“There’s nothing on here about eating the stuff,” she reported, “but I’m sure the government would not permit the company to make the spermicide if it were dangerous to eat.” I asked if she ever heard of Red Dye No. 2, and told her that my taste buds had nearly short-circuited. “So what’s the alternative, bimbo?” she huffed. “Fatherhood?” Linda hung up, ending the conversation and our relationship.
Nevertheless, my quest for the truth about foam continued. When I complained about my encounter to the guys at a local pub. I was surprised to learn that quite a few had felt the same confusion. Like me, they were riled. All of them agreed that a woman should tell the man when she has foamed up. But none had considered the possibility that swallowing spermicide was dangerous. After much speculation based on total ignorance and fueled by a few more rounds of Löwenbräu (the official Horny Guy brew), my friends charged me with the task of investigating the dreaded foam.
My first stop was a local apothecary. Pharmacist Paul Perniciaro escorted me to the “Feminine Needs” section and explained that the active ingredient in contraceptive foam is nonoxynol. The spermicidal property of this common emulsifier—belonging to a class called surfactants normally used to hold a mixture of oil and water together—was discovered in 1961. No one knows exactly why it destroys sperm cells. The different brands of foam included Koromex, Because, Emko, Delfen and Semicid. Actually, as Perniciaro pointed out, Semicid is not a foam, but rather a suppository that “effervesces like Alka Seltzer” when inserted in the vagina.
There were no references to oral sex on the packages. The only warning was on a box of Emko: “If vaginal or penile irritation occurs and continues, a physician should be consulted.”
“My God,” I said to Perniciaro, “if it can irritate skin, what would it do to a tongue?” He suggested I talk with Dr. John Zuzack of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, where the first foam—Emko—was developed.
When I explained my purpose, Dr. Zuzack laughed. “That’s a new one on me,” he said. “But I imagine that if you ingested enough foam, it would serve as a laxative. Foam is chemically related to laundry detergent, and would lubricate your G.I. tract. Eating the foam might be a problem only for someone with a delicate or nervous stomach.” However, Dr. Zuzack noted that research on the ingestion of foam was not extensive.
Next I telephoned Leonard Naeger, another pharmacologist at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, who also assisted in the creation of the first foam. He wryly observed that his fellow researchers had discovered an alternative use for the spermicide. “We also found it effective for athlete’s foot,” he informed me, “and that’s what we used it for.” I remarked that anything that kills fungi could not be too wonderful to swallow. But Naeger disagreed. “You could probably eat the whole thing without causing any irreversible damage to your taste buds,” he said. “It may desensitize them for a little while, but so what?”
I asked Naeger why manufacturers did not produce flavored foam. “As a joke,” he replied, “when we were students, we were going to use fruit flavors. We even came up with a name—Statutory Grape.” I thought about the possibilities. Maybe even a flavor of the month—Penis Colada in June; Harvey Ballbanger in July.
The manufacturers apparently do not want to acknowledge that women, God forbid, submit to cunnilingus while using the foam. This attitude explains why oral sex is not mentioned in brochures or on labels—nothing about terrible taste, numb mouth or laxative effects. “We know it’s not toxic,” said a spokesman for Schering-Plough Corporation of Kennelsworth, New Jersey, which bought Emko in the late seventies, “so why should there be a warning?”
Contraceptive foam was invented by a company that makes sharpening tools. Emko was the brainchild of the late Joe Sunnen, founder of the St. Louis-based Sunnen Products Company, known the world over for its quality honing machines.
Joe Sunnen was a prominent industrialist and philanthropist in his day. He owned fifty patents in the automotive field and perfected the modern hypodermic syringe. With financial success came Sunnen’s desire to help the poor. Population control became his passion. During a visit to a wretched barrio in Puerto Rico in 1957, Sunnen had an idea that he thought would revolutionize birth control: a simple, inexpensive, mass-marketed aerosol foam that would act as a barrier to conception. When he could not interest pharmaceutical companies, he decided to produce it himself.
Sunnen commissioned the chemists at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy to fulfill his dream. Professor Arthur Zimmer, one of the analysts, noted that the foam was originally intended as a barrier alone and that the spermicidal action of nonoxynol was a complete surprise. Zimmer explained that nonoxynol invades the spermatozoa and blows them to bits. “They literally swell up and burst,” he said. Why this chemical has this effect is still a mystery.
But, stressed Zimmer, just because the foam detonates sperm cells and knocks out athlete’s foot does not mean that it lays waste taste buds or digestive bacteria. “I have never ingested foam myself,” he said, “but I’m willing to bet that it is not much different from eating shaving cream.” Which is not a Horny Guy’s idea of fun on a Saturday night, either.
Dan Becker, a former Sunnen Products employee, was also eager to tell me foam stories. “When they first got into birth control,” he recalled, “the scientists were using samples from male prostitutes, seeing what would kill sperm. They found this one guy who had sperm that wouldn’t die . . .”
After Emko went on the market in the mid-sixties, the biggest problem the company had was designing illustrated instructions. “They couldn’t devise a simplified graphic, so people misused the product,” Becker said. “We’d get letters saying, ‘I took three teaspoons and still got pregnant . . .’”
Having completed my research, I reported the news to my friends. The only thing we have to fear from foam is fear itself. It probably is no worse than eating escargots.
IF IT’S MIDNIGHT, IT MUST BE JERRI
Like most young men, I fantasize about having feverish, spontaneous sex with every woman under forty who crosses my path. But the memory of a recent streak of luck still causes my penis to shrink and my balls to crowd up close.
Three of us had answered an ad in Chicago seeking riders to Denver. I quickly allied with the only female in the car, an attractive girl from Boulder named Sandy. By Kansas City we found common interests; near Abilene we were laughing; in Salina we bought beer.
Somewhere near the Colorado line at about two a.m., Sandy nestled under my down jacket and took my cock deep into her mouth. The Air Force cadet and the redneck in front talked about football while Sandy used her hand to pump my come down her throat. One of my countless fantasies had finally come true and I was enthralled—at the time.
Sandy gave me her phone number when we dropped her off in Boulder, twenty-five miles north of Denver. She invited me to visit her after I attended the wedding of a friend. She worked nights as a word processor and even offered me the use of her car. It was a mildly attractive proposal, but I remained noncommittal.
That night in Denver I went to the opening of an avant-garde art gallery. Standing before a decaying exhibit called “Interesting Food,” I was approached by a startling young woman who, counting the heels and spikey hair, was nearly six feet tall. She wore a black leather skirt, dog collar, studded bracelets, leopard-spotted sweater and lipstick that looked like it had been applied with a razor.
Jerri played bass in a Boulder punk group called Dogs in Heat. We went into another room where the band was playing. I expected her to pair off with someone like the lavender-haired fellow in the corner. But she stuck by me as we elbowed through the crowd. A few minutes later, I felt her hand kneading the crotch of my jeans. I suggested, in a pathetic I-wish-this-happened-all-the-time manner, that we go for a walk.
As we emerged in the freezing night air, I pondered what had transformed me from the retiring young man back home to an apparent sexual magnet. Perhaps higher altitudes cause women to crave sex with oxygen
-rich men from nearer sea level.
Shortly we found a dilapidated house trailer on a construction site across from the gallery. I spread my coat on the floor. Jerri pulled out a faintly pink tampon. It dangled from her fingers, steaming, before she flicked it into the shadows. We screwed hard and fast in the cold shed, with most of our clothes still on. When we finished, panting warm, white breath at each other, we laughed. She said she lived in Boulder with her parents and gave me her number to call if I was ever there.
Boulder, it seemed, beckoned. The prospect of having Sandy free during the day and Jerri at night gave me an exhilaratingly nasty feeling. I was going to soak this gift from the gods for all it was worth.
Sandy and I went to bed within an hour of my arrival on a Thursday afternoon. As I sucked one of her little pink nipples and prodded her thighs with my penis, I took a deep breath, ready to fire the first shot of a three-day campaign. After savoring the exquisite feeling of a snug cunt, I started to thrust. Then Sandy screamed.
“Does that hurt?” I asked, surprised.
“No, it feels so good.”
I moved again and she started yowling as though she had learned to fuck from a cat. Apparently her outburst denoted excitement. I buried my face in the pillow to hide my laughter. When I came, I was sure her wailing would bring the police.
“I haven’t had a man in a long time,” she whispered in my ringing ear.
After dinner we went back to bed. There was nothing else to do. What had passed for interesting conversation along hundreds of miles of highway wore thin across the salad. I was barely into Sandy again before her low moaning shortly gave way to bona fide screeching.
“Hey,” I said, suspending operations. “let’s try this.”
Wheeling around, I gazed into her vagina and put a stopper in her mouth. I felt bad shutting her up like this, but her neighbors must have thought someone’s fingernails were being pulled out.
A sense of grimly digging in on the Sandy front made me look forward to seeing Jerri. When I dropped Sandy off at work she paused at the car door, smiled wickedly and said, “I’ll be thinking about you all night.” I tried to grin as winningly as I could.
Jerri still had her prickly hair collected under a McDonald’s paper cap when I picked her up at work half an hour later. Inside the apartment, the tenancy of which Jerri never questioned, she immediately took off her uniform.
“These are the ugliest fucking clothes ever made,” she muttered, slipping out of the McDonald’s blue polyester pants. She was wearing tube socks, panties and no bra.
I was undressing on the couch when Jerri took my cock in her mouth. Straddling my legs she swung in rhythm with her sucking and stroking. Although I had been screwing most of the day and it hung in the balance for a while, I finally came. As I shook with orgasm Jerri breathed hard through her nose while taking the jolt of semen deep into her mouth.
“Let’s keep this hard,” she urged, kneading life into the subsiding erection. I was pleased with what I had managed so far, but now felt I had been given an ultimatum. After a few minutes I simply could not thrust again, much less make either of us come. She settled for having me stroke her off with my hand.
The action apparently over for the time being, I smiled helplessly to myself. This was pleasure beyond satiation, but my entire body felt as enervated as my dick. I groaned something about taking her home. She suggested that we sleep for a few hours and then I could drop her off at her high school at seven. She had clothes in her locker.
“High school? Your locker?” I yelped.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “I’m seventeen. Don’t worry. My parents don’t fuck with me or my hours.”
Later I watched miserably as Jerri trotted off to her classes and the kids walking by the car stared at me quizzically. Then I remembered that Sandy was just getting off work. She was waiting outside when I pulled up. I apologized, saying I overslept.
Back home Sandy wanted to sleep and asked if I’d come back to bed with her. No, I did not. After a nap Jerri and I had had a long fuck. I was not feeling anywhere near the top of my form and was disinclined to be on top of Sandy’s. But when she pulled her sweater over her lacy white bra I felt a glimmer of excitement and my penis began to stiffen. Whether guided by hormones or instincts, I shortly found myself rutting away toward my seventh orgasm in fifteen hours. Though no doubt not even a regional record, it was protested by every inch in my body save six. Sandy, on the other hand, was shrieking in ecstasy, “Oh yeah, baby; oh, baby; yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“That was unbelievable,” she sighed after the din subsided and I slipped out of her. “God, please go down on me.”
She pushed my head down to her soft brown hair. I was relieved: now I could relax. It was not much of a respite, though. Seconds after my mouth closed on her swollen labia, she started kicking and squealing with renewed vigor. She finally reached a plateau of hysteria which I took to mean orgasm, and we fell asleep.
I awoke from a nightmare in which I was trapped in a dairy farm, trying to escape from a gang of roving milking machines. As my head cleared I discovered that Sandy had my penis in her mouth. She took it out long enough to say brightly, “Hi! I’ve always wanted to wake someone like this.”
I laughed hollowly. Then, feeling like a punchy lab rat, I glimpsed a swaying nipple and a tuft of pubic hair. Soon I was guiding her head into my eager thrusts.
It was only noon. My body craved eight hours of sleep. No matter how thoughtful Sandy was to rouse me with oral sex, my testicles were ready to have a word with the shop steward. Fair was fair, though, so I lowered my face to her vagina and tucked into the job to be done.
When we were done I was frantic for more sleep. But in a playfully scolding tone, Sandy declared that I could rest when she went to work. We spent the afternoon touring the town.
That night Jerri was in a stormy mood. “Fuck the cheese on a Quarter-Pounder, and fuck the assholes who eat it,” was her opening remark.
Something like fear shot through my loins. I had been hoping for a fairly quiet evening. If we had to have sex I wanted to vote for something slow and sensuous, preferably beginning with a long backrub. Jerri was ready for war.
“Tie me up,” she demanded.
I dutifully found some scarves in Sandy’s dresser. After securing Jerri on the bed I started in on her, taking care to dodge the snapping teeth. Afterwards, as I untied the last scarf, she growled, “Now you.”
I soon found that bondage is liberating because it frees you from having to do anything. I was on my knees. Jerri started roughly, scratching my back and adding the occasional slap with one hand while with the other she stroked my penis. I had just resolved to beat her up at my earliest opportunity when she dove into my ass with her tongue. All was forgiven. She kept pumping me and I came with a shuddering, utterly satisfying orgasm.
“What are those marks on your back?” Sandy asked as I crawled, a broken man, into bed the next morning.
“Oh, you know. You get pretty wild sometimes,” I answered vacantly.
“Wow! I didn’t know I did that.”
“It’s okay,” I generously replied. Naturally, I felt a little guilty about using her car and apartment, but I was not a shirker. My incredible luck at the beginning of the trip had turned into a Sisyphean ordeal. Was I doomed to fuck one girl all night only to find her place taken by another horny young woman by day? Would I have to invent increasingly fantastic explanations to cover up my “unfaithfulness”? Would I get bedsores?
I fled town the next day and for weeks turned a venomous eye to any overly friendly woman. I may have even been unfair to the teller at my bank. But now I’m beginning to wonder if I will ever get lucky again.
THE EROTIC CONFESSIONS OF A ROMANCE WRITER
I have good news: The Land of Happily-Ever-After does exist. It is a place where men are bold, brave and godlike in their strength and wisdom. Women, vulnerable and lovely, are their counterparts. They meet—electricity passes between them. Yes,
there are complications, sturm und drang. But sooner or later they take that arm-in-arm stroll right into the sunset. It happens every time.
But I have bad news, too: Mostly, such happy endings occur in books. Romance books. Last year more than 200 million were sold. So lots of people do believe in a perfect-love-there’s-a-right-man-for-every-woman world.
As one of the creators of these books, I have a confession to make. The stuff is strictly fiction. The last time a man took my breath away, he was driving the uptown bus and I just could not catch him in time.
Do romance writers create by reclining on chaise longues, wrapped in pink organdy gowns and nibbling chocolate truffles whilst spilling out passion-filled prose onto the dictation pads of young, lustful male secretaries? It never has been that way for me. I was neither popular nor conventionally pretty while growing up. My mother was harshly critical. At the age of five, when I developed a mind of my own, I stopped being Daddy’s little girl. To keep myself amused I developed a skill for introspection and an observant eye. These were necessary survival skills that later merged and gave birth to a talent for fantasy. By thinking and writing down those thoughts, I could construct a perfect world where mothers adored their daughters, fathers were button-popping proud and beaus abounded. Even if I could not physically live in that world, it was my refuge during a lonely adolescence.
Then I grew up and fell in love. Alas, the romance was nothing like my well-constructed fantasies. The exigencies of real life, work and my lover’s feelings were surprising intrusions. Lying in bed next to him, how often I wished I could write a script of passion and undying love for him to enact with me. But those words were only to be spoken by men I had created in books. They always knew when a woman needed to hear the “I love you” that heals, confirms and secures.
Even sex was a let-down. Could anything ever be so heady as making love in a tropical paradise with a bronzed stranger who had just saved my life? It happened in one of my books, with yours truly as the surrogate heroine.
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