From the Fellatio File: In the July issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchins surveys the BJ field from, umm, top to bottom, in an article entitled ‘As American as Apple Pie.’ Sample tidbits include this gem: ‘Erotic poets have hymned it down the ages, though often substituting the word ‘his’ [soft mouth]. The menu of brothel offerings in ancient Pompeii… the temple carvings of India,… and Sigmund Freud wondered if a passage in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks might not betray an early attachment [to this activity].’ Hitchins repeats the American joke about the father and young daughter hearing together about the president of the U.S. receiving oral sex in an Oval Office vestibule and the little girl asking, ‘Daddy, what’s a vestibule?’
From the Bad Pun File: Henry Chu recently moved to India, where, as described in an Chicago Tribune (6/16) article entitled, ‘Whose Sari Now?,’ he ran into hijras. According to the article, ‘In the West they would probably be identified as something between a cross-dresser and a transsexual.’ They are, in fact, eunuchs who dress as women and who make livings by crashing weddings, birthday parties and, in this case, a new apartment construction to demand money to prevent bad luck. Chu refused their demands and was roundly cursed in Hindi. Chu wonders if the bad luck is that they’ll keep coming back.
For those of you in the November or December category (age-wise), the New York Times (6/18) says romance is still in the air: In its Weddings/Celebrations section Richard Moll, 71, and Wallace Pinford,59, affirmed their partnership on May 28. Pinfold, a plant hybridizer, identified a shrub for Moll and complimented him for opening Bowdoin College to diversity by making SAT scores optional. (Moll had been director of admissions). Their relationship grew into May’s commitment ceremony.
The New York Times Book Review Section (6/18) covers Alison Bechdel’s comics-memoir hybrid and calls it ‘Proustian graphic.’ Bechdel, the well-known cartoonist of the strip Dykes to Watch Out For, stretches her enviable ability to squeeze pertinent (and funny) info into a four-panel strip to book length in this graphic bio. Bechdel relied on journals she’s kept since she was 10 and the reviewer even used the memoir to check out the author’s hometown. With some evidence, Bechdel believes that her father’s death was a suicide brought on by her coming out to him.