The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- 'The Disneyland of the Arts' -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 13)

'But isn't it difficult to separate the two?'

'I think everyone at a fetish party understands what you can and can't do,' she counters. 'It's a question of feelings. There is a big difference between to seduce and to fock. I can seduce you by talking, but no focking. Seduction is not sex making.'

But just as seduction leads to sex—at least in my dictionary—it seems naïve to think that Fetish in Italy won't follow the same slippery latex slope as BDSM in more secular countries.

I wonder if Italian fetishists can afford to make such semantic distinctions because their society still has an outwardly strict moral code.

Max and Maria can enjoy the thrill of transgression by making night-time raids outside the boundaries, but when every Pietro and Paolo starts doing it, all hell will break loose.

'Catholicism is a strange religion,' Max scoffs. 'It's the religion of hypocrisy.'

'Yes.'

'One thing is what you say, and one thing is what you do.'

To my mind, this sums up the human condition, not to mention every '–ism' going, but Max and Maria seem to think it's specific to the one—and possibly only—religion they know intimately.

'You can do what you want, but you can't talk about it.'

'In Italy, there are swinger parties everywhere. Especially in small cities.'

'Really?' I ask.

Maria puffs out her cheeks and rolls her eyes. 'Yeah.'

'In the morning they are parents, and at night they are swingers.'

But apparently 'everywhere' doesn't include La Serenissima.

'In Venice, there isn't anything.'

'Anything!' Maria echoes.

'No sex.'

'No sex!' she snorts.

Not even modern counterparts to the 'grand horizontals' of yore. High-priced prostitutes fly in for the Venice Film Festival and special events, but there's not enough business to live here full time.

'We are very sorry, but you won't find anything of this in Venice,' Max says.

'We asked,' Maria agrees. 'We asked our friends, and they said no. No, no, no, no, no. No call girls.'

'I think that if you came to Venice looking for sex, you can't find it,' he shrugs. 'Venice is not a real city.'

'Venice is Disneyland. The Disneyland of the arts.'

Not so Disney: Ties on sale during Carnival

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