One Hand Jerking (34 page)

The goal of that movement was equality with men, but who could have guessed that now—when equality still doesn't exist on golf courses, salary checks, and corporate boards—at least women would have their very own disease, sexual dysfunction, to match men's erectile dysfunction. But it's a disease that was invented by the pharmaceutical companies in order to market the female equivalent of Viagra. A turning point came in 1999 when the
Journal of the American Medical Association
published an article claiming that “43 percent of all women over 28 experience sexual dysfunction.” It was a faultily arrived at statistic, but what the hell, it sells pills.

Here are some other recent bits of cooz in the nooz:

☞ Betty Dodson, known as “The Mother of Masturbation,” is an artist as well as a female sexuality activist. She produces erotic drawings and “pussy portraits.” And a woman who goes by the name “J” creates her own colorful but non-exlicit vulva paintings. She explains the process: “Lying on my back and using brushes of different sizes, I apply the paint around my shaved vagina and onto my inner thighs in whatever pattern and colors strike me. Once I get the paint on the way I like it, I lift my legs up and spread them open as wide as I can. Then I press the canvas panel against my vagina and the painted area around it, transferring the paint to the canvas.” She sold these paintings on e-Bay until they were banned.

☞ If the word “queef ” was ever mentioned on
Jeopardy
, the correct answer would be, “What is a cunt fart?” I may be jaded, but I was slightly stunned when Howard Stern had a queefer actually peforming songs on his radio show. On the televised version, the sight of her musical vagina was blocked out. But customers
of adult entertainment now have access to uncensored queefing. Already there is a collector's item, under the title, “Amber, the Queefing Lesbian.” She is 23 years old, and has had the ability to fart tunes with her labia since she was a young teen, but after years of anonymity she has finally brought her unique talent to video. She has trained her vagina lips to play everything from classics like the “Blue Danube” waltz to rock anthems like “We Will Rock You.” With musicals
Moulin Rouge
,
Chicago
and
De-Lovely
becoming blockbuster hits, it was only a matter of time before queefing would come into its own.

☞ At the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Center in Beverly Hills, a woman could have a board-certified gynecologist re-sculpt and rejuvenate—that is, tighten—her vagina, in only one hour, supposedly resulting in better sex. The same procedure is ordinarily used to relieve urinary incontinence—leaking from the bladder during coughing, exercise and fucking. Some women request “designer laser vaginoplasty,” a remodeling of the labia. This a purely cosmetic operation, for aesthetic purposes, nothing practical like, say, enabling the labia to produce a wider range of musical notes. In fact, there can be a loss of sensation in the labia after such surgery. The doctor also does “hymen reconstruction.” In other words, ladies, you can become a virgin again. As if. But why would you even
want
to?

☞ Extra Large Underpads for the Protection of Bedding and Furniture are also intended for urinary incontinence, but some female ejaculators use them for the purpose of preventing their sexual gushers from soaking their sheets. A lesbian writer confessed in the
Village Voice
that “the woman who taught me how to ejaculate is now my girlfriend. She's made me a squirtaholic, and I've gotten a little obsessed with how many times I can make her squirt, how much I can make her squirt, and how far I can make her squirt. Our personal best: four feet, from the middle of a hotel-room bed to the TV screen on the dresser.” And did she remember to call Room Service for a package of Extra Large Underpads?

☞ At Northwestern University, the medical staff conducted a study to determine which kind of pornography women found to be sexually arousing. Women between the ages of 20 and 40 were paid $30 to watch audio-visual erotica and answer surveys for an hour and a half. A 4-inch probe would be placed in a woman's vagina while she viewed several different types of porn. The researchers found that female arousal was at the same levels for images of male-female couples, lesbians, and gay men. They liked it
all
. Unless, of course, the women were actually aroused by those 4-inch probes.

When Ken Kesey's son, Jed, was killed in an accident—the van carrying his wrestling team had skidded off a cliff—I immediately flew to Oregon. “I feel like every cell in my body is exploding,” Kesey said as we embraced. A few days later, several friends were sitting around the dining-room table, and someone mentioned that the Dead Kennedys were on tour.

“I wonder if Ted Kennedy is gonna go see 'em,” I said.

Kesey, standing in the kitchen, said, “That's not funny.”

“You're right, I apologize. It's not very abstract right now.”

“It's
never
abstract.”

I recalled that little dialogue as I began to explore The Game, now in its 34th year, the longest-running dead pool in America, currently with 125 players. Before January 1st, everyone submits 68 names of people who might die that year. (Dr. Death, Game co-founder, liked to work on a legal pad—34 lines, two columns, 68 names.) Points are awarded according to the age of each dead person—anybody in their 50s is worth five points; 60s, four; 70s, three.

Each participant gets one wild card per year, worth five points no matter how old the deceased. Gamesters generally pick one-pointers for their wild card to get four extra points. Last year, most picked Bob Hope. When he died, one Gamester said, “My father was shot during World War II. While recuperating in England, Mr. Hope came up to his bedside and stuffed a half-dozen golf balls into his mouth. It cheered my old man up.”

Deaths become official when mentioned in the
New York Times
or any two major newspapers. One player “is extremely frustrated,” I was told. “He has Idi Amin, who is on life support in a Saudi hospital. Now there have been death threats, and armed guards have been posted.” Since the listees are all on various rungs on the ladder of celebrityhood, the Game is understandably rife with abstraction.

“After all, the dead pool has probably been around since the phenomenon of fame itself,” write Gelfand and Wilkinson in
Dead Pool
. “It has certainly been around as long as gallows humor has. In the heyday of hard-boiled journalism
(the
Front Page
days of the 1930s), reporters who covered a country ravaged by organized crime and engaged in a world war found respite in the dark humor of the dead pool. . . . Even before the Internet, the dead pool was slowly emerging from the shadows of our culture.”

As with dead pools, ranging from business offices to Howard Stern's radio show, that book is a guide to profiting from money bets. But members of The Game play solely for the fun of it. Whoever has the most points at the end of the year wins—“bragging rights only”—slightly ironic since Gamesters (lawyers, ad people, educators, psychology professsors, lobbyists, writers, everyday working folks) all play under aliases like Frozen Stiff, Fade to Black, Worm Feast, Decomposers, 2 Dead Crew, Johnny B. Dead, Wm. Randolph Hearse, Daisy Pusher, Silk Shroud, Necrophiliac Pimp, Legion of Doom, Gang Green, Habeas Corpse, Die-Uretic, Shovelin' Off, Blunt Instrument, Rig R. Mortis, Flatliners, Unplugged, Toe Tag, Clean Underwear and Gratefully Dead.

One couple, the Moorebids, insist, “We play for honor, not bragging rights. It has to do with honoring who you get the hit on.”

Another player told me, “I compare playing The Game to my day job, science. We do a lot of data collection and data analysis, play our hunches. Our reward is not financial, but peer recognition. One selects some names to acknowledge the person. Other names are selected because earning you points is their last opportunity to do something productive and honorable in their otherwise useless life. My most missed hit was Spiggy [Nixon's disgraced vice president, Spiro] Agnew; I was distressed at missing him.”

Each Gamester pays $10 to Pontius, official coordinator and editor, to keep score and report the hits. There are players in over thirty states (23 in New York), plus one each in Quito, Kuwait, England and Australia. You can become a Gamester only by being recommended by another Gamester. They're mostly baby boomers, attracted by a whimsical, informative style of reporting.

Forty-nine Gamesters “hit” Buddy Ebsen. Obituaries mentioned that after ten days of filming
The Wizard of Oz
, Ebsen fell ill because of the aluminum make-up on his skin, and was replaced as the Tin Man by Jack Haley. (One player wondered, “Did Jack Haley add something to the aluminum make-up at the
Wizard
set?”) On the other hand, there have been “solo's” on the unexpected demise of Princess Diana and JFK, Jr.

“A solo I am proud of,” one Gamester told me, “is the hit on Christian Nelson, who invented the Klondike Bar.”

“Yes, it's sick,” admitted one player, “but c'mon,
it's just a game
! The Game is
a light-hearted way of spitting in death's eye . . . your opportunity to pick a Generation-X rock star who OD's on heroin, a geriatric blue-hair who finally kicks the bucket, a fascist totalitarian in the Mid-East who is assassinated. I'm not doing great this year because I invested too heavily in Hamas, but I'm still in the top ten. The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is doing its job, I just guessed wrong. Last year I scored on Khattab, a Chechnian rebel leader who was killed by a letter he opened that was poisoned. Our first poison-pen-letter death.”

Isn't it somewhat ghoulish?

“Ghoulish?” a participant responded. “No more so than fantasy baseball. We can get up in the morning, and either pick up the newspaper or turn on the Internet to see if we scored, every day. It's like baseball stats, you want to move up in the standings of the veterans. The reason we Gamesters play, I would say it's about
style
. Style involves who you pick. Some concentrate on music, some on politics, some on sports.”

As for social significance, one player explained that “the pastime has been going on for more than 400 years, so I don't think it's reflective of any given time or society. Every Gamester comes with their own perspective. The Game is irreverent, even a bit shocking, and some take pleasure in that. It's a poke to the ribs that lie beneath stuffed shirts, a tweak of bluenoses. The Game is a competition—challenging, engaging and energizing. The Game heightens awareness and helps us to recognize our kinship with those whose deaths we note. The Game is a way of sharing and staying in touch with friends, whether near or far. It gives people a reason to call and correspond.”

Pontius' predecessor, Ghostwriter, thanked many folks in his farewell message, including “Persephone, who enabled me to say, ‘Yes,' when a friend here in Central New York said, ‘Do you know a good adoption lawyer in Arkansas?' It was my greatest cameo role, my finest hour as a networker, and I couldn't have done it without The Game and this wise, wonderful woman.”

The Game's listserv e-mails are titled “It's a Hit!” They can be poignant, respectful, even sentimental: “July 4th—A score of swaying Gamesters were heard singing ‘I Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe' as each collected a five note from velvety-voiced singer Barry White. . . .”

Or they can sound like a warhorse race: “July 22nd—Mosul, Iraq. Qusay and Uday, the brutal and powerful sons of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, were ambushed by Special Forces and the 101st Airborne that resulted in a deadly four-hour firefight. Enjoying the best day of his career was Tomb Essence who had a 14-point Daily Double. . . .”

But The Game giveth and The Game taketh away: “August 21st—British and American armed forces in Iraq announced today that they had arrested Ali Hasan al-Majid, aka Chemical Ali. Back in April 2003, the British armed forces announced they had killed him. Tomb Essence celebrated then, but is crying like a baby now. . . .”

Animals have also been “scored,” from Morris the Cat to Dolly the cloned sheep to Keiko the killer whale. Choices can get personal, though. A player told me, “I purposely left off a good friend [former
New York Post
editor Jerry Nachman] who I knew was dying, and one of our game mates refused to list a friend's [famous] mother who she knew was dying. Sometimes we just don't want to ‘cash in' on our friends' pain. How un-American of us.”

Gamesters have scored on all the Kennedys as well as Lorraine Petersen, the model on the Sunmaid Raisins box. But, under the title “It's
Not
a Hit!” came this e-mail: “August 9th—The entire Game failed to list dancer and actor Gregory Hines, 57.” In The Game's 2001 Hit List, under the subhead, “Other Notable Deaths That No One Picked,” included was “Ken Kesey, 11/12/01, author,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
.”

I had a visceral reaction. This was not abstract.

“I never could decide if leaving Kesey off my list was the right thing to do,” a Gamester told me. “The Merry Pranksters obviously inspired my
non de plume
, the Bury Pranksters.”

On November 27, 1978, former cop Dan White cold-bloodedly killed San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of that historical event, I was invited to be on a panel at the University of San Francisco with two other reporters who also covered the trial.

White had resigned from the Board of Supervisors because he couldn't support his pregnant wife on a salary of $9,600 a year. But he'd been the swing vote on the Board, representing downtown real estate interests and the conservative
Police Officers Association. With a promise of financial backing, White told Moscone he wanted his job back.