Eros & Capricorn: A Cross-Cultural Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Techniques (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 1)

by John Warren Wells

  Eros and Capricorn

  copyright © 1968, Lawrence Block

  Ebook Edition copyright © 2012, Lawrence Block

  Ebook Production: JW Manus

  All rights reserved. Except for the use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means is forbidden without the express permission of the author.

  Eros and Capricorn

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction, by Benjamin Morse, M.D.

  The Endless Search for Eros

  The Many Faces of Morality

  The Techniques of Provoking Desire

  Precoital Sex Techniques

  Positions for Coitus

  Coital Techniques

  Extracoital Copulation

  Masturbation

  Pluralistic Sexual Practices

  About the Author

  Eros and Capricorn

  Introduction, by Benjamin Morse, M.D.

  Author of A Modern Marriage Manual; The Sexual Deviate; The Sexual Revolution; The Sexual Behavior of American College Girls; Adolescent Sexual Behavior; etc.

  It has seemed to me for some time that a definite gap exists in the body of popular literature concerned with sexual behavior. As a practicing psychiatrist, I am made aware every day of the importance of sexual matters in the lives of many thoroughly normal individuals. That irritating word “normal” may come as a surprise. It shouldn’t. A psychiatrist deals with colorful neuroses and terrible psychoses and deviates of every conceivable persuasion, to be sure, but they are no more his steady diet than are eleventh hour brain operations the mainstay of the surgeon’s existence. The tonsillectomy and appendectomy, the prostate operations and hysterectomies—‌these bits of routine account for by far the greater part of operating room time. And by the same token, normal persons—‌anxious, of course; worried, perhaps; disturbed, to be sure—‌make up the bulk of a psychiatrist’s practice.

  As a psychiatrist, I’ve been made aware of the many elements of anxiety that comprise the sexual personalities of normal individuals. And as the author of ten books to date on various facets of sexual behavior, I’ve become perhaps more aware than some of my colleagues that a very large share of the popularly oriented work in this area fails to come to grips with questions of vital concern to these average and normal persons.

  The reader with a casual curiosity may inform himself handsomely on every imaginable sexual perversion. He may peruse some clear, pertinent, and accurate books (and some horrid bits of sensationalism, as well) on male and female homosexuality, nymphomania and satyriasis, necrophilia and abortion, incest and bestiality. I have myself dealt with all these themes at greater or lesser length and have done so with the certain feeling that information on any of them cannot fail to be of significant value to most persons.

  But where does the reader find books on some of the more interesting aspects of normal sex?

  What he does find, as I can tell from the rather extensive newsstand browsing I have done, is a large group of books that have come to be called “marriage manuals.” Some of the recent offerings in this category are quite excellent, Some, very much out of date, have remained in print for unfathomable reasons. Others are rather poor, loaded to the hilt with the type of data every modern child already knows long before grammar school graduation and lamentably lacking in material of value to anyone with a rudimentary degree of sexual sophistication.

  Whatever their merits, marriage manuals are of value only up to a certain point. Their utility is limited. But what of matters that exceed the scope of these manuals? What of the lay reader who wants to know more, for instance, about the postural varietism possible in a heterosexual relationship; about the actual ways and means, rather than the rights and wrongs, of oral and anal intercourse; about advanced methods of awakening sexual desire in one’s partner or oneself?

  While writing my own book A Modern Marriage Manual, I considered the possibility of concentrating upon such topics but decided for better or for worse against so doing.

  Although John Warren Wells may not agree with me, I do believe that these topics are properly beyond the scope of the marriage manual. These readers very much deserve a book of their own. In Eros and Capricorn they have been given such a book, and in John Warren Wells they have found a writer equipped to do them justice.

  This is, as the reader will shortly have the pleasure of discovering for himself, an enormously interesting and informative piece of writing. Had I attempted to develop a book along these lines, and I must say that I am not at all sure I would have cared to do so, I would have drawn upon the dual stockpile of professional experience and scientific literature. Wells, in contrast, has brought to the task, not the professional background of a doctor, but the rather different orientation of a scholar.

  As such, he has drawn upon an impressive array of sources. The exotic tracts concerning sexual behavior that have been our less-publicized inheritance from past cultures have been one of his sources of supply. Realistic erotic literature, ancient and contemporary, have also contributed. Genuine pornography in its many forms has been gleaned for what instruction it may offer.

  Finally, Wells makes selective use of the work of several contemporary “sexologists”—‌a word I had never before thought of applying to myself, but no doubt a wholly legitimate label. I must say, by the way, what a very odd feeling one experiences in finding one’s writings quoted in another man’s book!

  With all these highly diversified yet complementary works to draw upon, the author of Eros and Capricorn has done what I feel safe in calling a masterful job of examining the full range of sexual techniques exhaustively and objectively. His chapter on sexual morality might stand by itself as an engagingly perceptive essay on this subject. His discussion of aphrodisiacs, while necessarily incomplete, covers as much ground with as much validity as several book-length treatises I have examined. His whole analysis of sexual varietism is indescribably important; and some thoughts stimulated by his discussion have led me to be rather sorry I did not examine this subject somewhat more deeply in my own book.

  When Wells investigates the actual techniques of unusual coital postures or of anal intercourse or of oral lovemaking, he goes far beyond the pale of marriage manuals and similar works. As he himself points out, today’s authorities may tell a wife whether she ought to suck her husband’s penis—‌but they are almost never inclined to tell her just how she ought to go about it. Wells, on the other hand, leaves the rightness or wrongness of the act for persons more qualified to judge it and concentrates on the what and the how.

  This does not mean that Eros and Capricorn simply catalogs the unusual or the perverse. Although I feel that this alone would be wholly worthwhile, this book has much more to offer. By investigating the actual attitudes of the sex-oriented writings of other cultures, by disinterring the underlying implications of erotic and pornographic works, John Warren Wells has actually achieved even more than he intended. His initial chapter establishes ambitious goals; those which follow supply even more than their author had promised.

  There is one further point on which I feel I must speak. I cannot avoid the opinion that some persons are going to deal harshly with John Warren Wells. Two charges will almost inevitably be levied against him in various quarters—‌that he has written an immoral book and that he has written a pornographic book. It is evident tha
t Wells expects this criticism, for here and there in his text he has taken pains to answer such criticism before it can be made. I think it is very much to his credit that, while armed with this knowledge, he has had the integrity to go ahead and write his book as it ought to be written.

  My customary stance does not involve the placement of a soapbox beneath my feet; however, I should like to have a shot at answering this author’s critics before their voices are heard.

  On the first point—‌the book is not immoral, it is amoral, and anyone who does not know the difference between these two adjectives ought to consult a proper dictionary. This book, to repeat, is amoral—‌and that is precisely what it ought to be. I am sure I would have taken a somewhat moralistic stance if I had written this book myself, and the book would have suffered from it. The subject demands detachment, not a sermon.

  I don’t mean to say that Wells shrinks from expressing an opinion. He will quote an obscene passage from a pornographic book and will then label his source as “gutter trash” or “filth.” He treats the Hindu Vatsyayana with something very much short of reverence. But he does not often moralize, and prospective censors ought to see this not as a flaw but as the virtue it is.

  On the second point, that the book is pornographic, Wells could readily have avoided this charge simply by omitting pornographic works from his body of sources or by discussing them rather than quoting them in detail. He could even have quoted with dots and dashes and asterisks in the place of the words and phrases that offend persons who are themselves often quite offensive.

  But Well’s forthright treatment of hardcore pornography lends this volume a large measure of its distinction. As our nation sheds its Comstockian attitudes concerning sex and the written word, the issue of pornography has been receiving quite a bit of serious attention. The overwhelming majority of this attention is invariably focused upon questions of censorship, of distinctions between erotica and pornography, of the line dividing candid literature from filth, of all the topics embraced in the title of the Kronhausens’ fine book Pornography and the Law.

  It is altogether fitting and proper that these topics should absorb our interest, but it is neither fitting nor proper that they should prevent us from considering other special aspects of pornography. When one gets past the academic question of whether a book is obscene, when one has learned how to tell pornography from literature, it is time to find out something about the latter. What does it have to tell us about sexual techniques? What wisdom or lack thereof is contained in its pages? What societal attitudes, nowhere else given expression, does it reflect? What, for that matter, can it contribute to our knowledge and perspective?

  But this introduction has gone on long enough. Let me turn you over now to Mr. Wells; he has much to tell you.

  Eros and Capricorn

  The Endless Search for Eros

  From the first syllable of recorded time, the infinite realm of sexuality has exerted enormous influence not only upon the lives and thoughts of individual men but upon the whole fabric of man’s culture. The all-pervasive nature of the influence of Eros is universal. Whether in the heady hedonism of an ultra-permissive society or the close confinement of constricting puritanism, the mutual influence of sex upon culture and of culture upon sex is unmistakably evident.

  One need possess no special appetite for prurience to detect the sweet scent of sex throughout the whole of history. A biblical scribe cautions against emulating a reluctant lover named Onan—‌and at once gives a false name to masturbation and prescribes that strange method of birth control known as coitus interruptus. An Egyptian queen provides oral-genital stimulation for the more influential males of Rome and literally holds the destiny of an empire between her prettily rouged lips. A daft and inept marquis at once rebels against and simultaneously personifies the decadence of the ancien régime —‌and gives a name to the interrelationship of pleasure and pain. A British Cabinet Minister finds that

  To lie in the nude

  Is not at all rude

  But to lie in the House is obscene

  and a government is rocked by scandal. A White House aide commits a homosexual act in a public restroom and becomes an issue in a presidential campaign.

  It would seem that throughout the whole of his sexual history, man has been alternately occupied and preoccupied with sex. The image of slow but inexorable progress, so comforting to contemplate in reviewing the world’s political history, breaks down utterly where the gamut of sexual mores is concerned. The moral questions that surround sexual activity are as unsolved and as insoluble as they were when Cleopatra was a girl. The tapestry of civilization records the endless war of hedonism and repression, a conflict ever failing to achieve a genuine synthesis. And the pursuit of sexual knowledge, never a true art or a true science, succeeds in the compilation of more and more data without ever managing to answer the more important questions.

  The thousand and one questions of sexual technique and morality occur time and time again. Over and over they are answered, and yet they seem to remain forever unanswered and perhaps unanswerable. All our attention to ethics and morality has brought us to no more certain a position on sexual questions than the ancients possessed. All our wisdom and knowledge—‌our statistics, our questionnaires, our endless interviews, our pentothal, our psychoanalysis—‌have left us as eternally in the dark as ever in respect to those questions which have always been of paramount importance to us.

  It is perhaps a special mark of our current wave of sexual enlightenment that we have begun to print books that examine many of these basic questions. And the nature of these books—‌none of them lawful fare in the recent past, few of them available as much as half a dozen years ago—‌serves as a special rejoinder to all our visions of progress.

  For what are these newly available books? A handful of titles leap at once to mind—‌The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana; Justine; The Perfumed Garden; Fanny Hill; The Memoirs of Casanova; My Life and Loves. These are no new visions of sexuality. Quite on the contrary, they reflect not the beacon of contemporary knowledge, but special bursts of sexual knowledge offered up by the past. These classic works of yesterday have finally fought their way up into the light of acceptability to inform, entertain, and no doubt titillate the modern reader.

  So there are no new questions and no wholly new answers. There is, instead, a considerable parallel to be drawn between this sexual situation and the medieval quasi-science of alchemy. The alchemist, half scientist and half artist, with a heady dash of mysticism and witchcraft tossed in for good measure, sought to invent or compound or discover the answers to age-old riddles. He searched for the universal solvent, a single substance that would dissolve every other substance to be found on Earth. (Where did he plan to store it? A problem, to be sure.) He searched for a method of transmuting base metals into gold. He looked for the philosopher’s stone.

  If necessity is the mother of invention, then the alchemic quest is the bastard son of desire. For centuries men wanted to become easily and quickly rich, to possess gold. The most direct and painless method, obviously, would be that of creating gold out of nothing or out of some less valuable substance. From this desire, nurtured by myth and magic, the theory of the transmutation of metals was born.

  Need and desire have led to the predominance of the same questions for centuries in the realm of sexual behavior. Like alchemists, the students of sexuality have compiled data and spun elaborate theories to answer the timeless questions of Eros.

  How may a woman be made to love a man? How may a man be made to love a woman? What potions, magical or scientific, will create an appetite for sexual relations? What will cure frigidity? What will overcome impotence?

  How may a man increased the length and girth of his penis? How may a woman’s vagina be constricted? How may a man refrain from ejaculating prematurely? How may he increase his capacity for engaging in acts of coitus?

  What are all the possible postures of sexual congress? How may the chan
ces of pregnancy be increased? How may pregnancy be avoided? What sexual acts will lead a woman to conceive a child of one sex or the other? What signs during pregnancy will permit determination of the sex of the unborn child?

  How may pleasure be heightened? Broadened? Prolonged? What are the signs of a sexually adequate male or female?

  The answers to all these questions comprise an intoxicating brew of fact and fancy. They range in time from the folk beliefs of primitives to the sophisticated sexual mythology of modern America. Often based to some degree upon science, or anticipating scientific confirmation, they constitute a special extra-scientific sort of alchemy.

  How to prevent premature ejaculation? “A man whose ejaculation is too precipate must take nutmeg and oliba mixed together with honey,” says the author of The Perfumed Garden. How may a woman attract a lover? “Be careful that your armpits don’t exude an unpleasant odor and that your legs are free from unsightly hair,” Ovid counseled the women of Rome. And how may a man win and maintain the love of a woman? “Show me a man who won’t eat his girl,” says a more modern scholar, “and I’ll show you a broad I can steal.”

  Eros, that misbegotten son of Aphrodite, teaches only questions. And these in turn engender, in Cummings’s phrase, “Always the beautiful answer that asks the more beautiful question.”

  —♦♦♦—

  Man’s search for the sexually sublime has led him down a thousand primrose paths and up a million petal laden trails. The effects of these conjectures and explorations and discoveries are traced in the sands of history and passed on to us through a whole body of writings. Some of these books have been forgotten for centuries. Others have formed a part of the forbidden literary underground. Still others have been available only in much bowdlerized form. Now, as our society sheds the trappings of puritanism, much of this sexual scholarship has again become available.