As a 31-year-old British gay woman, I had high standards for the exhibition of Japanese comic book porn at the Museum of Sex. Turns out, my personal life is more interesting than anything you’ll find on display at their shrine to sexuality.
I took my ex-boyfriend, Greg, who I started dating after my first-female lover when I was still vacillating between the two sexes. I met him on the F train from Park Slope to Manhattan; he was on his way to a record store, I was heading out to a lesbian bar. A waspy Jason Priestley look-alike, he has the dubious honor of validating my decision—and three other ladies’—to be 100 percent gay. He didn’t let it affect his self-esteem, although he tended to put off potential girlfriends by asking them on first dates if they’ve ever slept with women. Unfortunately for Greg, he wasn’t the type of guy to be aroused by the thought of two women together. He’d already turned down my offer to spend the night with him and my Spanish ex-flame.
We stood in line at the museum between velvet ropes next to a sign that read “please do not touch, lick, stroke, or mount the exhibits.” The walls were painted brothel red and security guards in black suits made the place feel more like a club than a museum. Even the woman at the ticket booth was seductive. I asked for discounted admission for students. “Are you with the babe?” the attendant asked Greg and eyed me, “because if you are, you can have a discount too.”
The exhibition began with shunga, erotic Japanese prints depicting priapic men prodding geishas with huge veiny penises, and then happy-ended with some Manga cartoons played on a series of television screens. I hoped to be turned on (but wasn’t) by an enlivening round of oral sex performed by a group of cartoon Asian female nurses. Meanwhile, Greg turned his attention to a comic book featuring the seduction of a large furry mole by a nubile young super heroine. Given my recent theories about his sexual proclivities, I paid close attention to see how he responded to representations of man-on-man Asiatic loving. “These guys all have huge cocks,” said Greg.
In the final gallery, the objects on display from the permanent collection were anticlimactic and not the sleazy S&M-dungeon-Christopher-Street-bath-house-foot-fetish cornucopia I was expecting. So, we went on to a couple of dildos and vibrators strapped onto various electrical kitchen equipment, a video of an elderly woman showing transsexuals how to walk like “ladies,” and an old Viewmaster with 3D pictures of Nordic blondes lolling about in meadows wearing transparent, white peasant-smocks. Greg pressed a button on one of the sex toys and it whirred to life. He looked at me and smiled. “Far too big,” I said.
I was disappointed, my expectations had been set by a visit to Amsterdam’s equivalent, the Venustempel. After a huge spliff, my friend Maike and I had marveled at the extensive collection of ancient Greek pottery, which featured a striking array of novel and athletic positions. There was also a whole labyrinth of cave-like rooms covered in snapshots and Polaroid’s celebrating various carnal preferences and fetishes: straight, gay, bondage and bestiality. But it was the last room, entirely devoted to overweight people, that captured my imagination. While Maike and I were completely blasé about everything else, our insouciance waned slightly at the sight of a woman inserting a snake into her vagina, and vanished completely at the sight of two 300-pound lumps of human flesh moving as one. But at least we attained the cheap and shabby feeling we paid good money to experience. Kind of like the Coney Island freak show, pre-Giuliani.
New York is a great place for sex. Unlike England, where my neighbors’ activities were concealed behind net curtains, I’ve caught dozens of nudes frolicking around their apartments. Americans took me to their collective bosom, introducing me to threesomes and kissing girls. Emily from Connecticut jumped me one night when we were traveling together in Portugal. I had mistaken her warmth for that U.S. lack of reserve I had heard so much about. Maybe she just wanted a hug. Apparently not.
My friend Jessica threw good orgies, and always preceded them with a filling Thai takeout (“can‘t do much on an empty stomach,” she would say, maternally). A publisher by day and a dominatrix by night, she offered me a job at the dungeon in midtown where she worked. “They would just love your British accent,” she said, giving me a guided tour of the chambers. After reciting a history of the uses and abuses of the steel birdcage and the spanking horse, we reached the “doctor’s office.” She handed me something and said, far too brightly, “this is for administering enemas.” The salary was tempting, but I didn’t take the job at Rebecca’s Hidden Chamber.
At Jessica’s parties, I was resolutely monogamous. But, even by my reserved, Albion standards, the museum was tame. I left feeling more like I’d been to the gynecologist than to New York’s temple of lust. I looked at Greg. “I have blue balls,” he said.
