In contrast to the lifeless prose of sexologists, this 50-year-old publication stood apart for its relaxed, approachable style and its emphasis on pleasure
was 1972 and liberation was in the air. While Jane Fonda was in Hanoi beseeching American soldiers to stop bombing Vietnam, college students back home urged whoever would listen to make love, not war. What, exactly, it meant to make love in the age of sexual revolution, however, was anyone’s guess. For baby-boomers’ parents, sex was for procreation, and if it brought husband and wife closer together, that was an added bonus. At least, this was the orthodox view.
Amid this chaos, Alex Comfort imposed some order. The British scientist hoped “The Joy of Sex”, first published 50 years ago, would do for sex what “Joy of Cooking” had done for food: equip readers with the basics and provide a “gourmet guide” for those seeking sexual satisfaction. His manual aimed to demystify sex and teach people how to enjoy it. After all, the idea that sex should be joyful was far from an obvious one at the time.
Riffing on the cooking theme, Comfort encouraged his readers to move from “starters” to “main courses”, served perhaps with “sauces and pickles”. Make a habit of nudity in the house, he counselled. Try oral sex and bondage, a “wild sexual sensation”.
Comfort studied his subject in the wilds of free-sex communities such as Sandstone, a swingers resort in California. Gay Talese, an American writer, spotted Comfort there, sauntering nude between “prone bodies with the professional air of a lepidopterist strolling through the fields with a butterfly net”. And “with the least encouragement,” Mr Talese wrote, Comfort “would join a friendly clutch of bodies, and contribute to the merriment”; sometimes Comfort’s wife tagged along too.
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