In some ways I am a very bad New Yorker. I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty. I’ve never set foot in Rockerfeller Center. I’ve never visited half of the places I’d like to, half the places I’m supposed to. I am holding on to my New Yorker title by tenuous threads.
Saturday afternoon I finally, after six years in this city, made my way to The Museum of Sex.
Currently the Museum of Sex is running an exhibit entitled “Kink.” Supposedly, it is about BDSM. In reality, it is about fetish. I would guess that the curator would not know why I make that distinction. I would in fact guess that the curator is not kinky. But that is all right. It was enjoyable. May and I read about mud and macro fetishes, about how domination and submission are expressed in wolves, and peered curiously into the yiff tubes of plush stuffed animals. I applauded the way the exhibit handled their section on rape play. I was pissed that their leather sample was made from fake leather.
We followed the dark back staircase up and around, and wound our way through the history of pornography in film. I got a crash course in sexploitation films, and kept having to pull May away from screens of cute boys having sex, often pictured with demin around their knees and surrounded by the remnants of tight white tshirts. On the top floor we wandered through a sampling of the permanent collection, stopping on a bench to watch a film on a man who creates brilliant animated robot sex.
“I would have that in my house,” May said, indicating a series of graphic sex acts done in holograms, so that the images appeared only from specific angles. I was amused watching people walk by them and jump in surprise.
“No,” I answered.
“Why not?”
“I hate holographic art,” I answered. Although really, the content would be okay, maybe for a bedroom, I thought.
On the other side of the wall I pushed a red button and grinned in glee when a fucking machine next to me rumbled in to life. “Hee! Awesome.” The security guard chuckled with me.
The museum itself was enjoyable, small, and worth a second visit after new exhibits come through. Far more entertaining were the people, a constantly flowing crowd, mostly my age, maybe a little younger here, a little older there. It seems that in my age group the common reaction to sex is still to point and laugh. I almost don’t know why I was surprised.
I watched the people migrate, yelping and jumping, pointing and calling to their friends. Come look at this, look at that guy, what’s that a picture of, how does this work, are those really robots?” And even That’s disgusting!
And most often of all: Eewwww. Gross.
Oh, right, I thought to myself. Outlaw culture.
As May and I were walking down 6th avenue after we’d been kicked back out into the night, I mused. “Places like that make me remember how strange we really are,” I said to him finally.
“Mmmhmm,” he answered.
The curious thing about being an adult is that I finally understand the subtleties of how the world sees children. I see how we’ve linked maturity and age, though I don’t always see why. And yet, where are the lines being drawn between sexual maturity and emotional maturity? What do we say to the people who’re fully capable of fucking all the live-long day, and probably do, but who still need to snigger and point at genitalia?
The people for whom sex is still a dirty, weird, amazing mystery.
In some ways I grew up so, so fast. Sometimes I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
Standing on the third floor of that museum, Saturday night in New York City, I was unable to shake the idea that I was surrounded by children. I haven’t felt so old in years.
