BEYOND XAVIERA

This is the second – and hopefully last – book written by the former “companion” of Xaviera Hollander, a.k.a. “The Happy Hooker”. Larry “The Silver Fox” Dreyfus tells completely unbelievable tales in BEYOND XAVIERA.

The subtitle of Larry’s book is “What Do You Do for an Encore after The Happy Hooker?”.

Well, here’s what you do:

· Write your second book for a cheapie publishing house in an effort to hold onto that “brass ring” which seems to be moving further from your grasp.
· Put pictures of models on the cover of the book whom you couldn’t possibly have “nailed”.
· You also put a picture of yourself on the cover, looking like a gray-haired Marcel Marceau with an enlarged proboscis, wearing neck chains and a hideous, thrift store shirt.
· In the book, you tell stories of how women can’t keep their hands off you, leaving the rest of us to wonder how ANY women would WANT to put their hands on you.

As “proof” I guess with regards to his irresistibility to women, “Veronica”, in the first few chapters, writes of her sexual escapades with Larry. How do we know that this is genuinely “Veronica” speaking? Why it’s in italics of course and EVERYONE knows that printed italics just HAVE to be by the person to whom the writing is accredited, right?

So “Veronica” brags on liking to “take it” every which a way from Larry. Apparently Larry is so good at making her explode in sexual ecstasy that she’ll go from anal to oral just like that! Here’s hoping that there was some soap and water handy directly after anal and just before oral.

The rest of the book is pretty much the same thing over and over – bragging about how many satisfied chicks have his blown loads in their bellies, ad nauseum.

I’m reminded of high school locker rooms where you just know that the guy doing the most bragging is getting virtually no real action at all. I’m inclined to believe the same thing here about ol’ Larry.

IN MEMORIUM: SCOTT McKENZIE

The singer of the 1960's anthem “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)” passed away this past weekend at the age of 73.

I had to great good fortune to be Facebook friends with Scott; when I found him on FB and sent a friend request, not only did he accept it almost immediately, but he sent a personal note welcoming me to his page and to his humor page as well.

Frequent postings from Scott demonstrated that despite an illness he was suffering he maintained a positive spirit throughout. It’s not surprising, really, because anyone who listened to “San Francisco” could hear the positiveness of his message. It was one of those songs that when it came on the radio, I stopped what I was doing to listen to it. Not many songs make me do that.

Scott lived what he sang and it showed in every posting he wrote. He couldn’t help but make you smile and maybe forget about your troubles, at least for a little while.

There will be on-line tributes about Scott and his life in the days ahead, so I’m not going to get into all that here, except to say that there seems to be a movement afoot for those who loved him to actually wear some flowers in their hair this week as a show of celebration of his life.

As I got a close haircut just yesterday and have very little hair on my head right now, the best I’d be able to do is tape some flowers to my scalp.

Don’t fret about the above joke; Scott would have found it funny.

Rest well, my friend. You have finally been healed and released. Until we meet again some sunny day…..

(THE WAY TO BECOME) THE SENSUOUS MAN

• Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote about some cheapie knock-off version of this very book, which was called THE SENSUAL MALE. It was penned by that well-known stud Paul Warren – whom nobody had ever heard of, I suppose. It was published by Pinnacle Books, which, coincidentally, started out as a subsidiary of Bee-Line Books, a porn “house” for books with titles like HER HORNY UNCLE and writers using pseudonyms like “Dick Waggin”. I swear that one time I saw a Bee-Line book written under the name “U.R. Dumb”. So much for respecting one’s readers, eh?
  
  Anyway, (THE WAY TO BECOME) THE SENSUOUS MAN was a follow-up to Lyle Stuart Company’s previous best-seller, (THE WAY TO BECOME) THE SENSUOUS WOMAN. If memory serves, I haven’t read that one, mostly because I guess I don’t want to become a sensuous woman. Never would have had the knack for it regardless. I can say with all certainty.
  
  Written by “M” (another great unknown sex advisor), (THE WAY TO BECOME) THE SENSUOUS MAN has what looks to be the subtitle of “The first how-to book for the man who wants to be a great lover”. What “M” hopes to teach you, at least according to the introduction, are the following lessons:
  
  · How to banish premature ejaculation.
  · How to become expert at some of the great erotic techniques that have been known to superb lovers for centuries, such as “The Velvet Buzz Saw”, “The Runaway Pinch”, “The Butterfly Flick”, “The Easy Rider” and other delights.
  · Where to meet women.
  · How to master the art of prolonged lovemaking.
  · How to be a good sexual conversationalist.
  · How to achieve the ability to drive a woman almost insane with ecstasy.
  
  With chapters like “Getting It Up and Keeping It Up – Farewell to Premature Ejaculation, Inability to Ejaculate and Impotence”, “Orgasm – Yours” and “Orgasm – Hers”, this book is FULL of things that your likely to forget once you’re in bag deep. There’s also a “handy” chapter on Masturbation.
  
  BUT…..my favorite chapter is called “Party Sex”, which features lists called “Good Points About Orgies” and “Bad Points About Orgies”. Written during an era where “Aids” was the name of a diet candy (spelled “Ayds” though; anyone here remember them? They were similar to caramels and were supposed to be an appetite suppressant), the biggest thing talked about here is possibly contracting (“Oh, Lord, No!”)….a venereal disease.
  
  Plus the fact(s) that you may be partnered up with someone you’re not attracted to, the possibility of getting involved in sado-masochistic games you’re not able to handle and the chance someone could be filming the whole thing to show at your next Lodge meeting.
  
  Imagine, you’re 45 years old, wearing antlers as part of some secret fraternity rite and viola, for the evening’s entertainment, your pimply ass is being projected onto a white sheet movie screen on the meeting hall wall. Thanks, but no thanks. Wearing antlers is humiliating enough on its own.
  
  An interesting technique written about within the book’s pages: giving head to a shot glass as an exercise in tongue control (no thanks, I get enough tongue control answering a business phone and making it dodge and duck while I eat so that I don’t bite down on it).
  
  While it was an interesting, sometimes amusing experience to read this book, I have to say that it really wasn’t for me. Not that I’m exceptionally skilled in the “amore” department, but I think that the most beautiful thing about intimacy is that it’s better when it’s one on one and monogamous.
  
  I’m old fashioned enough to believe that one should be in love with their sex partner because that makes it special and not just some random, animalistic act. The beauty of her face during her orgasm is exquisite and worth everything you had to do to get her to that point.
  
  If you can use this book to make it better between you and your lady love, more power to you. On the other hand, if you are going to use this book to nail multiple women with self-esteem issues, then you are a degenerate swine and I hope you are shot by some jealous boyfriend while you’re on the downstroke.
  
  ‘Nuff said?

KELLER: THE CANNIBAL

I think I’ve written about this book before on one of my other blogs, but it’s worth a re-visit.

Nelson DeMille is a name that’s fairly well known in literary circles, but – as “they” say – he hadda start somewhere. Here’s where he developed his writing chops – at a cheap, sleazy publishing house like Manor Books.

DeMille wrote at least two series books for Manor back in the 70’s; the KELLER books and another cop series, RYKER. Books in the RYKER series sometimes alternated between DeMille and someone (or several folks) named “Edson T. Hamill”.

The books are pretty interchangeable owing in some part to the fact that both Keller and Ryker had the same first name and had the same type of marital/family history. Apparently all lead detectives in these books were named “Joe” and had bad attitudes, foul mouths, were WAY lacking in police courtesy, homophobic, and likely to engage at any moment in beating statements out of their witnesses. You can guess that these AREN’T your CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU type of police officers.

Ok, so Joe Keller is a NY cop with an attitude problem; we’ve established that. Mr. Charming here gets thrown into a case in which a former soldier, Albert Kondor, survives the war by hiding out and resorting to cannibalism to survive.

The problem is, Albert likes human delicacies a little TOO much and when he makes his way to New York after the war, he maintains his dietary standards. He prefers Asian “meat” and so when folks start disappearing from Oriental communities, you know that it’s Al doing his own form of Chinese Take-out. Unfortunately, three days later he’s hungry again.

The plot of THE CANNIBAL isn’t complicated at all but then these are Manor Books we’re talking about here and they were not particularly known for classy literature. Their rival publishing house, Leisure Books, were neck and neck with Manor in the sleaze factor sweepstakes. In fact, Leisure was the home of the RYKER books.

I do think that Manor missed the boat here on a good cover blurb for this book. Perhaps they could have used these:

“Is It Soup Yet?”
“It Was Still Better Than ‘White Castle’.”
“Pardon Me, Do You Have Any ‘Grey Poupon’?”

But since I’m not in the publishing biz, what the hell do I know about it?

Joe Kenney, a new friend of mine, advises that this particular book goes for high dollar amounts at online auction sites. Me, I paid 65 cents (approx half off the cover price) for mine many moons ago at a used book emporium.

Good luck finding your own copy - that is if you have the appetite for it.