Kitabı oku: «Put What Where?: Over 2,000 Years of Bizarre Sex Advice», sayfa 2
In my opinion, copulation is more seasonable in spring and winter; it may be used in the time of autumn, but in the heads of summer it should be carefully avoided, when the ordinary discharges of the body are so great...
We ought to embrace when our belly is moderately filled, for at such a junction we feel a strange desire to be meddling.
Cheek the zodiac, and never after war ...
Ananga Ranga of Kalyanamalla (Stage of the Love God), by the Indian poet Kalyan Mall (16th century)
Hot weather
Cold weather
Any time, in fact that’s not springtime or the rains
Daytime – unless it’s your woman’s favourite time
When ill with fever
When tired from travel
When observing a religious rite
At the new moon
When the sun or a planet passes from one side of the zodiac to another
In the evening
When tired from warfare
Geddinthere! (Times she might be in the mood)
Koka Shastra (The Scripture of Koka), by the Indian poet Kokkoka (12th century)
When tired from travel
Convalescing from a fever
Weary from dancing
The sixth month of pregnancy
A month after giving birth
Etiquette: when to introduce a new mistress to your wives
Chinese householder’s notebook (c. 16th century)
Recently I heard about a certain official who took unto him a new concubine. He locked himself in with her behind double doors and did not appear for three days. All his wives and concubines were highly incensed at this behaviour. This is indeed the wrong way.
The right method is for the man to control his desire and, for the time being not approaching the newcomer, concentrate his attention on the others. Every time he has sexual intercourse with his other women, he should make the newcomer stand at attention by the side of the ivory couch. Then, after four or five nights of this, he may for the first time copulate with the newcomer, but only with his principal wife and the other concubines present. This is the fundamental principle of harmony and happiness in one’s women’s quarters.
Three
CLASSICAL GAFFES
Owning a sex manual was not something you would shout about in ancient Greece: it was considered a sin against moderation, the primary virtue of the ancient world, and linked by critics to other faux pas such as gluttony, drunkenness and using prostitutes.
Greek writers of sex manuals were treated like the tabloid journalists of the day and labelled with the snappy title of anaiskhuntographo – ‘writers of shameless things’.
This did not deter aspiring sex advisors from putting pen to papyrus, though, and writing love guides became a feminine speciality. An AD 10 lexicon claims that the first Greek to have published a sex manual was Astyanassa, whose official job title was Helen of Troy’s ‘body servant’. She is credited with being both the first person to discover all the workable positions for intercourse and the first to write them down. She was followed by Elephantis and Philaenis. Elephantis, the prostitute-poetess, is supposed to have detailed nine different postures. The Emperor Tiberius is said to have been an avid reader, but tantalizingly, although these postures are often mentioned in classical texts, they remain lost somewhere beneath the mattress of time.
The other leading writer, Philaenis, is also believed to have been a woman (though it might possibly have been a man pretending, in order to boost sales). Only a few fragments from a papyrus of hers, from 2 BC, survive. In her preamble, she claims to have written it all from her own experience, as an objective and scientific guide. On flattery, she recommends, ‘Tell an older woman that she looks young. Tell an ugly woman that she looks “fascinating”. Pick the woman’s worst feature and then make it appear desirable.’ Other writers who appear to have flourished at the time include Paxamus, a general hack who wrote the Dodecatechnon, a book of twelve erotic postures – which is once again sadly lost.
We have more luck with the Romans, particularly the celebrated writer Lucretius, who at around 50 BC seems to have stumbled on the ‘Love Hurts’ idea so beloved of pop songs. The fourth section of his On the Nature of the Universe, dedicated to sex and sensation, warns readers that they must dodge Cupid’s darts: ‘The wounded normally fall in the direction of their wound: the blood spurts out towards the source of the blow. So, when a man is pierced by the shafts of Venus, whether they are launched by a lad with womanish limbs or a woman radiating love from her whole body, he strives towards the source of the wound and craves to ejaculate the fluid drawn from out of his body into that body. His speechless yearning foretells his pleasure.’ Messy.
Lucretius recommends that you try your best to avoid all this. His solution is to evade true love by embarking on a promiscuous sex spree: ‘If you find yourself thus passionately enamoured with someone, you should keep well away from images that remind you of them. Thrust from you anything that might feed your passion, and turn your mind elsewhere. Ejaculate the build-up of seed promiscuously and do not hold on to it – by clinging to it you assure yourself the certainty of heartsickness and pain ... Do not think that by avoiding romantic love you are missing the delights of sex. No, you are reaping the sort of profits that carry with them no penalty.’
The Roman period also brought us the first example of a sex-manual martyr. Poor old Ovid (aka Publius Ovidius Naso) is only the first of a long line of authors whose sullied reputations, trashed careers and broken lives litter the pages of this book. He got himself banished to a far fringe of empire for writing a bawdy guide to sexual postures, theirs amatoria (The Art of Love), which is a lads’-mag treasury of tips on grooming, sex and seducing your friends’ wives.
Ovid was born in 43 BC in Sulmo – modern-day Sulmona in central Italy – and studied in Athens before moving to Rome where he dutifully worked his way up to a decent civil service job. He then decided on a radical career move into the world of art and became a full-time poet. The gamble paid off handsomely and his writing and wit soon won him imperial fame and fortune. But at the age of 40 he made a rather less popular move, by treating his Roman readers to a pornographic poem. The Ars amatoria begins innocently enough: ‘If anyone among this people know not the art of loving let him read my poem and having read be skilled in love. By skill, swift ships are sailed and rowed, by skill nimble chariots are driven: by skill must love be guided.’ But its long closing passage was particularly risqué, suggesting sex-position tips for women that would show off their best parts (viz, if you’ve long legs, put them on your partner’s shoulders; if you’re saggy from childbirth, let him take you from behind; if you’re short, go on top, and so on).
The verses mortally offended the somewhat strait-laced Emperor Augustus. The poem, along with another, undisclosed error, got him banished to the freezing cold, primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. (He cryptically wrote, ‘two crimes, a poem and a blunder have brought me to ruin. I must keep silent.’) He continued writing poetry and begging to be allowed home, but to no avail. Ovid died in exile eight years later, in AD 17. The persecution of his saucy poem did not, however, stop there. All Ovid’s works were burned as obscene by the Dominican reformist preacher Girolamo Savonarola, in Florence in 1497 (though Savonarola met the same fiery fate himself a year later, after he upset the Vatican). And as late as 1928, an English translation of Ars amatoria was banned from America by US Customs.
The authorities might well remain reluctant to allow one of the late classical world’s other guides on lovemaking to be published. The Affairs of the Heart is effectively the inner monologue of a bi-curious male. Written by Lucien (or very possibly someone doing a rough imitation of his work) around AD 4, it records the disputes between a straight philanderer and a gay pederast over whose sex life is more honest and pleasurable. The straight guy wins, and the text recommends that male readers should choose wives over young boys – not least because they last longer: a woman is desirable from maidenhood to middle age, whereas boys pass their prime as soon as their beard starts to grow. What’s more, it adds, a woman can be used sexually just like a boy, thus offering ‘two roads to pleasure’. Bonus, eh?
Where to Do It
Outdoors
Marie Stopes, Married Love (1918)
There are some who do realize the sacredness and the value of nature and sunlight. There must be many beautiful children who were conceived from unions which took place under natural conditions of nature and sunlight.
But beware cops and other vermin
Dr Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (1972)
Outdoor locations in wild areas are often flawed by vermin, ranging from ants and mosquitoes to rattlesnakes and officious cops.
And certainly not in these places
Ananga Ranga of Kalyanamalla (Stage of the Love God), by the Indian poet Kalyan Mall (16th century)
In the presence of a holy man, a respectable old person or a great man
By rivers or streams
Next to wells or water tanks
Temples
Forts or castles
Guard-rooms, police stations, or other government places where prisoners are held
On a highway
In someone else’s house
Forests, meadows or uplands
Cemeteries
The consequences of carnal connection at such places are disastrous. They breed misfortunes. If children are begotten, they turn out bad and malicious.
Low light, on top of the blankets
Rennie MacAndrew, Life Long Love: healthy sex and marriage (1928)
Intimacy should always take place on top of the bed rather than beneath the blankets, so that each can enjoy seeing the physical charms of the other. Exhibitionism is not a perversion as a prologue to the consummation of love. Ideally, intercourse should be performed in a dimly lighted room, certainly not in the dark.
Four
NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH
In the unenlightened Britain of the Middle Ages, the Church was hard at work cementing the foundations for centuries of sexual double-standards and miserabilism.
Its moral leaders could not actually ban sex – they had to be practical, and intercourse was the only reliable way that mere mortals could fulfil God’s command to go forth and multiply. Nevertheless, the clergy shared St Paul and St Augustine’s wholehearted distaste for this undignified and bestial act – especially if anyone appeared to be having fun while performing it. Lust was a tool of the serpent of Satan, which turned the natural and sinless act of marital baby-making into something damnably hellish. Enjoying marital sex (rather than only putting up with it) constituted a venial sin. Adultery or fornication, moreover, constituted a mortal sin. Celibacy was the safest recommended route to heaven.
So when the local peasants sought advice on the physical side of marriage, the clergy were less than encouraging. One of the Church’s authoritative sources of sex do’s and don’ts consisted of an obsessively detailed inventory of acts that was apparently compiled by St Theodore of Tarsus, the Archbishop of Canterbury, from AD 668 to 690. In fact The Penitential of Theodore didn’t contain any do’s – they were all don’ts. The banned list included everything from receiving oral sex and masturbation, to bestiality and simply enjoying a cuddle with your spouse on holy days. Each offence was accompanied by a prescribed punishment, which could have you fasting regularly, getting whipped or paying penance. Masturbating would get you sentenced to 40 days’ penitence – and the same punishment applied for anyone who tried, but failed, to have sex for fun. Lesbians got three years, while male gays got ten. Anyone who slept with their mother got the maximum – 15 years – and were only allowed to change their clothes on Sundays.
Medieval doctors often took a different approach, however. They saw sex as essential to health and warned that long-term celibacy could lead to a dangerous build-up of ‘seminal humours’. They were heavily influenced by Galen, the first-century Classical doctor whose theories provided the backbone of European medical practice for centuries and whose cures, such as frequent bleeding, must have helped to kill millions. But Galen’s influence on lovemaking medicine would have been popular: physicians recommended regular, though not excessive, sexual intercourse to release their patients’ seminal humours. They added that the best moral way that single people and widows could stay healthy was to masturbate. Galen even recommended that physicians or midwives place hot poultices on the genitals of celibate women, causing them ‘to experience orgasm, which would release the retained seed’. The Church naturally disagreed, saying masturbation could only be excused if it was unintentional. But how do you prove you were having a wet dream?
As for sex guides, the contemporary De Secretis Mulierum has a strong claim to be one of the most deceitful, nasty and wicked ever published. Its title translates as The Secrets of Women and the work purported to be about women’s health. The contents, however, reflect the vicious paranoia of its misogynistic authors. It was written most probably in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century – possibly by Albertus Magnus, the theologian and scientist, or more likely by a disciple. It was published with the ostensible aim of helping to unravel the mysteries of creation for celibate monks and clerics who, theoretically at least, would be unfamiliar with a woman’s reproductive parts. Subsequent editions carried additional comments by other scholars, and the book steadily grew into a bizarre testament to medieval Englishmen’s warped attitudes to women and their bodies.
They seemed in particular to be rather frightened by the idea of sex with females, warning: ‘The more women have sexual intercourse, the stronger they become, because they are made hot by the motion that the man makes during coitus. Further, male sperm is hot because it is of the same nature as air and when it is received by the woman it warms her entire body, so women are strengthened by this heat. On the other hand, men who have sex frequently are weakened by this act because they become exceedingly dried out.’
The authors also warned readers that they would be particularly unwise to go near women during their monthlies, because ‘Women are so full of venom in their time of menstruation that they poison animals by their glance; they infect children in the cradle; they spot the cleanest mirror; and whenever men have sexual intercourse with them they are made leprous and sometimes cancerous.’
How Often?
Once a weak man
Dr Sylvester Graham, Lectures to Young Men on Chastity (c. 1837)
As a general rule it may be said to the healthy and robust, it were better for you not to exceed, in the frequency of your indulgences, the number of months in the year; and you cannot habitually exceed the number of weeks in the year without in some degree impairing your constitutional powers, shortening your lives and increasing your liability to disease and suffering – if indeed you do not thereby actually induce disease of the worst and most painful kind and at the same time transmit to your offspring an impaired constitution with strong and unhappy predispositions.
Four times a month, but never after a bath
Lyman B. Sperry, Confidential Talks with Husband and Wife: a book of information and advice for the married and marriageable (1900)
It may be safe to state that the ordinary man can safely indulge about four times a month. More than that would be excess for, perhaps, a large majority of civilized men and women. Sexual activity exhausts vitality; hence when one is fatigued, worried, digesting food or reacting from a bath, the vital energies are deeply engaged in important business. At such times, vitality says to sexual desire, ‘I am otherwise engaged’.
Twice or thrice weekly. Or less
August Forel, The Sexual Question: a scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study for the cultured classes (1908)
The reformer Luther, who was a practical man, laid down the average of two or three connections a week in marriage, at the time of highest sexual power. I may say that my numerous observations as a physician have generally confirmed this rule, which seems to me to conform very well to the normal state to which man has become generally adapted during thousands of years.
Husbands who would consider this average as an imprescriptible right would, however, make wrong pretensions, for it is quite possible for a normal man to contain himself much longer, and it is his duty to do so, not only when his wife is ill, but also during menstruation and pregnancy.
Once a fortnight, or after sexy poems
Marie Stopes, Married Love (1918)
Women whose husbands, for instance, are abroad are the women from whom the best and most definitive evidence of a fundamental rhythm of feeling can be obtained. Such women, yearning daily for the tender comradeship and nearness of their husbands find, in addition, at particular times, an accession of longing for the close physical union of the final sex-act. Many such separated wives feel this; and those I have asked to keep note of the dates, have, with remarkable unanimity, told me that these times came specially just before and some week or so after the close of menstruation, coming, that is, about every fortnight...
Many men, who can well practise restraint for 12 to 14 days, will find that one union will then thoroughly satisfy them; and if they have the good fortune to have healthy wives, they will find that the latter too have the desire for several unions in a day or two ... Expressed in general terms, my view may be formulated thus: the mutually best regulation of intercourse in marriage is to have three or four days of repeated unions, followed by about ten days without any unions at all, unless some external stimulus has stirred a mutual desire ...
In between these periods there may be additional special occasions when there springs up a mutual longing to unite. These will generally depend on some event in the lovers’ lives which stirs their emotions; some memory of past passion, such as an anniversary of their wedding, or perhaps will be due to a novel, poem or picture which moves them deeply.
Beware, you’ll have to keep it up
Theodoor Hendrik Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage, Its Physiology and Technique (1928)
I would warn husbands not to recklessly habituate their wives to a degree of sexual frequency and intensity which they (the husbands) may be quite unable to keep up for any length of time. There are many women of moderate sexual temperament who keenly enjoy long festivals of erotic activity, in which husbands both give and demand their utmost, but who do not suffer or resent when the tempest abates and a calm follows.
But there are others, though they are perhaps less numerous among Northern races, who, when once introduced to the maximum of sexual pleasure cannot modify their desires when this maximum is no longer available. Then indeed the husband cannot exorcise the spirits he has invoked. He has the painful choice between chronic ‘nerves’ on his wife’s part, which destroys marital peace and happiness, and equally chronic sexual overstrain and fatigue of his own.
Often no choice between these twin evils is possible and nerves, health, love and happiness are wrecked all round.
