In the early ’70s, Ms. Williams took a workshop from the sex educator Betty Dodson, an advocate of women’s masturbation. So that women might experiment in private, Ms. Dodson recommended the Hitachi Magic Wand, a cylindrical vibrator nominally sold for aching muscles.It's interesting that she needed to say that the man had acne, considering the folk belief that masturbation causes acne. Was Williams subtly insinuating that the sales clerk was seeking the camaraderie of a fellow masturbator? Or did she feel a compulsion to humiliate him after he (accidentally?) humiliated her?
Off Ms. Williams went to Macy’s to buy a Magic Wand. There, she wrote afterward, she found herself face to face with a “pimply 20-something” male sales clerk.
“What do you want it for?” he asked in a carrying voice.
“I left Macy’s that day,” she wrote, “clutching my precious, anonymous brown shopping bag and thinking: Someone really ought to open up a store where a woman can buy one of these things without some kid asking her what she’s going to do with it.”
I went looking for a good link for the proposition that masturbation causes acne — which has got to be one of the all-time great correlation-causation misperceptions. I'll go with this page from "Acne For Dummies."
I also ran across — why have I never noticed this before? — Mark Twain's "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism" (a speech given in 1879 at The Stomach Club, a group of American writers and painters in Paris):
The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: a disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke and tell indelicate stories — and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures. The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness and loss of progeny.And yet, there was money in it... for Dell Williams.
Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it....
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Meanwhile, in LA, police have arrested 14 boys allegedly involved in a sex ring at Venice High School. Details are sketchy and incomplete, but school administration officials have vowed " “I want you to know that no sexual misconduct of any kind by students or staff will ever be tolerated in L.A. Unified.”
We are now in an era where the only really safe sex is sex with yourself. Or your machine. All else involves risks of disease, incarceration or humiliation.
A bit early in the AM to be thinking about chicken choking, isn't it, Professor?
At Chez Quaestor we have a rule, no sex after 4 AM, otherwise the rest of the day seems futile.
I think Mark Twain was not being subtle in his implication that his audience were inveterate masturbaters.
If you are bothered that much by a sales associate, the thing to do is ask to see the Manager.
But if she'd done that, she wouldn't have been stewing on the walk home, developing the idea for her store.
Brookstone keeps them right out in the open.
They're the nice sleek Euro designs that I'd imagine the first crew sent to Mars will pack.
So "Eve's Garden" is a sex shop, eh? No green groceries? No vegetables? Not even cucumbers?
Mastrubation isn't the same for boys and girls.
The girl wants an orgasm, the boy wants to get rid of an obsession with girls that ejaculation accomplishes by way of some hormone flood turning off wiring, for a while.
You know they never showed us that Mark Twain speech in Jr. High.
Perhaps they feared things might get a bit out of 'hand'.
When MH370 disappeared, and they were hoping to find it before the batteries ran out, Imus asked why they can't build bigger batteries.
McGuirk said ask Degan, she would know about batteries.
Degan said you can't count on them, always get a corded model.
rhhardin said: the boy wants to get rid of an obsession with girls that ejaculation accomplishes by way of some hormone flood turning off wiring, for a while.
Man that is so spot on. If women could understand the brief moment, perhaps half a second, post relief, when all seems right with the universe.
Lennon must have written "Imagine" immediately post-masturbatory ejaculation.
There's more than one way a woman can be humiliated by a department store clerk.
See what I mean?
Sexist? Homophobic? Anti-Corporate? Anti-personal hygiene?
Who knows?
"Someone really ought to open up a store where a woman can buy one of these things without some kid asking her what she’s going to do with it."
So she opens up a store where everyone knows what the woman is going to do with it without even needing to ask?
Wait. I thought Blindness was the best indicator of spilling your seed. If it's only acne. then that changes everything.
Also since when do 20-somethings count as kids?
I think this post is embarrassing Lazlo from commenting.
...She was 92.
How was her eyesight?
Science has largely failed in its attempts to study the effects of masturbation.
No one's ever been able to maintain a control group.
Ms. Williams’s marriage to Ted Willms was annulled. No immediate family members survive.
As the Traveling Wilburys would say, "The End of the Line."
Next product: "The Inseminator, The Vibrator with a Future."
But if she'd done that, she wouldn't have been stewing on the walk home, developing the idea for her store.
This is the beauty of ingenuity. You never know how or where it will start.
I had a part-time job working evenings at an adult bookstore -- just doing research on the project that is the Life of Laslo -- when Taylor Swift came in one cold rainy night.
Now, it is not uncommon for women to enter the store, but most seem paralyzed by the vast array of possibilities that await them in all manners of color, flexibility, length and -- more important than many might suspect -- girth. However: not Taylor.
She walked in her mini-skirt and fashionable trench-coat directly to the section of double-headed dildos, cooly scanned the options, and without internal debate chose two yellow polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildos,
As she approached the cash register I politely asked if she had found everything she was looking for.
"I came in to purchase two yellow polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildos, I found the two yellow polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildos that I was looking for, and this will complete my purchase."
I rang them up, and started to put the items in a flimsy see-through plastic bag when she said that wouldn't be necessary: she proceeded to bend the two yellow polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildos and fit them in the pockets of her trench-coat.
"I bet you are dying to ask me what I plan to do with these," she purred, her voice that of a little girl being naughty: Taylor Swift can be an impressive naughty little girl.
"I respect your privacy," I replied.
"I intend to put one end of my yellow polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildo in my vagina..."
"I think that is an entirely proper use."
"...Then I will put the other end in my ass."
"I suspect many purchasers of this item intend the same usage," I nodded.
"So I'll have one end of the yellow polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildo in my vagina, and the other end in my ass. At the same time."
"Yes, yes: I put that together."
"Because I like the sensation of something in my vagina AND in my ass. At the same time."
"Understood."
"Do you know why I am buying two of them?"
"Let me guess: you are buying one for a friend."
"You're a smart one."
"And that friend is Natalie Portman."
Taylor paused for a moment, stunned. "How did you know?"
"Because just a little earlier this evening Natalie Portman purchased two polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildos, and said one was for you. It's nice to see people do nice things for each other."
"Well, I'm not quite sure we'll need four of them..."
"That's okay -- yours are yellow; the two polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildos Natalie bought were black."
"Natalie can be a naughty little girl sometimes."
"I imagine."
"I'm going to write a song about these dildos, you know."
"Can't wait to hear it."
"I think I'm going to call it "The Two Ends of Love." It'll be metaphorical."
"It is good to be inspired."
And with that, Taylor Swift exited into the dark rainy night with two yellow polyurethane ribbed 3-foot double-headed dildos in the pockets of her fashionable trench-coat.
So my point is it isn't so embarrassing anymore.
I am Laslo.
I didn't include any links to the actual items out of a sense of decorum. I'm sure you can find them on the internet pretty easily -- through the Althouse Amazon Portal, of course.
I am Laslo.
(Posted earlier, but now reposted with typos fixed.)
The Hal Holbrook invented the modern one-man theatrical performance with his "Mark Twain Tonight!" show which is still touring though Mr. Holbrook is 90 years old.
I saw Holbrook in person in his Samuel Langhorn Clemens role when "Mark Twain Tonight!" came to our campus for a single performance. I almost missed out because as a sophomore I couldn't buy a ticket accept through a lottery system. Nevertheless I got lucky for a change and got a seat.
Holbrook not only acted the role, he directed himself and wrote, I suppose a more accurate term would be compiled, the script. To do these things Holbrook became a considerable scholar on the subject of Twain, his life and works. Thus I have no doubt that Holbrook is aware of every discoverable detail of that address given to the Stomach Club in 1879. Which makes me wonder: Has Holbrook ever performed an "adults only" version of his play?
Twain left out the hairy palms problem/giveaway.
maybe her description of him as pimply was simply a way of showing how young he was. And nothing more.
Do people still feel guilty about masturbation? Probably not, but people still feel guilty. Maybe there was an economy of effort in masturbation guilt. You could only feel so much guilt about masturbation, but there's an infinity of guilt available if you start worrying about being, say, a good spouse or parent or whatever.
Sandra Bullock to Ryan Reynolds, her executive assistant, in The Proposal, needing a marriage to avoid deportation:
"Because if you don't marry me, your dreams of touching the lives of millions with the written word are dead. Bob is gonna fire you the second I'm gone. Guaranteed. That means you're out on the street alone looking for a job. That means all the time that we spent together, all the lattes, all the canceled dates, all the midnight Tampax runs, were all for nothing and all your dreams of being an editor are gone."
Bits of women as having a sex come up here and there.
Dell Williams, who in 1974, after being humiliated by a department-store clerk when she tried to buy a vibrator...
It seems that there was a lot of that sort of embarrassment going around back then.
Though I was but a pubescent lad I still feel a deep nostalgia for the early '70's. Dad would bring home Patty Hearst wanted posters from work, I was playing Quadrophenia till it was grey with scratches, and you could still be embarrassed buying a Hitachi Magic Wand at Macy's. A better, simpler America.
It's a made up story.
No one who is embarrassed by purchasing a vibrator is going to open a sex shop for women.
C'mon!
Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it….
All things that make it more appealing to women. LOL.
So Dell opens her shop to sell dildoes and sex toys to women, and the first person to apply for a sales job is the pimply guy from the department store. Does she hire him? Should she?
If he "identifies" as female, would your answer be different?
I ran across that Twain essay in a volume of the Library of America. Also in there is a ribald picture of the court of Elizabeth I. There's a young prince who's told that a young princess's hair has "sprouted below" two years since, and is asked, "Hast not about ye a little bird that stirs at hearing tell of so sweet a nest?" and replies, IIRC, "'Tis not insensible, madam," with a further line about how mousing owls can't attempt to compete with birds of paradise. Then Sir Walter Raleigh farts, and the remainder is naturally fart jokes.
Twain was a man of, um, considerable range.
"the only really safe sex is sex with yourself."
Woody Allen said it best, "Woody Allen said masturbation was having sex with someone you love."
I think it actually was "Having sex with someone who really loves you."
Much better.
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