position in previous generations but that today's young people are more daring and experimental in the bedroom than their parents and grandparents. As Ed explains:

But then came along the modern generation. They are no longer satisfied with small dishes of the sex food. They have a hearty and healthy appetite which is not going to be tossed away with simple words. 

Did you notice that phrase, "small dishes of the sex food"? That's typical of the strained metaphors and similes found throughout "Let's Talk About It!" Ed Wood tells us that people are like steam engines and will split their sides if they don't vent their frustration occasionally. Many parents, meanwhile, are like ostriches with their heads in the sand when it comes to talking about sex with their children. And then, Ed tells us that a single person's voice can be lost "in a big wind," but when an entire generation speaks, "it will not be lost in any manner of wind, hurricane or tornado." I'm not exactly sure what the "wind" is supposed to represent in this metaphor.

More recycled ideas: Housewives are having lesbian affairs while their husbands and children are out. Suburbanites in general are engaging in orgies with their friends and neighbors. (More fun than the weekly bridge game!) Oral sex is normal and healthy and doesn't necessarily mean you're gay. Information about sex used to be known only to doctors and scientists, but today it's out in the open. Books about sex are no longer hidden in the basements beneath libraries but are now available to the general public. Eddie comes back to this "library" idea time and again in his articles. I'm not sure where it comes from. Maybe, when he was growing up in Poughkeepsie, he imagined the Adriance Memorial Library on Market St. had some secret, forbidden storehouse of sex books hidden in its musty catacombs.

Next: "Youthful Boobs" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Satyriasis and Prostitution" (1971)

Two great tastes that go great together. (Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley)

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

The article: "Satyriasis and Prostitution." Listed on Ed Wood's resume as simply "Satyriasis." Originally published in Swap (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 5, no. 3, July/August 1971. No author credited.

Excerpt: "Many satyr homosexuals today still have generous feelings toward some kind of duty in the armed forces. The attitude might be an honest lure for the glory of battle or the pride of wearing the uniform. But there is also the fact the services can supply an endless source of males for the satyr diet."

Reflections: I'm pretty sure I first heard the term "satyriasis" in the movie The Big Lebowski (1998). There, it is uttered by pretentious conceptual artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), who is complaining to The Dude (Jeff Bridges) about her drug-addicted porn star stepmother Bunny (Tara Reid): 

It's a male myth about feminists that we hate sex. It can be a natural, zesty enterprise. But unfortunately there are some people—it is called satyriasis in men, nymphomania in women—who engage in it compulsively and without joy.

I think that's a pretty decent definition: "compulsively and without joy." Well, it turns out that, in 1971, Ed Wood wrote an entire article about satyriasis for the orgy-themed magazine Swap. "Satyriasis and Prostitution" is actually one of the longer pieces included in When the Topic is Sex, largely because Ed has a lot to say about the two titular subjects and seems determined to say just about all of it.

This is Messalina, not John Belushi in drag.

First and foremost, this article is about the career path of the typical male prostitute. Eddie is utterly obsessed with the caste systems or hierarchies that govern both stripping and hooking. He likes to write about how, in either of these professions, people tend to move down the ladder as they get older and less desirable. In the case of the young, handsome male hustler, the goal is to be a "call boy" catering to wealthy customers. After that, you move down to working in brothels, then working on the streets. Once even that becomes untenable, you must cater to the "rough trade" at "beer bars," those most-hated establishments in the Wood canon. Is there a step lower than beer bars? Yes. Skid row.

What keeps the male prostitute going through all these circles of sexual hell? A few things. The first factor, as you should know from the title of the article, is his insatiable, incurable addiction to sex. But Ed Wood adds that the typical male hooker probably has some kind of substance abuse problem as well. Eddie explains all this in his usual, byzantine way:

Thus, when the street has accepted him again, he has two monkies on his back . . . his insatiable urge for sex and the addiction to narcotics and alcohol. He has to come up with the cash to support either of the habits. However, it must be understood that most narcotic addicts do not take to alcohol. But, for this article we have combined the two as one for easier diagnosis. Either one can be just as demanding according to the subject's own physical acceptance or rejections. And either one can be just as expensive . . . the narcotics, of course, will probably be the more costly of the two. And with the pushers always under the eyes of the law, they are forever raising the price. 

At this point, there can be little doubt that Ed Wood is really writing about himself and the decline of his own career from the 1950s to the 1970s, largely due to his alcohol addiction. Notice that Eddie does a little rationalizing, even here. Alcohol is at least legal and therefore more affordable than drugs, so he's chosen the more sensible of the two addictions.

But Ed does not limit himself to the topic of male hookers in "Satyriasis and Prostitution." He's got a lot on his mind this time, maybe too much more. For a few paragraphs, he starts discussing famous women and men from history who were either bisexual or homosexual. What does that have to do with the rest of the article? I think the point is that these historical figures (Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Alexander the Great) were also sex addicts. The reason I say that is because Ed's list includes Messalina (20 AD - 40 AD), wife of the Roman emperor Claudius. Apparently, Messalina's name has become synonymous with promiscuity.

And "Satyriasis and Prostitution" is still not done! Ed shifts gears again and starts talking about homosexuality in the US military. At the time of this article, openly gay men and women could not serve in the armed forces. That change was still decades away. Eddie writes, perhaps with compassion, about gays being court martialed and then dishonorably discharged from the service. He describes this as process "a terror, a nightmare to the offender's future." He also adds that homosexual acts are illegal in 48 of our 50 states, which is a sobering thought.

So "Satyriasis and Prostitution" is very much a sampler platter of ideas and topics related to homosexuality, sex addiction, and prostitution. Does Ed Wood bring it all back home with one final thought that sums it all up? You bet:

There is no easing the satyr's position. For a time he may have a swinging life, but as age creeps up on him, and masturbation is no longer of any true satisfaction, the swinging life becomes intolerable because he finds himself swinging alone. 

Kind of a depressing message for the readers of Swap, but there you have it. 

Next: "Let's Talk About It" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Yes or No—The Candidates and Busing" (1972)

Ed Wood wasn't afraid to tackle controversial topics. (Illustration from Black and White)

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

The article: "Yes or No—The Candidates and Busing." Also known as "Yes or No—The Candidates on Busing." Originally published in Black and White (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 2, no. 2, June/July 1972. No author credited.

Excerpt: "Will the war in Viet Nam continue, and how long? And when are we going to pull the soldiers and Marines out of that far-off cobra infested country? And what in hell are we there for in the first place? That seems to be the general question. And whether or not straight answers are ever forth coming, there are always opinions by those who are in the know, or who would like to think they're in the know, or those who would like everyone else to believe they are in the know."

The awesomely-named Leonard Woodcock.

Reflections: The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case of 1954 declared the racial segregation of schools unconstitutional in America, but de facto segregation was still everywhere in this nation. How could we ever achieve racial equality if black children and white children didn't even attend school together? One proposed solution was so-called "forced busing." Basically, students were transported outside of their local school districts via bus—black kids to white neighborhoods, white kids to black neighborhoods. This pissed off just about everybody and dominated the news cycle for months in the early 1970s.

I was born just a shade too late to experience the "busing" controversy at its peak, but I learned about it from my usual sources: old sitcoms and back issues of MAD magazine. Since it was a political issue that directly affected schoolkids, busing received plenty of coverage in MAD. We also learned a bit about it in school. We were shown the 1990 made-for-TV movie Common Ground starring Jane Curtin during a high school civics class. (I mainly remember Jane putting on a Bahstahn accent and yelling a lot.)

What I didn't know was that Ed Wood had written an entire article on this hot-button issue in 1972. Well, "wrote" is somewhat of an exaggeration. Once again, Eddie just borrowed a bunch of quotes from someone else's article, in this case a piece about busing from Life magazine. Still, even though it's second- or third-hand information, you can read what a number of real-life politicians had to say about busing during that fateful election year. One of those quoted is Ed Wood's old crony, Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty, but Ed doesn't mention his own connection to the politician. Other speakers include Shirley Chisolm, George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, and UAW president Leonard Woodcock. (Some name, huh?)

If the busing issue were occurring in 2022, it would likely break down neatly along party lines, with Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other. The politicians in this article would be more concerned with demonizing the opposition than they would with actually addressing the issue. But the hyper-partisanship we see commonly today is not in evidence in this article from 50 years ago. The candidates actually talk about the merits and demerits of busing, and their main concern seems to be the education of our nation's youth, white and black, rich and poor. 

Moreover, not one politician in this article, conservative or liberal, slings an an insult at the other side. Most of the speakers, Democrat and Republican alike, come to the conclusion that busing is well-intended but ineffective. Not even George Wallace, the man all but synonymous with segregation, resorts to slanderous rhetoric in his response. He's anti-busing, as you might guess, but he doesn't feel the need to be a dick about it. In other words, this article would be completely impossible in 2022. Today, it's all about scoring a "win" for your team and beating the other side. What's best for the kids? Who cares? Spew out a soundbite on Fox News or CNN and move on.

Ed Wood being Ed Wood, he does wander off the main path and talk about other issues of the day. You may notice that the excerpt I included above is about the Vietnam War, not busing. I had to include it because of the phrase "that far-off, cobra-infested country." Eddie also discusses Richard Nixon's highly controversial trip to China and predicts (correctly) that Nixon will win reelection in 1972. But who could have known the controversy that would eventually arise from this election? Even Criswell didn't predict that!

Next: "Satyriasis and Prostitution" (1971)