I looked, enthusiastically, to see what was possibly "new" that required an update of the 70's classic, "The Joy of Sex."
Not much.
Oh, sure, there was the necessary addition about Viagra, Hormone Replacement Therapy and seeking therapy for sexual problems, but basically that's about it. I could be a cliche, I suppose, and suggest that after 60 some odd years of age the joy found in the bedroom is awakening, delighting in knowing that you have a pulse.
I know what fascinated me about the Joy of Sex (new and improved or the first version, written some 40 plus years ago), was the story behind the story.
As reported in an article entitled Doing It "Comfort and his wife, Ruth, divorced shortly after “Joy” came out:
the unpleasantness of his infidelity seems to have been heightened for
Mrs. Comfort when her husband became internationally known as “Dr.
Sex.” In 1973, a few months later, Comfort married his mistress and
muse, Jane, and the two moved to Santa Barbara so that Comfort could
assume a post at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a
liberal think tank. The move also gave them closer proximity to the
Sandstone, a clothing-optional community of utopian swingers in Topanga
Canyon, which was reportedly visited by Timothy Leary, Sammy Davis,
Jr., Betty Dodson, and the porn star Marilyn Chambers, and which
Comfort and Jane had frequented since 1970. “Often the nude biologist
Dr. Alex Comfort, brandishing a cigar, traipsed through the room
between the prone bodies with the professional air of a lepidopterist
strolling through the fields waving a butterfly net,” Gay Talese wrote
in “Thy Neighbor’s Wife.”
But Jane, according to a friend who was
interviewed by the journalist Pagan Kennedy, eventually tired of group
sex and open marriage. (Sexual fads may come and go, but jealousy is
forever.) At the same time, Comfort’s relationship with the Center for
the Study of Democratic Institutions soured, and he became involved in
lawsuits with the center over breach of contract. In 1985, Comfort and
Henderson returned to England, where he lived the rest of his life,
more or less monogamously, in Kent."
More or less?
I guess as it relates to sex, more is still better than less. Agree?
