Coming your way faster than you can say “wayward seed deluge,” it’s the second iteration of what’s indisputably the artiest smut fest the world over. The NYC Porn Film Festival is returning June 4 and 5), uniting an actually-smart postmodern exploration of porn with an earnest, non-binary, non-heteronormative, super sex-posi celebration of sex on film.
This year, the organizers say they’re once again dedicated to “exploring human sexuality through art, audience participation, parties, live performance, film, virtual reality, and sex technology.” Even if it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be seeing Miley Cyrus on the bill again this year, there will be plenty else to set fire to your loins.
Whitney Brown predicts 2016 might be the year New Yorkers finally turn off Tinder. (We imagine every bartender in town is rooting for this miracle as well.) But she’s adamant that our Seamless hook-up mentality has just about run its course, and we’re bound to return to an era where big, romantic gestures are in style once again. “Romance in the 21st century is in sort of a struggle stage,” Brown said. It was hard to imagine this willowy model-entrepreneur could be having any issues. Well actually, Brown is in the business of love, or romance at least, so it’s in her best interest to see a return to romance.
“I was very logical for my whole adolescence until I got a little older and I moved to LA. I started to reintroduce myself to these aspects of the metaphysical world,” explained Vanessa Cuccia, the founder of Chakrubs— a company that makes “sex toys made from 100 percent pure crystal.”
She was addressing a small class of women at Please, a sex shop in Park Slope– for the occasion, the shades were drawn at what’s normally a proudly-transparent establishment. Eileen, Vanessa’s friend and member of her original “focus group” cradled an acoustic guitar and a permanent smile.
A few years ago, Vanessa started carrying crystals around with her “everywhere she went” (according to the event invite that first attracted me to this class), but her bond with crystals took an entirely different turn after a woman with a “very large crystal collection” presented her with a particularly attractive specimen. “That would make a great dildo,” she recalls telling the room full of neo-spiritualists. “And the idea just kept growing and growing and growing.”
“Ceremonies of Love and Desire” at FIAF (Photo via Facebook)
When I first arrived at the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) I filed into one of the few empty stadium seats left save for the neck busters at the very front. The place was packed for The Art of Sex & Seduction: Ceremonies of Love & Desire, I realized all eyes were pointed to a tiny, gray-haired woman immediately below and in front of me. She looked more like a gentle octogenarian nun than a famous dominatrix known for her cruelty. But every once in a while there were flashes of unflinching harshness delivered with a toothy, thin-lipped grin–there was a reason why people seemed to either tiptoe or burst into fits of uncomfortable laughter around Catherine Robbe-Grillet all night. She could turn even the most accomplished Tinder Queens amongst us to puddles of prudish mush.
This week: everything you generally avoid talking about gets talked about.
Monday, Sept. 15 Hot, Wet and Shaking: Talking About Sex with Kaleigh Trace
Kaleigh Trace is a disabled, queer, feminist sex educator with a mission: to promote “safe, shame-free and consensual sex people of all abilities, ethnicities, races, orientations, and gender identities.” Among other things, she co-wrote and appeared in the above music video in response to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” More →
Kaleigh Trace is a disabled, queer, feminist sex educator with a mission: to promote “safe, shame-free and consensual sex people of all abilities, ethnicities, races, orientations, and gender identities.” Among other things, she co-wrote and appeared in the above music video in response to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” Now, Trace is down from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to promote her new book. Hot, Wet and Shaking: How I Learned to Talk About Sex is “a book about having sex by yourself, with one person, or with twenty people if everyone is down.” It’s a memoir-cum (ha!)-manual that doesn’t skimp on risqué detail. If you still feel like an awkward teenager when it comes to sex talk, or if (god forbid!) you were under the impression that disabled people aren’t fucking, come along and wise up.
Things are getting hot and heavy at this week’s upcoming readings and talks, with historical badass battles, fictional prostitutes, sexy sex-ed films, and a look at why America insists on measuring stuff the way it does. Gallons of fun, ahoy.
Saturday, August 9
Ladies of the Night reading with Maggie McNeill
Maggie McNeill’s biography reads like the worst nightmare of every English major’s mother and/or the wet dream of every horny undergraduate male: a BA in literature, then a Masters of Library and Information Science and a brief stint as a suburban librarian, before economic imperatives compelled her to find work as a stripper, then a call girl, then a madam. This decade-long sex work stint ends happily (mothers, cue a sigh of relief) in the fairy-tale manner. Madam marries favorite client, moves to ranch, and is able at long last to combine both of her interests: writing and prostitution. More →
KafkaRotica has been described as “the three-way love child of Franz Kafka, Christian Grey, and Regina Spektor,” by the site’s creator H.P. Xachariah. Conceived as a ‘home for erotica that doesn’t suck,’ Xachariah and friends pen parody erotica in the style of classic authors. Their tagline? “Cum for the parody porn, stay for the erotic diction.” If you prefer to experience erotica in a crowded environment, join members of the team for an evening of sexual intercourse-focused musical-comedy at KGB Bar.
As if those 42 kooky, kinky films weren’t enough to satisfy, this week seems to be a particularly raunchy one for local theater and performance. More →
Is Marnie Michaels embracing her unsolicited Internet fame? Tonight at 6 p.m. Girls star Allison Williams will be at Soho’s Apple Store to promote season three. On everyone’s mind: Marnie’s music video, which debuted in Sunday’s episode. If we know Marnie Marie Michaels, she’ll be giving some sort of small-scale TED Talk. A title has not been announced, but we took a few guesses. More →
