From "Doc Reuben," by Gore Vidal, The New York Review of Books, June 4, 1970:
The title of the current number-one nonfiction best seller is cute as a bug's ear, and we know what Freud thought of those who were cute about sex. ('Very uptight' - Sigmund Freud, M.D.) If a jocose approach to sexual matter is a mask for unease, then David Reuben, M.D.[, author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask]….is in a state of communicable panic….
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At two points Dr. Reuben is at odds with Moses. He thinks Onan was quite a guy, and his lonely practice particularly useful in toning up those of our senior citizens whose wheelchairs will not accommodate two people; and he has a positively Updikean enthusiasm for cunnilingus. Dr. Reuben would like everyone to indulge in this chivalrous practice--except women, of course: Lesbianism is "immature." He is also sufficiently American to believe that more of everything is best. At times he sounds not unlike the late Bruce Barton extolling God as a super-salesman. "Success in the outside world reads success in the inside world of sex," sermonizes Dr. Reuben. "Conversely, the more potent a man becomes in the bedroom, the more potent his is in business."
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Or take the case of Joni, the beautiful airline stewardess who couldn't achieve the big O no matter how hard she (he) tired. After being told that the values she had learned as a girl on a farm in Iowa…were not applicable to a flying bunny, she was able in a matter of months to wire her doctor "at Christmastime" (when, presumably, all thoughts flow toward orgasm), "'I may have been a stewardess, but I really "won my wings" in the psychiatrist's office.'"
Along with testimonials to the efficacy of his art, Dr. Reuben has a good deal to say about many subjects, and since he never attempts to prove anything, his opinions must be taken as just that.
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The looniest of Dr. Reuben's folklore is "Food seems to have a mysterious fascination for homosexuals. Many of the world's greatest chefs have been homosexuals." (Who? I'm really curious. Not…Fanny Farmer.) "Some of the country's best restaurants are run by homosexuals." (Those two at Twenty One?) "Some of the fattest people are homosexuals" (King Farouk? Orson Welles? President Taft?)
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"Blind girls become particularly adept at secret masturbation. They…" No. You had better read this section for yourself. At least [Doc Reuben] had the courtesy to wait until Helen Keller was dead before rushing to print with the news.
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Dr. Reuben tends to gloss over the social pressures which condition the life of anyone who prefers, occasionally or exclusively, the company of his own sex. Homosexuals seldom settle down to cozy mature domesticity for an excellent reason: society forbids it. Two government workers living together in Washington D.C., would very soon find themselves unemployed. They would be spied on, denounced secretly, and dismissed. Only a bachelor entirely above suspicion like J. Edgar Hoover can afford to live openly with another man. It is a nice joke if a Louisiana judge is caught in a motel with a call girl. It is a major tragedy if a government official with a family is caught in a men's room.
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For someone like Dr. Reuben…two men who do live together must, somehow, be wretched. "Mercifully for both of them, the life expectancy of their relationship together is brief." Prove? I wrote for the tenth time in the margin. But we are beyond mere empiricism. We are now involved in one of the major superstitions of our place and time and no evidence must be allowed to disturb simple faith.
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