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0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page i Masters of Sex 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page ii Also by Thomas Maier The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings Dr. Spock: An American Life Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power and Glory of America’s Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page iii Masters of Sex The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love THOMAS MAIER A Member of the Perseus Books Group New York 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/24/09 11:33 AM Page iv Copyright © 2009 Thomas Maier Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810- 4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. Designed by Pauline Brown Set in 11.5 point Garamond Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Maier, Thomas, 1956– Masters of sex : the life and times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the cou- ple who taught America how to love / Thomas Maier. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-465-00307-5 (alk. paper) 1. Masters, William H. 2. Johnson, Virginia E. 3. Sexologists—Biography. 4. Sexology—Research—History. I. Title. HQ18.3.M35 2009 306.7092'273—dc22 [B] 2008050803 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page v For my godparents, June and William Underwood. 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page vi “The profoundest of all our sensualities is the sense of truth.” —D. H. LAWRENCE 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page viii This page intentionally left blank 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page vii William Masters and Virginia Johnson 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page ix Contents Preface xi PHASE ONE 1 Golden Girl 3 2 Heartland 14 3 Mrs. Johnson 22 4 Never Going Home 30 5 A Wonder to Behold 39 6 The Fertility Expert 47 7 The Good Wife 57 8 Academic Freedom 66 9 Through the Peephole 76 PHASE TWO 10 The Matrix 87 11 The Experiment 95 12 Volunteers 103 13 Noah 116 14 Masks 121 15 Leaving School 134 16 A Matter of Trust 141 17 Revealing Secrets 150 18 The Human Response 156 PHASE THREE 19 The Excitement of Release 171 20 Focusing Feelings 176 21 Sexual Healing 185 ix 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page x Contents 22 Surrogates 196 23 Playboys and Patrons 203 24 Repairing the Conjugal Bed 211 25 The Scent of Love 218 26 Betrayals 225 27 The Marriage Compact 231 PHASE FOUR 28 Feminist Movement 241 29 The Business of Sex 252 30 The Pleasure Bond 260 31 Guide to the Stars 270 32 Conversion and Reversion 281 33 The Promise of a Future 299 34 Beauty and the Beast 307 35 Crisis 319 36 Breakup 331 37 For the Roses 339 38 Couples 345 39 In Memoriam 354 40 Forget-Me-Nots 367 A Note on Sources 377 Notes 379 Selected Bibliography 391 About the Author 397 Index 399 x 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page xi Preface “What is this thing called love?” —Cole Porter ex, in all its glorious expressions, has been an integral part of Sthe American experience in my four biographies—respectively, about Si Newhouse, Benjamin Spock, the Kennedys, and now Mas- ters and Johnson. As Dr. Spock, the best-selling expert who raised America’s baby-boom generation, once told me with disarming honesty, “Everything is about sex!” Indeed, at its most powerful and transcendent, sex is about the progression of the species, the ori- gin of self-identity, and the most intimate form of expression be- tween adults. The story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, as per- haps none other, deals directly with the eternal mysteries of sex and love. Their public life provides an unparalleled window into Amer- ica’s sexual revolution and its historic cultural changes still with us today, while their private relationship mirrors many of the most basic desires, tensions, and contradictions between men and women. I first interviewed Dr. Masters when he retired in De- cember 1994, already showing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, which would lead to his death in 2001. After several false starts, I gained the complete cooperation of Virginia Johnson in 2005, con- ducting many hours of interviews, including a lengthy visit to her St. Louis home. Despite worldwide fame, “we were absolutely the two most secretive people on the face of the earth,” Johnson xi 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page xii Preface confided. “There’s simply no one who knew us well. People have a lot of speculation, but they don’t know.” For years, the work of Masters and Johnson remained shrouded in strict confidentiality as a result of their own desire to avoid pub- lic scrutiny. Only now—with the willingness of many to be in- terviewed and access to their letters, internal documents, and Masters’s own unpublished memoir—can we fully consider their remarkable life and times. For all of the clinical knowledge they gained from America’s biggest sex experiment—involving hundreds of women and men and more than ten thousand orgasms—their story is very much about the elusiveness and indefinable aspects of human intimacy. As many today still ask themselves, “What is this thing called love?” —T.M. Long Island, New York APRIL 2009 xii 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page 1 PHASE ONE Gini as a young girl 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page 2 This page intentionally left blank 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page 3 CHAPTER ONE Golden Girl “It often begins in the back seat of a parked car. It’s hurry up and get the job done. The back seat of a car hardly provides an opportunity for the expression of personality.” —William H. Masters nto the dark, two beams of light showed the way. The pierc- ing headlights from a Plymouth automobile cut a path through Ithe unrelenting blackness of the Missouri countryside. Slowly the car carrying Mary Virginia Eshelman and her high school boyfriend, Gordon Garrett, rumbled down Route 160, a vast as- phalt stretch without street lamps, where only the stars and moon lit the even ing sky. For his date with Mary Virginia, Gordon borrowed the brand- new Garrett family car—a green 1941 sedan with a shiny chrome grill, protruding hood ornament, muscular fenders, and an ample backseat. They motored past rows of homesteads and crops, carved from the tallgrass prairie. That evening, they joined friends at The Palace, the town’s only theater, where the melodies and dancing of Hollywood musicals let them escape Golden City’s dullness. News- reels made them aware of another larger world outside their tiny hometown of eight hundred people. Bordering the Ozark Moun- tains, Golden City seemed closer to rural Oklahoma than big-city St. Louis—both in dirt miles and in Bible-thumping spirit. Before heading home, Gordon turned the Plymouth off the road and dimmed its lights. Noise from the tires, pressing loudly against the gravel stones, suddenly came to a halt, followed by a 3 0465003075_maier:Layout 1 2/12/09 3:09 PM Page 4 Masters of Sex palpable hush. Snuggled beside each other, Mary Virginia and her boyfriend parked in a secluded area where they would not be spotted. In the front seat of the car, Gordon opened her blouse, loos- ened her skirt, and pressed himself against her skin. She didn’t move or resist, just stared at him in wonderment. Mary Virginia never had seen a penis before except, as she later remembered it, when her mother changed her baby brother’s diaper. On that night, shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Mary Virginia Eshelman—later known to the world as Virginia E. Johnson—was introduced to the mys- teries of human intimacy. “I didn’t know anything about any- thing,” confessed the woman whose landmark partnership with Dr. William H. Masters would someday become synonymous with sex and love in America. In her puritanical Midwest home, Mary Virginia learned sex was sinful, something far removed from the breathless tales of storybook romance she imbibed at the movies before World War II. Like many women of her generation, she learned that sex, at best, was a thankless chore, better left for the confines of marriage and bearing a family. Years afterward, she’d refer to Gordon Gar- rett anonymously as the “boy with fiery red hair.” She masked his identity just as she concealed any unpleasant truth about her life, any memory of love that eluded her. As she admitted decades later, “I never married the men I really cared about.” But she would never forget Gordon Garrett, or that night outside of Golden City, when the two teens lost their innocence.