Send this story Print this story

Adjust text size

Behind the Sun: Hip to be scribe
Advice doctor bonds with randy '70s youth, randy '70s Pac Sun...

by Jason Walsh

Marin had a "friend" with a sexual problem 40 years ago this week.

It was the winter of 1970 and fallout from the era of free love and heavy drug use had left county residents literally itching for a doctor who could feel their pain. Fortunately for the sexually revolutionized, it was the year of Gonzo journalism—and Dr. Hip was on call.

"Under his nom de plume, Dr. Hip Pocrates, [Eugene] Schoenfeld for three years has been dispensing information of quite another color," wrote Pacific Sun managing editor Don Stanley in his story "Dear Dr. Hip." "Writing for the most part in the underground press, he has found his authority in the paramedical." Or more specifically, detailed Stanley, he was answering a lot of questions like, "My boyfriend and I tried this weird (sex thing or drug thing) the other night—what's going to happen to us?"

The advice columns of Schoenfeld, who was about to move to San Anselmo from Berkeley, were running in more than a dozen publications and he'd just ended a five-month stint in the Sunday section of the Chronicle. The 34-year-old Bay Area transplant held degrees from UC Berkeley, the University of Miami and Yale and was now spending most of his time at his Tiburon office reading letters about women who can't orgasm, their premature ejaculating boyfriends and the impotent older men who love them.

"And males who imagine their penis is too small," added Hip, whose day job, it would seem, was akin to being editor of Penthouse Forum's most incompetent submissions.

Upon arriving at the Tiburon interview, Stanley found the good doctor "barefoot in a pair of old brown cords and knit sweater." He was "attended by a lovely, leggy blonde secretary," drooled the reporter. After a few perfunctory questions about Hip's hobbies (travel), interests (public health) and marital status (college nuptials, lasted only a year), Stanley got down to the bare necessities of his assignment—to read some of Hip's racy letters. "I'm thinking about all the letters relating to sexual experimentation," leered Stanley. And the doctor was only too happy to oblige.

"Here's one from a man who wonders about women wearing leather," Hip showed the delighted scrum. But the reporter's arousal was soon softened, as the letter writer went on to observe that "leather doesn't breathe the way cloth does" and wondered if the rawhide his girlfriend wore during lovemaking was the cause of a particularly nasty fungal infection.

"It's an interesting speculation," admitted the doctor. Chaffed, Stanley steered the interview toward the issue of censorship in the mainstream media or, as Stanley put it, "the four-letter word thing." Turns out many of the cuts to his column were self-censorship, as Hip would reword the saltier language for big-time-daily mores. Still, the Chron withheld many of his favorite items from the column and even edited his farewell to readers after he resigned. Yet Hip vowed to find other publications—ones that would let him write how he wanted to write.

"What do you get paid for your columns?" Stanley asked.

"Most of the underground press can't pay anything," admitted Hip.

Three weeks later "Dr. Hip Pocrates" made its debut in the Sun.

These days Eugene Schoenfeld practices psychiatry out of an office near his home in Sausalito and works as a consultant in civil and criminal cases involving mind-altering drugs. Schoenfeld's legacy lives on today in any number of sex-advice formats—from the Pac Sun's own Amy Alkon to the radio shows of Drew Pinsky and Dean Edell. We asked Dr. Hip if he considers himself a media pioneer. In his typical soft-spoken manner he agreed.

"There was a Pacific Sun [story] a few years ago which featured media doctors and Dean Edell credited me with inspiring him to do his work," says Schoenfeld. "I was pleased to have him say that." Dr. Hip appeared in the Sun until 1974 and then finally called it quits in 1979 after one last try with the Chronicle. But this time the problem wasn't Chronicle censorship—it was parental censorship. The Chron ran his column back in the kid-friendly section of the Sunday edition. "Apparently," laments Schoenfeld, "there were people who would cut my column off the page so that their children wouldn't see it."

But not after they read it first.

Share your medical problems with Jason at jwalsh@pacificsun.com.