The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'I Don't Even Know What That Is' -- (Chapter IX, Part 14)

Likewise, whereas the modern view of homosexuality tends to focus on anal sex and penetration—one expert on 'Greek Love' dates this 'sodomania' from the Seventies—Beck's memoir is a reminder that gay relationships haven't always been about buggery.

Though we're conditioned to think of pederasty as a rite of passage, so to speak—even for heteros these days—many of Krafft-Ebing's homosexual correspondents claimed they preferred everything but anal.

That's not to say that sodomy wasn't part of the gay repertoire—Isherwood was an avid butt man, while Auden had to be treated for a 'rectal fissure'—but anal sex was far riskier before the discovery of penicillin (indeed, that's one theory why Judeo-Christians banned sodomy: to keep their 'chosen peoples' clean and infection-free).

OTHER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT

Recalling his first love, a fellow Zionist named Manfred, Gad says:

'Whatever we did, it was not much like gay sex as one thinks of it today, but then again, Manfred was not homosexual anyway. With him, as with many of the lovers my age, it was more about joy and fun and sharing hugs and caresses—to feel that the other person was just as aroused as you were… His parents and siblings noticed our relationship, but it didn't have to be talked about. Anyway, there really were other things to worry about.'

Like getting caught.

When Gad was finally captured near the end of the war with another lover, they were both interrogated by the Gestapo.

The officer torturing his friend Zwi taunted them: 'Did you fuck each other in the ass?'

Gad denied it and told him to also confirm it with his partner.

'And the man really did go back in to ask. The door was still ajar, and I could hear Zwi answer, surprised but truthfully, "No, I don't even know what that is."'

The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'A Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin' -- (Chapter IX, Part 13)

Amazingly, some gays managed to survive in the heart of the Reich.

One of the most extraordinary examples is Gad Beck, whose autobiography has an irresistible subtitle (Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin) and highlights just how much sexual attitudes have changed.

For example, he blithely recounts his first sexual encounter when he was nine or so—with his uncle, who was in his fifties:

'He put me on his lap and kissed me on both cheeks. And suddenly I felt that I was sitting on something! It was warm and firm and felt… well… nice. Nothing else happened. He smiled at me in a special way, mischievous and at the same time loving, which is why I tried to provoke these situations. For the first time, I had erotic feelings in that bottom of mine.'

After messing around with his schoolmates, Gad then had a one-off encounter with his PE teacher at the age of twelve.

'I embraced him and noticed that he was aroused as well. We caressed and rubbed against each other, not even all that much, and then we came, both of us.'

Later, when his mother asked how his day had been, he told her excitedly, 'Really nice. I hugged my gym teacher in the locker room. It was really fun.'

At this point, most modern parents would be on the phone to the police.

But Gad claims his mother 'was not at all upset: "Aha, I thought so," she answered dryly.'

Beck explains her response: 'Relationships between boys and girls were treated much more seriously.'

Mainly because of fears of pregnancy, but also Nazi laws on racial mixing.

'If something had happened with a girl in my class, I probably would have been afraid to say anything. But being affectionate with a male teacher? What could happen?... I came out, as you say nowadays, in a totally nonchalant fashion.'

It seems ironic that even the most liberal parents now, having grown up after both Sexual Revolutions, would act more conservatively than a bourgeois German mother in 1934.

The History of Sex: Berlin -- Well, Blow Me! -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 5)

As with the S&M tea in Paris, I was a little nervous about wandering into a basement of biker types where no one could hear me scream.

But Stephan assured me: 'If you don't want to do anything, all you have to do is turn away.'

Though he's Bavarian, Stephan speaks English like a wisecracking New Yorker, having acquired the accent from his first boyfriend: a Sephardic Jew from Brooklyn.

While we were at MORE, surrounded by men with their mothers' smiles, Stephan announced that he'd found a US publisher for his Sex Tips for Gays, though he wasn't sure it would sell.

'It has photos of men being fisted up to here'—he measured an imaginary arse mark at his elbow—'and of a penis with sperm flying everywhere. It's not something you ordinarily see in American books.'

It's not something I ordinarily visualize over dinner, either. Particularly not over Königsberger Klopse—meatballs smothered in cream.

BEND OVER!

But then Stephan isn't a mainstream writer.

His author's site includes a photo of him posing with his hand down his pants: you certainly don't get that on ianmcewan.com.

Swallowing another spoonful of creamy potato soup, Stephan informed me that he's also written several novels, as well as individual volumes on anal and oral sex, entitled Bend Over! and Blow Me!, and he's now hard at work on the third in the series, a guide to masturbation called Do It Yourself!

Not your usual DIY manual

'I've had to do a lot of research,' he said with a straight face.

Personally, I was amazed he had any strength left to type.

But I couldn't resist asking: 'Masturbation? How much is there to write?'

'Lots' was the inevitable reply. 'It's such a huge subject. Because everybody does it. It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight or married or single.'

Sadly, as a veteran of Europe's first Masturbate-a-thon, I reckon I could tell Stephan a thing or two about wanking.

When it comes to gay sex, though, I'm a virgin.

'Hedonism among gays is tragic,' he told me. 'Berlin has a very big party scene. You have 10, 15, 25 sex parties every day where you can do everything you could ever imagine. You can have sex round the clock, 365 days a year. What is true about Berlin is that you go out and get what you want and don't care much about anything else.'

* * *

The History of Sex: Berlin -- Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Phallus: Queer as Volk since 1897 -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 1)

Chapter Nine

DEUTSCHLAND, DEUTSCHLAND,

ÜBER PHALLUS

Queer as Volk since 1897

'Oh, if only you had never gone to Berlin!' 

--the sister of gay-rights pioneer Karl Ulrichs, 
when he publicly 'came out' around 1862

It's one a.m. on a sticky summer night in Berlin, and the annual Gay and Lesbian Street Festival is still going strong, marking the first night of Pride Week in the gay capital of Europe.

Over in the postcard part of town, between the Victory Column and Brandenburg Gate, the mainstream 'Love Parade' has long since come and gone, a techno-bacchanalia full of whistle-tweeting kids.

The Prussians erected the Victory Column, or Siegessaule,
to celebrate their military conquests;
it's now an adopted symbol of Berlin's triumphant gay community

But here in the leafy bits of Schöneberg, or 'Beauty Hill,' the party vibe is much more relaxed—grown-up, even.

Men, women and those in between are cavorting under the streetlights to salsa, disco and allsorts.

And if you venture into one of the many bars radiating off Nollendorfplatz, the atmosphere suddenly becomes very adult indeed.

In one hardcore hole-in-the-wall, the de facto dress code is rubber and leatherwear.

Guys with shaved heads and facial hair slug beer and eye each other up, surrounded by black bondage gear strung across the walls.

Handcuffs adorn the wood-beamed bar, along with a plastic statue of a man wearing a dog collar and an erection.

And if you tire of admiring that, a screen above the liquor is showing a cartoon of a clean-cut blonde playing with himself on a sofa while a couple of hard-bodied uniforms deliver a new PC.

The blonde guy climaxes just as they're walking by, and a splodge of ejaculate happens to hit one of the deliverymen in the face.

Rather than beat their customer to a pulp, he and his black co-worker start beating each other off.

The blonde begins taking it in turns to fellate the black guy and the brunette, and the trio end up humping in a daisy chain, with cartoon cum rocketing across the screen.

And if you turn your head—or, in my case, avert your eyes—another TV shows a live-action film of a woman slicing off a man's ear.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The Founder of the First Sexual Revolution -- (Chapter VIII, Part 35)

With his electrified shock of hair, hiss fairy stronk accent and screwball hypotheses, Wilhelm Reich (like Freud) would be laughable if so many people still didn't take him seriously.

In fact, one reason I've come to Vienna is to see the Jewish Museum's temporary exhibit in honor of the archetypal mad scientist.

Whereas Freud was a Victorian at heart, arguing that the libido had to be controlled to preserve society, his Galician disciple was a child of the sexed-up fin de siècle—'Willy' had started having sex with one of his family's maids when he was eleven, and both his parents had killed themselves over his mother's affair with one of his teachers.

Unlike his mentor in Vienna, Reich echoed Rousseau's view that humans were fundamentally good; it was society's hang-ups that were bad.

If people's libidos could be let off the leash, Reich argued, the world would be revolutionized: in fact, he coined the term 'Sexual Revolution' way back in 1930.

A couple of years later, the young psychoanalyst committed an unpardonable sin in Freud's eyes.

While the father of psychoanalysis had been exploring masochism with his daughter, he had also developed a new pet theory: the so-called 'death instinct,' the counterpart to the libido that drove humans to destruction.

Sacrilegiously, though, Reich had the audacity to debunk Freud's latest universal discovery, linking it to just one of many particular character traits.

Freud responded with the standard punishment for anyone who wouldn't kowtow to his godlike self-image: he had him excommunicated from the psychoanalytic church, using his masochistic daughter as his enforcer.

When Reich published his article on 'The Masochistic Character' in 1932, Freud tried to claim that he had written it 'in the service' of the Communist Party.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Anna Freud, Guinea Pig -- (Chapter VIII, Part 33)

As feted as he was at his death, though, Freud's legacy climaxed after the war.

His nephew taught his clients, namely the White House and major multinationals, to 'engineer consent' by appealing to the irrational sides of consumers.

Politically, this was meant to keep the masses in check and the Commies at bay. (Goebbels, Hitler's propagandist, had also hailed Bernays as an inspiration.)

By constantly stimulating people's irrational sides, though, companies conditioned them to behave more irrationally.

Consumers no longer looked to advertisements mainly for information but for entertainment.

Here we are now
entertain us

And as admen increasingly used sex to sell consumer goods, they created the modern concept of sex as a consumer good.

Meanwhile, Freud's daughter Anna was trying to set the world straight by re-educating the masses in America.

Unfortunately, she was profoundly screwed up herself.

As a young woman, Anna had been psychoanalyzed—not by one of Freud's colleagues—but by her father, whose analysis inevitably focused on sex.

Freud secretly used his favorite daughter as a guinea pig to develop his theories on masochism.

Without acknowledging that she was the subject in question (or her father the analyst), Anna later wrote a paper on 'Beating Fantasies and Daydreams' that told of a girl who'd supposedly fantasized about incest with her father, which then led to fantasies about being beaten when she was five or six years old.

And whenever she dreamt of being beaten, she would masturbate (not for nothing is it called 'beating off').

However, given Freud's dodgy ethics and obsession with sex, it's very likely that he planted these fantasies in the mind of his impressionable young daughter.

Anna admitted as much, noting in her paper that 'the girl never gave any detailed account of any individual scene of beating… which left to the analyst the task of completing and reconstructing a picture of the original situation.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- 'Habemus Papam!' -- (Chapter VIII, Part 26)

The reason Fliess was able to lead Freud around by the nose, so to speak, was because his friend thought that he, too, was 'on the scent' of a world-changing discovery.

Building on Charcot's cockeyed theories about sex and hysteria, Freud tackled another ambiguous 'disease' that was all the rage at the time.

A doctor in the US had coined the term 'neurasthenia' to describe a general state of nervousness in modern society caused by factors ranging from rapid urbanization to, um, religious freedom.

But Freud declared to Fliess that the one and only cause of this neurosis (nicknamed 'Americanitis') was an abnormal sex life, specifically masturbation and coitus interruptus (predictably, Fliess thought that wanking also caused inflammation of the nose). 

Of course, onanism had long had a bad rap in Judeo-Christian culture—there was even a theory of 'masturbational insanity' at the time—but Freud managed to convince himself he was onto something new.

He began routinely interrogating his patients about their sexual habits and soon jumped to a truly shocking conclusion: all neurotics had been molested as children by their parents.

'Sending a a woman to a Freudian therapist
is not so far distant from sending a Jew to a Nazi.'
--Gloria Steinem

The myth created by Freud—and perpetuated to this day in books and museums—is that he deduced this from what his patients were telling him.

The reality, though, is that he prodded and bullied them into telling him what he wanted to hear, forcing them (in his own words) to focus on 'repressed sexual ideas in spite of all their protestations.'

A case in point involved a woman who supposedly had symptoms of hysteria: namely, a speech impediment, with cracks and eczema around her mouth.

BUSINESS RULE #1: NEVER PEEVE THE BILL-PAYER

Freud outlined his tortuous thinking, noting that both the patient and her father spoke as if their mouths were full.

'Habemus papam!' he exclaimed.

In what must be an early example of a Freudian slip, the doctor said he 'thrust the explanation at her.'

Much to the patient's surprise, and without any evidence whatsoever, Freud informed her that her dad had forced her to give him fellatio as a girl—and that was why she now had cracked lips and talked funny. 

Unfortunately, he noted, the woman then 'committed the folly of questioning the old man himself,' and her father swore he was innocent.

Most likely he swore a good deal at Freud, too.

The doctor quickly realized that although sex talk with women was good for business (and more pleasurable than he ever admitted), accusing the men who paid their bills of molesting them wasn't.

More importantly, Freud noted that his own siblings were also high-strung, raising inevitable questions about his own papam.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- But Did She Stop Masturbating? -- (Chapter VIII, Part 25)

Now, having already made a charlie of himself a decade earlier, you'd think Freud would have learned his lesson about cocaine.

On the contrary, he had a lingering fascination with the drug, compounded by his lifelong inability to admit mistakes, ruining at least one more life in the process.

In 1895, he diagnosed a female patient as suffering from Fliess' made-up disease, supposedly caused by masturbation.

A myth with legs:
reminiscent of Fliess' theory that the nose contains 'genital spots',
this 'nasal delivery technology' was supposed to boost your sex life --
before the UK authorities banned the ads for being 'crass'
Getty Images

The two doctors decided that Fliess had to come to Vienna to remove a bone in the thirty-year-old's nasal cavity.

The problem was, Fliess didn't have much surgical experience.

So if you're squeamish, look away now…

Considering that Emma Eckstein underwent completely unnecessary, life-threatening surgery at the hands of an inexperienced quack, it's not all that surprising that the patient developed problems soon after Fliess had left Vienna.

She was in severe pain, hemorrhaging repeatedly and secreting a noxious fluid.

Oh—and her head started to emit a 'fetid odor,' as Freud recounted later in a letter to Fliess.

Partners in crime: Freud and Fliess in the 1890s

After she'd already been suffering for two weeks, Freud finally called in another surgeon friend who cleaned the wound, 'removed some sticky blood clots, and suddenly pulled at something like a thread, (and) kept on pulling. Before either of us had time to think, at least half a meter of gauze had been removed from the cavity. The next moment came a flood of blood. The patient turned white, her eyes bulged, and she had no pulse.'

'I felt sick,' Freud continued—no doubt at the sight of his career dying before his eyes—and admitted that he had to leave the room.

While the surgeon battled to stop the hemorrhaging, Freud had a cognac to recover to his default position and blame somebody else: not his dear friend Fliess, who had carelessly left nearly two feet of gauze up the patient's nose, but the subsequent surgeon who'd actually saved the woman's life.

'He should immediately have thought, There is something inside; I shall not pull it out lest there be a hemorrhage,' Freud claimed.

Remarkably, the poor patient had remained conscious during the ordeal.

'When I returned to the room somewhat shaky,' the doctor reported with typical self-regard, 'she greeted me with the condescending remark, "So this is the strong sex."'

The redoubtable woman underwent further surgery and wound up permanently disfigured.

Despite all this, Freud continued to swear by his friend—and claim that in actuality it was the woman's hysteria that caused her to hemorrhage to 'entice' Freud to pay attention to her.

For his part, Fliess went on to publish a monograph on The Relations Between the Nose and the Female Sexual Organs from the Biological Aspect.

One reviewer, noting Fliess' claim that diseased tonsils made children cross-eyed, condemned the book as 'disgusting gobbledygook:'

'In not a few places the reader has the impression that the author is making fun of him.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Bona Fide Freaks -- (Chapter VIII, Part 4)

And on and on—and on—it goes, case after Germanically detailed case of characters who would make headlines today but also make you wonder whether sex as we know it (or not) has changed at all since the nineteenth century.

On the one hand, for instance, there's one of Krafft-Ebing's early patients, a twenty-year-old farmer's daughter who couldn't stop masturbating.

The doctor tried hydrotherapy and various 'methods of coercion' to cure her before realizing the real reason she could never scratch her very particular itch: she was infested with maggots.

On the other hand, many of his 'perverts' are easily recognizable as our sexual ancestors, in spirit if not in deed: there are hordes of homosexuals (including sailors cottaging in public toilets and gay-for-pay soldiers), cross-dressing men and women (such as an officer who dressed up in a pink tutu), child killers and animal abusers (including a fowl-torturer known to prostitutes as 'Mr. Chicken'), proto-pony boys, leather fetishists, assorted sadists and people who enjoyed fisting (one man fantasized about inserting his arm, 'all the way up to the shoulder blade, into a woman's vagina') and genital torture (a captain forced his lover 'to place leeches on her genitals before coitus… The woman finally became very anemic and, as a result, insane').

BUT ONLY WITH THEIR LEFT FEET

Not to mention the bona fide freaks: a merchant who masturbated 'by means of a pocket electric battery' and orgasmed by burning holes in women's clothes on the street… a man who would have a woman lie down in a ball gown and then ambush her ('he jumped on top of her and defecated on her breasts… while doing this, he ejaculated')… a misogynist who murdered an old woman and was about to flog the corpse but 'was unable to do so because of his conscience; he therefore cut off the breasts and genitalia with a knife, cooked them at home, and ate them')… a physician who'd been introduced to medicine by his family doctor, who'd also masturbated with him as a boy and shown him their sperm under the microscope ('he dilated my anus with instruments')… a civil servant attracted to women who limped but only with their left feet… and finally the case of X, a man who 'only loved men with large, bushy moustaches':

'One day he met his ideal. He invited him home, but was unspeakably disappointed when the man removed an artificial moustache. Only when the visitor returned the ornament to his upper lip did he exercise his charm over X once more and restored X to complete virility.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- An Encyclopedia of Perversion -- (Chapter VIII, Part 3)

Though by no means immune to the crackpottery of his day, the truth is that Krafft-Ebing strove to understand sexual deviance in keeping with a motto recited to him by a masochist: 'to understand all is to cure all.'

His compassion helped persuade courts to take a more lenient approach toward many acts that aren't even classed as perversions anymore, let alone sex crimes.

In his mid-forties, the esteemed psychiatrist published a book that repulsed much of the medical establishment—and is still quite shocking now.

Psychopathia Sexualis was a bewildering compendium of case studies gleaned from Krafft-Ebing's own experience as well as medical texts, compiled in one easy-to-read encyclopedia of perversion.

The first edition, published in 1886, covered fifty-one case studies in just over 100 pages. By the time Krafft-Ebing died in 1902, the twelfth edition had swollen to more than 300 cases—a fraction of the 20,000 he'd accumulated.

Krafft-Ebing countered accusations of porn-mongering by arguing that his work would help doctors and lawyers assess sex crimes in court.

To prove it, he fig-leafed the dirty bits in Latin.

In contrast, the editor of my modern edition has not only helpfully translated the Latin into English, but also set them in boldface type, supposedly 'to illustrate Krafft-Ebing's editorial choices of what he found to be "particularly revolting".'

Not out of prurience, of course.

THE CASE OF Z

Case 81, profiling a Russian masochist called Z, gives an idea of the material:

'What oppressed him was the unnatural desire, recurring every four weeks, for mictio mulieris in os suum—' 

Or in my genital-warts-and-all version—'a woman to urinate in his mouth.'

'Puerum decem annos agens serva educatrix libidine mota ad corpus suum appressit et digitum ei in vaginam introduxit.' 

'When he was ten years old, his nurse, on a libidinous impulse, clutched him against her body and put his finger into her vagina.' 

'Quum postea fortuitu digito nasum tetigit, odore ejus valde delectatus fuit.' 

'When he happened to touch his nose with his finger later, the smell was intensely pleasurable to him.' 

'This immoral act developed into a lustful fantasy that made him believe he was lying bound inter femora mulieris cumbere—'

'—between a woman's thighs—'

'—coactus ut dormiat sub ejus podice et ut bibat ejus urinam.'

'—and forced to sleep under her buttocks and drink her urine.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Of Pinceurs and Zopfabschneiders -- (Chapter VIII, Part 2)

Before Freud began seducing the West, though, Europe produced a boom in sex research that belies the buttoned-up stereotypes of the nineteenth century.

The Industrial Revolution forced millions of people to migrate to the cities, freeing individuals to make like-minded acquaintances outside their families.

Rather than having to suffer as 'the only pervert in the village,' a person with unconventional kinks could find entire clandestine villages of 'perverts' in the big city.

And faced with this perceived increase in 'perversions'—and their attendant diseases—doctors endeavored to work out whether deviance was inborn or induced: was it breeding or city living that drove people crazy? 

Inevitably, these medicine men framed their diagnoses in the technological (and sexist) metaphors of their time.

In fact, like the old nature-versus-nurture argument, you can still hear people repeating them today.

Doctors concluded that the human body was a complex machine, and sex a uniquely powerful form of energy. To keep the machine from overheating or breaking down, regular releases of energy were necessary.

Conversely, if a body had too much sex—or the wrong sort (viz: masturbation)—the whole thing could blow.

And if that happened to enough people, well, civilization itself could bump and grind to a halt.

The most famous sex expert was a German-Austrian aristocrat who's barely remembered now.

If mentioned at all, Richard von Krafft-Ebing is often vilified as an obsessive cataloguer of 'perversions,' a doctor who created the sexual categories we still live with today.

At a time when the world seemed to be going sex-mad, it was a roly-poly Catholic with kind eyes who crafted the straitjackets.

To be sure, Krafft-Ebing and his fellow sexperts had a tendency to get carried away: besides inventing terms that we still use ('heterosexuality,' 'homosexuality,' 'exhibitionism' and 'pedophilia'), they came up with plenty more that we don't, such as pinceur (a perv who pinched women) and the presumably extinct Zopfabschneider (a perv who chopped off women's hairbuns).

With their Germanic knack for nomenclature, it's a wonder they never minted a term for 'Doctors Who Get Their Kicks Conducting Dodgy Sex Studies in the Name of Research,' such as the gynecologist in Berlin who beavered away, examining 1,000 women—it's hard work, but somebody's got…—to conclude what most of us would have guessed already: that a woman's hair color often matches her pubic follicles.

(The world's still awaiting a follow-up study on men).

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Milukman and Muslim Porn -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 24)

In analyzing the adventures of the 'new Tintin,' an arch-conservative journalist (and Flemish separatist) noted that the case was the latest in a series of sleaze scandals.

'Morality has gone berserk all over Europe, but nowhere to the same degree as in Belgium,' he claimed. 'If Europe ever "belgianizes", i.e. becomes a state without a real nation, it will end up as the same moral cesspit that Belgium is today.'

As entertaining as Belgium-bashing may be, I'm sure there are plenty of Belguel types in other countries: I've even arranged a rendezvous with one in Paris.

ENTER MILUKMAN

'I think that Belguel guy was mad,' my contact says, though many people would say he's not so sane himself. 

The mystery man across from me is known to hordes of adoring wankers only as 'Milukman,' the founder of websites specializing in what some Westerners refer to as 'Muslim porn'—a deeply offensive term in its own right, especially when pornographers make puns on the word 'submissive' in the S&M sense and the literal meaning of Muslim as 'one who submits.'

Milukman's flagship site is Beurettes Rebelles, a beurette being any French-speaking girl of Arabic or North African extraction, particularly if she hails from one of the immigrant sink estates, or banlieues, on the outskirts of Paris.

For around €350 (less than $500), Milukman's French-Arab 'rebels' willingly subject themselves to varying degrees of humiliation: some masturbate in close-up—with or without the aid of 'fucking machines'—while others limit themselves to oral and anal sex (saving their vaginas for their loved ones), and a hardcore group of wannabe porn stars put their every orifice at the director's disposal.

But all the 'rebel beurettes' have one thing in common: they start off wearing nothing but their birthday suits… and a black veil.

'The veil is my brand—it's my marketing,' Milukman explains.

However, it's not a hijab, he adds.

Although it may look like sacrilege, Beurettes Rebelles features a disclaimer declaring that its inspiration is the (misogynistic) classic, A Thousand and One Nights, in which a courtesan tells a king a cliffhanger each night to avoid execution in the morning:

'Thus no religious character should be attributed to these veils,' the site states.

In fact, Milukman claims the beurettes' black headdress came from a costume store.

'It's a veil like Scheherazade wore.'

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Islam and the Pretty-Faced Sadist -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 22)

With their emphasis on 'safe words' and sex 'play,' most self-styled sadists today are anemic imitations of the real Marquis.

Like their namesake, genuine sadists probably wind up in prison—though more than a few walk freely among us.

In the maiden years of the new millennium, a modern Sade began posting Internet photos of his holidays to Morocco humiliating Muslim women.

Styling himself 'Belguel'—which sounds like 'pretty face'—the Francophone sex tourist boasted that he hadn't even had to pay the women for their services.

The girls he picked up on the streets of Agadir willingly submitted to being sodomized (and worse) because they believed he would whisk them to Europe.

'These sluts are so naïve. If you promise to marry them and take them with you to Brussels they do whatever you ask,' he wrote, alongside a photo of one of the eighty or so women he'd conned into posing for him.

Many of his unwitting victims were single (though some were married) and most were plain.

'NO BETTER DRUG'

In a typical sequence, one of Belguel's prettier victims, a dark-skinned woman with a sweet face, smiles shyly for the camera in a stonewashed jacket and denim skirt.

Before you know it, she's bent over a sofa with her skirt hitched up and her knickers around her knees, spreading her backside.

And that's just the beginning.

In the next photo, she's kneeling naked with a bondage gag in her mouth and her hands tied behind her back.

Belguel has wrapped a rope around her neck, chest and groin and clamped nipple clips on her breasts.

He stands over her, gripping the tail of the rope like a dog lead, having removed his trousers and underpants. He then proceeds to urinate in the bound woman's face (having placed a metal pot in her lap to protect the furnishings).

In another shot, she's wearing a hijab and silk gown, leaving only her face exposed while she kneels and the white man masturbates to completion in her eyes.

In the original series,
the face of Belguel's victim is clearly visible
(I've edited this photo)

'Look at this girl, her face is covered with two liquids. She didn't like it very much, but she said she was open to learning anything new from the West,' jeered the anonymous correspondent.

In an entry reminiscent of Sade and his era's fascination with nuns, Belguel bragged: 'There is no better drug than to ejaculate on the veiled face of a woman.'

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The Bee Gees and the Terribly Nice Sadists -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 21)

I should point out that all this is taking place to a surreal, disco-riffic soundtrack of ABBA, Barry White and the Bee Gees.

Next door, a greyheaded man has lashed his partner to the X-shaped cross of St. Andrew.

She's pantyless and facing the wall, the taut skin on her face contrasting suspiciously with the flaccidity of her backside—if only they did Botox for buttocks.

As the old boy flails her with twirls and whirlybirds and other tricks of the whip, she gasps 'Oui! Oui!' and even 'Encore! Encore!' while the 'Walrus of Love' croons 'Let the Music Play.'

One voyeur starts grooving in unison—before stopping self-consciously.

Steve and Fanny have disappeared from the bar, and I wander upstairs to see if they're still here.

I turn the corner to have a look in the bedroom and—whoa!—see more of Sex Action Man than I ever wanted.

Steve is naked, kneeling with his butt to the doorway, while Fanny whips him between the legs… and gazes over his shoulder at me.

I shrink away.

TOO MUCH HEAVEN?

By now, the air in the club is the usual Metro stew of alcohol, sweat, smoke and garlic, plus a queasy soupcon of bodily secretions.

Over in the ob-gyn clinic, the bulbous woman with the trussed tits—she of the hot-waxed nipples—is lying on the examination table, her feet in the stirrups.

'Le Marquis Noir' guides a rotund blonde into the room and positions her between the patient's legs.

She begins administering cunnilingus, while the black woman's fat, ponytailed boyfriend kisses and fondles her and the usual crowd gathers round.

One of them starts humming along with the lush melody winding its way up the stairs.

(To answer that timeless question posed by the Bee Gees, I'm guessing the lickee's love is about six inches deep.)

Out in the hall, I've been cornered by a little guy with porthole glasses and a tubby sidekick wearing a toupee that wouldn't fool a blind man.

The elderly fellow in specs pauses to put on a tight leather glove, as if preparing for a rectal probe.

'What's that for?' I ask.

He blinks at me obviously and nods toward the blonde. 'For ze lay-dee.'

Ohhhhh.

Back in his shiny fetishwear, Sex Action Man materializes out of the funk, ready and more than willing to assist in Operation Ecstasy.

Steve's standing behind the kneeling woman with his arms at the ready, and at some mysterious signal—maybe it's a nod from the Marquis, maybe it's the beginning of 'Too Much Heaven (Nobody Gets Too Much Love Anymore)'—Steve sticks his fingers up the latex expanse of the fat woman's skirt.

She doesn't balk—then again, her tongue's otherwise engaged—so he enlists another guy to lift up her skirt with a plastic snap! and Steve's hand disappears up her bottom.

Despite the black woman's moans of ecstasy, after many minutes of lap licking, it becomes clear she can't muster up a crowd-pleasing climax.

Her boyfriend asks the blonde to stop.

'I'm doing my best,' she protests.

'Thank you, but I think she's had enough.'

And with that, the Terribly Nice Sadists disperse.

* * *

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The Chanel No. 5 of Coition -- (Chap. VII, Pt 20)

Drink Three 

It's taken me a while (maybe I'm not so clever after all), but I finally realize: the Marquis' Tea is basically a sex club with spanking—lots of spanking.

I've been driven out of the writer's room by a couple of old folks who look better suited to sunshine and grandchild-dandling than black leather and shagging in public.

Maybe they're the last big bang of the Baby Boomers, the generation that turned youthfulness into a religion.

As I left, gramps was spasming against granny—Forever young!!!!!—while a younger voyeur with bulgy eyes played with himself in his leotard.

Over in the bedroom, someone has taken up the fellatee's offer and is taking his girlfriend from the rear while remaining fully clothed himself.

He's pounding her so hard she's grunting 'Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!' with each impact: it's a wonder the guy on the bed isn't crying 'Teeth! Teeth! Teeth!'

I'm standing right next to the paunchy love machine, but no matter how close I get (close enough to know he's wearing a condom), it's decidedly unsexy.

Mind you, I've never been one for spectator sports.

He and the girl are giving it their porn-star best, with him going 'Unh! Unh!' and her going 'Ooh! Ooh!'—except it comes out as Mlmooh! Mlmooh! because she's moaning with her mouth full.

Maybe it would help if I faked interest, too: Go on, my son! Allez! ALLEZ! ALLEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZ!

But I don't want to throw them off their stride, if only for the sake of the guy with his bits in the sharp end.

And I doubt the Mexican wave would go down well here, either.

The Frenchman at the rear finishes with a rather subdued groan, orgasming in public with the old Unh!-Unh!-UNNNNNNHHHHHHHHH! combination—a classic, that; the Chanel No. 5 of coition—and the black girl collapses with a whimper, pawing at her master's chest, while the other white guy winkles the rubber off his winkie.

Some time later, the girl and her master emerge from the den.

She's surprisingly young and pretty; not so surprisingly, she's a little unsteady on her feet.

'So how did that turn out?' Steve asks me down in the bar.

'Put it this way—it's a miracle she can walk.'

He leans across Fanny's fanny to speak with me, man to man.

'Did you—did you see if she took it up the ass?'

I stare at him dumbstruck. 'I—I honestly couldn't say.'

So much for me and my eye for detail.

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- 'Most Other Clubs Are Sordid' -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 19)

To spare you the literal blow-by-blow—and in homage to the Marquis' love of theatre, I'll call what follows Les Cochons et Moi: A Farce in Three Drinks.

Drink One

In the dingy, red-lit room, a couple of men are beating some faceless woman's backside.

At first, I think she must be wearing tights—I'd certainly want padding—but she's actually black, and while her bare behind is being abused, she's simultaneously going down on a white guy stretched out on the worn, satin bedspread.

The main spanker is beating not just her gluteus maximus but also everything inbetweenus, like a man who can't tell a pussy from a cat-o'-nine tails.

Meanwhile, his compadre is thwacking his penis against the girl's butt to try to get an erection.

And behind them, a gaggle of us are crowding around somberly, in a scene that somehow reminds me of an old oil painting of medical students receiving a lesson in human anatomy: Masters Thumpcock and Witherdick Demonstrating to Esteemed Gentlemen How to Give a Slag a Bloody Good Hiding.

I bump into Steve on my way out.

'It's really good here, isn't it?' he says. 'Most other clubs are sordid.'

Drink Two

Down in the bar, Fanny has a special request for Oda: she wants to borrow the red whip from behind the bar.

'I'd really like to try this on you,' she tells me, her smoke-cured chords doing their best approximation of a purr. 'I like to dominate clever men—not stupid, rubbish men. Men who have something in their heads.'

To which I guess I'm meant to clap my hands to my face and gasp: Well, golly! Seeing's how you've flattered my intelligence, I suppose I could let you take out your anger toward men by whaling on me! But not to a pulp—I'm not stupid, you know!

In the upper room, most of the men are massaging their limp appendages—or maybe they're just really small; it's hard to tell in this light.

One has managed to ejaculate across the black girl's back (note to self: avoid puddles), but she's still noshing away on the white guy and being paddled by all comers.

Even a shy Asian guy gets in an occasional slap, in between spanking his own privates.

On the bed, the recipient of the world's longest blow job lifts his head languorously to address the strangers: 

'Does anybody want to fuck her?'

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 -- A Poor Little Aristocrat -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 7)

However, Finn's relativism echoes that of Sade's defenders.

His most acclaimed biographer, Francine du Plessix Gray, spends the first sixty pages of At Home with the Marquis de Sade creating a sympathetic portrait of her subject: a poor little aristocrat with a rich pedigree (one ancestor was Petrarch's muse)… neglected by his frigid mother and bisexual father (they didn't even attend his baptism)… fobbed off on his uncle, a womanizing priest in Provence (who loved the troubadours)… spoiled rotten by his relatives… a brave but laddish officer… and finally married off to a plain wife for money... comme ci, comme ça—pretty much the routine for an eighteenth-century aristo.

Next thing you know, though, little Donatien-Alphonse-Francoise de Sade is tormenting a pregnant prostitute in a rented house outside Paris, boasting about cramming communion wafers up a woman's holiest of holies and wanking into a chalice while blaspheming the Virgin as a 'bugger,' God the Father as a 'motherfucker' and shouting 'If thou art God, avenge thyself!'

That bit of funmaking earned Sade three weeks in the clink in 1763.

Five years later, after much infidelity interspersed with marital bliss (including a few children), Sade was back in Paris, this time picking up a part-timer and taking her to a little house where he proceeded to masturbate while flogging her with a bundle of cane and a cat-o-nine tails; if she refused, he told her, he'd kill her and bury her in the garden.

During a break, the prostitute tied the bedsheets together and escaped out the window to report him to the police.

Glamorized misogyny:
sexing up Sade's crimes

The crime scandalized the nation, not least because he'd done all this on Easter Sunday, seemingly mocking the flagellation of Christ.

Without any aristocratic friends to protect him, Sade's whipping of the prostitute turned him into a whipping boy for the bourgeoisie.

Even so, he spent only seven months in jail.

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- 'The Last Slave of the Marquis de Sade' -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 6)

Like most of its neighbors in this fractious territory, Lacoste is built on a hill for self-defense and hewn from a tawny stone that glows in the sunshine, its dwellings protected from the elements by tile roofs and timber shutters.

Mysteriously, though, it's escaped the gentrification that's transformed its immediate rivals.

Whereas Bonnieux and Menerbes boast upmarket shops and restaurants, barely 200 souls live in Lacoste—nearly half of them outsiders—and its few streets are little more than petrified pathways winding down the hillside.

Even with the festival under way, Lacoste seems all but deserted.

As for Sadeian touches, there is a gay restaurant called 'Loofoc,' but that refers to a 'seal' rather than cottaging, and the inevitable Café de Sade is just a drab café-cum-newsagents.

'Am I missing something?' I ask Finn.

He assures me there are no secret S&M rings in the village; they don't even get many BDSM pilgrims here. 'Sade's not marketed at all.'

As a pacifist vegetarian and recovering alcoholic, he's probably the least likely defender of sadism you could find.

However, just as Sade's wife stuck by him for years, aiding and abetting him, you can't help but wonder if the Marquis appeals to his admirers' inner masochist.

The local schoolteacher who first started restoring the chateau—his widow passed it on to Cardin—used to claim he was 'the last slave of the Marquis de Sade.'

Now that dubious honor seems to have been passed to an Irish gardener whose scraggly cap of black curls makes him look like a friendly labradoodle.

Or maybe I've got Finn all wrong.

'A few of the things that brought Sade down was that he went into a church and took a Eucharist and a chalice,' he explains nonchalantly.

'And he put the Eucharist in a woman's vagina and had sex with her and challenged God. He also masturbated into the chalice. But so what? Big deal. Nowadays, people are going into churches all over the world and stealing stuff and breaking them.'

Somehow that doesn't seem like the same thing at all.

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- So Who's This Jesus Geezer? -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 4)

Facetiousness aside, the fact that a former prima ballerina of the Paris Opera Ballet can mount a choreographed bondage-fest out in the sticks—with the blessing of a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts—shows just how far BDSM culture has penetrated the mainstream.

The perversions of yore have become commonplace: for all I know, half the provincials in this Provençal audience are wearing nipple rings.

Artistically, though, there's nothing exciting about Sade, the dance version.

At one point, a witless murder inspires the inmates to hang the long-haired deceased a la Crucifixion (minus the traditional loincloth)—a scene that would be a lot more shocking if Europe weren't a couple of generations away from schoolchildren asking in art history: 'So who's this Jesus geezer, then?'

It's all a bit passé.

Like most modern takes on Sade the Legend, though, the ballet doesn't reflect the deeply repugnant reality that was Sade the Man.

Standing only five-foot-two, the real-life aristo was pint-sized even by the vertically challenged standards of his day.

And although handsome in his youth, by the time he turned to porn in his late forties he was so fat from guzzling wine and sweets in jail that he could hardly dress himself, let alone walk.

Though no portraits of the Marquis survive from his porn years,
Man Ray was probably right in imagining him like this...

...rather than this (a portrait of Sade in his twenties,
before he turned to writing porn)

Still, that didn't stop him from trying to keep up appearances.

Having already impoverished his wife, he continued to demand silk hair ribbons, face powder by the pound and custom-made dildos so he could sodomize himself—as well as plenty of ointment to soothe his hemorrhoids.

No wonder the legendary Marquis actually had to pay most of the people he ever slept with.

Somehow, though, the cynical, one-handed musings of this gluttonous powder puff not only presaged modern views on sexuality but also shaped them, reinforcing France as the ne plus ultra of all things sexy.

* * *