Two pages leave nothing to the imagination in terms of erotic innovation, including things even I didn’t know. : Notes on Lust and Learning

Bad news in Culver City.

The school department tried to slip a dirty book into the library but, thank God, a group of alert parents heard about it, got a copy, read every filthy word (especially pages 96 and 109) and began raising a good deal of . . . well . . . heck.

They think the book is obscene and belongs in one of those places with painted windows that trafficks in French ticklers and X-rated animal movies.

The book, you see, is all about s-e-x. Well, not just sex, but sex in enough flaming detail to cause synaptic shorts in the brains of God-fearing, smut-hating Christian ladies.

Sure they read every putrid detail, because how can you know what slime the devil is churning out unless you study his slimy handbook? Makes sense to me.

Especially pages 96 and 109.

The book is titled “Changing Bodies, Changing Lives.” It was published in 1980 and I’m amazed that it somehow got by Culver City’s smut-watchers until now. Anything with bodies in the title has got to be objectionable.

But they finally did spot it, and demanded that the book be removed from the school library.

By the way, book, singular, is correct because they only had one copy and it was checked out by a girl who decided to keep it and pay the fine. I’m not sure whether she was moral or horny, but at any rate she still has the book.

The parents’ outrage went from Supt. Curt Rethmeyer to a special reviewing committee to the school board.

The result is that the book is not going to be reordered until a new edition is published in about six months, at which time it will be reviewed again to determine if it is as putrid as before.

Also, the board wants to know if a chapter on AIDS has been added, and the parents want to know if the author intends to point out that while things like oral sex might not cause pregnancy, they are filthy and wrong. See Page 96.

I asked Marcela Melendez, one of the Outraged and Disgusted Parents, what would happen if the book did not flat-out condemn what it was explaining in some detail. She said that if it appeared as before on the library shelves, they would once more raise seven different kinds of heck.

“The book is anti-marriage, anti-family and pro-promiscuity,” she said. “It teaches children how to have intercourse! If the new edition is the same as the old, we’ll fight it all the way!”

That goes for Page 109.

Melendez makes the point that if the kids at Culver High are sexually active, they already know about what’s in the book, and if they’re not, they don’t need it.

That’s not a valid point, however, because even though most American adults know what sex is all about, dirty movies are still big box office. The truth is, it’s fun just watching other people do it.

I must say that while I am opposed to censorship, “Changing Bodies” is pretty explicit, all right. Especially pages 96 and 109, which were pointed out to me in the first place by Melendez.

They leave nothing to the imagination in terms of erotic innovation, including some things even I didn’t know about.

Page 109, for instance. Those stretching exercises are entirely new to me and, I presume, to my wife, who has never mentioned them. We’ve been married a long time and I’m confident that somewhere along the way she would have explained them to me.

I’m frankly a little jealous that the students in Culver City are getting all this presented to them in a book. I had to learn it on my own, and that takes a long time. It wasn’t exactly drudgery, not like writing a column or anything, but it did take concentration.

Let’s see, now, you take one hand (a) and reach for the girl (b) and then you unsnap her ... (c) and you ... (d); then, if you still have the energy (e), you ...

All I can remember in terms of sex education in school are dirty comic books, something called party records and a girl named Gladys Crocker. She was a semester in herself, that Gladys.

I can still see her standing by the bleachers hollering “Class time!” to the guys passing by.

I’m not sure what she’d have done if she’d had pages 96 and 109 in her possession. They would have probably had to shut down the school.

I do not want to give the impression here that I am in favor of promiscuity, especially in an era when casual sex has taken on a dangerous new meaning.

Also I am not unaware of the moral considerations involved, despite the faint smile on my face when I mention Gladys Crocker, which, by the way, is not her real name.

The problem in Culver City, however, is that everyone is wrong. The book is overstated and the parents are over-reactive, conditions ripe for the town’s first all-out sex war.

There has to be an intelligent in-between and I hope they find it. But even if they don’t, it doesn’t really matter. While the parents are hollering morality and the schools are hollering censorship, the kids are going to find it on their own.

They always have.