Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk, 229 pages of precisely calculated, punch-by-punch sex gags, is a compilation of charts, blurbs, anecdotes and hey-didja-knows from the “Association for the Betterment of Sex.” Perhaps more accurately, five guys who write funny things in shows and magazines decided to get together and write a funny book. Scott Jacobson (The Daily Show), Todd Levin (The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien), Jason Roeder (The Onion), Mike Sacks (McSweeney’s, Vanity Fair), and Ted Travelstead (Esquire) have together assembled an incredibly comprehensive and structurally satisfying sex manual that makes fun of sex manuals.
I approached this compilation with high hopes. I’m all for de-tabooing sexual discussion, and what better way to encourage frank and open discourse than an in-your-face humor book? I looked forward to an easy and amusing read.
As irresponsible and at times outright odious as it is moderately amusing, the guide plunges first through human reproductive anatomy (penis sweaters and rating your genitals on the Harrison Ford scale are discussed), before reviewing pick-up lines to be avoided (isn’t that all of them?). A favorite deserving mention: “Do you come to this hospital chapel often?” But to my slight disappointment, and in contrast to my initial expectations, the lines that made me smile – let alone laugh – were relatively few and far between.
It is the kind of book that you see on the gift shelf at Borders and flip through while the person you accompanied there peruses the New Fiction aisle; it is a good way to pass fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe even a half an hour, before the diagnoses of phony professionals begin to blend together and you wonder if you should start getting offended by the allusions to gang-bangs.
But, with some special stamina, there are gems to be found. Should you ever need to tell your partner about the STD you now share, you could try, “My friend Danielle bought her fiancé a sweater he didn’t like, but the store wouldn’t take it back. What if I were Danielle, you were the fiancé, the sweater was herpes, and the no-return policy on the sweater was the lack of a cure for herpes?” There is similar advice aplenty, from a Did I Just Lose My Virginity checklist (#7: “knuckles chapped and bruised from fist-bumping yourself”) to the best places to masturbate in public while evading detection (“#3: Meet-and-greets for users of Friendster.com”).
While the introduction hails the volume as one for “man or woman, gay or straight,” some words of warning: women and gays, proceed with caution – I didn’t see it at first, but this was probably obvious from the get-go. In books like these, no group goes unsatirized, and yet those with whom the authors do not sexually identify seem to bear a significant brunt. The book calls the female orgasm a myth, claims the vagina will never be happy, and that women can get their husbands to give in to threesomes without argument, while the reversed situation is oftentimes an insurmountable struggle. (I do concede that gender jokes like these are funny to some people, but it just gets excessive!)
There is this bizarre chapter on homosexuality tacked on to the end for “heterosexuals like you” to be primed in “same-sex arts.” The ridiculous male gay stereotypes, like “Leather Daddy” and “Insufferable Old Queen,” are absurd enough to poke fun at the ridiculous gay male stereotypes that actually exist in our culture – okay, I get it. The female “Bull Dykes” and “Garden-Variety Lesbians,” however, who respectively dress like the Brawny paper-towel mascot and are turned on by abusive men, seem uncomfortably similar to the stereotypes they are presumably satirizing.
But of course, if you are even willing to commit to a book brimming with as much sardonic gusto as Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk, you are doubtlessly not easily offended, else the references to bestiality and necrophilia, among other tasteless and so-appalling-it’s-basically-expected sexual tidbits, would have sent you walking at a fast clip (running in Borders is discouraged). The shock factor tends to fizzle, though, after the 1002nd inappropriate reference, which I would think does nothing but sap a reader’s attention, as well as reveal that a single subject cannot really be fresh, biting, and hilarious for over two hundred jam-packed pages.
There are arguably a handful of reasons to soldier on from chapter to chapter, even through songs to teach your children about oral sex, and “litterboxing” fetishes: everyone has a different humor palate, after all, and you’re bound to be amused by something(s). Though initially I found the quiz: Are You Sexually Attracted to Animals unfunny – the question: “Complete the following sentence: ‘Old McDonald had a a) cow, b) pig, c) dark and disturbing secret” nearly changed my mind. And then I thought, what is wrong with me? But perhaps encouraging alarming self reflection can be chalked up as one of the book’s unconventional charms.
Buy Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk if vulgar humor holds a very special place in your heart, if decently funny jokes are the kind you want to revisit time and time again or if you have a particularly impressive attention span. If not, it’s best left on the Borders shelf, instead of costing you nineteen dollars and attracting unwanted attention at your bedside table.
