"The Joy of Sex"

The classic sex manual -- "Updated for the 21st Century!" -- offers good advice but has a fetish for underarm hair and a very unsexy cheeriness.

By Charles Taylor

Nov 8, 2002 | Cheeriness is not sexy. A smile -- salacious, conspiratorial, sly -- is. And so are shared jokes, dirty or otherwise. But cheeriness, which can imply a sort of pep-talk falsity, is a real turn-off. And "The Joy of Sex," just reissued in an edition said to be "Fully Revised & Completely Updated for the 21st Century" (of which more later), fairly reeks of cheeriness.

When "The Joy of Sex" first came out in the early '70s, I was too young for it to be more than something I'd peek at surreptitiously in bookstores or upon chancing to find it in someone's house (and I found it in houses I wouldn't have expected to). By the time I was old enough to look at it, it was something of a joke -- particularly the illustrations of the hairy Lawrentian hippie male, his hirsuteness nearly matched by the thickets under his partner's arms. The text itself often sounded like the work of a doddering hippie eccentric who was more taken with his cuteness than anyone else would be. Comfort's division of sex into "Appetizers," "Main Courses" and "Sauces and Pickles" sounded less like an erotic invitation than the menu at one of those restaurants where the food is plentiful without any of it tasting very good. It wasn't until I saw Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch as the hairy, academic lovers in the "Saturday Night Live" sketches that I thought, "That's exactly the sort of people this book is for." You know the sort, the ones still reading "Siddhartha," wearing macramé vests, and saving for that summer sojourn to Mykonos.

Comfort died in 2000. It's not clear whether this revision was finished before he died or if others worked on it. And obviously, with 5 million-plus copies sold in the U.S. alone, lots of different kinds of people have read it (or at least own it after receiving it as a gift). When I began reading through this new edition, though, it took me a while to figure out why the book gave me such a swift pain.

It's easy to be superior or dismissive when evaluating sex manuals, easy to decide a book isn't hip enough or daring enough and forget that plenty of people need information on the basics before they get advice about setting up a threesome or using a dildo on their partner. More than anything else, these people need simple, informative, reassuring, honest talk that tells them they aren't freaks or perverts.

In a lot of ways -- for heterosexual couples at least -- "The Joy of Sex" delivers that. Comfort's underlying argument is for communication and tenderness (which needn't preclude passion or even aggression) in sex. He has no time for cads of either sex, and he believes that every sexual encounter should be marked by respect for your partner. He also stresses that adults have to take responsibility for their sexual behavior, not just by practicing safe sex but also by taking note of a partner's emotional and physical state. He doesn't completely shy away from the element of aggression that always exists in sex, and he's not so squeamish or unrealistic that he links sexual aggression to hatred or sadism. While he warns against the damage that lying can wreak in a sexual relationship, he makes the same warning about absolute candor. Sometimes, he just offers good practical technical advice. If, for instance, you've ever tried to have sex standing up with a partner much shorter or taller than you, you might be grateful for Comfort's tip that a couple of telephone books can make things easier.

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