Richard Freeman's Batteries Not Included
Let's Get It On
by Adrienne Benedicks

Years ago, those who truly wanted to learn how to be better lovers (bless their frisky libidos) were hard put to find anything more than technical advice disguised as medical advice. Which was about as titillating as sex education in High School.

Today, How-To books are exploding all over the book scene—how to be sexy, how to please, how to excite, how to fuck, suck and do it right. Problem is, you learn how to get it on according to the author's view of getting it off. It's just too bad if it doesn't work for you. Worse yet, you may feel obligated to blow when you really want to suck, fornicate when you really want to frig, or join a menage a trois when you really want to join a jack'n'jill party.

However, don't despair. The peculiar folks at Goofy Foot Press published a most wonderful book, The Guide To Getting It On! Without a doubt, The Guide is the most playful and sensitive book I've read on sex; it's funny, irreverent, intelligent and refreshingly honest.

The Guide isn't like any other How-To book: "...it encourages you to explore dimensions of sexuality that people in our country usually aren't told about—from the emotional part of getting naked together to why a guy who takes his penis too seriously might have trouble pleasing his sweetheart. It covers subjects like hand jobs, and heart throbs, kisses above and below the waist, vibrators, friendship and sex on the interstate."

Goofy Foot philosophy says that it doesn't matter what you've got in your pants if there's nothing in your brain to connect it to.

Julia Hutton's (Author of Good Sex) influence is evident throughout The Guide: "...sexual savvy depends less upon 'how-tos' than on self-knowledge, which evolves slowly, awkwardly and through many different routes."

Chapter titles include: "The Zen of Finger Fucking," "Horizontal Jogging," "Basic Brain Weirdness & The Mind/Body Interface," "On Culture & Kink," "Techno Breast & Weenie Angst," "When The Tide Turns Red," "Dyslexia Of The Penis—Improving Your Sexual Hang Time" and "Goofy & Gay."

Don't let the goofy titles fool you into thinking this is just a silly book. The Guide is full of useful information for experienced and inexperienced men and women. Everything you ever wanted to know is discussed; you get to do with it what you want. There are the very best chapters on oral sex: "Yet many a male merely pushes his face into a woman's crotch, sticks his tongue out like when the doctor says to say 'ahhh,' and wags the thing mindlessly." This chapter is loaded with tips and techniques for giving a woman oral pleasure. Reading this section to your lover while his tongue is in the best possible position is more fun then watching Nina Hartley's Guide To Oral Sex.

The chapter on fellatio offers excellent suggestions for giving a really good blow job with a few things for women to consider: the deep throat myth, the vacuum factor (hoover fellatis), slobber, and visual glee to name a few. The Guide offers a unique section of things a guy can do to help a woman who is trying to give him oral sex, along with information on bruising, lasting shorter, attitude issues, and gagging: "If she gags on your penis, do you really think she's going to be excited about putting it in her mouth again?"

The Guide takes an interesting stand on foreplay: "...yet there is nothing caring about the underlying premise of foreplay: that women are somehow a little retarded and need to be warmed-up before they want to become sexual...What's really nuts is that women buy this concept as often as men...Perhaps the problem isn't that women have a slower warm up time, as the notion of foreplay seems to imply. Perhaps the real problem is our culture's concept of sexuality, where being a woman ('getting fucked') is a common insult, where 'scoring' makes a boy feel like a man, and where respect, friendship and caring are not necessary conditions for sex.

"Unfortunately, the concept of foreplay implies that tenderness is little more than a warm-up for intercourse...If you can't get past the notion of foreplay, try to think of it as everything that's happened between you and your partner since the last time you had sex. How you treat each other with your clothes on has far more impact on what happens in bed than carefully planted kisses right before intercourse. This is just as true for the way that women treat men as for how men treat women."

Unfortunately The Guide doesn't have an index; a serious oversight on Goofy Press' part. It's damn inconvenient, especially when you're naked, to thumb through the text looking for that great bit of advice you read yesterday.

The Guide To Getting It On! will certainly inspire you to get it on. I highly recommend it. And when you're done reading it through, give it to your teenagers, it is the best thing you can do to encourage a confident and healthy view of sexuality.
The Guide To Getting It On!
Created by Paul Joannides
The Goofy Foot Press 1996
367 pp $17.95