<\/p>\n
Playing in New York<\/b><\/p>\n
Just back from two weeks in New York, town of my roots.\u00a0 New York can be grim or it can be delightful.\u00a0 This visit, in the cool of spring, with happy, sexy people on the streets everywhere, leaned heavily in the direction of delight.<\/p>\n
San Francisco and New York must be the two sexiest towns in the U.S. of A., but with radically different sexual styles.\u00a0 I remember masturbation advocate Betty Dodson commenting on the contrast, one time when she was visiting San Francisco.\u00a0 In New York, she said, everyone was into sex as dark and dirty.\u00a0 In San Francisco, to her delight, everyone was into sex as fun and play.<\/p>\n
What I noticed among the New Yorkers I met this trip was the delightful way they had of simply taking their sex and their sexiness for granted.\u00a0 No hype, no pretense, no aren\u2019t we just the coolest, the hippest, the most sexually outrageous people on the planet.\u00a0 Just people being easy, being human, being sexual, and getting on with their lives.<\/p>\n
Got invited to a gathering of friends who come together every couple of months for an s\/m play party.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been doing this for three years.\u00a0 Whenever the time seems right, Bob puts out the word to his network of friends, books a suite of rooms in an attractive midtown hotel, brings some light equipment, food and wine, and waits to see who\u2019ll show up.\u00a0 Once he sees how many people are there, he makes the rounds telling people what it will cost to cover expenses.\u00a0 This night it\u2019s $15 a couple.\u00a0 (And I thought New York was supposed to be expensive!)<\/p>\n
Bob\u2019s network includes about 100 people, a third of whom were at this party.\u00a0 Friends of friends of friends.\u00a0 Working class people, mostly suburban, mostly straight.\u00a0 Dominant men and submissive women, but you\u2019d never know it walking in the door.\u00a0 No one strutting top or mewing bottom, just people talking to each other and from time to time moving in and out of scenes.\u00a0 Friendly, open, informal, easy.<\/p>\n
Introductions all around.\u00a0 The comfort of people going out of their way to make you feel welcome.\u00a0 Pretty people, unpretty people, younger people (20s and early 30s), older people (40s and 50s).\u00a0 Mostly, but not entirely, white.\u00a0 People watching other people\u2019s scenes with respect, attention, and appreciation.\u00a0 Conversation everywhere, background to whatever scenes are going on.\u00a0 People passing by scenes feeling free to offer friendly commentary, the use of a new toy or a special whip.\u00a0 Sometimes a couple scene grows to include an additional person or two.\u00a0 Lots of sensual domination, whips and spankings mixed with gentle nipple sucking or soft genital play.\u00a0 Some scenes that get specifically sexual, though not all.\u00a0 One couple goes into the bedroom and fucks on the bed.\u00a0 No cocks in sight, and no men playing with each other, though some mention in conversation that that\u2019s too bad.<\/p>\n
All of it like family, like a cousins club, social as much as sexual.\u00a0 Familiar friends.\u00a0 Folks.\u00a0 By the end of the evening I had a base of sexual, affectionate New York confederates that hadn\u2019t existed before, people I could look up next time in town, or feel good about seeing out here.\u00a0 Positively wholesome.<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/p>\n
Sex on the Streets<\/b><\/p>\n
In New York sex is taken for granted, an on-going part of being alive, no big deal.\u00a0 A tv news show interviews people on the street about how important sex is to them.\u00a0 All but one says it is definitely important, part of the larger picture of a relationship, an aspect of being with a partner that has to work for people to feel happy and fulfilled.\u00a0 It is assumed that this is common knowledge, nothing more than common sense.\u00a0 You need food, you need sleep, you need a decent job, a decent place to live, decent sex.<\/p>\n
Walking down Seventh Avenue, across from Penn Station, Helen (my partner) notices a huge bronze sculpture on the sidewalk, just next to the entrance to the Ramada Hotel.\u00a0 It is a sculpture of a naked couple sitting on a bench, embracing, while a second woman looks off into the distance, perhaps bored, waiting for them to finish playing with each other so the three of them can go for a walk or something.\u00a0 Nice.<\/p>\n
“Look,” Helen says, suddenly surprised, “she\u2019s holding his cock.”\u00a0 Sure enough, the woman\u2019s hand is pressing the man\u2019s erect cock, while his balls shine beneath her palm in the sunlight.\u00a0 The man, meanwhile, has one hand on her breast while his other hand moves across her upper thigh, reaching for her cunt.\u00a0 All this right out front, on a busy sidewalk in midtown Manhattan.\u00a0 A hundred people a minute pass by — business people, workers, old ladies, children — some of them noticing the statue, most oblivious to it.\u00a0 No one is shocked or horrified.\u00a0 No one makes the sign of the cross or holds up garlic.\u00a0 A woman playing sensuously with a man\u2019s cock in public, like everyone does this sort of thing every day.\u00a0 Maybe in New York they do.<\/p>\n
A teenage boy comes by, strokes the woman\u2019s thigh affectionately, like he\u2019s done this many times before.\u00a0 In New York everyone\u2019s anonymous, so you can do what you want, knowing that no one will notice, let alone object.\u00a0 Sometimes this goes for murdering people, but much more often it goes for being sexy in public, or unconventional in some other benign way.\u00a0 They say a guy once walked down Central Park West from 110th Street to 59th Street (three miles) with a python around his neck and not one person stopped or said anything about it.\u00a0 I notice the boy caressing the statue because I happen to be taking a picture of it at the time.\u00a0 The boy grins at me, unembarrassed, knowing I understand.\u00a0 Sex is, simple as that.<\/p>\n
We go into the hotel to find out the story of the statue.\u00a0 Max, the general manager, tells us he was working at the hotel in 1984 when the statue first arrived, is working there again now, knows the whole story.\u00a0 He leans back in his leather armchair and settles into telling a good tale.<\/p>\n
It seems that Abe Hirschfeld — the 70-year-old parking garage millionaire who recently bought the New York Post<\/em>, had the whole staff resign in protest, fought them all, lost, gave up, and left — saw the statue somewhere in Florida.\u00a0 He liked it.\u00a0 He bought it as a present for his wife.\u00a0 His wife didn\u2019t like it.\u00a0 At all.\u00a0 Like Max says, either you love this statue or you hate it.\u00a0 (Of the people who talk to Max about the statue, most seem to not like it.\u00a0 Max himself is diplomatically neutral on the subject.\u00a0 “Like they say,” Max says, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”)\u00a0 Anyway, Hirschfeld\u2019s wife hated it, did not<\/em> want it in or around her house(s).<\/p>\n Hirschfeld offered to donate the statue to the City\u00a0 but, guess what, they didn\u2019t want it either.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 He put it in the lobby of what was then the Penta Hotel, which he owned.\u00a0 (Later he sold the hotel to Ramada, but still owns the building himself, Max tells us.)\u00a0 As imposing as the statue is in the street, it must have been even more so in the lobby, but Hirschfeld is not known for caring about what other people think.\u00a0 Guests of the Penta Hotel were greeted as they arrived and left by this huge bronze ode to sex.<\/p>\n Soon religious groups started complaining and threatening to take their conventions elsewhere.\u00a0 They wanted the statue removed.\u00a0 Hirschfeld resisted, then compromised and put the statue on the sidewalk where it wasn\u2019t quite so much in people\u2019s faces.\u00a0 That seems to have been enough to quiet the good sons and daughters of Zion, so there it sits on Seventh Avenue, facing Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, just outside the Penn Bar, in the heart of the garment district.\u00a0 As the artist has engraved, graffiti-like, on the statue\u2019s bench, “Amor, con la passione para siempre<\/em> — wonderful ocean of sex.”<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Rated X<\/em> Photo Show<\/b><\/p>\n Over at Marge Neikrug\u2019s Photographica Gallery on East 68th Street we drop in on the 18th annual erotic group photography exhibition, Rated X<\/em>. \u00a0One hundred color and black-and-white photos ranging from sensual to sexual, from mild to outrageous.\u00a0 Mostly sensual, mostly mild, ranging in quality from fair to wonderful.\u00a0 Neikrug is one of the few non-marginal photographic galleries that shows erotic and sexual photography, and the “Rated X” show has grown over the years into something of an annual spring happening.\u00a0 I missed this year\u2019s opening, but was there in 1991 when the two-story gallery was crammed belly to belly full of photographers, models, patrons, collectors, wannabes, and curious oglers.\u00a0 A naked man, painted gold head to toe, squeezed through the crowd, offering hors d\u2019oeuvres.\u00a0 The atmosphere was festive, the heat stifling.\u00a0 People by the dozens moved out onto the sidewalk to cool off, flirt, and breathe.<\/p>\n Some of the most interesting work in this year\u2019s show comes from several San Francisco sex photographers, including Michael Rosen, Mark Chester, Craig Morey, and Steven Baratz.\u00a0 I noticed that many of the prints by these four had already been sold.\u00a0 There were a number of promising works in the show, including images by Carlo Gagani, Hans Farmeyer, Barbara Ellen Adelman, Stephan Lupino, Peter Monroe, Thomas Gaspar, Ron Johnson, Vivienne Maricevic, Marie-Claire Montanari, Spencer Tunick, Bill O\u2019Connor, Dianora Niccolini, James Flanagan, Eric Kroll, Fran Collin, and Irina Ionesco.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Sexually Implicit at the Whitney Museum<\/b><\/p>\n From Neikrug we go to the Whitney Museum, where Robert Mapplethorpe\u2019s sexual work was given a retrospective even before the Cincinnati\/Corcoran brouhaha.\u00a0 The Whitney\u2019s show of socially conscious art is considered sufficiently sexual to require a disclaimer at the entrance, warning parents of sexually explicit material that might not be appropriate for children.\u00a0 (Obviously the museum is proud to be outrageous in these censorious times:\u00a0 it is selling t-shirts emblazoned with the disclaimer.)\u00a0 As it turns out, the only explicit sex in the show is a photo of a man licking a woman\u2019s breast, and a multi-media installation by Shu Lea Cheang, “Those Fluttering Objects of Desire,” which includes occasional, non-genital, sexual video scenes.<\/p>\n There are other non-explicit sex-related pieces, including two very large (4\u2019 by 6\u2019) color photos by Cindy Sherman, one of a huge cock, one of a huge cunt, both awesomely overpowering.\u00a0 People flow by, looking up at, and often jumping away from, the photos — generally spending considerably more time with the cunt than with the cock (especially the men).<\/p>\n I stand and watch people go through their reactions for quite a while, while a short, nervous-looking guard eyes me suspiciously.\u00a0 Finally he scurries over to warn me not to lean on the walls.<\/p>\n “Why not?” I ask, incredulous.<\/p>\n “Cleanliness,” he answers tersely, scampering back to his post opposite the immense, yawning cunt.<\/p>\n Cleanliness as in wall smudges, or cleanliness as in germs, I wonder.\u00a0 None of the other guards seem overly concerned with wall sanitation.\u00a0 Could it be that staring at colossal cunts and cocks day after day makes a person nervous about cleanliness in the sex-paranoid 90s?<\/p>\n The most interesting aspect of the show for me is an installation of photos from Mapplethorpe\u2019s Black Book<\/em>, interspersed with statements on Mapplethorpe\u2019s work from a wide variety of commentators.\u00a0 My favorite quote is from anticensorship feminist organizer Carole Vance:\u00a0 “If we are always asked to offer a public defense of sexual images, then even in our rebuttal we have granted the right wing its most basic premise: sexuality is shameful and discrediting.\u00a0 It is not enough to defend the principles of free speech, while joining in denouncing the image, as some in the art world have done.”<\/p>\n I also get a kick out of a quote from Harry Mapplethorpe, presumably Robert\u2019s father:\u00a0 “Here he\u2019s got three other brothers and they\u2019re all perfectly normal in my mind.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s the group of people he was with.”<\/p>\n * * * *<\/p>\n Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n Penny Arcade (Susana Ventura) is a 42-year-old performance artist whose show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!<\/em> has been playing to enthusiastic crowds at P.S. 122 and The Village Gate in New York for close to a year.\u00a0 Subtitled “The Penny Arcade Sex and Censorship Show,” BDFW<\/em> combines a series of Penny\u2019s monologues with intermittent go-go dancing by a delightful array of ten very sexy, not particularly glamorous, men and women.<\/p>\n Aside from the title, the show is a not-so-outrageous appeal for sex, tolerance, prostitution, bisexuality, humanity, and general faith in the life spirit, sex and all.\u00a0 With an energy that\u2019s utterly infectious, Penny exhorts her audience to get beyond divisive oppositional thinking, moralizing, and rigid political rectitude.\u00a0 The show is a real joy, if occasionally didactic, and filled with memorable one-liners.\u00a0 I jotted down a few:\u00a0 “There\u2019s just one energy and it happens to be sexual;” “1993 is definitely the year of the lesbian.\u00a0 Lesbians can even wear lipstick now and other lesbians won\u2019t kill them;” and, with regard to why the government keeps trying to suppress sex, “People who fuck think.”<\/p>\n “Love,” Penny reminds us, “is the most political act you can make.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n June 25, 1993<\/p>\n Copyright\u00a9 1993 David Steinberg<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Playing in New York<\/p>\n Just back from two weeks in New York, town of my roots. New York can be grim or it can be delightful. This visit, in the cool of spring, with happy, sexy people on the streets everywhere, leaned heavily in the direction of delight.<\/p>\n San Francisco and New York must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comes-naturally","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}