Joe Blevins's Blog, page 47

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Prostitution—A Problem" (1972)

In today's article, Ed takes a more serious look at the world's oldest profession.

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

The article: "Prostitution—A Problem." Originally published in Swap (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 6, no. 1, March/April 1972.
Excerpt: "The convention members stepping out of the Belmont Plaza barely have time to seek out some pornographic paper or book before they are captured by any number of these girls who are all bidding for his wallet. The man at a convention is the fairest of all game for the streetwalkers. And they are professionals. They know the likely subjects, therefore little time is spent on duds. They know the ones who will fall prey to their wiles."
Ed Wood consulted this exact magazine.Reflections: As I said yesterday, prostitution is a major motif in the career of Edward D. Wood, Jr. There are hooker characters in a few of his films—Orgy of the Dead (1965) and Take it Out in Trade (1970) come to mind—but he truly explores the theme in his writing, both short-form and long-form. Back when I was reviewing Eddie's short stories and it seemed like every third or fourth one was about hookers , I speculated that perhaps Ed Wood himself felt like a hooker because he was prostituting his talents by writing smut for Pendulum Publishing. Maybe I was overreading.
"Prostitution—A Problem" is an example of Eddie's nonfiction writing about the topic, and he approaches it from an evenhanded, almost clinical viewpoint. The material presented in When the Topic is Sex often captures Ed Wood at his most serious. When he's in full-on professorial mode, he keeps his stylistic quirks in check (for the most part) and sticks to the facts, only pausing occasionally to philosophize or editorialize.
So what does Ed Wood have to say about prostitution in this article? Here's a brief rundown:The profession has been around for nearly all of human history but is still capable of causing controversy today, as though it were something new. The police and the courts have largely been powerless to stop it, though a few crusading judges like New York's Morris Schwalb are doling out stern punishments to prostitutes.The modern-day streetwalker is likely to be young (because that's what clients want) and addicted to heroin (because that's how pimps control them). Even after they are no longer able to support themselves by hooking, the girls still have to commit crimes like robbery to feed their drug habits.New York City has a lot of hookers. Some prostitutes in Manhattan actually have fancy, expensive apartments where they do business. The neighbors tolerate it unless the prostitute and her pimp have noisy, violent arguments. Many experts feel that our prostitution laws are antiquated.What can Eddie add to the topic? Not much, except this extremely generic attempt at drawing a conclusion, which I like to imagine being delivered by Bela Lugosi in Glen or Glenda (1953):

The problems of prostitution may have some of that same truth connected with it. The activity, as stated earlier, has been with us all down through history. . . . It is not going away simply because one might wish to turn their head. It is possible there might be a lesson to be learned that the world's oldest profession really has been with societies since the beginning of time. 

Eddie actually did his homework for "Prostitution—A Problem." He cites a New York Times editorial as well as an article by William S. Ruben called "Pimps, Prostitutes and Pornography" from the December 1971 issue of Sexology magazine. What's really interesting is that one of the quoted experts is a Democratic congressman named Edward Koch. After serving in the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977, Ed Koch became the mayor (and de facto face) of New York City from 1978 to 1989. Here's Hizzoner on the prostitution problem in New York:

"You hear the man hitting one of the women a lot. And she's screaming, 'Don't kill me!' and there's furniture falling and those marbles falling constantly, and finally you hear her hit the floor and him walking away, and the moaning and groaning. And then you wonder, is that girl in there bleeding to death, or are they going to kiss and make up and go out to eat, or is it all an act for the customer? The police today hear such horrors that it's minor to them."

Later, Koch had to withdraw his support of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer when the latter was involved in a prostitution scandal. Whoops!
Next: "Sex by Mail" (1970)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "To Produce a Lovely Creature" (1971)

Another Ed Wood article with a Dial illustration. I've been informed this cartoonist's name was Jim Dial.

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

The article: "To Produce a Lovely Creature." Originally published in Spice 'n' Nice (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 2,, no. 2, August/September 1971. No author credited.
Excerpt: "The topless waitress is solidly instilled in our community, and that is the job which a pretty girl is going to be offered if there is not a spot for her in the show. And this position is not to be looked down upon either. Some of the better topless girls make as much as two and three times that of the girls on stage, what with their salary and tips."
Ed Wood used this as source material.Reflections: Ed Wood put his own name on some of the articles contained in When the Topic is Sex. Examples include "That's Show Biz" and "Behind the Film Scene." Others are credited to one of his pseudonyms, such as "Ann Gora" or "Dick Trent." Still others, however, have no credited author whatsoever, not even a fake name. Are these stories the "black sheep" of the Wood literary canon, the ones even he was embarrassed to be associated with? I cannot say with any certainty, but it's a theory.
"To Produce a Lovely Creature" is one of Eddie's unsigned articles, though he did include it on his resume. Whether he was proud of it or not, it's definitely a patchwork job. For no real compelling reason, Eddie begins this piece with three extremely dull paragraphs about the state of Florida, copied directly from The New York Times Encyclopedia Almanac 1971. It's the kind of stuff you'd learn in school: population, elevation, length of the coastline, etc. The only justification for this material is that this article originally accompanied a pictorial featuring girls from Miami. (When the Topic is Sex contains no pictures, by the way. Just text. You've heard of people reading Playboy for the articles? Well, you're reading Spice 'n' Nice for the articles.)
This segues into Ed's description of Miami and its nightlife in the swinging 1970s. He talks about how "Miami town" was once a haven for the elderly, but has recently seen an "influx of the younger crowds." These newcomers have brought with them a demand for a different form of entertainment. They find sex shows more entertaining than shuffleboard, Eddie says.
Ultimately, though, "To Produce a Lovely Creature" is not about Miami or even about Florida. No, it's a primer about stripping and what it takes to make it in that very competitive industry. More than anything, it reminded me of Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls (1995), minus that film's soapy plot contrivances and grotesque characters. Strippers aren't nearly as common in the Wood canon as prostitutes, but he does write about them occasionally. The short story "Flowers for Flame LeMarr" (1973) comes to mind, as does the film The Young Marrieds (1972), in which the married protagonist, Ben, becomes obsessed with an exotic dancer to the point that it impacts his marriage.
Eddie wants us to know that only the girls with beautiful faces and bodies really make it as strippers. Those are requirements even in the low-class strip joints. If you're going to work in one of the high-class venues—and this is why I thought of the Verhoeven film—you'd better be skilled as a singer, dancer, or both. "In the more expensive clubs," Wood writes, "it is only the very best who are going to be hired. And she's got to know a hell of a lot more than her left foot from her right foot."
Pretty but can't do anything? Don't despair. You could get a job as a topless waitress or a non-moving "statue" in a stage show. Some women do both of these. Curiously, though, Eddie doesn't have much positive to say about the adult film industry:

There is the nude movie business which hires many of the strip girls and exotic dancers as well as the statues and topless waitresses. But, even though there are many producers in the other cities across the nation, the jobs pay very little and, depending upon them for a living would only see the girl starving from month to month and then giving the whole life up as one big mess and returning home. 

This is in line with what Eddie said in Hollywood Rat Race (1998) and The Sinister Urge (1960), both of which advise young women against moving to Hollywood to pursue a film career. Stay home and strip instead, ladies.
Next: ""Prostitution—A Problem" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Sexual Freedom & Sexual Ignorance" (1972)

There's such a fine line between freedom and ignorance.

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

The article: "Sexual Freedom & Sexual Ignorance." Originally published in Roulette (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 6, no. 1, January/February 1972. No author listed.
Excerpt: "Today's typical young couple is sexually liberated in the extreme. They practice premarital intercourse, or they dispense with marriage entirely. They practice fellatio, cunnilingus and anal intercourse. They take part in communal sex, wife-swapping and troilism. They fancy that they know all there is to know about sex. But do they?"
TLC during the Golden Age of Condoms.Reflections: I grew up during what I'd consider the Golden Age of the Condom. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s genuinely shocked America, and suddenly the prevention of STDs became a top priority in this country, more so than even the prevention of unwanted pregnancy or the promotion of abstinence. The condom, an effective deterrent against both pregnancy and disease, took center stage. Gone were the days of prophylactics being hidden behind the pharmacist's counter. Now, they were on display with the rest of the merchandise at your local Walgreens. As The Fat Boys put it on their 1987 song "Protect Yourself" :

Now there's somethin' real old but still hot news.
Been around since Lincoln but out of view.
You stuff it in your wallet so your mom can't see.
It's called a condom, baby, and you better believe.
It ain't under the shelf, now it's on display
With all these diseases going around today.
You need a piece of mind when you do the wild thing,
So a condom, brother, don't forget to bring.

If The Fat Boys are rapping about it, that's about as mainstream as it gets. (Lest you think the Boys were getting too serious, "Protect Yourself" morphs into a song called "My Nuts.") Just a few years earlier, in 1982, Madness had a song called "House of Fun" about a teenage boy's extreme, embarrassing difficulty in purchasing condoms. A lot changed in just those five years.
The condom maintained its high profile in the '90s. Kids in sex ed classes across America slipped them on over zucchinis and cucumbers. Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC wore a one as sort of an eyepatch. Condoms even began to be advertised on cable television. I remember those incredibly annoying Sheik commercials being ubiquitous on Comedy Central in the '90s. Network TV was a bit slower to catch on. The sitcom A Different World, for instance, was allowed to mention condoms in a 1990 episode ("Time Keeps on Slippin'"), but NBC wouldn't allow them to actually show one. Eventually, everyone in America must've gotten the message, because Condomania subsided a bit in the new millennium.
In "Sexual Freedom & Sexual Ignorance," Ed Wood tells us how it was in 1972 in regards to condom use and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Obviously, AIDS hadn't happened yet, but syphilis and gonorrhea were around, and then there's pregnancy—perhaps the most destructive sexually transmitted disease of them all, depending on how you look at it. According to Eddie, America's young people knew a lot about group sex and swinging, but they were woefully ignorant when it came to birth control and STD prevention. Who knows? Maybe this Roulette article saved some lives... or at least prevented some lives, if you get my drift.
Eddie's in professorial mode here, so "Sexual Freedom & Sexual Ignorance" isn't exactly a laugh riot. In short, he's more interested in addressing the ignorance part rather than the freedom part. Things were a little different 50 years ago. For one thing, a rather sizable chunk of this article is about how many times you should reuse condoms. I guess, back then, it was fairly standard practice to wash them off, powder them, and roll them back up for later use. 
And I guess people were less trusting of condoms than they are now, because this article spends a fair amount of time discussing various stress tests you can perform on condoms to see if they work. Here's how he explains that:

Various authorities continue to maintain the long-held opinion that testing is a necessary part of use for the individual. The chief methods of testing are filling the condom with air or water. When air is used, after the condom is blown up like a balloon, it is inspected before a bulb that has been covered with a sheet of white paper. Tiny holes then appear as light spots. When water is used, the condom is placed over the tap and the flow turned on. After the condom fills and expands to several times its normal width, the water is turned off and the outside is carefully dried. Then the condom is gently pressed to make water exit from any holes. 

This is one of those articles in which Eddie cites no sources, so we'll never know who those "various authorities" were. But this sounds like it could make for a hell of a Mr. Wizard episode.
Next: "To Produce a Lovely Creature" (1971)

Podcast Tuesday: "Things We Saved from the Fire"

Henry Winkler and Al Molinaro on Happy Days.
What do you do after torching Arnold's, the beloved hamburger joint that's been an integral part of Happy Days since Season 1? Well, you rebuild it, naturally.  In Season 7's "The New Arnold's," we get to see what the restaurant will look like for the remainder of the series, which is to say a lot like the old Arnold's but uglier with a lot of wood paneling and a vaguely rustic aesthetic. It kind of reminds me of the tavern that Gaston frequents in Beauty and the Beast (1991), except there aren't antlers mounted on the wall.
(Come to think of it, Gaston says, "I use antlers in all of my decorating." So did he decorate that tavern? Is it his place? Is Gaston a small business owner or does he just invite the entire town over to his home to drink every night? Either way, it makes me look at him more favorably.)
Anyway, Al (Al Molinaro) and Fonzie (Henry Winkler) are partners in the new Arnold's, and the major conceit of the script is that they disagree about everything, including what the restaurant should be called. Al votes for Big Al's. Fonzie votes for Fonzie's. They get so mad over this and other issues that the grand reopening almost doesn't happen. In the end, as the title indicates, they decide to compromise and call it Arnold's. Big surprise. I think the idea was for this "new" place to become a college hangout, but two of the show's college-aged characters, Ralph (Don Most) and Richie (Ron Howard), left Happy Days just a few days later. Arnold's instead became a meeting spot for the next generation of high schoolers. This is just as well, since the new Arnold's lacks a liquor license and wouldn't be much fun for for college kids anyway.
But is the episode any fun? Find out when we review "The New Arnold's" on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast .

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "How Not to Get Trapped Into a Marriage" (1972)

What better article to review on Valentine's Day?

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

The article: "How Not to Get Trapped Into a Marriage." Originally published in Pendulum (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 1, April/March 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "Not all men are looking to get married. On the other hand most women are looking for that state of the union. It seems to be born in them. The woman has much more of a capacity for love than the man. Most men can have a quickie, promiscuous affair and when it is over put on his pants and shoes and go home and think little about it except that perhaps he has had a good time (or a bad one as the case may be). And with most young males, searching out new conquests, a variety in love partners is their aim and the girls know it."
1952: Li'l Abner gets married.Reflections: Nathan Detroit tried to warn us, many decades ago. "What's playing at the Roxy?" he sang to his pals. "I'll tell you what's playing at the Roxy. A picture about a Minnesota man so in love with a Mississippi girl that he sacrifices everything and moves all the way to Biloxi. That's what's playing at the Roxy." 
Ed Wood's 1972 article "How Not to Get Trapped Into a Marriage" is intended as an advice manual for the man who is single and plans to stay that way. It espouses the same basic viewpoint as the musical Guys & Dolls: namely, that shrewd women are constantly scheming to trap helpless men into marriage. Nathan Detroit, for one, gives into the pressure and marries his longtime girlfriend, Adelaide, thus abdicating his life of gambling and carousing.
I don't know that I've encountered too many examples of this phenomenon in real life, but it's a fairly common stereotype in popular culture. Or it was, anyway. This year will mark the 70th anniversary of Li'l Abner Yokum's marriage to Daisy Mae Scragg. Now virtually forgotten, the event was a pop culture sensation in its time. One of the 20th century's most famous bachelors had been hogtied.
Before you start calling Ed Wood a sexist pig, you should know that this particular article is yet another example of Eddie blatantly recycling material from another writer. Once again, he read an article in the adult-oriented tabloid The National Informer, found it interesting, and decided to pen a response. In this case, it was an article called "How You Can Trap A Man Into Marriage" by Sherman Cooper. Basically, what Ed does here is pass on all the sneaky tricks that Sherman Cooper advises women to use against men. After quoting extensively from the Informer article, Ed then adds:

And there it is laid right out in the open for any male who can read and digest both sides of the coin as it has been presented here. Now it becomes only the thought as to how hard the male wishes not to be trapped. He can now go into an affair with his eyes wide open. But no matter how many words of warning are put down on paper there are still those girls around who are ever scheming and they will always be coming up with new plans to trap the male into the altar trip.

And that's how the article ends. Eddie really never tells us how to avoid marriage. He just tells us which red flags we should be aware of. I'm reminded of Louis Jordan's 1946 record "Beware,"  which was similarly intended as a warning to single men about wily women.
So what are the tricks? The first one that probably came to your mind was the old-fashioned pregnancy scare. The woman will either allow the man to impregnate her or will simply pretend to be pregnant long enough to get the poor dope to walk down the aisle. But Sherman Cooper advises against that strategy. If you actually get pregnant, the man might just take off and abandon you. Then you're left with some dumb baby that you never wanted in the first place. He advises instead that women make themselves "indispensable" to men through cooking, sex, and shameless flattery. Cooper describes it as a matter of salesmanship. Remember, gals, that you're selling yourself to your boyfriends.
Ed Wood doesn't really have a lot to add to Cooper's article, apart from a semi-coherent preamble about the pitfalls of "quickie" marriages. I said earlier that he must've found the Informer piece "interesting," but maybe that's not it. Maybe he knew he had to turn out a lot of text in a short amount of time and needed to take ideas from wherever he could get them. So he scoured the tabloids for anything he could repurpose and sell to Bernie Bloom.
Next: "Sexual Freedom & Sexual Ignorance" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Seek and Ye Shall Find" (1973)

This maze illustration originally had a photo at the center of it, but I had to remove that.

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

The article: "Seek and Ye Shall Find." Originally published in Orgy (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 5, no. 1, January/February 1973. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "It must never be forgotten that sex is more than just a biological happening. It is an art. Just as no painter or writer would ever think of working without understanding the tools that they use, so the woman should not dream of having sex without knowing her tools."
Sex and suburbia: Ed Wood's last film?Reflections: As prolific as he was as a writer in the 1960s and 1970s—and I would describe him as superhumanly prolific in this arena—Edward Davis Wood, Jr. never gave up on his movie career entirely. While I'm sure he would have liked to write and direct his own theatrically-released feature films, just as he had in the 1950s, this was not always possible or practical. Even low-budget movies represent a sizable expense, and Ed Wood was nearly always at or below the poverty line.
But Eddie still found ways to stay involved in motion pictures: mainly, working for other directors as a screenwriter, assistant director, and actor. He also became heavily involved in the production of 8mm adult loops intended for home viewing. And whenever fate allowed him to direct a feature, well, he practically jumped at the chance. Had he lived into the 1980s and '90s, he would almost certainly have made direct-to-video pornography for the VHS market, both softcore and hardcore. That's where his career was heading.
To the best of our current knowledge, the final theatrically-released feature film Eddie ever directed was 1972's The Young Marrieds, the story of a young suburban couple and their desperate search for mutual sexual fulfillment. The husband, Ben (Dick Burns), is a hot-blooded type who seeks release for his carnal urges wherever he can find it, including with total strangers if necessary. The wife, Ginny (Alice Friedland), is much more reserved and tends to cringe at Ben's crude advances. (Though, when she's alone, she'll masturbate to soap operas on TV.) Ben and Ginny try various gimmicks to spice up their love life, including photography and even role-playing, with limited success. Eventually, one of Ben's coworkers invites him and Ginny to an orgy, and our young married attend—Ben enthusiastically and Ginny less so. This, too, has mixed results.
I thought about The Young Marrieds a lot while reading Ed Wood's 1973 article "Seek and Ye Shall Find," its title a rather incongruous reference to Matthew 7:7 . For the most part, this is just another one of Eddie's rambling, shapeless diatribes about sex. Those who have been reading along in When the Topic is Sex have already heard these same basic points over and over. Yes, Ed, we know that books about sex used to be hidden away in the library basement. Yes, we know that people used to believe that sex existed solely for the propagation of the race. Yes, you've told us (many times) that oral sex is more accepted nowadays than it used to be, even endorsed by doctors. And, yes, you've made it quite clear that sexually incompatible couples like Ben and Ginny are headed toward divorce court.
Same old, same old? Not quite. "Seek and Ye Shall Find" frames all of this as a quasi-mythical quest. It's even accompanied by an illustration of a maze, reminding us of the labyrinth of Greek mythology.  I've previously written about the biopic Ed Wood (1994) as a version of the "hero's journey" story. Well, if that movie was about the hero's journey, then this article is about the horndog's journey. A satisfying sex life is like the Holy Grail or Golden Fleece awaiting the traveler at the end of a long road. As with any quest, there are various creatures to slay along the path—your own puritan upbringing, the judgement of society, your festering insecurities, your partner's festering insecurities, etc. Not everyone will survive. But the rewards are well worth the peril for those who do.
Incidentally, in this article, Ed Wood again namechecks famed sex researchers William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson. That's nothing new. But this time around, he specifically references their 1966 book Human Sexual Response . According to Ed, this book held special importance for married women:

The Masters and Johnson's Human Sexual Response taught the young and not-so-young married women things about her own potential for pleasure that previously she had only suspected. Masters gave scientific verification to the legendary capacity of women to enjoy sex far more than man is able to. "First the female is capable of rapid return to orgasm immediately following an orgasmic experience, if restimulated before tensions have dropped below plateau-phase response levels. Second, the female is capable of maintaining an orgasmic experience for a relatively long period of time."

In mythological terms, Masters and Johnson serve as the wise mentors who guide the hero (or heroine) along the path. William Campbell says that the mentor will often give the hero a talisman or artifact that will be helpful in the quest. Their book is that talisman. Next: "How Not to Get Trapped Into a Marriage" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "That Lingering Social Disease" (1972)

Say, where have I seen that font before ? Oh, no. Oh, god, no.

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

The article: "That Lingering Social Disease." Originally published in Orgy (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 1, April/May 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "Any guy or girl who makes the scene over and over again with many many partners is letting themselves in for a very bad time of it. Gonorrhea is far from painless. But the guy who has contacted the disease becomes lazy about it. Perhaps he has heard that it will go away in time and if not he will sooner or later, at his convenience, take some shots and that is bound to clear up the infection. However, the longer he waits the more factually he will find himself suffering the consequences of extreme pain."
A vintage propaganda poster about VD.Reflections: In most of Ed Wood's sexology articles from the early 1970s, he marvels at the progress we as a society have made in just the last few years. Eddie wants us to know that America's young people are no longer shackled by the puritan beliefs of their parents and grandparents, many of whom were taught that sex is strictly for procreation rather than pleasure. Today, things are much freer and more open. People are discussing sex more boldly than ever before and writing about it in terms everyone can understand. More importantly, people are experimenting with everything from group sex to sadomasochism.
Unfortunately, there is a downside to all this fun-seeking, and it comes in the form of sexually-transmitted diseases or STDs. In Ed's day, such maladies were referred to as "social diseases," a term I like because of its gentility. It seems we no longer have the patience for polite euphemisms anymore. The 1972 article "That Lingering Social Disease" is Ed's relatively straightforward treatise on STDs of the pre-AIDS era, back when a few trips to the doctor could knock out just about anything. In his writings and interviews, John Waters has occasionally pined for the swinging 1970s, back when scabies was the worst thing you could get from sex. That would soon change.
Social diseases do not play a major role in Ed Wood's movies, unless there are some obvious examples that I'm forgetting, but he visits the topic fairly often in his books and articles. Syphilis is such a motif in his writing that Ed will sometimes shorten it to "syph." There's even a character called Syph in his 1968 biker novel Hell Chicks. And let's not forget "The Whorehouse Horror," Ed's 1974 story in which prostitutes are intentionally infected with syphilis. In this article, Eddie writes about both syphilis ("the disease of the sheep") and gonorrhea, detailing their causes, symptoms, and cures in a more-or-less encyclopedic style. Eddie keeps his trademark idiosyncrasies in check here, but I enjoyed this fanciful little passage:

Where about a decade ago gonorrhea was almost wiped out of this country it has now returned in epidemic proportions. And the disease is not being spread only by the prostitutes, it can come just as easily from the pretty girl in the frilly pink dress who lives in the high rental areas. 

That bit about the "frilly pink dress" is classic Eddie.
In this case, Eddie knew first-hand what he was talking about. According to James Pontolillo's The Unknown War of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2017), Eddie himself was treated for syphilis in April 1946 after experiencing a body rash and painful bowel movements. He seems to have contracted the disease after a "pick-up date" with a prostitute in Beaumont, CA in December 1945, although Eddie claimed to have worn a condom during that encounter. In "That Lingering Social Disease," he further advocates for condom use:

There have been many men who claim the rubber is too much of a constricting force for him and that he cannot enjoy full climactic satisfaction when using one. But the new materials of this day and age belie that fallacy. And it is better to have some small discomfort than a real discomfort which can last for many months or more. However most medical men say that using the rubber is the most healthy way and that it is all in the minds of any man when he complains about the constriction. 

Perhaps the humble condom had been improved between 1945 and 1972. I would hope so.
Once again, Ed Wood turned to the Beta tabloid The National Informer for his source material. Specifically, that publication ran an informative story about gonorrhea in its December 1971 issue. (I don't know if these tabloids were weekly or monthly or what.) At first, he just refers to it as "an article," but he later gives us a title and an author: "Things You Should Know About Gonorrhea" by Russ Truman. Alas, Mr. Truman and his article have both vanished into the endless reaches of time, apart from being mentioned by Ed Wood.
Next: "Seek and Ye Shall Find" (1973)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Let's Swap Spits" (1972)

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Ed Wood gives us an article about kissing.

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

The article: "Let's Swap Spits." Originally published in Gold Diggers (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 2, May/June 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "We wonder where the motion picture industry would be if it had not been for that fortuitous happenstance of history. It is most certain that watching the beautiful Lana Turner shaking hands with some leading man wouldn't have the effect which happens when she parts those luscious lips and the male star lays his on hers."
Ed Wood kisses Dolores Fuller.Reflections: How much research did Ed Wood do for his nonfiction books and articles? It varies wildly from project to project. A few months ago, when I was mainlining as many of Wood's paperbacks as possible in a short amount of time, I noticed that he could go pages and pages without citing a single source. He was completely comfortable making up "facts" for his books, pulling entire chapters out of his ass, often with the confident pomposity of a college professor. I am reminded of the great scene early in Cormac McCarthy's Western novel Blood Meridian (1985) when the villainous Judge Holden interrupts a tent revival and makes some damning claims about the reverend who is conducting it:

Ladies and gentlemen I feel it my duty to inform you that the man holding this revival is an imposter. He holds no papers of divinity from any institution recognized or improvised. He is altogether devoid of the least qualification to the office he has usurped and has only committed to memory a few passage s from the good book for the purpose of lending to his fraudulent sermons some faint flavor of the piety he despises.

Ironically, the reverend in the novel is actually innocent of all the charges Holden levels against him. But the above speech fits Ed Wood pretty well. Some of the time, that is. Eddie was a world-class bullshitter when he needed to be.
As I've made my way through When the Topic is Sex, however, I've found a great many instances of Ed Wood citing actual books and articles, ranging from tomes by licensed physicians to articles printed in bottom-of-the-barrel tabloids. I get the impression that Eddie kept up with all forms of sexually-oriented literature, way more than the average person would. Writing about sex was his job, after all, and he took it seriously. Sometimes.
In the case of Ed's 1972 article "Let's Swap Spits," my guess is that he was entirely guided by research when he chose to write it. Basically, the main reason this piece exists is to pass on information from another article: "The History of the Kiss" by Charles Golden. I was not able to track down this particular source, but, based on my previous experience with When the Topic is Sex, I am certain that both Golden and his article are quite real. It seems like Eddie read this piece somewhere, possibly in a tabloid (that would explain it not being indexed anywhere), and decided to appropriate huge chunks of it, adding his own commentary along the way.
Anyone who's read Ed Wood's novels and short stories will know there's a lot of passionate kissing in them. Ed often describes the "lashing" and "slashing" of lovers' tongues with great gusto. It was only a matter of time before he devoted an entire article to the topic of osculation. Drawing heavily from "Mr. Golden," Eddie gives us a capsule history of kissing, including how the practice was once suppressed by the church, and waxes philosophical about the significance that kissing plays in our lives and in our art. Given Eddie's morbid imagination, I knew there would be a passage about the possibility of spreading germs through mouth-to-mouth contact. He largely shrugs off the danger of the act, but he does manage to work in one of his trademark references to death:

And it must also be pointed out, facts being facts, that many have heard that harmful germs pass from one person to the other while in the act of kissing each other. This would seem, if true, to prove that every person who has ever kissed should be calling the undertaker in advance of the act. 

Only Ed Wood could write an article about kissing and somehow manage to include the word "undertaker." (He even repeats this word later in the article.)
As I indicated previously, Charles Golden's "The History of the Kiss" was Eddie's main source for "Let's Swap Spits," but he also quotes a psychiatrist named David H. Fink, who says that kissing is an "accurate barometer" of a male-female relationship. (Just as Betty Everett tried to warn us: "If you want to know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss.") Although Ed doesn't specifically name any of  Dr. Fink's books or articles, it's possible he's referring to David Harold Fink (1894-1968), author of Release from Nervous Tension (1943) and For People Under Pressure (1956). Or maybe Golden quoted Fink and now Eddie is quoting Golden quoting Fink. Gosh, this gets confusing sometimes.
Next: "That Lingering Social Disease" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Climax Needed" (1972)

Dick Trent scores again!

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

The article: "Climax Needed." Originally published in Goddess (Gallery Press), vol. 1, no. 2, November/December 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "Sex is the most natural of all the human elements going right along with food and water in importance. The animal world certainly makes no bones about their demands. If a bitch dog is in heat the male dogs will break down fences to get at her."
Ed Wood's creative process?Reflections: "Climax Needed" is another article in When the Topic is Sex that seems to consist solely of tropes from other Ed Wood articles. I sometimes suspect that Eddie constructed these articles using a prefabricated kit, sort of like Ikea furniture. When an article was due, he'd dump the parts out on the floor, then assemble them with an Allen wrench. Let's see here. We have all the usual suspects:People used to believe sex was strictly for procreation, not pleasure.The missionary position can become awfully boring after a while. But people may not be familiar with anything else.America's young people are more sexually adventurous than their elders, trying out different positions and different combinations of partners.Couples with unsatisfying sex lives often get divorced.Group sex is more common than you'd think, and it's getting more popular all the time.Books about sex used to be written in technical language that only doctors understood. Thankfully, this is no longer the case.We're all discussing sex more openly these days.Due to uptight censors, movies used to show married couples in double beds. Can you believe that?Oral sex was once shunned by society but is now more accepted.Sex is a natural, healthy, and necessary part of life.Throw in a couple of Ed's pet phrases, the ones he'd been using since Glen or Glenda (1953)—stuff like "behind locked doors" and "strange as it may seem"—and you've got another sexology article ready to send to publisher Bernie Bloom.
What sets Ed's articles apart from each other is that, generally, each one will have its own specific gimmick or hook. For instance, "Climax Needed" stresses the importance of climaxing during sex. (I'm pretty sure Ed has used the word "orgasm" in other articles, but he doesn't use it here.) According to Ed Wood, America's youngsters are unhappy with old-fashioned orgasms and want newer, better ones:

The young have become unsatisfied with what they have been taught as to what a sex life is all about. They have felt the climax and know that it brings them to the very edge of life itself. But they also felt that the climax should be stronger . . . perhaps it could even last longer. In the locker rooms of the schools they have heard sketches of conversations which tell of other sexual happenings . . . sometimes actions they had never heard about before . . . and because they are of the enlightened age they want to get out, try it on for size, and see what it's all about. They are finding out rather quickly that they like what they have witnessed and experimented with.

Cancer? Heart disease? That stuff can wait. The hippies demand more satisfying sexual climaxes. To them, a bedroom (or, just as likely, the back of a VW Microbus) is a science lab for all kinds of erotic experiments. You're welcome, America.
In their quest for that fabled new-and-improved orgasm, America's youngsters are engaging in what Ed calls "oral copulation." Or what we commonly call today "mouth stuff." Which brings me to another distinguishing feature of "Climax Needed." Ed has often discussed the stigma that society once attached to fellatio and cunnilingus—it's a topic that comes up fairly often in his books and articles—but I don't know that he's ever done so with quite so much panache as he does here:

Years ago when one was heard to have practiced such an affair they were shunned by society as something dirty, a specimen which had crawled out from under a rock and one that most certainly shouldn't be permitted to contaminate the rest of society . . . the good people . . . the good people who steadfastly practiced the missionary position and in general, went unsatisfied. It is well known that when one is unsatisfied in their sex life, they are going to come up with a troubled mind whereby even their jobs can become influenced . . . influenced toward the down-side of the ledger. The unsatisfied sexual partner or partners will also become irritable at the slightest word or action. Naturally with such a situation the divorce court becomes the only out. Lawyers have become rich on the malfunctioning sex lives of others.

This, frankly, is the kind of passage that keeps me reading When the Topic is Sex. If I'm following Ed's logic correctly here, a lack of oral sex will lead to poor workplace performance, increased irritability, and even divorces. That's what I'd call a slippery slope.
Next: "Let's Swap Spits" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Turn On or Keep Out of the Sex Business" (1973)

Turn on, tune in, drop dead.

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

The article: "Turn On or Keep Out of the Sex Business." Originally published in Gallery (Gallery Press), vol. 2, no. 1, January/February 1973. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "Many women still experience something that borders on disgust, when it comes to sex. They have been raised to feel this way . . . that all men are beasts and that the sex drive is something left over from the lower animal forms. Of course, there is much more hope for these women today than there was fifty years ago."
Reflections: One of my favorite pastimes as a youth was going to used book stores and comic book stores and picking up old issues of MAD magazine from the 1960s and '70s. Not only did I love the writing and artwork, MAD also provided a valuable education about America's recent and semi-recent past. First and foremost, I learned about movies and TV shows that were slightly before my time—I'm sure I read "The Odd Father" long before ever seeing The Godfather—but MAD also clued me in about politics, fashion, music, fads, and changing social values. These were tumultuous decades in which young Americans were challenging the values of their elders, and MAD was there to cover it all, generally from the perspective of the harried, beleaguered Everyman who was just trying to keep up. 
There's no better example of this than cartoonist Dave Berg's recurring feature, "The Lighter Side." Corny as they were, Berg's comic strips—sitcom-style vignettes about the hassles and headaches of modern suburban American life—were my window into the world of adulthood, including sex. (And I'm not the only one who feels this way.) While viewpoints on sex and morality changed rapidly in this country, Berg's flawed, fallible characters were there to debate it all.
A typical example of Dave Berg's "Lighter Side."
The title of Ed Wood's article "Turn On or Keep Out of the Sex Business" was probably intended to make us think of Dr. Timothy Leary and his famous mantra, "Turn on, tune  in, drop out." But as I read it, I thought not of Leary but of good old Dave Berg. Specifically, this article seemed like it could have been written by Berg's surrogate character, Roger Kaputnik, the doughy, middle-aged husband and father who generally represented the "square" old-school view of the world. 
Dave Berg aka Roger Kaputnik.Not that this article is stodgy or prudish, mind you. In fact, this is another of Eddie's "sex positive" stories. He applauds the new openness with which we are all discussing sex nowadays, and he seems also to be in favor of couples having premarital sex to see if they're compatible in the bedroom. Eddie explains that this might prevent a trip to divorce court down the road. In short, this article captures Ed Wood trying to seem "with it," i.e. keeping up with the times. But at heart, he's still Roger Kaputnik, a relic from the previous generation. Kaputnik was the type of guy who'd remain faithful to his wife but could resist ogling some young secretary in a miniskirt if she happened to cross his path. You know those cocktail lounges Eddie's always writing about? It wasn't the hip young kids going to those places; it was the Roger Kaputniks of the world.
Once again, to give the article some validity, Ed Wood has chosen to cite a scholarly, real-world book about sex, in this case The American Sexual Tragedy (1962) by American psychologist Albert Ellis, Ph.D. (Eddie also namedrops Arthur Kinsey as well as Masters and Johnson, but Ellis is the only author he actually quotes at length in "Turn On.") The passage that Eddie has appropriated deals with the unhelpful and unhealthy messages that both boys and girls are given about sex in their early lives and how these messages can cause problems for them as adults.
Ellis was an eminent, if controversial , practitioner of his trade, and I'm sure his book was meant to be taken seriously at the time of its publication. The passage that Ed Wood quotes is actually rather dry. It's interesting, though, to compare the cover of the hardcover edition of The American Sexual Tragedy with that of the mass-market paperback . Clearly, some publisher decided that any book with the word "sexual" in its title must be at least a little dirty and slapped a naked lady right on the front of it. Who knows? Maybe it was that very lady who inspired Ed Wood to pick up this book in the first place.
Next: "Climax Needed" (1972)