The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People Read Online Free PDF Page A

classes. He ended his life as librarian to Count von Waldstein in a castle in Dux, Bohemia.
    HIS PERSON: Tall, dark, and powerfully built, with the witty manner of a Harlequin or a Figaro, Casanova possessed the ability to insinuate himself into every picaresque possibility. His sexual conquests were legion. “There was not
    a woman in the world who could resist constant attentions,” he claimed. A Machiavelli of sexual intrigue, he would court, cajole, scheme, insult, and threaten until he got his way; rebuffed, his ardor would only increase. Continence caused illness, he thought, whereas indulgence resulted in at least 11
    bouts with venereal disease. (Perhaps on this account, but also because he was sympathetic to the woman’s risk of pregnancy, he was familiar with the use of a “protective covering” as well as a contraceptive diaphragm made of half a lemon, the citric acid acting as a spermicide.) A vigorous sexual athlete, he refers casually to “running my sixth race,” and more. In his prime he was capable of having sex anywhere, with anyone, and in any position, with particular reference to the positions described by 16th-century satirist Aretino.
    Unlike a Don Juan with a constant need to prove his virility, according to Dr. Robert B. Greenblatt Casanova was a connoisseur of sex who “enjoyed the sexual encounter as much for the pleasure it afforded him as for the satisfaction obtained in the seductive process itself, and in the mystique of the adventure.”
    Gourmand as well as connoisseur, Casanova celebrated women with all his senses. “The odor of those I loved was always fragrant to my nostrils,” he wrote.
    And of course he had a highly developed sense of taste. One of his specialties was the oyster orgy, which involved passing the savory aphrodisiacs from mouth to mouth, retrieving them with his lips should they happen to fall between
    “alabaster spheres.”
    Above all, Casanova was an incurable romantic who constantly fell in love.
    “Without love this great business is a vile thing,” he believed. He was forever rescuing damsels in distress, then extricating himself with difficulty. He considered marriage “the tomb of love,” preferring instead the “inexpressible charm of stolen pleasures.” He described these pleasures in exquisite and occasionally fictional detail in the 12-volume Histoire de ma vie (“History of My Life”).
    HIS LOVERS IN PARIS: Sexual awakening came when Casanova was 11 or so at the hands of Bettina Gozzi, his landlord’s sister, who, while washing him, touched his thighs suggestively. His first complete sexual experience, six or seven years later, involved not one but two budding young nymphets, Nanetta and Marta Savorgnan. Conspiring to introduce himself into their bed, he lulled them into a deceptive sense of security by feigning sleep. Gradually he uncurled first one girl, then the other, slowly moving toward his ultimate object. After washing together, the three aroused themselves to such a state of sexual intoxication that they spent the remainder of the night “in ever varied skirmishes.”
    “With a female friend,” Casanova discovered, “the weakness of the one brings about the fall of the other.” The pattern later repeated itself with Helena and Hedwig, cousins in Geneva. Having pierced their maidenheads and bathed them (an activity that always delighted him), Casanova found his ardor renewed by their curious hands, which aroused him to fill “their cup of happiness for several hours, changing from one to the other five or six times before I… reached the paroxysm of consummation.” Even then, one of the girls was delighted on kissing his “pistol,”
    as Casanova occasionally referred to his member, to prompt yet another eruption.
    HOMOSEXUALITY: In his youth Casanova became obsessed with what he mistakenly believed to be a castrato, one of the young boys playing women’s roles on the Italian stage. “Bellino” turned out to be Teresa, a