Robert A. Heinlein In Dialogue with His Century

28. “Human Vegetable”

21. Heinlein’s desk-drawer “laboratory” was probably among the material burned at the time of the move from Bonny Doon to Carmel in 1987. The shelf of porn was apparently also destroyed at some time, as none of it came to the RAH Archive (which received, by Virginia Heinlein’s will, all of the Heinleins’ personal property). A brief description of one such story, written by Heinlein for Leslyn before their divorce in 1947, was given by Grace Dugan Sang Wurtz in a letter to the author, 03/07/11:

Did you know that Bob Heinlein was also a writer of porn?

I say that to get your attention. He didn’t sell porn stories but he wrote at least a couple soft porn stories for Leslyn. When Henry Sang and I were living with Bob and Leslyn on Lookout Mountain [in spring of 1946], Bob and I were often left our own devices while Leslyn was at work with Henry trying to make his stories marketable. They worked in the back of the house on the porch, and Bob and I spread things out on the dining room table, and did our sketches and readings. Bob also had written a cutesy-pie story about Willis (more about him later) a baby possum, who lived in Bob’s navel. The porn story I remember had to do with a threesome involving a man, his young wife, and his mother-in-law. It was the older woman who was the hottest participant. Was this maybe to introduce the idea of a younger junior wife?