Put What Where?: Over 2,000 Years of Bizarre Sex Advice. John Naish
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Put What Where?: Over 2,000 Years of Bizarre Sex Advice - John Naish страница 8
Even after that, properly married couples could not simply dive in willy-nilly whenever they pleased. The guides stressed that they had to practise sex at the right times. The rules forbade lovemaking on the wife’s birthday, as well as the day before a full moon, and on new moons.
Across the water in Java, the ancient sex guides adopted early Islamic rules, which were based on the Prophet’s guidance: no sex standing up, or sitting, or with the woman on top; no talk during intercourse; and sex during menstruation was banned because it created ugly children. Other written advice probably survived from older local folklore: you can tell the shape and size of a man’s penis by looking at his thumb, while a woman’s vagina reflects the shape of her mouth. Or perhaps they got those ones from the playground.
My Place or Yours?
How to pull
Philaenis, papyrus sex manual (2 BC)
Pick the woman’s worst feature and then make it appear desirable. Tell an older woman that she looks young. Tell an ugly woman that she looks ‘fascinating’.
Top womanizers
Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)
The following generally obtain success with women:
Men well versed in the science of love
Raconteurs
Ones acquainted with women from their childhood
Guys who send women presents
Slick talkers
Men who have not loved other women previously
Chaps who know their weak points
Good-looking men
Men who have grown up with women
Men who live next door to women
Men who are devoted to sexual pleasures, even though these are with their own servants
The lovers of the nursemaid’s daughters
Men who have been recently married
Men who like picnics and parties
Liberals
Men who are celebrated for being very strong
Enterprising and brave men
Men who are better looking, cleverer and kinder than your husband
Girls go mad for burnt skulls
Ananga Ranga of Kalyanamalla (Stage of the Love God), by the Indian poet Kalyan Mall (16th century)
Take a human skull from the cemetery or burning ground on the eighth day of the moonlit fortnight of the seventh month Ashvini (September-October), expose it to fire, and collect the soot upon a plate held over it; let this be drawn over the inner surface of the eye-lids, instead of the usual antimony, and the effect will be to fascinate all the women.
Turn yourself into a sex god
Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)
First, get some fashionable gold hyena bones:
Good looks, good qualities, youth, and liberality are the chief and most natural means of making a person agreeable in the eyes of others. But in the absence of these a man or a woman must have resort to artificial means ...
If the bone of a peacock or of a hyena be covered with gold, and tied on the right hand, it makes a man lovely in the eyes of other people.
Or smear either of these on your penis:
The application of a mixture of the leaf of the plant vatodbhranta, of the flowers thrown on a human corpse when carried out to be burnt, and the powder of the bones of the peacock.
The remains of a kite who has died a natural death, ground into powder, and mixed with honey.
Then enlarge yourself:
Rub your penis with the bristles of certain insects that live in trees, and then, after rubbing it for ten nights with oils, rub it with the bristles as before.
By continuing to do this a swelling will be gradually produced in the penis and you should then lie on a hammock with a hole in it, and hang it down through the hole. After this you should take away all the pain from the swelling by using cool concoctions. The swelling lasts for life.
How to be a failure
Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui (16th century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton
Know, O My Brother (to whom God be merciful), that a man who is misshapen, of coarse appearance, and whose member is short, thin and flabby, is contemptible in the eyes of women.
When such a man has a bout with a woman, he does not do her business with vigour and in a manner to give her enjoyment. He lays himself down upon her without previous toying, he does not kiss her, nor twine himself round her; he does not bite her, nor suck her lips, nor tickle her.
He gets upon her before she has begun longing for pleasure, and then he introduces with infinite trouble a member soft and nerveless. Scarcely has he commenced when he is already done for; he makes one or two movements, and then sinks upon the woman’s breast to spend his sperm, and that is the most he can do. This done he withdraws his affair, and makes all haste to get down again from her.
Such a man is quick in ejaculation and slow as to erection; after the trembling, which follows the ejaculation of the seed, his chest is heavy and his sides ache.
The Renaissance in Europe revived not only the arts of painting and literature: from the late fifteenth century onwards, the sex-advice industry resurfaced and rapidly began to churn out international bestsellers, thanks to a vital new innovation – the printing press.
It had been invented in the mid-1450s and soon became available to entrepreneurs at relatively affordable prices. Ever since this point, the sex industry has relied on latest-tech tricks to pump its wares