Jezebel's review of the reissue of The Recently Deflowered Girl is hilarious, as is the guide to post-loss-of-virginity-etiquette,written by Edward Gorey under one of his pen names, itself. I know Gorey is a Goth icon, and his illustrations and visual style have become enormously popular. But I'll always think of him first and foremost as an incredibly sharp humorist. The man was an alchemist, especially when it came to sex, which is fascinating, considering he presented himself as essentially asexual (The Curious Sofa comes highly recommended). I mean, a story about a girl who ends up having sex with her mischievous pen pal sounds only mildly entertaining when I put it like that, right? But in Gorey's hands, it becomes this:
Deflowered By Proxy
You fall in love with pen pal, Walter, English turf accountant, whom you have never met. By correspondence, wedding date is set. Two days before marriage, he cables that he can't leave London due to pressing business deal. Instead, according to cable, he has made arrangements for proxy marriage and his friend, Howard, on 84th Street, will stand up for him. You invite Howard to your apartment following ceremony. After deflowerment, you say, "Incidentally, Howard..." He ways, "There is no Howard. I'm Walter, your pen pal."
You say: "Of course, silly. I recognized your handwriting on the marriage certificate."
When married to practical joker, it is always delightfully feminine to go along with the gag.The whole scenario is absurd, of course (as all the scenarios in The Recently Deflowered Girl are), but as with most great humor, the genius lies in the details. Walter is a "turf accountant"? And I would love to meet the girl who, after having sex for the first time, begins a sentence "Incidentally, Howard." The anachronistic touches actually make the story a lot funnier, too, since something like this could never happen in a time of social media, but that sort of feels like a loss. Gorey is wildly un-PC, too--something like "Deflowerment By Chinese Detective" would never pass muster today. But it's all an extremely effective part of Gorey's ghoulishness: he's a warped mirror, the silver cracking, on both the past, and our own strange brains.