Each Thursday (Friday, this week -- damn lazy editor!), your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.​

You Would If You Loved Me

Author: Sol Gordon, Ph.D
Date: 1978
Publisher: Bantam Books

Discovered at: Thrift store

The Cover Promises: "Sex Lines! You've heard them. You've tried them. Here's What you can do about them."

In short, snappy answers to stupid come-ons!

Representative Quotes:

• "Don't worry. You'll only bleed a little." (page 69).

• "Male: I just oiled my machine. Want to see how it works?
  Female: Why don't you give it a cold shower and see if it rusts?" (page 15)

Americans have never found it easy to sit their children down and not have the big talk about sex, so it's only natural that, eventually, we have left such awkward non-discussions to the schools, where not explaining condoms, pregnancies, or the ins-and-outs of ins-and-outs has in many districts been official curriculum for over a decade. The small price to pay for this convenience? Record outbreaks of chlamydia.

Thirty years back, parents had fewer options. To help out, Sol Gordon, PhD, has stuffed a paperback with hundreds of the "lines" young men have purportedly used to talk young women into bed. Unlike sex-ed, he covers all the bases, from the evergreen "Let's make tonight something to remember," to the boastful "The hookers usually pay me afterwards," to the educational "It is said that having sex on the Jewish sabbath is a double mitzvah -which means 'good deed.'"

Also: "Are you a dyke or something?"

Understanding the deep persuasive power of such sweet talk, Gordon includes helpful rejoinders that ladies might toss back. This also lends the book something approaching a moral justification. I mean, really, without the comebacks, this is a list of closers' finishing moves.

Him: I would like to get into your pants.
Her: No, thanks. One rear end is enough!

Yes, puns will preserve your virginity!

Fortunately for America's girls, those moves are just a half notch more romantic than some boy declaiming "Insert tab A into slot B" from IKEA instructions.

Male: Is it getting hot in here? Let's go for a walk.
Female: No, it's not hot in here. The heat is in your pants.

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Sometimes, Gordon's shut-him-down replies seem like confused invitations:

He: Hey, I'm a geology major. You wanna come over and see my rocks?
She: No, thanks. I'd rather stay at home and get stoned.

Some are downright vaudevillian.

Male: How about a good-night screw?
Female: Good night, screw!

And others strain credulity:

He: Want to watch the corn grow and see if we can't get the kernels popping?
She: A corny invitation should be saved for the squirrels.

We're meant to believe that a man might have said this? And that the woman responded with a punning one-liner that would make Bazooka Joe holler for rewrites? Perhaps this was the same couple who shared this exchange:

He: Hey, baby, want to pretend my bed's a tree and kiss inbetween the limbs?
She: Sorry, squirrel, I'm not a nut.

I'll give Gordon this much. Nobody who has ever said any of this has ever found a willing sexual partner. Except furries, of course.

Shocking Detail:
Occasionally, Gordon illustrates these ripostes with photos.

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Often, those photos are staged with the woman on the left, meaning the word balloons run backwards.

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I believe this qualifies You Would If You Loved Me as early manga.

Highlight:
More gems offered from disreputable men to their coy mistresses:

• I'm afraid I'm gay. Help me prove to myself that I'm not.

• I have such a heavy load! If you don't, I'll hurt!

• If you love me, than you'll let me, because I ain't had none in a real long time.

• Would you like to come to my room and see my peacock feather?

• I've got a card from the Red Cross that says I'm negative. It means I have no sperm. So I can't get you pregnant.

• You can always get an abortion.

• If you don't have sex by the time you're sixteen, you'll become a lesbian.

• Aw, come on! It will be over before you know it. Just close your eyes and open your legs.

• Aw, come on, baby! I've got a hard-on that won't quit!

This last one deserves a rejoinder. Ladies, might I propose:

• This will be more beautiful and fulfilling if we save it for when we're both ready.

• You know what's hard? Winter, for I am a squirrel.

• Look, let's just try the hand. Will that shut you up?

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[The Crap Archivist lives in Kansas City, where he originates his on-line Studies for the Voice's sister paper, The Pitch.]