The History of Sex: Prague -- I Blame Gauguin -- (Chapter X, Part 27)

Noting my discomfort, John reckons we should double back to a place called Sweet Paradise, yet another oasis of kitsch in a concrete desert, a pseudo-tropical bar burrowed into a wintry grey street.

Not for the first time on my journey, I can't help but wonder: why do sex clubs have to be so tacky? Why do plastic palm trees and Pavlovian neon signal SEX to the male psyche?

Personally, I blame Gauguin, the artsy stockbroker who ditched his day job in Paris for a life of getting laid in paradise.

Unfortunately, he took his syphilis with him, sharing it with the fourteen-year-olds he purchased with sweets and alcohol until his running sores made him so repulsive even the poorest Tahitians wouldn't touch him.

Paul Gauguin's portrait of Tehura, his 14-year-old 'wife'
in Spirit of the Dead Watching

His paintings, now in every major gallery on the planet, are like The Picture of Dorian Gray in reverse: immortalizing an innocent sexual Eden, whereas the reality was sordid and syphilis-ridden, thanks to colonialist cretins like him.

Since Gauguin, the tiki-plasticky look has been the décor de rigueur of dodgy clubs and cocktail bars around the world.

In its own way, Sweet Paradise, promising 'luxurious ambience and almost family atmosphere,' is more surreal—and depressing—than anything Kafka ever dreamt up.

Outside, it's Christmas in the Old Country; inside, it's the Land of the Yuletide Luau, with a full-scale beach hut in the corner adorned with a snowman and accompanying conifer.

A dozen prostitutes sit drinking and smoking on the ledge lining the lounge, facing the few men on hand with expressions ranging from bored apprehension to fabricated lust.

John reckons he's getting the evil eye from the Queen of the Brothel, a pretty enough twenty-year-old, though her hair's so bleached you wonder if it's fallen out in clumps and been superglued back onto her head.

'She's one of the most popular girls here. Clients end up feeling sorry for her,' he laughs. 'She doesn't want to be here. She's got a kid.'

John knows this because he and Martina used to be an item.

'To have someone who you liked as a boyfriend, and who kind of liked you as a girlfriend, pimping you—well, it's not very nice.'

The History of Sex: Berlin -- It's the Nazis, Stupid -- (Chapter IX, Part 26)

Karl-Heinz shows me around the museum's temporary exhibit entitled 'Paradise' and murmurs appreciatively: 'Here is a very interesting drawing.'

That's one word for it.

The artist was a German POW who swapped erotica for cigarettes with American guards.

The drawing shows a group of naked cuties in officers' caps putting the 'cock' into 'cocktail:' one is peeing into the proffered glass of another.

Mmm… fresh pee-tinis, anyone? 

Images from the museum's 'Paradise' exhibit

Gad told me before coming here that Karl-Heinz 'used to be gorgeous.'

For the record, that seems ungenerous, because he's only fortysomething and still a good-looking guy, with white teeth gleaming against his tan and a salt-and-pepper goatee.

He's also fun to talk with because he engages difficult subjects head-on.

In fact, I like him so much, I've decide to burden him with a couple of questions I've been dying to ask:

'I know that places around the world celebrate Christopher Street Day—even in Istanbul,' I start off. 'But why do gays in Germany focus on commemorating an American event rather than their own, far more important achievement: the founding of the world's first gay-rights movement?'

Karl-Heinz pauses before giving me a diplomatic, respectful answer that amounts to 'it's the Nazis, stupid.'

'You shouldn't forget that the infrastructure that there had been in the Twenties wasn't established again until the Eighties. From 1933, within half a year after the Nazis came to power, this widespread network and infrastructure was totally wiped out and had to go underground or become invisible. What is especially important for all the more history-oriented groups—but even for restaurants or the organizers of fucking festivals—is the knowledge that a very good community can be destroyed in less than half a year. So in Germany and Berlin this is maybe more on the table, as we say, than in other countries.'

The History of Sex: Berlin -- No Famine of Phalluses -- (Chapter IX, Part 25)

In truth, that image summed up my initial impressions of Berlin's gay scene.

Given Germany's pioneering role in the gay rights movement and the sacrifices made by its homosexuals over the decades, it seemed overwhelmingly tragic that modern Berlin should be just another gay party capital renowned for shopping and shagging.

But then I went to see Karl-Heinz Steinle, the curator of the world's first Schwules Museum: the only 'Gay Museum' in the global village.

One of the museum's exhibits

'I would say that Berlin is actually more balanced than other cities,' he explains. 'Berlin has these dark-sex-triple-gangbang-fuck-rooms—'

—a word I would love to see written in German— 

'—with all the drugs and stuff. And it has, let's say, new ideas, experimental gender-crisscrossed rooms and programs and quite a few historical groups.'

The Schwules Museum began in a flat before the fall of the Wall and now occupies an old industrial workshop; its neighbours are a gay café and a shop called 'Faster, Pussycat!'

'There is one part of gays' thinking that isn't so interested in history, but there is another part which is enormously interested to be able to say "I'm not the first one,"' Karl-Heinz says.

'The museum's development from a little special interest group to the institution that we are now also establishes gay history as a scientific study. It's not done by gays who want to say, "I will collect 2,000 photographs of cocks."'

That said, there's no famine of phalluses in the museum's exhibit on two centuries of gay history.

Inevitably, as with Freud's house in Vienna, Berlin's Gay Museum takes the we-are-the-champions approach to history.

But amid the usual namechecks—nods to the Greeks and Romans, plus Dietrich, Wilde, Auden and Isherwood—it also displays plenty of curiosities: an anal diagram from a French medical text in 1878 showing 'Desordres que produit la pederastie' (it ain't pretty)… Gestapo photos of known homosexuals, taken in three poses (including with and without hats)… and kitsch Seventies copies of him: das magazine mit dem mann featuring weedy sex symbols with bush cuts and sideburns before the American gym-bunny aesthetic conquered the world.

The History of Sex: Berlin -- The Wall Comes Down -- (Chapter IX, Part 18)

Homosexuality wasn't legalized in West Germany until 1969 (once again, East Germany's Communists one-upped their democratic counterparts, having repealed Paragraph 175 the previous year).

By then, though, the main battleground for gay rights had shifted across the Atlantic.

In June that year—just days after West Germany abolished its Nazi statute on sodomy (and the same day as Judy Garland's funeral)—gay men in New York fought back against a police raid of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, inspiring 'Friends of Dorothy' around the world.

West Berlin held its first Christopher Street Day festival a decade later and, by the time the AIDS epidemic took off in 1983, the gay scene was well established.

On the other side of the Berlin Wall, though, the scene was more subdued.

The first East German film about homosexuality, Coming Out, didn't come out until November 9, 1989—the same night the Wall fell.

The History of Sex: Berlin -- Into the Darkroom -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 2)

As in most gay bars here, though, the real action takes place in the all-important darkroom.

A door at the back of the pub marked FRONTIER ZONE opens onto a staircase spiraling into the basement, where men in various degrees of undress are having sex in concrete cubicles.

As humid as it is upstairs, the darkroom is a sauna of sweat, urine and alcohol.

Club Tropicana it ain't

A bearded staff member breaches the darkness with a small torch, discreetly flashing the light on the floor to collect dead beer bottles.

In one cubicle, a couple in leather police gear are kissing each other's nipples, while across the way, two skinheaded guys with their trousers down are snogging and masturbating, as a bystander turns their ministrations into a ménage a trois.

Bald and obese, the third man wears a dirty T-shirt over his pale, fish-belly skin, his tongue lolling around like Uncle Fester the Molester or Igor of the Darkroom.

Whether friend or freelancer, he's a bottom-dweller in every sense of the term, fingering one of the men's sphincters as he, too, wanks himself to completion.

Meanwhile, on the video loop upstairs, the male-maiming seductress is licking the blood from her fingers and masturbating, while across the street, at 'the gayest restaurant in Berlin' a liquid-crystal display flashes up paintings by the Old Masters, including Michelangelo's Adam languidly fingering the hand of God.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Freud's Science Fiction -- (Chapter VIII, Part 31)

Unlike Freud, who said most humans are 'trash,' I think the majority of people strive—consciously and subconsciously—to make sense of the world around them.

So there are good reasons why his theories have saturated the modern psyche.

Freud on the cover of Time, 1924

The most convincing lies contain an element of truth, and Freud was a genius at making the obvious look new and the specious sound true.

Yes, a toddler may be jealous of his father's time with his mother, but that doesn't mean the kid wants to off him and get off with her.

In fact, his 'jealousy' may not be sexual at all.

Anyone with any practical experience of children will tell you that a toddler can be 'jealous' of anything that gets between him and his feeding machine: a sister, a cat—even a book or chores.

In fact, anyone with a puppy will notice similar behavior when you introduce a rival animal into the house—but this canine 'jealousy' doesn't mean the dog wants to commit an unnatural act with its owner.

Not everything's about sex.

A SECULAR RELIGION

Although Freud insisted that what he'd 'discovered' was unassailable fact, much of it was nothing but science fiction.

In the absence of any proof, his followers had to have faith, and psychoanalysis developed all the hallmarks of a secular religion, creating the template for virtually every personality cult and self-help movement to this day.

With Freud's blessing, apostates like Jung were excommunicated and their characters publicly assassinated.

by Phil Selby

Psychoanalysis also coincided with the birth of cinema, embedding 'Freudian symbols' in the minds of the masses while always appealing to people's sense of their own self-importance, giving even the most innocuous dream or slip of the tongue a Deeper Hidden Meaning.

In their defense, many of Freud's followers were fooled because they didn't know better: he tried to destroy incriminating paperwork—ironically, the woman who saved him from the Nazis unwittingly wrecked his posthumous reputation by salvaging his letters to Fliess.

What's more, his associates cynically drip-fed his most damning papers into the public domain over decades—in fact, some archives won't be released until 2057.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Raggedy Ann in Chains -- (Chapter VIII, Part 18)

'There's even an SM Style now,' she continues, citing the pop star Rihanna (SM boyfriend optional).

Our tablemates are a tousle-haired artist and his wife, whose orange pageboy, bright lipstick and striped tights remind me of a Raggedy Ann doll.

Sure enough,
if you Google 'bondage Raggedy Ann,'
this is what you get

Very much to the contrary, she's the model for Axel's new series on Sex and Aggression, which makes me even more appreciative of Max's paintings in the S&M B&B in Venice.

Like most modern artists, Axel can't resist the post-Freudian urge to tell you what his images are trying to say—when of course the truth is, if he could actually paint, the work would speak for itself.

His canvases feature snatches of Krafft-Ebing and Sacher-Masoch plastered above paintings of his wife, who's naked except for bondage straps and pictured in various degrading poses: bending over naked, eating out of a dog bowl and so on.

As in life, her wide eyes are startlingly blank, though in art, she also has a corresponding lack of genitalia: the belt crisscrossing her groin forms a kind of labia.

Flipping through the samples, and sitting next to his apparently mingeless muse, I'm finding it surprisingly hard to make conversation.

WANNA RIDE?

The question I really want to ask—is that really what your bits look like?—probably isn't socially acceptable, even in this crowd.

So I opt for the boringly conventional: 'Sooooooo… how did you two meet?'

Judith tells me a tale reminiscent of Schnitzler's Dream Story, the Viennese source of the film, Eyes Wide Shut.

At twenty-five, Judith found herself married with two children when she realized that—Grosser Gott!—she'd never had an orgasm.

So she took up with Axel, who constructs real-life fantasies for her involving his acquaintances.

'Axel might arrange for me to go to a restaurant, and I'll say, "Is there a taxi driver here?" And a stranger will stand up, and I then go with him.'

Presumably they avoid cabbie hangouts.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- It All Comes Together in the Sacher-Masoch Suite -- (Chapter VIII, Part 13)

So far, that seems premature.

Sacher-Masoch's house in Graz is now a place where people go to treat their ills; apparently, the pharmacy even has a plaque commemorating the author of Venus in Furs, but I'm too distracted by the billboard across the way advertising Der Venus Club, a girlie bar that takes its symbol from another Renaissance masterpiece—Botticelli's Birth of Venus (gold and silver plated)—and charges €75 for half an hour with a 'Top Girl' in themed rooms spanning Hollywood, Africa, Harlem… and, um, Britain. 

If only I'd known…

Instead, I've booked the 'Wanda Sacher-Masoch Suite' at a hotel in the center.

Leopold and Aurora used to dine at the Erzherzog Johann after the opera, so as part of the 2003 festival, the hotel's owners concocted a cake fit for masochists—the Sacher-Masoch Torte, natürlich (with layers of fruit and marzipan)—and dedicated a suite to the unhappy couple.

Its designer is the same Austrian woman who bullied the Pole for performance art, and the centerpiece is a large portrait of her posing as Wanda in the middle of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, right in front of Titian's Venus in Furs as well as his Ecce Homo/Christ Before Pilate.

Irene Andessner as Wanda

Now, this is all very exciting for me because the photo ties together Titian, his pornographer mate Aretino (as Pilate)...

...and the same saucy model from the Venus of Urbino...

...posing as Venus in Furs (aka The Woman in the Fur Coat)...

—plus an Austrian artist playing Sacher-Masoch's muse.

Irene Andessner's Wanda wears thigh-high boots, a corona and a satin-lined cloak with a massive train: the fake fur in the portrait is actually the bedspread of the four-poster in the Sacher-Masoch Suite.

Though the room's color scheme is predictable—black and white with red velvet features—it's the details that take the room gloriously over the top: the (somewhat disturbing) cameo of the artist as Wanda inside the bed's canopy—gloating over you while you sleep (or not)…

...the quote from Venus in Furs on the glass panels in the bathroom… the life-sized projection of Venus on the shower wall when the lights are dimmed… and the pièce de résistance: a Gideon's Bible next to the telephone.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- 'The Century of Sacher-Masoch' -- (Chapter VIII, Part 12)

You may have blinked and missed it, but Graz was Europe's Capital of Culture in 2003, the same year its most famous son did his bit for world culture in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Nowadays, though, Schwarzenegger is a former Governator non grata, after Graz's assembly denounced him for sending a convicted killer to his death in California.

(The city hasn't always been so conscientious, however, having produced more than its fair share of Nazis—including Arnie's own police chief father.)

The star of Kindergarten Cop promptly returned a 'ring of honor' to Graz and demanded that it remove his name from the local sports stadium.

MASOMANIA

As for its other infamous son of a local police chief, Graz has also had a tortuous relationship.

The story goes that Sacher-Masoch's widow tried to have his ashes interred in Graz, but the city fathers refused to let his cinders besmirch their soil.

In the sexed-up twenty-first century, however, the dead writer has become an underground celebrity, with at least one French philosophe bemoaning the fact that masochism 'has suffered from unfair neglect' versus sadism, and Ukrainian and Russian intellectuals bickering over which country is the true home of the perversion: Sacher-Masoch's hometown was actually the city of Lviv in Ukraine, which now boasts a Masochist Café and a life-size bronze statue of him, while some Russians argue that he got his taste for a good whipping from their native sect of khlysty, or flagellants.

According to this fascinating Russian blog post on monuments people rub and kiss, the statue "hides a few 'surprises': in chest was mounted magnifying glass through which erotic pictures can be seen, and by putting a hand into the left pocket you can touch its 'man-dignity' for good luck." 

To justify Graz's EU sop in 2003, a local art gallery hosted a full-blown Sacher-Masoch Festival, including a film festival, a conference featuring a domina friend of the Fanny I met in Paris, lectures with titles like 'The Headaches and Rewards of the Dominatrix in the Relationship with a Submissive/Masochist' and a program of 'Masomania' performances, as well as an installation piece featuring a weedy little Pole being bullied by an Austrian (alas, some things never change).

'The 20th century was the century of de Sade,' the festival declared. 'The 21st century will be the century of Sacher-Masoch.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The Original Mistress-Slave Relationship -- (Chapter VIII, Part 7)

Being slapped around entertained him for a bit, but Sacher-Masoch eventually tired of the doctor's wife, deeming her too common to be a despotic sultana or tsarina.

So he started trying to offload her onto some other sod, thinking the jealousy might spice up their adultery.

Sacher-Masoch had shown Anna a draft of what would be his most famous work—Venus in Furs—but she never really got what he wanted.

What she did get, though, was syphilis from a 'Polish Count' who'd been encouraged by Sacher-Masoch to seduce her.

Even worse, the 'Count' turned out to be an impostor, and when Anna tearfully confessed her infidelity—and contagious disease—to Sacher-Masoch, he pretended to be offended… and neatly cut her dead in the process.

THE FANNY OF HIS DREAMS

Leopold then flirted with a manly Baroness from Munich who turned out to be a lesbian before he finally found the Fanny of his dreams.

Or, to be precise, Fanny found him.

In 1869, Sacher-Masoch received a fan letter from a would-be authoress who signed herself as 'Baroness Bogdanoff' but in reality was just plain ol' Fanny Pistor.

Nevertheless, they soon embarked on the original Mistress-Slave relationship, complete with a six-month written contract giving her the right to punish 'Gregor' at will.

In return, she promised to wear furs as often as possible: 'especially when she is in a cruel mood.'

Sacher-Masoch and Fanny: Mistress and Slave

Mistress and Slave immediately left boring old Graz to live out their fantasies in Venice, where Sacher-Masoch encouraged Fanny to have an affair with an Italian actor he insisted on calling 'the Greek' (because it sounded more exotic).

That year, the writer also published Venus in Furs, basing the title on his nickname for a painting by Titian (which is actually called Venus with a Mirror).

As with the Venus of Urbino, Sacher-Masoch's fixation features a hefty goddess in the buff, but Titian painted her dripping in jewels and fur.

The saucy detail is in the trim: her fur cloak cunningly overlays her mons veneris.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The First Masochist -- (Chapter VIII, Part 6)

The 'first masochist' had come into the world around the same time that sadism made its way into the dictionaries.

Like the Marquis de Sade, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was an aristo with theatrical tastes who became a bestselling author and wound up dying in an asylum.

As with sadism's namesake, he was probably a bit odd to begin with.

Born in 1836, he came from Austrian Galicia, a culturally rich but cruelly poor region on the frontiers of Russia and Poland.

When Leopold was barely ten, his father helped crush a master-versus-servant revolt in Galicia that featured all the usual Slavic bloodlust: massacres, rapes, lynchings and people being buried alive.

A contemporary noted that Galician women had two choices: 'Either they fully dominate the husband and make him their slave, which is their most usual behavior, or else they themselves sink to the most pitiable level of abject existence.'

As a boy, Sacher-Masoch idealized his mother as one of Raphael's Madonnas, but the woman he idolized was his father's sister.

Tall and domineering, his aunt had a comically theatrical name: the Countess Zenobia.

Sacher-Masoch would later recall impulsively kissing her foot while helping her put on her shoes.

Like a good aunt, the Countess laughed at her nephew; then, like a bad aunt, she kicked him in the face.

LET THE SLAPPING BEGIN...

Some time later, the little Chevalier was secretly playing in her bedroom—sniffing her furs, natch—when she rushed in with a lover.

While Leopold hid in the wardrobe, her husband happened to interrupt the adulterers, but instead of begging his forgiveness, the Countess leapt up and slapped the Count in the face.

After he and the lover fled the room (via different exits, naturally), the frustrated Countess discovered her nephew's hiding place and gave him a hiding.

Whereas most people might try to forget such a trauma, Sacher-Masoch spent his life trying to recreate it.

Having qualified as a doctor of law at just nineteen, he published his first book two years later as a professor at the University of Graz.

Around the same time, he met the first of his would-be dominatrixes.

Anna was the sexy wife of a doctor (with whom she also had two children), and her young admirer was attractive in a tortured artist-mad hatter kind of way, with tousled hair and intense eyes that diverted attention from his irregular features.

What's more, Sacher-Masoch had a way with words—not to mention a steady income from his family.

The pair flaunted their affair until the writer began to realize that Anna was a gold-digger.

When Leopold finally challenged her about spending his money, she slapped him.

She immediately apologized, but to her surprise, he replied, 'No, Anna. I like it—do it again.'

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The Marquis de Sade and Intensified Farts -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 8)

However, Sade's third outrage earned him a death sentence.

In the summer of 1772, the thirty-two-year-old set off from Lacoste for Marseille with his valet and a crystal box of candies made from Spanish fly.

After finding four willing young women for both him and his servant to enjoy, the Marquis ordered the girls to eat the aphrodisiacs.

Much beating, whipping, wanking, shagging and buggery ensued.

At the high (or low) point of the session, the Marquis sodomized the youngest girl while being simultaneously buggered by his valet and ordering one of the other women to watch.

Long story short, some of the girls got sick from the candies—Spanish fly is toxic in large amounts—and accused the Marquis of poisoning them.

 In his defense, he claimed he simply wanted to intensify their farts.

One of the whores testified that he'd 'stuck his nose between her buttocks so as to inhale her wind.'

As you do.

Even weirder, there are not one but two words for the fetish:
flatuphilia and eproctophilia

Still, Sade's defenders reckon his worst excesses were exaggerated.

'He's been wronged by history,' Finn maintains, wearing the violence-shy expression of a man who wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone make a woman eat one.

Faced with the death penalty, Sade went on the run, fleeing to Venice (Titian was one of his favorite painters) and later Naples and Rome, where he got in touch with a debauched cardinal who was a friend of Casanova's.

Sade's companion for part of the journey was his sister-in-law, a convent girl who he'd also seduced.

A VERY MODERN SEXUAL PREDATOR

Meanwhile, a provincial court in France sentenced him to be executed not once but twice—decapitated for poisoning and burned for sodomy.

Sade was eventually caught but never killed for his crimes, thanks to his pedigree.

Instead, he was locked up for most of the rest of his life, rejected even by veteran debauchees like his father—not so much for what he'd done as how he'd done it, making him a very modern sexual predator.

In our secular age, for instance, it may be hard to fully comprehend the psychological torment that Sade would have inflicted by forcing his victims to blaspheme.

Even for Catholic prostitutes today, selling your body to survive is a forgivable transgression; desecrating the sacrament would seem an unpardonable sin.

Likewise, in Sade's day, it wasn't unusual for well-heeled men to get carried away with their sexual hijinks.

When they did, though, they usually relied on their fellow aristocrats to prevent them from going too far—or help cover up the evidence if it was too late. That's why they partied in groups.

What made the friendless Marquis different was the cold, calculating way in which he carried out his sexual fantasies; even worse, he executed them alone (the whores and servants on hand didn't count).

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Pierre Cardin: The New Master of the Marquis' Domain -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 3)

Ensconced in their Saturday-night best, the members of the mostly middle-aged audience watch it all stern-faced and stoically, taking their high culture like other people take medicine, convinced it must be good for them because it's been sanctioned from on high—in this case, literally: rumor has it that the new master of the Marquis' domain helicopters in from the capital.

Now well into his eighties, Cardin seems to have reached the stage in life where he doesn't care about keeping up appearances.

Naturally, he still sports his black glasses and navy-blue blazers, and his sneakers are Umbro this year rather than Nike, but what's left of his hair has been clipped short—not long and wavy—and he hasn't bothered shaving.

In other words, the fashion billionaire looks like an old man who's lived long enough to be at ease with himself, pushing a large belly in front of him like a wheelbarrow.

When I met him, Pierre Cardin looked more like this

than this:

In fact, Lena and I bumped into him yesterday without recognizing him, and I spoke with him earlier this evening at a soiree hosted by SCAD, the American art college.

On a garden terrace overlooking the Luberon valley, he admitted he'd never imagined owning the Marquis de Sade's castle—or Casanova's old haunt in Venice, for that matter.

'It's very funny that I live in Casanova's villa and the Marquis de Sade's,' he mused. 'I'm Italian, you know—'

—actually, I didn't—

'I'm Venetian, and I know Florence, and for me this area of France has the same atmosphere as Florence.'

After restoring the chateau's main tower, the new lord of Lacoste turned the adjoining quarry into a magnificent amphitheatre to host his month-long Festival de Lacoste.

'Last year I said to Pietra: "Why don't you imagine what happened to the Marquis de Sade when he was in the hospital with crazy people?"' he recalled, adding that he was more than happy with the result.

'It's extraordinary. Very fantastic—you'll enjoy it.'

Well, call me a philistine, but after the initial buzz of being in situ wears off, the only coherent theme I can discern from the overly long show is that crazy people are—wait for it—crazy. (If surprisingly sexy.)

By the end, the comely ensemble of three men and four women have stripped off to dance semi if not fully naked.

Who knew lunatics could be so hot?

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Now That's What I Call Culture -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 2)

But of course they're au fait with sadism.

For if the Spanish Inquisition proved there was nothing new about fetishizing cruelty, it took a French aristocrat to give it a good name.

The term sadisme swaggered into Western civilization around 1834, twenty years after the death of its namesake, a pornographer with literary pretensions who was reviled in his own time but later venerated as 'the Divine Marquis.'

From the age of twenty-three, the French government locked the Marquis de Sade up for most of his adult life, inadvertently gifting him the time and boredom to crank out such masturbatory epics as 120 Days of Sodom and Gomorrah (penned in the Bastille just before the Revolution).

True to cliché, there's plenty of sex in Sade the ballet.

TITILLATING THE 21ST CENTURY

Like practically every other take on the man who married Madame Slap with Monsieur Tickle, the dance version is based on the porno-philosopher's last years, locked up in a mental hospital on the orders of Napoleon.

To satisfy his theatrical urges, Sade was allowed to produce plays starring himself and his fellow inmates—a case of a 'madman' running an asylum.

And at first, The Theatre of Fools is interesting enough, not least because it features one of France's most beautiful ballerinas, Marie-Claude Pietragalla.

Her small troupe from Paris starts out in tight-fitting asylum-wear—imagine if Danskin did straitjackets—performing poignantly disjointed pas de deux.

This being art, though—specifically, French art of the titillated 21st century—it's only a matter of minutes before the first dildo rears its ugly—well, you know—and the dancers start getting their breasts out.

Now that's what I call culture.

Over the next two hours (sadistically sans intermission), most of the major perversions get a look in, along with a few minor ones: there's lots of bondage gear, riding crops, chains and black leather, some cross-dressing, simulated group sex, rape and sodomy with a smattering of cannibalism and even a bit of ponyboy training, all amid much angsty yammering and stagey madness.

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- From Le Marquis to Le Drilldo -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 1)

Chapter Seven
FROM LE MARQUIS TO LE DRILLDO
Porn and Perversion in Paris and Provence

'How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!'

--The Marquis de Sade, on deflowering a fifteen-year-old, 

in Philosophy in the Bedroom, 1795

The prima ballerina has her breasts out, a topless girl's writhing in a cage, a gimp is crawling around on all fours, and a man in a skirt is marching back and forth with a bucket on his head—while another dancer lies naked in a tin bathtub and fake blood drips down the back wall of the stage.

Bienvenue to the world premiere of Sade: The Theatre of Fools or, as I like to think of it, Everybody Spank Now!—billed as the first attempt to tell the story of the infamous marquis through the medium of dance.

But what makes this twist on the myth unique is its setting.

Rather than the jaded confines of a Parisian theatre, we're in a state-of-the-art amphitheatre out in the clear country air of Provence, on the very grounds of the castle where the ignobleman staged his own theatrical extravaganzas—and committed his most unpardonable crimes.

Poster for Sade
with the Marquis' castle in the background

As if that weren't remarkable enough, our host for this evening is Pierre Cardin, the flesh-and-blood brand name who bought the Marquis de Sade's chateau and now owns much of the surrounding hilltop village of Lacoste.

Bizarrely, the rest of the hamlet is roughly divided between natives—some families date back to Sade's time—and New Worlders.

Of all the places in Europe, America's biggest art college (the Savannah College of Art and Design), based in good-ole-boy Georgia, sends its students here for, um, inspiration.

According to one SCAD professor, not all of them know what they're getting into.

'Some of the students don't even know who the Marquis de Sade is when they come here.'

The History of Sex: Seville -- Beware Satanic Fashions! -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 11)

So it was that students in seminaries and religious colleges were told to beware the 'diabolical serpent' of the penis and the 'Satan's den' of the vagina.

As in medieval times, books on morality divided the female body into three zones: the 'honest' or 'decent' parts (the hands, feet, face and arms up to the elbow); the 'less decent' bits (such as the upper arms); and the downright 'indecent' bits.

The Archbishop of Toledo issued a dress code declaring that 'it's against modesty not to wear stockings,' while posters warning against the evils of MODERN DANCES showed a besuited young man waltzing unknowingly with a horned and winged devil, as a woman in a dress does likewise.

('YOUNG PERSON… AMUSE YOURSELF ANOTHER WAY' it commanded, though it must have been a toss-up between close dancing and masturbation.)

All the media were censored, and most magazines and newspapers hired touch-up experts to doctor photos.

Rita Hayworth above, Ava Gardner below:
both before and after the censors

Gone With the Wind wasn't shown until 1950—eleven years after its debut—and even Biblical fare like Samson and Delilah had to be made decent for los españoles (the temptress' midriff was covered up in posters).

However, just as Goya had dodged the old Inquisition by painting a double portrait of La Maja (one nude, the other clothed), Spanish filmmakers found a way around Franco's censorship: shooting two versions of the same scene.

In The Return of Clint the Stranger, one of many spaghetti Westerns shot in Spain, the international version included a scene with a blonde lying on a bed, exposing everything from her breasts to the top of her pubic triangle.

In the Spanish edition, a sheet covers her up to her armpits.

What with modern Spain's fame for 'Ibiza Uncovered'-style debauchery, it's hard to fathom that one of the main battlefronts in the war on sin was the country's beaches.

Up until at least the Fifties, many swimming areas were divided between the sexes: boys would have to bathe separately with their fathers, and girls with their mothers.

In Las Palmas, the bishop ordered his priests to deny absolution to anyone who insisted on playing on la playa in mixed company.

As late as 1976—a year after Franco's death—a religious magazine in Valencia denounced 'Satanic Fashions:'

Bikinis and tight trousers
Mothers sin by buying them for their daughters.
The girls sin by using them.
Men sin by looking at them.

A modern condemnation of 'infernal fashion':
Woman: 'Hey! Why are you cutting my dress?'
Demon: 'It's to make you more attractive...
but especially to send men to hell!'

The History of Sex: Geneva -- Calvin and 'The Woman With Beautiful Breasts' -- (Chap. V, Pt. 12)

The latest attempt to breathe life into the Old Reformer is the $3.4 million International Museum of the Reformation that opened in 2005 in a neoclassical mansion right next to the cathedral.

Built on the spot where Geneva's leaders officially adopted Protestantism, the maison itself actually dates from the city's age of decadence—in fact, the merchant who built it was accused of flouting laws against extravagance.

Even more gallingly for Calvinists, the museum's first director is a Lutheran, though she's also the moderator of Geneva's Company of Pastors, the first woman in the post since Calvin himself created it nearly five centuries ago.

As if the 21st-century mandate of making history 'fun' weren't daunting enough, the Reformation Museum also has to overcome the modern ignorance of religion.

A PROTESTANT JUKEBOX

What's more, the early Protestants weren't big on the visual arts; their focus was always on the Word.

So the museum has done its best to make religious history comprehensible to the TV-minded: Calvin and Luther pop up in mirrors as talking heads, an imaginary dinner party ropes in the competing opinions of Jean and Jean-Jacques, and a jukebox cranks out Protestant hymns.

In trying to make Calvin's brand of Protestantism palatable, though, they've watered it down so that he comes across as being mainly about respect for the individual, a fundamental love of democracy and other smiley-faced concepts.

The museum shop peddles Calvin's grave image on everything from busts to umbrellas.

They even sell Calvin-branded beer, Reformation ashtrays and bonbons stamped with the ascetic's face, which is akin to putting Gandhi's mug on shotgun shells.

As of this writing, there are no Calvinator sex toys on sale, but I wouldn't rule it out.

The new musee won the Council of Europe's Museum Prize in 2007, causing some embarrassment: the statuette is an abstract by Miro with a terribly specific title: La femme aux beaux seins, or The Woman with Beautiful Breasts.

While drinking a Calvinus with a museum board-member and an official Friend of Calvin, I mention that their founder condoned death for adultery.

They look bewildered.

'I don't think they killed people who committed adultery,' the museum official blusters. 'Witches were burned, but that was everywhere at the time.'

So even modern Calvinists are a bit sketchy on Calvinism.

The History of Sex: Geneva -- Kicking Apostate Posterior -- (Chap. V, Pt. 11)

Not even the secluded Old Town is spared the sensual onslaught.

A dive called Le Petit Palais offers mixed strip shows 'for him and her,' and behind St. Peter's Cathedral, a neon girlie bar competes for business with the Lutheran church just a couple of doors up; at the top of the same street stands the Palace of Justice and a police station—but who are they to judge?

The big story this week is a police sex scandal, including allegations that Geneva's cops have been, well, copping off at headquarters.

On the very street where the Reformer lived, the Rue de Calvin, an art shop displays nudes alongside prints from Pompeii.

O Calvin, where art thou?
Geovanne Preite, a Colombian contender
for the title of 'Miss Fetes de Geneve'

And throughout the elevated heart of the city, amid the winding stone streets, sculpted parks and tiered dwellings are stores tempting you with everything from antiques to scented candles, beautifully aged meat to chocolate that's as intoxicating as any drug.

A standard joke about Geneva's old Protestants is that they invite you home for tea and ask if you want 'une sucre ou pois?'—'one sugar or none?'—but you can hardly blame them for keeping a tight lid on largesse.

After a few days in this environment, you realize that you most definitely could get used to a life of Genevese luxury.

SAVED BY SHALT-NOTS

Before you know it, you, too, would be coveting that 140-franc (£60 or $90) rhinestone collar for your dog with matching bling-tastic togs for yourself.

In fact, with all the money in the world, and no Calvinist self-restraint, you wouldn't make it out of Geneva alive.

You'd end up ODing on fondue and chocolate on a yacht on Lake Geneva, with a stripper on each limb and a bouquet up your backside (or you might end up like this guy).

Ironically, it's partly old-fashioned Protestant values—all those shalt-nots about idols, wasting money and showing off—that have made Calvin virtually unknown in the city once created in his image.

Back in the nineteenth century, Genevans considered building a giant statue of him out on the lake as an anti-libertine Statue of Liberty, but that was deemed, well, a bit much, so eventually his supporters had to make due with a hundred-meter Reformation Wall below the Old Town.

Geneva's godly Gang of Four stand front and center, led by Calvin with his sleeves rolled up like he's raring to come down and kick some apostate posterior, starting with the skateboarders and students snogging shamelessly in front of him on the very university campus he founded.

And as much as Jean praised music's ability to inflame men's hearts, you wonder what he'd think about the rock concerts inflaming their loins during the annual Fetes de Genève in front of the Reformation Wall.

The History of Sex: Geneva -- 'Fornicating Renegade Priests' -- (Chap. V, Pt. 5)

By 1541, Calvin's allies had come to power in Geneva and begged him to return, effectively granting him carte blanche to turn the republic into a Protestant theocracy.

By the time of his death in 1564, Calvin had vanquished the old guard of Geneva who resented 'that Frenchman,' his fellow foreigners, and his 'fornicating renegade priests.'

These free-spirited natives styled themselves the Children of Geneva, but Calvin denounced them as Libertines—giving us the modern meaning of the term—and ran their leaders out of town on pain of torture or execution.

Ironically, Catholic propagandists had invented a story that Calvin
had been branded as a sodomite before fleeing to Geneva

At the same time, he made Geneva an international safe haven for religious refugees.

These immigrants turned the 'Protestant Rome' into a center of artisanry and banking, with no fewer than forty printers cranking out Master Calvin's works as well as one of the first English translations of the Bible, compiled in part by the Scottish refugee John Knox.

The 'Geneva Bible' became the version read by Shakespeare and the one the Pilgrim Fathers took to America on the Mayflower, along with the founding principles of Calvinism.

Like its Catholic counterpart, though, the Protestant Rome had its excesses.

Calvin effectively ran Geneva as a religious dictatorship. As in much of Europe, torture was commonplace, though in Geneva's case it's ironic given the city's modern association with human rights.

It also doesn't seem much of a defense to argue that the self-styled City of God was as bad as everywhere else.

Geneva had already started cracking down before Calvin arrived, but the Reformer took the crusade against sin to Biblical extremes, outlawing prostitution (natch), but also premarital sex, dancing, immodesty, swearing, make-up and drinking in taverns.

In keeping with the rest of the Continent, heresy was a capital offence, but in Geneva that could take the form of simply disagreeing with Calvin.

The guy who complained about the Frenchman's 'fornicating renegade priests'—and was stupid enough to hang a placard on the pulpit where he preached—was tortured for a month and finally beheaded.

The History of Sex: Geneva -- Protesting Too Much?: From the 'Protestant Rome' to 'Le Petit Paris' -- (Chap. V, Pt. 1)

Chapter Five

PROTESTING TOO MUCH?

From the 'Protestant Rome' to 'Le Petit Paris' in Geneva 

'Twice a week is the woman's due.
Makes in a year twice fifty-two.' 

--ex-monk Martin Luther, the 'Father of the Reformation,' advising husbands on how to keep their wives happy, c1530 

At the same time that Renaissance men were turning Venice into the world's porn capital, a greater threat to Rome was gathering force on the far side of the Alps.

Whether it was Martin Luther getting hitched to a nun or Henry VIII getting rid of his wives, sex played a crucial role in the world-changing split between Catholics and Protestants.

Though mainly a spiritual movement, this other cultural 'Re-Birth' also focused on matters of the flesh: particularly the age-old debate about celibacy.

By establishing a rival 'City of God' on earth, the Reformation ended up revolutionizing sexual mores around the world, paving the way for gender equality and creating laws on marriage, divorce and sex crimes that survive to this day.

In 1510, a provincial German monk hiked 850 miles across the Alps during winter to make a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Rome.

Martin Luther soon returned disillusioned, not least because of the sexual hypocrisy he'd seen in the home of his Mother Church.

St. Peter's was on the verge of being rebuilt in the glorious incarnation we know today, financed partly by the proceeds from prostitution.

Sixtus IV, the man who commissioned the Sistine Chapel (hence its name), had also been the first Pope to tax prostitutes (and sanction the Spanish Inquisition).

And when that still wasn't enough, the Vatican stepped up its sale of indulgences, effectively doubling its money on whoremongers.