BijouBlog

Yes, the book, Valley of the Dolls, on which the camp classic movie was based, is 50 years old! Hard to believe!

I actually saw the movie before I read the book. A former friend of mine seemed to think I needed to see it as part of Gay 101. I showed it to another friend, who knew nothing of the movie's gay cult status, and he said, “This is a bad movie.” Yes, it is. I could go on and on about why it is bad, but like other cult movies, it oddly suck the viewer in, perhaps because it's consistently bad (Neely, Neely, Neely O'Hara!), except for the touching performance of Sharon Tate as Jennifer. Even more touching, as we know of Sharon's horrible death.

When I finally got around to reading the book, I was actually shocked that the Jennifer character played by Sharon Tate in the movie enjoys a lesbian tryst while in college This tryst is not the movie, of course, and even though Jacqueline Susann is relatively explicit here, girl-on-girl sex in school wasn't as shocking socially at that time, because the hetero man finds it titillating, and it reaffirms the stereotype that a woman can easily experiment with lesbianism before finding the man of her dreams.

And as the recent article on this book in Slate points out, the word “fag” shows up quite often in the book, emphasizing the stereotype of the bitchy queen hairdresser or clothes designer prevalent in the 1960s and before.

Yes, much seems dated, but the the trials and tribulations of the fame- and fortune-seeking “dolls” who pop dolls parallel the hyperkinetic, hyperreal, hypertweet celebrity culture of today.

One could even say that Jennifer, Neely, and Anne are the infinitely more talented grandmothers of Real Housewives, the Bachelorette, and the Kardashians. Jennifer was beautiful and also kind, Neely, according to her nemesis Helen Lawson “has really got it” (referring to talent) and Anne was both smart and beautiful. One feels for them as they fall into their own respective valleys of the dolls.  

Could one say the same about their 21^st century granddaughters? I wonder.

The crowd historian Elias Canetti claims in Crowds and Power that invisible crowds have always existed.

The most numerous, according to him, are those microscopic entities like bacteria and sperm.

Crowds of them that can't be counted, there are so many.

Think numbers stretching into infinity...

There are some average numbers, though, based on some serious scientific observation.

Hate to disappoint you, guys, but human males don't even close to the top ten in the average number of sperm per ejaculation in mammals.

According to The Book of Lists 2, here are the top ten:

Swine: 45,000,000,000
Jackass: 14,000,000,000
Horse: 8,000,000,000
Dairy Cattle: 7,000,000,000
Zebu (humped ox): 5,098,200,000

Beef Cattle: 4,000,000,000
Eurasian Buffalo: 3,978,000,000
Sheep: 3,000,000,000
Goat: 1,755,000,000
Dog: 1,500,000,000
 

 The above numbers are in the billions! What I find interesting that humans often call each other swine and jackass to insult each other.

(Except those in certain parts of the gay community who are proud of being and behaving as   various types of sex “pigs.”)

Perhaps these numbers would make you think twice, if quantity is your guide to value judgments, about using those terms as insults. In fact, I'm surprised pigs and asses haven't taken over the world, based on their sperm counts.

(By the way, the median sperm count for human males is about 255,000,000 per ejaculation, according to Wikipedia's article on semen analysis. Again, sorry, guys.)

And guys, try to think quality, not quantity.
 

It's pretty much a given, that, as humans, we often laugh at what others think is taboo, or in fact, anything that really makes us uncomfortable.

(My students, though technically adults, still laugh at the word toilet.)

The greatest comedians have known that a joke about sex usually gets a laugh, and the best ones don't always have to necessarily be that graphic.

Here are a few zingers from The Big Book of Famous Sex “Quotes.”
 

A terrible thing happened to me last night – nothing. – Phyllis Diller

Home is heaven and orgies are vile
But you need an orgy once in a while. – Ogden Nash

The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4 a.m. – Charles Pierce

I know so much about men because I went to night school. – Mae West

Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets. – Andy Warhol

Pornography is in the groin of the beholder. – Anonymous

Oral sex: the taste of things to come. – Anonymous

Gordon Grant! He's the total rock solid muscle hunk with a 9 inch uncut cock who's featured in several magazines and brochures we carry and on the covers of our titles Pleasures in the Sun and Hot Truckin'. In Hot Truckin', tough-looking Gordon, called Buck, is a handsome deliverman who sucks and fucks blue-collar types while on the job - first a carpenter, then a painter - both young, handsome, and horny. He and his co-worker (Nick Rodgers) end up picking up a hitchhiker … in more ways than one.
 

Born in Alaska of Dutch and Nez Perce Indigenous heritage, he appeared in such films many of the FalconPacs, like The Lifeguard, Working Late, and The Crotchwatcher in the 1970s and 1980s.
 

He also appeared in Dirty Words, billed as Falcon's first feature film (as opposed to loops). He also went by the name of Don Bowman.

According to a vintage Colt magazine, he worked for two years as a construction worker on the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Ripe fantasy material …

Gordon also did some stunning Colt photo spreads, often modeling two figures in the Village People gamut: cowboy and construction worker. Wow! Such big arms!
 

 

He pretty much epitomizes the original Colt man, a direct descendant of all those muscle beefcake types that appeared in magazines like Physique Pictorial and Tomorrow's Man.

Gordon has passed on, but information is obscure. A couple of sources claim he died in the early 1990s from AIDS related causes, the fate of so many porn stars of that generation, but I could find nothing specific.

Still, he pretty much has entered the Mount Olympus of gay porn icons.
 

“They all do it... “ And in so many different ways!

Male squirrel monkeys display their penises and urinate in each other's faces during the mating season.

A small percentage of seagulls pair up as lesbians (observed on the Santa Barbara Islands, California). They go through all the patterns of mating, and lay sterile eggs.

Jacking off has been observed among deer, lions, apes, moose, boars, porcupines, dolphins, and elephants (who use their trunks; now, that must be one exciting and long experience).

Some species of animals and plants are hermaphroditic; they possess male and female sex organs.

The hermaphroditic European sea mollusk mates in chains of three or more; the front animal acts only as a female, while others acts as males for those in front and females for those behind.

The male sea horse and pipefish (same family of fish, Syngnathidae) carry the brood, and because males are occupied with prenatal care, the liberated females end up being able to compete for males.

Gulf pipefish mate according to the "classic polyandry" system, where each male receives eggs from a single female per pregnancy, but females can mate with multiple males.

Female hyenas are the leaders of their families; she also has a penis — well, sort of. Female hyenas have a pseudo-penis, basically an enlarged clitoris, that can become erect! She will expose this member to males to demonstrate her willingness to mate.

All in all, not exactly the rigid gender binaries certain narrow-minded and small-hearted groups proclaim as “natural!”

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