by Jason Stotts
I recently read Eros Denied: Sex in Western Society by Wayland Young and I found it to be an amazingly interesting read. It’s rather hard to get your hands on a copy as it’s out of print, as far as I can tell, but it’s well worth it that you do. I’ll be writing more about some of the interesting things from the book, but the thing that I want to point out now is a reference to an ancient sex came called “crossing the valley.”
Orgies are common in Japanese and Chinese art, and were common enough in the traditional Japenese pattern of life to have given rise to a game called “Crossing the Valley.” The girls lay down on the floor and the boys had to fuck them all in turn, from one end of the room to the other. The winner was the boy who “crossed the valley” without coming. There is a print called “Crossing the Valley” which shows that the game was well enough known to have allowed gamesmanship ploys to form, even if only in the imagination. It shows a boy fucking the girl in the middle of himself, and seeing to all the others at the same time with a series of dildoes fixed to a pole which is strapped across his waist. (Eros Denied, 120)
I find it immensely valuable to learn about the sexual mores and activities of other cultures and times. I don’t think that one can truly appreciate one’s own culture if one knows nothing of the past or of the ways in which other people live.