Disinformation Book of Lists (25 page)

 

1

Adultery

In many states, not only is it a misdemeanor to nail someone else if you're married, it's also illegal to nail someone who's married even if you're single. For example, Arizona law states: “When the act is committed between parties only one of whom is married, both shall be punished.” Michigan is biased on the issue, declaring that “both parties are guilty if the woman is married and the man is not; only the man is guilty if he is married and woman is not.” Most of the states that outlaw adultery rank it as a misdemeanor, but in five states—including Idaho and Michigan—it's a felony.

2

Pretending to be a person's spouse or a medical professional

Like many other states, California defines sodomy as contact between the penis of one person and the anus of another. The act is not automatically illegal, but—being California—there are numerous conditions that make it against the law. One of these involves buttsex “where the victim submits under the belief that the person committing the act is the victim's spouse, and this belief is induced by any artifice, pretense, or concealment practiced by the accused, with intent to induce the belief…” Punishment is up to eight years in the state slammer, where no one ever breaks sodomy laws.

In a related vein, going up someone's rear in Cali is illegal when the recipient “[w]as not aware, knowing, perceiving, or cognizant of the essential characteristics of the act due to the perpetrator's fraudulent representation that the sexual penetration served a professional purpose when it served no professional purpose.”

Both of these statutes apply word for word to oral sex, as well. So when you're in the Sunshine State, don't fool someone into anal sex by pretending to be her husband, and don't tell someone that going down on him serves a professional purpose when it really doesn't, okay?

3

Incest

Sex with close family members is a felony in every state (and DC) with two exceptions: It's a misdemeanor in Delaware, and there's no law against it at all in Rhode Island. Maybe New England should be the butt of all those inbreeding jokes, instead of the South.

4

Necrophilia

Sexual contact with a corpse is specifically outlawed in several states, including Georgia, where it'll get you one to ten years in jail. Indiana considers it a felony if you merely open the lid of a coffin with the intent to molest the occupant, even if you never consummate.

5

Sexual intercourse

In a few states, it's illegal for an unmarried person to have sexual intercourse with
anyone.
Doesn't matter if your partner is of the opposite gender, of legal age, completely willing, etc. In Georgia, this is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to a year behind bars. Idaho, Massachusetts, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia have similar restrictions, and several other states consider it a misdemeanor for unmarried couples to live together if they're having sex on a regular basis.

6

Bestiality

Covering all its bases, Missouri specifies that its law against critter-humping also applies to
dead
animals.

Honorable Mention

In Washington, DC, having oral or anal sex with anyone is a felony, while adultery is a misdemeanor, and bestiality and peeping aren't specifically against the law. Besides being an upside down application of sex laws, it would appear that there are a whole lot of guilty politicians on the Potomac.

1.
almonds

2.
calamus

3.
chicken eggs
(raw)

4.
chocolate

5.
dill

6.
garlic

It's not necessarily an aphrodisiac for your partner, though.

7.
ginseng
(especially the Chinese variety)

8.
honey

9.
licorice root

10.
marijunana
(moderate amounts)

11.
musk
(taken internally)

12.
oats
(
Avena sativa
)

From whence we get the phrase “to sow your wild oats.”

13.
onion seeds

14.
saffron

15.
salep
(
Orchis morio
)

The root of this orchid.

16.
saw palmetto

17.
Spanish fly

An actual insect
(Cantharis vesicatoria)
, this powdered beetle works by irritating the urinary system and is very dangerous.

18.
vanilla

19.
wild carrot

Where do you think rabbits get all their sexual energy?

20.
wild celery

21.
yohimbe

The bark from the African tree
Pansinys-talia yohimbe
is widely regarded as one of the most unambiguous aphrodisiacs.

 

A triad is to three people what a couple is to two people. In other words, a relationship among three partners. It's sometimes called a threesome or
ménage à trois
, but these words have a primarily sexual connotation, usually being applied to a physical encounter that doesn't involve a long-term commitment.

This list is indebted almost completely to the amazing research of Barbara Foster, Michael Foster, and Letha Hadady. Themselves a triad, they went through history with a fine-tooth comb, digging up numerous examples of famous people involved in triads. The resulting book,
Three in Love
, is an unprecedented chronicle of this formerly unacknowledged type of relationship. (All quotes below are from this groundbreaking and highly readable book.)

1

Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid

Wild West outlaws Butch Cassady and Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) committed crimes with Etta Place. All three of them lived together; details of the relationship are sketchy, but it appears that they thought of themselves as a family.

2

Catherine the Great

Imperial Russia's most famous Empress formed a triad with two of her closest staff members, chief deputy Gregory Poterakin and secretary Peter Zavadofsky.

3

Friedrich Engels

Benefactor of Karl Marx and coauthor of
The Communist Manifesto
, Engels lived and loved with two sisters, factory-workers Mary and Lizzie Burns.

4

Jacob Epstein

Called “one of the leading portrait sculptors of the 20th century” by the
Encyclopedia Britannica
, Epstein lived with his wife and mistress.

5

George Gordon, Lord Byron

The archetypal Romantic poet was involved for several years with Countess Teresa Guiccioli. He was her
cavaliere servente
, which is basically a combination of errand-boy and male mistress. Count Guiccioli was fine with sharing his wife, a not uncommon attitude among Italian aristocracy of the time.

6
7

Henry II and Catherine de' Medici

King Henry II was married to Catherine de' Medici and openly loved the aristocratic beauty Diane de Poitiers, who knew Henry since he was nine.

8

Victor Hugo

The French novelist who wrote
Les Miserables
was married to Adéle (née Foucher) and was involved for most of his life with a gorgeous but minimally talented actress, Juliette Drouet. (He routinely cheated on wife and mistress with other women.) For years, Adéle hated Juliette, whom Victor always set up in a nearby dwelling. However, the two grew to like and respect each other, with Juliette eventually running the household. Victor remained with both women until their deaths; his relationship with Ms. Drouet lasted exactly 50 years.

9

Lenin

Soviet leader Lenin was part of a fully cooperative triad involving his wife Nadezhda and mistress Inessa. The two women formed a friendship, and all three comrades worked together to further the revolution.

10

Lothar, King of Gaul

In the sixth century, Lothar was married to sisters Ingund and Aregund.

11

Harold Macmillan

As
Three in Love
sums up: “Harold Macmillan, the Conservative prime minister of England from 1957 to 1963, overlapping the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, lived in a thirty-year triad that included his wife Dorothy Cavendish and her lover, his closest political connection, Bob Boothby.”

12

Marquis de Sade

The man whose name gave us
sadism
lived and loved for a while with his wife Renée and her sister, Anne. The sisters “performed together in the marquis's lost plays, playing his heroines who acquiesce in the acts perpetrated against them.”

13

John Stuart Mill

One of the leading philosophers of freedom, Mill found his soulmate in the intelligent Harriet Taylor, who happened to be married to merchant John Taylor. After some initial friction, John came to accept the triad. After he succumbed to cancer, Harriet and John Stuart married and spent the rest of their lives together.

14

François Mitterand

President of France from 1981 to 1995, Mitterand equally loved his wife Danielle and his mistress Mazarine, fathering children with both of them. The families knew of each other but lived apart, though sometimes the triad would vacation together. Both women and all three offspring attended François' funeral.

15

Jawaharlal Nehru

The first Prime Minister of independent India formed a threesome with Louis, Lord Mountbatten (British Admiral of the Fleet) and Edwina, Lady Mountbatten.

16

Admiral Lord Nelson

One of history's most brilliant naval commanders, the man who saved England from France was famously involved with Emma, Lady Hamilton. Less known is the fact that her husband, Sir William Hamilton, approved of the relationship. In 1802, the triad sent cards bearing the greeting: “Sir William Hamilton, Lady Hamilton and Mr. Nelson desire to wish you a merry Christmas.”

17
18

Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin

In perhaps the most well-known triad, pioneering erotic writers Henry Miller and Anai's Nin formed a complex, rocky threesome with Miller's wife, June, in which all three were having sex with each other. Nin's husband stayed on the sidelines of this pow-derkeg relationship.

19
20
21
22

Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst

Poet Paul Eluard, his wife Gala, and painter Max Ernst formed a triad that lasted several years. Gala's second husband, for 53 years, was Salvador DalT. She had numerous affairs with artists he knew, which apparently didn't faze him.

Meanwhile, Paul Eluard became great friends with Picasso and married a Parisian prostitute, Nusch. She shows up in many of Picasso's paintings, and they formed a triad that lasted a decade, until Nusch's death in 1946.

23
24
25

Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke

One of the great lyric poets, Rainer Maria Rilke was emotionally and sexually involved with Louise “Lou” Andreas-Salome, who later became a disciple of Sigmund Freud and a minor contributor to psychoanalytic theory. Lou at the time was in a sexless but loving marriage with an older scholar, F.C. Andreas. The three of them lived and traveled together, and Lou became Rainer's hands-on muse, helping him find his voice.

This was actually the middle of three triads that Lou would form. In the first, she was in an emotional but chaste threesome with philosophers Friedrich Nietzshe and Paul Ree. (Nietzsche had been in a previous sexless triad with Richard and Cosima Wagner.) In the last triad, Lou and Freud became very attached, though they never slept with each other; that honor was for the third party, psychoanalyst Victor Tausk.

26
27

Percy Byssche Shelley and Mary Shelley

Romantic poet Shelley had quite the complicated lovelife, with two aborted triads, one probable one, and an almost quadrad (i.e., involving four people). Early on, Shelley wanted to form a triad with his first wife Harriet and his best friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, but Harriet would have none of it. Later, he fell in love with Mary Godwin (daughter of pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft), who would write
Frankenstein.
He proposed that he, Harriet, and Mary shack up, but again his wife said no.

Shelley and Mary went to Europe to frolic; accompanying them was Mary's half-sister, Claire Claremont. We don't know for sure, but it appears that Percy and Claire started hooking up, with Mary tolerating it.

Things got even more complex and ambiguous later—Percy, Mary, Clare, Lord Byron, his married lover, and her parents all lived under the same roof, along with Jane and Edward Williams, who had children and lived as a married couple though they weren't. (By this time, Harriet had committed suicide, and Percy had married Mary.) Percy fell in love with Jane, and it is likely, though arguable, that they got physical with each other. Percy and Edward became fast friends, sharing Jane's affections. Meanwhile, Mary also fell in love with Jane, who didn't return the feelings. Confused? Imagine how they felt!

28

Voltaire

The witty philosopher was deeply involved with the Marquis du Chatlet and his wife, Emi-lie. “The two men shared not only one woman but their money and influence at court.”

29

Orson Welles' parents

The director of
Citizen Kane
essentially had three parents—his biological dad, Richard Welles; his mother, Beatrice Welles; and her lover, Dr. Maurice Bernstein, whom little Orson called “Dadda.” The big, happy family lived together.

30
31

Victoria Woodhull and Henry Ward Beecher

Through the middle of the 1800s, Beecher was America's preacher, basically the Billy Graham of his time, except that he had progressive views. The most progressive he kept under wraps—he was an advocate and practitioner of free love. For many years he was involved with the wife of close friend Theodore Tilton, a situation that pleased all of them.

After a while, Tilton took a more active role in another triad when he began bonking pioneering feminist Victoria Woodhull. Her husband didn't mind; together he and Tilton wrote a biography of Victoria. Beecher enters the picture again, when Victoria started getting it on with him, plus Tilton, not to mention her husband. It also looks as though Victoria, her husband, and her sister Tennessee Claflin formed an emotional triad that may or may not have been sexual. Further complicating the issue is the fact that Victoria took on various lovers throughout the years. If you find these overlapping triads, quadrads, and even pentads confusing, you're not alone.

32

Emile Zola

French novelist Emile Zola split his time between two households—that of his wife and his mistress. The women tolerated each other, then became fast friends after Zola's death.

Others
:
Marguerite Duras; Joseph Goebbels; Graham Greene; Ernest Hemingway; Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady
, and
Carolyn Cassady; Frida Kahlo; D.H. Lawrence; Georgia O'Keeffe; Ezra Pound; Jean-Paul Sartre
and
Simone de Beauvoir;
and
Oskar Schindler
.