Alfred Kinsey

"The only unnatural sex act is one which you cannot perform." - Alfred Kinsey

Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was, for a time, best known for his obsessive relationship with gall wasps. He traveled the nation in search of every variety, collecting in excess of 300,000 and mailing the eggs back to his home base in Boston. Many of them hatched in transit, wreaking havoc in post offices across America. That was nothing compared to what happened when he began to collect the sex lives of strangers.

DID YOU KNOW? Alfred Kinsey had attained seven years' worth of Boy Scout merit badges in twenty-four months? Get it? Kinsey was a BOY SCOUT.

His childhood was awful. Born the son of a carpenter, he lived in relative penury, mocked by his peers for wearing heavily-worn, mightily patched clothing, he also suffered from rickets and curvature of the spine. In addition, his father was an overbearing puritanical freak. It is little surprise to me that 1) he had extreme sexual hang-ups at a young age, not coming into his own (see how I did that) until later in life followed by 2) not only a keen interest in sexual relations but a desire to break free of all restrictions what so ever. He and his wife Clara McMillen were nudists and libertines.

But enough of this, just watch the movie, it's fun and it's got Laura Linney in it.

Source:
The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure

Kay's Bookstore

One afternoon in June, 1955 my father was downtown looking for a summer job. Picture a street teeming with men in hats, suits, skinny ties. On this date like so many others he may have ducked into Kay's on Prospect near East 6th Street.

Owned and operated by Rachel Kowan (Mrs. Kay) Kay's was a three-story bookstore, and its mosaic tiled floors and walls were stuffed and stacked with books. The more I hear it described the more I imagine Lucien's library in the Sandman series, the one that contains every book that was only ever dreamed-of or never-completed. Esoteric and odd, you could find it, and much more, including arcane philosophy, anarchist manifestoes and a surprisingly collection of porn.

Like so many of his generation, you could find Dad perusing "health" magazines espousing the life-extending benefits of nudism. He recently described to me on thought-provoking photograph of a young woman grilling in the rain, wearing only a waist-length slicker.

And, you know, a smile.

On this particular day in question, my father was having little fortune lining up any kind of summer gig. He eventually stepped around the corner up to Euclid and into the Cleveland Trust rotunda, and applied. For his efforts he was hired as an alternate teller and general dogsbody (his words.)

Later my grandfather reported his surprise when a manager approached him in the commissary a few days later to rib him about not telling him that my Dad was now working as a teller. My grandfather replied with equal surprise that he didn't know either!

Source:
Anecdotal Evidence
Read this extended report on Kay's, including more great stuff in the comments section.