“Did you know that gaining 30 pounds causes a guy to lose an inch?” says Dian Hanson.
She’s not talking about height.
Since Dian Hanson is sexy books editor at Taschen books, and edited The Big Penis Book (in 3D, no less) it’s clear what she’s talking about.
Not your typical library event. Also along the for the talk-show-style ride are Cheech Marin, both hilarious and thoughtful, talking about his life and Chicano art collection, and how he started his subversive life at this very downtown library, near his dad’s beat. Also here are Lol Tolhurst, original drummer for The Cure, and poet Harryette Mullen…all of them, saved by libraries.
Last night’s This is Your Library event, which also included a concert, and food from Border Grill—no bringing mojito into the hall!—is typical of the innovations of Jason Veach and Ken Brecher of the Library Foundation.
Also typisch, I called Linda on Tuesday asking if she’d like to go with me. Linda, the consummate pre-planner, had already purchased tickets and insisted on taking me as her date. At least I got to pay for the tacos–pork with citrus–but she beat me to the wallet for the mojitos.
Dian Hanson started her “hippie pornographer” career early. As a 13-year-old in Burien, Washington, she hid out in the library reading, Psychopathia Sexualis, the first scientific study of sexual perversion(1886). Psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, from the same world as Freud, but a few years earlier, popularized terms like ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’, although he chose the medical-sounding title and wrote much of the book in Latin to deter the lay reader.
But those lay readers….we seek out what we seek out. And for Dian Hanson the background proved a fruitful start, and helped her later on when she edited such magazines as Juggs, Partner, Purity, Hawgs, Oui, and, especially, Leg Show, which dealt with fetish-ism. Fetishists are quite particular and Dian found herself, in addition to titillating, explaining her readers to themselves.
One reader taken with her eye and pen was book publisher Benedict Taschen, of lavish coffee-table fame. He lured her into the book publishing world, where, once she got used to the ‘it’s all about context’ idea, she’s been totally happy and able to do what she wants, The Big Breast Book, The Big Butt Book, titles on early gay porn, in particular the transitional stereotype from strictly effeminate to hyper-masculine. She’s now working on a book of pin-up art.
She loves her job, of course. “I can look at bigpenises.com on the clock, no problem at all.
“But if I got caught reading lolkitty.com at the office…then I’d be in trouble.”
 Night at the Library….)
