The Hermetic Whore- Excerpt

In 1569 A>D., the anatomist Realdus Columbus located the clitoris or, as it is commonly called, the spinster's button.  Some four hundred years later, American social workers, with the cooperation of freethinking psychiatrists, launched a campaign to legitimize the utilization of this button for the achievement of better mental health.

I cite the above facts by way of introduction.  And I ass a corrective:  I am not, in principle or practice, concerned with clitoral masturbation.  Penile self-gratification--primarily for the aged--is my special field of interest.  Rightly so, since I am a man (though not aged) and it would be presumptuous of me to attempt to speak for women on this matter.

The Department of Social Services for which I work agrees and, accordingly, appointed two of us, one female, the second male (me), as co-directors of Project FULL LIFE-- a flippant (in my opinion) imitation of military jargon whose acronymous origin is mercifully unknown to most participants:  Full Utilizatiuon of Lingering Libidos for Longlived Inmates of Federal Enclaves.

"Self-abuse is self-use" is the way one of our publicists put it.  I'm sure you've seen the message on subway billboards.  Space donated by the Greater Metropolitan Advertising Council.

The impetus for our project came from an unlikely source:  the passenger wing of the Interstate Commerce Commission.  It seems that the ICC was embarassed by a series of articles printed in a national weekly dealing with the take-over of bus terminal waiting rooms by the elderly.  As I recall, it was one particular installment describing the condition of New York City's Port Authority Terminal, beginning with a poetically heartending understatement "--that got under the collar of the Commissioner.