Family Planning Made Tasteful
Goodman, Walter
"Family Planning Made Tasteful" sexuals know that powerful social pressures may induce behavior otherwise not freely chosen. Yet no social system completely determines behavior, and in any healthy social system there must be room...
...The tailor politely pretends to be impressed...
...He uses them because we like them," says the pretty girl in the Playboy ad as she caresses her Jim's chest...
...And, setting the machine on "spin," I doffed my tim'rous sense of sin...
...Laurent will give of their talents or at least their names...
...She whips a condom from her carryall, goes to the stove, and fills it with coffee grounds...
...Fade in Thelma and Phil in bed...
...FRIEND: Textured for greater vibration, snug fitting, and available in packages of three, twelve, and the 144-pack economy size...
...PHIL: It's like having nothing on at all...
...And since babies are not popular among the nubile these days, recourse is being had to old-style birth-inhibitors...
...In this position further protection may not actually be required by the Population Planning Association, but the product is too much fun not to use, "a Scandinavian best-seller...
...And here is the coming TV commercial: [Young wife, disconsolate, at kitchen table...
...What wonder that sales of condoms will reach $150 million this year, with all those young folks just starting out, color-coordinating their contraceptives with their bedroom drapes...
...While she selects the fabric, he, perhaps with the assistance of a paraprofessional, gets himself into a condition to be measured—length, girth, eccentricities of shape...
...Groans, moans, and small screams.] THELMA: Mmmm, that body heat...
...I can hardly wait to surprise Phil...
...Anyhow., at the appropriate occasion, if it ever came, who was in a state to reflect on whether powder blue seemed more in the spirit of the encounter than shocking pink...
...Turn the page to the ad from the Population Planning Association, for THE MOST SENSUOUS CONDOM IN THE WORLD...
...It is "made with a new 'nude' latex that transmits body heat instantaneously...
...You can get it from a post-office box in North Carolina...
...ANNOUNCER: Suprema Sheaths have earned the Seal of Approval of Planned Parenthood, the Disease Control Center, and Screw magazine...
...Yet no social system completely determines behavior, and in any healthy social system there must be room to experiment and to live in many different ways...
...Jim doesn't use them because he has to...
...It was kept under the counter along with, we imagined, the opium and Spanish fly...
...TOUCH, "so thin it's the closest thing to nature's way yet...
...Our introduction to Homer...
...Well, there goes the little lady, off to Pathmark: "You need anything, dear...
...For the good of all of us, homosexuals included, it is well that society should prefer heterosexuality and specially nourish it...
...not to mention PASSION PLUS, a special "sexual aid used by the male partner...
...This brand, the Stimula Sheath, is really something...
...Consider the firm called Horizon, which seems to be an international philanthropic institution: "Throughout the world, we serve one overriding principle—to make the act of love as easy, exciting and as satisfying as possible....Look for Horizon products in food, drug, liquor, convenience and tobacco stores...
...FRIEND: Just watch this...
...How many blood clots is an orgasm worth...
...From a firm called World Population Control, situated inside a post-office box in Newark, you can get "gossamer-thin, super-sensitive condoms" in unmarked wrappers...
...From Federal Walter Goodman is a writer in New York City...
...It features a picture of the top half of a woman smiling the smile of contentment...
...Not much like my generation's approach...
...The possibilities of togetherness extend beyond the bedroom...
...Now oft when on my couch I lie In sensuous and receptive mood I murmur what I can't deny: There was no bliss in solitude...
...Do fashion designers need contraceptives...
...Certain boys were suspected of actually discarding one of the package-81/3 cents' worth—so they could find a pretext for showing off the remaining two with a smirk...
...With luck, the druggist would be sharp of hearing and the transaction would be speedily consummated, three for a quarter...
...WIFE: Is that S-U-P-R-E-M-A...
...she is lying on her stomach, and over her is a man, his expression reverent as he reflects, one presumes, upon the profound womanly satisfaction he has just accorded her...
...Geoffrey Beane and Calvin Klein and Bill Blass and Yves St...
...Yet the joys of sex once experienced are not so readily put aside...
...WIFE: Gee, it sounds like the closest thing to nature's way yet...
...But, no, that kind of coverage is too special...
...But is it reliable...
...Not inviting enough...
...Drugstores turned into boutiques and druggists into extremely interior designers...
...textured to provide maximum pleasure for both of you...
...But it is also good for all of us to lighten the burdens of homosexuals, as we would have them lightened for ourselves...
...Pharmacal Laboratories in Chicago you can get four new sheaths: MAN-FORM PLUS, with its "scientific shape for greater freedom of movement...
...And as they showed their Sears ID's I welcomed them with open knees...
...Well, its "delicately ribbed surface gently massages the woman, while the contoured formfit provides the greatest sensitivity for the man...
...FRIEND: I know what you mean...
...BOTH: It's Suprema for us from now on...
...The one thing none of us thought to do when it came to condoms was discuss them with the girl of our dreams...
...I am not in favor of one that treats heterosexuality and homosexuality as equals, or as matters of indifference...
...Individuals (and societies) can make their own moral vision clear without undue coercion upon those who do not, or who cannot, share it...
...We are talking, remember, about formfit...
...Most likely, the merchandise would then be placed in the least accessible niche of one's wallet, there to remain while the need for its services, alas, kept not arriving...
...This is a product for the people, mass marketing stuff...
...WIFE: And the polka dots are so elegant...
...There will be drapings and fittings and finally a proper showing for the trade...
...Close-up of condom with coffee grounds.] See how it retains its shape...
...How...
...I am in favor of a tolerant and open system...
...Just dropped by to ask whether you and Phil want to join Harry and me tomorrow night for a rubber...
...There will be Paris openings...
...Friend enters.] FRIEND: Hi, Thelma...
...At the drugstore, the merchandise was not out there among the cosmetics...
...One girl of the neighborhood was reputed to keep a supply in her night table, but hers was not a wholesome reputation...
...We didn't know for sure whether the condoms were better as prophylactics or as contraceptives, but being equally terrified of babies as of having our I laundered, lonely as a crowd That bloats the pages Riesman fills, When pharmacology endowed My life with contraceptive pills...
...Society has a strong interest, in private and in public, in encouraging heterosexuality and in discouraging homosexuality...
...Once heralded as the liberator of women's randier instincts, unlocker of the heart, unchainer of the libido, uncrosser of the legs, estrogen has now been associated with too many side effects for comfort, and young women are backing off...
...Yeah, some blades and a dozen condoms...
...Close up.] [Movement.] ^ 18 The American Spectator October 1978...
...THELMA: Madge sure knows her rubbers...
...Innumerous as the golden sands That sift and shift on Nilus' banks, Repairmen, each with wrench in hand, Arrived to probe my clunks and clanks...
...But I just bought a dozen last week and it wasn't exactly a record-setter for us, what with you working late Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday...
...Movement...
...It's like making love to a galosh...
...Oh, occasionally a wag would blow up a bag at a party and the girls would giggle and pretend to blush and the boys would guffaw and try not to blush, but by and large this was man's business...
...The pill, super-weapon of the revolution, is no longer in favor...
...Women's Wear Daily will put out a special supplement...
...It is "supremely sensitive" as well as "anatomically shaped...
...MARDI-GRAS, "unusual and exotic colortones for a new sensual experience...
...Say, you been giving at the office...
...IF:The/mina Washworth The American Spectator October 1978 17 noses fall off, we forearmed ourselves with never a thought for the aesthetic dimension or a prospective partner's feelings...
...In time, refinement caused us to drop the adjective, but it was not until we actually went to do commerce with druggists that we got much more elegant...
...Saturday afternoons given over to holding swatches up to the light, testing for durability, checking, out Consumer Reports, together...
...Lest this prove a downer to those who emerged from puberty at a time when the Chairman Maos of sex were preaching spontaneity at all costs, merchandisers of old favorites have taken to pushing not their contraceptive but their romantic connotations...
...The young folks enter the tailoring establishment...
...When the hour did finally strike, it meant something of a scramble through pants pockets and wallets only to find, as often as not, that the latex, purchased at the height of adolescent expectations four years earlier, had turned to dust...
...There was always an elderly lady being waited on when you went in to make a purchase, and it sometimes took ten or fifteen minutes of studying laxative labels before conditions were right to step up and murmur, "a pack of Trojans...
...Fade out...
...To do so without injuring those homosexuals who are without choice, and to establish conditions in which their lives may be tolerably creative and satisfying, is an important social task...
...Listen...
...Not much along these lines can be done for the diaphragm or the intrauterine device, but our admen have discovered potent aphrodisiac qualities in the common condom, or, as one firm has renamed it, the Conceptrol Shield...
...And as my — with -- fills, I bless the-liberating pills...
...I must check my tobacconist, a Hispanic-American on West 38th Street...
...Today, with a spirit of equality and fair play in the saddle, enlightened young persons figure sex out together beforehand...
...The future depends on it...
...Walter Goodman Family Planning Made Tasteful A note on the latex revolution...
...WIFE: Speaking of rubbers, Madge, the ones Phil uses sure do get in the way...
...Intercourse was an abstraction until Harry and I switched to Suprema Sheath...
...Late dispatches from correspondents on the erotic front report that the sexual revolution has entered a postrevolutionary phase, and appears to be taking a detour into domesticity...
...Our introduction on the streets of the Bronx, some years before we could possibly have found any use for the things, was not to contraceptives or prophylactics, but, forgive me, to scum bags...
Vol. 11 • October 1978 • No. 10
