Sunday, July 13, 2008

Two-Hundred-Seven

Brothels and the Meaning of Life
by Bruno Phillips

Some great libertine and savant once observed, ‘Only in a brothel do men and women discover the true nature of human relations.’ However one chooses to deconstruct such philosophical squibs, nothing hasty should be concluded without knowledge of the Dumas Brothel in Butte, Montana.

The brothel of course has had a long, romantic and (albeit sneakingly) admired place in populist social history since Pompeii got buried. More recently, whilst London had its bawdyhouses and Paris its bordellos, America had its democratic equivalents that ‘came West’ along with the men who drove cattle and railroads and settlements into the heartlands of the prairie and mountain.

What makes the American experience different is that where we Europeans corralled, made urban and attempted to disguise these havens of release, in the great energy of that young nation they were public agents of growth and opportunity. Men and women of humble origin sought escape from straightened circumstances, sought liberation, to achieve wealth, or at least a comfortable life. Men through their muscle, women most often through the skills regarded as peculiarly theirs. This might involve marriage, sewing and child-rearing. In the short term it mostly meant the willingness to fuck.

These natural desires could of course be satisfied, as it were, informally. But humans are creatures of context. Calloused cowboy you might be, but memories of the old homestead and plumpy cushions and little sister made you yearn for some homely comforts.

The Dumas Brothel is a classic of its kind. It was built around 1890 as a purpose-designed three-floor house for prostitutes. It still survives (just), and is probably the only example of its sort left in America. Herein the hairy, horny and hopeful miners of Butte could emerge from the depths and the dust to find a soft embrace, a seductive smile and a place for the one muscle that had not been much called for underground.

It was part of a locale called ‘Venus Alley’ and played a significant role in the maintenance of social order among the mining community. So much so, that when in the early 1940s the Federal Government tried to ban brothels as detrimental to the war effort, the region’s copper and mineral company combined with the local authorities to finagle regulations on the grounds that the miners would leave if denied some rumpy pumpy. The Dumas House survived until 1982. Rumour has it that there was a tunnel from the neighbouring and grand Finlen Hotel to the brothel and that JFK himself used it.

Be that as it may, current owner, conservator and writer Rudy Giecek is an honourable celebrant of a proud tradition. Although he doesn’t run a brothel, he shares with Cynthia Payne an amiable sympathy with human sexual needs and women’s economic pragmatism.

Quite evidently, these old brothels were not paradise. (So where is?) Sex is a transaction of many sorts. It may be conducted with love, affection, as an instrument of power and submission, or a combination of all these. In Butte the Dumas Brothel had a social and economic purpose. This was not without pleasure or reward. Girls could earn real money and escape. Men could find love. That there was also violence and degradation did not single it out as different from other socially sanctioned relations.

In the quixotic and contradictory society that is America today, and in particular in the Midwest, the brothel, the whore and the rumbunctious miner, cowboy and outlaw got together in all that dust and heat and downpour and had a fuck of a time.

Thanks to Rudy Giececk author of Venus Alley.
See also thedumasbrothel.com

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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Two-Hundred-Six

Erotic Haiku
by Colin B Liddell

his three minute penis her two hour vagina - Gertrude Morris

Say ‘erotic poetry’ and most of us instantly think of a dirty limerick or two. For a few of the better educated, some lines of a saucy Shakespearian sonnet may pop into our memory. But, essentially, poetry is an art form little represented in eroticism, which has traditionally been better served by the more explicit forms of culture i the steamy novel or anything visual. This is a pity because erotic poetry, used in the right way, can be a lot more potent than you might imagine.

The best eroticism subtly melds the external and the internal, bringing together our own experiences with new stimuli. The more explicit the eroticism, the more passive and unreal the experience often is. To work at its peak, eroticism has to find some way of writing us into the story, something that may be difficult with a video of a bronzed beefcake and a pneumatic blonde going at it hammer and tongs, unless (a) we happen to be one of the former, and (b) are happy to associate ourselves with the roles presented.

Often the best eroticism is that which does the least to achieve the most i the feather instead of the whole chicken, as one wit described it. What this calls for is something that makes use of the visuals, memories, and fantasies already in our own heads, something that sets our imaginations in motion.

A major source of the power of poetry is its ability to evoke. This is where the haiku, a short Japanese form of poetry, comes into its own. Rejecting the long windedness of other poetic forms, it focuses on the telling detail, and, in a sense, tries to paint a vivid picture with a single brushstroke. By being so short, it forces the poet to get to the point.

Interestingly, it is a form of poetry that has been utilized for erotic expression much more by foreigners than the Japaneseiwho feel too much reverence for the formias revealed in Erotic Haiku, a collection of poems edited by Hiroaki Sato, a Japanese writer living in New York.

‘Haiku in English are free, with few constraints,’ he explains. ‘In Japan, even though “free-rhythm” haiku were written as early as in Basho’s days (Matsuo Basho, the seventeenth-century father of the classical haiku), the overwhelming sense is that haiku is a one-line 5-7-5-syllable form with a seasonal indicator.’

Unconstrained by respect for what is after all an alien tradition, English writers have turned haiku’s power of capturing a sudden mood or feeling to good effect, creating keys to unlock our erotic imaginations:

pushing
inside until
her teeth shine - Michael McClintock

without clothes
it’s a different
conversation - John Brandi

Like most erotic haiku, these examples are deceptively simple. But this simplicity, this economy is a source of strength, as we are invited to reactivate our own sexual memories and imaginations. Perhaps McClintock’s poem helps us to half recall an instance when ‘it’ wouldn’t quite fit at first, but, when it did, her face lit up in a smile of pleasure. Brandi’s poem captures the tension of dates, when we strive to say the correct thing, but, having achieved our goal, talk and behave more freely.

Skillfully selected details, insignificant in themselves, become seeds which sprout into full-blown visions:

she leaves i
a curled hair
in my soap - David Walker

a tattooed butterfly
shivering
on her buttocks - Dejan Bogojevic

While some haiku like these make you concentrate on visual images, seeing first the detail and then the woman, others make you think. A good example is a haiku by the Illinois poet Lee Gurga. At first glance the image presented seems baffling as well as vaguely unpleasant:

old lovers
only her left nipple
becomes erect

Then you realize why he specifies the left nipple: it is the one over the heart, signifying that although eroticism has declined, in this case, at least, it has left love behind.

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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Two-Hundred-Five

(h/t to Erotic Garden)

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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©