Word: casanova
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...lose a suspect in a phone booth. He gets out of breath cutting corners, hasn't enough hair to make a wig for a grape, and cowers before any weapon larger than an insult. Nevertheless, in accordance with the rules of soft-core pornography, he attempts to be Casanova in Jockey shorts. On the trail of an anonymous killer, Jake samples a smorgasbord of tarts, including a Lib wom-mannekin (Pamela Gruen) with the voice of a burglar, some spaced-out chippies and hookers of various hues...
...THAT GOT PREGNANT? Now the Council has outdone itself. On the cover of 200,000 pamphlets that will be distributed to British high school and college students and local medical clinics later this month is a posed reconstruction of a 200-year-old engraving of Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, the 18th century courtier whose name is a byword for sexual adventurism. It shows the world's most famous seducer kneeling before a bare-breasted and obviously willing maiden. The moral of the scene, says the caption: CASANOVA NEVER GOT ANYBODY INTO TROUBLE...
...contrast, says the pamphlet, Casanova "knew how to make love without making his women pregnant." His secret: a primitive form of "French letter," a century-old British slang term for condom. "Instead of being made out of synthetic rubber, as they are nowadays, it was made out of sheep's gut," explains the council. "To keep it in place, he tied it on with a tasteful pink ribbon...
...Model. The British press was quick to raise some questions about the council's own taste-and the accuracy of its claims. Citing Novelist John Masters' 1969 biography, Casanova, editorial writers pointed out that, far from being a model sexual citizen, Casanova practiced bisexuality and was a voyeur and even an abortionist. Moreover, while he may not have got anyone else into trouble, he certainly got into enough himself, suffering frequent bouts of venereal disease-including syphilis. Furthermore, Masters notes, Casanova sometimes refused to use condoms. After one of his mistresses, identified in his autobiography only...
...council's director, Dr. William Jones, was unmoved by the controversy. Casanova will remain on the cover, because, says Jones, "in an ignorant and permissive age, he took reasonable precautions when making love." But to placate the Church of England, which objected to the wedding scene, the bride's condition will be made "a little less obvious" in future printings...