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How to seduce a friend who has a boyfriend and otherwise wouldn’t sleep with you.
Step Four: Remove all your clothes and break into your friend’s house.
Step Five: Use the knife to cut your body in various places. Avoid the face. If possible, focus on your back. The more blood the better.
This is weird and disturbing and awesome. (via 3qd)
In this video, the NY Times profiles a pair of Pakistani brothers who run a business in Karachi designing and manufacturing bondage and fetish wear. As you’ll see in the video, many of the firm’s employees are unaware of what they’re making. (thx, andrew)
Gay Talese is writing a new book about his marriage to Nan A. Talese, a union that was almost ruined by a previous book Gay wrote about the sexual revolution.
The book, originally published in 1980, is about the sexual revolution, which Talese believed would be the most important cultural shift in decades, and which he spent most of the seventies intimately researching. It’s the research itself — particularly Talese’s tendency to take the participant-observer concept to the extreme — that turned out to be the unintended legacy of the project. “If you want to write about orgies,” says Talese, who at 77 is still slim and handsome, “you’re not going to be in the press box with your little press badge keeping your distance. You have to have a kind of affair with your sources. You have to hang out! I wanted to write about sexuality and the changing definition of morality. Maybe if I had put that in a subhead on the cover I might have gotten a better hearing.”
As detailed in a 1973 New York article (written seven years before Talese’s book came out), part of Talese’s research included managing two massage parlors, living in a California sex commune for six months, and attending orgies.
Erika La Tour Eiffel, betrothed two years ago to the pointy Parisian landmark, is an objectophiliac, someone who feels intense sexual desire toward inanimate objects.
Emma (not her real name), 43, the only British member of the community, suffers from Asperger syndrome — a condition which seems to be shared by around half of OS people. Asperger sufferers often have difficulties forming relationships with other people, and Emma’s fixations are radios and hi fis. When I met her, she was in love with a hi-fi system which she called Jake. Jake, she says, is “solid, reliable and beautiful”. She repairs “him” when he goes wrong, and “makes love” to him on average twice a day. “This is the way I communicate with him.”
(via cynical-c)
At the Shibuya Pink Girl’s Club in Tokyo, men pay upwards of $130 to grope the girl of their choice on a simulated subway train.
The connoisseur picks out from the menu the girl of his choice, dressed either as a schoolgirl or office receptionist. This girl then beckons him through the window of a mock-up train carriage, which not only broadcasts station announcements, but even shakes and rattles.
Real-life incidents of subway train groping are on the decline, in part because more women are reporting them and the subway offering women-only cars during peak times.
This is NSFW if very squeaky balloon animal sex is not safe to view at your workplace. Unsafe perhaps, but hilarious. (via siege, also NSFW)
Can I interest madame in a $2000 vibrator?
The base of the vibrator is encircled with a stunning “eternity” band of 28 round-cut black diamonds.
Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a recovering sex addict. As part of his rehab process, he wrote a note from the addict inside of his head:
I will make Benoit lie and manipulate and chase sex every hour of every day, until he can’t feel anything anymore, until everything good and decent about him is removed. He needs me. His life is boring when I’m not in charge. I control him. I keep him numb so he can function. I make him feel good, and I make him feel worthless. The minute he steps out of this stupid rehab, I’ll start whispering in his ear. That’s all it takes — whispers. I win. I ALWAYS win.
A columnist for the Financial Times signs up for Illicit Encounters, a site for people who want to have affairs, and finds that there are lots of men from the financial sector trolling for a bit on the side.
He said that, in a recession, people wanted hugs. This struck me as a pretty feeble explanation. Surely there are easier ways of getting hugs than putting one’s marriage on the line? Hugging one’s children or — if one is desperate — even one’s spouse might seem easier and safer.
He said that this was just the point: that the risk was the lure. That bankers are suffering from a risk deficit: their working lives have been derisked compulsorily and this could be a way of compensating by adding risk to their private lives.
Who’s gonna make the “Bankers Want Risky Hugs” tshirts? (via mr)
Update: Aaaaaaand, here’s the shirt.
Lawyers representing Roman Polanski have asked a California judge to dismiss the statutory rape case against him because of evidence presented in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a documentary about the case, that the judge in the original case engaged in unethical and unlawful behavior.
Tuesday’s filing said Judge Rittenband, who is now dead, intentionally violated a plea agreement with Mr. Polanski after having engaged in what it called “repeated unethical and unlawful ex parte communications” with a deputy district attorney who was not involved in the prosecution, but was independently advising the judge.
Several folks on Twitter are talking about post-election sex and Obama babies (children conceived on election night…mark your calendars for late July 2009). The consensus seems to be that Barack got laid in a big way last night.
The confessions of a first-time naked sushi model.
As the reality of what I’d gotten myself into set in, I began to have doubts. Maybe my parents were correct and I was, in fact, an absolute loon. Who the fuck does this? Maybe I should have avoided the spicy food at lunch. What if these freaking booties cause my toes to cramp? What if I twitch my arms? What if I look terrible in this position? What if I can’t stop myself from laughing my ass off?
If you live in NYC, you can give the naked sushi thing a try. NSFW.
In lean times, men look for women who can work and in times of plenty, they want women who can reproduce.
The Environmental Security Hypothesis says that in tough times men will prefer women who are good at production, generally older, taller, heavier, less curvaceous women with less body fat. In good times, they will prefer women who are good at reproduction, generally younger, shorter, lighter, more curvaceous women.
A pair of social psychologists looked for signs of this in the pages of Playboy magazine.
Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.
High-end prostitutes see an uptick in business — for a few months anyway — during times of financial hardship and crisis.
Their clients were coming to them for a mix of escape and encouragement. As Jean, a New Yorker and a 35-year-old former paralegal turned “corporate escort” (her description) told me, “I had about two dozen men who started doubling their visits with me. They couldn’t face their wives, who were bitching about the fact they lost income. Men want to be men. All I did was make them feel like they could go back out there with their head up.”
Indeed, forty percent of encounters between high-end prostitutes don’t involve sex…like therapy with occasional benefits.
This Harper’s article from 2005 compares the food porn of the Food Network to regular porn.
Eventually, Tyler and the housewife would go cheek to cheek, lean forward, open their mouths, taste the chicken and rice, and melt into a flushed-face, simultaneous food swoon. When the inevitable sequence finally rolled, the editor kept looping their wet mouths and rapt faces as they pushed forkful after forkful of arroz con pollo past their lips, chewed, and swallowed-and pushed and chewed and swallowed again and again. “Classic porn style,” said Nitke. “They’re stretching the moment out, the orgasmic moment. In porn they’ll take a cum shot and run it in an endless loop.”
That must have been a fun one to write. See also: Food Network star or porn star? (via serious eats)
Update: Here’s an interview with the author about the article. (thx, jim)
Short film: Blow Job by Andy Warhol. Mostly SFW…it’s just the face of the recipient. Here’s some info on the film.
When Andy Warhol decided to shoot Blow Job, he rang Charles Rydell and asked him to star in it, telling him that “all he’d have to do was lie back and then about five different boys would come in and keep on blowing him until he came,” but that the film would only show his face.
Charles agreed, but when he didn’t show up for the following Sunday afternoon shoot, Andy reached him at Jerome Hill’s suite at the Algonquin and screamed into the phone “Charles! Where are you?” Charles responded: “What do you mean, where am I? You know where I am - you called me,” and Andy the said “We’ve got the camera ready and the five boys are all here, everything’s set up!” Charles’s shocked reply was: “Are you crazy? I thought you were kidding. I’d never do that!”
Panopticist has a quick round-up (with clips) of a few adult movies inspired by the films of Stanley Kubrick.
There have been several other porn films inspired by Kubrick’s oeuvre, including Spermacus, 2002: A Sex Odyssey, Thighs Wide Shut, and A Clockwork Orgy.
NSFW.
Corrections to last month’s letters to Penthouse Forum.
In the letter “And Wifey Makes Three,” the letter writer stated: “My wife was eager to engage in a threesome with me and our incredibly hot 19-year-old babysitter.” The sentence should read: “My wife was disgusted, repulsed, and, in every imaginable way, opposed to the thought of engaging in a threesome with me and our incredibly hot 19-year-old babysitter.”
NSFW if your default browser font is large enough to be read from several feet away.
The top nine songs about masturbation. Includes the obvious I Touch Myself by The Divinyls and some less-obvious songs. (via buzzfeed)
A photo gallery of snack foods that sound a bit naughty. Salted Nut Roll, Dutch Crunch, Double Creme Betweens, etc. (via buzzfeed)
Now showing on HBO:
On March 11, 1977, Roman Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with the following counts: furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, committing a lewd or lascivious act on a child, unlawful sexual intercourse, rape by use of drugs, perversion and sodomy. Less than a year later, on February 1, 1978, Polanski drove to LAX, bought a one-way ticket to Europe, and never came back. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired explores the implausible events that took place between these dates, along with details, before and after, that forever altered the life and career of Polanski, one of the world’s most acclaimed directors.
This snippet of an interview with the filmmaker should give you a taste of what to expect from the film:
I felt it was my job to explain how people think they know the story, but they don’t. That doesn’t excuse Polanski in any way, but it shows what he went through. I think the best viewer for this film is someone who can’t stand Roman Polanski and is disgusted by what happened. But if they allow themselves to watch the film, they usually come away from it feeling differently. If not about the crime, then at least about the aftermath. It’s quite surprising.
The Smoking Gun has the grand jury testimony of then 13-year-old Samantha Gailey, taken two weeks after she had sex with Polanski. If you don’t catch the movie on HBO, it’ll be out in limited release in theaters on July 11.
Update: There’s a post on the HBO bulletin board for the movie that looks like it was written by Samantha Geimer (formerly Gailey):
I hope you all watched and enjoyed the movie. I think Marina did an excellent job in uncovering the facts. Since my mother did not participate, let me clarify a few things for you all.
She did not travel in the same social circles with Roman. She met him once, that meeting had nothing to do with my getting the modeling job. She did not send me off to be raped, or have some blackmail plot in mind. Calling the police pretty much rules blackmail out from the get go. Roman was not known as a pedophile in March of 1977, he was a influential and respected director. Even his relationship with Natasha Kinski did not occur until after my meeting with him, as far as I know.
The sex was not consentual and I have never said it was.
And last, I was not supposed to be alone with him, a friend was to come along with with us, but he talked me into going alone with him as the last minute, my mother was unaware of that until I called her later to check in. Even so, she would never have dreamed he would do what he did to me, just because we were alone. This was a long time ago, when child molestation did not immediately leap to the front of everyone’s mind as is does today. I do find it strange that some of his friends say he couldn’t have done it, while others say of course he would.
My mother has carried alot of guilt about this for many years, so I would appreciate it if people would stop blaming her. There is alot of blame to go around.
The Coolidge Effect is a phenomenon whereby males exhibit high sexual performance given the introduction of new willing females.
It earned its name many years ago when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that “could copulate with hens all day long, day after day.” Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, which he did.
The President thought for a moment and then inquired, “With the same hen?”
“No, sir,” replied the farmer.
“Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge,” retorted the President.
Zing! (via defective yeti)
The economics of high-end prostitutes.
Unlike their low-end counterparts, high-end call girls are expected to supply some level of companionship, and often accompany clients to dinners or parties. Because a beautiful and intelligent woman inevitably has other job (and marriage) options, a very high wage is necessary to encourage them to forgo other opportunities, and risk arrest, disease and shame.
And escorts must spend a great deal maintaining their value without immediate compensation. Much time and money is spent on grooming: hair removal, expensive hair-cuts (one stylist I spoke to claims several of his clients are escorts, who spend at least $1,000 a month on extensions and colour) and regular exercise. Many women have had plastic surgery (particularly if they were once men) and maintain an expensive designer wardrobe. Frequent visits to the doctor are necessary to protect against sexually-transmitted diseases.
Clayton James Cubitt’s photographs of a manufactured vagina.
Male to female transsexual. This is a manufactured vagina. A Neovagina.
This is genital origami, the cock cut open, carved and folded, crafted by techniques with names like Penile Inversion, the Suporn Technique, and the Wilson Method. The head of the cock morphs into the neoclit. In some methods the scrotal skin becomes the neovaginal canal.
I don’t know which methods were used in the creation of this particular neovagina, but surely this is art of the highest caliber. Sculpture in flesh tissue and nerve bundles.
Amazing and NSFW.
David Attenborough narrates a sexual encounter between two leopard slugs. I know slug sex probably isn’t your thing, but this is worth a look. Beautiful.
(thx, alex)
We’ve heard from the sex workers about the Spitzer affair. Now the psychologists. This article compiles many ideas about why Spitzer did what he did:
Psychologist Christopher Ryan, author of “Sex in Prehistory,” says the desire for sex with more than one person has always been there — for leaders and followers alike. “The desire is not a function of status or power — it’s a question of availability.”
What’s relatively new to the human race, he said, is the ability to exercise power and the connection between power and sex.
That’s because, for most of human existence, there was only so far a man could coerce others when food was essentially free and hard to hoard. And until relatively recently, sex with multiple partners was the norm. “It would have been very unusual 100,000 years ago for a person to have one sexual partner for 30 years,” said Ryan in an interview from Barcelona.
And here’s the evolutionary psychological point of view:
She points out that, while powerful men throughout western history have married monogamously (they had only one legal wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers, concubines, and female slaves). Many had harems, consisting of hundreds and even thousands of virgins. With their wives, they produced legitimate heirs; with the others, they produced bastards (Betzig’s term). Genes and inclusive fitness make no distinction between the two categories of children. While the legitimate heirs, unlike the bastards, inherited their fathers’ power and status and often went on to have their own harems, powerful men sometimes invested in their bastards as well.
As a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring (legitimate or otherwise), while countless poor men in the countryside died mateless and childless.
(thx, anne)
Update: And one more from Natalie Angier:
Yet as biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests to the offspring of these bonded pairs, social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy. Assay the kids in a given brood, whether of birds, voles, lesser apes, foxes or any other pair-bonding species, and anywhere from 10 to 70 percent will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male.
One of the side effects of the Eliot Spitzer situation is the discussion of prostitution happening in various places online by those with experience in or knowledge of that profession. Here are a few I’ve run across.
On the Freakonomics blog, an interview with a “high-end call girl” named Allie about the Spitzer affair.
Almost all of my clients are married. I would say easily over 90 percent. I’m not trying to justify this business, but these are men looking for companionship. They are generally not men that couldn’t have an affair [if they wanted to], but men who want this tryst with no stings attached. They’re men who want to keep their lives at home intact.
Susannah Breslin talks about her twin web projects, Letters from Johns and Letters from Working Girls and what light they could shed on Spitzer’s actions.
But one high-end call girl I spoke to about the Spitzer affair said there are lots of reasons a man in such a prominent position might seek high-stakes sex with a prostitute. Why not just have an affair, which probably wouldn’t have destroyed his career? She said that Spitzer, if he did use prostitutes, was probably one of those men for whom the payoff was the excitement of doing something really taboo. “What could be more taboo than going to an agency when you’re a crusader for all that is moral and good?” she theorized. “It’s only natural,” this call girl asserted, “that they’d hire a girl to get off.” She speculates that there was probably a “midlife crisis element” there too.
Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss chimes in:
Look, it’s going to go on. You’re never going to stop prostitution. The way to do it is to regulate it. Clean it up a bit. Make it fair-fair for the girls, fair for the clients. At the end the government gets money out of it.
A Former Sex Worker’s Thoughts About Eliot Spitzer.
I’m a former sex worker. I still have many sex worker friends that are dear to me. Ones who both face all the risks of being a sex worker, but also fight for sex worker rights in public. They are at risk from the very policies of men like Spitzer. Eliot could have done something groundbreaking. He could have been a governor that dared to advocate for sex worker human rights. But he didn’t. Eliot persecuted sex workers. He made it easier for sex workers to be exploited, to be violated, to be stigmatized, to face discrimination, to face rape, assault and other crimes.
Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh has done research on high-end sex workers in NYC and elsewhere. He explains how it works in this Slate article.
What high-end clients pay for may surprise you. For example, according to my ongoing interviews of several hundred sex workers, approximately 40 percent of trades in New York’s sex economy fail to include a physical act beyond light petting or kissing. No intercourse, no oral stimulation, etc. That’s one helluva conversation. But it’s what many clients want. Flush with cash, these elite men routinely turn their prostitute into a second partner or spouse. Over the course of a year, they will sometimes persuade the woman to take on a new identity, replete with a fake name, a fake job, a fake life history, and so on. They may want to have sex or they may simply want to be treated like King for a Day.
If you run across any similar links, send them along.
Maybe this is surprising to you: when compared to Roman Catholicism, Islam is less conservative when it comes to sexual ethics.
Oh, The Onion: Pornography-Desensitized Populace Demands New Orifice To Look At.
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