Saturday Night Lewd

I first met stand-up comic Beth Lapides in 1992. She had been doing a joke in her act about running for first lady: "It's such an important job. And how does she get it? Sleeping with the president" Then it occurred to her that "it would be a lot better to actually run than to just keep saying this joke. To do a sort of joke in action." And she put her career on hold so she could conduct her mock campaign. It was a "full-disclosure campaign," she told me. "I've smoked pot, not just to try it, but because I liked it. I inhaled, I exhaled, I used my entire respiratory system."

In 1993, Lapides became the mother of alternative comedy, giving birth to the Un-Cabaret, where comedians would talk about their experiences rather than their standard shtick. It opened for a three-week run at Luna Park, a Hollywood nightspot, and has been there ever since. Traditions have developed in the process. The annual Sex Show, for example. Here are highlights from the true confessions of female comics the past couple of years at the Un-Cabaret Sex Show, with Lapides providing the mortar between the bricks. After attending numerous times armed with my tape recorder, I came to feel like I was eavesdropping in the girls' locker room.

Judy Toll

I am a huge whore, and I'm also a really huge hypochondriac, so it's such a drag because I've actually been tested for AIDS more times than I've had sex. The last time that I had any real sexual activity was in March, and it was on the way home from my girlfriend's wedding. I was so depressed because I was engaged, she got engaged after me, and then mine fell apart and she got married. It was (continued on page 112)Lewd(continued from page 107) so depressing that on the way home I stopped off at my ex-fiancé's house and accidentally blew him.

Since I really have no sexual activity, I discovered something a few days ago that has changed my life forever---my new favorite porno video. Oh, my God, it's all Camp Pendleton marines jerking off one after the next, with this sleazy gay porno film director in the background who has somehow convinced them that if they do this he'll put them in porno movies with beautiful women. And they just do it. I can't get enough of it. And the weird thing is, none of them shows any expression. I guess they're so young they can just do it like that.

The director plays a porno video for them, so that's in the background and you hear "Ooh! Ooh!" But you just focus on the marines, that's all. So they're all watching the porn video---maybe it's the first one they've ever seen---and they're just doing their thing, and then when they come, nothing changes in their expression. Except for one guy, who goes, "Ah, here it comes, baby, ah, you fuckin' bitch, you fuckin' bitch!" One guy and that's it. He's kind of my boyfriend.

Beth Lapides

I actually read two things this week. I read in Vogue that sleep is the new sex, and I had ten hours two nights ago, so I am high. And I can't believe it took them this long to figure that out.

And then I read in LA Weekly that sex is the new religion. But if sex is the new religion and sleep is the new sex, then would that make sleep the new religion? Or religion the new sleep?

Julia Sweeney

I don't know if I happened upon it or what, but at the age of three I knew how to masturbate. So I would say, "Mom, I can do this thing that makes your whole body shake!" And then I would show her what I could do. And I'd go, "Oooh!" And then my mother would go---this fucked-up Irish Catholic---"I don't think you should do the thing that shall remain nameless."

When I was five and in first grade, on weekends I would masturbate---I didn't call it that, I didn't know what I was doing then---and I would come like 12 times in an hour. I'd just go bam! bam! And it was so much fun, and I kept trying to teach people how to do it. This was just the greatest thing, and I couldn't understand why everyone else didn't spend their weekends masturbating.

And then finally my mother sent me to a doctor, and they called it "hanging." My mom would say, "She's hanging again," because I would kind of hang on like a doorknob, and it was so intense and so much fun and it was really great. And then the doctor would say, "You're too young to be hanging on things." I never got what he was talking about. I never really felt like it was bad, even though they were telling me that. I just continued.

Then I got to high school, and suddenly the nuns got up and told us, "You shouldn't masturbate." And, of course, I didn't know what they were talking about. I did not correlate it to what I was doing. When I masturbated, I thought, I'm running down the street and somebody's running after me. My fantasy was like, "Oh, my paper's due tomorrow." I didn't even know it had anything to do with sex. I didn't know at all.

So the nuns would get up and say, "Masturbation is terrible, and it's a sin," and I would say, "Yes, it is." Of course, they didn't describe what it was. And I thought, Masturbation is terrible and you shouldn't do it. And I thought that until I was 17. And then I read Our Bodies, Ourselves, and I had this moment where I went, "Oh, my God, I have been masturbating my entire life."

Then I thought, I'm supposed to be aroused sexually and then I'm supposed to come? I couldn't figure out how those went together.

So it took a very long time for me to have a psychological meeting of the idea of being sexually aroused and coming at the same time. Now, I actually do. Once I connected with the idea, they connected, believe me. I would read stuff about women not being able to come, but my whole thing is trying not to come. It's a good problem.

Beth Lapides

Yoga is a very sexy way to work out. I think that anyone who pretends that yoga's not about sex is just lying to you, and if they're saying, "It's very spiritual," well, it's not as if spirituality and sex aren't connected.

Also, there are women in yoga class who wear leotards without any underpants---which is very yogic, apparently---except I can totally see their assholes. And I guess that's cool.

Sabrina Matthews

I recommend engaging in recreational lesbianism. Don't worry particularly that you're going to hurt some lesbian. Probably you're not. Because we all have a straight woman at some point in our lives. It's something we have to do. When we sign the contract, they say, "Paragraph 4-E: This woman's going to come along, she'll be curious, and, you know, you're going to be first in line at the buffet that Sunday if you do her."

But, on the other hand, if you are curious, and you're a woman, and you meet a lesbian and you sort of come on to her and she says, "Oh, I've already had my straight woman," don't be offended, because one is our quota, and then we're done. Really, ask any lesbian. I'm not making this shit up.

When I moved to San Francisco, it was such a mind-fuck. Everything was freaky to me, like there were leather-clad women with tattoos. I called a friend who had moved to San Francisco a little earlier, thinking, OK, this will be my sort of oasis, and this is someone who can help me transfer to this really open sexuality that I may one day interpret as a paradise. But today it's just really freaky and terrifying, and I'd rather just drink in the corner at the bar.

I called her, and I had to leave a message on her answering machine. She called me back like ten minutes later. She said, "I'm really sorry but I recently got my nipples pierced, and I was changing my nipple ring, and the pain was so intense that the endorphin rush made me pass out, and I couldn't take your call."

Beth Lapides

I hear a lot of people talk about their sexuality in terms of Catholicism and guilt and everything, but you don't hear that many people talk about their sexuality in terms of Judaism. And there's a reason. I think my sexuality is connected to Judaism in a big way.

For instance, I have a dildo, and it's black, and we keep it in a drawer with the yarmulkes. We use them equally as much. Also, I think my sexuality blossomed on the bar mitzvah circuit, quite frankly. I went from one bar mitzvah party to another.

And---this is a weird beginning sexual experience---I was at an all-girls' summer camp, and we had socials with the boys' summer camp, and I snuck off with a boy from the dance into the woods or the tennis court or wherever you might go. I remember that he was feeling me up---that'd be second base---and he was going, "Yeah, the Jewish girls are the best." Suddenly, I did not feel sexy. I was like, "Take your hand off my breast." That's so weird. Isn't that like saying black men have the biggest dicks?

Margaret Cho

I was living with this guy, and one night he was fucking me up the ass, and I'm laying there, and fortunately (continued on page 200)Lewd(continued from page 112) there was an open copy of Mother Jones on the floor, and it was open to an article on capital punishment. So I'm reading, and I get to the bottom of the page and it says, "Continued on page 67," and I'm like, is it rude to finish the article or should I just wait for him? I realize that I must err on the side of caution. So I'm waiting, and he's taking forever. And I'm like, OK, I get it, wrap it up---June, July, August---let's go!

There's a certain penis style that really bothers me. You know, when it's a grower, not a show-er. It starts off like really small, you don't think it's going to be any big deal, it's just sort of there. It's kind of like a frog on a lily pad, you know, it's adorable, it kind of looks like a corsage, and then out of nowhere it just kind of like expands and becomes like a huge elephant-trunk thing. What is that? That's too much. I don't want all of that. I want half of that. Could I put half of that back? That's too much for me. I can't eat all that, frankly. I know my limits, and when I go to Subway, I do not get the foot-long, I get the six-incher.

Beth Lapides

People have come up with kinky sex because it's memorable. That's the thing about kinky sex, you remember it. Regular sex---how many times have you had sex where nothing particular happened and it wasn't a one-night stand, and you actually remember it? You just have a vague memory of some sex, right?

But when you do something kinky, it's like, yes, the mango sex. We'll always remember the mango sex. Try it, but try it with a sheet you can throw away, because there's nothing stickier than mango sex. It wasn't even that good, but we remember it. And that's the key---the remembering.

Ellen Cleghorne

I do give a good blow job. I really, really do, and I wish you could get a grade, or some type of certificate. I realized I was really good at it, I guess, when I was 20 or 21 years old. I was giving this guy a blow job, and he said, "You do this so well. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?" And I said, "Well, I can't do this." Stupid me---I had to get a real profession, so I started training to be an actress. But I could have just kept blowing. I could've just kept sucking dicks.

It's good for a woman to have gay friends, because gay men give each other head on a regular basis, so they have more experience. So I asked my gay friend, "How do you do it without gagging?" So he told me this exercise. These are things you can't learn on morning TV. They teach you shit like planting tomatoes. I don't fucking plant tomatoes! I want to know, how do I get it down a little farther without gagging on my dinner?

Beth Lapides

We don't role-play---I don't have that kind of energy. If you need to role-play with the person you're with, that's going to require a lot of effort. But if we did role-play, who would we be? Maybe we would be the ringmaster and the clown. And that sounds so good, I think we'll try it.

What would be our safety word if we were into that? Your safety word has to be something that you would never, ever say---like in S&M---and I realized the only thing that I would never, ever say under any circumstance is, "I think I've lost too much weight, and I'm actually too thin now." That's my safety word.

My biggest sex fantasy is [whispering] we're making love, and I realize I'm out of debt.

Moon Zappa

I had an awful make-out session recently. I met this guy who was repellent, and I thought, Well, maybe that's what marriage is like. But I made out with him, and he had a tongue that poked. It was just like this poking, rock-hard tongue, but it also had flaps underneath, like a car wash. He also deposited a lot of saliva in my mouth during a kiss, so it was like the rock-hard tongue poking, the flat dry---kind of like a cat's tongue---the flaps and then the saliva. But I said no. When you're not attracted, you're not attracted.

I had an affair with a guy who said, "You never initiate." He wanted me to initiate, and I thought, Yeah, yeah. So I set the stage. Basically, I blindfolded him, had him lie down and started to give him a hand job, but what he didn't know was this: I went into the kitchen and I got a butcher knife, and as I jerked him off with one hand, I fucking stabbed the air with the other hand. He never knew anything about it. I realize I'm not going to have sex with any of you here in the room.

Beth Lapides

I had this boyfriend, and he was just hard all the time. I used to call him Eveready. So we would have sex all the time, and then one day he goes, "I don't think I can have sex anymore, because, you know, I've had sex so much in my life, I was thinking my come could probably fill a huge garbage can. A huge one, you know, one of those really big ones, that's how much I've come in my life. And I just thought maybe I should give it a rest." And he did. He stopped cold. He said, "You know what? Enough!" I hope that he's back at it, because he was good.

Merrill Markoe

On the topic of faked orgasms, if sex fraud were a crime, I'd be in jail for the rest of my life. Sometimes, if I think a guy is very good, I fake multiple orgasms. Here's what I don't get. So many guys don't seem to know where anything is on a woman. Guys who can assemble a refrigerator for you, guys who can take apart your computer and put it back together again, guys who can fix your dishwasher, have no idea where anything is on a woman.

Why can't we just give everyone, when we meet them, some sort of a manual, like you would get when you buy a Cuisinart? It would have a small map that would show them where they're going, because lots of times they're close, but it's like they got on the Hollywood Freeway and they got off at Lankershim and they meant to get off at Highland. So close but yet so far.

The last guy I had an affair with, his whole approach was like the female sex organ was a plate of spaghetti. But the harder they're trying, the more orgasms I fake, because you want to encourage them. As if a guy would ever do that. As if, if a woman were searching and searching for a guy's penis and couldn't find it, a guy would go, "Look how hard she's trying. I got to give her points for that."

I have come to think of orgasms as the things that I have really quickly while the guy gets up to look in the refrigerator for something to drink. My definition of bad sex is contained in the question, "How many times should you let a guy slam your head into the headboard before you call a halt to the proceedings?" And the answer is two. The first time could have been an accident.

My best piece of sexual advice: If you're a guy, and you've been attempting to arouse a woman and you are working hard and it's going slowly and it seems to be taking more than half an hour, rest assured that you do not know what you are doing. And for God's sake, don't do it harder.