Erotic Anarchy

Shortbus is a really fun movie, a slightly saccharine morality tale of finding happiness and redemption by discovering what sort of sex each of the characters needs and then really enjoying it.  We saw the movie in the theater shortly after the premiere in Toronto (which we missed).  It is funny, adorable, touching, and genuinely erotic.

We ran into John Cameron Mitchell in Mexico City at the film festival there and he told us that the marching band in the movie had nothing that he knew of to do with San Fransciso’s Extra Action Marching Band, but that’s sort of hard to believe when you see them.

We also talked with  Paul Dawson, who was very charming and friendly.  There’s something very leveling about meeting people in distant places.

It’s a great movie for anyone who feels sex should be fun, and probably even better for those who don’t.

Kinky Salon has been around for a long time but we’d never been because they tell people they have to dress up.   The theme of our first visit was jungle night; almost all the men were wearing some variant of the pith helmet thing.  The women weren’t awfully jungly, but something sexy generally suffices.  Our apprehension about having to dress up was misplaced.

The advertised difference between Kinky Salon and Club Kiss (located in the same venue) is that Kiss is screened for attractive people and as a result it tends to be populated by superficially better looking people who are a bit more overtly exhibitionist and pretty much everybody is there to have sex most of the night.  Kinky Salon is much more of a social experience and many people are not there to have sex at all, rather to be with friends in a comfortable environment. The  attendees are not bad looking, but even in the play rooms there may be more people socializing than actually doing it.

Those that do engage in sex acts are a bit less in the mode of doing show-off sex than at more sex-oriented sex-clubs where they tend position themselves such that the genitals are visible.  I don’t think I saw anyone else’s genitals all night…

There were several female couples there, which is very unusual for a nominally straight sex club, but kinky salon is actively gay friendly.   Gay male clubs and straight clubs are very rarely integrated for complex psychological issues that have everything to do with straight male insecurities.  While there may be some gay men at kinky salon, a friend who goes just about every week says she’s only seen a few male gay couples and they usually don’t come back.  Then again, with all the options gay males have and most overtly catering to their needs, a straight club could seem uptight and boring and pretty pointless.

Gay women seem less well served by the community and the effectively zero pressure fun party atmosphere seems like it would be pretty comfortable; still single females are rare and female couples rarer still.  Like every US club, there seems to be nearly zero spontaneous interaction between people who don’t know each other already, though as always, a receptive female can have as many males or couples as she’s interested in.

Natacha Merritt’s Digital Diaries is a classic work of erotic photography.  It is naive, informal, explicit, and erotic.  The pictures seem un-posed, more snapshots than model shoots.  The subjects are unselfconscious and seem genuinely aroused.  The result is a work of unusual eroticism and immediacy.

Traumland, Vienna

We visited on a Saturday night, a couples-only night every week. There are other nights where the club caters to different interests, including a Thursday night regularly scheduled gang bang with professional bangees.

Traumland is probably the nicest, best appointed sex club we’ve visited thus far. The first visit runs about € 104 including memebership. After that it is € 69 per couple. This includes a fairly decent buffet style dinner in a dining room, free drinks of brand-name alcohols from a well-stocked bar, and access to the entire club.

The club has approximately three floors (on four or so levels). One enters from the street into a small monitored room, and then one is admitted into a dressing room. They do not allow street clothes in the club. You get a locker key and a towel on entry. People are generally wearing something around the club, if only a towel, but it is not obligatory. There are no areas where nudity or sex are prohibited, but on the bar would probably be inappropriate.

One enters from the dressing room to the bar, which is nicely appointed and comfortable and has a lounge-style attached room where people seem to rest and engage in light play. Down a half flight of stairs there are toilets and another dressing area, sex segregated locker rooms, a sauna and steam room (both were cold when we visited).

The basement is, as our very cute psych major guide explained “middle aged” theme, including basic BD/SM play equipment such as whips, paddles and the like (though the hand implements were padlocked and we never did find out if there was a protocol for their use). There zone includes a huge castle-grade dining table with tie down points, a spinning rack, a fixed rack, and various padded and unpadded zones. Nobody was using it when we visited.

Upstairs is the play area. It is a warren of different rooms with different themes and lighting levels. Several are specifically configured for show/voyeur arrangements, all are quite nice. One includes a gyno-style chair for easy access, others have swings or various pads and supports or unusual lighting. One is almost completely dark.

The crowd is what one would imagine euro-swingers to be – a variety of 30-50 year old couples, some very attractive, some not so much. People are friendly and participative. Most speak some English, but German fluency would be a plus.