Furtling

Ah, the Victorians. Frantically covering nicely-turned table legs one minute, then indulging in suggestive hand manipulation the next. Furtling, a fantastic word which rolls off the tongue with just the slightest allusion to furtiveness and fondling, is classic Victorian entertainment, and it works like this:

Take one image - possibly a woodcut of a young lady, sitting at her dressing table, or a gentleman on a beach, drying himself with a towel. Note that the image has cut-out regions: the young lady's legs appear to be missing, and the gentlemen's buttocks have been replaced with a suspiciously-shaped hole.

Having read the instructions, place one's hands appropriately behind the image, filling the gaps, as directed, with skin. Mmm... sensuous, realistic, strokable skin! Well, actually we all know it's just fingertips, but to the repressed and easily-amused Victorian masses a gentleman on the beach sans knitted swimsuit was akin to hardcore porn. As for the lady, her legs nicely filled in with a pair of fingers, the knuckles cunningly forming her knees... well, it certainly brought a giggle to after-dinner proceedings, and led quite nicely to the suggestive songs about coconuts.

The practice, unsurprisingly, was a subject of much controversy. The Reverend F.B. Cummings got into quite a stew over the practice, declaring forcefully 'The hand was not meant for this, Sir'. Others disagreed and a range of high society members proclaimed its virtues, even as the practice dwindled.

Strangely, furtling lives on. A good source of history is The Naughty Victorian Handbook: Furtling: The Rediscovered Art Of Erotic Hand Manipulation by Burton Silver and Jeremy Bennet. Alternately, the internet can be relied on, as usual, to produce a range of people who think furtling is more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.

A gallery at www.xenophilia.com features such diverse individuals as Sarah, 23, who runs an ostrich farm, and Bill, 30, an Egyptologist, who are all keen to show you their 'finger buttocks'.

Also, there are exciting things afoot at Fentiman's, with only the slightest ulterior motive. I tried the ginger beer once, and I must say I wasn't entirely impressed.

Destricted

Destricted is a collection of short films linked by a common theme of sex. Like Shortbus, Lie With Me and 9 Songs, the film has achieved notoriety for its inclusion of unsimulated, graphic sexual activity. Ostensibly investigating the realms of art and pornography, the film has been exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, followed by a number of other events, and is now on UK DVD release with an 18 certificate. The DVD was released in a limited edition silver vacuum-pack on September the 25th, 2006.

The classification of the film as an 18 in the UK is itself an indication of the content of the film, a reflection of its intent to present itself as art rather than pornography, for which a Restricted 18 classification would be more suitable. A US release is, of course, unlikely.

The films:

Balkan Erotic Epic / Marina Abramović

Almost educational, this film features old rituals from the Balkans. Each ritual is introduced and followed by a short film section or animation showing the mechanics of the ritual. We see a variety of women leaping about in the rain, trying to get the raindrops to fall on their labia. A field of men, viewed from above, fuck the ground to ensure its fertility for the coming year; a rather bizarre sight if truth be told. Three sets of men in traditional Balkan dress stand proudly before us as a Balkan folk song is played over the top, the subtitles looking strangely incongrous beneath their erect penises which protrude from their flies. The animation of a Balkan housewife removing a dead fish from her vagina is surreal, particularly when she grinds it up to brew a love-potion-esque mug of tea, but not as alarming as the one where she wipes her vaginal secretions on her son's face to bless him for a journey.

Hoist / Matthew Barney

Made up in greens and browns, with shredded leaves and moss surrounding it, a penis slowly becomes erect over a period of minutes. For the first few minutes it is unclear what is happening; it seems as though some strange, slug-like creature is writhing slowly over a forest floor. A large machine is then introduced to us, and workmen attach it to a crane so that its wheels might be hoisted from the ground. Rumbling into action, the camera slowly zooms beneath to the drive shaft of this massive vehicle. There, initially stroking it before raising himself to rub his erect penis against the wax-coated, spinning shaft, is a man. Presumably the owner of the penis at the beginning of the film, he is covered in leaves, dirt and other plant matter. A large gourd hangs from his anus and there is a similar protrusion from his mouth. He continues to rub his penis against the drive shaft as the camera zooms and pans, slowly, occasionally showing the edges of the massive, lazily spinning wheels of the machine. Eventually, after drawing back his foreskin, the man achieves orgasm and ejaculates. We zoom back out from the belly of the machine, past the spinning wheels, and the film ends.

Sync / Marco Brambila

Short, but clever. Taking hundreds of scenes from different pornographic films, the director cuts it all together with a frantic drum track to make a new film. The scenes are chosen and cut together so that it looks like one shot, but with the actors' faces, legs, buttocks and genitals changing in a constant blur. It produces a kind of generic porn film and serves to show that there truly is only so many ways you can fit people together.

Impaled / Larry Clark

One of the more intellectually fascinating pieces. A series of young men appear and are asked a variety of questions about their attitude to sex. It becomes apparent that they are auditioning to take part in a porn film, although the interview also reveals their own attitude to sex as a generation that has grown up with readily available porn. It's fascinating, for example, to find out that each of the men believes it is important to ejaculate outside the vagina, or to note the utterly naive expectations of various aspects of sex. One young man is chosen, and at this point he is asked to interview and choose from a range of female porn stars. He chooses an older woman who is willing to have anal sex with him. She performs fellatio on him, and they have vaginal and anal sex. He eventually ejaculates, following a slight accident during the anal portion of the activity. Most people realise that if you're going to try that you're inevitably going to notice something brown one day. Of course, in the glorious world of pornography such things never happen, and the revulsion on the young man's face is wickedly joyful to behold. A sad film, actually, and probably the best of the bunch.

We Fuck Alone / Gaspar Noé

Strobe lit for about twenty minutes, I'm afraid. Two people in separate rooms masturbate while watching the same piece of pornography. A young man with a bizarrely Hitler-esque haircut masturbates and fucks a sex doll before fucking its mouth with a handgun of some kind whilst ejaculating into its vagina. The woman uses soft toys to stimulate herself. Every now and then we zoom into the television, through the pornography which forms a reflection of the solo sex act, and back out into the other room. The message, one presumes, is that sex without love is merely masturbation using another human. Either that or Gaspar Noé is actually mad. (See Irreversible for further evidence of this, but take care to check for some further details before committing yourself; it's violent.)

House Call / Richard Prince

An old porn film with the soundtrack replaced with strange, industrial-tinged electronica. The film has been produced by recording a television showing the porn video. You can't see the edges of the screen, but the pattern of phosphor dots is clearly visible, making a grainy, washed-out image. It's strangely clinical to watch, and not even slightly erotic. Although, come to think of it, not one of the videos has been remotely erotic so far. Plenty of genitalia and nudity, but not a lot of eroticism. Perhaps that's the point.

Death Valley / Sam Taylor-Wood

We pan slowly across a desert scene. A man appears, walks nearer to the camera and removes his shirt. He opens his jeans, pulls them down to his thighs, kneels and masturbates. A few minutes later he uses his t-shirt to lean his elbow on and continues to masturbate, keeping his body off the ground by supporting it on his knees and elbow. He kneels up, wanks some more, props himself up again and eventually ejaculates onto the desert floor. And then it ends. If you like men then I suspect this is the nearest you'll get to erotic, and I'm not sure why this isn't just pornography - it's a man wanking in front of a camera. Still, there you go. Art needs no explanation...

Sources: Do visit the imdb for more information. Someone there has also gone through the films one by one for you. There's not a lot of information on Wikipedia, but you can always pop over to the Destricted website for more info.

Gang Bang

A gang bang is serial sex with more than two partners. It has been claimed that this is the sort of sex for which our bodies are designed, citing the difference in average time for orgasm between men and women as primary evidence for this view. It is well known (and sometimes cursed) that men can reach orgasm in a relatively short time - as little as two or three minutes - whereas some women may take twenty minutes or more. Certainly, one can see the advantage a clan of primal humans could gain from having more than one male inseminate each woman, however distasteful this may seem to more socially aware minds. Such sex and indeterminate paternity of the resulting offspring would bring the clan together and ensure the sharing of food and resources when necessary. This is, of course, the type of behaviour engaged in by many primates, ostensibly our closest relatives.

Gang bangs differ from a menage a trois, troilism, candaulism, or the practice of having simultaneous sex with multiple partners (also known as the Mongolian cluster). The term gang bang can unfortunately be applied to rape situations in which a group of rapists take turns to violate the victim. However, a gang bang can also be organized and consensual, and notable gang bangs have even made their way into the public eye recently, such as the case of Annabel Chong, whose exploits are now world famous. Waiting in line at such events, televised or not, may have some benefits, as (according to various participants), watching other men have sex can be both stimulating and educational. The tension and anticipation is undoubtedly higher than during ordinary group sex, where the group's attention is shared amongst multiple acts and focused on the current partner.

Individuals may, of course, indulge in less organised gang bangs, experiencing many partners in one night. They may slip away from social events with a range of partners to have sex at intervals during the night, perhaps even without their sexual partners being aware that they are merely one of many that night. Whether such behaviour is indicative of satyriasis or nymphomania is debatable. Safe sex practices are imperative in such situations, however, and the responsibility of each individual.

Other examples of gang bang related practices are the so-called two-minute parking lot test, where an individual can check out a string of prospective partners, without any committment, before settling on a final choice for the evening. Rejected partners are said to be content at having received the consolation of a couple of minutes of sex, and subsequently chosen partners receive a boost to the ego and the promise of further participation later on.

Both these examples differ from the standard idea of a gang bang in the sense that subsequent partners are unaware of their participation in the event; the situation is more one of an individual sleeping with separate partners in a short timespace.

The moral view of gang bangs varies greatly. There are those who frown on anything other than a one partner per life, let alone one per night. Even those who consider one partner per night to be permissible may consider more than one partner in such a short space of time to be irresponsible or wanton behaviour. The moralities of consensual gang bangs are for the individual to decide, but the desire for safe sex should be paramount, regardless of personal philosophies or morality.

(Bonus points for working out the relevance of the image.)

Sex Dwarf - Soft Cell

Sex Dwarf is a track by Soft Cell, and let's hope you were aware of that when you clicked on this, lest you turn out to be curious about actual dwarves and wish to see them in a range of sexual situations. Actually, if that is the case, you'd be better off hunting on Google Images, or some other specialist site. However, while you contemplate this, consider the real truth, which may or may not be a revelation to you: in the mid-eighties the band Soft Cell, comprising Marc Almond and Dave Ball, produced a track called Sex Dwarf with a video so awful, so disgusting, so downright perverse, that the police seized the master tapes and burnt them. That's right - we're talking the levels of perversion that get your master tapes seized.

Take a pause. Do a little research... it's true.

Really, it's true. Mind you, so is the fact that most of it would be considered quite tame if you accidentally spliced it into the middle of 'Saw IV'. There's a sobering moment, if ever I saw one.

So let's be calm for just a while. Let me tell you about Soft Cell's first album, a joyously sleazy affair called Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. You may wish to consider exactly where they thought they were going with that title. It's hardly demure, and you wouldn't expect a coy glance and a blush to follow once you'd placed the pristine black plastic twelve inch on your turntable. Coy glances, as predicted, failed to follow...

'Frustration', the first track, was the story of a man doomed to a life of middle-aged hell, and the video seemed to centre about the poor bastard's death, with Marc Almond doing everything apart from dancing on the coffin. No, wait - he more-or-less did that, actually. Literally. 'Tainted Love', the second, was destined to become Soft Cell's most celebrated song, despite (or perhaps because of) the peculiar 'Roman Cricket' visuals (complete with 'Please God Make Marc Almond's Skirt Longer' moment), but the following tracks: Seedy Films and Youth, were far more indicative of the depths Soft Cell were determined to plumb. All credit to them, in my book, and do take a breath now, ready to fill it in later, because this is where 'Sex Dwarf' clunk-clicked. 'Entertain Me', the follow-up, was sardonic, but 'Chips On My Shoulder' redeemed it all, despite the over-acting, and 'Bedsitter' is amazing, even more amazing than 'Secret Life' and the celebrated (which means covered by David Gray) 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye'.

Soft Cell was doomed to a life of sleaze: right from the moment Marc Almond tarted himself up with black eyeliner and Dave Ball set the synths up inside a cage for their very first Top Of The Pops appearance, their fate was sealed. 'There's more to Soft Cell than sleaze,' claimed Marc Almond in one interview. A page later, he was discussing the Marquis De Sade and 120 Days Of Sodom. It's in the sleeve notes of the 2005 live release, if you want to confirm it for yourself. But let's get back to the video, controversial as it is:

The video begins with a starlet chained to a table. The chains are gold, because no expense has been spared. Marc Almond is stroking her, all over. Yes, all over - breasts included. Naked, dirty, sexy breasts. Which, considering the Soft Cell audience is mostly gay, simply makes us admire Marc for doing what must be done. Deep breaths and stroke...

At this point, Dave Ball, who usually (wisely) constrains his efforts to pressing bits of synthesisers, brings a meat cleaver down on a wooden crate. It's really quite ironic that it's surprising when a dwarf leaps out, dressed in some sort of sadomasochistic leather outfit, including a massively prodigious jockstrap. We are, if I may side with the viewer for a moment, utterly shocked. It's a dwarf in a jockstrap. What's worse, he's going to indulge in sexual relations with anyone in sight, and this is where it all goes horribly odd...

I have failed to mention the meat carcasses. You see, the meat cleaver fits in with Dave Ball's outfit, as he is inexplicably dressed as a butcher. In fact there are approximately six meat carcasses hanging enticingly from the ceiling. They are props, and they are clearly there to be used. Dave Ball has already been seen playing a chainsaw with a violin bow, and it's hardly suprising when he begins running about using the chainsaw to cut pieces of meat from the carcasses.

Breathe. Let's take stock. As we speak, Marc Almond is cavorting in raw meat with a scantily clad tart, while Dave Ball chainsaws raw meat into smaller chunks. Try to imagine why the British police impounded the tapes and burnt them as we continue with the show...

There are a few more semi-naked men, and now Marc's stripped off his black vest and is clad only in a jockstrap, too. There are women about, also dressed in leather, and - oh, lots of blood, bits of meat, the odd bit of offal. You see, the chainsaw's spitting blood about as it carves up the carcass, and Marc Almond appears to be smearing the blood over his body as he gropes at his jockstrap-clad crotch.

Meanwhile, there's a be-wigged woman with a rib of beef on her tits, and a dwarf with a liver (which isn't, technically speaking, his) humping her. The blood's everywhere, and it's true - at one point Marc Almond pulls the elastic of his jock strap rather lower than you'd want him to and rubs the blood into what must surely be his pubic hair. By the end of the video we see a panting Marc Almond leering through an orgy of blood, beef and cheap tarts to giggle 'That's nice!' as something white and horrible drips from his lip.

A little history. Tacked onto the end of Tainted Love in the official video collection, Marc Almond reads dramatically from a tabloid newspaper. Here's what he reads:

"Soft Cell have made a pornographic video as outrageous as those shown in London's Soho. Lead singer Marc Almond is shown masturbating through his clothes and rubbing raw meat into naked women. He strips down to only a jockstrap and appears with a dwarf in the same attire.'

People familiar with the history of the band, and of Some Bizzare records boss will be delighted to watch as an obviously drugged-up Stevo incisively comments 'Yes. Yes. Analysation of people!'. The aforementioned DVD, incidentally, does not feature the original Sex Dwarf video, instead there's a be-suited Marc Almond conducting some nicely-dressed dwarves with a baton; it's all rather sarcastic, really.

I expect you want to watch it now, right? Well, it was here, but sadly it seems to have vanished again. Good luck finding a copy; it's been the holy grail of Soft Cell fans for years, and while it hardly compares to some of the more shocking videos available on the internet now, remember that the whole sleazy affair took place right in the middle of the Thatcher years, when homosexuals were threatening the very fabric of society with their evil, evil agenda. Dwarves, raw meat, gold chains and jockstraps probably didn't help the cause much...

Penis Landscape

Penis Landscape is the affectionate name for work 219: Landscape XX, by the Swiss artist H.R. Giger. Created in 1973 from airbrushed acrylic on paper covered wood, the original piece measures 70 x 100 centimetres. To those who have seen Giger's work before, it comes as no surprise that of the two names, Penis Landscape is the more appropriate.

You are familiar with Giger's work, by the way. It's almost impossible not to have heard of Alien, lovingly designed by Giger with an appropriately phallic head. Species, too, provided an opportunity for grotesque sexual imagery, and the idea of loving Giger's work has become something like a mark of the elite. William Gibson mentions Giger's paintings of New York in Idoru, and the underworld of the internet is almost smothered in Giger-esque imagery. Failing that, album covers by Emerson, Lake And Palmer, as well as artwork involving Debbie Harry may well have come to your attention.

Landscape XX, however, remained entirely unremarkable for a decade until the Dead Kennedys chose to feature it on the sleeve of their 1985 album Frankenchrist. At this point, work 219 became of the utmost importance to a San Francisco court. In 1986, the painting, and various newspaper clippings associated with it were scrutinized fiercely. Eventually, the image was declared to be art, and therefore not pornography, after a period in which the album remained unavailable.

The image itself is as visually stunning as all Giger's work. It features six whole penises and three half-penises, their base and scrotum cruelly snipped off by the image's edge. The head of each penis is inserted into a vagina, though at least one appears to be on the verge of slipping out, and only one has been prudent enough to use protection. All but the buttocks and genitalia of each individual are hidden by that peculiar, scummy surface Giger seems to love painting, leaving a repeating pattern of penis, vagina, penis, vagina, which you realise could easily continue on to infinity. The style fits with Giger's obsession at the time, vast repeating landscapes of tiled images, always with a grotesque or shocking theme: the heads of diseased infants wail at us from the image, or a cracked metal skull, held secure with wires, is drilled from above by a sinister and filthy mechanism.

We may be led to ask why. Aside from the standard answer, confirmed by court ruling (It's art!), this painting is merely part of Giger's usual theme-based work. From the earliest moments in his career Giger has focused on specific themes, whether it is the Passagen series - stark images of dimly-lit passageways, many blocked in some way by curious yet simple metal devices - or the Erotomechanics portfolio: images of sex between things which are part metal, part flesh, sometimes part of the landscape, all seen from strange viewpoints - either unbearably close up or so distant that the act itself becomes simply a part of the surroundings. This is what the landscape series achieve: these infinite planes of image simply serve to reduce their contents to near-meaninglessness. Their purpose, save for existing in their own right as 'art', seems merely to entertain or, if we read Giger's accompanying words in his book ARh+, to horrify.

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian scientist who spent his life investigating human emotions and energy functions, his work centering around an unknown form of energy which Reich postulated existed in all living matter and permeated the cosmos. He called it orgone energy, and his continued investigations into its nature eventually caused his imprisonment at the hands of the FDA and his death shortly after.

Reich was born on the 24th of March 1897 in the Austrian province of Galicia, and went on to study at the medical school of the University Of Vienna. Graduating from here in 1922 he continued to study the works of Sigmund Freud and pioneered many of the great breakthroughs in psychoanalysis. Eventually, however, his clinical studies drew him to more practical studies of the nature of energy processes and their effect upon the emotions.

Labelling this energy orgone energy, Reich moved to the United States in 1939, intending to continue his studies and discover ways of making this unknown and elusive form of energy usable. Reich was led to create devices such as the Orgone Accumulator and the Orgone Shooter, a device which could collect and distribute orgone energy.

Reich had already been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who were concerned that he might harbour communist commitments. This, coupled with his distribution of devices for manipulating orgone energy along with the claim that they could cure a whole plethora of medical conditions, quickly brought him to the attention of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, who, concerned at the unverifiable nature of much of his work, obtained an injunction. This injunction allowed them to ban and incinerate Reich's literature, including his published books and journals. This burning is now considered a most heinous act of censorship, and Reich, quite rightly, stated that 'Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word freedom should ever be more than an empty political slogan.' The court, apparently rejecting this defence, convicted Reich of contempt of court for transporting orgone accumulators across state lines, and Reich was given a two year jail sentence in the LewisburgPenitentiary. He died on November the third, 1957 whilst imprisoned.

Reich's assertions concerning orgone energy are the subject of much controversy. Though Reich believed orgone energy to be demonstrable visually, thermically, electroscopically and by means of geiger counters, there has been considerable difficulty replicating his results. Reich claimed that orgone energy is omnipresent and accounts for such things as the colour of the sky, gravity, galaxies, the failure of the majority of political revolutions and a satisfactory orgasm. In living things orgone energy is known as bio-energy or life energy. The study of this science was named orgonomy, and Reich claimed to have discovered the existence of other entities - bions - which exist as vesicles for orgone energy. Reich recorded that bions were neither living nor dead, but were so-called transitional beings.

Despite attaining little success in the mainstream scientific community, Reich's ideas have attracted a number of devoted followers, such as The American College Of Orgonomy, initially founded by Elsworth Baker, and The Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, Inc., headed by Dr. James DeMeo. Baker's successors and DeMeo continue to defend orgonomy and, by association, Reich.

Despite the FDA's best efforts, Reich's work is still very much a part of popular culture, spawning musicals (Wilhelm Reich In Hell), books and even inspiring popular music. Cloudbusting by Kate Bush tells the story of Reich's imprisonment at the hands of the FDA in great detail. The song was accompanied by a six minute music video starring Donald Sutherland as Reich, attempting to demonstrate how orgone energy can burst entire clouds and cause rain. Hawkwind, too, were inspired to produce the song Orgone Accumulator.

It's highly likely that, were a similar case to come to light today, the draconian action taken by the FDA in 1956 would not be repeated, though precisely where Reich's studies would have led him is a question best answered by examining the continuing work of James DeMeo and the College Of Orgonomy, who still have little success making mainstream progress with verification of Reich's theories of orgone energy. Reich's son, Peter, also wrote A Book Of Dreams, which focuses on their relationship and other notable events, making it an excellent source of further information. Reich's own books, as expected, offer considerable insight into Reich's theories, but for a more biographical approach, Fury on Earth, by Myron Sharaf , is preferable.

A short bibliography of books by Wilhelm Reich:

The Function Of The Orgasm, 1927

The Invasion Of Compulsory Sex-Morality, 1931

Character Analysis, 1933

The Mass Psychology Of Fascism, 1933

The Sexual Revolution, 1935

People In Trouble, 1936

Listen Little Man, 1948

The Cancer Biopathy, 1948

The Murder Of Christ, 1951

Contact With Space, 1957

Some notable articles:

Specific Forms of Masturbation (Part of a series of papers published from 1920 - 1925 which led Reich to his theories of orgone energy.)

The Oranur Experiment (A collection of papers published from 1947-1951 dealing with Unidentified Flying Objects and their effect on the desertification of the earth.)

Contact With Space (Further works on the Oranur experiment, originally published between 1951-56, republished Core Pilot Press, 1957)

The Einstein Affair (Correspondence with Einstein, originally published in 1953, which had little effect on either Einstein's or Reich's theories.)

Felching

The Encyclopedia Of Unusual Sex Practices has surprisingly little to say on the subject of felching. The word felch refers, author Brenda Love tells us, 'to either stuffing animals into the anus or vagina, or to a partner sucking semen out of one of these orifices. For such a well-known, if not necessarily well-respected, tome to have so little to say is almost unthinkable, and thus we encounter the problem: how to define felching.

A Form Of Bestiality, Or Merely Oral Retrieval Of Semen?


Those who dare to define felching are neatly divided by its meaning. A quick search outside e2 provides a whole wealth of resources claiming to know what felching is, and one or two who claim to perform it on a regular basis. For proponents of the semen-drinking faction tips involving drinking straws abound, and only one source goes as far as to point out the risks involved where an exchange of bodily fluids takes place. Those who prefer to think of felching as a sexual act involving small animals quickly descend into urban myth, exchanging the same story of a gerbil-related mishap that it is claimed appeared in the LA Times. The story never appeared, and variants can be found on usenet tracking right back to 1993.

Alternative stories include the tale of a certain Richard Gere, who arrived at Los Angeles hospital with yet another hapless gerbil lodged in his rectum. The story comes in a dizzying range of varieties, both with and without fur, plastic bags or sources of lubrication. None of these variations (it hardly needs to be pointed out) are true.

Urban legends make poor evidence for any definition - the correct term for such practices appears to be gerbilling - and it would, therefore, seem prudent to define felching as the retrieval of semen from a bodily orifice into which is has been recently deposited. This includes the vagina or the anus. Interestingly in the light of such practices as nasolingus, and no doubt as a result of common sense, no sources mention other potential orifices such as the nose or ears. It should also be noted that despite the implication that one would felch out one's own semen, there is the possibility of felching out the ejaculate of another, previous lover.

Semen Retrieval: Why Would Anyone Want To Do That?


There is no doubt that felching deserves the monicker unusual - it's not one of your more common sexual practices. In fact, as seen above, the term is more often used derisively, to insult or slander, rather then taking the form of a simple descriptive phrase for a sexual act, presumably of pleasure to at least one of the two people involved.

In a world where golden enemas, Roman Showers and hygrophilia are recognised sexual practices, there is clearly a place for felching. It may be considered unsafe, but then so are many forms of sexual activity where bodily fluids are exchanged. Certainly the semen re-ingested from one's partner would be liberally mixed with vaginal discharges or, if the anus were the orifice of choice, a varying quantity of rectal mucus or even feces. Sounds unpleasant, but the practice of coprophagy has been around for a very long time, and adding semen to the mix is hardly going to make it worse.

The question of why an individual would wish to do such a thing is one best answered by such individuals. Either one is the type of person who finds the idea of sucking semen back out of the orifice into which one has just deposited it an arousing and irresistible one, or one is the type of person who finds it inherently abhorrent.

Regardless of which category one falls into, the only acceptable attitude anyone can have regarding such practices is one of tolerance; ultimately, the practice of felching is of no consequence to anyone except those involved, regardless of the social niceties it bruises, or the feelings of disapproval it may cause to well up within us.

Debbie Does Dallas

One of the five best selling porn films of all time, Debbie Does Dallas appeared in 1978, close enough to the release of The Exorcist, The Driller Killer and other such notorious seventies video nasties to provide blessed (if rather sticky) relief from a stream of blood and gore. Starring Bambi Woods, whose parents must surely have realised a name like that gave her little choice of career beyond pornography or wildlife films about deer, the film is, in truth, abysmal. Cheap, badly edited and portraying some of the worst acting in the history of bad acting, one can only assume the producers were fully aware most people would be focusing on the more 'artistic' content of the film - namely the endless parade of naked breasts and white, hairy arses.

The plot is simple. Debbie, cheerleader beyond compare, has been chosen to travel to Dallas and become a cowgirl. Alas, she is penniless and must raise the money herself. Her parents, quite wisely, refuse to support her. Despite having only two weeks, Debbie and her cheerleader chums decide to raise enough money to allow them all to travel down to Dallas and give Debs the support she deserves. (Understand that whilst this discussion takes place each girl removes her clothes and idly soaps herself in the shower, a scene that would later influence the infamous shower scene from Porky's. The display of mis-aligned tan lines is a highlight here - one girl has a white stripe that comes halfway up her buttocks at an angle of approximately thirty degrees off the horizontal.)

But where to find the money? The girls flock off to offer their services as bookshop assistants, sports equipment saleswomen and auditors of novelty candles at Mr Hardwick's candle store. The inclusion of a candle shop turns out to be a happy occurrence, of course, as later on in the film the young lady is possessed by an irresistible urge to penetrate herself with a sizeably-girthed wax item more commonly used to provide subtle or romantic illumination. Needless to say, she is discovered and diverse entertainments ensue: Mrs Hardwick somehow ends up with her fingers inside the young lady whilst her husband, never one to miss a bit of excitement in a candle shop, masturbates vigorously and rounds the whole thing off with a spot of inter-generational intercourse.

Of course, she's not the only one. Two other girls accept an offer of twenty-five dollars for a kiss. This, as you'd expect, leads to breast-licking, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal intercourse, ejaculation and a spot of ooh-look-I-can-rub-my-face-in-your-spunk. Other girls enjoy a bit of a spanking, various bouts of fondling and the usual stuff. All of it, remember, badly shot, badly edited and badly acted.

You'd think, with all this industrious copulation, there'd be enough cash to send an entire football team to Dallas, but no - in order to raise that final injection of cash Debbie is obliged to dress as a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and indulge in various sexual shenanigans with an appropriately dressed Mr Greenfeld. In return, Mr Greenfeld will pay for the whole lot of girls to make their way down to Dallas. It's been hot, sweaty work, but it's clearly worth it... at the end of the film the word 'Next....' appears on the screen, concerning which we are left to draw our own conclusions.

There is no doubt that Debbie Does Dallas is famous for being famous, and that of those who speak of its nefarious charms few have actually seen it. Certainly the porn scenes on any copy commercially available in the UK are cut to ribbons and thus reduce the film to a rather tame, soft porn epic. The Debbie Does Dallas available today is not top-shelf, scorching-hot pornographic material. Add to this the fact that the quality, even on the later UK DVD releases, is extremely low. One of the early scenes has been clumsily edited and includes a painfully lengthy section filmed before action has been called - cue one second of teen cheerleader poised ready to 'act'.

Nevertheless, Debbie Does Dallas has entered modern culture as an epitome of adult entertainment, a paragon of pornography. Infamous but ultimately unsatisfying: an afternoon spent watching Debbie Does Dallas is not, it must be said, an afternoon well spent. Still, curiosity may get the better of you, or the urge to be one of those who can proudly say 'Yeah, I've seen Debbie Does Dallas'. If that's the case, Debbie was recently re-released in the UK on DVD in that censored, hacked-up form, or there's always those original seventies VHS and Betamax copies if you hunt round hard enough. Then, if even that doesn't quench your insatiable desire for tack, there's always the sequels... many, many sequels...

Debbie Does Dallas was directed by Jim Clark and released in 1978. It starred Bambi Woods as Debbie, and a host of other, now forgotten, actors and actresses who all did their clumsy, inept best with Maria Minestra's rather plain, straightforward script. There's surprisingly little information in The Internet Movie Database about Debbie Does Dallas, but a google search will provide those all important details, plus information on the Debbie Does Dallas play, which features no sex or nudity, functioning more as a tribute to one of the most famous pieces of pornography of all time.