Abstract
If the sizzle of erotic fantasy sells real estate in Glengarry, in Sexual Perversity the sizzle binds Danny to Bernie. Talking dirty is an adolescent male ritual. To bond with each other, Moss and Aarnonow grouse about their job. Bernie and Danny grouse about broads. Danny looks up to Bernie as a champion stud. By soaking up Bernie’s tales of epic fornication, Danny hopes to learn the score. Testosterone raging, the buddies pass the day spinning sexual yarns, ogling babes, critiquing porn. In addition to being a mechanism of male bonding, all three habits reinforce a masculine self-image. Bernie and Danny fancy themselves gourmets of female flesh. “Tits and Ass. Tits and Ass. Tits and Ass. Blah de Bloo. Blah de Bloo. Blah de Bloo.” This refrain runs through their baby talk.1
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Notes
Mamet, Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations (New York, 1978), 58, 62–63.
C. Gerald Fraser, “Mamet’s Plays Shed Masculinity Myth,” New York Times, July 5, 1976, sec. A:7. So-om Kim, “Sexual Myths in David Mamet,” Journal of English Language and Literature 42.4 (1996): 899–922.
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James McCourt, “The Untouchables,” New York Native, nd, np. I found this review in the clippings file at the New York Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center. There was no other information on the clipping.
Gaylord Brewer, “Hoffa and The Untouchables: Mamet’s Brutal Orders of Authority,” Literature/Film Quarterly 28:1 (2000): 28–33.
The conflict between girlfriend or wife and male friendship runs like a leitmotif through many important studies: Niobe Way, Deep Secrets (Cambridge, MA, 2012); Greif, Buddy System; Cohen, “Men’s Families, Men’s Friends.”
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© 2014 Arthur Holmberg
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Holmberg, A. (2014). Friends without Benefits. In: David Mamet and Male Friendship. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305190_7
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