When I’m scouting about for antiquarian/used erotica for purchase, I run acoss a fair amount of stuff that makes me laugh.  Ususally, we’re talking double entendre here, a type of humorous twist many people find juvenile.  However, if my first reaction is an automatic chuckle, then whatever the item is, it hit my natural default and I shrug off any notion of dignified, dowdy restraint.

Often, it’s raunchy pornographic paperbacks that earn my accolades — smutty twists on easily recognizable cultural fare.  Cockwork Orange? Go for it.  Pacific Phallusades?  Sure, why not!

Although the latter, somehow, gets me stuck on that Gary Lewis and the Playboy cover Palisades Park, an east-coast radio staple during my summers as a kid.  Hey, what can I say — cocks sound more fun with a soundtrack!

Another recent favorite:  Wendy’s Whips with the handwritten disclaimer “It is our duty to state that everyone who has written to us has eventually died a horrible and unexplained death.” (Detailed image here.) I guess that’s one way to declare a whip catalogue as “for novelty use only.”

But the last item?  It’s a reader, the erotic short story pamphlet cousin to the Tijuana Bible, common throughout much of the 20th century.  Ususally, you’d find the humor in the publisher’s name, as I’ve previously outlined, and the pamphlet titles were usually pretty, well, unremarkable.  Quick samples from my own collection include A Long One, Paging Young Heroes, I’m For You, My Secret Memoirs, and The Love Doctor.

So when I came across Hair Pie a la Wee Wee, it brought me up short.  I mean, WTF?  Hair Pie, I get.  But Wee Wee?  Are we talking a grostequely juvenile double entendre along French language lines?  Or are we talking piss play here?  I doubt it’s the latter; these readers kept to oral, intercourse, and group sex.  Regardless, this title is uncharacteristically tawdry for its format.  Can’t help but look at it with crossed-eyes and a perplexed expression.

But worth sharing with you nonetheless.  And I’ll keep my eyes (uncrossed) peeled for more.

A magazine that strikes me as an early fetish pub-lication and not all that different from the tamer sections of John Willie's Bizarre from the 1940 - 50s.

Lately, when I’m not working on the next novel,  I’ve immersed myself in researching BDSM literature and its history.  It’s an endeavor that satisfies my inner bibliophile and collector, ever-curious facets of my mind.  I suppose it’s what I get for never seeking an advance degree beyond the B.A. I earned too long ago.

I’m never surprised by the extremes to which various BDSM artifacts go to.  Not even some of the stuff from the 1970s which presented an anything goes/right up to snuff portrayals of S/M.  It reeks of bad-as-I-wanna-be bravado and makes me wonder whether it influenced the slasher film that emerged as the 1970s ended.  But I suspect this stuff was too esoteric and underground to have any pronounced influence on anything.

What does surprise me, however, is how consistent our fetishes have been through the ages.  I began to see this in the better known fetish publications from mid- last century.  John Willie’s Bizarre isn’t all that different than the Nutrix/Mutrix stuff of the 50s and 60s. Ditto the more limited-to-get stuff like Dominate! digest and its peers.

"Devotees of the "elevator" heel is something else to interest you -- a pair of patent oxford shoes with eight inch heels, and a pair of patent bar shoes with eight and a quarter inch heels, made my Mr. W. Coulson, of 15, Tottenham Court Road, London, W.C." Left: "Note the dainty delicacy of the tread." Right: "Note the chic effect produced by the bracelet."

But when I came across a copy of a 1911 Photo Bits, our consistency really hit home.  Here was an early 20th-century British relic that featured — what else! — items on corsetry, female impersonation, and extreme shoes, even headlining the latter as “the cult of the heel.”  That’s very similar to the tamer sections of Willie’s Bizarre, isn’t it?

Photo Bits was considered an early girlie mag, a publication that tried to straddle the mores of the Victorian era even as the world move onward.  The playful bathing beauties on its cover were eye-catching and tantalizing for its day and its headline about kleptomania almost yells “women inside!”  Still, if not for the fact that Photo Bits makes an appearance in Leopold Bloom’s thoughts in James Joyce’s Ulysses, I’d be hard pressed to think of the publication as edgy.  But there you have it.

And I must admit: It has me interested in securing some copies and delving into its page.  Hell, anything with a caption of “The Cult of the Heel” is likely to do that!

Click on the images for their full size. I’ve uploaded these and two other images to my Flickr account. Enjoy.

THE DEVIL’S WALK THROUGH THE UNITED STATES, BY FRANK RIVERS. From the ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT  found among the Papers of THE LATE BEAUTIFUL COURTEZAN, ELLEN JEWETT. New York: Elton, Publisher, 134, Division-Street. circa 1836 (no date). 16 page stapled booklet, 5 1/2″ x 8″.

The manuscript for this poem was supposedly found among the possessions of Ellen Jewett (Hellen Jewett), a beautiful young prostitute who worked in an infamous New York City Whorehouse known for having some of the city’s gentry as clientele.  The poem is credited as being written by Frank Rivers. “Frank Rivers” was an alias for Richard Parmelee Robinson, the man accused of murdering Ellen Jewett. The engraving on the cover is credited to “Bill Easy” an alias for another man Jewett was reportedly with Jewett the night of her murder. This murder was perhaps the first of the sex-sin-and-mayhem cases that birthed sensational journalis. The title for this poem was borrowed from a well known piece of British political satire written by Professor Porson.

In 1836 Hellen Jewett was considered New York City’s most desirable and sought after prostitute. Jewett became something of a “star” at several of several of New York’s most exclusive bordello’s. Besides her stunning good looks, her sexual skills were legend. Her clientele was a who’s who of famous people. Even Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe were known to suffer from infatuation.

On the night of April 10th, 1836 Helen Jewett was murdered with an axe and set on fire. Richard Robinson,one of her clients, was accused of her murder. The ensuing trial captivated the nation. The sensation and publicity surrounding the murder and trial help set the stage for the rise and popularity of murder mystery and detective fiction, whose literary conventions Edgar Allen Poe pioneered, a resident of New York City at the time of the trial.

Although the prosecution had overwhelming evidence against Richard Robinson, he was aquitted. At the time, Robinson was well known for his literary skills and was more than likely the author of this poem.  This booklet was probably printed shortly after the trial in 1836.

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I haven’t found any foundation for the claims that major authors were smittened by Jewett, the Jewett murder essentials in the listing are accurate.  However, I’m far from certain the pamphlet in question was actually found among Jewett’s belongings.  It’s not mentioned at all in Patricia Cline Cohen’s exhaustive and captivating book, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute In Nineteenth-Century New York — a red flag for me if every there was one.

And I’m skeptical that its attributions are sound.  Robinson and George P. Marston (aka Bill Easy) were rivals for Jewett’s attentions, and Robinson’s jealousy toward Marston was well documented. That Marston would provide an engraving to a work by Robinson borders on ludicrous.

There’s another reason for all this, me thinks.

Consider the estimated date of the publication.  Consider the text I’ve placed here (and see more at my Flickr feed).  It’s all about the devil coming to America to stir up abolitionist woes.  Now think: What abolitionist events happened during this time frame?

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By treaty, European countries agreed to abolish slavery left and right.  Jamaica abolished slavery.  And, by 1840, outright abolition or suppression of slavery by treaty reached from Europe to South America.

And most noteworthy to this region of America at this time? Amistad was right around the corner, starting in 1839.  Indeed, since this pamphlet is undated, it could conceivably date to the Amistad years.  In fact, the stanza I picture here where the devil  The Devil and A—r T—n, refers to, as far as I’m concerned, to abolitionist Arthur Tappan.  Whose brother, Lewis, took up the Amistad cause.

I view The Devil’s Walk Through America as an anti-abolitionist trait produced sometime between the Jewett incident and Amistad.  It appropriated Robinson’s and Marston’s monikers, capitalizing on one sensation to further another.  And it names prominent abolitionists George Thomson and  William Lloyd Garrison in its stanzas.

I’ve placed several more images from the pamphlet in a set at my Flickr page.  Feel free to examine them.

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As a collector of erotica and “curiosa,” an old bibliophile’s codeword for the pornographic, I come across a lot of unusual publications. Some are historical interesting — like a rare pre-Civil War erotic novel — and some are downright silly. I figure one way out of my blogging inertia might be to start a Tawdry Tuesday where I share tidbits from and about books I’ve collected. And to start things off, let me share four flagellation images from the 1934 Falstaff Press edition of Iwan Bloch’s Sex Life in England.

Falstaff Press was one of several clandestine publishers that produced books out of depression-era New York City. Run by Ben and Anne Rebhuh, Falstaff specialized in the risque and “anthrolopgia” and traipsed that fine line between scholarly and prurient. A arts-and-culture website’s wiki entry provides a sound run-down of what’s known about Falstaff Press.

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Although by today’s standards, Sex Life in England would appear tame, it was one of those titles that flirted with the prurient, largely because of its cabinet of illustrations as end contents. The flagellation illustrations I’ve posted here range from the seriously rendered to caricature. Hard to imagine that this is the kind of stuff that would stop the U.S. Post Office in its tracks and arrest someone for distributing such stuff, but such were the times when the Comstock law was in effect.

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Iwan Bloch was a noted author and sexologist from pre-Nazi Germany. He was a contemporary of fellow sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Sigmund Freud considered his contributions on homosexuality key to looking at sexual orientation from a non-pathological stance. I suspect it gave some level of legitimacy to Falstaff Press in the eyes of government suppression, but not much, given the fervor of the law. Although he was responsible for discovering the presumed-lost manuscript of The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade and he was an early biographer of the notorious figure, so who knows.

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I happen to like Bloch’s Sex Life in England because it’s a what’s what and who’s who of English erotic literature — although I chuckle at chapter titles like Highly Spiced Titles of Erotic Books, Secret Pornologic Clubs in England, and The Greatest Erotobibliomaniacs in England [and] Their Fabulous Erotic Treasures Described. Sure, it lacks the bibliographic depth and details of highly scholarly work, but it’s still informative. So much so that I have two copies of Sex Life in England in my library — one in collectible condition, the other clearly beat-up but perfect for reading and research.

I’ve posted jpegs of the table of contents from Bloch’s book at my my Flickr account. Stop by and view the breadth of Bloch’s research yourself!

For starters, let me present two late 19th-century celluloid mirrors. When you first look at them, they seem tame but clearly intimate. Intimate? Well, each woman is wearing her hair down. You only did that when preparing for bed back then and many a word’s been written about a husband seeing his wife let down her hair on their wedding night. And, no, it wasn’t always a euphemism for available sex. It was as much as comment on the sexual privilege that came with marriage.

Anyway.

See that locket on each woman? Turn the image upside down and you’ll see it becomes something else all together. A lovely little quim, as they use to say. (No, they didn’t shave back then.)

Wanna see? Click here for an animated gif. Enjoy!

Author Debra Hyde is pleased to announce that Cinekink – the really alternative film festival — will debut her short film “Happy Tears: A Vintage Vignette” on Saturday, October 23rd in the 7:00 pm film program. It marks the first time Hyde, better known as an erotica writer and blogger, has tackled a film presentation.

Happy Tears will accompany the feature, “Born in a Barn,” and two other short films, “Spanky! Spanky!” and “Dream Human.” All Cinekink presentations will be shown at the Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue at 2nd Street, New York, New York.

The four-minute vignette takes its material from a flagellation/discipline novel of the same name and believed to have been published in the 1930s.
Called a family idyll, its whippings occur between family members, right down to wicked aunties and naughty cousins getting into the act. For all its bare bottom exposure and ritualized punishments, Happy Tears surprisingly contains no other portrayals of nudity and no sex whatsoever. “It’s all about the discipline,” notes Debra Hyde, the film’s creator.

Today, Happy Tears would be considered an incest novel, a form of erotica now taboo in publishing circles. But Hyde wonders if its family setting was less threatening to the readers of its day because the taboo of non-marital sex was such an absolute back then. “And perhaps because spanking was a commonly accepted parental practice back then, erotic portrayals of so-called family idylls weren’t taboo – at least not to the spankophile,” says Hyde.

Hyde jokes that creating the vignette from the text and illustrations of the novel originated as “an endeavor to put a rather bad bibliophilistic habit to some kind of good use.” She created the film using a home computer video editing application and despite whatever amateurish flaws Happy Tears might have, she hopes to make more shorts in the future. “I’ve got several obscure novels and lots of time on my hands,” she teases.

A well-published erotica and sexuality writer, Debra Hyde’s work can be found in such anthologies as Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotic, Best S/M Erotica 2 and Naughty Spanking Stories. (And of course, keeper of this blog.)

Each year, Cinekink showcases kink-positive depictions in film and television, covering topics that S/M, leather and fetish, roleplay, swinging, polyamory and non-monogamy, and gender bending. With offerings drawn from both Hollywood and beyond, works presented at CineKink NYC range from documentary to drama, camp comedy to hot porn and everything in between. Cinekink runs from October 21-24, 2004 at the Anthology Film Archives, 32nd 2nd Avenue at 2nd Street, New York, New York. Admission per program is $9; $8 in advance; $6 students and seniors. A kick-off party is scheduled for Thursday evening at the Remote Lounge, 327 Bowery (near 2nd Ave), NYC. A $5.00 donation is suggested.

DEAR READERS, TAKE NOTE: Help me celebrate! I’m having publicity postcards printed. If you’d like me to send you one, email me an appropriate snail mail address. All of which will be kept strictly confidential and will not be sold to anyone, anywhere, nowhere, nohow. Promise.

Her father, for many years the chief urologist at Hartford Hospital, attracted notice as an early advocate of public education about venereal disease.

Hepburn’s mother had an even more controversial public career. She was an active, and highly visible, supporter of women’s suffrage and legalized birth control.

Despite Hepburn’s mother’s early 20th-century advocacy, birth control would become legal in Connecticut in the 1960s and only after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Griswold v. Connecticut. (Visit Planned Parenthood’s timeline to see Connecticut’s role in American birth control history.)

According to the article I’ve linked to, her motherwas virtually shunned on the streets of Hartford for her outspoken views, and today is considered a co-founder of Planned Parenthood.

In the early on-air announcements of Hepburn’s death, I heard an “in lieu of flowers” claiming that donations can be made to her favorite charities and Planned Parenthood was named among them, but damned if I can’t find that in print anywhere.

Hepburn’s relationship with Spencer Tracy was, in fact, a pivotal revelation for me. When Tracy died, I was eleven and his passing was big news locally, of course, because of Hepburn’s Connecticut ties. I must’ve picked up on the nature of their relationship and asked some pointed questions because I remember my mother very patiently explaining the details to me. It was the first time I’d heard of extramarital affairs and yet the look on my mother’s face told me that this particular example was complicated and anything but tawdry and ruinous. I realized even then that it had an element of honor that comes when life hands you less than ideal circumstances.

I don’t think I truly appreciated Hepburn’s unconventionalism until some of those same kinds of choices and unconventionisms would come into my own life. Before then, she was an interesting film figure from a generation that was older than my parents. Who knew common threads, well above generational differences, would emerge.

Incidentally, I find it amusing that she compared herself to the Flatiron Building, located in a NYC area that I wandered earlier this year. Like I said, common threads. Common — not exceptional — but they resonate with me.For additional content and my diary, please visit www.pursedlips.com.