So I go to the little straight NYC after hour mafia run dive where I am queen by virtue of the fact few women go there and I meet this porn actress, Precious, we play for the crowd pretending to be vying for dominance but really I’m just fascinated because I’ve never met anybody from a porn-hd.xxx site before and she was so pretty. (This was, by the way, during the tail end of the era in NYC when the most hard core gay male sex clubs were fashionable for many famous hipsters and bored rich folks who wanted to go slumming.)
Eventually I just started talking with Precious, my curiosity winning out over giving the club some performance art (as I saw it) and she, I don’t know, didn’t have much to say and somehow we ended up taking a cab to a very straight sex club called Plato’s Retreat. While you can never be 100% sure of what you’ll see in these kinds of places, I had a fairly good idea; I suspected we’d bump into new york asian escorts and other attractive girls with their male partners, whether or not they would be partners for the duration of the night is not for me to say though they may well be. There was a chain of Palto’s Retreats, don’t know if they’re still around. She said she could get me in for free.
And I’m really wanting this to be fascinating, here I am with a porn star! Woo hoo, a chapter in my one day best selling novel!
(Lou Reed & Velvet Underground, “Venus in Furs,” courtesy YouTuber melgallagher)
We walk in the place and I see a steam table with some very suspect entrees and side dishes slowly drying out upon it. I was beginning to feel uneasy.
Then I walked into the room of sex, where all these naked people were having sex, and there were a lot of older men and younger women. All I remember of it was that I didn’t see one smile on anyone’s face and there was no laughter. I think I was a little traumatized by the sight because I honestly don’t remember any more than that.
Well if you want to know more about that night, you’ll have to ask.
I didn’t stay long at Plato’s retreat.
And Precious just made me sad — she was soul dead, not unhappy or anything like that, just jaded to the childlike mien that many folks in the sex industry or sex club culture have — I don’t know how to describe it. Part of me is drawn to that vibe, there was an honesty born of experience that I appreciated — as opposed to what I saw as the insurmountable horridness of the straight bars of the 70s and 80s where people acted in unfathomable ways to mate with each other. Heh.
There have been countless erotic scenes during our human civilization and probably even before. The primal desires between human beings can be raised ot artistic heights. I read a book once by Norman Spinrad, Child of Fortune, talked about the far future, how the “tantric arts” were respected and given an honored place in society, the protagonist’s mother was a famous tantric artist and her father was a respected inventor of high tech sex toys. Well, Spinrad … I heard he once went to the same NYC dive club I used to hang out at but I guess it was either before or after my time. Anyway, I digress.
I highly doubt (even though I have no evidence whatsoever) that there is any really erotic place in our present American culture. Well, New Orleans would be an exception, they’ve raised erotic living to a fine fine art, they’ve had to, mercy. No, to find much eroticism these days you have to head online to sites like babestation.tv/girls/beth-bennet where you can view some racy content without leaving your home.
We don’t have courtesans, we have hookers. And marriage, don’t even start with me about marriage in the USA.
I will say some of the wild gyrations of the girls in the rap videos are unbelievably erotic, but the commercialization of it all doesn’t move me. And then there’s the retro women who try and bring back the glamour of the past from Billie Holliday to Marilyn Monroe, from iconic attitudes like Bette Davis’ and all that. But that’s a carbon copy no matter how you cut it.
So what’s erotic now, what doesn’t immediately hit you only sexually, like a bit of nice porn 7 would, but instead provides an erotic atmosphere? It doesn’t have to or need to lead to sex, it’s just that a pleasurable social vibe is there, adding to the attraction of the scene. Yeah, that’s it, it’s a kind of attraction, and energy, that adds to any social mix.
Well whatever it is, I think we’re in need of it here in the ol’ U S of A.
In the spirit of the erotic (which is as playful as it is sexy, imo) I shall humiliate myself by sharing one of my first erotic feelings, stirring to me as a early teen, watching Rifleman. And no, it wasn’t the Rifleman, that moved me, it was his son, “Mark.” Oh Mark. Oh Mark.
If anyone laughs at me I’ll destroy them. I mean it! Really! You are all TOAST! Ok. (YouTube courtesy of toadfoto)
Happy Friday to all. If anyone is in favor of my Erotic Civic Improvement program, please sign the petition. Heh.
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Or maybe it was Irma:
Author
… about soft power … but I HATE those kind of jokes!
But I could if I wanted to.
I just don’t want to.
The whole “no erotic place in American culture” thing. We have a culture? Does it kiss well?
The sex clubs in NY are commercial ventures, even something small like the Hellfire used to be before it went downhill. And the baths have always been so. Even SF’s Power Exchange is — very much — about the bux.
There are many who say it is insufficiently transgressive for the sort of eroticism you discuss here, as such things go. If leather is wholesome, is it still leather? But out here we have:
http://www.sexpositiveculture….
…also known as “The Wet Spot”.
of the actual sensation occurring. It exists in that space where the imagination explores the possible pleasures. Sometimes the actual touch lives up to it; sometimes it takes some searching. It’s a magical temporary phenomenon but when it works well it’s really an art.
It’s one of life’s gifts to the human experience. The Hindus understood it well. Anais Nin has gift for capturing it, too.
It is so difficult to even develop an erotic “identity/affinity” because just as we are entering any sexual awareness is when we are subjected to all these pre-packaged ideas. Our own sexuality gets “marketed” to us before we can really even touch base with it.
No wonder there is so much shame, abuse, and confusion surrounding what is or is not erotic. Graft capitalism on that and I am amazed anybody can feel both free and joyous.
In ’67 there was a venue called The Boston Tea Party on Berkeley St. The Velvet Underground used to play there a lot. In fact, they debuted there. They were practically the house band. I used to hang there three or four nights a week. Sometimes more. It was a time and a place