By MICHAEL PERKINS (Essex House; 1969)
Another depraved dispatch from the upscale smut outfit Essex House, and one of its signature writers. Michael Perkins was quite inspired here, turning his corrosive gaze away from the gritty big city backdrops of most of his other Essex House novels in favor of a much different but equally debauched milieu: blue collar suburbia.
Southern Ohio, to be exact, in a town called Meat City. There reside the Whackers, led by Bo, a gruff factory worker who when he’s not using machinery for sexual gratification can generally be found engaging in rough sex with random women; his obese wife Mart, who’s having an torrid affair with the milkman; their eldest son Morg, who’s taken a job at a local drive-in to support his pregnant girlfriend (who just happens to be screwing Morg’s boss); their slutty daughter “Sis” Linda, who’s all too aware of the incestuous desires her male relatives have for her; fourteen year old Pard, an unstable sort who keeps detailed files on his family’s depraved doings (of which there’s no shortage); and Grandpa, a dirty old man who’s been kicked out of an old folks’ home for screwing his fellow internees, and so moves into the overheated Whacker household. There’s also Solly Shakespeare, Linda’s mild mannered English teacher, who involves himself in the doings of this unholy clan after succumbing to her charms.
Much of this self-proclaimed “Sexual Soap Opera from the Heartland” is played for laughs. Depraved laughs, that is, as when Mart is caught sucking off an ex-boyfriend by the guy’s wife, who in turn initiates a threesome—as seen from the point of view of the family dog Buster, who observes that “It was all so crazy—humans acting like dogs.” But the humor stops when Solly is taken to the Whacker Family Picnic, where he’s made to pay, quite painfully, for deflowering Sis. Further nastiness is in store, leading to a Grand Guignol finale that turns this sexual soap opera into a Greek tragedy.
That the author is a poet is evident in his use of language, and a narrative voice that attempts to approximate the Midwestern sixties slang spoken by its characters. It may not be up to the standards of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE or RIDDLEY WALKER, but Perkins’ argot is artfully rendered in its way, with certain turns of phrase—such as an early description of how life in Meat City “continues its slow bumpety-bump from hole to hole on a common string—pulled by dozing gods,” and a later one detailing how “he kicked again and again at the V between his son’s legs, turning it into a U”—that nicely compliment Michael Perkins’ poetic bent.
As for the sexual content, it’s extremely plentiful, needless to say, but erotic? This is an Essex House novel, so no. What’s more, WHACKING OFF is a Michael Perkins Essex House novel, meaning the emphasis (as in other Perkins titles like EVIL COMPANIONS and QUEEN OF HEAT) is on darkness and psychosis, in which category the book, like its fellows, more than satisfies.