A 1999 book called Baby Precious Always Shines: the Selected Love Notes
between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, edited by Kay Turner, makes it
clear that having a "cow" refers to Toklas having a bowel movement.
Evidently viewing this up close was a sexually exciting turn-on for Gertrude.
To each his own: I would expect nothing less from a genius.
"More than a third of the notes demonstrate unequivocally that "cows" are
Toklas's feces or stools...p. 25
"In the 1970's, writers on Stein and Toklas such as Richard Bridgman and
Linda Simon veered toward this understanding, yet they pulled back--out of a
sense of propriety, disbelief, or repulsion--from claiming that the loving
command for a "cow" from Alice is the command for a bowel movement...pp. 25-6
"Orgasms are not "smelly," nor do they go "splash" or "plop." They are not
shaped like a "banana." It is the anus that yields the "cow." p. 27
"Stein's attention to Toklas's bowel movements exemplifies, in a profound
sense, the hallmark of married intimacy: one body entrusted to another,
singularly known, cared for, loved, and desired in all its intricacies, all
its successes--and all its failings. p. 29
"Alice's "movements" seem to fulfill a deeply primal and erotic need in
Gertrude. p. 30
"Still, psychology and pleasure do not fully unlock the importance of the
"cows." At the deepest level, Stein's scatological interests were
artistically and ontologically motivated. The notes ask us to take further
account--to take what might best be called a phenomenological account--of the
fact that Stein's delight in the prospect and evidence of Alice's "cows" was
excessive, even obsessive. pp. 31-32
Quotes from Kay Turner's 37 page introductory essay to Baby Precious Always
Shines, published by St. Martin's Press, New York.
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