Thursday, February 26, 2015

Lesbianism Made Easy by Helen Eisenbach


Title: Lesbianism Made Easy
Author: Helen Eisenbach (no website found)
Publisher: Open Road Integrate Media
Rating: WORTHY!

If Woody Allen had been a lesbian, he might have written something like this. I'm honestly at something of a loss as to how to review this one usefully except to give you a few quotes and to say that I was laughing out loud on pretty much every other screen.

It's a humorous look at lesbianism, no doubt based on the author's own experiences and stories she's heard, and it's funny as hellions. It does flag a bit here and there (and "fag" a bit in parts, too!), but overall it's exxcellent (yes, that's two X-chromosomes thank you!), well-worth reading if you have any interest at all in sexual preferences and in laughing.

Told with tongue firmly in cheek (or somewhere) this exquisite satire introduces you to lesbianism and how to make (or even mate) the most of it - or at least live with it! Author Eisenbach had me at the opening quiz. Here's one of the multiple choice (and I mean really choice) questions:

When in the presence of Scarlett Johansson, I usually feel:
  • a. Warm and/ or tingly
  • b. Slightly faint
  • c. Hungry
  • d. All of the above, not to mention whew!
  • e. Other
This is a trick question. Answers (a)—(d) prove nothing except that you’re alive. If you chose (e), you’re not fooling anyone. There are no other answers.

The book is full of off-the-wall commentary and observation:

One of the great rewards of lesbianism, among the many too numerous to elaborate upon, is that it is possible to go to bed with someone and feel more beautiful naked than clothed, more desirable than you had any expectation of feeling after being weaned on a diet of American standards in silicone and femininity.

The observations are not confined solely to women. Gay guys come in for a butt-load of ribbing, and to Eisenbach's comedian, heteros get to play the straight man:

Nature has given men erections to make sure they never forget that nothing lasts.

Nothing is excluded from the humor or escapes attention:

The telephone, to get back to where we started, is an instrument that is frequently misused in interpersonal relationships; indeed, it is sometimes the root of intercouple trauma. Remember, if you can, that the phone should be wielded like a vibrator: 1. Gently, paying particular attention to the responses of the phonee, 2. Only when absolutely necessary, so as not to become too dependent on its usage, and 3. Never as a substitute for the real thing face-to-face. Well, almost never.

One sour word on the formatting side: in the Kindle app on my Smart phone, some of the text that was intended to appear in two separate columns wasn't very well separated as you can see from the image below.

I thoroughly recommend this even if you don't have your dreams swimmin' in women.