By Dinah Alobeid
Upon reading the title, it seems “How to Be Smart With Your Part” will be an enlightening look at the male member. But once the reading begins, all hope is lost.
The author, Lords A. Leapin (more on this interesting pseudonym later) assumes in the book’s first sentence “the typical purchaser of this book will pick it up and instantly be smitten” with what this “part” could possibly be and why someone should read about it.
That is perhaps true, but Leapin spends the first 13 pages dancing around the medically-correct term (penis), essentially killing an already tired joke. In its place, he uses the words “part,” “member,” “lower brain,” “rocket” and, most juvenile of all, “thingy” as nouns to replace the word “penis” and leave the reader in suspense of what this mysterious “part” could be.
The book is subtitled “A Guide For a Man On the Way Up,” therefore it hardly takes a genius to say maybe this part is only found on men. And it’s a good guess – after digressing on topics such as how to conduct an experiment to find out if the “part” has its own brain (he really took that metaphor too literally), on page 20 (yes, 20 pages in) Leapin finally writes “the part we are following closely in this book is the male penis.”
Well, hallelujah! Ten lords a’ leapin’! Maybe now you can find nine ladies dancing and that coveted partridge in a pear tree. But I digress, much like Leapin.
The book emphasizes sexual safety and knowing one’s partner (or partners, as the case may be), but the ridiculous scenarios the author comes up with are completely implausible and unsound. As though the idea of using a newspaper on a commuter train to conceal the act of “massaging your partner’s upper thigh” will actually work.
Despite its only slightly comical appeal (the book delivered much fewer laughs than expected), the book changes from the lighthearted, silly approach at how men should “be smart” with their penises to a more somber tone in the “Serious Pages” which comprise chapter 10.
To be smart, Leapin cautions readers not to engage in unsafe sexual practices with strippers at any of the five types of exotic bars he describes – non-urban, urban, gentleman’s clubs, BYOB all-nude and triple-x establishments – and not to expect to be a sexual Adonis after a night of drinking or drugs. Common sense, one would think, but it really can’t be repeated enough.
Another plus of this in-depth look at sex and the penis are the descriptive methods Leapin describes to make a woman comfortable and give her what he calls “The Power Orgam”. His description of said act is like a how-to-guide. Step by step this sub-portion of Chapter 5: “Shrinkage and Other Complexities” teaches the reader how to provide a woman with “true bliss.”
One potentially offensive fact is women are mentioned in a very demeaning way. In the beginning, Leapin mentions Lana, a woman who took part in researching whether penises have a brain (the results are obscure and ambiguous.) Women are then on mentioned in relation to their appropriate mates: cheerleaders for athletes, white house interns for presidents and so on and so forth. Excuse me, I thought we left the 1950s unscathed without stereotypes, but maybe I was wrong.
The “Serious Pages” provide explanations of STDs and manners of contracting them in an informational format. In this sense, the book serves as a great tool on sexual safety, getting to it just requires withstanding the whimsical, and at times cheesy, beginning and middle.
The book’s press release describes it as “arguably a man’s real-life look at sex in the city,” and it’s correct in that real life sexual encounters mean there are risks at stake. It’s also billed on its back cover as a “both tongue-in-cheek and serious guide to sexual sanity in the new millennium.”
Aside from the numerous copy editing mistakes (such as “though” substituting every “through;” one letter really does make a difference) the book almost meets that claim. It’s mildly funny and, at the very least, great for train reading.
“How to be Smart With Your Part” is available on www.amazon.com, www.borders.com and www.barnesandnoble.com for $15.99.
If you’ve got a few free hours you’d like to fill with somewhat-entertaining, somewhat-cheesy sexual humor and statistical information about STDs like trichomoniasis, that reads like a health clinic pamphlet, pick this book up.
