1981 1 of 5
JOURNAL FOR 1981
My journal for 1981 is not as detailed or day-by-day as before; I just want to get the BASIC journal pages on the website. Journal starts after trip to Mexico that ended January 8, 1981. For missing days, I've included LIFELIST at the end of the year to supplement journal entries.
ESSAYS 42
2/8/81
EFA MEETING 11/25/80
Barbara Rodriguez replaced by George Maldonado, Manager of American Society of Chemical Engineers (ASCE). WORD PROCESSING. Peter Adams, HBJ.
MTST: Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter is about 150 words per minute.
First MTST's were critical for periodicals, now in books.
STANDING TEXT used in going through successive EDITIONS of books.
Greatly used in REPETITIVE letter writing.
Great initial expenditures.
Lots of "Wait and see": lots of companies go out of business in two years, but no IBM, Xerox, or Pitney-Bowles.
Lots of LEGAL software available.
Typesetting ALREADY affected; newspapers beginning to be affected.
Freelance word processing will PROBABLY start IN-HOUSE.
15-16 type faces in 6-15 point types at HBJ NOW!
$8000 Shaftstall Box converts ALMOST any input to ALMOST any other.
More and more publishers getting their OWN photocomposers.
In-house now LIMITED to lower-cost, simpler photocomposition.
Specific compositor: $25/hr for 2-page manual; 3 hour minimum.
Trend will be MORE user-oriented, English-language oriented.
Vydec? Not EASY to use at all. Wang CAME OUT simple.
How will voice-activated equipment handle bow/bough??
Will ALWAYS require BETTER proofreaders?
Machinery would hyphenate bal-lpoint pen!
Learn to use it? ABSOLUTELY!
Error and reliability? Survey and evaluation? Questions to be asked.
$250-300 will get you trained on A word processor---but 12 of them?
More machines WILL have self-teaching programs.
$15/hr to $25/hr for self-learning, MAYBE 2 hours for FAST learners.
Cost of New Era is now between $10,000 and $25,000.
TOO expensive AND incompatible for SINGLE user.
SCHOOLS for word processing NOW are no good.
BEGINNING to be word processing shops, for hourly rate.
Check yellow pages in telephone: WORD PROCESSING SERVICE BUREAUS
Engel is getting 100 books from National Endowment of Arts to INDEX!
$6 floppy disk: 40-60 pages/disk; need 12-15 for 700-page book.
Bubble memory is a real breakthrough in storage.
Learn the SYSTEM that's compatible with your PUBLISHERS' EQUIPMENT!
Wang, IBM (Olivetti has a terrible reputation), Xerox 850, Adressograph-Multigraph, Exxon's QUIX "an intelligent typewriter" AND upgradeable.
You DO get eye fatigue, so CHECK screen.
Dictaphone ZOOM DOUBLES page size.
Cheaper machines have HIGHER blink rate and FEWER refresh cycles.
Single-line self-correcting typewriters are NOT computers.
ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT and OFFICE PROCEDURES do SURVEYS YEARLY.
DATAPRO and AUERBACK and VISION 80 do periodic updates.
INTERNATIONAL TYPOGRAPHIC CORPORATION does survey every 3-4 years.
Department of Commerce SURVEY on radiation STUDY showed "No harmful effects." Henry Engel said he'd send me a copy when he got it. No eye damage SUITS ever AWARDED.
COMPSET compositing machine.
Stay away from Weeks Temp and Cyberway.
Phone Wang, IBM, Xerox, and ask for intros.
ESSAYS 44
2/20/81
AMY'S PSYCHIC ABILITIES CLASS, 1/11/81
We gathered at 11, waited until 11:30 for final student (there were 4 of us: me, the stewardess Sheila, the novice, and another woman). Amy led an Actualism-type gathering with introduction to the White Star, short notes of how to go about it, and emphasized that we're just DOING it, we're not going for ACCURACY, which makes ME feel good (as it should, since Amy stated that the brochure and course was designed for me SPECIFICALLY). Then she handed out paper for the Present Life Reading, which I exchanged with Sheila (from notes): Sheila at 6: LOTS of kids together---shouting, running. LARGE gray metal object. Peaked---roof? Wooded hilltop? Snow and cold? Round yellow canisters. She said that NONE of this applied, but I was amazed at VISUALNESS. Sheila at 14: "Sound of Music"-like: "The hills are alive with the sound of music." Gray day---Gray wolf? Yellow-and-orange candy corn. Blood, menstrual? Train---in wooded hills? AGAIN she said none of it triggered. Sheila at 21: Marriage? PARENTS married? School---"Belles of St. Trinians." Uniform with black shoes and dark gray ribbed stockings and flat caps---teeth? Worried brow (definitely a HIT for her!). "Open door with a rush at Christmas." "Confined in narrowness." Small piece of silver jewelry. She denied the uniform but AMY said SHE saw a uniform, at which point Sheila remembered that at 21 she'd gotten her first STEWARDESS'S uniform.
CHAKRAS:
1. Upper room---very radiating---OUT-FLOWING "point source."
2. Crown center---VERY open and receptive---not SO much DOWN flowing.
3. Third eye---large, THINLY veiled with yellow, "overfed---needs exercise."
4. Throat---small and closed.
5. Thymus---wild---no reading, blank.
6. Heart---large, warm, receptive.
7. Solar plexus---large but unopened.
9. Organizational center---cluttered, obstructed, full of blockage.
9. Sexual center---small but receptive.
Scan body---check health---few negative sensations.
PAST-LIFE READING
Senator---U.S.---old---Lincoln's time---guilt for failed responsibility.
1) What unfinished business is there left hanging from the past?
2) What has ALREADY been accomplished? What have you HAD in the line of skills and abilities and experiences?
AURAS---visible energy field---large egg-shaped field around body.
Be prepared for the unexpected---and expect RAPID INSTANT changes.
STRUCTURES in aura: caps above head; dunce cap---is WISDOM cap; LOCATION is important.
TRANSLUCENT color: fine; MUDDY THICK color---holding back.
Yellow---rational, analytical, thinking CLEARLY---scientist and rational mind.
Red---heart and STRONG feelings---AROUND heart, PASSIONATE FEELING; around SEXUAL AREA, sexual feelings.
Orange---communicative---reaching out and contacting people.
Pink---love and sweetness and balance---lots in CHILDREN. For AMY: Pregnancy is DEEP RED with GOLD BANDS holding fetus in.
Gold---protective qualities, spiritual quality, over head as in halo---has INSIGHT.
Silver---1) Great CHANGE coming in person's life---SLICES through aura like thunderbolt.
2) DIFFUSE silver---warm, maternal, lunar, dreamy (maybe spacey).
Blue---mental, a thinker, understanding through MIND, not FEELINGS. Strong ELECTRIC blue---after PROFOUND wisdom. DARK muddy blue---after DATA. Blue FLASH when telling the TRUTH.
Emerald Green---creativity, fertility, imagination, and love of nature.
Soothing, calming, healing. Also lots of objectivity---no illusions.
Gray---1) Transparent: undecided, uncommitted; 2) THICK: problem getting INVOLVED in life; schizoid.
Light apple green---regeneration and healing---SIGNIFICANT transformation.
Brown---depression, especially over head; stagnation. "Shake it up, baby."
Purple---spirituality. STRONG purple, on this planet for SERVICE.
Violet---strength, courage, and initiative---undertaking something NEW. Active, not afraid of truth.
Black---bad moral character; power for SAKE of power.
ETHERIC body is one NEXT OUT from physical. Look in mirror for thin white piping around body.
Auras: 1) eyes CLOSED, PICTURE person opposite, and observe colors FLYING through picture.
2) Eyes OPEN, person before LIGHT backdrop---gaze ABOVE head and SCAN and WAIT for colors to appear.
For Sheila: Pinkish red (after-image of green blouse?)---gold around.
Touch of blue on HER right, green on HER left.
But during this, about 4 pm, it became clear that we were mentally DRAINED, and so Amy didn't go on with reading photographs and reading objects.
We sat around and chatted, everyone pleased with the class and progress made today.
ESSAYS 46
3/3/81
JOE McGINNISS: GOING TO EXTREMES---BOOK
Amy lends me this book on Alaska, saying I'll love it. I find nice things:
P. 52: "I remembered hearing about the soldier who had gone on winter maneuvers outside of Fairbanks. He had brought along a flask to keep him warm. He unscrewed the cap, took a gulp at 50 below, and dropped dead, his throat frozen shut. The alcohol had kept the liquid from freezing at that temperature, but the liquid, at 50 below, had produced the opposite of the desired warming effect.
P. 73: talks of "Barrow's fist brush" where it should be FIRST brush!
P. 87: (On Nome): tourists ... walked up and down Front Street and choked on the dust and watched Eskimos puke on each other. Then the mosquitoes got to them and they ran for their rooms---sixty-four dollars a night at the Nugget---and pleaded with Wien to fly them out.
P. 127: Spend a week in Juneau, especially with a couple of sunny days, and you think you would like to live there for the rest of your life. But stay for three months, especially in winter, and you would give a year of your life just for a weekend out of town.
P. 242: (On Brooks Range) The worst of the mosquito season, in northern Alaska, means you keep your entire body covered and wear a net around your face and the net is so quickly covered with mosquitoes the size of nickels and dimes that you can't even see where you are going. And if you live in a village and own dogs, you rub motor oil inside the dogs' noses and inside their ears, so the mosquitoes and ghats will not crawl in and begin to eat the inside of the dogs' heads.
So the writing is somewhat colorful, if somewhat fragmented (example from p. 16: The action was not in California any more. As far as Sandy could tell, it was not anywhere. Gone. Poof. Just like that. So, gradually, aimlessly, almost imperceptibly, she drifted up the coast. Carried along on some sort of psychological ebb tide of the early seventies. San Francisco, Portland, Eugene, Seattle, and, eventually, Juneau, Alaska. The end of the line. Such a haunted, beautiful, somber, mysterious, deadening town. Where all the driftwood finally came to rest. And then slowly rotted in the rain.) Maybe he got paid by the punctuation mark?
But even in the book's apotheosis, when he finds a miraculous meadow in uncharted mountains and valleys around Cocked Hat Mountain, he stumbles: (P. 279-80) "Shangri-la. The meadow so pristine, so silent, so still. Its lushness even more incongruous against the starkness of the spires which rose so bizarrely above it, with lingering mist brushing lightly against the tips.
We were not sure whether we had entered a cathedral or whether we had stumbled across the gateway to a lost, forbidden land. Even now the last survivors of an unknown, undiscovered civilization might be watching us, in silence, or darting quickly, high above us, from rock to rock.
But no. All was still. There was nothing here. There never had been." Ray Bane tried it too: "The great swirls of rock strata, splendid spires, and ponderous slabs---a symphony in rock."
But it was pleasant to read with the Alcan Highway, Portage Glacier, Fairbanks, the train down to Anchorage, and the flights to Inuvik and Point Barrow so fresh in my mind---even though he bogs down when he gets into the politicking and haggling over the new capital, and how MANY times can you say that people like to get dead drunk??
ESSAYS 48
3/3/81
RICHARD BACH: ILLUSIONS: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
It's a detail that I think HE thinks HE'S a better messiah than Don Shimoda.
P. 3: I do not enjoy writing at all.
P.33 (Don Shimoda): "And you think you'll be led to a teacher who can help you."
P. 47 (DS): We're all the sons of God, or children of the Is, or ideas of the Mind, or however else you want to say it.
P. 58 (from Messiah's Handbook): Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.
P. 63 (MH): You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.
P. 120 (MH): You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
P. 176 (DS): "The Is doesn't need me to tell anybody how it works."
P. 177 (MH): The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
But there IS a good feeling that the stuff he writes, though terrifically simplistic, MIGHT put people onto reading MORE Zen-like things that he keeps going at---and it IS nice that SIMPLE people ARE reading him, since it went through three printings (at least) in June of 1979. Though it leads people to say silly things about it like the inscription: "To Our Friend Amy on her 30th Birthday. Thanks for helping us to see what isn't there. Much Love, Carol and Al." But I suppose it's STILL better than nothing, even though Amy didn't care for being given a paperback of the book that I guess she already has in hardcover.
ESSAYS 49
3/3/81
ASI FREELANCE INDEXERS CONFERENCE
At 9:35 Lewicky announced that this was the THIRD Seminar on Freelance Indexing, so they're every other year: 1977, 1979, 1981.
Bartenback says there are 330 people and gives ASI information.
TELENET and TIMENET are database systems.
Indexing: selecting the subjects of the records and expressing them in the language of the indexing systems.
9:47-10:30: Cynthia Weber: How to get started as an indexer.
1) Treat it as a business: set up an office and hours for SENDING work requests.
2) Learn how to index: a) Courses in schools (ASI list), b) Study a well indexed book and re-index it YOURSELF), c) Borko and Bernier "not a bad little book," and The Indexer.
3) Find a job: a) Know people, b) Work free, c) Write publishers and send resumes to the production editor, d) suggest better index to authors of books being reprinted, e) Contact academe: department heads, librarians, researchers, f) Advertise, distribute flyers, get in the ASI register, and put your name in technical journals, g) take a correspondence course by writing to Norma Harwood /U.S. Dept. of Agriculture/Graduate School Correspondence Study/Room 1048/South Building Washington, D.C. 20250, h) go into apprenticeship with Sydney Cohen at 254-2391 or BevAnn Ross 4405 Dolphin Lane, Alexandria VA 22309 (correct?); she contracts database indexes.
4) Charge rates of $5/hour to $10/hour, average about $6, OR $1-$2/page, OR "Do the best you can for $250," OR 35 cents/line, which is CHEAP!
5) Take PRIDE and JOY in accomplishments well done (few OTHERS will praise you!).
SHE will never send cards (once lost), ALWAYS types the index.
10:45-11:25: Barbara Preschel: Basic Indexing. Taught indexing course at Queens College at 42nd Street. "Many many books of indexing that exist on bibliography list: Wheeler, Martha, says EVERYTHING. Plus Borko and Bernier NEW one, not on list, Indexing concepts and methods; Chicago Manual of Style, Norman Knight books, Robert Collison books---none of which AGREE with each other.
Purpose of index: 1) Help you find information you want, 2) Makes selective reading possible.
TERMS: Closed-end index: book. Open-end index: serials, databases, always room for MORE. Coordinate index (which means a POST-coordinate index---pre-coordinate index done for a book where concepts are joined PRIOR to printing)---each concept treated separately and USER makes coordination (without saying what that IS!!).
Most freelance indexing is manual closed-end, back-of-book indexing.
Need clairvoyance: what terms will someone search for five years HENCE.
You should use AS specific a term AS will cover the material.
"Don't put anything under the subject of the book."
"USE author's words UNLESS correcting to a USUAL way from the AUTHOR'S term."
Use Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Second Edition.
She DISLIKES her CURRENT letter-by-letter encyclopedia.
Do it all the PUBLISHER'S way.
Three-level index is generally the most detailed needed.
Study the table of contents for clues.
"Alphabetize as you go along."
A Good Index has 1) Internal consistency, 2) Logical structure and arrangement, 3) comprehensiveness of material, 4) precision and accuracy.
"To librarians: if there's no index, SEND IT BACK! If we don't push, we're not doing our duty!"
Sears gives no RULES, only a guide for SPECIFIC libraries; SAME comments for LC & Dewey.
ANSI---Basic Criteria for Indexing, 1974.
Workshop 11:25-12:10, Indexing Ch. 5 of Borko and Bernier; Preschel our leader.
Hideous lunch with some dizzy gabby woman who obviously monopolized me LAST time.
2:06-2:43: Bernice Heller: Advanced Indexing. It's lonely work, but it IS creative AND subjective. Don't be intimidated by JARGON, just ASK.
"Soft-side books" (political science, sociology) vs "hard-side books (physics, mathematics, chemistry). Then to 9-page sample. Paragraph versus "hanging" style. Workshop on "subject index" set with crippled Weber our leader to 3:33.
3:35-4:05: Rochelle Field: Thesaurus Construction (UNBIS and ERIC)
Thesaurus: an orderly listing of descriptors. All relations are reciprocal. UNESCO Thesaurus of Science and Technology better than subject-heading list for ONLINE searching.
THREE RELATIONSHIP TYPES:
EQUIVALENCE (broken into purely synonymous and quasi-synonymous, which may (1) provide specificity, 2) Marshes, see Wetlands, 3) Flying saucers, see UFOs.
HIERARCHICAL:
Mammals
Canines Dogs BT (Broader term) Canines
Dogs Canines NT (Narrower term) Dogs
ASSOCIATIVE---see also, or RT (related term)
Clarify scope of the thesaurus:
1) Who are the clients?
2) Hard copy versus computer search?
3) Parameters of subject? In depth? Broad?
4) WHAT types of literature?
5) Quantity of literature and rate of growth?
6) Financial and personnel restraints.
Over 800 terms, use personal home computer 1) with alpha sort, 2) with global edit.
Use OTHER thesauri for suggesting CLASSIFICATION structures.
NUMERICAL classification schedule useful. Get future users' input FIRST.
Ignore programming aspects "Which can be fun." Forbidden terms = unused terms.
Must be subjective, but RECOGNIZE existing order. LIST OF THESAURI FROM: Bibliographic Systems Center/School of Library Science/Case-Western Reserve University/Cleveland Ohio 44106.
4:07-4:38: Cynthia Weber---Freelance Indexing on a Personal Computer.
Computer-ASSISTED indexing (not computer-GENERATED indexes).
1) Choosing a computer. LARGE microcomputer---disk or tape, disk better.
300-page book needs 25K storage; need space for old AND new files.
For editing facilities, need 64K. Get a SYSTEM, don't put PIECES together.
Must have industry-standard machine for widest programming capability: RS232-Interface.
Program CPM accepts MANY programs on ANY hardware.
2) Choosing a printer: a) Thermal, b) dot-matrix, $1000, 3) letter quality, $3000---worth it, particularly if it's used and only costs $1000.
3) Choosing PROGRAMS
a) "keep head and subhead so you only have to add bottom line"
b) automatic inverting desirable
c) sort OPTIONS needed for w-by-w or l-by-l
d) prepositions IN or out of sorting order?
e) run-in or indented style?
f) a/b vs a, b
She HAS a machine, she's HIRING programmers from Empire Business Systems in Buffalo, "one half the company's a programmer": Peter Perello.
Price: processor for $5700, a Dynabyte 64K microprocessor, 2 disk drives, double-density
Printer and terminal (secondhand) for $2000: Heath H-19 CTR terminal, QUME printer.
Available for CPM-compatible and PROGRAMMER will market it, charging her LESS: $600!
It'll be COMPLETE, she says, in 4-6 weeks. Most small BUSINESS computers use CPM.
TELENET is about $200/hour for interface time, thus too expensive for home.
I talk to her after: it takes 315K on disk---takes 56K for 128P book.
Cynthia Weber/89 Getzville Rd./Snyder, N.Y. 14226/ (716) 839-4034, and I send her the problem list THE VERY NIGHT, adding 1) Cell membrane, function of, EQUAL TO Cell membrane function, 2) power-down safety and restart, 3) codes?, and 4) maximum-number-of-sub-n specification exceeded.
ESSAYS 53
3/3/81
TAPE WITH HAIR ANALYSIS
I listen to tape from 2:55 pm - 3:35 pm on 2/8/81, nearly a month ago!
1) MINERALS catalyze enzymes, enzyme action may cause imbalances.
The ratio of calcium to magnesium should be 6.711
2) I NEED magnesium; I'm sensitive to sugar, alcohol, refined carbohydrates.
3) High sodium and potassium means HIGH ADRENAL---sensory/emotional/mental STRESS.
4) Slightly restrict salt; better to regulate adrenals: recommend Thym-Adrenal
5) Do POORLY with carbohydrates, WELL with fats and proteins.
6) Take COPPER to up IRON deficiency.
7) LEAVE manganese deficiency alone.
8) Take ZINC for energy and SEX.
9) Teeth COULD be weak because of immune system, which is helped by zinc.
10) Low CHROMIUM hurts carbohydrate handling.
11) Selenium levels not recorded.
12) Phosphorus FROM fish, meat, chicken.
13) Anti-stress pak FOR a fast oxidizer---who NEEDS protein and fat in diet.
14) WATCH diet and REGULAR meals, which means BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER. Vegetables (for bulk and fiber for elimination) and some occasional fruit.
15) Need to take supplements with FOOD, not separately.
16) TEETH problem means that whole body is out of balance.
17) Need a low-dose vitamin C.
18) STILL take vitamin C, 1g, 10,000 vitamin A good; NOT large as 400 units for E; FDA will BAN B-15 as carcinogenic. Calcium lactate, gotu kola, selenium all OK. DISCONTINUE theraform-M, take CHELATED minerals and anti-stress pak for ME. Lecithin and brewer's yeast OK.
19) Take NOTE of physical changes and FILL out SECOND form---6 months or a YEAR is OK.
20) Toxic minerals: cadmium is INDUSTRIAL pollutant, or CIGARETTE smoke. Stay away. Zinc ANTAGONIZES cadmium, too.
21) Ni is OK (scale is changing currently)
22) Molybdenum was unmeasured.
23) Call for Cosmic Mother with loving, supportive, caring---for assimilation and elimination.
24) WHOLE grains, BROWN rice---NO canned and frozen foods.
25) Include SPROUTS---high-enzyme foods.
26) Bowel movement at least once a day. More fiber will help. If constipation is persistent---let HER know---either letter or phone.
27) If OTHER problems, let her KNOW.
28) HOLD supplements in hand and LIGHT them and assimilate on ALL LEVELS---work in CONSCIOUSNESS as well as on the physical level.
29) NO amyl nitrate---NOT good for liver---has to be detoxified. Side effects NOT fully understood---as well as "consciousness factors associated with these drugs."
30) Teeth---she assumes I'm under the care of a good dentist.
31) Cut down on SUGARY FRUIT JUICES and sugary WINE. Drink dry RED wines.
32) My father was probably a fast oxidizer.
33) AVOID ice creams and sweets if there's a CHOICE; avoid catsup and mayonnaise: sugars.
34) "The Supermarket Hand book" by Goldbeck---for additive-free foods by country-section.
35) Regular exercise is very good.
36) Phone: Katie Dusenberg, living in Costa Mesa Center/3305 South Kimber St./ Santa Ana, CA 92702/ (714) 957-9346 or 549-7732.
TUESDAY, 3/3/81: OLDER PEOPLE ARE unhappy!
1) They KNOW (as youth DOESN'T) that they will NOT remember details of all
a) sexual encounters
b) movies
c) plays
d) love affairs
2) A list SO SIMPLE at age 20 is VERY COMPLICATED at age 50.
3) They've seen SO MUCH EXCELLENCE in operas, plays, movies, etc, that most NEW ones seem TAME, and that has to be added to the FACT that MODERN people in large towns see more in a YEAR than people fifty years ago ANYWHERE would see in a LIFETIME of theater-going and culture-absorbing---and even TRAVEL.
ESSAYS 55
3/7/81
1981 WSDG TAPE
Mod: Bob was here a year ago, and we filled the hall that night because the subject was "Masturbation for fun and profit" and (Me: I had as much to do with that title as I had to do with this one) now we've switched around, he's very mirthful, he's fun, he's informed, he's done research on the subject of masturbation, and the subject tonight being "Masturbation can be a good first choice and good clean fun." Bob Zolnerzak.
Thank You. For those of you who weren't here last year, the first thing I'm going to make sure to make clear is that this is going to be the METAPHYSICS of masturbation---not the physics of masturbation---no one I know is going to DO it. You have to take care of that yourself. So the metaphysics, which I define as an "inquiry into what exists" about masturbation. Last year I handled half of it, because I talked about "what, when, where, and who," because about two years ago, three years ago now, I sent around a survey, put an ad in the Advocate and asked about people who were interested in jerking off, and had 200 people respond, and I asked them a very, very detailed list of questions (holding it up), as you can see. I type small. Probably 100 or 150 questions. (Read some.) Got back lots of answers, typed them all up, xeroxed them, and sent them out to people who wanted various sections or the whole thing. I learned a lot about jerking off, and a lot about people. One of the people here had responded and thought the group might be interested in a talk about it. So I came here and talked mainly about, as I say, "What, when, where, and who." The best WHEN comes from Werner Erhard, whom some of you may have heard about, and the best WHEN for any kind of sex, particularly masturbation, is "When you're hot, you're hot; when you're not, you're not." Now I think that's tremendously profound, because I know how it is---just to say a little bit about my background---I started masturbation when I was twelve or thirteen, and there's not too much concern about when you're hot, because you're usually always hot. But later on, in the thirties or forties, I wasn't hot, and I sort of had to work on it. So this is a very good answer to the question, "When?" The best answer for WHAT was "Whatever turns you on"---different people---different strokes for different folks. It's as simple and as wonderful as that. I classify all that as the ontology of masturbation, the nature and kinds of masturbation. Tonight, are you ready for the cosmology of masturbation, which is the structure and relationships in masturbation? People don't talk about this much; in fact, people don't talk about masturbation too much at all. I tried to get information about it, and here's one book that I found that's completely about "Sexual Self-Stimulation," interesting: it was remaindered at Marlboro's for $2.98, written in 1968. There's a good book about New Age viewpoints called "Total Orgasm"; this is a classic: "Human Sexual Response." It said lots of the things that needed to be said; it hasn't been bettered, in the preface they talk about it: "Possibly history will record as Kinsey's greatest contribution the fact that his incredible effort actually enabled him to put his foot firmly in the door of investigative objectivity." (p. vii) You don't get that very often in sex. "This text represents the first step, a faltering step at best, but at least a first step toward an open-door policy. The door of investigative objectivity must not be closed again." So I kind of like that. And now I want to talk about things that aren't usually talked about, and that's the WHY. And how WHYS may be related. One set of WHYS that seem to come up a lot is "it's infantile." And when I get into the discussion part, I'd like to hear responses about all of these statements. So keep in mind things that you want to discuss. Good old Krafft-Ebing in "Aberrations of Sexual Life" came up with this (p. 102): "If one desires to understand this sex deviation"---this sex deviation he's talking about is autosexualism---one musts bear in mind that it is in its essence INFANTILE." I don't like that. We'll see what others have to say. This book was written in 1937 (someone pointed out this was only a REPRINT; orig. OLDER) so that was a while ago. Another book that came out a while ago was "Auto-erotism" by Wilhelm Stekel, and this came out in 1950, which is still a while ago. And he has a statement which is sort of the same thing (p. 192): "Before proceeding to the analysis of the masturbator's feeling of guilt, we must point out another important feature. Masturbation is always a regression (Freud) back to the level of infantile sensuality. It even replaces the first and the strongest gratification known to man: the pleasure of sucking. I have repeatedly found among masturbators the fantasy that the penis stands for the nipple that is being milked (when they couldn't confess that it FELT good?). Masturbation among men is frequently called milking. In my work, The Language of Dreams, will be found a sufficient number of masturbation and sucking dreams to prove this contention." All right. He says something else which is kind of interesting, too, while I have the book out (p. 20): This is rather hard to paraphrase. "In paradise man lived asexually, until the snake (phallic!) seduced Adam and the latter tasted of the tree of knowledge. Thereupon divinity drove him promptly out of paradise lest he should taste of the tree of life. Otherwise man would become immortal and a god. That means, he would become capable of enjoying sexual pleasure without the sense of sinfulness. (I didn't read this, but I should have: "All discipline of cultural man rests on this feeling of guilt and on the fear of punishment. Man feels himself a weak sinner ... ") Terrible. Some things just seem plain wrong, as for instance, in "Sexual Self-Stimulation," when he says---now I don't think this is true, but maybe we'll discuss it (p. 120): "Kinsey pointed out that many homosexual males watch their own penises when masturbating. From the study of our homosexual patients, we have been unable to confirm this statement." I would have thought they did (and think the OBSERVATION would make them TOO GUILTY to look at their cocks!), but that's up for discussion. One thing that's interesting that I haven't heard of before---Freud at one point said that "the subject of masturbation is quite inexhaustible (p. 204)." This fellow Masters---this is not the Masters of Masters and Johnson, this is R.E.L. Masters, he says here---this is one of the things that makes me interested in the subject (p. 71): "No author has attempted a comprehensive treatment of self-stimulation in all its varieties and myriad complexities. The accumulated knowledge essential to so formidable a task today does not exist. Many more individuals must make their particular contributions before some one person or collaborating group will be able to integrate what has been learned and provide us with anything resembling a comprehensive formulation." I think it's true, the fact that I haven't been able to find a book on the topic of masturbation itself, seems to say that people aren't thinking about it or writing about it very much. There were a couple of things that I thought were interesting about the incidence of masturbation with age. Oh, this isn't about age, this is another sentence. I thought he might be pulling someone's leg here (Krafft-Ebbing, p. 340): "Men of this kind (autosexualists) are generally reserved, hermit-like and uncomradely. It is also worth while awaking their communal feeling and effecting their incorporation in a circle of men of the same age." I wondered if he was talking about a circle jerk? I don't know. This is what Stekel has to say, which I think sounds positive (p. 279): "It is plain that the higher our cultural ethical requirements become and the more refined our love life grows, the stronger must grow also the need for masturbation. As the craving for self-indulgence increases the more difficult it becomes to transfer one's libido unto the environment. We can imagine a time when masturbation must have played a very insignificant role. The primordial man knew no bounds and took advantage of all erotic pleasures whenever opportunity presented itself. With the development of the ethical imperative "Thou shalt not!" the gratification of the libido had to be sought upon the autoerotic path. I believe therefore that the masturbation habit is bound to grow with the growth of culture. At the same time the reaction against this form of gratification must also increase. The struggle against masturbation becomes more fierce in the measure that the need of it becomes stronger." I think that's an interesting thing to say. Somewhere the point was made that masturbation is usually a general outlet for the very young, and when people grow into middle age they begin to expand their outlets, and then when they pass a certain point of growth, they begin to revert, although the sources don't necessarily say in an INFANTILE way, they simply return to increased levels of masturbation. There seems to me to be more talk about it these days, but I can't tell whether it's just because I'm interested in it and everyone who's interested in it manages to find me to talk to. Have any of YOU found any more openness in talking about it, or any framework for indulging in it that hadn't been opened a couple of years ago?
Mod: Bob, as long as no one's answering it; those of you who have seen "Ordinary People," the psychiatrist asks the little boy what he's been doing lately and the boy say masturbating, and the doctor says "Well, did it help?" and the kid says, "For a minute." And then later when the boy gets angry with the psychiatrist, he says "I don't ask you about whether YOU jerk off," so this is bringing it into the living room of America, obviously a topic that can be discussed.
ME: There have been movies showing women masturbating, Bergman's "The Silence" was it? a number of years ago had a scene of a woman lying down masturbating, but a man is somewhat different. "The Fox" too. I don't know of any movies on the Hollywood circuit that---yes?
R: In "Blue Lagoon" the scene that garnered the most snickers the evening I saw it, where the boy is off by himself, in the backwoods, obviously doing that, and then the girl complains something about---I forget the dialogue, but he was obviously doing that.
Me: What were the snickers about? Do you have any idea?
R: They weren't laughing AT the movie, but AT the SITUATION, THAT he was doing it. The movie SHOWING him doing it. Some of both, I think. They didn't SHOW him doing it.
ME: I was curious if there was any indication of the acceptability of the subject matter itself in a movie of that kind.
Mod: There's a question.
R: I think, answering YOUR question, that it may well be that it's become more acceptable in the more urbanized, let's say culturally oriented areas in the northeast, and on the West Coast stretching from Oregon to San Francisco down to Los Angeles. I have lived in a very rural area of this country, I have noticed, being a teacher, that a 13-year-old boy or girl will get to that point in life where they're unacclimated to what's happening to them, they're about to freak, whereas that doesn't happen in the Northeast and West. My question is, Where EXACTLY, to your knowledge, does the prohibition against masturbation come from?
ME: It generally seems to stem from---this is a book by Pomeroy called "Boys and Sex," and these are some of the reasons he uses to talk against the idea of people EASILY masturbating (p.33): "These are the reasons which might be advanced for NOT masturbating, or at least not masturbating often, since the human male will almost inevitably do it to some extent": and one of them is "It is condemned by some religions, and again a conflict of guilt may arise, which may undo any good resulting from the practice." Pomeroy starts out with a list of fairly obvious pros, for doing it (p. 32): "It's pleasurable ... it's easy to do ... it releases tensions ... it's an outlet for fantasy ... it offers a variety which enriches the individual's sex life ... it harms no one ... it's not against the law ... For many Protestant sects, it is not condemned morally. On the other hand, it must be remembered, religions of all kinds do not encourage it." So it's the sort of Moral Majority influence, where the parents want to think themselves more moral than they are, to inculcate their children into a morality that THEY no longer have, to say they shouldn't do that. That's the easiest thing to say. The other thing, it seems to me, would be a kind of taboo thing; if people in an auditorium can't accept it in a movie, where it's fairly naturally portrayed, I'm sure the snickers would have been a lot louder in the middle of the country than it would have been here; I assume you saw it in New York? It's unknown, and anything that's unknown is first to be feared, and then in defense from the fear, you laugh at it.
Mod: Bob, in porno movies, in STRAIGHT porno movies, the man is never seen masturbating for his own pleasure, but there's always a masturbation scene of a woman by herself, or with another woman; why is this? Why do they accept women but not men masturbating on the screen?
ME: Well, the straight porno film, as I understand it, is usually made for men, and so the men would be far more turned on watching the woman masturbate because then he can fantasize that he's in the room, he's causing them to do it, whereas---probably watching a man masturbate would just embarrass him. I know there are a couple of cases, way back in college, people had to be very careful in what they reacted to in stag films, because people were ONLY supposed to be watching the women. Someone once had the temerity to say "Gee, is that a big one," and the response was "Oh, what are YOU looking at?" You're not even supposed to LOOK at it.
R: A lot of people don't know how to masturbate.
ME: Uh, that doesn't seem to be a problem as far as most of these books are concerned, since the percentage seems to vary anywhere from a very very low of 93% to a flat-out "We're sure everyone does it," if only through wet dreams. The idea seems to be, in most of these books, that if you don't relieve your physiological pressures yourself, nature will do it and sort of show you how. That's one of the things about these ascetic religions---they have to put out these elaborate bulwarks against wet dreams, because they have to excuse them, or talk about how to handle it, because they all have them. So I don't think it's difficult finding how. (Pause) I'll read a few of the other things that Pomeroy said were against it---remember this is in the context of BOYS and sex, this is not written particularly for an adult audience, but I'll use it as a springboard because it gives a lot of the more obvious criticism and there are some other reasons that might be less obvious and more discussable (p. 33): "Boys who do it a great deal may, because it is solitary, miss the opportunity for other sexual experiences which are not solitary ... It is taboo at some levels of society; therefore it may arouse feelings of guilt, which is an unhealthy state of mind ... Many boys are afraid they will be discovered masturbating, and once more, the resulting fear is not a good mental state." Except that that can do a kind of flip, that some people, I think, get a heightened feeling of freedom when they no longer fear to be found, move away from home, and they know that Mommy or Daddy won't come through the door anymore, they can suddenly indulge themselves and they DO, more than they might have, had they not been there to start with, so it might have a reverse effect, too (Continuing): "It can be harmful if masturbation continues to be the ONLY form of sexual outlet an individual has as he grows older. It can be physically and emotionally frustrating if it is practiced without orgasm as the end result. Most often, however, a boy ejaculates when he masturbates." Here's the quote I was looking for before (p. 35): "Thus masturbation makes a complete cycle. It "comes on strong," as the saying goes today, diminishes to an unimportant role during the twenties, thirties, and forties, then returns again for an encore." So, again, it may be that since I'm getting near the end of that age range, maybe I'm just hearing more about it, because that's more normal. Yes, sir.
ARNIE: The reason we heard more about it is a book called "Portnoy's Complaint," that brought masturbation very much out into the open. It came out shortly after the Boy Scout Handbooks stopped talking about masturbation as being the sin that it was, so that in the early 60's, masturbation was the last taboo on the airwaves, that you'd hear on the talk shows, so that "Portnoy's Complaint" was one of the biggest---bringing it out into the open. And this dealt exclusively with men. Books like "The Hite Report" made it knowledgeable that women also masturbated, where the Kinsey report back in the 40's only dealt with men masturbating, not with women. It was published as lots of other things were being spoken about, not that they were necessarily being done more, but they were being more open about speaking about it, first with the men in "Portnoy's Complaint" and then "The Hite Report," five years ago, with women.
ME: That's a good point. Some of the books, though, are supposedly directed toward women, but I get a funny feeling they're somehow directed toward men. There's something I'd marked in a book called "Auto-Erotic Practices," a new enlarged edition (laughs as I hold up 79-page pamphlet) by Porter Davis, and it's generally about masturbation with women, but then you get this marvelous description (p. 23): what audience is this written for? "Having discovered the mysteries of the female adult, the young girl is enraptured with the entire form; the beautiful white breasts with their dainty red nipples, the pleasantly curved buttocks, the curly public hair, the pink inner lips of the vulva, wrinkled and slightly parted, seeming to resemble her vulva, yet so different. The woman, noting that she is being observed, will smile and then even her mouth and lips will appear inviting." It SEEMS to me---this writing doesn't go on about MEN in books that are directed toward men, it COULD be that this is written for a male audience, that's very interesting. If no one stops me I keep on talking, so you better think of something to say. Some of the other PROS I've thought about, that don't seem to be mentioned in any other books, and I'd like a discussion on whether these seem to be apt or particularly inapt. For one thing it's one of the most INTIMATE things that a person does: it's what a person does with him or her SELF, exactly as he or she would like it to be done. It also, in general, FEELS the best. Masters and Johnson made the remark, when they found out how to measure these things, they made the remark about the woman, in the section about female orgasm, yet all through the book they emphasize how similar the male is to the female in all the responses, and the statement is definitely that the intensity of orgasm is much, much greater with self-manipulation, second with a partner's manipulation under the direction of the self, and only third in actual man-woman sex (p. 133, paraphrased). So it seems to be that those two things come together for a very positive attraction to masturbation, and to be connected with someone ELSE'S masturbation, and the intimacy of it, and to the salient fact that THAT feeling is the person's most intense personal feeling IN an orgasmic state---of course ALL of this says very little about the idea of someone being "in love" with someone, or with all the emotional reactions on top of the strictly physiological reactions. The Masters and Johnson's machines have to measure physiological response: blood pressure, heart rate, which of course the emotions will contribute to, but I don't know of anyone that has a measure of emotion. And of course it might be that in other forms of sexual experience the EMOTIONS might be greater, but in the physiological, measurable components of orgasm, self-manipulation takes the cake.
Q: There's a lot of fantasy, not stimulation.
ME: Yeah here again it's a very intimate thing, because the fantasy is based solely on the individual, probably on other encounters that aren't present at the time, but it's strictly within the individual, whereas it would seem to me that sometimes an outward person would possibly interfere with some treasured fantasy: your partner isn't exactly doing what you'd like, so it would seem that that intimacy would still be retained, even with the fantasy.
Q: It seems to me that this is a reversal of the old story you know, that everyone talks about the weather but no one DOES anything about it; but here everyone DOES it, but no one wants to TALK about it. (Laughter) Everybody wants to have a certain amount of freedom with their own body. Everybody seems to do it. People say, "It's all right for guys in jail to do it, but it's not all right out here because in order to get into society you're supposed to be able to attract somebody else, and then you're supposed to be able to get it on right away. And doesn't happen. But then again even if you WERE somebody else, no one else to do it with, so you masturbate. And masturbation seems to be frowned on.
ME: In some cases, in relationships, it's especially frowned upon. I was in a relationship at one point, where my desire to masturbate meant to my partner at that time, that there must be something wrong with the relationship, because if the relationship were perfectly fulfilling, I wouldn't want to masturbate. So there's society; and he felt justified saying this, he didn't think he was being unfair or unkind.
Q: [Didn't record] Couldn't it be just a different form of escape?
ME: Well, the amusing thing was, this relationship ended about six years ago, and in the meantime he's come completely around in a circle and is VERY much into masturbation. (Laugh) It's hard to say where our relationship would be if he'd gotten into it earlier.
Q: Tell him he's wrong.
ME: It's hard to tell people they're wrong when they know absolutely for a fact that they're right.
Q: What this gentleman said is an indication of how deep-seated the religious prohibitions on masturbation are in the Western culture. It's something that's so deep seated that even with people who are intellectually aware that there's nothing wrong with it, are still edgy, in the back of your mind, that masturbation is something wrong.
ME: Is it really religion or is it more the parental---
Q: exactly---was emanating from---
ME: ... because I was raised a Catholic: I was never afraid that GOD would strike me dead, but my MOTHER might (laughter).
Q: You're unusual, it's always GOD that would strike you dead, not your mother, especially if you're brought up a Catholic.
ME: But that was what ...
Q: It's unusual. I think it's got a lot to do with the religion ... I don't think it's so much about the parent, I think that a young person is lots more concerned about finding himself exposed, about finding himself with his cock in his hand, and he's not ready YET to stand up and say "Well, this is what it is; this is what it looks like," but I think it's more afraid of being exposed than having his parents finding him masturbating.
ME: When you say exposed, do you mean physiologically revealed, or religious---
Q: I said revealed, he has his cock in his hand, and he's not ready to have his parents find him exposed, his cock exposed.
ME: This has echoes---who's wife turned to salt?
Q: Lot's.
ME: And the daughters saw the father's nakedness and it was a terrible crime?
Q: No, I think you're getting two Biblical stories mixed up. (laughter) No, I think with most young people it's more religious than parental, and I think they don't want to find themselves with their pants open and exposed in front of their parents. (Discussion about continuing on the same point).
Q: I was going to say that I was ignorant about the fact that it's a religious problem ... the present occupation ... It seems that children do not learn about masturbation with experience with other people. Now there's special places where you can go and I never ... I seen two movies ... I made two encounters with different fellows that were very much into masturbation. It was amazing.
ARNIE: In our society, it brings us back to the origin of the word "onanism," which is the word for masturbation; it can also be confused for "spilling one's seed," in the Bible. But most religions say that sex is ONLY to produce children, and anything that doesn't produce children is frowned upon. Then it's not parental, Bob, as much as the church or the temple saying, "You're not supposed to be doing this," and it's not the parents, but the parents acting in what they were brought up with, that they'd hit you, but from this, I think, comes the fact that someone who masturbates, privately, will not masturbate publicly. Someone who thinks nothing about masturbating in the privacy of their room or the shower, when they get into a relationship, they may consider what they did as being childlike or immature, because now they're in relationship with another person; and the idea that a man will masturbate if he's away on a business trip masturbating in front of his wife---COMPLETE schism between the two things, and a lot of the saying "It's immature, and now that I have a partner," is not being able to explain to a woman WHY they're masturbating. You offered one suggestion, the partner may find you have no NEED for it if I'm doing my job right. But really that women should---People who masturbate PRIVATELY, and never think of doing it publicly, and then people who get very excited about thinking of doing it openly, doing it with one other buddy, in a circle of buddies, in the various backrooms where it's done, in the movie house in the various places, you can take the same person who would do it secretly who would not be able to do it anywhere else, and the person who is feeling free enough to include it as a variety of sexual outlets and can do it openly. (No smoking)
Q: Before we were talking about who's responsible for transmitting the phobia about not masturbating; I think what we're really discussing is "Who in society is really responsible for transmitting these social mores in that society. I think it's really almost a hit-and-miss---either your parents transmit that more to you or if they miss, then it's reinforced by the institution, usually the church. And in cases of masturbation, for many years, for many generations, there was a taboo about speaking to one's children about ANY form of sex whatsoever. So usually, in that generation, over a period of thirty or forty years, many people were never told anything about sex by the parents, who were to be responsible for transmitting it down through the church, but I think the church would simply reinforce things that were unspeakable, but well known, to the parents. So I think it's hit-or-miss who really has the onus of responsibility of passing it down. If it's not done by the church, it's done by your parents.
Q: Casting the guilt aside; you can get beyond the guilt and the social mores and religious mores, the big thing about masturbation is that after it's all through, you have this feeling of "It's complete, because there's been no give and take." So in a sense you feel that, speaking personally, you got all excited, and then I gratified myself, and then I say "Gee, I wasted my time because there was just no exchange."
Mod: Is that universal, Bob?
ME: Um, it is and it isn't. There were a lot of people who responded who set it up to be completely satisfying where the highest praise they could give their jerk-off session was that afterwards they fell asleep. There were others who said things like "Gee, that was great, but there was no mouth there to take it," or "Yes, I was doing this, but I wanted someone to be there with me." But, in general, the people who responded to the survey were so absorbed in the process and everything that went into the process, of setting up their own little fantasy, surroundings, setup; THAT usually, they implied, satisfied them.
Mod: Fantasy (discussion conversation)
Q: I'm the one who came here to talk about "Trixie True," but I can't resist talking about j/o, the suggestion was made that jerking off and masturbation was unsatisfactory and it was basically a solitary experience. I am very much into the j/o trip, and I find an awful lot of satisfaction in sharing the experience with other people. The way I do it is, I feel good and allow it to be OK, for myself, I think initially to give permission to be open, and open myself up and allow myself to function with another person exactly as I would function by myself, and I think this gives the other person the comfortableness to do the same thing, and many, many people that I had sex with along these lines said that this was the first time in their experience that they had done with another person what they had done by themselves. So I think that masturbation can be a satisfactory sexual expression shared with another person and not necessarily have to be done alone. I do it all ways.
Q: Can I go on record about your survey and say it's a great ball.
ME: A great what?
Q: Masturbation. Ever since I was knee-high, I thought it was a great thrill. I would only like to say as far as what that guy said in the book about doing it when you're thirteen and fourteen, forgetting it in your twenties and thirties, and going back to it in your forties and fifties---you don't go back to it in your forties and fifties because you WANT it, you just go back to it because you're lazy, or you don't want to go out and cruise, or you don't make out with the young group. But when you're 40 and 50, you don't want to masturbate after you've been fucking. And I think that's BULL. And that's (laughter)
Q: I think, getting back to the point of whether it's society or religion or who is it that says you're not supposed to masturbate in society, I think you'd find it very hard ... include the fact that it doesn't feel good. You know, I masturbate---(tape turn) and it's not religious, and so it has to be people who are near you, you see, because when you sit down and talk about sexual experiences, you always talk about sexual experiences you had with other people. We'll never talk about sexual experiences we had with yourselves. That would totally backfire. We are really ...
Q: I think that one of the ideas ... no matter how much you quantify it with survey samples.
ME: The thing that I'm trying to do is to get a lot of different viewpoints to see how broad the subject should be ...
Q: Rather than make such statements as "This is the norm, this is a codification."
Q: I think it's mostly wish fulfillment or fantasy.
Mod: Person in front row?
Dennis: Yes, and my mind went dead, you'll have to come back to me.
Q: I also think we're discussing the situation from within our culture. There are many other cultures where it's more a fraternal experience, especially in a Catholic or Southern Italian or Spanish cultures, even in the Mediterranean culture, north African, where women have essentially been inaccessible for hundreds of years, where men develop (and women also) a very highly engrained fraternal and sororal experience, and develop masturbation to the point of it being a function of the culture, being together, as brothers, as sisters, has become more refined. We strike ... whereas in other cultures it's really more of a sharing instruction, as a ... brotherhood.
Dennis: There's a certain media thing that you learn, too. I started reading very early, and I skipped a lot of books that you were supposed to read as teenagers and I started reading adult novels, because that's where they would describe the sex scenes. I learned quickly it was at the end of each chapter, or in the last few pagers of each chapter, that the man would get together and have intercourse with the woman, and he would thrust his throbbing member into her, and I would read and reread this many times, but you would never read about a man masturbating. Neither did you read about a man's nipples being aroused, or the possibility of anything except him thrusting his throbbing member into her. So you know by the very fact that this was never written about that it was something that was not done and we should not do it. So at best it was a substitution for something else. I think it goes back to a form of celebrating your own body. Like "Hey, I'm beautiful," which I think is something that until very recently you weren't supposed to do.
ME: Yes, that's an excellent point. For instance, it's only very recently that all this mind expansion and body expansion has come to be ACCEPTED, what is now called the ME generation, because you're so interested in yourself.
Q: Men are never allowed narcissism; women are, men aren't. So that the emphasis always has to be on the woman enjoying herself; the man must enjoy something outside himself. For him to enjoy himself is very unhealthy and not other-directed.
ME: These are great, all points I haven't thought of.
Q: Don't you think that the interest you raised about the books merely indicates this is the publisher's conception of the kind of material that will sell...
Q: Outside culture. What he purchases of this
ME: To a society. Yet it does seem to be done.
Q: Only recently have we gotten other kinds of literature.
Q: The official rule on this, it seems to be, is that it's a religious taboo. The general society's prohibition ... The Catholic church ... Pope came out again and said it's a sin again ... It seems to me that in real life, it's shameful. That is to say, that you don't want anybody to watch you; you don't want your parents to know that you're doing that, that children who know about those things ... people watching, and doing it with others. Associated with that, though, is the thought ... an intense moment that if they're not participating in it ... like any kind of sex, if you're not participating in it, getting voyeuristically involved in it ... Seems to me ...
ME: Is there maybe a jealousy that you can't get into anyone else's skin? If we see two people reacting, if A is reacting to B and B is reacting to A.
Q: ... but also because ... it makes you an undesirable person.
Q: I think the reason they take it out in gay porno movies is that you have to show the ejaculation on the screen, because that's what the customers pay money for. He has to pull out ...
Q: ... you don't get paid.
Q: Don't you think that one of the taboos against the male masturbating is that if the male does this and anyone who observes him might be turned on, God knows what might happen to society if men turned each other on.
ME: Excellent.
Dennis: I think it's very much connected with what this fellow said about narcissism. I don't know why, but there's a great taboo against it. I think it's very exciting to see someone being turned on by themselves. I've done it with other people and I think---try it with the next partner you're with, say "Hey, you really think your cock is beautiful." They'll say, "Well, yeah, it's OK." "Well, you think it's beautiful, don't you?" "Well, YEAH ..." It's admitting---it's OK to say "the other" is beautiful, but to say that about yourself, there's an incredible taboo about that. And what is more intimately yourself than your cock?
ME: I hope everyone noticed the marvelous complimentarity of the last two comments.
Q: The taboo seems mostly to be connected with Western religions, because occasionally in my readings---I've lived in Oriental countries; I remember reading a book way back about Tibet, certain places, temples, where they even had a part of the temple where a man could masturbate and ejaculate in a certain part of the temple. In another book I read somewhere, in another country, I don't know whether it was Cambodia or another country close to it, where in, I think it was inside a temple, or outside, they would have posts where young men or boys would masturbate against. This book wasn't meant to be a pornographic book, but anthropological custom.
ME: Do you recall if there was a religious connection here. In other words, you say near the temple or in the temple---a lot of Eastern religions consider semen a very sacred fluid, and the fluid should be retained for individual purification and uplifting---was it connected with the religion? Do you recall?
Q: I don't recall now, but it seems it was. Definitely in the one about Tibet.
Mod: Bob, we're going way over our time, do you want to close up and give us a few statements before, and then if there are any questions they can ask you during our social hour afterwards?
ME: I have no particular closing statements. I wanted to engender a discussion and I've gotten it.
Mod: We're way over our time because it's been such a great discussion; don't forget, Bob will be available to talk to you afterward and we have a social hour with refreshments. Bob, thank you very much, and we'll have you back again. (Applause) I want to sincerely apologize for having to draw it to a close, but we have to get out of the building. (Announcements)
THURSDAY, 3/19/81: TALK WITH DENNIS ABOUT SEXUALITY 3/15: Incredible coincidence that AFTER talking with Amy and Ken about sexuality this morning (ACTUALISM 133) after my talk with Bruce (Actualism 127-32), HE came up with connected feelings. He's just returned from an orgy with 13 people at Jerry Rodgers', and is OVERWHELMED by how nice it was: how ALL these people, linked only as being friends of Jerry's, gathered and LOVED and SEXED and RESPECTED each other. He wondered at Jerry's seeming SEXUALITY exclusively with the group, but about his EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT to each of the people, including Dennis at their dinner afterwards. He felt touched, as if he were finding new levels of homosexual relating. I said this was just the sort of camaraderie Bruce was looking for in his men's pelvic session, and yet had no idea how to produce it. He talked of the heightening of sensuality with a group of men participating in the same activity, and how he could relate STRONGLY with two or three men in a group, and I said this had to be taught to Bruce, who thought it had to be two people ONLY for any kind of sensual-mental-emotional rapport. Dennis still seemed to be going through conflicts with Dick Currie, getting jealous when he saw him relating deeply with someone ELSE, wondering how WE would react to each other if WE were together, and I reminded him that we had some nice THREE-PEOPLE encounters with Theo and Mark someone. He seemed not able to find adequate words to describe the intensity of the situation, and he didn't seem to want to get together with me to talk about it more fully, so he was contributing to the problem that Crystal pointed out about HAVING both the casual AND the permanent that seemed to CONFLICT with each other. But I had no problem with Edgardo or Arthur Mitchell's intensity WHILE in the relationship with John, though neither of those THREATENED our stability since neither COULD be permanent, with Edgardo in Italy and Arthur into his ballet company. But the area is still wide open for MORE, rather than less, and this is what I keep having to insist to Bruce and Actualism AND to Dennis, who has to learn to ACCEPT it, rather than QUESTION it and tear it apart, while doing disservice to HIS emotions and conflicts at the same time.
MONDAY, 4/6/81: Note from HELLFIRE CLUB #1 - 3/16: My Monday slip got me in, but they said I should pick up a card downstairs. I never found where. Paid $5 to check my clothes, without anything to tip the guy. Sleazy bar area, but the back is even worse: overheated slapped-together walkways and "fantasy rooms" with holes cut crotch-high in the walls, with no one walking around. A raised stage with a horse-like bench on it, and in the back a spotlighted "torture chair" in bright red and chrome glint. Checked my clothes with a bright-eyed bald guy with too much flesh to be sexy, and he was into getting his ass eaten out after with his legs up in the Trendelenberg position in the red chair. The vested fellow was there getting people hot with his incessant jerking off, and he came at least two times on the horse. Ron was there in his pudginess and friendliness, but didn't want to seem to talk personally with me, just acknowledge my presence. Jerry ignored me the first time around the bar, since he was talking with someone, but then he came over and chatted with me. I liked looking at someone who turned out to be named Paul, and he came over and showed me how he liked to jerk off, but his tits were tiny and ungraspable, and when I leaned in for some nice affection, he didn't seem to want to participate. I cupped his balls as he shot, and the come SQUIRTED up very excitingly and struck me in the face, getting some around my left contact, so I then had an "excuse" to leave early, since my eye was bothering me a lot toward the end. Who turned out to be his roommate, Gary, "happened" to be sitting on the stool, supporting me while I jerked and jerked, mostly soft, wanting to come, feeling sexy in my boots, too hot in my flannel shirt, and I DID come, and they liked it, and he introduced himself as Paul and we agreed we didn't know what John was going to be doing next week. But as I left, about 11, there was a sign on the door (obviously AGAINST John, saying that they'd be showing J/O films next week, business as better than usual). Few people in the back, but I HATED the john-room: pissy and decadent and wet. Bartender looked NOT into j/o, which was too bad, and there were a few of the old and a few new, but though it was a bit of a downer, it was still exciting, enough for me to figure I'd probably want to see it again.
TUESDAY, 4/7/81: Note from HELLFIRE CLUB #2 - 3/23: Just under the wire at 9:30, somewhat smaller group than last week, but a few NEW people seemed sexy: a guy who didn't take off his blue jeans until way late in the game, when he got off with the sexy guy from the Heights; and a fellow who was jerking off with Paul and Gary (who gave me their numbers on a slip of paper, which Paul got from the humpy bartender that he wished would join in the activities: he might have, had he been asked, but he wasn't), and then fell into necking with an overweight jock that I was certainly better than. He brushed past me with a smile, and I thought there might be something, but he was occupied by his big friend. Without John or the vested guy, things were rather slow getting started, but there were still enough people to get interested in, except that I couldn't go over to them, they had to come over to me. At one point I followed the jeaned fellow into their cubicle and shamelessly went into the NEXT room and peeked through the peepholes until someone came along and leaned against the wall right there to jerk off while watching them. It was too hot, again, and I took off my shirt and jock and wandered around trying to get some attention, but nothing much worked. I told myself I'd stay around until the end, to watch some of the die-hards come, but some of the cuter ones DID come and then left, and when some rough-looking characters came down the OTHER stairway, the exit stairway, I fantasized that there might be some misunderstandings about the type of bar and then trouble, so I got my clothes and dressed quickly and left, at first surprised to see that it was as late as 12:30, but then found the first clock had been wrong and it was only 11:30, so I didn't even have to worry about getting the long-way-round train back home. Didn't care for it so much the second time, so I didn't have any conflicts about staying home to watch "The Tempest" on TV followed by the Oscars, and tonight I'm just not too sure about, rather disappointed that they DIDN'T have the promised j/o films, though no one was AS into rimming as the bald fellow, who wasn't there either. But tonight will tell me what I'm doing TONIGHT.
WEDNESDAY, 4/8/81: 4/6/81 note on TALKS WITH DENNIS ON TOUCHING: He kept saying how LONELY he was in his private writings; he keeps talking about how nice it is when others TOUCH him. I can't bring myself to say that his acned back turns me off. We have great sex, but I've forgotten what night it was. Then after the party on 4/4, Dennis having had maybe a bit much to drink, we get into bed at 11 and start jerking off, but suddenly he's into GREAT affection, holding intensely and squeezing his head up against the wall so that I have to interpose my hand to prevent his hurting himself, and he squeezes out tears and gasps, "I know I haven't said this very much, lately, but I love you," and then he went on to an even more heartfelt, "I NEED you," and I didn't know what to respond. After a few minutes I could honestly say I loved him too, but I felt in a turmoil about our relationship: WHY is it that when HE wants to be with ME, I don't particularly feel like being with him? And when we have a CHANCE for sex, usually one or the other of us is tired and wants to go to sleep, or is busy and wants to get up to start the day? I feel CLOSE to him at one point, but when we reach another point, I simply don't feel like exerting the energy to caress and comfort him and MAKE him feel loved and wanted. It seems so perverse but at the same time so APPARENT that there's nothing I seem to be able to do about it. I keep telling people that our relationship is tapering off, but then he'll do something like that which makes me wonder if I wouldn't be hurting him too much to cut off the relationship more than it is. He asked me to see "9 to 5" last night and it was AWFUL to say no, knowing that he'd want to share that with me, even though he said the writing was awful afterward. I don't have any control over it, it seems; and that might be one of the things that I don't like about it: HE seems to be calling the shots now. But he NEEDS contact with people, which I don't give him; he NEEDS new sexual encounters, which I can't offer him; he DOESN'T like indexing as much as the other indexers, but there's no way I can train him for what he'll do INSTEAD of indexing. So the situation gets less and less certain, and my control doesn't SEEM to matter, but I don't know where it's going!