Story Time!

History Laid Bare: Love, Sex and Perversity from the Ancient

Etruscans to Warren G. Harding

by Richard Zacks

HarperPerennial, 471 pp., $11

Imagine Mario Cuomo presiding over the New York State legislature in a ball gown and tiara. Today, such a sight might have ended his political career, if the Republicans hadn't gotten to him first. In fact, Cuomo would just have been following the lead of his predecessor Lord Cornbury, the Colonial governor of New York in 1702. Cornbury, using the excuse that he had to he had to represent Queen Anne as best he could, regularly wore women's clothing to the state's Assembly. His portrait--in which he sports "a gown, stays, tucker, long ruffles, cap," and a five o'clock shadow--still hangs in the New York Historical Society.

Tidbits like this fill the pages of History Laid Bare, a chronicle of "Love, sex and Perversity" which begins in 1400 B.C. and continues up to 1920s America. After that, presumably, there is too much perversity to fit in one book.

Author Richard Zacks set out to "put flesh and blood on the bare bones of history." While this isn't exactly history, it is ideal bedside reading. Zacks doesn't set out to reach any conclusions about history or sexual mores. He tries to titillate and surprise; and he succeeds.

The hundreds of anecdotes, jokes and limericks in the book fall into three categories; the familiar, the amusing and the downright revolting. The first group includes just about every sexual stereotype in history: the libertine Frenchman, the repressed, masochistic Englishman, the randy medieval priest and the depraved Roman aristocrat are all present. Some of the anecdotes are almost too well-worn. The exploits of Casanova, for example, feature prominently, as does Lawrence of Arabia's fondness for being whipped. And the story of Abelard and Heloise is also included, since castration is one of the book's favorite topics.

As for the disgusting parts, let's just say that the third page contains a catalogue of the enemy soldiers' penises that were sent to the Egyptian Pharaoh in 1300 B.C.--and that's far from the worst item Zacks has dug up. Bestiality, severed and bloated genitalia, rape, child molestation and other delicacies figure prominently. If you're squeamish, avoid the description of the (unsuccessful) penis-enlarging lotion.

At its best, History Laid Bare is novel enough to hold the reader's prurient interest.

Some of the practices which medieval priests would ask about in the confessional anticipate "9 1/2 Weeks." One suggested question in a handbook for priests reads, "Have you done what some women do? They take off their clothes and smear honey all over their naked bodies and then lay down...onto some wheat...then roll around a lot this way and that...and make bread from the flour and give it to their husbands to eat."

Another high point is the American army doctor's account of a boy who could perform "auto-stupration by the mouth." Not surprisingly, he was put in a mental hospital when he refused to stop.

In rare moments, the book is even fascinating. The love letters of Marx, Napoleon and Poe, as well as Flaubert's descriptions of Egyptian dancing girls, are worth reading even beyond their titillation value. The excerpts from Walt Whitman's diary, in which he berates himself for his homosexual longings--"Depress the adhesive [i.e. homosexual] nature/It is in excess, making life a torment/all this diseased, feverish disproportionate adhesiveness..."--are almost as beautiful as his poetry.

History Laid Bare's only failing is its author's refusal to acknowledge that the book works best as a procrastination tool. In the introduction and in the running commentary which links the anecdotes together, Zacks sets himself up as a righteous liberator of history from "Victorians and other prudish scholars" who took out all the good parts in history. Zacks' condescension towards his subjects is irritating. He would have done better to get out of the way and let his ribald material speak for itself.