Sex: An Oral History
by By Maurer, Harry
Category: Social Science , General

Anyone can tell you that sex is important, complex, exciting - and often difficult. We want affection? We want thrills? We want escape? We want true love? We want the raw edge?However rough the terrain, we occupy the land of sex and move in it. We keep our eyes closed or keep them open, make do with the body or use props. We're straight, we're gay, we're bi. We like sex lyrical, we like sex raunchy. We need familiarity, we crave newness. But can we communicate what we want? Do we admit it to ourselves?In this book, fifty-two people do admit their needs and communicate unforgettably while doing so. From twelve-yearold Amos Hartigan, who has yet to kiss a girl, to Judith Rothstein, age fifty-seven, who figures she has slept with a thousand men; from Jackie Dunhill, a bisexual finding liberation through S/M, to Protestant minister Eli Gregory, married and faithful for forty years, we learn about their realities and fantasies, their histories and hopes. They speak with extraordinary candor and in explicit detail about what they do. They reveal the singular landscape of their emotions: rapture, humor, pain, guilt, resignation, and passion. In many cases, they talking they do changes their lives immediately.Harry Maurer, the author of two previous oral histories, began this book because he noticed how hard it is for people to speak plainly about sex. By inviting such frank testimony from his subjects, he has cut through dogma, fear, and posturing to paint a serious and original group portrait of Americans as sexual beings. Sex: An Oral History is more illuminating than a library of how-to manuals, more erotic than a shelf of the best sex scenes in fiction.