sex Archives — Page 89 of 111 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The circle game

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August 20, 2008

Say "Kumbaya," somebody. Despite vast differences in sound, intent, and commercial appeal, a thin yet unseverable bloodline connects the big, bold, Brill Building, pop-factory-perfect songcraft of Carole King, last heard coursing off the AM radio, and the stripped-raw, close-to-bare-bones rasp and moan of Tiny Vipers’ Jesy Fortino, delivered to a small clutch of listeners at the Elbo Room last year. Eyes squeezed shut, plucking her acoustic guitar beside just one other guitarist, Ben Cissner, she was a small dark star, poured fully concentrated into the sparse minor key chords of "Swastika," and, as gutsy as the loudest reaches of the underground, she sang as if her life depended on it: "If I would let you into my heart / Would you thank the Lord / Would you tear it apart?"

Superficially, so far away — doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? — from King’s monumental oeuvre, which seems almost incidental amid the gushy, gossipy tidbits propelling Sheila Weller’s bio, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation (Atria), concerning King’s beleaguered marriage to her first husband and songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin, with whom she wrote such songs as "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," among many other classic pop numbers, even after he fathered a child with one of the pair’s vocalists. Likewise Weller makes much of Mitchell’s out-of-wedlock daughter and penchant for using her songs to seduce paramours like Leonard Cohen, Graham Nash, and James Taylor — the last often credited with spurring the singer-songwriter movement and acting as a unifying thread between Mitchell, King, and Simon — and Simon’s uninhibited, proto-pro-sex feminist "eroticism"; read: sex in a cab was "no problem." Yet as remote as the early-’70s phenomenon of the singer-songwriter seems, the form appears to have returned: could this be the revival of core values of craft and voice, the intimacy and immediacy of a writer on a single instrument, during a tumultuous time for the music industry, post-Auto-Tuned disasters and Ashlee Simpson lip-synch blowouts — the adult flip-side to the bubblegum remnants of High School Musical, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers?

The initial energy of so many turn-of-the-millennium garage rock bands may have petered and innumerable hip-hop artists may have turned toward dully materialistic navel-gazing, so hail the return of the soft-spoken singer-songwriter who can break down a tunes to its bare, unadorned components. The stars are aligned; the signs, apparent: from Outside Lands headliner Jack Johnson landing at the top of the Billboard 200 chart with his latest album, Sleeping Through the Static (Brushfire/Universal), earlier this year, to ex–Castro Theatre ticket-taker, proudly folkie Devendra Banhart being adopted by Parisian couturiers and glitterati, from the MySpace-inspired success of Colbie Caillat and Kate Nash to the iTunes-buttressed popularity of Eureka native Sara Bareilles — hell, not to mention everyone and their dog documenting their solo acoustic version of "Bubbly" and posting the video on YouTube. This quiet flurry of activity undoubtedly whetted someone’s appetite for all things unplugged.

Those with eyes trained on pop cycles might point to the rise of antiwar sentiments throughout the country, coupling it with the renewed attention given to the softer, sincere sounds of singer-songwriters — a worthy theory, though apart from the many unfortunate CD-Rs of anti-Bush agit-pop that crossed my desk during the last two presidential elections, the generally apolitical vibe of the music from this crop of singer-songwriters seems to belie that notion: championing green issues are as didactic as these writers get. Instead this current wave of earnest songsmiths has more to do with both a reaction against the insincere, canned, possibly un-nutritious mainstream boy-band and Britney-centric breed of pop from the recent past — the likes of which could only be enjoyed with a semi-size dose of irony — and a response to an easy access of technology, which allows just about anyone and their mutt to make their own music at home, bypassing Brill Building–style hit-factories.

This time, the slew of sensitive men — solo fliers ranging from Iron and Wine, Conor Oberst, and Adam Green to Josh Ritter, Jonathan Rice, and Ray LaMontagne — sequestered behind acoustic guitars or pianos, working freak-folk, soft-rock, commercial pop, and Grey’s Anatomy–friendly veins, are being almost eclipsed by the multitude of womanly singer-songwriters. Natural women all, including Feist, Kimya Dawson, JayMay, Brandi Shearer, Yael Naim, and Ingrid Michaelson, among others. As much as King, Mitchell, and Simon are considered mothers of these singer-songwriters — along with predecessors like Woodside resident Joan Baez and ’60s folk hit mistress Judy Collins and successors like the many estrogen-laden ladies of the ’90s Lilith Fair outings — so too are indie sisters Liz Phair, Sarah Dougher, and Cat Power, a holy trinity to homemade, once-bedroom-bound DIY divas who make their own clothes, hope to carve out their own path, and find their own vox.

Of course, one can’t discount the release of resurrections and reissues of neglected and forgotten femme singer-songwriters such as Vashti Bunyan and Ruthann Friedmann and late greats Judee Sill and Karen Dalton, whose latest private recordings were unearthed via Green Rocky Road (Delmore) in June. And Mitchell’s unique guitar tunings, experimental mindset, and maidenlike purity of sound has made her one of the most oft-referenced artists of the last few years, thanks to such explicit shout-outs as Wayfaring Strangers’ Ladies from the Canyon (Numero, 2006). But no less influential is Phair, whose classic Exile in Guyville (Matador) got the royal reissue treatment this summer: her pro-sex, third-wave feminist, Midwestern rejoinder to riot grrrl writ large, with a gatefold sleeve and a slip of naughty nipple peeking through. At the same time, Dougher — cover girl in Johnny Ray Huston’s take on the last, more-riot grrrl-centered singer-songwriter movement in the Guardian about a decade ago — took a more polemical tack on the Northwest coast with her K Records releases, while working tangibly for greater female rock visibility by organizing the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls and teaching courses on the history of women in rock at Portland State University.

But Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, appears set to be the Joni Mitchell of this generation — even as Marshall has largely turned her back on originals with her latest Jukebox (Matador). The Seattle-based Fortino’s almost gothic melodrama seems to draw more than a little inspiration from Marshall’s What Would the Community Think (Matador, 1996), while San Francisco transplant Thao Nguyen of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down borrows Marshall’s clarion-call, half-sung, half-spoken phrasing for her far more fancy-free, loose-limbed, and shambling songs. Nguyen sounds positively, happily tipsy on the old-timey bounce, finger clicks, and sandpapery soft-shoe shuffle on We Brave Bee Stings and All (Kill Rock Stars).

Yet Marshall’s most indebted sib might be Emily Jane White, 27, whose Dark Undercoat (Double Negative) evokes the former’s haunted and haunting, hollowed-out sensuality as well as her songwriting savvy and way with a hook. "Everybody’s got a little hole in the middle / Everybody does a little dance with the devil," the Oakland singer-songwriter croons on her "Hole in the Middle," sliding around the curves of this verb or the other and letting her voice drift off into the meaningful silences between the words.

The surprise is that this intensely eerie, closely miked singer-songwriter also turns out to be one of the more deliberately political-minded. Of "Hole," she said recently while breaking from the recording her second album with Greg Ashley, "I originally wrote that in response to the war in Iraq when that first started. Yeah, it’s about American imperialism."

And perhaps that’s the key to why the music by this former member of an all-girl band, the Diamond Star Halos — much like those seemingly apolitical numbers by other singer-songwriters — has increasingly relevance today: White and other crooners are foregrounding the everyday loves as well as the overseas skirmishes in a way that transcends the desensitizing glut and so-called objectivity of news headlines, sound-bites, and bloggable blurbs — and acutely personalizes it all. Call it the resensitizing of pop.

"I’ve always believed that your personal experience is political," says White, echoing the first wave feminist tenets, "and everyone has a story to tell, about how they’ve lived their lives and what has happened to them, and the experiences they’ve gone through. Not that what I think I do is revolutionary or anything, but one positive thing about being a singer-songwriter is people have contacted me and said they’ve felt a strong sense of encouragement or inspiration, so I think putting myself out there says something."

Emily Jane White plays Aug. 22, 8 p.m., $8, at the Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. www.uptownnightclub.com

Burning woman

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August 19, 2008

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

It’s late summer again, when the hipper urban enclaves empty out and suddenly there’s parking because all the cool people have gone to Burning Man or some other anarcho-artsy fire-dancing/fairy-wings festival. Burning Man in particular, plunked down as it is on a lake bed as hot as Venus and as barren as the moon, can take a toll on participants’ health and well-being. According to my friends at the Women’s Community Clinic (www.womenscommunityclinic.org) nothing takes more of a beating out there than the private parts (less private than usual due to rampant nudity and a fair amount of random partnering) of female festival-goers.

So what do women need to know to avoid having to rush their rashes straight to the clinic as soon as they’ve unloaded the truck and showered off the playa dust? Staffers there asked me to write a list of common sense self-protection maneuvers for a situation in which sense is less valued than sensation and spontaneity.

(1) This goes for everyone: drink an insane amount of water. I actually recommend bringing double the usual ration of a gallon a day — it’s not like you can easily run out for more in a commerce-free zone like Black Rock City. You want to "piss clear" (an infelicitous phrase that I have nevertheless often found useful since first encountering it at Burning Man). Your health depends on it. Your urinary tract, in particular, will thank you.

(2) Keep clean. This is, of course, one of the many uses to which any extra water can be put, but you’ll also need unscented baby wipes with no greasy or sticky additives. You don’t want to attract every mote of dust (and oh my, is there a lot of dust) and convince it to cling to your damp spots. Out in the desert, I wash my face with witch hazel pads and my other parts with massive numbers of store-brand unscented "natural" baby wipes. Don’t get these mixed up.

(3) Bring a safer sex kit. Consider all casual pickup sex unsafe unless somehow proven otherwise — you don’t want to be having long, intense negotiations with strangers while you’re out of your head on whatever you’re doing out there to get out of your head. Use condoms and, while you’re doubling your recommended water ration, do the same with the lube. The fierce desert wind wicks moisture like you would not believe, and even nice known-quantity sex with your steady partner can chafe. Lube up. You might want to consider using gloves for anything really intimate, too, and just generally being more careful than usual about introducing anybody’s (blank) into your (blank). After a few days on the playa, you’re likely to be abraded, chapped, windburned, sunburned, scraped, scratched, and undefended in a way that’s unfamiliar to the city dweller. It’s much easier to pick up somebody else’s creepy-crawlies when your skin isn’t in top shape, and trust me, it won’t be. Use the condoms and other barriers when reasonable. Piss clear when you’re done and don’t forget the wipes. Bring alcohol gel and clean your hands regularly, even if you haven’t been up to anything. Don’t get crazy and clean things that oughtn’t to be cleaned with alcohol, though.

Most of all, don’t be an idiot. I can’t stress this enough, and the Community Clinic, while staffed by women too nice to call you an idiot, doesn’t want you to be one either. If you’re going to take substances specifically designed to bring out the idiot in you, do so under the safest circumstances you can manage. Party with your friends, make a meeting place, follow a buddy system, and make some rules for yourself. If you’re going to take E or anything else likely to act as an empathogen (or "entactogen") — that is, a drug that makes you think you like people who may not, in truth, be worthy of your affection — try to do it in the presence of people who’ve got your back, and not because they want to climb up on it and hump you like a dog.

There are organizations dedicated to disseminating information on safer drug-taking. I do the sex part, and I habitually worry about young people having sex with people they don’t like, or, especially, with people who don’t like them. If you’re going to do it anyway, use a condom. Not only do you not have these people’s e-mail addresses, you may not even like them, remember? You’re not going to want to track them down later to ask about that funny-looking pimple.

And finally, if you’re female and have sex with men or might have sex with men after enough empathogens, bring Plan B emergency contraception with you. This may seem extreme, but it’s not like you have to use it. Condoms can break or be forgotten. Midnight’s "oh, what the hell" can easily turn to "What the hell did I do?" in the harsh (in Burning Man’s case, extremely harsh) light of day.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Editor’s Notes

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August 19, 2008

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Chronicle has come up with a new name for the broad spectrum of political leaders and activists who make up the San Francisco left. We’re now "ultra-liberals."

The term first appeared in Heather Knight’s Aug. 15 article on the changes in the local Democratic County Central Committee. Her lead sentence was almost breathtaking in its drama: The party, she wrote, "has veered dramatically to the left, telling voters that on Nov. 4 they should elect a raft of ultra-liberal supervisorial candidates, decriminalize prostitution, boot JROTC from public schools, embrace public power, and reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s special court in the Tenderloin."

There’s no question that the progressives made significant advances in winning control of the DCCC in June. And I think it’s entirely fair — and a good thing — that the party has veered to the left. It’s "dramatic," though, only because for so many years the Democratic Party in one of the world’s most liberal cities wasn’t particularly liberal at all: it was controlled by political machines and friendly to real estate developers and big business.

It shouldn’t really surprise anyone that San Francisco Democrats support public power and decriminalizing sex work and oppose military recruiting in the public schools. Those are pretty basic San Francisco values. What’s surprising is that it took a wholesale organizing effort and a huge battle to get the party to where it is today.

But I still cringe at the term "ultra-liberal."

David Campos, a Police Commission member (and generally a fairly even-minded guy) who is running for supervisor in District 9, called me this weekend to tell me he was laughing about the new tag: "It’s a badge of pride," he said. And of course, on one level, I agree with him.

But there’s something more to the story here. The way the Chron uses it, "ultra-liberal" is supposed to be a derogatory term, just a bit short of "radical" (or in another era, "commie." It suggests candidates who are out of touch with the mainstream, who don’t represent the majority, who can’t entirely be trusted.

I asked Knight what she meant by that term, and she had no comment. But here’s what I think is happening: Newsom’s political operatives are mad that the progressives have seized control of the term "progressive" — which is, in fact, an accurate and historically valuable term. They’d like to call Newsom a progressive mayor — which is inaccurate and historically invalid. But since they can’t get away with that, they’ve pushed the Chron to use another term for people like Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, and the best the editors could come up with is "ultra-liberal."

Weak.

Speaking of progressive issues: the move to reinstate JROTC in the public schools is really a wedge campaign that will be funded by downtown interests and used against progressives like Eric Mar, who is running in a more moderate district. The issue itself is a no-brainer. Do we want military recruitment programs in the public schools? The progressive candidates for school board need to stand up on this one and make it clear that they aren’t going to back down — JROTC has to go.

Local Artist of the Week: Aurie Ramirez

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August 18, 2008

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LOCAL ARTIST Aurie Ramirez
TITLE Untitled
STORY Aurie Ramirez’ sophisticated, delicately rendered compositions create an ever-expanding fantasy world where fragments of 18th-century dandyism, neo-Victorian decorum, psychedelia, Venetian masquerade, glam-rock sex, and punk fetishism are repeated and transformed. Aurie’s work has been inspired by her interest in The Addams Family and KISS.
BIO Born in 1962 in the Philippines, Aurie Ramirez has exhibited her work at White Columns in New York, Jack Hanley Gallery in Los Angeles, ABCD in Paris, and Collection l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.
SHOW “Estacion Odesia,” through Aug. 30. By appointment. Queen’s Nails Annex, 3191 Mission, SF. (415) 202-3199. www.queensnailsannex.com
WEB www.creativegrowth.org

Stretch your hole and your mind will follow: Meet Stephen Boyer

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August 18, 2008

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Stephen Boyer is an up-and-cumming writer/blogger/porn star. To hear about his sexcapades, stop into his next reading at Dog Eared Books on August 21st. And if want to read his blog or see him take a foot up the ass, just follow the links below.

SFBG: The first time I ever met you was at a party in Oakland. You came out of nowhere, grabbed my girlfriend and I by the shoulders and said, “Oh my god you guys, I just got fucked behind the bar!” Is that how you normally introduce yourself to people?

Stephen Boyer: Ha! Actually, I think we met in Dolores Park. I remember because you and all your friends were trying to convince a pregnant girl to eat a pot brownie. I don’t really remember the Oakland party though, and I could have my dates jumbled. That’s pretty like me. But yeah, I am usually pretty up front with what’s happening in my life. It helps me feel better… that and writing.

SFBG: So what do you usually write about?

Boyer: The major topics I’m taking on right now are shit, piss, and lots of sex. I’m also doing my part to help define a fag/male movement in response to all the feminist bullshit I was forced to sit through in college. You know, because white men are sooooo privileged (sarcasm!).

SFBG: Is it always sex stuff, then?

Boyer: A lot of it is. But not everything. The sex part comes from being young and horny in a country with lots of inhibitions and secrets. Plus, sex sells.

SFBG: What compels you to share that part of yourself with others?

Boyer: Well, I like stretching my brain as well as my asshole and I want to help others do the same. Basically, I really enjoy learning about other peoples’ fetishes and helping them enact their desires. I have a shit load of desire and I’ve spent the better part of the past five years working through it to learn about what turns me on. I’ve realized that learning about other peoples desires and stretching my preconceived notions about what is and isn’t sexy is my biggest turn on. Well, that and orgies. And to return to the question, I want to make money.

SFBG: What’s the craziest, dirtiest thing you’ve ever done?

G-List: 6 laundromats that don’t suck

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August 13, 2008

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The G-List is a weekly list of things to do and places to go by Justin Juul

As a Los Angeles transplant, I enjoy talking shit on my old hometown even more than most San Franciscans. But there are a few perks to living in the city of douchebags that a man doesn’t notice until he’s moved on. For starters, the weather is better there. No getting around that. But there are other reasons I occasionally consider going back to hell and one of them is so constantly irritating I could die. Talkin’ bout laundry ya’ll.

Every apartment I had in LA came with a laundry room. But not here. Of the five crappy apartments I’ve had in SF, only two of them have had laundry facilities. The building I live in now is the worst. Not only does it lack an onsite washroom, but the nearest Laundromat is almost a mile away. Which doesn’t really matter because I wouldn’t want to go there even if it was right next door. The thing about doing your laundry at Laundromats is that it takes almost an entire day. You have to stuff your shit in bags, truck the whole pile down the street, and then sit and twiddle your thumbs until it’s done. Doing laundry is pretty much the most boring shit ever –a total waste of time. Unless, of course, you know where to go.

All of the Laundromats on this list have special features you won’t find at regular places. They make washing fun.

Brainwash
Drink beer, eat food, and wash the stains from your soiled sheets with stand up comedians, SoMa punks, and a bunch of crazy swingers from a nearby Sex Cult. Brainwash is the best show in town because it’s the only Laundromat that serves alcohol. Plus, the music is usually pretty rad and the wi-fi is free.
1122 Folsom, SF

Pennies from heaven

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August 13, 2008

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Growing up gay in a military family of evangelical Christians in the Reagan-era South sounds like a tight squeeze for anyone. But as Kirk Read affirms, however claustrophobic one’s environment, there’s always room for a good fantasy. Besides, Read likes tight squeezes. His active dream life (which includes having a very large man lie on top of him and expel all the air from his lungs) percolated early with the image of his young gay Christian self leaving home for school each morning past an angry throng of fellow evangelicals in protest formation, waving signs expressing God’s vehement opposition to little backpack-wearing Kirk Read, holding up the obligatory jars of fetuses, shaking fists, and lobbing Bibles. Well, Read is here to testify that dreams can come true.

The story of that, um, miraculous moment (which took place recently as Read toured his home state of Virginia with the Sex Workers’ Art Show) makes up just one part of the Bay Area writer-performer’s lively, gleefully offbeat, and largely autobiographical concatenation of multimedia performance pieces, This Is the Thing, now being reprised at Shotwell Studios after its sold-out Queer Arts Festival debut at the Garage in June. But it comes, along with a raucous striptease, as the apt climax of an evening driven by a kind of fervor and sensibility clearly (if inadvertently) inspired by Read’s "hardcore" Southern Christian upbringing (recounted in detail in his 2001 memoir, How I Learned to Snap [Hill Street Press]).

Thus the evening begins with a prayer. Stepping onto the stage looking like a young Osmond-esque televangelist in a white polyester suit and gold sequin tee, Read (ably accompanied through many a mood by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, and backed by the smooth, evocative video collage work of Liz Singer) leads those assembled in a celebration of all those things disappearing — the cassette mixtape, the bottle rocket, the sonnet — before segueing into a paean to the penny and a loose, carefree set of associations that promptly lead to Abe Lincoln as well-hung gay icon. Pennies, those "shiny whores," are a sort of leitmotif here, though I can’t exactly say I understood why. Still, in terms of theme and execution, Read’s deceptively laid-back intensity, wit, and bold and personable self-exposure tend to make up for the evening’s slighter or more muddled aspects.

At its best moments This Is the Thing melds carefully honed physical and thematic juxtapositions with Read’s loose and natural but wholly committed performance style. The effects are often simultaneously hilarious, haunting, and gently moving. In a segment titled "The Conductor," Read recounts his first encounter with his very favorite sex client, a 450-pound man with a penchant for the classics, acting out the surprisingly romantic business affair with the aid of a large Winnie the Pooh–headed bear of a mannequin — a luxurious pileup of stuffed animal pelts constructed by Doug Hansen. In another pas de deux, a quietly strange and graceful piece called "Computer Face," Read is paired with a man-size figure set on wheels, wrapped in white bandages with clumps of wires for hands, and a glowing, hollowed-out Apple computer monitor for a head. As a looped recording plays a speech by Harvey Milk, Read pulls a series of objects from the figure’s head and dances with it in tight circles across the stage. In "The Nu Handbell Choir," the show reaches a kind of peak of starkness and delicacy as Read, calmly micturating into a set of crystal goblets, describes his furtive childhood adoration for his father — a veteran of three wars — and his Army brass buddies as they assembled in his parents’ living room to drink, talk, and console one another.

Other vignettes are less complex but still compelling in their energy and frank humor. "Hotel Hooker Haiku" is a sassy phenomenology of an Atlanta prostitute’s working world, set to banjo accompaniment and jovial footage of some dingy, dreary motel grounds. And the more traditionally outrageous if still amusing "Missing Mike Brady" posits Florence Henderson as a clothesline post airing her sex life on a well-worn marriage sheet. The Bradys may seem a little far afield here, but then, like the best of preachers, Read is nothing if not ecumenical.

THIS IS THE THING

Thurs/14–Sat/16, 8 p.m. (also Sat, 10 p.m.), $12–$20

Shotwell Studios

3252 Shotwell, SF

1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/38121

Upsie

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August 12, 2008

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Now that I’m postmenopausal, I’m worried about how I can get some orthopedic support in our bedroom to make "amore" easier. My arms and back are injured from overuse and wear and tear. I really think about the garage door-opener rig in the movie 9 to 5. Is there something like that hoist that is available for home use? I think this would work great. A friend suggests a sky-chair. What can we do? Grab bars are out since there isn’t a door nearby. Thanks for any help you can offer. I’m not dead yet.

Love,

Ouchy

Dear Ouchy:

Oh, dear. I hear you about the overuse and wear and tear — at some level I simply don’t believe we were meant to last this long, any more than my pampered, heavily medicated house cat was "meant" to still be alive and scratching at 21. Still, merely making it past menopause ought not to doom you to a life of pain and infirmity. Promise me you have seen some doctors and physical therapists and a teacher of some school of gentle and not-too-ridiculous yoga, and I will tell you what I know about assistive devices, which is plenty. Do we have a deal?

Starting on the lower-cost, lower-tech, and lower-to-the-ground options, I have often mentioned "sex pillows" and I will mention them again. You can buy fancy ramps and humpty-things from a company such as Liberator Adventure Gear, whose unintentionally hilarious Web site features apparent Chippendales rejects and their female counterparts posing awkwardly on big foam hummocks that would not look out of place in an ’80s loft-space complete with black leather coffee tables and Nagel prints on the wall. If you can’t deal with that level of retro, you can get foam ramps and donuts and the like from a medical supply company. They won’t come in colors (especially not "premium" colors), but you’re just going to throw a towel over them anyway.

Next we have stand-alone swings and slings. These do not operate on garage-door frequencies, but I’m not sure how good an idea mechanization is anyway. I keep imagining bits and parts getting snagged and hoisted against their will. Plus, while your neighbor may not hit the garage door opener and cause your … something … to go up, I did find a story about an English guy with a Turkish-made erectile implant that responded enthusiastically to a neighbor’s remote, and I’m not Snopesing it. Call me Fox Mulder: I Want to Believe.

There are dozens of swinglike devices made specifically for your purpose (well, not for the creaky and painful of joint, but for suspending a receptive partner in the air, hopefully above the insertive one). You could check out the jauntily-titled justaswinging.com; it carries a full range of swings. These devices are ugly (and the site itself, in sharp contrast to Liberator Adventure Whatsit, looks like the photographer set up shop in the bathroom of a San Fernando Valley furnished apartment and covered whatever he didn’t want in the shot with used bedsheets), but what do you want for $425? That will get you the Effortless model, which not only has a packable, hideable frame for vacations and visits from relatives, it even has a remote for raising, lowering, and possibly swiveling. That oughta solve your garage-door itch right there.

For considerably more money and even less aesthetic appeal, but with a degree of sturdiness and whoops!-lessness I cannot guarantee for a purpose-made sex swing, there are those devices made for lifting a disabled or infirm person in and out of bed. You don’t need any sort of special license to order one of these — or most medical equipment, really (didn’t Tom Cruise buy Katie her own ultrasound machine?). All you need is a charge card. A good charge card, though, because they’re not cheap. You’d need to order something like a "Sani-sling," too, if you think the problem through, and that will set you back another $400 or $500.

Forget that. You’re going to do better in the sex world than in the medical world. The sites may be sleazy and the devices may not be something you’d want either your parents or your kids to see, but the medical versions would require just as much explanation (since you’re not actually disabled, just a little rickety), be twice as ugly, and cost twice as much. I am all for getting the best-designed, toughest gear you can afford (our kids are outfitted as much or more by REI than they are by Babies "R" Us), but there’s such a thing as overkill. And anyway, buying medical supplies is kind of depressing unless you’re, you know, into that. Stick with the swings and slings. They’re the right tools for the job, although anything’s better than hooking yourself up to the garage door. Aren’t you glad you asked?

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

The flak over Newsom’s hack

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August 7, 2008

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The word that Gavin Newsom is taking to campaign consultant Garry South is suddenly big talk on the blogs.

It started that way a growing number of political stories are starting these days, with an enterprising blogger catching someone in what was supposed to be a private meeting. In this case, Zuma Dogg of Los Angeles spied Gavin Newsom at a Starbucks (with his SUV parked in a fire lane) chatting with the prominent (and notorious) South.

Now Newsom is getting denounced on Calitics and is facing an (admittedly insider) threat that some progressives may abandon him as he moves to the political center.

A couple of thoughts on this.

1. Garry South isn’t running Newsom’s campaign. That’s still the job of Eric Jaye. In fact, Jaye tells me that South hasn’t been hired yet: “We’re taling to him,” Jaye said. “We’re putting together a team. But nobody’s been hired yet.” Not saying that Jaye is going to advise against a move to the center or anything, but if South does come on, it will be as a senior advisor.

2. I get the problems with Garry South, and I’m not defending him here, but anyone who thinks Newsom will run for governor as a San Francisco progressive hasn’t been paying attention to the mayor’s history and career. He ran for mayor the first time as a pro-business moderate, and that’s how he’ll run for governor. He won’t deny promoting same-sex marriage (which, frankly, won’t be a big issue in the Democratic primary anyway and can only help him) and will try to be an environmentalist (isn’t everyone these days?), but he won’t be talking about raising taxes on the rich. Isn’t going to happen.

3. What this really means is that Newsom’s “exploratory” campaign is getting a little less exploratory and a little more serious. No doubt Jaye has been doing polls to see if Newsom’s record would fly in a statewide race, and no doubt he’s found that his man can be sold to the voters will the proper packaging. And now Team Newsom is getting into gear. Even Jaye admitted that “the exploratory campaign is stepping up its efforts.”

So look for Newsom to pay even less attention to City Hall and even more to vote-rich Southern California in the next few months.

Photo Issue Q&A: Jessica Rosen

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August 6, 2008

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The cover image of this week’s Photo Issue comes from Jessica Rosen. While it reflects Rosen’s recent shift toward collage — which she also is using to create one-of-a-kind handbags and books — it only represents one facet of her work to date. Rosen’s website presents sections devoted to some of her earlier projects. Her vivid portraiture is defined by a striking use of color and shadow, and by a cooperative, perhaps even collaborative, bond with her subjects. I asked her about all of these things recently via email.

From Jessica Rosen’s series “The Beach,” at www.jessicarosen.com

SFBG: Brazil is important to your photography to date. How did this come to be?
Jessica Rosen: To some degree, the location of my images is incidental. For about three years I was living between New York City and Rio de Janeiro. New York became my day job and Rio became my studio. Working in Brazil was simply a process that functioned really well for me.
Many of my photographs are rooted in a very specifically Brazilian setting, but I feel like I was exploring the same ideas that I had always been interested in. I was thinking a lot about cultural constructs of gender and sexuality and how those play out in the formation of subjective identity. I was also really interested in sex workers because I feel that this work becomes a very literal performance of sexual and gender stereotypes. And more importantly, the specificities of this performance are a reflection of more general cultural systems.
It’s not that those ideas could be exemplified only using Brazilian subjects. I mean, I could have been working with American sex workers and created different images that would have addressed the same ideas. In fact I have done projects of this nature in New York City. But Brazil was a great place to explore my interests.

Don’t be a hatah

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August 6, 2008

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I hate my contraceptive! Hate hate hate hatedy hate! I’m on the mini-pill because the other ones made me sick, and this one is giving me headaches, zits, bloating, crying jags … you name it. Planned Parenthood says the Mirena IUD has fewer side effects, but isn’t that just the same hormone? So I’ll be just as sick, but out more money? I think I’d just as soon get my tubes tied. Do you have any better suggestions or is it all the same bullshit?

Love,

I Hate Everything

Dear Thing:

I get it! You’re miserable. It’s bound to happen sometimes when the system you’re messing with is inextricably bound up with metabolism, mood, libido, and even whether you’re going to have zits or not. Perhaps hormonal birth control is not for you?

Usual caveats (I’m not a doctor, etc.), but I have two suggestions for you — beyond the Mirena, which is greatly beloved by most of its many users and really does have fewer side effects, mostly just break-through bleeding. The subject of permanent birth control, especially for women, always raises these interesting issues of self-determination and even self-knowledge. At the risk of sounding either paternalistic in the old-time doctory mode or, I guess, maternalistic (as a smugly parental parent addressing the childless), people change their minds. People change their lives, or their lives are changed for them, and there you go. If you are absolutely sure this could not possibly ever apply to you, I think this new thing, Essure, is a great option. It’s a pair of tiny coils inserted in a quickie outpatient procedure. The company claims that it’s covered by most insurance plans, and I believe it’s covered by Medicaid in 46 states. If you can find a way to get it, I’d say it has you written all over it (albeit in very small writing).

My second suggestion is hormonal, but bear with me. Although the arsenal of useful hormones is limited, making it appear at first glance as though there’s no real difference between this method and that, delivery style matters. Pills must survive a trip through your inhospitable digestive system before getting filtered and altered, often in unfortunate ways, by your liver, while topical methods follow a less torturous path and can be administered in much lower doses. Many women who can’t tolerate pills love the NuvaRing so much they’d marry it if they weren’t already seeing somebody. It’s very low dose, easy to use, and easy to quit if you don’t like it (remove offending ring, throw away). You should be able to get it for cheap at a clinic. If you hate it, feel free to write back and bitch me out, but seriously, you may be feeling so much better you won’t want to.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

At a recent routine checkup, my doctor asked what methods of contraception I’m currently using, and she strongly advised me to use something to fortify my old mainstay of a condom. Her suggestion, spermicide, sounded plenty reasonable. She’s been my doctor for most of my life and always trustworthy, so I felt good about going the extra mile to protect myself when I used spermicidal film the next time I had sex.

Next thing I know, I’m in the throes of a particularly grim yeast infection, which I’m not prone to, so I suspected the spermicide. Sure enough, a bit of Web-poking turned up a long-established link between nonoxynol-9 and yeast and bladder infections. Maybe it wouldn’t happen every time I used the stuff, but the connection is there, and this infection has been miserable enough that I assure you I’ll be avoiding nonoxynol-9 like the plague.

So what’s a girl to do? I know you’ve rolled your eyes in the past at overzealous combinations of birth control, but it does seem like with the potential for error in condom usage and the possibility of mishaps or undetected flaws, a not-so-invasive backup is a great idea — as long as it doesn’t come with the side effect of excruciating discomfort.

Love,

Back Me Up Here

Dear Here:

Oh dear. I hope she’s your primary care doc. I’d expect a gyno to know better. Nonoxynol-9 can indeed upset your delicate lady-balance but, even worse, can make you more vulnerable to STDs. I’d avoid it like — well, if not the plague, at least a bad yeast infection. And yes, I’ve rolled my eyes at some overcautious method-doublers, but usually for imagining that their brand-new sex lives with their equally recently devirginated childhood sweethearts require multiple methods of STD protection. For you, I’ll forswear the eye-rolling and suggest sticking with the condoms, following the directions, changing them mid-act if you’re going to be more vigorous or persistent than usual, and pre-locating a source for emergency contraception so you’ll have it in the somewhat unlikely but not impossible event of condom breakage. I feel about spermicide the way the first writer felt about the pill: hate hate hate hatedy hate.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

PG&E’s gaywashing

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August 5, 2008

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Nice piece in the BAR by Matthew Bajko about PG&E’s efforts to make nice to the queer community — just as the company faces a huge battle over a Clean Energy Act that could lead to public power.

There’s no question that PG&E needs to do some work buffing its popularity in the LGBT community, particularly after funding a homophobic mailer attacking Assemblymember Mark Leno.

“I think in addition to greenwashing, PG&E is now engaged in gay-washing, given their inappropriate attacks on Assemblyman Mark Leno,” Davis told the Bay Area Reporter last week. “I think there is pretty resounding resentment in the gay community for PG&E’s tactics. It is kind of obvious they are trying now to court favor in a community they offended with their unsavory tactics.”

I think Leno has another good point: PG&E is going to spend maybe $10 million fighting the Clean Energy Act — and is giving all of $250,000 to support same-sex marriage:

“I would think our community might feel we have been significantly shorted by their $250,000 contribution,” said Leno.

We’ll see more of this — PG&E giving money to environmental groups, PG&E giving money to neighborhood groups and nonprofits, PG&E giving money to politicians …. whatever it takes to buy favor for a corrupt utility that can’t even make the basic state goals for renewable generation.

Friends of Chet celebrate his 66th birthday

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August 4, 2008

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By Bruce B. Brugmann (Scroll down for a picture of the Friends of Chet)

Lee Housekeeper, the worthy keeper of the flame for Chet Helms, sent out the word to the Friends of Chet.

“This Saturday (Aug. 2) we would have celebrated Chet’s 66th birthday with him at the Great American Music Hall. Some of you would have shared a meal with him at Lefty O’Doul’s. Alas, Chet’s ashes are stashed at the Columbarium but that won’t stop us from celebrating our brother.”

And so 22 Friends of Chet showed up on a beautiful Saturday afternoon on the top floor of the Columbarium in San Francisco to celebrate the legendary rock impresario and symbol of the Summer of Love who died on June 25, 2005.

It was a a lively little group, who talked and joked as if Chet were with us, wearing flowing white robes and looking like Jesus Christ. That is how I remembered him when he appeared at Guardian parties in the late l960s at the time he was energizing the old Avalon Ballroom and rock music. Then it was Chet Helms and the Family Dog and he was at the top of his game.

Carole Vernier was there, looking as if she were still gathering items for Herb Caen (she was Caen’s last assistant). And there was Boots Houston, who did a benefit to pay off Chet’s debts and promoted the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love in memory of Chet in Golden Gate park); Eugene (Dr. Hip) Schoenfeld and his wife Lonie (Dr. Hip wrote a famous column on sex and drugs for the old Berkeley Barb and the Guardian); Robert Altman, of the famous last name, but a fine photographer in his own name, who arranged the group photo; and Julius Karpen, who managed Janis Joplin, Chet’s find from Texas, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, her group.

Jose Angel Najera, who used to throw free block parties on Mullen Avenue in the l960s/70s with Chet, Janis and their d his rock star friends, did a beat on Chet’s memorial glass. Everybody chimed in with the beat. Jose’s son Eloy Cipriano Najera (aka CIPRE) let out a freestyle rap in honor of Chet.
“Chet was loving and giving and music is what kept him livin.'” (Full rap below.) Then everyone headed to Lefty O’Douls where even more Friends of Chet were gathered to continue the festivities.

Chet, you inspired another jolly good show. B3

Chet Helms celebrationsmall.jpg

Top row standing left to right: Julius Karpen, Sydney Minnerly, Jose Najera II, Jose
Najera, Lee Houskeeper, Bruce Brugmann, Steve Sodokoff, Scott Mize, Boots Houston, Karen Albin, Jon Diamante, Robert Altman

Middle row seated left to right: Tom Soto, Steve Somerstein, Jose Najera, Carol Vernier

Bottom row seated left to right: Eugene Schoenfeld, Lanie Schoenfeld, Judith Davis, Darice Murphy, Jerilyn Brandelius, Ann Pierson

Eloy’s rap on Chet:

“Chet Helms was born in Texas, and hitch hiked with Janis, she always wanted a Mercedes Benz but now we ridin in a Lexus!

“I remember him and my pops, smokin on chops, around the table, and gettin much props! Passin the wine, and enjoyin the time, and Cipriano raps with a rhyme! That was pulled off the grape vine

“He was good friends with my mother, and he was like a brother to my parents, and he was even the manger for Jimmy Hendrix. So we are all here to give respect thats just, due to a great man from the Family Dog, while your gone we are all in the Fog, but I goin to rise a bay HOG!,

“But Chet was loving and giving and music is what kept him livin’! SO we’re all here to give honor and respect to a man that gave the Hippies a reason for wishin for Peace, and love, and to shine bright like the stars above, and I to be free like a dove! One love! Chet Helms!”

Eloy says check out his websites:

myspace.com/Cipre
Ursession.com/Cipre
Ursessoin.com/BERNALBEAT

“Getting in on the Ground Floor and Staying There”

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July 29, 2008

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PREVIEW I read those articles in Vanity Fair blathering on about a woman’s ability to be funny. First, Christopher Hitchens says women can be witty, but since they issue children, ours is a dignified, cerebral kind of humor. Unless we’re fat or gay. Then along comes Alessandra Stanley’s article, which fixates on how all the new funny ladies are smokin’ hot, and if you’re not, you won’t ever get on MTV, or something. Well, long before those stories, I saw Carole and Mitzi, a local female comedy duo who combine a powerful sexual magnetism with down-in-the-dirt, clit-tickling humor. So I find it shocking that the pair — who are hotsy-totsy (especially when naked), kinda gay, and possibly pregnant — still haven’t managed to get their big break on cable — not even local access, really. They are, of course, the alter egos of Beth Lisick and Tara Jepsen, two bizarrely funny bosom buds whose kindred spirit–ship dates back to their days on the 1999 Sister Spit tour, when their imaginations gave birth to the failed child pop stars Miriam and Helen. On her own, Lisick has penned a number of semi-autobiographical novels — among them Everyone into the Pool (William Morrow, 2005) — spent eight years keeping a weekly nightlife column for the Chronicle called "Buzz Town," formed the sketch comedy group White Noise Radio Theatre, actually had a kid … with her husband … and started the popular Porchlight Storytelling series. Meanwhile Jepsen organized the long-running queer spoken word night, K’vetch, and teamed up with Jenny Hoysten of Erase Errata to form the issues-centric rock band, Lesbians. I know, it still hasn’t really quite sunk in how women can be funny, gorgeous, and not on TV. Go figure. And go see the show. (Deborah Giattina)

GETTING IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR AND STAYING THERE Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission, SF. Thurs/31–Sat/2, 8pm. $12–$14. (415) 255-1155, www.centerforsexandculture.org, www.brownpapertickets.com

Aftermeth

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July 29, 2008

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By Andrea Nemerson

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

My husband had been a secret methamphetamine user since the mid-1980s. He had issues with depression and repressed anger, but I had no idea that drugs had so much to do with everything that’s happened in our lives. We’ve always allowed each other a lot of space, so it was easy for him to hide his use and the spending that went with it.

Six months ago he finally got tired of the lies and the fear (random drug testing at work) and started rehab, and I feel I’m starting to get the man I married back. However, his confidence, libido, erections, and our sex life are all gone. He recently confessed that he was high every time we had sex for the past 10 years or so, and now that juice is gone. Blood pressure medication is compounding the problem.

Considering the number of people who never had sex without drugs and are now sober, there is precious little information about sex after sobriety. Most of what I found was along the lines of "You just need to get over the fear." It was all pretty much about having to figure it out for yourself, and nothing mentioned prescription meds. Maybe everyone really does have to find his or her own way back?

Despite some of the drug- and depression-related behaviors my husband has exhibited over the years, he is a wonderful man with many wonderful qualities, and I love him very much. I could live without the sex — my libido isn’t what it used to be either — but it does make me sad to think of leaving this world without ever making love with him again. The fact that it was drug enhanced didn’t make it any less great.

Is there any good information out there about sex after sobriety, especially after uppers? My husband is afraid he burned out his circuits with the drugs. I don’t know what to think. Maybe six months isn’t enough time to expect a transition to "normal" functioning. Going back to drugs is certainly no solution. Is there anything that can help in this situation? Trying to have a sex life without meth and with high BP meds … maybe it’s too much to ask.

Love,

Aftermeth

Dear After:

I could answer this myself — but why bother when My Friend the Therapist, whose practice consists largely of men whose sex lives were first fueled and then derailed by meth and subsequent sobriety, is willing to take it on? I warn you that My Friend is not given to sugar-coating things, but he does know what he’s talking about.

There’s a huge public health effort to convince people that sex without meth is great: "It’s so much more (intense, intimate, meaningful, etc.) without drugs." The truth is that, for many folks, post-meth sex will be less compelling than sex on meth, and that’s just the way it is. Brain chemistry versus ad campaigns: brain chemistry wins. If you start with that, you’ll have better chances of having a satisfying (though possibly never again as mind-blowing) sex life. Modest expectations = better odds of success.

For some people, this improves after the first year or so. It takes about that long for your brain to get back on track making the appropriate endogenous chemicals, and once they’re back on their own internal meds, a lot of folks experience a return of libido. If your partner is only six months sober, don’t expect much yet.

I usually recommend starting really, really slowly. He can try jacking off a little, work up to jacking off together, and eventually do some oral. Go slow, and leave the intercourse until he really, really wants it.

Viagra can be helpful in a reverse kind of way. Viagra itself won’t help with low sexual desire, but absence of libido plus Viagra plus calm environment plus stimulation = hard-on, which often leads to some kind of sexual activity, which then often leads to a return of some level of desire. If a heart condition is a factor, no Viagra without doctor’s permission. Try some alprostadil (a prescription erection aid that doesn’t affect blood pressure) if needed.

Short version: start with gentle, no-expectations stimulation, don’t expect much for the first year, and see how it goes. — Adam Zimbardo, MFT

I would also suggest that your husband talk to his doctor about the meds; it’s possible an adjustment might make a difference. And I do think it’s worth asking for Viagra or something similar. The worst that can happen is the doc says no. I promise the doctor will not recoil with horror, gasping, "Sex with your wife? Why ever would you want me to help you have that?"

I think it’s kind of criminal that people are expected to get and stay sober with so little warning that their entire sex, love, and intimacy pyramid might collapse, crash, and burn in the aftermath, and with so little information on how to rebuild it. Hope this helps.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Editor’s Notes

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July 29, 2008

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s not an easy time to be celebrating. The Bush administration has driven the economy into the toilet. After more than five years, the nation is still fighting a foolish, unnecessary war in Iraq. Unemployment is rising, and so is the cost of living.

But it’s also been a banner year for grassroots democracy. Barack Obama, the antiwar candidate, the upstart, took on and defeated the vaunted Clinton operation, and did it in large part with little pieces. He raised millions from small donors and mobilized activists on the ground in a way we haven’t seen in too many years.

And that energy is alive and well in San Francisco. The city that defied Washington and forced the legalization of same-sex marriage, the city that remains the heart of the antiwar movement, will be leading the way toward a more sustainable energy policy this fall. District supervisorial campaigns are well underway, with the mobilizations and energy coming not from big campaign donors and powerful interests but from ordinary people who live here and care about their community.

That’s the spirit we celebrate in this Best of the Bay issue.

There’s a lot more democracy in our selections this year — more selections and ideas from our readers, more input from our community. Our cover art and the illustrations inside reflect the activist traditions and inspirations of this city.

It’s bleak out there in America, but hope lives in places like San Francisco. And that’s a great reason to be proud of all that is the Best of the Bay.

Ammiano on Newsom’s honeymoon

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July 28, 2008

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Today’s Ammianoliner:

Another bride. Another groom. Another Newsom honeymoon. It wasn’t same sex but what the heck.
He got the password.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Monday, July 28, 2008.) B3

Adventures in eroscillation

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July 22, 2008

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m in my 20s, I’ve had a few partners, I masturbate fairly frequently (since childhood), and I have no hang-ups that I can identify. In fact, I enjoy having sex as often as possible (usually more often than my partners can keep up with). However, I don’t think I can orgasm. I have no problems enjoying sex, and I can feel myself building up to an orgasm, but just at the point where it feels like I may reach the peak and crest over, suddenly everything just ebbs away and fizzles out. What gives?

Love,

Going Nowhere

Dear Going:

You too? I had a bunch of these questions this year, but I don’t think there’s any sort of trendy "no orgasms are the new orgasms" thing going on here. I think the orgasmless female sexual experience is with us always. And due to the cosmic joke part wherein our most sensitive bits ended up outside while most of our partners are driven to lodge themselves inside, I don’t expect this phenomenon to go away anytime soon.

You, though — are you saying you don’t come from masturbation either, even though you diligently practice like a good girl? That is frustrating! And it tells me that despite a professed lack of hang-ups, you are likely just not comfortable — sorry for the dismal cliché but there is no better way to say this — "letting go." It’s truly unlikely that you lack the capacity — that just doesn’t happen much with young, healthy women. What does happen is fear, inhibition, and "spectatoring," or allowing oneself to be distracted from the moment by wondering what one looks like or what one’s partner (even imaginary ones) is thinking of one’s performance, and so on. As I mentioned the last time (see "Going solo," 02/20/2008), one of the best sources for exercises aimed at getting one’s inner critic to STFU is Julia Heiman and Joseph LoPiccolo’s Becoming Orgasmic (Prentice Hall, 2003), although there are tons of similar resources out there.

There are also tools available that simply didn’t exist when pioneering works like Becoming Orgasmic‘s original 1980s version were being written — and by "tools" I don’t mean coping skills and so on, as referenced by therapists and therapy geeks. I mean tools that use batteries or alternating current. Some of the stuff out there now is just mind-blowingly efficient, so much the right tools for the job that they practically dare you not to come. Try something in the way of the Rabbit Pearl or one of its many descendants, any of these things that rotate, undulate, buzz, flicker, dice, puree, and frappé. Then see if you’re still having a problem.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My ex-boyfriend was able to give me multiple orgasms, usually using his hands. I mean real, one-after-the-other, sometimes three or four in 60 seconds. I haven’t been able to replicate this myself and I haven’t found anyone else who has quite the same effect on me. I miss it. Do you have any advice? I’m sure there’s no foolproof way to recreate this experience — step one, step two, presto! — but any tips from you or your readers would be welcome.

Love,

Miss the Multiple

Dear Miss:

Foolproof, no, but quite reliable, certainly. Just because you have not shared the above writer’s frustrations does not mean you can’t share her prescription: high-tech sex toys, the kind with something that goes in and something that stays out and various things that go ’round and ’round.

My favorite sex toy vendor, for no real reason other than that it is local to me and staffed with friendly nerdy chicks who can write a decent sentence and test everything before considering carrying it on the site, is Blowfish.com. And while you don’t have to shop there, you should certainly give its Web site a look. The "luxury toys" section is especially fun — even if you don’t want to spend $119, isn’t "The Cone" fascinating? It’s just a pink silicone, well, cone with a 16-function motor, and I suspect it may exude "come to me" pheromones like the similar-looking pink jelly monsters in erotic science fiction are wont to do. (They then enslave you and breed in you and you die, but that’s another story.) It even has an "orgasm button" (isn’t the whole thing an orgasm button?) for the impatient.

Then there’s the Eroscillator, which I love because it sounds and looks like something a bearded, dispassionate 19th-century physician might have used to solicit nervous paroxysm from hysterical housewives.

It also carries less rarified and less expensive options, of course, all of which are rather remarkable examples of modern and mostly Japanese engineering. And I can pretty well promise there was nothing your boyfriend could do with his hands that these can’t do with their … parts. Admittedly, however, they don’t love you. Is that part of the equation necessary, do you think?

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

America, meet your new gay bachelor

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July 22, 2008

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Yes, the meat is in! But first, let us pause for some sad news. Estelle Getty, beloved Golden Girl, has passed on to that pastel lanai in the sky. (queer tear.)

Yet we move on … to myPartner.com‘s crowning, last week, of America’s Most Eligible Gay Bachelor. It was inevitable, I guess, and my inbox has been absolutely flooded of late with what the more or less cynical among us would regard as desperate capitalization on the whole legal same-sex marriage thing. But I must admit that myPartner is a tad genius. It set itself up before the California Supreme Court ruling as a matchmaking site for gays looking for “long-lasting relationships” — kind of a Bizarro Manhunt, except that Manhunt’s recently evolved into the gay MySpace (it’s no longer crossing the line to know what your bff’s dick looks like, zomg). It all seemed a bit confusing initially, especially since the promotional materials featured hot shirtless guys rolling around in bed and promised the possibility of “making connections” on business trips out of town. Slutty! Hedging their bets! But when that ruling came down, myPartner was perfectly positioned to pimp its romantic fantasy wares, and boy did it jump on that shit with this nationwide Most Eligible Gay Bachelor contest. Good for them.

But enough of that — let’s get to the goods. Here he is ladies and gentlemens, after 35,000 big gay online votes (that’s 350,000 in heterosexual votes!) and a live runoff in San Diego during Pride Week, your new husband on the hoof (with foof) is …. Abel Lima, Mr. Rhode Island, who, oddly perhaps, resides right here in San Francisco!

Just look at that smile! He won $25,000.
Photo by Tara Luz Stevens.

Abel was the winner, out of five finalists, based on high ratings in the category of “mind,” “body,” and “soul.” No word on how he did in the quantum mechanics portion of the contest. Coming in 2020: Most Eligible Gay Widower contest. It’s the Golden Girls all over again!

To scope the other contestants — rather handsome I must say, although I’m still into Polk Street hustlers badly in need of dentistry — click here.

Ta-ta and smack-smack, Trannyshack

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July 19, 2008

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As many if not all know by now, Trannyshack, revered weekly trash-drag temple of glittery gore from the planet Thrift Town, is ending after 12 years of tranny antics (trantics?). Head honchette Heklina revealed to me the exact reasons why in a candid interview back in early February — and I didn’t even have to score her any hot sex with quadriplegic Desert Storm veterans in return! She’s magnanimous. I’m scoopy. We traded memories.

Right now, Trannyshack’s counting down to its close with a series of four command performance nights featuring fave messy queens from the present and past. That will be followed by a ginormous, absolutely ginormous, Trannyshack Kiss-Off Party at the Regency Center on August 23. This shindig will double as this year’s famed Trannyshack Pageant as well, and will encompass appearances by Lady Bunny, Justin Bond, Lady Miss Kier, Ana Matronic, and more. I smell glorious disas-tears.

Let’s leave this off with the incredible Glamamore’s (NSFW maybe!) performance of Bjork’s “Pagan Poetry.”

Self-help books

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July 16, 2008

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ISBN REAL In a recent, much-discussed Washington Post op-ed, Twelve publisher Jonathan Karp said, "There are thousands of independent publishers and even more self-publishers. These players will soon have the same access to readers as major publishers do, once digital distribution and print-on-demand technology enter the mainstream. When that happens, [major] publishers will lose their greatest competitive advantage: the ability to distribute books widely and effectively."

The "widely" Karp refers to is an advantage that major publishers lost a long time ago. A physical copy of the latest Robert Ludlum novel is far less accessible to the global community than Joe Shmuck’s online prose poem about his first drug experience. It’s the "effectively" that’s taking its sweet-ass time to materialize. After all, thanks to the ease of e-distribution, the Internet has already become a cosmic slush pile.

Karp foresees a time when the glut of options for disposable entertainment will make brand-establishment for "formula fiction" a less successful strategy, leaving attention to quality as the only way for a major publisher to stay relevant. On the contrary, it seems to me that the agoraphobic variety offered by the Internet would make brand-establishment quite successful for a major publisher. Maybe it’s defeatist thinking, but I wonder if the only truly exciting possibility for seekers of uncompromising work in the near future is that smaller enterprises might have a better chance to survive alongside the larger ones. Maybe the practical hope is that the eventual normalization of "digital distribution and print-on-demand technology" might be sufficient to sustain the talented independent writer of modest financial expectations.

One potential beneficiary of this modest revolution is novelist Carl Shuker, who is publishing his brainy horror experiment Three Novellas for a Novel all by his lonesome at www.threenovellasforanovel.com. This month, Shuker — a New Zealander now living in London — has made the second of the three titular installments, ?O Hills Park, available for download. Also available is the first novella, The Depleted Forest, about an editor in an alternate-present Japan who is proofreading the computer-translated memoir of a member of a secret society of rape-tourists. The third installment, Beau Mot Plage, will be uploaded soon. For the PDFs, he’s charging — à la Radiohead — whatever you want to pay.

Since Shuker has already published two well-regarded novels (2005’s award-winning The Method Actors and 2006’s The Lazy Boys), he’s not exactly at the bottom of the slush pile. But he’s not Radiohead, either. More to the point, while The Depleted Forest is a relatively accessible and not unmarketable story, ?O Hills Park is the kind of thing only an Internet could love. It’s the full memoir excerpted in the first novella and presented in the quasi-English of computer translation. Rushed to publication to catch the public’s fleeting interest in the first book’s sex scandal, the text of ?O Hills Park is as much a mesmerizing word puzzle as an intriguing piece of fiction. It’s also a supremely ironic comment on the publishing culture from which the work was spared — the culture whose cathartic rehabilitation Karp is so optimistic about.

It’s doubtful either Karp or Shuker is making that culture hang its head in shame. Back when writers with a taste for food and shelter were at the mercy of those with the exclusive means of wide distribution, they had no choice but to pretend publishers answerable to stockholders had an obligation to publish works with all the mass appeal of a conscript military. It’s always been an honorable delusion, but it may be that such an insistence is now a waste of the energy that should be spent learning how to cut out the middleman.

Diaboliques

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July 16, 2008

0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Sex is such an unalloyed force in Catherine Breillat’s films that it actually seems to consume narrative. Among a controversial lot that includes Fat Girl (2001) and Romance (1999), The Last Mistress is unique for its classical trimmings, but its plot points and character development are still no more or less important than the emotional content of a moan. All the French writer-director’s films are anatomies of hell, but this time she’s courting provocations instead of simply imposing them. The thickening of Breillat’s stock may be due to her 2004 stroke, or her decision to adapt an earlier work (the film freely elaborates on an 1851 novel by Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly), or the fact she’s finally snagged an actress who enlarges her take on female appetite-for-destruction.

That actress is Asia Argento. In performances typically labeled raw or animalistic by a mostly male press, the daughter of Dario bottles up the rage simmering underneath every black magic woman and femme fatale in film history. It’s telling that Argento’s daredevil acting style doesn’t conjure other actresses so much as rockers like Diamanda Galás, PJ Harvey, and Courtney Love — women who live on the literal edge of a stage.

In The Last Mistress, Argento isn’t so tongue-in-cheek that she’s willing to slobber a rottweiler (as in a much-discussed moment from Abel Ferrara’s 2007 Go Go Tales). Breillat has given Argento a character who dovetails with her persona. Her Vellini is constantly described as a creature and, in a key moment, as a mutt. Her titular courtesan — rumored to be the illegitimate offspring of an Italian princess and a Spanish matador — is conjured by flashbacks and the looks and idle gossip of others. The film opens with a churlish count and countess plotting to inform Vellini that the object of her longtime amour fou, Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Ait Aattou), is marrying the virginal Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida). Our first image of Argento — a double-portrait of actress and character, stretched over a divan in a classic pose of seduction — instantly explodes any element of Merchant-Ivory farce, with the actress already burnishing the angry glow of her character’s typecast destiny.

A moment later, Vellini is relishing Ryno’s porcelain weight, her pleasure-hungry visage adjacent to the glassy eyes and growl of a stuffed tiger head. The shot suggests Breillat is playfully embracing her unsubtle craft. Radical plot offensives aside, she isn’t so different from Joseph Mankiewicz in her camera movements, editing, and composition. Her reactionary feminism might sink into serviceability except for one thing: when it comes to staging and directing her actors’ body language, she’s a master.

Pascale Ferran’s Lady Chatterley (2006) flushed cheeks where Breillat’s dark drama gnashes teeth, but the films are united in loosing their actresses to trammel over history. Ferran crafts an amorous epic; Vellini climaxes only a few minutes into Last Mistress, raising the discomfiting question: what if the enabling (and ennobling) freedom that lets us do as we please only turns us into slaves of desire? The answer might look something like Sofia Coppola’s fizzy tonic of lethargy and shopping, Marie Antoinette (2006), though Argento’s supporting role as Comtesse du Barry in that film practically beggared Breillat’s fleshy rejoinder. Where Sex and the City‘s infantilized Manhattan suggests constant airbrushing, woman directors such as Breillat make Paris drawing rooms, Versailles, and the French countryside shimmer with unsettled agendas.

THE LAST MISTRESS

Opens Fri/18 at Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at sfbg.com

www.ifcfilms.com

Belay that

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July 16, 2008

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Ever since I was nine or so, I’ve had unexplored dominant-role power exchange fantasies. Now they are at odds with my marriage of 20-plus years (my wife isn’t into it) and my worldview/faith. I feel pretty strongly that I’m fooling myself when I think that finding a similarly-situated woman to clandestinely and mutually scratch this itch would somehow be cathartic and result in resolution once and for all, but the fantasy persists. Are these type of fantasies typically lifelong? Do they wane with age?

Love,

Hoping

Dear Hope:

Is it national S-M month or something? Shouldn’t I have been flooded with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual, and questioning questions all June instead? I do like a good S-M question, of course. I was just wondering.

I doubt you experienced those childhood urges as "dominant-role power exchange fantasies." I guess, rather, that you really enjoyed playing pirates, but only if you got to tie the prisoners to the mast and do weird stuff to them, and you never wanted to be the prisoner yourself. And eventually your friends got bored or irritated, but you wanted to keep playing. Likewise, I assume that more recently you’ve been doing some reading and now you recognize your youthful leanings for what they may have been: early indicators of later inclinations.

These types of fantasies are fairly likely to be lifelong, but like any other enthusiasm they are apt to wax and wane with the seasons, the hormones, and the circumstances. One of those circumstances may be deprivation, but I have to say that it’s just as likely to be immersion — if sex breeds sex (and it does), then kink no doubt breeds kink as well. Therefore, indulging in online simulacra or other noncorporeal outlets is not necessarily a cure for inappropriate fantasizing. (Hold that thought.)

"Wait," you say. "What’s so inappropriate about S-M fantasies? I thought Andrea was kinda in favor of those?" Maybe I am and maybe I amn’t, but that’s beside the point. It is obvious, given your commitment to your marriage and your wife’s lack of interest, your power-play longings are not doing you any favors, so dwelling on them may not turn out to be very helpful. Individual real-life appropriateness aside, I actually think S-M is morally neutral: great for some people, a bad choice for others, and, as my Hispanophone friend Melissa would say, bla bla y bla.

Now, is it really a bad idea to immerse oneself in S-M fantasies if one will not be indulging them in real life? No, of course it isn’t. If there is one tenet by which all sex educators swear, it is that fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality, and there is no obligation that ever the twain should meet. If, however, the fantasy ignites and will not quiet, and you find yourself spending ever more of your precious waking hours obsessing on it, then cultivating a very rich fantasy life is probably not for you.

Ah, but you didn’t really ask about fantasy. You asked about finding a real person, similarly unfulfilled at home, and embarking on a S-M-only clandestine nonromance. And I say, in the immortal words of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, "That trick never works!"

Is it possible to have a partner with whom one only does S-M, no sex, and with whom one does not fall in love? Emphatically yes. Is it a good idea to do this without one’s spouse’s agreement? Of course not. Add in the special intimacy, false or not, that you and such a partner would likely forge, based largely on the seductive call of "my partner doesn’t understand me," and really, just no. I didn’t miss the part about your worldview and faith being incompatible with acting on any of this, either. Happily you do see that putting yourself through that many uncomfortable and potentially unethical contortions at once can only lead to injury — psychic and possibly otherwise. I think.

I do not believe that acting out a power differential with a fully informed and consenting partner is incompatible with an egalitarian or nonviolent worldview, but if you do, that’s going to be a bad fit. As for not fitting in with your faith, well, I’m unaware of any organized religions except perhaps what a friend once referred to as "Episcopaganism" that expressly embrace kinky sex, but many insist only that you respect your body and your partner’s, an idea that is open to hairsplitting interpretation. You would know best, of course. If what I’m hearing from you is what you meant to present, though, I’d have to say that a moderate amount of (porn-assisted, if you like) fantasy and no real-life contacts will be the healthier choice for you. Finding a girl on the Internet and flogging her? Not gonna help.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.