SEXIS WRONG

Beat Off 101
Earl Kemp
Masturbation is not only an expression of selfregard:
it is also the natural emotional outlet of
those who...have already accepted as inevitable
the wide gulf between their real futures and the
expectations of their fantasies.
—Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant
This is the graduate course. The prerequisites are “Pornography:
Its History and Purposes” and “Propaganda: Its Use as
a People Suppressor.”
Very early in the life game, I became involved with dirty books,
the kind men like, and I wasn’t even one yet…a man…just a
kid. Then, as quickly as I could and when I thought I was a
man, I moved into the world of dirty-book publishing, all by
way of setting the stage for what’s going on here.
It was 1961 when I became a certified pornographer. I was
thirty-one at the time, thought I knew it all, and couldn’t say
fuck without blushing. I signed on with Nightstand Books
in Evanston, Illinois, which had been in business just over a
year…almost like getting in on the ground floor. I was the third
man hired to work side by side with science fiction cohorts
Harlan Ellison and Ajay Budrys. In 1965 we made a massive
move to San Diego, became Greenleaf Classics (“The Porno
Factory” to insiders), and started ejaculating sleaze books in
geyser fashion.
Those early years in sleaze-book publishing, in the USA anyway,
found most of us involved with it floundering around
and wondering what we were doing and how to do it just a
little better. We were interested in profits to begin with, and
not much of anything else, only over time that became much
more about legality and moral issues and illegal activities by
people beyond reproach but usually in it up to their sleazy,
greed-stuffed assholes.
To offset that lack of knowledge, there were a lot of people
conducting a lot of surveys trying to find out what it was that
we should be doing, disguised as, “What is it about pornography
that turns people on?”
Pretty early on, at the University of Copenhagen, Dr. Berl
Kutchinsky was undertaking some groundbreaking research
in just that. His studies involved interviews with a large number
of people discussing the realities of their sex lives. I was
fortunate enough to become involved with the fringes of the
Kutchinsky studies during my frequent trips to Denmark during
those days.
In 1968, President Johnson ordered up the big one, the Presidential
Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, but that
was a few years down the timeline. Because it eventually
resulted in Greenleaf’s The Illustrated Report of the Presidential
Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, of which I
am unreasonably proud, I can’t pass up the opportunity to
mention it again.
Then there’s Donald H. Gilmore, PhD, the ultimate pornography
connoisseur. He wrote fiction and nonfiction under his
own name, “Dale Gordon, PhD,” “Del Grayson, PhD,” and
others. Dr. Gilmore had been at it for years before me and
was so saturated in it he could quote chapter and verse without
lifting his carefully manicured hand or raising his voice
even noticeably. It was uncanny to watch him in operation
in the 1960s, because he was so smooth. He could’ve sold
anything he wanted to, I suspect. He certainly sold enough to
me. Enough to make me thank him and remember him and
think of him forever, at least.
Gilmore was one of the first people I met when I moved with
232 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG