Sexy Books!

A few weeks before I turned fifteen, my mother asked me what I’d like for my birthday. In past years I had attempted to force her hand by refusing to ask for anything but a puppy for all gift-exchanging holiday. After a few years and one upsetting 6-month long puppy ownership, I had figured out there was really no way to beat the system, so — disillusioned — I handed over a short list written on lined paper: “jean jacket, purple boots, season pass to Kings Dominion, and Sex Tips for Girls by Cynthia Heimel.” Nothing about this list struck me as odd, but my mother was HORRIFIED. “Sex Tips For Girls? I can’t buy you that!! What is that? That’s awful! What is it?”

It was a book I had been reading bit by bit at the Waldenbooks at Regency Mall. I can’t remember how I heard about it first, but once I did I started skipping the Bloom County collections in my beloved Humor section and making a beeline for it’s lipstick-red spine. This was not a bleached out good girl “what’s happening to me?” book– this book was bad. The cover was bright yellow with a pair of sexy-lady-legs in red shoes it said in bold, shamless, letters Including Important Advice On ‘Zen And The Art Of Diaphragm Insertion’, ‘How to Cure a Broken Heart’, and ‘The Great Boyfriend Crunch’. Holy Shit! That really is Important Advice! The only thing I found scarier than the thought of a boyfriend was the idea that I might someday have to shove a rubber jellyfish into my cervix, and at fourteen-and-a-half getting my heart broken was a daily event, so I was sold.

My mother, however, couldn’t get past that title. SEX tips? For GIRLS? Not even For Women Above The Age Of Consent? Who Have Husbands? I kept trying to explain to her that it wasn’t literal — that it was a kicky in-your-face neo-feminist collection of essays — which was true. But unfortunately for me, my mother was no fool — she knew that neo-feminist meant whorey. I whined that there was practically NO sex in it at ALL, knowing that there was an in-depth blow-job tutorial in Chapter 11 (Sex Tips #3-How To Be Good In Bed), and pointed out that she always talked about how I should be more interested in reading and books. But she just kept insisting that SHE could NOT buy me this book. “People’s mothers do not buy them sex books, Eliza!”

I couldn’t buy it myself. I had very little available cash at fourteen, and what I did have I greedily shoved into my savings account to stave off the fiscal panic attacks my father had already programed into me. Or I spent it on seven-layer burritos to greedily shove into my fat unpopular face. Yes, fat and unpopular — I was a girl who spent her afternoons reading books in the humor section of Waldenbooks, or occasionally photocopying pictures of the Beatles at the library — so of course I was fat and unpopular. So see, I HAD to have this book — this book with chapter titles like “How to Find Someone To Fall In Love With” and “How To Be Blindingly Beautiful”.

So when my birthday rolled around, I got everything but the book and then I went to visit my sister in New York. She was living in a studio apartment in midtown with some dancer friend, and I got to sleep on the floor and watch David Spade walk home with his girlfriend from the window. She took me to St.Marks place — which she seemed to think was dirty and obvious, but I loved — and called a cabdriver a “motherfucker” for cutting us off. And even though she was uncomfortably poor at the time, she gave me a birthday present wrapped in comicbooks.

“Mummy told me to get you that” she said as I unwrapped my very own copy of the book I had practically already read bit by bit. “Why do you want that? It looks really tacky.”

I read the whole thing cover to cover on the train on my way home. I gave it to my best friend to read. I read it again. It was so.…SMART. That was where the sex was — in the smartness! It said that if you didn’t want to rip his clothes off, then what the fuck are you doing with him? (A standard I still live by.) It — frustratingly — didn’t say anything about getting him to like me, except that I shouldn’t worry about it as much as I inevitably would. It also talked about all the choices that grown up girls have to make and what a drag they are when you’d rather stay in bed with a tray of quaaludes (which I thought might be fruit), but that they’re kind of exciting, too. It talked about standards and boundaries and not giving a fuck what people thought of you (if they didn’t like you). It celebrated the sloppy, sexy, opinionated, woman, and seemed believe that the rest of the world would catch up eventually. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty fucking close.

I loaned that book out to so many people I had to buy a second copy in college. Then I loaned that one out just as much, and one day it never came home. I never bought another copy, because I think I had outgrown it — and probably knew most of it by heart anyway. I then read every other thing Cythia Heimel wrote, even her crappy dog book.

If I had a younger sister to come visit sleep on the floor of my Queens apartment, observe SNL stars, and buy crappy punk souveniors with, I would give her a gift-wrapped book, too. But I wouldn’t give her Sex Tips for Girls — I mean, there’s a detailed Blow-job tutorial in chapter 11! What do you think I am!? I’d give her Tiny Ladies In Shiny Pants by Jill Soloway. The cultural references are more current, the sex is less blatant, and its even smarter. In fact, if I suddenly got a big fat imaginary check, instead of spending it on boots and wine — as per usual — I would go buy a box of copies of this book and stand outside of a high school slapping it into the hands of girls who seem too weird — or even more importantly, not weird enough.

People of the internet! Give this book to a girl too young for it! Girls need inappropriate books before their curious dirty minds stumble on even worse crap! Before they find He’s Just Not That Into You, or The Rules, or Cosmo Magazine! Publications whose every page is essentially a blow-job tutorial, without the dignity of being straight about it.

Do it!