The 10 Books That Taught Me Everything I Know About Sex

1. The Encyclopedia

Some of you whipper-snaps are probably too young to remember this, but there was a time before the internet when you couldn't just whip out your phone and consult Google if you wanted to know the proper nomenclature for ye olde grundle-taint. Before Wikipedia, there was the encyclopedia, which was a twenty-plus volume set of hard-bound books containing all the knowledge in the known universe at any given time (minus the misinformation and pop culture minutiae). People actually sold these door-to-door, and if you were lucky enough to grow up in a middle-class family, your parents may have sprung for a set of these innocuous reference books for you to call your own. Little did they know they were filled with the Devil's knowledge. 

While not technically a single book, it was within these tomes that I began my quest for truth, searching out entries for words like penis, vagina, and sex. And as my list of reference materials grew, it was there that I returned to fact check what I had learned elsewhere. A solid foundation if there ever was one.

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2. The Bible

Even more insidious than the Encyclopedia was that wolf in sheep's clothing known as the Bible. For a book that is used to shelter people from sex and violence, it contains a shit-ton of sex and violence. Murder, rape, incest, genocide, slavery, prostitution, bestiality, donkey dick, horse semen, foreskin scalping, wives being sold into sexual slavery by "godly" men, daughters offered to rapists by "godly" men, bears sent by God to rip apart kids who made fun of a bald guy, virgins forced to marry their rapists if monetary restitution was made to their fathers, the stoning of rape victims, child abuse, child murder, money shots, breast poetry, bowel movements, angel sex... it was a lot for my young mind to process. But process it I did. Either my mother thought it all went over my head or she thought it was okay because it was in the Bible. Is it any wonder religious people have such weird feelings about sex?

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3. My Mother's Romance Novels

Again, not a single book. After learning the cold hard facts, I wanted to see the hot and heavy practical application. The only materials at my disposal at the time (that I was aware of) were my mother's swashbuckling bodice-rippers. Even though my mother was a god-fearing woman who wouldn't let me watch prime time television, somehow it was okay for her to read softcore pornography. Thus, it was at Fabio's altar that I was schooled in the ways of romantic love. Taking ladies by force, making them your sex slave until they fall in love with you—it probably wasn't the best place for an impressionable young lad to start. You see what happens when you don't properly educate your children? I've had a bizarre Italian pirate fetish ever since.

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4. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

I know what you're thinking: Why would a young boy want to read Judy Blume? Because he was resourceful, that's why. I had engaged in my share of diaper-changing/doctor roleplay by this point and I wanted to know what made girls tick. Specifically in their vagina clocks. Unfortunately, the book wasn't as sexy as I anticipated. It was actually kind of gross. But I learned a valuable lesson: the female vagina is a wondrous, magical place, full of mystery, but it's also a capricious vixen that cannot be tamed. Maybe I should have read Then Again, Maybe I Won't instead. That way I wouldn't have freaked out and thought I was getting my period the first time I had a wet dream. Where was your God when that happened?

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5. The Final Friends Series

If Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret was a primer on the horrors of being a pubescent (girl), the books of Christopher Pike were a primer on how sexy and violent high school was going to be. Especially the Final Friends series. Granted, I had stopped reading Pike long before I entered High School, but it filled my head with how much sex I would be having and how adult I would be, solving mysteries, saving the world from alien sex lizards. So you can imagine my disappointment. The books weren't even that graphic, but I had never experienced characters so close to my own age written that way before. I was jazzed by the sex and violence, which—is that really what we want for our young, bubbling hormone cauldrons? Thankfully, I didn't turn out to be a chronic masturbator who wears women's skin as pajamas, but your child might not be so lucky

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6. The Presidio Movie Tie-in

Okay, this is a weird one. The Presidio was a shitty movie starring Sean Connery and Mark Harmon that centered around a murder at the titular army base in San Francisco. I still wasn't allowed to see R-rated movies at this point, and I had been spending more time in the adult section of the library. I don't know what made me check out this novelization, but somehow it found its way home with me. It stands out for two reasons: One, there is a scene in which Sean Connery's character beats a guy up using only his thumb. I thought that was so bad ass and would go on to terrorize my brother with my own thumb for years. And two, Mark Harmon's character finger-blasts the Connery character's daughter in it, which was a rawer sexuality than I was used to. This book really opened my eyes to the violence of fingers.

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7. Hollywood Babylon

I guess the puritan's were right: the entertainment business is a sleazy one. I don't know how I discovered the film studies section of the library was a sexual gold mine, but it was the first place I saw a naked woman where I didn't have my eyes covered by my mother or was told to face the corner. There were a number of pornography precursors for me to peruse, but the one that sticks out in my mind is Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon. Babylon is basically a scandal rag on the Hollywood Golden Age in book form. It's filled with salacious anecdotes of dubious veracity, accompanied by old tyme nip-slips and upskirts. It was TMZ before the internet. I had no idea who the people in the pictures were or what the book was about; all I knew was that on such-and-such a page I could see a grainy black and white picture of Carmen Miranda's beaver.

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8. The Body (Book)?

I could have kicked myself when I discovered the wealth of spank bank material that existed in the art/photography section of the library. There I was subsisting on c-grade paparazzi shots like a sucker when I could have been basking in the glory of high quality nudes. I had been boasting to a friend about Hollywood Babylon and how clever I was in my quest for titillation and he showed me what an amateur I was. I can't remember the exact name of the book or find it online; it was called Body or The Body Book or something similar. Basically, it was a photographic study of the human form, taken one part at a time. My local library didn't have it, but I found it on a display in the storefront of a local book shop. It was risky to get my perv-rusal on out in the open, but that didn't stop me. I turned right to the V section. I put in a request for an inter-library loan and never bothered with Hollywood Babylon again.

9. Jaws

This is another weird one. I found this on a bookshelf while sitting in the back of science class with the cool kids when I was in junior high. I was leafing through it out of boredom when BAM! I was railroaded by the clumsy eroticism and ham-fisted prose of a Peter Benchley sex scene. I started passing the book around, once again pleased with my knack for finding sexually charged material. I guess we weren't being too subtle about it, because of course the teacher noticed. As the instigator, I was called into the principle's office and subjected to a battery of humiliating questions, such as: What was so interesting about that book? Why were you giggling like a little girl? How did what you read make you feel? Remember, I'm an educator. Do you have any questions about what you read?

Holy shit! I just realized that was the only time in my formative years anyone ever offered to have a frank discussion about sex with me. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late. I had already been conditioned to believe sex was icky and sinful and feelings about it should be internalized.

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10. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices

Years later, when I was already the veteran of my own awkward fumblings, I came across the Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. By then I thought I knew everything there was to know about sex, but this book proved me dead wrong. I was working at a B. Dalton book store with one Dennis Widmyer at the time. When things were slow, we'd pop over to the sexuality section and thumb through this bad boy. This was right before the internet put the weirdest of the weird at the world's fingertips. Without this book, I would never have learned what sounding, docking, acrotomophilia, or felching was. Or that pleasure could be derived from nailing one's penis to a block of wood. Or that orifice suturing was a thing. My education was finally complete!

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