Joy of Sex: The Little Cookbook of Straight Life, Revised and Smoother Edition

Straight Guy,

A reader sent a link to this hilarious New Yorker review of the overhauled Joy of Sex. (The article has a graphic of a breast; it's completely benign, but you decide if it is NSFW.)

The new Joy of Sex, out in stores this week, updates what would seem to defy being updated. When it comes to sex, is there anything new for which to be joyful? (This is an example of a rhetoric question, SG. I don't really require an answer.) At least one thing is different: the male figure in the 1972 illustrations looked frightening --picture the Geico Caveman. The new man looks more like that nice looking guy who works down the hall in the finance office. Just with a better haircut.

Finding the Joy of Sex in my parents' nightstand drawer was worse than finding out that, well, that Dad ate the cheese and crackers we left for Santa.

--Gay Guy

Thanks, GG. I really needed a resource like this when I was growing up. Like many straight boys, I got wildly inaccurate information from my playground chums followed by gentle corrections from my mother. Once, while running a few errands with her, I asked what the word "genitalia" meant, and the floodgates of unwelcome information opened. We were probably only 5 minutes from home, but I'm sure she drove many miles out of her way, just to get it all out while I was a captive audience. I think I slept in the car that night.

As to the fact that Gay Guy left cheese and crackers (!) for Santa... of course he did. Sugar cookies are so... gauche. This year, he left a tapas sampler with microwave instructions as well as a chilled cava.

--Straight Guy