Let’s get it on

Those fat, winged babies don’t need archery lessons to shoot stylized arrows through anatomically incorrect hearts.

That’s because cupids aren’t real.

But if you really hope to fall in love, stay in love, rekindle a love or simply find something to distract you until love comes around, chances are that getting sweaty and intimate will play a role. And, like any skill you intend to practice on a lifelong basis, it never hurts to spend a little time brushing up.

So, in the spirit of continuing sexual education, Xpress sent me on a mission to delve a little deeper into the topic of sex manuals. Thankfully, I’m a newlywed, and was able to convince my new wife to help me with … er … research.

A classic, revisited

In my early teens, I made my first honest attempt to cover the entire text of the Kama Sutra. I did most of my reading while pretending to browse the “Self Help” section of a chain bookstore (which happened to be next to their “Sexuality” shelf), hoping that passersby would think I had deep-seated emotional issues rather than a raging hormonal urge to read about people humping. From what I’d heard, Sir Richard Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot’s translation of Mallanaga Vatsyayana’s classic tome of Eastern sexuality was the definitive work in literary smut.

And yet, it took me about 15 minutes to realize that the Kama Sutra was anticlimactic. For one thing, much of the advice was beyond impractical—I’m unlikely to have several wives of varying ages, and even if I wanted them, where could I find a gold-plated hyena bone to make myself properly attractive to the opposite sex? And then there were the beautifully rendered drawings of completely impossible sexual positions that not only defied anatomy, but also common sense. It wasn’t titillating. It was funny.

Evidently, I wasn’t alone. In 2003, New York-based publisher Stewart, Tabori & Chang released a revised, condensed and re-imagined version of the Kama Sutra—as a pop-up book

The Pop-Up Kama Sutra, just a hair under 50 pages, contains six “paper-engineered variations” of the acts described in its predecessor, accompanied by plenty of pictures and the scantiest highlights of the original text. And, as my wife and I were able to confirm, it’s also more-or-less useless as a guide to meaningful (or, for that matter, possible) sex.

But is it fun? For about the first 30 seconds. But, as there are only six pop-ups, the joke dies pretty quickly. How many laughs can you really expect to get out of pulling a tab to watch a couple rock back and forth on the back of an elephant? (About two, in our case.) The book itself is also a little on the shoddy side—several of the pop-ups broke almost immediately.

To be fair, The Pop-Up Kama Sutra is intended as a gag gift, not a true tool for carnal enlightenment. Although, since we’re being fair here, I didn’t find it any less useful as a sex guide than the original.

Furry fun

In 1972, the first mainstream, modern, illustrated sex manual was published in America. The tasteful The Joy of Sex (cheekily taking its name from the popular Joy of Cooking series) spent 70 weeks in the top-five slot of The New York Times bestseller list. After centuries of sexual repression, Western culture finally had its benchmark work on the ins and outs … ahem … of making love.

Of course, I wasn’t born until a few years after The Joy of Sex was published. And, unlike many who remember the book’s heyday, I harbor no nostalgia for it or its impact on the culture. In fact, as my wife and I read through the 1972 trade-paperback edition, we had a hard time focusing on the content because we were constantly distracted by the book’s dated quality.

Blame the drawings. Joy looks like something an MFA student would turn in after a pre-deadline detour to a Rainbow Family gathering. (Armpits, the book instructs in no uncertain terms, “should on no account be shaven.”)

Much of the information is still fairly usable—what’s striking is what isn’t discussed. Male homosexuality, for instance, is barely mentioned, although female bisexuality is given plenty of largely positive treatment. STDs (under the now unfashionable term “venereal disease”) and the concept of safe sex (rather than birth control) are given just a few lines, a definitive mark of a pre-AIDS world.

The whole book doesn’t so much seem scream “classic” as much as it does “we were here first.”

Of course, Joy has gone through many, many updates and revisions since its initial publication. So unless you’re just looking for that perfect volume to complete your ‘70s-kitsch coffee table, I’d go with something more modern.

The modern-day how-to for the terminally hip

OK, so you’re not into the semi-mystical Kama Sutra (pop-up edition or standard), and you’d really rather not wade through the outdated info and hirsute imagery of the original The Joy of Sex. That’s dandy—but if you still want to learn about the details of getting hot ‘n’ heavy with another, a roadmap remains a requirement.

The Big Bang: Nerve’s Guide to the New Sexual Universe, by former Nerve.com sex columnists Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey (or “Em & Lo”), is an edgy, honest, unpretentious guide to the bewilderingly complex world of 21st-century sexuality. Sections like “Ah … Ah … Ah … Achoooo!!! The Anti-Climactic Orgasm Chapter” and “Fisting for Pacifists” suggest that sex isn’t any more sacred than you make it. Rather, The Big Bang is all about having good, fun, safe sex, regardless of your gender, persuasion or taste in music. Think of it as Sex Ed for the too-cool-for-school crowd.

Of course, the pansexual approach can get tedious, and the book assumes the reader will be having nothing but casual couplings with pretty much anyone of any gender who strolls by. There’s no discussion of love, for instance (and even if there were, there’s no index by which to look it up). Worse, the semi-pornographic illustrative photos rarely have much to do with anything in the text, and seem more suited to a particularly dirty American Apparel ad. Like that scenester hottie you could never work up the courage to talk to, it’s hip, but not approachable.

A guide for the rest of us

So, what’s a would-be student of sexuality to do? Surely, there must be an informative, up-to-date, non-intimidating guide out there. Fret not, sexy reader. We found just the thing.

Now in its fifth edition, the Guide to Getting It On is exactly what you’re probably looking for. Running at just over 850 pages, it may be colossal—but Paul Joannides’ epic sex guide is relevant and easy to read. As open-minded as The Big Bang, Getting It On is yet braver, unafraid to tackle such non-hot topics as how sex is impacted by romance, aging, disease, pregnancy and parenthood. As a guide, it’s truly adult, but avoids the grown-up trap of being boring.

Illustrated by comic-book artist Daerick Gross Sr., Getting It On manages to infuse its informative images with a little tongue-in-cheek humor. In fact, it’s by far the most visually explicit guide I reviewed for this article, yet the drawings don’t look dirty. And, unlike The Joy of Sex, the images are also of a variety of people, rather than a seeming collective mass of proto-dreadheads.

It isn’t perfect, its major crime being also its major attraction: too much information. Even for the most devoted enthusiast, the 60 pages devoted to “Sex in the 1800s” is hard to justify.

Afterglow

But what about the thing you really want to know: After having spent the better part of two weeks reading sex manuals, am I any better in bed? Has all this education paid off? Is my gold-plated hyena bone working?

Although I’d have preferred to have taken a written test, there was really only one way to be certain.

“Hey, wake up!” I whispered into the napping ear of my wife, who’d crashed out shortly after returning home from work. “I’ve got a really important question to ask you.”

“What?” she mumbled, halfway between confusion and irritation.

“You know all those sex guides we’ve been reading? Have they made me better in bed?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, as though having trouble processing the question’s importance. After thinking about it for moment, she answered something along the lines of a “no,” and then rolled over, burying her face in a stuffed animal.

Obviously, you can’t improve on perfection.

What the local sexperts say

“You want to know what I think? I’m against sex manuals! Tell everybody, ‘Swami Virato is against all sex manuals!’”

To those who know him, it should be of no surprise that Swami Virato (aka J. Charles Banks) has strong opinions on the topic of sex and sexual education. As the host of the 880 AM radio show “Virato Live,” Indie columnist and publisher of the Web-based Asheville Magazine, Virato has made his strongly voiced thoughts his calling card. But, as a teacher of Tantra since the late 1970s, he also has reason to doubt the ultimate use of sex instruction.

“I really do have a problem with sex guides,” he says, letting his on-air persona relax for a moment. “They tend to titillate the physical side, but not the spiritual. In fact, I’d be embarrassed if someone gave my wife and I a sex manual.”

So, what does the good Swami recommend for those who need to add a little spice to their bedroom? A few good tantric-sex workshops, right? Wrong. “Actually, that’s a serious misunderstanding; sex isn’t a major element of tantra,” he says. At best, he divulges, the techniques of tantra, when applied to a sexual setting, can “move your physical relationship to a higher level.”

Instead of recommending any specific technique to lovers, Virato urges something surprisingly simple. “The most important thing to realize is that there is more to the person you are with than just their body. If that’s all there was, you could just get a high-quality blow-up doll. But, you can’t replace their eyes, their breath, or the sensation of melting into the other. If one is sensitive to their partner, they can learn everything else from experimentation.”

Of course, not everyone is quite as willing to delve into the mystical side of sex without knowing a little something about the basic moves. Who doesn’t remember that awkward, fumbling first time? And—horror of horrors—what if you’re still needing a remedial class in basic sexual education? Surely, a little help would be welcome.

“There’s just not enough classes and information about oral-sex techniques.” Enter another of Asheville’s sexperts, Angela Montgomery. “It’s not usually discussed, and no one really ever tells you how to do it,” she continues. “It’s absolutely possible to learn these techniques from books.”

As the owner of the Ineffable Woman, a “safe and comfortable” erotic boutique in downtown Asheville, Montgomery makes it her business to de-mystify the essential facts about sex. She’s lectured at UNCA and Warren Wilson, and will shortly begin teaching a sex-ed class at Asheville School.

Montgomery claims that a good sex manual can illuminate some basic elements of the act. “Every individual is different,” she allows, “but there are some universal things that do not change from person to person. You’re always going to know where the clitoris and the G-spot are, for example. Learning how to stimulate those parts are really all that’s going to vary from person to person.”

Montgomery recommends Ian Kerner’s She Comes First and He Comes Next, guides that stress an anatomical approach but put it all in layman’s terms. “Another great one,” she says, “is the The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex, which addresses almost every question you could have. They also add a lot of humor, which is good, because people can be uptight about unknown things.”