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Favorite Trivia – BEAUTY & VANITY & SEXUALITY & INUENDO
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| “Beauty is the first present nature gives to women, and the first it takes away.”
Méré |
| “Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”
Rodney Dangerfield |
| “Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.”
Charles Reade |
| “What the artist has to grasp is that there is no such thing as ugliness in the world. This I believe to be true, but perhaps the saying would sound less difficult in another form: All ugliness has an aspect of beauty. The business of the artist is to find that aspect.” [January 3, 1899]
Arnold Bennett – The Journal of Arnold Bennett |
| “There are no ugly women; there are only women who do not know how to look pretty.”
Antoine Berryer |
| “A woman without beauty knows but half of life.”
Mme. de Montaran |
| “Fifteen years later, the ‘Queen of Romance’ [Barbara Cartland, mother of Diana’s stepmother (Raine Spencer)] made a succinct judgment on the reasons for the marriage’s [of Diana and Charles] failure. ‘Of course, you know where it all went wrong. She wouldn’t do oral sex.'”
Tina Brown – The Diana Chronicles |
| “I love the dumb blonde image. Then I have nothing to live up to. I can only surprise people.”
Pamela Anderson – People Weekly Favorite Pictures, 2000 |
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“High heels, it is said, were invented by a girl who was kissed on the forehead.” Anon |
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“Never interrupt when you are being flattered.” David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Enlightenment |
| “The problem with beauty is that it’s like being born rich and getting poorer.”
Joan Collins |
| “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”
Friedrich Nietzsche |
| “A young girl betrays, in a moment, that her eyes have been feeding on the face where you find them fixed.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes |
| “He once passed a hand over his face and told you, ‘I am not a handsome man.’ This was only a piece of another throwaway bar story whose plot you no longer remember, but each time you greet Ignacio you are reminded of this proclamation. It was a magnificent thing to say and you admire him for his self-knowledge.”
Patrick deWitt – Ablutions |
| “In order to judge beauty, night and wine are bad counsellors. It was in broad daylight, under the open sky, that Paris saw the three goddesses, and said to Venus; ‘You excel your two rivals.’ Darkness hides blemishes and imperfections too well. In the dark there is no such thing as an ugly woman.” [Part One]
Ovid’s The Art of Love, Trans. by Ronald Seth |
| “And although she was very beautiful, Monroe’s appearance was not considered perfect. In 1950, Hyde [Johnny] paid for Monroe to have plastic surgery. Her chin and nose were reshaped to fit the ideal feminine image at the time. According to Snively, ‘Monroe always tried to lower her smile because she smiled too high, and it made her nose look a little long.’ Monroe also had her hairline raised through electrolysis. Monroe would remain insecure about her appearance throughout her career.”
Lisa Owings – Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon |
| “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”
Samuel Butler |
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| “I want to marry you, I want to fingerfuck a gold hole…” Rachel Scrubas – I Want To Marry You |
| “Today is rainy and a relief. I am at the point now where I find it difficult to be out in the spring day streets because the beauty of all the women drives me wild. I can’t stop looking and wanting until the wanting HURTS so much that I get angry with them.” [May 16, 1990]
The Journals of Spalding Gray |
| “Curly the Cur was there, who reeks, in the morning, with odors that would outstink the smell of at least two funeral parlors.” The Fourth Satire: Against a big fish (The Satires of Juvenal – trans. by Rolfe Humphries) |
| “breast: The most attractive container yet devised for dairy products.”
Webster’s Unafraid Dictionary: Defiant Definitive Put-Downs – Leonard Louis Levinson |
| “The Devotion of Ladies growing into Years, is frequently no better, than a little kind of Decency taken up to shelter themselves from the shame and the Jest of a fading Beauty; and to secure, in every Change, something that may still recommend them to the World.” [DCLXVIII]
The Moral Maxims And Reflections of the Duke De La Rochefoucauld |
| Fragile is Beauty: with advancing years ‘Tis less and less and, last, it disappears. Your hair too, fair one, will turn grey and thin; And wrinkles furrow that now rounded skin; Then brace the mind and beauty fortify, The mind alone is yours, until you die.” Ovid |
| Marilyn Monroe about her husband, famed baseball player Joe Dimaggio: “Joe brings a great bat into the bedroom.” |
| “I never made Who’s Who, but I’m featured in What’s That?”
Phyllis Diller |
| “‘I can’t have any sex,’ Suzanne explains cheerfully. ‘Ever since I gave birth, it’s been vaginitis, cystitis, fatigue. A month now. How about you?’
“‘Not much sexual passion in my life,’ I say. ‘I still imagine I’m giving birth when I lie on my back. And it’s ten months.'” [November 18, 1978] With Child: A Diary of Motherhood – Phyllis Chesler |
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“I lingered a week in Boston, went around everywhere, and saw all that was to be seen, especially human beings. . . Indeed there is a good deal of the Hellenic in Boston, and the people are getting handsomer too—padded out, with freer motions, and with color in their faces. I never saw so many fine-looking gray-haired women.” Walt Whitman, Specimen Days (Christopher Morley’s Book of Days for 1931 [April 19]) |
| “Conversation about perfumes and how they are made. In order to concoct a scent for a client, the specialists in the large perfume houses do not inquire about hair color, but rather they request a piece of underwear that she has worn.” [January 11, 1944]
Ernst Jünger – A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 |
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“‘The greatest curse derived by man from nature is bodily pleasure when the passions are indulged, and strong, inordinate desires are raised and set in motion for obtaining it. For this have men betrayed their country; for this have states and governments been plunged in ruin; for this have treacherous correspondences been held with public enemies.” [De Senectute., I, 12.] Cicero |
| “Your handsome face looks so well when it frowns, that I long to see it illuminated by a smile.” [Tito Melema to Monna Ghita]
George Eliot – Romola |
| “You know what they say when a supermodel gets pregnant: ‘Now she’s gonna be eating for one.'”
Jay Leno (That’s Really Funny) |
| “I threw my back out. . . for a period of two weeks, my upper torso was canted at a thirty-five-degree angle. . . That it now took me half an hour instead of ten minutes to walk from my house to my office was not a big deal. Nor was it bothersome for me to run into friends or colleagues, four of whom saw fit to liken me to ‘an old man.’ But what was hard for me—or more specifically, hard for my ego—were those times when I ran into, or was about to run into, guys I flirt with in our neighborhood. “Nothing has ever happened with these gents—I’m a happily coupled spouse—and I’m pretty sure nothing ever will, which seems to be the point of these little pools of charm. These are simply handsome men who live in my neighborhood, some of whom I’ve only ever said ‘Hello’ to and with whom I’ve been sharing knowing smiles on the sidewalk for years. They’re like mirrors, allowing me to gauge my ego’s worth. I tried my best to avoid these men during the first week of my old-manhood—one time I ducked behind a corner, twice I walked several blocks out of my way—because I didn’t like the idea that I had lost my appeal. . . “I’d like to think that, as I age, my ego will need less and less affirmation, but such a mind-set is probably naïve. My looks will fade, my power will wane, my money will be spent or diminished by rampant inflation, my wit will grow softer, my hipness will grow stale. . . I simply need to get in the habit now of compensating for my ultimate wanings.”
Henry Alford– How To Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People |
| “Lady: One who never shows her underwear unintentionally.”
Evan Esar – Esar’s Comic Dictionary |
| “I wonder why men can get serious at all. They have this delicate long thing hanging outside their bodies, which goes up and down by its own will. First of all having it outside your body is terribly dangerous. If I were a man I would have a fantastic castration complex to the point that I wouldn’t be able to do a thing. Second, the inconsistency of it, like carrying a chance time alarm or something. If I were a man I would always be laughing at myself. . .”
Yoko Ono – Grapefruit |
| “Women were made to give our eyes delight.”
Young |
| “Confidence is necessary to beauty; it is its illumination.” [Sierra Madre November 4, 1953]
Anaïs Nin – Trapeze: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947-1955 |
| “If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.”
David Foster Wallace (Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore – Terry Newman) |
| “Wrinkles are mementos of smiles we have had.”
David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Enlightenment |
| “Miss Daisy smiled so sweetly all the evening that I imagined a ray of sunshine tried to pass her and got stuck.” [July 18, 1885]
The Diary of Thomas Alva Edison |
| “Let your well-cut clothes have no stains upon them. Do not speak sharply. Keep your teeth free from tartar. Do not let your feet swim about in shoes that are too large. Do not let your hair, badly cut, flop about your head, but have your hair and beard cut by a skillful hairdresser. Always have your finger-nails clean and polished. Do not have hairs sprouting from your nostrils. Above all, do not infect the air about you with your breath, and do not offend the sense of smell of those near you by that fetid odour such as the male goat exudes.”
Ovid’s The Art of Love, Trans. by Ronald Seth |
| “Look, girls: one thing first—you have to think of your conduct. When the character’s right, looks are a greater delight. There is a love that will last: age will lay waste to your beauty, Time, with remorseless plough, wrinkle and furrow the brow. There will come a day when you hate to look into a mirror, When your grief and your pain double the wrinkles again. Goodness is more than enough, and time can never outwear it; Long as your days will run, love rests securely thereon.” Ovid – The Art of Beauty (trans. by Rolfe Humphries) |
| Donald Trump: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Billy Bush: “Anything you want?” Donald Trump: “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” |
| “Vanity came in but stayed at the hotel. . . cool. She is a nice girl at heart but she just drives me nutz. After the sex, I wish she would turn into a bottle of Jack.” [July 14, 1987]
Nikki Sixx – The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Rock Star |
| “We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us. All this means that association, by likeness or contrast, enters largely into the aesthetic emotion.”
Somerset Maugham – Truth, Beauty and Goodness |
| egotism: “A person who would be more attractive if his I’s were not so close together.”
Webster’s Unafraid Dictionary: Defiant Definitive Put-Downs – Leonard Louis Levinson |
| “Homeliness is the best guardian of a young girl’s virtue.”
Mme. de Genlis |
| “I feel that beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived, and glamour—although the manufacturers won’t like this—cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour, it’s based on femininity. I think that sexuality is only attractive when it’s natural and spontaneous. This is where a lot of them miss the boat. And then something I’d like to spout off on. We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift. Art, real art, comes from it—everything.”
Marilyn Monroe speaking with Richard Meryman, Life Magazine, August 3, 1962 |
| “If God had wanted women to give blow jobs she wouldn’t have given them teeth.”
Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women, ed. by Stillman & Beatts |
| “He came back with a dog-eared paperback, sat on the edge of the bed and cleared his throat: “‘The entire Court, with the exception of Madame d’Étampes, of course, agreed that Diane de Poitiers [King Henry II’s Royal mistress] was simply ravishing. All the ladies copied the way she walked, her gestures, her hairstyles. She served, in fact, to establish the canon of beauty, one which all women for over a hundred years would seek in desperation to emulate:Three white things: skin, teeth and hands. Three black: eyes, eyebrows and eyelids. Three red: lips, cheeks, nails. Three long: body, hair, hands. Three short: teeth, ears, feet. Three narrow: mouth, waist, toes. Three wide: arms, thighs, calves. Three small: nipples, nose, head.'” Hunting and Gathering – Anna Gavalda |
| “Went to New York via Desbrosses Street ferry. Took [horse-drawn street] cars across town. Saw a woman get into car who was so tall and frightfully thin as well as dried up that my mechanical mind at once conceived the idea that it would be the proper thing to run a lancet into her arm and knee joints and insert automatic self feeding oil cups to diminish the creaking when she walked.” [July 13, 1885]
The Diary of Thomas Alva Edison |
| “I am very fond of the company of ladies: I like their beauty; I like their delicacy; and I like their vivacity; and I like their silence.”
Samuel Johnson |
| “In the sunshine in front of the Place des Ternes. These are the moments when I can breathe, like a drowning man. Opposite me a girl in red and blue who combines absolute beauty with an icy manner—a pattern of frost crystals. Whoever thaws her, destroys the form.” [May 3, 1941]
Ernst Jünger – A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 |
| “For those of us who have wondered why it is that Southern California seems stocked with a disproportionately high percentage of ravishing women, Babitz offers a supremely logical explanation: ‘These were the daughters of people who were beautiful, brave, and foolhardy, who had left their homes and traveled to movie dreams. In the Depression, when most of them came here, people with brains went to New York and people with faces came West.'” [Introduction by Holly Brubach]
Eve Babitz – Eve’s Hollywood |
| “While Venus inspires me, young Beauties, give ear to my lessons. Modesty and the laws permit you to do so. Your curiosity makes you want to hear me. Just think for a moment of old age, which arrives all too soon, and you will not lose an instant. While you can, and while you are still in the spring of your years, give yourself a good time. The years trickle away like water. Get what you can from Youth; it passes all too quickly. Each day is less beautiful than the one which preceded it. . .
“Beauty is a present from the gods, but how few women are able to improve their looks? Most of you have received this gift from heaven, but the care you devote to your dress will enhance it. Without being looked after even the most beautiful face, though it may compare with the face of the Goddess of Idalia herself, loses its radiance. If the Beauties of old had neglected their bodies, their husbands would have neglected them. . . “Never neglect your hair. Its charm depends more or less on the skill of the hands that dress it. There are a thousand styles, and you should choose the one which suits you best. Always consult your mirror. An oval face demands that the hair should be simply parted in the middle. A loose knot on the top of the head which leaves the ears uncovered suits rounded faces better. Some should let their hair fall on their shoulders like Apollo’s was when he plucked the melodious lyre. Another ought to put up her tresses like Diana did when she pursued the wild beasts in the forest. One should charm us with bobbing curls, another with flattened hair drawn tightly across the temples. . . “Women, how willing to help your charms Nature is! She provided you with so many aids with which you can repair the ravages of time. We men cannot hide ours. Age makes our hair fall out like the leaves of a tree battered by the north-east wind. The woman, however, tints her white hair with the juice of herbs from Germany, and art gives it a borrowed colour which is often more attractive than its original shade. A woman often appears with a thick head of hair which she has just bought, and for a little money the hair of others becomes hers. . . “Beauties should learn to laugh, for this art adds another charm. Do not open your mouth too wide, and let two little dimples crease your cheeks, and let your lower lip cover the tips of your upper teeth. Avoid laughing too heartily and too often. On the contrary, let your laugh have some indescribable sweetness and femininity about it, so that it may be a pleasure to listen to. There are some women who cannot laugh without twisting their mouths hideously. Others wishing to express their joy you would think were weeping. Others shock the ear with their raucous and disagreeable noise; you would think you were listening to the braying of a donkey. . . “My dears, you will do well to mingle with crowds; often go out with no destination in view. The shewolf watches many ewes in order to seize one of them; the eagle pursues more than one bird through the air. Thus a Beauty ought to be seen by the people; among them perhaps there will be one whom her charms will captivate. . . everywhere chance offers luck. Let the hook be always held out; the fish will come to take it when you least expect it.” [Part Three] Ovid’s The Art of Love, Trans. by Ronald Seth |
| “Despite what everyone said—that I would love being tall one day, that they would steal inches off my legs if they could—I wanted to be short. Those critical years I spent hunched over, made worse by a lifetime of coughing, still reveal themselves in my rounded posture today.” [April 28, 2016]
Mallory Smith – Salt In My Soul: An Unfinished Life |
| “Women, cats and birds are the creatures that waste most time on their toilets.”
Charles Nodier |
| Little Red Corvette – sexual slang for a woman’s vagina (from the title of Prince’s song, which is filled with sexual innuendos).
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| Circassian women – Considered the most beautiful women on earth, prized by Turkish sultans for their harems. Circassian women come from the mountainous region of the Black Sea, the purported birthplace of the Caucasian race, therefore, known as the “purest” type of white person.
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| “A charm invests a face Imperfectly beheld,— The lady dare not lift her veil For fear it be dispelled.” Emily Dickinson |
| “I hung over him enamour’d indeed! and devour’d all his naked charms with only two eyes, when I could have wish’d them at least a hundred, for the fuller enjoyment of the gaze.”
Fanny Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure – John Cleland |
| “At least a woman’s hands and feet don’t disclose the size of her sex organs.”
Patty Martino Alspaugh |
| Me: “[answering the telephone] Thank you for calling the Library. How may I help you?”
Man: “Can you read me a list of all the books by John Grisham?” Me: “Sure, I can help you with that. Are you looking for print books, audio, adult, young adult, youth fiction, nonfiction?” Man: “Just read me the list of his books.” Me: “Okay. [I start going through list.]” Man: “Can you go a little slower?” Me: “Okay. Sure. [I slow down]” About halfway through the list I notice a distinct change in the man’s breathing.” Me: “Are you okay, sir?” Man: “[whispering, panting] Oh, yeah, you like that don’t you?” Me: “[Realizing what the man is most likely doing on the other end of the line.] That’s all the books by Grisham. Goodbye.” Man: “But I’m not done!” Me: “I am.” Gina Sheridan – I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories |
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“A secret is a weapon and a friend. James Stephens, The Crock of Gold (Christopher Morley’s Book of Days for 1931 [September 14]) |
| “The secret of life is the pursuit of pleasure, which lies in beauty. And beauty is always simplicity, even in the face of apparent complexity.” [January 7, 1951]
John Fowles, The Journals: Volume 1 |
| “I could see in the reflection of the hubcaps that there was a woman standing over me, and I turned, and there was a pair of beautiful brown ankles blooming like flowers out of red leather high-heeled shoes. I looked up and saw the calves, and the kneecaps, and the thighs—bare, brown thighs—and I looked up, farther still, and could see from my angle that this presence, this woman. . . was not wearing any underwear!”
Patrick deWitt – Ablutions |
| “Even Venus herself never takes off her veil without covering with her hands her secret charms. Animals copulate anywhere, in the sight of everyone, and often at such a sight the young maiden lowers her eyes. Our love-thefts must have a private place and closed doors, and we cover our shameful nudity with clothes.”
Ovid’s The Art of Love, Trans. by Ronald Seth |
| “She looked thirty-five. A good thirty-five, but thirty-five. And out here in Hollywood that might as well be a hundred. The young beautiful girls thronged through the city like lemmings, lasting one year, some two. Some of them so beautiful they could make a man’s heart almost stop beating until they opened their mouths, until the greedy hopes for success clouded the loveliness of their eyes. Ordinary women could never hope to compete with them on a physical level. And you could talk all you wanted to about charm, about intelligence, about chic, about poise, the raw beauty of these girls overpowered everything else.”
Mario Puzo – The Godfather |
| “She [Dolores Del Rio] regarded her beauty as a gift from God, and her maintenance of it had a spiritual quality. She favored massages in lieu of exercise. ‘I never drink, I never diet, I always stay in love,’ she told a reporter in 1955. Nor did she smoke. As for her extraordinary unlined skin, she did not, as fan magazines reported in the thirties, eat gardenias and rose petals. But she did attribute her flawless complexion to the fact that she drank hibiscus juice every day and she slept up to sixteen hours a night. ‘She told me that a women’s skin is her canvas on which she paints,’ recalls Arlene Dahl.”
Annette Tapert – The Power of Glamour |
“[Greta] Garbo’s face was so well proportioned that for years plastic surgeons proclaimed it the hallmark of perfection. The space between her eyes was the width of one eye. Her nose length was one-third the distance from the hairline to the chin. Her lower lip was slightly fuller than her upper lip. In addition to balance, Garbo was blessed with eyelashes so long and thick that in photographs they look false (when not coated with mascara they were practically white). She had luminescent skin and, though audiences never saw the color of her magical eyes, they were a translucent grayish blue.” Annette Tapert – The Power of Glamour |
| “Excreting is the curse that threatens madness because it shows man his abject finitude, his physicalness, the likely unreality of his hopes and dreams. But even more immediately, it represents man’s utter bafflement at the sheer non-sense of creation: to fashion the sublime miracle of the human face, the mysterium tremendum of radiant feminine beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are; to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles again within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out—the eye that gave even the dry Darwin a chill: to do all this, and to combine it with an anus that shits! It is too much. Nature mocks us, and poets live in torture.”
Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death |
| “What’s that phrase from the Greek—A man is drawn to a fairy? What in the world can be worse than the fairy who’s stingy about it?. . . Does he think this job is so easy, Shoving it in to the point where it meets with yesterday’s dinner?” The Ninth Satire: On the griefs of a career man (The Satires of Juvenal – trans. by Rolfe Humphries) |
| The Judgment of Paris (Greek Mythology):
Zeus held a banquet in celebration of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (parents of Achilles). However, Eris, goddess of discord, was not invited, for it was believed she would have made the party unpleasant for everyone. Angered by this snub, Eris arrived at the celebration with a golden apple from the Garden of Hesperides, which she threw into the proceedings as a prize of beauty. According to some later versions, upon the apple was the inscription, “For the Fairest One.” Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera [Juno], Athena [Minerva] and Aphrodite [Venus]. They asked Zeus to judge which of them was fairest, and eventually he, reluctant to favor any claim himself, declared that Paris, a Trojan mortal, would judge their cases. Thus it happened that, with Hermes as their guide, the three candidates bathed in the spring of Ida, then confronted Paris on Mount Ida in the climatic moment that is the crux of the tale. After failing to judge their beauty with their clothing on, the three goddesses stripped nude to convince Paris of their worthiness. While Paris inspected them, each attempted with her powers to bribe him; Hera offered to make him King of Europe and Asia, Athena offered wisdom and skill in war, and Aphrodite, who had the Charites and the Horai to enhance her charms with flowers and song, offered the world’s most beautiful woman (This was Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus.) Paris accepted Aphrodite’s gift and awarded the apple to her, receiving Helen as well as the enmity of the Greeks and especially of Hera. The Greeks’ expedition to retrieve Helen from Paris in Troy is the mythological basis of the Trojan War. wikipedia.org |
| “She [Daisy Fellowes] was equally attentive to Gwen Fargo, a shy and introverted American woman who became one of her few female friends. Like Daisy, Gwen had a nose that spoiled her features. Daisy, recalling her own happy experience with plastic surgery, treated her to a nose job. Gwen emerged devastatingly pretty, and a wealth of previously hidden charm bubbled to the surface.”
Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins – The Power of Style |
| “Got a bad cold, so Rupert had to keep his distance. . . We sat opposite ends of the table and spent an enjoyable afternoon talking about sex and scandal. He told me all about the Chelsea set that used to be, before the war that is—about 120 people who’d all been to bed with each other once and were wondering what to do next.
“‘How many of them did you have?’ I asked suspiciously. “‘Not many, I’m a bit fussy—but of course I could have had them all! Take Peggy Guggenheim, for instance, I went round to see her at the Gallery to try and get Gerhardt a show, and there was this funny little woman with enormous gold ear-rings and a long sharp nose, bright red, glaring at me through the gloom with small, beady sex-mad eyes. You’re Guggenheim I guess,’ I said as she rushed at me. ‘You’re sure right baby!’ she replied, breathing heavily in my face. ‘Come to the country with me!’ she howled. Back in an hour! I cried, eluding her, and dashed straight home to Gerhardt in a taxi, gave him a stiff drink, bundled him in and turned the taxi around. Two weeks later Gerhardt was driving Peggy’s yellow Packard and his exhibition was on at the Guggenheim.’” [September 27, 1939] Joan Wyndham – Love Lessons: A Wartime Diary |
| “Work on American Tragedy & letters. Helen collects $35.00 from Metro & gives it to me. Wonderful session in evening—after dinner at Petitfils. Helen has a streak of perversion in her. Makes me promise never to teach any other girl to osculate my penus as she does!” [October 25, 1920]
Theodore Dreiser – The American Diaries: 1902-1926 |
| “A man goes to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist takes out a Rorschach ink blot test and says: ‘I want you to look at this picture and tell me what you see.’
The man looks carefully at the ink blot and says, ‘That’s a man and a woman having sex on a bed.’ ‘OK,’ says the psychiatrist and shows the man another ink blot. ‘That’s a man and a woman having sex on the beach,’ says the man. The psychiatrist shows him a third ink blot and the man says, ‘And that’s a man and a woman having sex in the park.’ ‘Well,’ says the psychiatrist, ‘you seem to have an obsession with sex.’ ‘What do you mean I have an obsession with sex!’ says the man. ‘You’re the one who keeps showing me dirty pictures.'”
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| “I have everything but my looks, but my looks are everything.”
Patty Martino Alspaugh |
| “In Athens, girls regularly showed their bare behinds in public so that the populace could choose which was the nicest. And what about the triumphal entries of the Dukes of Burgundy, the Kings of France and even the Emperor Charles the Fifth? On these occasions, hundreds of naked women and girls posed for allegorical tableaux without the slightest shame or hesitation at displaying their nude bodies. They even fought each other to take part.”
Armand Coppens – The Memoirs of an Erotic Bookseller |
| “My mother had so many face-lifts that by the end of her life she couldn’t close her eyes.”
Pam Houston – “Five Crucial Things the Fifty-Three-Year-Old Bitch Knows” (The Bitch is Back, ed. by Cathi Hanauer) |
| “I only want to ask the gentlemen to show their appreciation, if any, in the old Russian style. When we danced during those suppers I was telling you about, the men always took out their penises and banged them on the table to indicate their approval. Any girl who failed to please, was squirted with soda-water or drenched in champagne.”
Armand Coppens – The Memoirs of an Erotic Bookseller |
| On Tuesday I met a very nice gentleman for coffee, whereupon we sized each other up a bit, made some idle chit chat, and then retired to a local motel for adult activities. He was short, funny, and Italian. We talked a lot about smokers being persecuted and ostracized, and golf. The sex itself was actually pretty good, and then the hour was up and he asked if he could see me again. Walked away with a 30 percent tip, even. I felt rather amused with myself on the drive home. . . I’m still rather amazed that I can get paid for doing something so fun.”
Sex Diaries – http://happyhooking.blogspot.com |
| “I am walking down the street in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue in the lower Sixties, women with shopping bags on all sides. I realize with some horror that for the last fifteen blocks I have been counting how many women have better and how many women have worse figures than I do. Did I say fifteen blocks? I meant fifteen years.”
Pam Houston – “Out of Habit, I Start Apologizing“ (Scoot Over Skinny) |
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“Sabina has a thousand charms Anonymous, published in Amphion Anglicus, 1700 (Christopher Morley’s Book of Days for 1931 [September 24]) |
| “sublimer intellectual ones: Eighteenth-century sexual folklore held that idiots were blessed with larger sexual organs in recompense for their limited mental capacities.” [Note 69]
(not Fanny Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure – John Cleland |
| “The party is at a middle-class home in a middle-class suburb in the middle of Ohio. Partygoers range in age from early twenties to mid-sixties. Not everyone is naked. Like me, a few others are first-timers and we are offered a cushion of comfort—‘if and when you’re ready, get naked.’ Those who are naked have towels slung over their shoulders, or if sitting, spread under their bottoms. Commandment One of Nudist Etiquette: never nude without your towel; Two, Three, and Four—collapse that erection; don’t stare at body parts; no physical familiarity in the nudist ‘public,’ even between couples; Five, no photography—with the exception of the permission of close friends; Six and Seven, avoid last names; confidentiality is a must; Eight, Nine, and Ten, never leave home without sunscreen, sunglasses, and sunhat.”
Donna Jarrell – “Fat Lady Nuding“ (Scoot Over Skinny) |
| “The year on the streets had drained me. I’d followed a man into a hotel room and sat at a plastic table snorting lines of coke while a john with a black mustache and blond wig wearing a nurse’s dress sucked off two or three homeless men at a time. I’d hitchhiked to California with my best friend and spent three days in the Las Vegas detention center. I slept with strangers, ate out of garbage bins, panhandled for change. I got in cars every time a driver opened a door.”
Stephen Elliott – The Adderall Diaries |
| “and here we are again, folks, a table of women, 7 of us, & the first thing i do to assess my co-workers on Tooth & Nail is look around at all of you to see who is prettier than i. my lover used to say how i was prettier than other women in women’s lib & i would feel better while feeling worse & wish it weren’t even a consideration. in anybody’s mind, including mine, because it drives me crazy & actually prevents me from enjoying situations. like i used to hate to go to martha’s house because she is, and i quote, perfectly beautiful. she doesn’t even bite her nails. how can i compete with that munch munch. then i got to know her & the bitterness is real, cannot be measured; that we really like each other & could have been friends all that awful lonely year but i was afraid to be around her & have him look at my lousy skin & big nose & bitten nails next to her perfect complexion & little nose & nice nails. how could he possibly want me more than her? everything becomes a handicap: every time i take a pill i think jesus no man loves a sick wife (to quote mother). men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses. blondes have more fun. fat ass. big boobs. clear skin. sheeit. then it got so i could count on being the second prettiest woman in Alta – Pretty |
| “In the dog days of August, naked people start appearing all over town. I hear about them on social media where grainy photos show the bare asses and blurred-out genitals of average-looking people walking around Manhattan in the nude. They wear shoes and socks, a wristwatch and a pandemic mask, but that’s it. Sometimes they carry a briefcase or backpack, like they’re headed to the office, like they’re not naked at all. What brings this on? Is it the disinhibiting effect of plague, the absence of the hyper-normal gaze, the anonymity of the face mask? Naked people run through the streets of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year in 1665, but they’re all raving mad, singing and praying to the heavens, while today’s naked people are businesslike and otherwise well behaved. Like a stargazer during a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower, I am eager to witness this rare phenomenon. Every time I go out, I look for a nudist, but keep coming up empty. . . “And then I get my wish. From the shadows behind the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, a naked person steps into view. She emerges fully nude, hands on hips, defiant and barefoot in the lamplight. Someone says, ‘Baby, baby, put on some clothes,‘ but she’s enjoying her nakedness and skips away, adding her delight to the larger delight.”
Jeremiah Moss – Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York |
