In the Mood For MoSex

By Liz Langley, AlterNet. Posted February 25, 2003.

People don't discuss porn much. They certainly don't watch it in public, in groups of up to 15, with their clothes on. Yet I'm watching a group do just that, view a film of a man bonking a young woman he's just picked up on the road. His white heinie bobs up and down like a volleyball on a small but turbulent sea. Due to bad lighting you can't see much of her except her stockinged legs. Her girlfriend spies from the bushes, eagerly rubbing the crotch of her dress. The viewers are all smiling indulgently, the way you would if you were watching the cat try to open the door. They're charmed. This is the cutest goshdarn fuck flick any of them ever saw.

That's because this movie was made in 1915. It's silent: there's no groaning or squishing, just panels that keep you abreast of the plot (porn plots through history being as extraneous as the Braille on the drive-through bank machine). The film is being broadcast in the Museum of Sex, or MoSex as it's known, one of Manhattan's newer sources of culture and a fun one at that. (No offense, but would it kill you other museums to have some nudes that get greased up and move around?)

My initial experience with MoSex mirrored a lot of people's initial experience with actual sex: a) "Cherry Pie" by Warrant was playing; b) the people who took my money were very accommodating, and; c) five minutes in I was really confused.

I had a self-guided audio tour, explanatory signs, ambient sounds and the exhibits themselves to absorb. The net result was overstimulation, which can ruin a sexual escapade faster than a bucket of well-aimed ice water. Plus they could have introduced me to the new idea of a sex museum with something inviting -- something sleek or cuddly or velvety -- instead of starting out with a dead prostitute. I've had boyfriends who have made some klutzy segues into sex (including one who clicked his tongue like he was calling a horse), but none ever tried to seduce me with tales of a dead hooker, a subject that will dry up your juices quicker than a roll of Bounty.

This hooker, Ellen Jewett, was murdered in New York in the early 19th century. You get the idea from this exhibit, titled "NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America" (running through July 3, 2003) that hookers played a pretty big part in 19th century NY sex. They were popular enough to have their own guidebooks, such as "Guide to the Harem or Directory to the Ladies of Fashion in NY and various other cities, 1855."

The museum also features the wet blanket antics of active prudes, like Anthony Comstock, the "professional meddler" who succeeded in getting contraceptive ads and sales, abortion instruments and blue photos banned. So every era has its Falwellian fruitcakes as well as its hunks, pop stars and sexual pioneers, who tend to be more fondly remembered than the meddlers. Margaret Sanger is not forgotten, nor is Julius Schmid, a sausage maker who sold leftover casings as condoms, or "skins" as they were then known. Schmid eventually founded the Sheik and Ramses brands, but not before moving up from sausage casings and making his rubbers out of latex.

Sexuality gets a little more diverse as you move through the chronological exhibit into the 20th century. We get a decoupage tribute to Christine Jorgensen, a look at the homoerotic art of Paul Cadmus, and some sexy lesbian pulp fiction book covers with titles like "The Strange Path" and "The Tribe of Lesbos."

If dorky brush cuts and prim poodle skirts were the yin of the 50s then the yang was a soft, shapely sexuality that produced the pin-up. And here's something most of us probably subconsciously knew: It was the Germans who introduced fetishism to the U.S. We of German heritage should be proud -- thanks to our forebears, 40s and 50s America was introduced to bondage gear, "Satan in High Heels," rubber girdles and erotic peach eating.

Come the sexual revolution, all hell breaks loose. Things like pornography, gay rights and nudism came up from underground. This brings us to the performance art of Annie Sprinkle; George Urban taking a camera around New York in 1980 inviting women to expose themselves (a clear forerunner to "Girls Gone Wild"); the horror of AIDS and the anger of the ACT UP demonstrations; the advent of the VCR and the Internet (two new ways to watch naked people) and right on through to Guiliani's cleanup of Times Square.

There's something kind of comforting in seeing clearly how sexual culture takes the same old cycles generation after generation, changing its faces and incarnations, producing new hunks, pop idols and shock techniques, but always really being the same old thing in brand new drag. Whatever ground is being broken now, those stone-faced people in the antique pictures were chipping away at it 100 years ago.

A final note of interest: part of the 1970s timeline included some scenes from the classic porn flick, "Deep Throat," but no crowd clustered around Harry Reems and Linda Lovelace with the charmed indulgent expressions they wore at the vintage stag film.

In fact people just glanced at it and walked by. Why? Maybe no matter how sophisticated we think we are, sex is still threatening, but it's less so when practiced by silent, black and white people 88 years in the past. Or maybe everyone's just seen "Deep Throat," already and it's old hat. Or maybe people just find it adorable when they see sex that might have involved their grandparents. People can be kinky; we don't need a museum to tell us that. But we're sure glad there is one.

Liz Langley is a freelance writer who lives in New York and Florida.

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