Venus Defiled

He was as carried away as I was," Laurie confessed. "I felt his hands on my body, gentle but manly as he stroked the bathing suit halter encasing my breasts. I pressed my hand down on top of his, inhaling deeply so that my breasts swelled to his touch. We kissed again and I was filled with a yearning desire to go even further with our love-making. I moved my hand to my shoulder and pushed down the strap to my bathing suit. He buried his face against my bare breast.

"It was the furthest I'd ever gone with a boy," Laurie confided. "His very excitement made me feel even more excited. But when his hand closed tentatively over my thigh, I pushed him away. 'No,' I said breathlessly. 'We'd better stop before we go too far.' "

The rebuff was only temporary, however.

This, after all, was Romance Time, February 1965—Volume 12, Number 6 of one of the many women's confession magazines whose monthly sagas of sex and desire are the erotic folk tales of our contemporary mass culture—the passionately vicarious Thousand and One Nights of millions upon millions of wives, sweethearts, mothers and daughters of the great American blue-collar class.

"We spent many nights necking, enjoying the sweet torture of arousal without fulfillment," Laurie went on to recall in a tone of almost wistful oestrous, "but we never went further than that night on the beach. Until that hot September evening a few days before Steve was due to leave for college ..."

On buses and subways, in kitchens, living rooms and ladies' rooms, in offices, factories and beauty shops, in luncheonettes and laundromats the numerous sisterhood of confession fans avidly read on:

"My parents were out that night," Laurie informed her gentle readers. "We were sitting on the couch, half-turned to face each other. My blouse was open and Steve's lips were burning against my bare breast. My heart was racing wildly and when his hand moved over my legs I made no protest.

"I felt him brush my skirt aside and then the flesh of my legs was trembling at his touch. His hand moved higher and for a moment it seemed as if the room was beginning to spin ...

" 'I want you, Laurie.' It was almost a groan. 'I want you so much I ache.'

" 'No,' I told him. 'No, we can't.'

" 'But this is torture, Laurie! Look.' He grasped my hand and pressed it against himself so that I could feel his throbbing need of me.

"I moved my hand slowly. He closed his eyes and sighed. Thus I brought Steve relief without bringing him satisfaction. Thus he knew my love, but not my body."

"Should I go to bed with Steve?" Laurie asked in the closing paragraph of this brief first-person account of one girl's experience with the sweet torture of arousal. "WON'T YOU PLEASE WRITE US, LETTING A 17 YEAR-OLD-GIRL KNOW WHAT YOU THINK SHE SHOULD DO?" the editors implored in type so large and urgent as to suggest that Laurie's unbuttoned adventures might soon grow out of hand. "LAURIE LOVES THE BOY WITH ALL HER HEART, BUT SHE CAN'T MARRY HIM FOR FOUR YEARS. SHOULD SHE WAIT—OR GIVE IN?"

The question was one that had been plaguing confession-book heroines for years. But this, to the best of my knowledge, was the first time in history that so intimate an issue had ever been submitted to a national referendum.

Since it wasn't likely that even an airmail special-delivery would get to Laurie in time to influence her decision one way or the other, I abstained from the voting. But, considering the high incidence of no-questions-asked hanky-panky that currently enlivens the pages of the women's confession magazines, her hesitancy to hop into bed with Steve seemed almost touchingly archaic—a quaint survival from that sexually simple-minded era when the kiss-and-tell books were committed to a rigorous policy of sin-and-suffer. More typical of the present state of illicit affairs is the afternoon love scene that occurred between Mrs. Denis Carstairs and Gene the handsome filling-station attendant, whom she had met only a few short paragraphs before, on page 56 of the same magazine:

"Gene pulled into a tiny cleared space in the woods and stilled the motor," Mrs. Carstairs reported from the star-board seat of her shiny new car. "Without another word, he took me into his arms and kissed me. Shamelessly, eagerly, I responded, biting his lower lip in my frenzy, like a little hellcat.

" 'Come on, let's get out,' he said, his voice rough with emotion.

"He took the car blanket from the back seat. Then holding my hand, he pulled me into the heart of the wood, and spread the blanket on a mattress of fallen leaves.

" 'I have to have you,' he said, and threw me down onto our forest bed.

"I didn't care; I knew I had to have him, too. There, amongst the secret trees, I gave myself to him, recklessly, passionately. It wasn't like it was with Denis, sweet and tender. Gene's hands were hard and demanding, his body heavy and hot on mine.

"It was like that with us every time we were together, those next few weeks. I knew it was wrong, knew I was an adulteress, betraying the best man in the world, but I couldn't seem to care. I guess I was drunk, drunk with the wine of unadulterated sex. That's no excuse, that's just the way it was."

Take it or leave it, Charlie. And if you should happen to cherish any starry-eyed notions that Mrs. Carstairs' willingness was any greater, or her compunctions any less, because of her nonvirginal status—well, forget it. Whether virgin teens or torrid grandmothers, the girls one meets these days in the pages of the smooch-and-snitch books are a different breed entirely from Laurie Mize, the demure young widow who was the female lead in the first confession story I ever read: "TAKE ME, TAKE MY CHILDREN!" which appeared in True Story back in November 1962.

At the time, my interest was confined to the image such magazines were presenting of the American Hubby, and to his pretty little widow's responses to the Insurance Man as a girl's best friend and protector—a new and highly idealized hero figure that had been created by some of the nation's leading life-insurance advertisers. In "TAKE ME, TAKE MY CHILDREN!" I had been fascinated to discover the first instance in which the Insurance Man was actually cast in the romantic role of the widow's lover and potential second husband. But in those days of innocence, circa 1962, the word "lover" could still be construed in terms of noncoital affection. When Laurie Mize invited Stan the Policy Man to come in out of the rain and dry off, sex was subordinate to a pipe-and-slippers kind of coziness that was a harbinger of hubby-hood to come. "I sat there by the fire, relaxed as a cat," Stan mused, "and in no time she was back carrying a tray with a toasted-cheese sandwich, a big wedge of cake covered with whipped cream and a cup of steamy black coffee. The gal could cook besides being sweet and a good looker. I didn't think it was strange then that my wolf tendencies didn't take over. I liked this girl, really liked her as a person. What I felt was more than the old Adam-and-Eve bit."

Being somewhat familiar with the traditional formats of popular romantic fiction, I was inclined to accept Stan's behavior as natural enough under the circumstances—just as I was willing to believe that no more than a single kiss resulted from the fact that he was forced to stay overnight at Laurie's house because the rain had washed out the roads. "I can't thank you enough for your hospitality and good company," Stan told her, after spending the night on a cot in the kids' room. "If there is any way Acme Insurance can serve you, just give us a call."

But Laurie was still in a "rosy pink" blush of embarrassment over that kiss. " 'About last night—I don't want you to think I'm awful or brazen although I can't blame you if you do.' She faltered. 'I'm sorry it happened. I don't know what came over me,' she whispered."

What came over her, of course, was the same old Adam-and-Eve thing that made working-girl Stephanie Carter risk her restless virtue on "ONE LAST FLING!" on page 36. "My husband-to-be was off on a gay bachelor weekend. So why shouldn't I have a ball, too?" Stephanie exclaimed in a large quarter-page blurb. "When my old love coaxed, 'Let's go out and burn the town down,' I went!" But when her old love, Terence, finally coaxed her onto a couch at his place, the sweet torture of arousal quickly gave way to the fisticuffs of female refusal:

" 'No,' I panted.

" 'But---'

" 'No.' I shoved Terence with all my might."

Over on page 58, meanwhile, a lonely trailer-camp wife named Julie was having her responses tested by a guitar-twanging construction worker called Waco, in "IF I HAD A WIFE LIKE YOU":

"And then, in a flash, the moment of madness passed. I'm a married woman—the mother of two children—I told myself harshly. Flirting, giving encouragement to admirers—that's behind me in my girlhood. I ought to be ashamed of myself!

"With a little gasp, I pushed Waco away ..."

Throughout that entire issue of True Story, pushing a man away was depicted as the ultimate physical act. Only in the closing moments of "WE ELOPED WITH MAMA" did a blizzard-bound wife, named Ellen, begin to wonder if she should go to bed with Phil—her estranged hubby:

"... We were both silent, but the air was charged. I turned to gather up the coffee cups and accidentally brushed against him. Roughly he pulled me into his arms, and I responded with all the intensity that had stored up within me.

" 'This separation has been agony,' he said. 'But maybe there's been some good in it, too ...' "

The idea that agony has its virtues and virtue its agonies was apparently a most familiar one to the average True Story reader—a composite profile of whom could be pieced together from some of the comments and opinions expressed in that month's letters column:

"All stories in the September issue were interesting, especially 'Haunted Wedding Night,' " Rosemary H. Bagneski wrote from Randolph, Wisconsin. "I was close to tears when Sue found out her husband and sister had been killed in the accident. The ending of the story pleased me greatly."

"Sex, sex, sex—that's all men care about," a Miss Y. K. of Detroit, Michigan, lamented. "Fortunately, some women don't share their ideas, and these are the ones referred to as virgins. I intend to stay a virgin until marriage. Temptations—sure I have temptations almost ever day. But that little voice, referred to as 'conscience,' won't let me give in. Thank goodness some people still have those little voices."

"Since my sister's recent death from cancer, her husband told me to have her copies of True Story sent in my care," Mrs. Floyd Kulek wrote from Guide Rock, Nebraska. "I hope this arrangement will not be considered illegal, for the contentment I find each month in T. S. for a while lulls my constant heartache over the loss of one so loved.... Please finish out the subscription in her name, in my care; she'd want it this way."

Post-mortem subscriptions notwithstanding, a Mrs. Millard Welch of Georgia claimed the earthly distinction of having been a T.S. fan for a quarter of a century—a record that was topped only by that of Mrs. C. E. Monaco of New York City, who had been on the receiving end for 27 years. But despite all such demonstrations of loyalty, rumor had it that the circulation figures for this "Woman's Guide to Love and Marriage" had declined by more than a million since 1959. Some were inclined to blame the time-consuming effect of television on True Story's lower-middlebrow audience. But my own guess was that the drop-off was more attributable to the magazine's man-pushing reluctance to face up to the physical facts of love and marriage at a time when the ladies' big, slick consumer journals were expanding their sexual content to the very limits in an effort to keep pace with the new literary freedoms of the Sexy Sixties.

With a view to describing the enormous contrast between the sexual content of these two major categories of American women's magazines, I picked up another copy of True Story four months later. At first glance, the March 1963 issue seemed essentially the same old T. S. The cover bore a portrait of the same sort of pretty young girl, and was plastered with the same sort of hyperhysterical titles: "MY HUSBAND OFFERED ME TO ANOTHER MAN!" "OUR BABY WAS BORN A DOPE ADDICT," "MY DAUGHTER IS IN TROUBLE—What Should I Do? What Should She Do?" "THE NIGHT I CAME HOME TOO SOON."

Having learned that True Story's stories were seldom as sensational as their titles, my mind automatically amended the list to read, "MY HUSBAND OFFERED ME TO ANOTHER MAN—as a part-time bookkeeper," "MY DAUGHTER IS IN TROUBLE—because she whispered during a third-grade fire drill," "THE NIGHT I CAME HOME TOO SOON—and had to wait a half hour for dinner," etc.

But, as I soon discovered, the past few months had wrought some rather momentous changes. In the new True Story, Blake Jordan really did offer his wife to another man! The promiscuous daughter Anna really was in trouble—with a teenage frigidity problem! And when Prudence Hunter came home too soon, she found her husband-to-be, Peter, bouncing around in bed with her room-mate Julie!

"The world was wonderful!" Prue had exulted in the opening paragraph. "I had a wonderful job.... I had a wonderful apartment, a wonderful roommate—Julie, who was always fun and easy to get along with—and a wonderful man—Peter, who loved me as much as I loved him. Just thinking of Peter made my heart bang."

Unfortunately for Prudence, thinking of Peter made Julie's heart bang, too. And when Prudence was detained at the office that night, Peter found Julie so easy to get along with, he and she were already on the most intimate of terms when Prue walked in the door at eight P.M.

"No! Oh, my God!" Prudence gasped.

"Julie leaped from the bed, winding (continued on page 130)Venus Defiled(continued from page 80) the sheet about her. Peter sat up, pulling a corner of it over his naked body."

"No!" Prudence cried. "Oh, my God, no!"

" 'Prue!' they chorused."

"Well, I'll be damned!" I soloed. It was an epoch-making, precedent-setting moment in the women's magazine field. Naked, unadulterated sex had come to True Story, and we were all a trifle distraught.

"I couldn't take my eyes off of them," Prudence confided, as the entire T. S. readership peered over her trembling prose shoulder. "I was riveted to the spot. Julie, with the sheet wound around her from her breasts to her thighs, looked like an alabaster nude. Peter, behind her, sitting up in bed, tousled, eyes still heavily lidded and not from sleep, clutching at the sheet that revealed more than it hid ..."

It was a shocker, all right—and True Story had evidently had a photographer concealed in the room to snap a full-color photo illustration of Peter and Julie, just as they looked when Prue walked in and caught them in bed.

It was the same Johnny-on-the-spot lensman, perhaps, who provided the photo documentation for Mavis Marshall's candid confession, "I CHEATED TO STAY MARRIED," which appeared in the same pace-setting issue. To underscore the fact that Mavis wasn't just confessing to some minor chicanery at Chinese checkers, the editors ran a full-length nude study of Mavis kneeling on a rumpled bed, with a purple robe draped over one shoulder to conceal the cleavage of her shapely derrière. "I stood trembling in the darkness, appalled at my own daring," she whispered in the sotto-voce white type of the caption. "But I had to wait here for this man—only he could solve my desperate problem!"

The desperate problem was that Mavis' marriage was in trouble because she couldn't have a baby because her hubby, Clint, had a secret sterility condition as a result of a severe case of testicular mumps which he had contracted in Korea.

In the high-line ladies' books, such as the Ladies' Home Journal, this all-too-familiar dilemma would have inspired nothing more than a talky little medicine show on artificial insemination, starring Doctor Strangesex and his homologous hand pump. But in the more earthy biological boondocks of the new True Story, natural insemination was the preferred therapy, and Mavis was allowed to work out her own solution with the willing assistance of her husband's handsome young hired man, Bob Akers. If she wanted a baby so badly, she could always "take a roll in the hay with somebody else," Bob laughingly suggested.

Mavis professed to be horrified at such a shocking proposal. "I'll get him fired," she thought. "I will. I will!" But when hubby Clint took off for Knoxville "to look at some new farm equipment," she found herself lying awake, waiting for Bob Akers to come home from his Friday-night date. "It was about 11 o'clock when I heard Bob's old car pull into the yard." she recollected. "Almost as though that were a signal I'd been waiting for, I got up, crept out into the hall and silently made my way to his bedroom.... What I planned was bad, the lowest kind of cheating, but I had to do it. I had to cheat to stay married!

"I crept between the cold sheets of Bob's bed and lay there shaking. Then he was in the room. He sat down on the edge of the bed and I touched his back with my hand. He turned and grabbed it, bending over to stare at me in the darkness. Then he whispered, 'Mavis! Gosh, I—I never---'

" 'Don't talk!' I begged. 'Don't say anything, Bob—you've already said it all! Just ...'

"With a smothered exclamation, his arms encircled me, his mouth sought mine, hard and demanding," Mavis recalled, as she succumbed to his wordless passion—and Saturday night found her back in Bob's bed for an equally nonverbal repeat performance. But when Bob approached her on Sunday afternoon, she did her utmost to dissuade him: " 'Oh, please—please—just go away!' I begged. 'Clint could walk in any time. I don't want to have to face him with you here, Bob. I feel so guilty for what I've done.'

" 'Let's see how guilty you feel if this time next month you're pregnant,' he whispered, pulling me into his arms. 'One more time together—it might make all the difference—' he went on urgently. I tried to fight him off, but it was a losing battle. But I wasn't thinking of him—or myself, as I surrendered to his embrace—only of the miracle of a baby in my arms."

No such lofty, long-range purpose prompted the passionate yearnings of Gloria Jordan, the sex-starved star of "MY HUSBAND OFFERED ME TO ANOTHER MAN!" on page 67, however. In Gloria's case, both the desire and the excuse to err came by way of an auto accident that left her hubby, Blake, paralyzed from the waist down. "He stared at his helpless legs and his hands knotted into fists. 'I used to be able to do a lot of things,' he said pointedly. 'Like holding you in my arms. Like showing you how much I loved you.' A flush darkened his face. 'You never talk about it and neither do I, Gloria. But I'm not a damned fool. I keep wondering how long you can go on this way. You're a young, healthy woman. How long can you live without sex?'

"It was my turn to flush," Gloria confided, "because there had been many nights when I'd tossed restlessly in bed unable to sleep."

As a solution, Blake thoughtfully suggested that she shine up to their good friend and neighbor, George, whose wife Penny had been conveniently killed off in the same auto accident that had left Blake "half a man": " 'I wouldn't blame you if you did,' Blake said. 'As a matter of fact it would be the most natural thing in the world if you went for George in a big way. I wouldn't feel like you were cheating on me and I wouldn't be mad at George, if he went for you, too.' "

Like Mavis, Gloria professed to being shocked at the idea of giving herself to another man. But, since Blake was so darned insistent, she promoted a couple of clinches with George that made her nights more restless than ever. "I kept feeling his mouth on mine and the hardness of his body pressed against me and I wanted him, oh, how I wanted him," she confessed. Sleepless with desire, she finally pulled a robe on over her skimpy nightie and slipped next door to George's house. "Don't send me away," she pleaded. "Please let me come in."

"He opened the door wider and I went inside," she said, as an expectant hush fell over page 97. "I didn't wait for him to take me in his arms. I went to him. Clinging to him wildly, saying incoherent words, until with a groan he picked me up and carried me into the bedroom. He knelt by the side of the bed, caressing me, kissing me.

" 'You're so beautiful,' he kept saying. 'Oh, my God, you're so beautiful. I want to touch you and love you. I've thought about it so often.'

" 'Love me,' I whispered. 'I want you.' "

What the virginal Miss Y. K. of Detroit, Michigan, thought of such goings on, or whether she wondered why George knelt by the bed in order to kiss and caress Gloria, I would not venture to guess. But considering the extraordinarily high guilt potential displayed by True Story's old-style heroines, Miss Y. K. was undoubtedly as astonished as I was when Gloria went on to reveal that "George was the one filled with guilt and remorse. And I had to try to comfort him." In the end, it was George who felt morally compelled to break off the affair by moving East to live—thus paving the way for yet another new and noteworthy switch: namely, that nobody suffered, that neither George nor Gloria was required to "pay" for their "sin." Unconvincing as it may sound, Gloria's affair with George was indeed presented as the basis for a happier, sex-free marriage with Blake.

Still clinging wildly to the same issue of True Story, I found that a remarkably (continued on page 189)Venus Defiled(continued from page 130) similar conclusion was reached after Flora Kelleher got through panting out all the titillating details of her frantically orgasmic affair with her stepson Mickey, in "NO BED OF MY OWN," which began on page 54.

Actually, Flora did have a bed of her own, of course, which she shared with her hubby, Mike, the good-natured widower cop who had been kind enough to marry her after her father had thrown her out of the house because she was pregnant from having been raped by four boys in a tool shed. Flora was 17 at the time, and Mike was 36, which caused a lot of talk in the neighborhood. But Mike loved Flora and Flora loved Mike, despite the fact that his lovemaking left her "restless, wanting, needing something.... It was as if I were—well, too hungry, too wanting." she explained. "... It was my guilty secret, my failing, and I fought it alone." Until, that is, reinforcements arrived ten years later, in the tanned and muscular form of a fully grown 21-year-old stepson whom she hadn't seen in ages—Mike's boy, Mickey, fresh out of the Army with an honorable discharge.

The difference in their ages notwithstanding. Mickey's effect on Flora was one of instantaneous arousal. He merely shook her hand in greeting, and she went completely ape: "His touch set off a violent explosion within me. I fought a fantastic impulse to throw myself into his arms, to strain passionately against him, to kiss, caress and possess him and to be possessed by him.

"A million times in the weeks that followed I wondered if I were losing my mind. Being in the same room with Mickey—hearing his voice, seeing him, touching his hand in passing a dish or cigarette lighter—was exquisite torture. Being separated from him, for even an hour, was an agony of longing.... I could hardly eat. Sleep was beyond me, except in restless snatches, and then I dreamed of Mickey, of Mickey taking me in his strong arms, of Mickey's kisses.

"And I was not alone in my torment. For Mike's sake, I hoped I hid my feelings better than Mickey hid his.... He was like a delighted puppy in his pleasure if he came upon me alone. His eyes would sweep admiringly over me. I could see the inward struggle he waged to keep his hands from caressing me ..."

To cut short the restless snatches of exquisite torture, let it be said that it turned out to be a losing struggle all around. When Mickey selflessly decided to move to California and go into the dry-cleaning business in order to keep his hands from caressing his father's wife, Flora hurled herself at his hard young body:

"To this day I can't say how I got into his arms. Nothing mattered after that except being there, clinging close, laughing and crying, kissing---

" 'How I've wanted this—to hold you, Flora!' Mickey moaned. 'I've fought it. I tried not to---'

" 'It's wrong! It's wrong, but I can't help it!' I cried.

"We were both on fire. I didn't protest when Mickey picked me up and carried me into his room. I knew how terrible the thing we were doing was—and how wonderful. At last I knew the ecstasy of complete response, of love fulfilled, of hunger satisfied. Even knowing the price I would have to pay—in guilt and shame—I would have gone on giving myself to Mickey as often as he asked. I wouldn't have been able to refuse as long as we both lived under the same roof ..."

Though I had scarcely skimmed half an issue, it was already apparent that True Story's frequencies of female response were peaking well above the highest intensity levels established by the big, slick ladies' books, and were rapidly approaching the ultra-orgasmic spectrum to which we would normally relegate the sexual escapades of nymphomaniacal fruit flies and jack rabbits in rut.

Without any advance warning to anyone, least of all me, T. S. was now operating on a whole new policy of Total Sex!

• • •

A million times in the following weeks I wondered if I were losing my mind. I could hardly eat. Sleep was beyond me, and I kept running out of ice cubes and bumping into things. I fought it. I tried not to—but I just couldn't help it.

If, while seated on the bus, I happened to espy a True Story reader sitting opposite, I fancied I could feel her eyes sweep admiringly over me, and could sense the inward struggle she waged to keep from caressing and possessing me, right then and there.

For the sake of the other passengers, I hoped I hid my feelings better than she hid hers. Sex, sex, sex—that's all women care about, I thought. And subsequent issues of True Story just went to prove it.

With the awed fascination of one who had suddenly been made privy to some age-old cabalistic truth known only to the inscrutable vestals of a multitudinous female fertility cult, I began to keep a monthly record of the sexual frenzies of the new-style confession heroines, and found that I had soon filled six large file cards with notations—and this in the post-teen, mature-woman division alone.

"Don't call it love, just KISS ME ... HOLD ME ... TAKE ME!" Tinita begged her lover in the title of a May 1963 True Story of sex in a fishing shack. "He grasped my fingers fiercely and lifted them to his lips. 'I love you—I love you!' he whispered.... I looked into his eyes, and a hunger I could no longer deny spread through me. 'Don't call it love,' I gasped, 'just kiss me, hold me—take me!' His mouth sought mine, and as Manuel rekindled the cold ashes of my womanhood, I felt no guilt. My physical need to be warmed and comforted overshadowed everything ..."

Trapped indoors by a snowstorm, which occurred in T. S. the following May, comely Holly Adams entertained her daughter's boyfriend with mugs of brandy-laced coffee that served as a steamy aperitif to the double-Dutch predicament telegraphed in her story's title: "HE GOT US BOTH IN TROUBLE—MY DAUGHTER AND ME!"

"We went on kissing until I felt his arms tremble. 'Oh, Holly,' he groaned. 'This is all wrong.'

"No. It was right. For some crazy, mixed-up reason I felt this wonderful glow between us couldn't be wrong. It was right, right, right.

"The room spun around me. 'Oh, Chip,' I whispered. My arms went around him, pulling him down toward me on the couch. We kissed again and again until neither of us had any sanity left ...

"Only then I felt the robe slip down from my shoulders. I didn't have anything on under it. 'Oh, Chip,' I whispered against his lips. 'Oh, Chip, darling.' And then neither of us spoke as we were overtaken by a powerful, yet almost unreal flood of desire and fulfillment."

Even more powerful and swift was the flood of desire that engulfed a young mother named Judy, when her salesman friend, Brad Wyatt, turned up for dinner in "A DIVORCEE'S SECRET LOVE LIFE," which appeared in the following month's issue. It was a "hot, humid night," the kids were in bed, and Judy was sensibly attired in "shorts and halter"—a circumstance as fortuitous as the fact that Brad had just received a large bonus:

" 'I'm very proud of you,' I said and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

"At least I intended it lightly, but I had been without love too long. Something wild and fierce and uncontrollable happened.... I had never known I was even capable of such raging passion as this. I didn't care that the doors were unlocked and a neighbor might walk in or one of the boys might wake up. Nothing could have stopped me from giving myself to Brad.

"As if coming out of a strange, shocking dream, I realized I was lying on the floor, Brad's body still covering mine.

" 'Forgive me,' Brad whispered. 'I—I've been crazy about you, right from the first, but I never meant to let you know.'

"My halter was torn," Judy realized, now that Brad had finally demonstrated how much he really cared. "I tried to pull it together. This had happened to me! To me!"

Through the magic of the printed word, it had also happened to several million women readers, whose increasing newsstand purchases and subscriptions were boosting True Story's circulation figures higher with each passing month. Nor were such circulation-stimulating episodes of passion peculiar to True Story. Equally eager to be seduced, the heroines of other confession magazines fought valiantly and hard for their sexual rights, hurling themselves at every likely male in order to have something wild and titillating to confess.

"That night there was no sleep for me ..." Anne Sanders revealed in True Confessions' Giant Book-Length Story for the same hot, humid month of June 1964. "At last I knew I had to put an end to my torment. I put on a dress and slipped out. I ran around to the kitchen door of Cliff's house and called his name. Either he was asleep or his bedroom door was closed. I tried the kitchen door and it was open, so I went inside, ran up the stairs and knocked at Cliff's door.

" 'Who is it?' I heard his startled voice. He had the door open even before I could answer. 'Anne, what's happened? What is it? ...' "

It didn't take Cliff long to figure out what it was. Anne hadn't run all the way upstairs to borrow a cup of sugar:

"We stared at each other, desire moving between us like a living thing.

" 'Better go, Anne. I'm not made of iron,' he said.

" 'No,' I said. 'No!'

"Then I was in his arms again, and his voice was desperate. 'Oh, Anne,' he begged, 'please go! Don't make me hate myself any more than---'

"I clung to him, whispering, 'I won't go. I won't! I won't.'

"I felt him tremble, and then he lifted me onto the bed and turned out the light. His lips were warm against mine, and his hands were tender, making me forget that he'd never said he loved me. And because it seemed I'd been l ving all my life for just this moment, I didn't even question what it really meant to him ..."

Regardless of what it meant to Cliff, Brad, Chip, Mickey or any other male character, this was the moment for which most confession-book heroines had been living and waiting—often for as long as two whole pages. In the heat of the competitive quest for fiercer desire and wilder response, the editors of Modern Romances went so far as to put a 35-year-old virgin, named Liz Enders, in the same September bed with Tom Coates, "a husky dark-haired young man" who owned a filling station across the road:

" 'I love you, Liz.' His mouth moved tenderly over my cheek and then found mine.... His hand groped and moved and as my gown slid up I felt his touch on my bare thigh. I gasped and pushed closer to him. Sweet wild longing filled my body—a wanting I had never known except in some hidden part of my mind. Tom's mouth sought mine again. And then I was nothing except what he wanted me to be. A woman with a wanting, receiving, giving body. I cried out in pain, ecstasy and wonder, and then I lay trembling and quiet in his arms ..."

Each month the gowns slid higher and higher, and the groping and groaning increased, as the sweet wild longing of the wanting female body demanded and received its ecstatic gratifications. But seldom was the mature heroine's sexual credo so frankly expressed as on the November 1964 title page of a My Secret Life story in which the attractively buxom Helen unblushingly declared, "I was a lonely widow, hungry for the feel of a man's caress. And when you're over 30, you stop being choosy ... ANY MAN WILL DO!"

"Slowly he undressed me as we stood there in the darkened room," Helen recalled, in describing her affair with Jerry, "a tall brown-haired young man" she had met while attending business school in Seattle. "He smiled as the flashing lights from around the lake splashed their color across my body, changing it from red to green.

" 'You're beautiful,' he whispered, drinking me in as if he could not get enough of looking at my nakedness. Then he drew me close and his lips bit into mine with a savage passion. He was young, but he had known love. Finally he picked me up with a cry and carried me into the bedroom and threw me on the bed. He waited a long time ... until we were both weak with longing ... and when he possessed me the joy was almost like pain ..."

By December 1964, all signals were flashing from a warm. Christmasy red to a bright go-ahead green, when Uncensored Confessions made a unique gift package of the kiss-and-carry thrills and spills experienced by a young and pretty part-time waitress named Mary Beth Lewis, whose hubby, John, was away on a fishing trip. "Frank was virile, exciting," Mary Beth explained in the blurb. "For one shameful night his passion swept away all thoughts of my husband, of my marriage vows ... I HID HIM IN THE BEDROOM CLOSET WHEN MY HUSBAND SURPRISED US." I gasped at the sheer originality of this ploy, then hurried on.

Frank, as fate would have it, was a waiter in the same posh eatery where Mary Beth was employed—the Chuck Wagon Steak House. "He was really a very handsome guy and a lot of fun, too," she confided. "As I walked back toward the kitchen Frank came up behind me and pinched me hard. 'Frank!' I said sharply. he was laughing, his teeth very white in his tanned face. He was very broad across the shoulders and tall—over six feet—with tight ropes of muscle showing beneath the clean white serving jacket he wore. His wide shoulders tapered down slowly to very narrow hips, and whenever I watched him, he always moved across the floor with a certain indefinable grace of movement that was utterly relaxed and free, yet under absolute control."

Male readers, who may often think of love and sex in purely physical terms, and fail to comprehend the more complex emotional and psychological natures of women, may be as hard put as I was to understand the subtle attraction that Frank exerted upon Mary Beth. For example, during their dinner break, she revealed, "I started eating my meat, but he pricked my hip with his fork just as I started to take a bite. 'Frank,' I said. 'Cut it out! ...' "

"As we were walking out, he held the door for me and pinched me. I grabbed his arm and squeezed it as hard as I could to show him I was displeased.

"He got into the car first, and when I stepped in and slammed the door behind me, he suddenly pulled me to him and kissed me full on the mouth. I was shocked. I tried to force him away, but his arms were tight around me. I resisted all that I could, but his lips were tight on mine, and his embrace was warm, and there was something irresistible about the spicy shaving lotion that I smelled on his cheek. Somehow I found myself unable to tear away from him, unable to pull myself back from something I couldn't believe I was doing. His hands were eager on my shoulders and back, and I felt myself drifting, floating.... His touch was so different, so much stronger and so much more eager than John's. Yet I couldn't believe I was really doing this, accepting his caresses, acting like a married tramp ..."

" 'No, Frank, no. We've got to stop. We can't do this. It isn't right. We can't, Frank,' I pleaded at last, my face tight against his warm neck. I felt his warm, soft, urgent hands on the buttons of my blouse, and I lifted my hand to stop him. But strangely, unbelievably, I couldn't stem to summon enough energy to stop him. I reeled in some strange sort of dizziness, some sort of growing desire which was foreign to me ..."

The desire was still growing and the strange dizziness persisted when Frank lifted Mary Beth out of the car and carried her in to bed. " 'I love you,' he whispered, over and over. 'Don't you know I've loved you for months?'

" 'No, no, Frank, you couldn't have.' But at last I knew it was too late; I had come too far to turn back.... All I could think was, Frank, love me, love me.... My brain seared with the scorching, burning pain of want and need and desire. I was more unrestrained and eager and abandoned than I ever thought possible.

"And at last, when I felt as though I couldn't live another moment, I shivered, every atom of my being quivering and rippling in an ecstasy and fulfillment that was almost insanity."

All too soon, alas, dawn quivered at the bedroom window and morning came. Startled by the sound of someone fumbling at the front-door lock, Mary Beth was moved to reflect, "It must be John! John was home early!"

"Frank!" she whispered. "Get in the bedroom closet! Hurry!"

As Frank nipped into the closet and pretended to be an odd sports jacket without slacks, I flipped to the front of the book and realized that it would be almost impossible to convey anything but a most rudimentary impression of the sexual impact of any one confession magazine for any one month. To cite but a few of the items listed in the table of contents of that single December issue, for example, is to give only the sketchiest view of the total prose-and-photo effect:

"OUR SENIOR PROM TURNED INTO AN ALL-NIGHT, UNDRESSED BASH.... After the chaperones went home, the boys dared us girls to take a swim in the pool in our gowns—or strip down to our bras and panties. I took the dare!"

"I ATE HIM UP WITH LOVE ... WHY DID HE RUN OUT ON ME? ... I thought our marriage was going great, until the night Owen said: 'I can't make love to you anymore, Lola. I'm going to leave you!' "

"MAMA WAS A STREETWALKER ... SHE SURE TAUGHT ME ABOUT MEN! ... I was so ashamed of Mama's 'profession' I wanted to die. Still, when I began to dig boys myself, who could I confide in but Mama?"

"I HAD TO FIND OUT ... WAS SHE SLEEPING WITH MY BOYFRIEND? ... Bob never got out of line on our dates—but I knew about men and their sex urges. Was he getting his kicks with Margie, the office tramp?"

As a lifetime student of the fair sex, and a reader of the Kinsey report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, I thought I knew something about women and their sex urges. Was it really possible that some 18,000,000—the estimated combined readership of confession magazines—American wives, sweethearts, mothers and daughters were getting their kicks from the likes of True Story, Modern Romances and Uncensored Confessions?

If so, the kicks were—and are—available in a quantity that would beggar the wildest imaginings of a sex-mad caliph with a harem of a hundred concubines. Since each issue contains an average of 10 to 12 stories, and upwards of 30-odd confession magazines hit the newsstands each month, readers are free to enjoy as many vicarious sexual escapades as their purses, pulses and eyeballs can endure—for, despite the overlay of workaday p'ot details and paper-thin characterizations, the central incident in most confession stories is almost invariably concerned with sex. Where other story elements, such as death, brain tumors, amnesia and automobile accidents, are generally kissed off with a few token expressions of sorrow, anxiety or pain, the sexual experiences of the female protagonists are commonly fleshed out to the fullest with a titillating fervor that would seem to be in direct contradiction to Kinsey's findings on the nature of female erotica, and the average female's responsiveness to such evocatively lively prose.

Women, according to Kinsey, are seldom interested in reading or writing pornographic material, per se, but "produce another, more extensive literature which is called erotic" and deals with "more general emotional situations, affectional relationships, and love. These things do not bring specifically erotic responses from males." the report stated, "and we cannot discover that they bring more than minimal responses from females."

While Sexual Behavior in the Human Female gives no examples of such literature, the description can hardly be extended to include the highly physical, often loveless and extremely specific sexual material in the pages of some of America's most popular confession magazines—and it almost certainly would not seem to apply to such vivid accounts of foreplay as the following, which appeared in the May 1965 issue of My Secret Life:

"Suddenly all the desire I had felt for Alan over the past few months welled up in me," Leta Brent, girl advertising assistant, confessed from the now-familiar horizontal position. "My breath was coming in little gasps as my fingers, with a will of their own, fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. Alan knelt beside me on the couch, covering my face and neck with hot, demanding kisses. Then he was kissing my breasts and impatiently I drew off my sweater. He tugged at the hooks that held my brassiere. When it finally came free, he sighed deeply and kissed my breasts tenderly. My nipples became taut and hard and he rubbed them between his thumb and forefinger. I started to moan with pleasure and let my body go limp, abandoning myself to the exquisite joy of his lovemaking. Alan's fingers found the zipper of my skirt and he quickly drew it off me, followed by my panties and slip. Then we were both naked and I felt his warm body pressing against mine. 'Oh, darling, you're so beautiful!' he exclaimed. He began to kiss me all over and I trembled and moaned as exquisite sensations shot through my body. Are you ready, darling?' he asked me. I was too full of ecstasy to speak. I nodded and kissed his hand. When he entered me, there was a moment of pain, followed by a great burst of indescribable pleasure."

As one might begin to gather, the confessions of many new-style heroines are not being written according to Kinsey. Occasioning no more than "a minimal response" from some females, perhaps, the "affectional relationships" and "emotional situations" are—like Frank-the-waiter's shaving lotion—so irresistibly spicy that even the most prose-hardened of confession fans are not likely to tear themselves away before all the hooks are undone, the nipples made taut, the panties slipped off, and it is much too late to turn back.

• • •

At the risk of provoking a wide-scale maximum response from irate confession fans, and distracting America's habitually purblind smut hunters from their noisy blunderbussing of erotic museum pieces, such as Fanny Hill and Tropic of Cancer, it is at least minimally interesting to note that the new and sexier confession stories are more closely akin to the erotic fantasies of "male-oriented pornography" than they are to traditional romantic fiction.

In view of this literary kinship, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of confession stories are written by and for women, it is also interesting to note the Kinsey researchers' comment that, in the "quantity of pornographic production" studied prior to the writing of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, it was "exceedingly difficult to find any material ... produced by females."

"It is true that there is a considerable portion of the pornographic material which pretends to be written by females who are recounting their personal experiences," the report acknowledges, "but in many instances it is known that the authors were male, and in nearly every instance the internal content of the material indicates a male author. A great deal of the pornographic literature turns around detailed descriptions of genital activity, and descriptions of male genital performance. These are elements in which females, according to our data, are not ordinarily interested. The females in such literature extol the male's genital and copulatory capacity, and there is considerable emphasis on the intensity of the female's response and the insatiability of her sexual desires. All these represent the kind of female which most males wish all females to be. They represent typically masculine misinterpretations of the average female's capacity to respond to psychologic stimuli. Such elements are introduced because they are of erotic significance to the male writers, and because they are of erotic significance to the consuming public, which is almost exclusively male."

In measuring the degree to which confession erotica meets the Kinsey description of male-oriented pornography, there is hardly any need to further exemplify the confession magazines' "emphasis on the intensity of the female's response and the insatiability of her sexual desires." But it does behoove us to briefly consider the manner in which these magazines "extol the male's genital and copulatory capacity."

To be sure, most references to the male genitalia are euphemized. Laurie, the sex-lorn teen, moves her hand slowly over Steve's "throbbing need." Gloria Jordan lies awake nights recalling "the hardness of his body pressed against me," and man and penis are sometimes made one through the use of male names that carry a familiar phallic connotation, such as Peter and Dick. But double-entendre allusions to the male erection are often introduced into the very midst of a confession "love" scene—as in the following, which took place between Doris Fall and Kenneth Bannister in the August 1964 issue of Modern Romances:

" 'You've felt it. Surely you've felt it, too, this thing between us.'

" 'Of course I have,' he said almost angrily.

" 'So quick. So hard.' I whispered. His arms tightened around me. I drew in a sharp breath. Every nerve in my body had come alive and been set on fire."

And, again, in the following scene from "KISSES AREN'T ENOUGH ANY MORE!" which appeared in the December 1963 issue of True Story:

" 'But I want to be taken advantage of!' I wailed. 'You don't have to marry me until—until you think I'm ready. Just make love to me—teach me what it means to—to be a woman! I want that—I do!'

" 'That's what makes it twice as hard for me.' His voice went all loving and husky again. 'Diane, Diane, I'm only human, you know. A man can withstand just so much temptation ...' "

The Kinsey findings notwithstanding, a most decided female interest in the male "copulatory capacity" is evidenced by the popularity of titles such as "HE WANTS LOVE FOR BREAKFAST—Every Single Day!" and "BEDROOM MAGIC! HE COULDN'T GET ENOUGH OF ME ... I had some thing every woman wants." But even more curious, in light of the Kinsey findings, is the fact that so many confession heroines are, in the sexual sense at least, precisely "the kind of female which most males wish all females to be." And most curious and significant of all is the fact that this image of the frenzied, sex-driven female who literally begs for intercourse is not an image that has been created by male writers for an audience "which is almost exclusively male." To the contrary, it is a female self-image with which some 18,000,000 American women continually identify in the pages of the confession magazines.

Male approval of this female self-image is indicated by the fact that True Story's 1965 audience was rumored to include one sneaky male reader for every six prose-hungry females. And all previous findings regarding the supposed differences between male and female erotica seem "typically masculine misinterpretations of the average female's capacity to respond to psychologic stimuli," when one comes upon an occasional male-created confession story in which the sexuality of both the male and female characters is presented in a manner that could be of erotic interest to members of either sex.

Consider, for example, the double-barreled appeal of "I LOVED MY WIFE—BUT I WANTED HER KID SISTER!" an October 1965 confession in which an anonymous hubby described the titillating physical details of "doing it" with his wife's teenage sister, Mary. "She had been one of these girls who develop early and now, at 17, she had the figure of a voluptuous woman," he wrote, in setting the scene for Romance Time. "Her breasts were large and high, her hips round and well-molded, her legs sleek and long. And there was none of the awkwardness about her which is usually identified with adolescent girls. She was very self-possessed, quite at home with adults, sure of herself with men of any age—sure of being wanted.

"I wanted her that night, and she knew it. She made no secret of that or of the fact that she wanted me too.... I stood up when she came in and strode over to her and kissed her. I suppose I kidded myself that it was just some sort of paternal greeting. But Mary turned her face deliberately and it wasn't her cheek that I kissed, but her lips. They were warm and clinging and the kiss stirred me up.

"When it was over, I turned away to hide my feelings. Just for something to do while I regained control of myself, I walked back to the TV set and turned it off. When I turned around, I found that Mary had followed me. She was right in front of me and I found myself kissing her again.

"Her body was warm and desirable, her breasts soft under the flimsy summer blouse she wore. As if drawn by a magnet, halfway through the kiss my hand closed over one of them and she moaned low in her throat and closed her hand over mine, holding it tightly against her. Then, somehow we were on the couch together and my fingers were fumbling at the buttons on her blouse.

"When the blouse was opened, Mary shrugged so that one of her bra straps slipped down off her shoulder. My hand slid inside the cup of the loosened bra and I felt the straining, rigid evidence of her desire. I reached behind her and undid the bra altogether then, and the twin glories of her breasts sprang into view.

"I looked at them a moment. Mary's bosom was young and high and full and trembling with emotion and eagerness. Looking at it that way I was stirred unbearably by both her youth and her femininity.

"She reached out and her hands clasped at the back of my neck. She pulled my head forward until my face was buried in the deep cleft between her breasts. I covered them with kisses and once again she moaned. And her hips moved, describing little circles of passion as they rose and fell on the couch.

"My hand was at the hem of her dress then, inching it upward, stroking the creamy whiteness of her thighs, feeling the muscles tense there as her legs parted. She arched her body so that I might remove her panties and I did. Her hand fluttered to her mouth then and she was biting it, making wordless sounds meant to urge me to hurry.

"I needed no urging. I quickly opened my own clothing. And then we were locked together in a searing embrace during which our bodies moved as one, moved in a rising rhythm of passion that brought us to the very peak of ecstasy and then sent us spinning off into the release of our desire."

On first reading of this "genital performance" in the pages of Romance Time, the twin glories of my large, round eyes described little circles of wonder at the strong element of voyeurism it contained—the emphasis upon visual stimuli, on becoming "stirred up" by looking.

The entire scene was, in fact, a miniature peep show in prose. The visual immediacy was such that the reader could actually see Mary's breasts spring into view, her skirt inch higher, her panties slip down over her "well-molded" hips, and the "creamy whiteness" of her parted thighs. In contrast, the nameless, faceless narrator was no more than a breast-kissing penis figure with 20/20 vision—an erotic prose stud who provided the verbal-visual foreplay for a searing fantasy of intercourse that spun off rhythmically in the imaginations of his female readers.

Though narrated by a male, the appearance of this literary production in a women's magazine—edited by and for women—left no doubt as to its "erotic significance" for a female consuming public. Nor was this particular confession any rare exception in its use of a male narrator whose eyes would voyeuristically mirror the sexual desirability and urgencies of a female character for the psychologic stimulation of its fair readers. The same sort of narcissistic feedback, or male mirror view of the sexually desirable female, has been employed as an erotic device in numerous other confession stories, such as Chuck Johnson's "I FELL IN LOVE WITH A NIGHT-CLUB STRIPPER!" which appeared in My Secret Life in February 1965.

As narrator, Chuck was required to serve the ladies as both proxy peeper and penis figure—and all this in such time as he could steal from his regular job as "floor manager in a department store." While he wisely refrained from trying to explain the art of merchandising to the My Secret Life crowd, Chuck's personal sales technique was such that he succeeded in wangling a date with the beauteous blonde stripper, Mandy Lee, the very first time they met. In keeping with the speedy sexual tempo of today's confession stories, the date was for lunch in her apartment that very day, and Chuck came on ready to carry Mandy right in to bed:

"When she closed the door of the apartment behind us, I pulled her to me, feeling for the first time the warmth of her body against mine. I had never wanted a woman so badly in my life. For one beautiful moment she relaxed in my arms. Then she pushed me away, gently, slowly, turning her face so my lips could not reach hers.

" 'Fix us a drink, Chuck,' she said. 'You were only invited for lunch.'

" 'Mandy, I can't eat anything. You know I can't. Ever since you suggested coming here, I've been ...'

" 'Undressing me, Chuck? You can do that any night at the Tomahawk Club for the price of a drink.' "

As a matter of fact, that was exactly what Chuck had been doing nights, and if his mental movie of Mandy's act was anywhere near accurate, the show was well worth the price of a double Scotch. " 'MANDY LEE AND KING,' the m.c. bellowed. King, the biggest snake in show business, and Mandy, the only girl who could keep him happy and keep his fangs sheathed. 'And now,' declared the m.c., 'ladies and gentlemen, wolves and animal lovers, I give you Miss Mandy Lee and King.'

"The spotlight picked her up as she came on from the side of the small raised stage, blonde, beautiful and slim. The big snake wrapped around her was as black as the girdle and stockings she wore under a transparent negligee.

"I started at her ankles and took it all in. White skin but warmly so, where the stockings didn't meet the girdle. Breasts tantalizingly round and full. Her arms and shoulders were now wrapped around by the writhing, undulating snake. She was terrific, all right, but one thing didn't go with the show—her face. Even with the blonde hair falling away from it, some of it wrapped around King, the face wasn't right. She was smiling, yes, but not for me, not for any man in the room, maybe not for anyone.

"King, maybe? He was already sliding his head over her breast and under her arm, pulling the flimsy gown from her shoulder. She released the negligee and it fell around her feet, leaving King black against the white skin of her breasts and shoulders. Now as she started to move to the increasing tempo of the drums, King wound down around her body until his head suddenly appeared between her thighs, as though trying to release the garters that held her stockings. Then slowly, one by one, she released the stockings and rolled them down, with the snake's head following her hands from thigh to ankle. Now, as the cries from the floor began to increase, she moved in an undulating rhythm, with the snake working his way around her body and up to her shoulders again."

With that scene fresh in his memory, Chuck yearned only to be King for a day—or even one little lunch hour. But Mandy kept pouring drinks and telling him about her no-good husband, Johnny, the second biggest snake in show business:

" 'Johnny comes here when he feels like it,' she said. 'He almost always comes the night I get paid. Sometimes he stays. Sometimes he doesn't. He takes half of what I make. He claims I owe it to him ... conjugal rights, or something.'

"Suddenly I felt as though I were bursting, I needed her, I wanted her so badly. I knew I was crazy to fall for a night-club stripper ... and a married one at that! But I was no longer able to think about what was right and wrong. My mind and body cried out for her.

" 'Why did you bring me here, Mandy?' I said, half angrily, half pleading. Do I look like Johnny? Do I walk like him? What are you looking for?' I took her hand in mine. She looked startled and a little frightened. 'Look at me. I don't care when Johnny was here last. I don't care when he comes again. I care right now, about you. You want me.... This is why you asked me here. Everything in you wants me as desperately as I want you.'

"I waited for her to come to me, and she did. Her arms went around me, her teeth were biting my ears and neck. My hands unzipped her dress and pulled it from her, then her bra and girdle. While I buried my head in her breasts, kissing first one, then the other, she started unbuttoning my shirt. I got my trousers off and found her waiting for me."

And so it was that, after a few appetizing mouthfuls of ear, neck and breast, Chuck and Mandy shared the lunchtime feast of love for which the fervent floor manager had been hankering ever since he had first watched the shapely blonde stripper being divested of her sexy skimpies by King—the biggest wrap-around phallic symbol in show business.

"Stage, night-club, burlesque and other commercial exhibitions of female nudity almost never, as far as our sample indicates, provide erotic stimulation for the exhibiting females," the Kinsey researchers found. And yet, much of the erotic effectiveness of Chuck Johnson's confession was dependent upon the female reader's ability to put herself in the exhibitionistic Mandy's sexy black stage finery, and vicariously savor the voyeuristic view of her striptease as mirrored in Chuck's hungry eyes. Nor, once again, are we here involved with an exceptional instance, since even a cursory sampling of recent confession titles reveals a most profound female interest in erotic exhibitionism of the most lurid sort: "I WAS A HOUSEWIFE BY DAY—A STRIPPER BY NIGHT," "THEY DARED ME TO WEAR A TOPLESS DRESS," "I Could Make a Fortune POSING HALF NUDE," "Behind the-spotlight confession of a SHOWGIRL WIFE ... My show was strictly for men!" "I POSED FOR PICTURES 'THAT WAY' ..." "HOUSEWIFE TEASE," "BLACKMAILED—IN MY BLACK LACE STOCKINGS," "FORCED TO POSE FOR DIRTY PICTURES!"

In the mature-woman category, the exhibitionistic fantasy is usually born of boredom with the unglamorous role of monogamous housewife, and is most modestly manifested by an ambition to win fame and fortune as a beauty-contest sex goddess. "I don't care how jealous my husband is. Now that I've won the beauty contest I know I'm TOO PRETTY TO BE JUST A HOUSEWIFE," voluptuous Valerie Ahearn cried out in the February 1966 issue of Real Romances. "I couldn't believe this was happening to me—the applause, the pictures, the fabulous offers! How could Earl expect me to give it all up?"

For the average female reader, the psychologic thrill that comes of vicariously living out a fictional display of her physical charms is immensely heightened and intensified by the opposition of the prudishly jealous hubby in the story, whether he be called Earl, Owen, Stanley or Matt. Back in the March 1963 issue of True Confessions ("Your Magazine for a Better Life"), it was a stuffy aircraft engineer, named Tom Cullen, who forced his titian-haired "SHOWGIRL WIFE," Lois, to abandon her career as a night-club performer, immediately upon marriage. But showbiz was in Lois' blood, and when hubby Tom went off to Alaska on business for six months, she couldn't wait to visit the Seattle World's Fair with her old friends Kathy and Danny, and see the big midway "girlie" show, "The American Goddess Revue."

"The theater itself was beautiful inside, and the stage settings were out of this world.... But it was the girls I watched more eagerly than anything else," Lois confessed. "They were really beautiful. And in spite of the fact that the dances they did were pretty daring, I found myself wishing I was up there on the stage with them.

"The show closed with a finale that brought down the house. Each girl walked out alone, very slowly and seductively, as the name of the goddess she represented was announced. She'd stand for a minute in the center of the stage so that everyone could get a good look at her, and then walk slowly off again. Venus was the last name to be called, and I gasped as the spotlight shone on her. She wore a sequin-covered blue robe, and all she seemed to have on underneath were a few strips of transparent chiffon. Every time she moved the audience whistled and roared with approval.

" 'Wow!' Danny whispered. 'I guess the only way they get away with that is to call it art!' "

Lois didn't care what they called it. "The American Goddess Revue" was her kind of showbiz. She didn't want to play Lady Macbeth or Hedda Gabler, or any of those snooty, highbrow dames who do nothing but talk. Like any other full-breasted confession heroine with creamy white thighs, she wanted only to excite gasps and roars of approval as Venus de Midway.

Suffice it to say that Lois got her wish by working her way up from ticket taker to chorus girl, until her big break finally came—the chance to move slowly and seductively into the spotlight as Venus, the Greco-Roman, all-American goddess of Beauty and Love! Venus-Aphrodite, the mammiferous mother of Eros-Cupid! Impassioned wooer of Adonis! She "of the Fair Buttocks," surnamed Kallipygos! Divine guardian of women, marriage and money! Sensuous, semi-nude patroness of the harlots of ancient Rome! Archetypal, aphrodisiac Queen of the Confession Mags!

Lois was a smash. "Once I got on the stage that night, I forgot everything except that I was in front of an audience again," she confided. "I loved the applause I got. I felt I was back where I really belonged." And when the producer implored her to stay on as the permanent replacement for Tina, the show's alcoholic and undependable star, Lois agreed. "After all, with Tom out of my life, I didn't have any reason not to," she explained in an offstage aside. "It was work I loved and had talent for ..."

On the evidence of the confession books, erotic exhibitionism is work that many women love and have talent for. If the average showbiz heroine is led to eschew her vain ambitions and accept the less glamorous but more secure role of wife and mother, it is only in the closing moments of the story, when the liberating fantasy has spun itself out and its readers must be returned to the realities of their daily existence. Beautiful and sexy and talented as the readers secretly are, they can't just kick over the traces and go into show business, can they? No. So what right would Lois or any other heroine have to go on being a big "girlie-show" star, when they can't? Right? Fair is fair.

But, in the process of sweetening the sour grapes for millions of women readers, the confession books are never so unrealistic as to suggest that the exhibitionistic Venus urge can or should be completely stifled. On the contrary, they are all for the idea of a woman's making the erotic most of everything the good Lord has given her in the way of visible charms—but on a nonprofessional, party-fun level. Laudable as this may be, in light of the confession magazines' former tendency to shroud the body beautiful in nought but sackcloth and symptoms, the indications are that the results are likely to resemble amateur night at a tank-town show bar.

"To Keep Your Man At Home At Night, Try Wiggles, Wiles and a Black Net Skirt," True Story advised in a recent June feature that recounted the experiences of an ingenious mother of three, who induced her hubby to cut down on his bowling by whipping up a harem-type outfit and doing belly dances at home.

"Let's face it," this talented part-time temptress commented at one point, "there's nothing like getting out that black, sexy underwear and taking off with your man." And to make sure that every potential Venus in America has suitably sexy flimsies in which to wiggle, bump and grind, many confession magazines carry the luridly hand-drawn kind of whoopee-wear ads that look like sample charts from an all-night tattoo parlor situated in the red-light district of some sin-ridden port of call.

On "please rush me" order blanks, confession-mag houris can check off their urgent need for a wide variety of "Glamor Garments" that seem more suited to the burlesque runway than the boudoir. These include an aptly named "DEMI-VENUS" open-front bra; "SHOWBIZ SEQUINED PANTIES ... the perfect touch for posing, show and party sensations"; a "WHIZ-BANG STRIP PANEL ... a full circle of saucy, swinging action"; a genuine "TINY-EST G-STRING"; and a snappy, strappy "STARDUST DANCING GARTER BELT WITH SIX GARTERS ... You don't need a script, plot or dialog when you wear this French froufrou."

Offering the utmost in revelation and convenience is "a completely devilish little panty ... completely cut in front, there's no crotch at all!" Available in several fully operational models with lacy crotch straps to picture-frame milady's winsomely exhibited mons Veneris—the "MIGHTY MITE," the "DOUBLE DARE" and the "EXPOSÉ"—the open-crotch eye-grabber may also be had in the form of a panty that quick-change artistes can whisk off and switch around to use as a whiz-bang, peekaboo bra. "It's a BRA-PANTY! French Reversible! ... Only Originals would think of it! This lovely Turnabout, a pair of exciting open-front pants or a bra, is of the finest, sheerest nylon.... Delicate French lace trim and skillful hand finishing with dainty rosettes tastefully appointed to add just the right flair. Choice of Flaming Red or Exotic Midnight Black.... Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!"

Granted that only Originals would think of it, this French froufrou obviously needs no script, plot or dialog, either. But from just looking at the ad, I keep seeing scenes and hearing voices:

He: "Wow! What's that you're wearing?"

She: "My new French Reversible open-front bra-panty, which only Originals would think of."

He (impressed): "Gee, it's ... original, all right."

She (calling attention to the dainty rosettes with just the right flair): "See? Except for the skillful hand finishing, they look just like ordinary open-front panties, don't they?"

He (maneuvering to pick her up with an urgent moan of desire): "Yeah, I guess they do. But you didn't invite me here to discuss panties, did you? You want me as desperately as I want you."

She (as she seductively removes panties and pulls crotch straps up over shoulders to form a bra): "Hocuspocus ... abracada-bra! Surprise!"

He: "What the---? Why did you---??"

She (biting his ears and neck, more unrestrained and eager than she ever thought possible): "Don't talk! Don't say anything. You've already said it all! Just ..."

He (muttering a turnabout version of a Good Housekeeping complaint once leveled against men, as he moodily fumbles with the fasteners on her French Reversible bra): "Golly, why do women want sex to be like a burlesque show? Why can't they realize that it is a solemn thing?"

Off stage, in the wings, a team of highly trained and dedicated sex researchers hurriedly consult their data, hoping to find an answer to He's plaintive question. Finding none, they shrug in bewilderment and hasten out the fire exit to conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 5328 American women, who will cross their hearts and promise to level with them.

Out front, meanwhile, a nationwide audience of millions of female confession fans sits enraptured as the French Reversible comes undone, the twin glories spring into view, and He and She begin to move in a rising rhythm of passion.