It's 1969. You're wearing bell bottoms and platform shoes, long hair and love beads. You're watching "Laugh-In" and listening to raindrops falling on your head. You're driving a Beetle with a "Make Love Not War" bumper sticker. You've got a subscription to Playboy and you're feeling groovy. And when nobody's looking, you, along with 100 million others, thumb through "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask") by Dr. David Reuben.
And now it's 1999. You're wearing easy-fit jeans and Hush Puppies, a comb-over and a Medic-Alert bracelet. You're watching "Wall Street Week in Review" and listening to stress-reduction tapes. You're driving a Camry with a "Tommy Bartlett's Water Show" bumper sticker. You've got the Playboy Channel on cable, the Starr report on the night table and a friend in a chat room named Red Hot Mama. Any interest in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) -- the All New Edition"?
In 1969, when psychiatrist David Reuben approached publishers with the idea of writing a humorous book about sex (original title: "Beyond the Birds and Bees"), he was told to forget about it 23 times. One publisher sent him a note saying, "Funny books about sex close on Saturday night."
"I have it framed," says Reuben, 65, from his home in Costa Rica. "It's right next to the New York Times best seller list, which has the book at No. 1 for 55 weeks in a row."
That was a much more innocent and ignorant time. We weren't comfortable talking about sex in private, let alone in public. TV couples slept in separate beds. Druggists kept condoms behind the counter. Life magazine wouldn't use the words intercourse, penis or vagina. A 1960 study of medical students found that half of them believed masturbation led to insanity, and so did 20 percent of their teachers. If someone told you that in 30 years, we would be holding a public debate on whether oral sex was sex, you would have told him to take another hit on whatever he was smoking.
"There wasn't much sex education in those days," says Chip Rowe, who writes the Playboy Advisor column. "People couldn't even identify their own parts."
Everything changed
And then along came Reuben's book in its peppy, bright yellow cover, with its chatty question-and-answer format. ("Do peepers and exhibitionists ever get together? More often than one would imagine. Are nuns allowed to take birth control? Only under certain unusual circumstances. Doesn't gonorrhea prevent prostitutes from getting pregnant? The world of biology is full of surprises. Do men have a change of life too? Yes, unfortunately."
The tone, to quote the 1970 New York Times review, was "exuberant, wisecracking, jaunty" and "flippant." "Mr. Sperm" and "Miss Egg" get it on. Couples have "funsex." The description of an orgasm was so "incandescent," one reviewer wondered if the real thing might be "an anticlimax."
"The book just caught on," says Carolyn Anthony, who was the publicity director for the publisher, David McKay Co. "It was sheer luck. Two or three very good things happened. Life magazine and the New York Times both gave it good reviews. The book was something people wanted, and once those two said it was OK to read it -- the rest is history. We didn't need to advertise."
The publisher originally printed 10,000 books (in those days, 30,000 copies was a huge best seller) but soon went back to the presses. "A lot had to do with the title," says Esther Margolis, who was head of publicity for Bantam, the book's paperback publisher. "At the time, it was very original." Woody Allen later used it as the title for a movie.
When Reuben chatted with Johnny Carson, the "Tonight" show ratings went up. (NBC censors had to approve the use of the word "masturbation.") He had a monthly column in McCall's magazine. There was even talk of his own TV show.
"After I delivered the final manuscript, I was sitting in my living room, watching Johnny Carson on television," says Reuben. "My wife turned to me and said, 'You'll be on that show.' I said, 'You've got a great sense of humor.' "
The public clearly loved the book; sex researchers not so much. Some of the information was bizarre ("orgasm usually brings on a lapse of consciousness"). Some was just plain wrong. In 1972, Playboy ran a lengthy article on everything Dr. Reuben didn't know about sex; it pointed out a hundred errors.
Male homosexuals were deeply offended. Reuben said few gay men use their real names. Lesbians got barely two pages, and that was under "Prostitution."
Entertaining, useful
"I wrote a book on human sexuality, I wasn't running for Miss America," says Reuben. "My goal was to tell the facts as directly as I could in a way that was interesting and entertaining and useful for the reader."
Reuben says all the changes in human sexuality over the last 30 years inspired him to rewrite his book. That and his perception that, paradoxically, there's still a lot of bad information out there.
"Even though our attitudes have changed tremendously toward sex, and society's much freer and more opened," he says, "basic knowledge unfortunately has not improved that much."
He claims the 1999 edition is "96.8 percent" new, but it is an exaggeration. Many of the interviews have been spruced up and updated, but with very little change.
He does note many differences between 1969 and 1999. Abortion was illegal in 1969. There was no such thing as AIDS. Viagra hadn't been invented.
Reuben lives in Costa Rica with his wife, Barbara. They have been married 37 years and have five children ranging from 16 to 31.
Pub Date: 3/08/99