DIRTY WORDS
Reading between the lines of the 'Elements of Style'
By Andy Klein
Some anonymous friend recently sent me a copy of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman by Ian Kerner. (I'm always getting "prank" gifts.) Mr. Kerner's manual has much that is useful, though well known to any male beyond adolescence; for instance, he never even touches on elementary variations I'm sure you're all familiar with, such as Nose to the Grindstone, Alice B. Toklas's Mustache, and Mooring the Dinghy in the Cove.
Still, he has a breezy style, though his humor does not always work: for instance, among his "droll" conceits is patterning the book's organization and chapter headings after The Elements of Style, the classic writing guide by William Strunk Jr. (later revised by E.B. White and then Roger Angell). The presumed "joke" - a sex manual in the form of a grammar guide - can only seem funny to those who aren't aware that the original Elements of Style was already intended as a sex manual, albeit couched in guarded phrases, to satisfy the culture of its times.
Strunk composed the first version in 1918. Young men by the millions were returning from the war in Europe, and he knew that they had been exposed to things that had previously been verboten: The pussy, as it were, was out of the bag. But censorious bluenoses like Anthony Comstock would never permit the publication of an admitted sex book, so Strunk took on the task of preparing a manuscript that would appear to the proudly ignorant to be a grammar guide, yet would be instantly recognized by liberal sophisticates as a handbook about sex.
This was not a wholly new concept. For years, sexual information had been forced to go around in similarly musty drag. The popular formula for couples desiring pregnancy - "insertion before ejaculation but not after contraception" - had long been referred to with the mnemonic "i before e except after c," to avoid tainting the ears of children. An unfortunate side effect was that the traditional spellings of such common words as "reciept" and "decieve" had to be abandoned to conform to this grammatically illogical rule, so that the kids wouldn't start asking embarrassing questions. (The cost of correcting all those books was enormous.)
It doesn't take more than a quick glance to find hints of Strunk's true purpose. On the very first page, he coyly mentions the fertility goddess, Isis, as well as the admonishment "It's a wise dog that scratches his own fleas," an obvious reference to the wisdom of masturbation in an age of STDs (which were also coming back from Europe).
In addition, there is much discussion of conjunctions and even - this is, after all, a broadminded book - the proper use of the colon (for those with the taste for it). The index includes entries for "thrust," "verbal vs. oral," and "enormity." Dominance and submission are discussed at length, only thinly disguised as "active and passive voices."
White - whose relationship with his former teacher, Strunk, has long been a subject of speculation - drops some not-so-subtle hints in his introductory recollections: "From every line there peers out at me the puckish face of my professor, his short hair parted neatly in the middle and combed down over his forehead, his eyes blinking incessantly behind steel-rimmed spectacles as though he had just emerged into strong light, his lips nibbling each other like nervous horses, his smile shuttling to and fro under a carefully edged mustache." If there are any doubts that this is a portrait of a sex-crazed maniac, White dispels them by referring to " ... the remembered sting of his kindly lash ... "
White's own taste for sadistic anal sex comes through, perhaps unconsciously, in the sentence examples he added to the original. In Section I, Rule 7, he prescribes " ... three props: a knife, a piece of wood, and a back porch ... . Understanding ... that penetrating quality ... that grows from ... conviction, assertion, ... and humiliation."
Angell brings yet more interesting obsessions to the mix. In Section II, Rule 20, we find, "He noticed a large stain right in the center of the rug," followed by "New York's first commercial human-sperm bank opened Friday when semen samples were taken from eighteen men. The samples were then frozen and stored in a stainless steel tank." Except of course for that stain on the rug.
The Elements of Style remains a fine book for beginners, but it is, by design, little more than a catalog of first principles. Most adults are better served by The Chicago Manual of Style (preferably the now-out-of-print 12th edition) for a more comprehensive guide to practices and positions.
Kerner's instructions for "pleasuring women" are certainly more forthright than Strunk's, but they only go so far. For hints on what men should avoid, you may want to consult the recent bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves - whose title pretty much says it all.Published: 05/12/2005
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