My cousin gave me four tickets to the show last week. That was very thoughtful of her, although I had to laugh when it occurred to me that:
a) perhaps I was her only (or best?) candidate for actually using the tickets?
b) I was the only person she knew who knew three other people who would go, too?
Hardly, I thought afterwards, surely there would be other people in her social circles who would go to a sex exhibition?? Some friends I mentioned it to had to know more about it before they would consider going. I can understand that, but it wasn't like we were shuttling off for a stag at the infamous Number 5 Orange, or even Brandi's (the even more-famous site of Ben Affleck's alleged infidelities to his now-ex-fiancée, J.Lo). Even if that were the case, who cares?? Is prudishness replacing curiosity these days? (More on this in a mo'.)
We didn't go to the show until after dinner, around 10pm, and even two hours before it closed for the day we found the Exhibition Halls at the Trade & Convention Centre jam-packed. For all intents and purposes, it was like any other trade show, except for the X-rating. No sprogs running about. Demonstration videos were of devices that located G-spots instead of, say, GPS positions. Instead of filling out draw slips for home improvement gadgets, it was for reading material with titles such as Book of Dicks (I flipped through it -- amusing, not titillating).
My friends and I were definitely amused, and a wee bit enlightened as well. And no, not because of the beefy (in all places) exotic male dancer over by the show stage, or by the dizzying array of sex gadgets, peek-a-boo clothing, battery-powered devices for every imaginable orifice/s, and what-have-you. There, bobbing conspicuously alone in the sea of toys and lube and videos, was a Sexual Health booth manned by, well, a man. Who seemed only slightly discomfited by our questions of, "So, which is more effective, the diaphragm or the cervical cap?" or, "Can you show me how you insert the diaphragm into this plastic model?" I wonder if this guy was hired by the Ministry of Children and Families or he was just one of the workers in a muncipal outreach office who picked the short straw when they drew lots for the booth. What a way to spend a weekend, filling up the baskets of giveaway condoms and lube, fanning out pamphlets on planned parenthood, and trying to be serious and professional while flanked by hangers of bondage outfits and fur-lined thongs.
Here are some random snippets of our conversations:
"How can the Diving Dolphin have 'Device Not Waterproof' on it??"
"I like this one, it feels more like the real thing."
"Look! You can make your own dildo! It comes in a bucket, just like Play-Doh."
"A mini-vibrator disguised as lipstick (I think it was called Powder Room Fun or something like that)... the next time someone says she has to go powder her nose..." and "I'll never look at lipstick the same way again."
"How on earth do you wear this??" (I couldn't figure that out, myself, and I have a pretty good imagination)
When it came to the stage shows, it wasn't anything to write home about. I supposed I'm a bit spoiled for quality (ha ha!) after seeing a live sex show in Amsterdam. It was a real eye-opener, that. I was there with a couple of friends, a Brit and a German. It was just before Christmas 1997, my first time in The Netherlands, but both friends had been there lots before and persuaded me that no first-time visit to Amsterdam would be complete without seeing a bonafide sex show. How could I argue with that? I'd already seen the Sex Museum -- including the Back Room with the prominent disclaimer -- and that left absolutely zero to the imagination. (If it were not for my inability to get nauseous from visual displays, I would have lasted 5 seconds.) They bought tickets to Pink Elephant, which my friend assured me was more upscale and worth the money. It even included a free drink (a requirement, I suppose, or a necessary accompaniment, like crackers with brie or melon with prosciuttio).
What I did expect -- for the guilders we forked out, anyway -- was attractive and well-endowed performers. Details such as a revolving stage on a turntable so you had a 360-degree view. Cheesy sketches with nurses and everyday situations that inevitably led to the requisite clothes-shedding and subsequent shagging. What I didn't expect was how well-choreographed the whole thing was. It was ballet-like in its dynamics and the performers were agile and lithe, even the silly fella in the Batman costume. It would not be fair to attribute this opinion to one drink playing with my brain, either, I'm not that cheap a drunk.
What we didn't necessarily expect (and I have no idea why, since nearly all manner of shows have it) was the audience participation segment. You can imagine the horror when my German friend was dragged unceremoniously onstage along with nine other men to "play" with a lady dressed like Carmen Miranda. My Brit friend and I nearly collapsed with a fit of the giggles, we felt so badly for him. She lay down on the stage, plucked one of the bananas from the bunch she had on hand (she was, after all, Carmen Miranda), and inserted it lickety-split, her athletic legs splayed with complete control. Each of the participants had to take a bite out of the banana, which doesn't sound all that difficult until you imagine she was gyrating and writhing about the stage.
As each participant took a bite, we glanced over at my German friend, who was becoming increasingly more anxious as each poor sap before him -- with his hands tied behind his back -- had to dart to and fro, trying to chomp a piece of banana that was getting too short way too fast... Our eyes tearing, our guts aching, we couldn't take our eyes off our friend, who had the lucky position of being the 10th, and last, in line for the banana. It was every man for himself in this event, too -- each guy was more intent on nabbing that banana than taking small bites to leave enough for the next guy...
We did other things in Amsterdam, of course. My German friend and I continued what was becoming our habit of sneaking label beer glasses in our coats as souvenirs (although when we did this a year later in Germany, I felt a bit guilty and asked the pub worker, and he just gave them to me! I even had the cheek to ask for the gold-rimmed ones, and he fetched them from the dishwasher. I have those, still).
One night my Brit friend begged off the late night shenanigans, and my German friend and I carried on walking the streets near our hotel off the Amstel river in search of a pub that was still open. We zigzagged down the side streets, and eventually he spotted a little place called Cupido Bar, with thick velvet drapes covering the frontage. I said promptly, "it's a gay bar, are you sure you want to go?", to which my friend replied, "How do you know?" Geez, man, the fact that you can't see inside?? We went in. We'd already closed the gay clubs with the transvestite bartenders sporting giant purple bouffant hair, so we figured we'd just keep on going. It was that late, but somehow having tins of Heineken from the vending machine in our hotel lobby didn't hold the same appeal.
Well, it was like walking into the Old Saloon in the archetypal Western flick. We swung the door open, stepped in, and of course everyone in the tiny place -- mostly old, gay men -- stopped all their chatter and stared at us, as if to say "You ain't from around these parts, are ye?" We just ignored them, and tried to order a beer. The bartender just ignored us and kept serving everyone else. After everyone else was served, he took our money and gave us beer. We acted like we just didn't care. After all, it was a local place, and this wasn't our neighbourhood. We were like a couple of cheerleaders at a Star Trek convention. After being ignored so long, I wondered if anyone would notice me looking for a ladies' room. Was there even a ladies' room?? All eyes were on me as I ventured off to search for one, leaving my German friend to fend for himself. I did find a toilet, but there was no lock on the door. I had to go badly enough to ignore it, and when I returned, my friend told me that when I left, the old geezers were giving him the nudge-nudge-wink-wink, saying, "Hey, why don't you go join your girlfriend, there's no lock on the door." Then we witnessed something that told us it was time to ditch the draft in favour of our hotel vending machine: there was a lover's quarrel between a young black guy and his old geezer, who was convinced the young guy was diddling some other guy at the bar. Next thing we knew (the exchange was all in upper-decibel Dutch, so we didn't have quite all the warning signals), the accused infidel's alleged lover wound up and socked the accuser in the nose, his nose smashing with a very audible *crack* and his head rebounding off the wall like a basketball with the force. Needless to say, the sounds of bones breaking and skull on wall was not a pleasant one, and everyone winced and froze. I have never seen a nose broken like that before, even at a hockey game. It was suddenly on one side of his face and bleeding like the dickens. We just stood there, only a few feet away, horrified... The bartender was ready to get rid of his regulars just to avoid the fall-out, so we took that as a cue to leave. We spilled out of the Cupido Bar and headed towards our hotel, still reeling from the sight of a nose that would probably never be restored to its former... ehm, glory?? Each trip back to Amsterdam I find myself walking around that neighbourhod; I try to head over to the straat to see if the Cupido Bar is still there, but I can't quite recall the zigging and zagging pattern we followed to get there, so I'm not sure if it has new proprietors or I'm not zigging or zagging properly.
My Dutch friend, who at the time was still living in The Netherlands (now he's in Brussels doing contract work for Mastercard), couldn't stand Amsterdam -- the traffic, the lack of parking, the hassle, the prices, the glut of tourists. He picked the three of us up one day and took us to the countryside for some sightseeing, checking out villages, the seaside, and played classical guitar for us in his houseboat. I recall that time fondly... I think we were pretty tired by then -- too many late nights, loud venues, and neon lights. We were ready for a time-out from the assaults to the senses.
I found myself in Amsterdam again last April, and took a little canal cruise to admire the Dutch architecture in the warm sunshine. Then I took a train to Utrecht to visit some friends who'd just had a baby. No sex museums, sex shows, or coffee shops. I'm sounding like an old geezer, myself!Which brings me back to my talk of prudishness, much earlier in this post. We're pretty prudish here, although I don't think we're quite as prudish as Americans. We don't use that little fuzzy thing over nipples, for example. The old joke is that American kids grow up thinking the fuzzy bits are part of the female anatomy. (The same way that Alaska and Hawaii, shown as insets on maps of the United States, have no real geographical location, they're just floating somewhere in the ocean near the continental U.S. in inset boxes.) Moses Znaimer, founder and producer of Toronto's Citytv, was cited to have said that on American television, you can't show a nipple. But, you can show a nipple with a bullet hole through it... (a nod to American acceptance of violence)... OK, I'll save this topic for another day. Back to prudishness.
Last night when three of us were having dinner at the restaurant Manhattan in the Fairmont Delta Suites Hotel, every time our cute (their word, not mine) waiter came by to attend to us, everyone would lower her voice to a whisper when talking about going to the sex show, or just say "the show". It seemed more like an involuntary reaction than feeling unable to say sex in a regular tone of voice. What's with that? The other people dining were far away, it's not like they could hear us. And even so, what did it matter? My point is, it did matter, and we were taught that it matters. I think it has more to do with context than anything else. If we were at some diner on Commercial Drive, like Wazubeez, we'd let 'er rip. Sex! Sex! Sex! (It's pretty loud in there, anyways.) No such thing as impropriety on Commercial Drive, proud bastion of alternative lifestyles and home to Womyn's Ware. This also goes back to when I mentioned that some friends wanted to know more about the sex exhibition, eg. location. Somehow, the fact that it was at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre, which also houses the famous sails from Expo '86 days (part of the Vancouver skyline and ubiquitous on postcards), the cruise ship terminal, and the tony Pan Pacific Hotel in Coal Harbour commanded more cachet and lowered the sleaze factor. I'm sure that's what CanWest Shows had in mind when they booked the venue.
