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.

And they’ve done so under the tenacious leadership of Cecilia Tan through thick and thin.  They’re survived the collapse of independent bookstores. They’ve withstood the demise of several distributors.  And when the e-book market reached viability, they switched horses in midstream without getting wet.

Yet they haven’t abandoned their love of print books.  Currently, they aim to bring a new volume of their BEST EROTIC FANTASY to print and have initiated a major fundraising effort to accomplish that goal.  You can find the details at their website.

Clever, no?  Evidently, their approach is unique enough to attract the attention of Publisher’s Weekly,  the book industry’s key trade journal.  I mean, how cool is that!

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.

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Readers, like their more famous dirty comics kin, were produced by the same publishers who produced erotic book and playing cards.  Cheap to produce and carrying a big profit margin, they were distributed to newsstands, cigar shops, used bookstores, bars and burlesques houses.  First appearing in the 1920s and 1930s, they saw a good thirty-year run before falling away in the face of legal pornography.

I’m always attracted to any clandestine erotica — and these babies certainly had underground existence — but I’m attracted to readers for more than just their clandestine nature.  First, known curiosa book publishers printed them, namely  Samuel Roth, who fought repeated obscenity charges during his publishing life, and I. R. and Jack Brussel, noted book row jack-of-all-trades, the latter of whom later reprinted the famed three-volume Bibliography of Prohibits Book by Prisaus Fraxi (really Henry S. Ashbee) in 1962.  I’ve also appreciated how, when all else tried to keep people ignorant about sex, these readers at least contributed something to an American’s erotic awareness.

And, of course, pamphlets in general were often a vehicle of street democracy and sometimes subversive as well.

But what I like best about readers are their subversion “thrown the authorities off the track” sense of humor.  Their cousin, the Tijuana Bible, were never actually printed in Mexico.  The label was a ruse, a complete fabrication, meant to mislead the authorities.  The same for readers, except they were far more tongue-in-cheek about it.  I mean really:  Humpville Illinois?  Gimme a break.

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Shaftsbury Ave, London? Sure. Whatever.  But the 20 shillings suggest it could’ve been European in origin, perhaps aimed at lonely G.I.s.

The Havana locale may have been legit.  The exorbitant $5.00 price tag indicates that it was produce late in the readers’ existence.  And the mob was well known for supplying all kinds of forbidden entertainment in Cuba in the years before the rise of Castro.  However, it’s just as likely that Havana, Cuba was nothing more than code.  “Havana” was once short-hand for anything-goes sex.  (See Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, believe it or not. Cleavon Little says as much to Madeline Kahn.)

You know, maybe that’s another reason I like these little readers.  Maybe it’s because they make the cogs and wheels of my mind turn.  I guess it’s true — the best sex *is* between the ears!

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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!

At BEA, I attended Laura Baumbach’s signing of her M/M action suspense novel, Mexican Heat. I’d visited the MLR Press booth earlier in the show and promised to stop by for the book — with every intention of putting it high on my reading list. Why? Because, coming from LGBT origins, I wanted to see what differences existed between queer erotic and M/M romances. And honestly? MLR Press nicely blurs the line, blending the best elements of erotica and romance together into, if Mexican Heat is any indication, an enjoyable read.

Consider Mexican Heat’s synopsis:

Tough, street-smart SFPD Detective Gabriel Sandalini is willing to do whatever it takes to bring down West Coast crime boss Ricco Botelli — including a dangerous, deep undercover gig as one of Botelli’s hired guns. But Gabriel’s best laid plans may come crashing down around him when he falls hard for the sexy, suave lieutenant of a rival Mexican drug lord. Turns out his new love interest may have a few secrets of his own: secrets that could destroy both men and the fragile bond between them.

Now, I gotta tell ya: If not for BEA and my interest in M/M, I probably would’ve overlooked Mexican Heat. Why? Because I’m not really into organized crime/cop/action dramas. It’s not my preferred cup of tea. But Baumbaugh and co-writer Josh Lanyon really pulled off a good one here. Mexican Heat’s hard-boiled, bare knuckled prose worked as well in its sex scenes as it did in the depicting the drug cartel crime world. And when the story turns to love, the authors pull off a proficient, subtle change in tenor, one so tempered that you’ll hardly noticed. And they know how to pace a story, whether it’s keeping the action plot moving, reveling on the romantic possibilities, or depicting hot man-on-man sex. Bravo.

And this exercise has taught me something, too. I’m overlooking a lot of good books if I don’t stretch my parameters. That, in general, I better not judge a book by its cover or copy because I’ll miss out on a lot of good reads. Note taken.

I’d seen all the buzz about Vanderbilt’s novel and I no doubt wanted to read it. After all, I’d like to think that when I’m Vanderbilt’s age, I’d be capable of writing intriguing and provocative fiction. And when I met Gloria Vanderbilt at her BEA book signing, she graciously told me that this book meant a great deal to her. Granted, she was probably indulging me in the social graces she’s known for, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t sincere.

I’m not sure what I expected when I cracked the spine and opened Obsession. I’d heard about its BDSM content and the speculation that always arises when an author explores out-of-the-mainstream sexuality. What I got was an entertaining and challenging read.

Beginning as a semi-epistolary work, Obsession details the repressed widow Priscilla Bingham’s discovery of a cache of letters that reveals her late husband’s extramarital kinky endeavors. Each letter is more explicit and detailed than its predecessor and draws you in to a secret world of covert sexual extravagance. Written by Priscilla’s rival, the mysterious, sexually-free Bee, the letters seem to pose a side of her late husband that Priscilla never knew.

A New York Times article about Vanderbilt’s book poses whether Bee is a figment of Priscilla’s imagination or vice versa. But I think there’s something deeper going on here. As I read the book its prose became increasingly dream-like. Alternating between Priscilla and be, it seemed to nearly become a fugue.

And then it struck me: Perhaps I was seeing two sides of the same coin. Wife and mistress, Madonna and whore, doppelgangers of a single self, split apart by the agony of grief. Perhaps Priscilla and Bee are the Ego and the Id, respectively, each driven to seek the other, not out of jealousy but because, unable to survive alone, continued life is only assured by their ultimate reunion.

The world in which Bee exists – and that which Priscilla wants to access – is, in fact, the Janus club. And Janus is the Roman god of doorways a two-faced deity whose visages peers out in opposite directions. More than once, Janus has served to a represent BDSM practices, and here, I suspect, it symbolizes the doorway through which the divided selves can step through and rediscover one another.

Of course, my theory could be total hogwash. Vanderbilt has reportedly written and recorded a new ending for Obsession in audio book form, presumably a less abrupt and more expansive conclusion. But any book that can make you stop and wonder what it’s really all about, what’s really underneath the facade of sexual extravagance, is a book worth reading. And I’m still struck by the sense of wonder whenever I think about Gloria Vanderbilt’s Obsession.

The TBR pile -- books from BEA.

Which brings me to the photo you see here. It shows the books I accumulated at BEA that are related to erotic publishing. Some are hot erotic romances, some are GLBT memoir, fiction and nonfiction, and a couple of them are how to’s. They represent about a third of the books I brought home for BEA, but they constitute what’s going to be an entertaining summer-long project for me here at Pursed Lips. I’m going to blog about these books either individually or collectively by publisher as a way of illustrating just how vibrant the erotic word is today. I wasn’t surprised to see this much libris eroticis at BEA, but I was surprised by how open and enthusiastic people were about my particular authorial calling.

In fact, when I handed out my business card almost everyone wanted the card that featured Pursed Lips naughty illustration on it! And everyone was quite interested in meeting a blogger who focused on erotic literature.

So keep an eye out for upcoming entries about my discoveries. They won’t be the only thing I’ll blog about this summer but they will represent a fun summertime project.

First up? Gloria Vanderbilt’s much-anticipated novella, Obsession.

High-end erotica. Sounds like “high-priced callgil.” In a way, it is.

It’s beautifully packaged book. First, it’s hardcover, which is pretty well unheard of for erotic fiction. Its boards have an onlay, a repeating floral pattern of black against a minutely speckled scarlet, and its endsheets carry the same pattern, white on black. Most exquisitely, it’s slipcased. Yes, slipcased. In 1/8th-inch boards that not only repeat the same floral pattern (but in scarlet on black), but with a large die-cut into its side.

The only thing missing in this baby is a colophon.

Susie’s book left me with a damn good case of book lust, and I’d like to see more high-end work like it. But that’s a tall wish — the publishing industry has been hit badly by the economic slide. Still, makes me think about my early years of book collecting when, as a recent college graduate, I was more likely to spend my money on a Donald Grant or a later-edition Arkham House title than a skirt or blouse for work.

I think about how fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction have a long history of small presses producing beautiful, limited edition books* and how they’ve supported them with their hard-earned dollars. If only erotica’s fan were like that, I’ve often wished. Of course, I know that’s unfair to those of you who love erotic fiction. We’ve never had an infrastructure like those genres — no conventions, no fanzines, not even a lasting history of support from the Big Houses of Publishing. It’s impossible to have a high end without infrastructure support.

But I’d love to see erotic fiction get its day in the sun, a day bright enough to support everything from the high end to common mass market paperback. (And e-book!) I’d love to have a shelf of attractive, finely-produced books of erotic fiction in my library.

I hope Susie’s book is just the start of it.

X: The Erotic Treasury is not a limited edition work.

I’m talking about Sexology, the Illustrated Magazine of Sex Science and now Craig Yoe has selected and compiled a boatload of articles from its many issues, delightfully packaged in a retro-hardcover edition that I can’t help but feel would be the perfect gift to the horndog on your holiday list. Yoe introduces the collection with a “history of” recap that veers from near-camp to seriously informative, then launches you right into the most titillating offerings the magazine put forth in its forty-year existence. Topics like Homosexual Chickens, Men in Lingerie,and Sex Education on the Beach will keep you entertained and amazed. (My personal favorites? Chastising Thrills and Two Psychiatrists Analyze Obscene, Pornographic Letters.)

I won’t deny that Sexology had more than a bit of an “anatomical curiosity museum” element to its contents — a topic like Polymastia… multiple breasts isn’t all that different than pickled body parts — but the magazine also served a useful purpose. Immigrating to the U.S. in 1907, Gernsback was surprised to find a lack of sexual intelligence among Americans and began publishing the magazine during the sexual dark ages of the early 20th-century. It took courage to publish any tracts on sexuality, thanks to the suppressive affects of the Comstock Act and, indeed, Sexology would more than once come under the scrutiny of obscenity mavens, but it never faced actual conviction, perhaps because it contained enough medical language and M.D. appellations in its bylines to protect it from being labeled prurient.

Gernsback’s commitment to sexual intelligence would last a lifetime. If I understand this ERBzine “reprint” of a 1963 Life magazine article that profiled Gernsback, he was still fighting the enlightenment battle.

“Gernsback is fully prepared, even anxious, to answer the slavering critic who accuses him of prurience. Sex, he feels, is a “cultural subject” and as such should not be “relegated to back rooms” but discussed openly–even its more peripheral phases. He finds the “non-scientific attitude” about it “appalling, abysmal stupidity….Let me tell you something very few people realize,” he says. “Even physicians are not taught anything about sex in college! A horrifying situation!”

According to Life, Gernsback said he felt that “sex offer[ed] a last, unexplored, scientific frontier.”

Gernsback was right. But I wonder if he knew how prescient that statement was. Did he know that the homesteading race of sex was about to commence? That the pill catapulted us into the sexual revolution, overthrowing the old order of moral suppression?

Ironically, Gernsback died in 1967 during the summer of love. He did not live to see the rise of sexual liberation in all its variety but he escaped having to see his creation outlive its usefulness.

But I bet he would’ve appreciated the fact that his little magazine had a role in its own obsolescence.