Stress Testing Me Out

One sentence from today's “New York Times Magazine” article Stress Test by Peggy Orenstein really stressed me out!

“A Danish study of 6,689 women, published in 2005, found that those who were highly stressed were 40% less likely than others to get breast cancer.”

The only thing surprising about this statistic is that bunk like this is believed. Unless these Danish guinea pigs were being monitored night and day, the sentence should read “those WHO REPORTED BEING highly stressed were 40% less likely than others to get breast cancer.” In other words, those “40% less likely to get breast cancer” were fully aware of their stress, and thus able to confront it and, one assumes, better deal with it than, say, those who reported low stress levels as a result of being in sickly denial. And just like some people have bodies that naturally burn off excess calories, some people have minds that easily burn off excess stress. It’s not the amount of stress but how the organism handles it, the crux of the issue, that Orenstein unhealthily overlooks.

Top Hot Pride Pics

Are you a supporter of gay marriage?
“I know nothing about it. I don’t follow that.”
Why doesn’t it interest you?
“The same reason heterosexual marriage doesn’t seem to interest me.”

–From “Questions for Gore Vidal” in “The New York Times Magazine,” 6/15/08.

Amen, sister. One of the perks of being queer is that you’re not expected to engage in unnatural acts like high school proms and monogamy. So in honor of the hedonistic right to our own guilt-free, queer Mardi Gras, here are some subversive suggestions that will get you in the mood and take you back to that more innocent, less commercial “Over The Rainbow” time.

For my five recommendations for celebrating Stonewall in sexual style visit Spout.

Don’t Call Me I’ll IM U

Recently I received a call from someone I haven’t spoken with in twenty years – or more accurately, from someone I can’t recollect ever having spoken with at all. This sweet-voiced female was phoning to get my address so she could send me an invitation to my high school reunion. Now, I left the small town I grew up in about two and a half seconds after graduating valedictorian (not much of a feat as Canon City, Colorado is not what one would call, um, an “intellectual hotspot”) and I am very happily still in touch with exactly three people from the class of ‘88. (Hi, Vanessa, Michelle and Jen!) Which made me wonder:

1) Why would I want to give my personal information to someone I don’t know so she could send me an invitation to gather with a group of people who I also don’t know and never did? And, just as importantly,

2) Why on earth would any rational individual in my graduating class (other than those three friends who, like me, left Colorado years ago) want me at their high school reunion? For I was simultaneously the school rebel who refused to stand for the pledge of allegiance, brandished anarchy signs whenever possible and generally attempted to show my contempt for anything and everything that had to do with the status quo – which meant mostly my peers.

I don’t mean this as a slight to the poor dupe who made the call, for she was probably just going down a list of all the names given to her by someone else that she herself, until recently, hadn’t spoken with in twenty years. I just find this whole “high school reunion” ritual a bit bizarre, the way I find the whole “MySpace friends” thing odd. Why all these efforts to reach out to strangers? What does this say about the society we live in? And why not just have a MySpace high school reunion?

After all, wouldn’t that be the best way for me to catch up with the friends I never had?

Five Unsexiest Movies About Sex: The Breillat Awards

I can think of no better poster child for celibacy than Parisian “provocateur” Catherine Breillat, the director of such erotic misfires as “Fat Girl,” “Romance,” and more recently “The Last Mistress,” which stars another over-hyped “hottie” Asia Argento. Exiting the theater after a Breillat flick, I never want to have sex again. Ostensibly concerned with digging deep into the beating heart of female sexuality, Breillat creates characters that are writhing bundles of drama and pain, anger and confusion. There is no laughter, never any levity nor celebrations of desire at all – just academic intellectualization in lieu of visceral heat, cardboard cutout chemistry between actors, dire emotional consequences hidden in every fuck. The Breillat canon would make for a wonderful addition to those abstinence-only programs George W. loves so much.

For my list of groan not moan inducing winners visit Spout.

Swing Down Memory Lane

Within an hour of my arrival at Thursday’s swing party, another one of Erick’s muscle-bound, “Gaiety material” friends appeared. Sauntering through the door he looked my way, flashed a catlike grin, so I soon walked up and introduced myself, received a kiss on both cheeks. “Very European,” I noted, though he turned out to be Puerto Rican with his own “entertainment company.” “So you’re a stripper,” I guessed. “Not anymore, but I used to be,” he replied. “You worked the gay clubs because that’s where the money is,” I added, reading the open book. He was somewhat surprised that I knew the hustling spots all the way to Chicago so I explained I’d been in a relationship with a guy who danced at the Gaiety. “I worked the Gaiety!” the stud declared wide-eyed. “Who?” When I told him he laughed then added, “I know Dave very, very well.”

Why I’d never met Gio until then was a mystery since we knew all the same sex industry workers going back nearly a decade. When I brought up David’s former boy toy Cameron who couldn’t stand me (no love lost as I thought him a stuck up drug addict) Gio gave a knowing smile. “A lot of people didn’t like Cameron.” By the time he asked to check out my ass, inspecting my butt cheeks beneath my blue undies with firm hands as he inquired if I do anal, I knew I could overlook the fact that he was too nice to be my type. I’d be getting some action tonight.

Or maybe not. I was hanging out with Jude, who I’d taken with me the evening before to a press screening of Catherine Breillat’s predictably boring “The Last Mistress,” when a cute, young Asian chick arrived by herself. “She likes Gio, too,” Jude whispered. Well, any girl with the guts to go to a swing party alone surely deserved whatever cock she desired! Wrapped in a white towel she took a seat on the couch in front of the bad porn. Curious, I joined Jude who’d gone over to greet her. Turns out the woman’s husband worked for a company in Dubai and knew exactly how she filled her free time without him. You go (Gio), girl!

While the Gaiety boy and the single swinger went to get it on near the curtained massage table on the other side of the room I chatted with beautiful twink Andre, offering that my friend Roxanne would eat him up. Inspired I decided to call her so she could practice her Italian on him. “He’s twenty-one,” I added once I had her on the line. “Oh, wow,” she sighed like a mooning schoolgirl (after excitedly disclosing the best thing about the “green” man – yes he was rich and older but he also owned an environmental company – she was seeing. That he had two sons, ages twenty-one and twenty-three. “They’re of legal age!” she explained, making it O.K.).

Since the single chick proved to be an insatiable nymphomaniac, monopolizing Gio’s dick for most of the night, it’s a good thing the master and slave arrived to give me something to do. Luckily I’d stopped by Pandora’s beforehand so I had a flogger and paddle on hand (swingers bring condoms, kinksters bring equipment) which I used on the master’s pig-tailed, white stocking and red heel wearing wife after he’d bound her with an orange extension cord Gio had found on the second floor. The husband, soft-spoken and sporting a long dark ponytail, who hailed from Albuquerque and had been in the scene nearly twenty-five years, nodded that he recognized me though I’d never seen him before. (After he’d politely asked Erick if he could use the decorative birch twigs arranged innocuously in a vase I knew he knew what he was doing.) I verbally humiliated his slave a bit (“You nasty whore!”) while she was getting fucked by one of the random white guys at the party while her master covered her mouth to stifle her moans. I was way more jealous of this woman as she sucked off another dude while her master slapped her ass than I was of the single girl getting her pussy licked by the Gaiety stud.

Taking a break I found Liquid wandering the party like a lost soul, looking devastated. “I haven’t had sex once – and I use three holes!” she announced to the busy room. “This is really sad.” I suddenly felt guilty. Here I was flogging a chick in front of bisexual Liquid – and I don’t even like girls. But there was no time for sorrow as another bodybuilder arrived. As I put down my paddle Jude jokingly declared, “Hands off! He’s mine,” then gave the guy a big hug. “Doesn’t he look like a Bollywood star?” she asked me, running her hands over the clean cut Indian’s bulging biceps. I nodded though he struck me as more Wall Street than Calcutta, especially with a California accent to rival Liquid’s. When I went to the bathroom to get a bottle of alcohol for Star (who was on her sixth or seventh victim of the night and couldn’t be bothered to leave the well-pounded mattress) I noticed Gio had been granted a much-deserved break. He came over to give me a devouring kiss. I breathed a sigh of relief that his lips didn’t taste icky then knelt to the floor and opened wide in nostalgic longing for big Gaiety cock. After I’d used my tongue from head to shaft, gotten him all ready for another round, I rose to my feet.

“You’ve got some wild mouth there,” he stated a twinkle in his eye. “You know what I haven’t done in a long time?” I reminisced. “What?” “Two guys. You know anyone?” I asked. Gio nodded with certainty then inquired, “Do you like Brazilians?” Uh, hell yeah! I took Gio’s number then got scared. “Not Victor!” I cried, remembering the last Brazilian hooker I got hooked up with – an aggressive, six-foot tall thug with a foot-long dick who was best kept a safe fantasy. “Nah, not Victor,” Gio assured, adding that the guy he had in mind wasn’t juiced up like that, wasn’t even a stripper in fact. Happily I returned to the mattress where the Bollywood star lay naked, still chatting with Jude, and urged me to join him. The cougar had to leave so she gave her blessing for us to have fun then said goodbye to the master and his slave, exchanging emails so they could arrange for a more intimate S&M encounter. I tweaked the guy’s nipple piercing, toyed a bit with his dark-skinned dick as he removed my tank top to kiss my tits – then told him to jerk himself off. It was all too straight-laced for me.


The following evening paled in comparison to the previous night’s exploits (especially since Erick had decided “Tonight’s theme is foot fetish - encourage that!” Ugh!), with only a middle-aged couple from Montenegro – he a big burly bear, she his high-hairdo, bottle-blonde, pot-smoking girlfriend of ten years (“She’s not my wife,” he’d corrected when I’d mistaken his mistress for such) – to while away the time watching. It was so slow we all ended up gathered around the new video monitor, more exciting than the urban porn, voyeuristically viewing Erick’s conversation with a couple guys outside. “Wow – look how short those guys are!” Liquid exclaimed. “Yeah, it’s almost like he’s talking to midgets,” I agreed. As I made my way over to the curtained boudoir area to see if anyone besides Star was getting any action, another one of Erick’s black personal trainer friends (in baseball cap, muscles announcing themselves from a wife-beater T) approached me. “I’ve seen you around. Are you a fighter?” he inquired. Noting that this most definitely was not a pick up line I asked where he trained. “All over.” I told him he might have seen me doing pad work and light sparring at Crunch. I thought of last night’s master. Why did everyone seem to recognize me from somewhere?

But I didn’t have time to ponder this puzzle as the midgets arrived with Erick – well, not midgets, just a couple of very short queens who climbed the stairs behind two of Erick’s very tall friends who were lugging an air conditioner to the top floor. One of the fags was an older man in leather boots and straw cowboy hat, his companion a young, nervous, hand waving Nelly who couldn’t stop asking questions. At first I got a kick out of them – especially when I found out they were looking to move their gay sex party to Erick’s pad after having been booted from the S&M club Paddles – but the drama twink soon began to grate on my nerves. “And you work with Erick? What kind of party is this? See – our real issue is a clothes check because we have sixty people and those lockers are just much too small,” he motored on and on as if his fuck fest were “Vanity Fair” at the Oscars. I was hoping the grey-haired master in cowboy hat would pull a gag from his back jeans pocket, but alas, no such luck. Erick shot me a look of “Why the hell are you still talking to them? Get them out, out!” so since I was leaving anyway I suggested we talk on our way downstairs where I blew them each kisses as we parted. I headed for the subway glad I would never be that kind of a queer.

Better Than Sex: David Lynch's Wild at Heart

“No tongue – my lipstick,” Diane Ladd’s conniving Marietta Fortune admonishes at the beginning of “Wild at Heart,” flirting with Harry Dean Stanton’s Johnnie Farragut, while perfectly setting the tone for the tantalizing sexual games to follow. Lynch’s typically bizarre noir contains one of the steamiest foreplay scenes ever to grace the indie screen. Strangely, this kinky non-sex scene involves not Laura Dern’s Lula and Nicolas Cage’s Sailor Ripley (whose love scenes are saturated with such hyper-real color and artistic angles as to overshadow the screwing), but the childlike Lula and Willem Dafoe’s greasy, so-creepy-he’s-charismatic Bobby Peru (”Just like the country,” he drawls, introducing himself to Lula and Sailor outside the hotel they’re all staying at, sliding snakelike into “Wild at Heart” nearly an hour and twenty minutes fashionably late). Dressed in black, sporting a Clark Gable moustache, Bobby’s the ultimate contrast to Dern’s big blonde hairdo, red lipstick painted, 20-year-old piece of mentally damaged white trash. That the episode doesn’t culminate in predictable fornication only proves that the iconoclastic director truly understands how to harness the power of the erotic chase––that is, that it’s hotter than the catch.

For more on my take on the best non-sex scene ever to grace the indie screen visit Spout.

Still Swinging

Just when I thought my job prospects couldn’t get any weirder there came the ad on Craig’s List inquiring, “Do you write erotica?” But no, this wasn’t some Internet site looking for free content, just a pleasant, middle-aged white guy working in PR who wanted some chick to read sexy stories to him. Yeah, I could do that.

So after about an hour of chatting and reading most of the first chapter of “Under My Master’s Wings” aloud on a bench on a sunny day in Chelsea Waterfront Park, I headed uptown to the swing party with cash in my pocket – where I was met by the sight of Erick’s gorgeous new twink, a 21-year-old from Florence, Italy with shaved head and solid young bod. I told him all about how my sister had spent the last few summers in Florence then asked him if he was a stripper (he had just arrived in NYC from southern Florida, the hustler’s route). Turns out he worked in a restaurant and for an Italian shoe designer in her store. Of course I had to cut the conversation short when Erick’s other new pal swaggered in, a cocky black guy in tight black jeans and a tight black T-shirt that showed off his tight rippling torso. I walked up and introduced myself, asked where he was from. “An island far, far away,” was his singsong reply. “Which one?” I asked, guessing Trinidad. “Dominica,” he answered, looking at me in the same sleazy way I was trying to penetrate his clothes with my gaze. Dominica. Hmm. Where is Dominica? I wondered, glancing over at the “Big Bubble Butt Brazilian Orgy” playing on the TV. I’d never done Dominica.

We kept our eyes roaming towards one another as I mingled with Liquid, Jada and the other black girls (well, not Star as she has a fucking only policy) and the few white guys who’d stopped by (well, not the annoying schmoe who kissed my hand then kept trying to touch my knee and arm as I conversed with a gay porn connoisseur hostess like myself. After forcing him to sit on his hands if he wanted to have a word with me, the sniveling slave admitted he’d been to the S&M club Paddles. Naturally.)

Unfortunately, the night was filled with more talking than fucking. The Caribbean stud wouldn’t even take off his shirt, his coy routine starting to grate. He asked why I was still dressed – “because you’re shy?” I replied that I wasn’t shy at all. “Show me your kitty,” he said. My kitty? I flashed him my slave rings instead and his eyes grew as wide as if I’d shook out my dick. Finally he agreed to strip in an empty corner on the couples’ floor, letting me remove his cock from a black vinyl jock strap. He got beneath my mini-dress long enough to kiss my tits. “I want to fuck you. Do you have a condom?” “No,” I replied hard-on in hand. “Let me run upstairs and get one. Wait here. I’ll be right back,” he begged, stuffing his dick into his jeans. Well, that seemed rather silly. “No, I’ll come with you – I’ll blow you in front of everyone!” I enthused, trailing behind. Dominica man stopped in his tracks, a mortified expression upon his face. “No way.” “But we’re at a swing party!” I reminded exasperated. “Yeah, but that’s not why I’m here,” he huffed.

And suddenly my own hard-on wilted. I did not come to a kinky party to have boring hetero sex in some dark corner. As it was late and I was getting nowhere fast I told him that next time we’d negotiate a compromise. I’d suck him off in front of the crowd and then he could screw me in private. I may be a pushy perverted queen but I’m nothing if not reasonable.

My New Spout Column

Hot off the SpoutBlog press releases:

“Later today, we’ll be debuting a new column from Lauren Wissot, whose work you might have also read at The House Next Door and/or The Reeler. Lauren, who will be tackling (no pun intended) sexual themes in indie and classic cinema every Wednesday, will begin with a revisionist take on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie.” We wanted to call her column “Art Films To Jerk Off To,” but in the end that might be too limiting––after all, who’s to say what qualifies as art?”

To check out Dial S&M for Marnie visit Spout.