My friend Beth Slovic, at Willamette Week (where I used to work), just wrote an excellent piece on a Facebook fatwa launched by female students at Lewis & Clark College in Portland against an alleged rapist. Student Helen Hunter initiated the fateful encounter with Morgan Shaw-Fox, sending him a text and going over to his place, drunk. But the make-out session quickly got violent, Hunter said. She struggled against him, tried to get him to stop, he told her to “choke on it.” Hunter realized what had happened was wrong, but she didn’t know exactly what line it crossed, or how to deal with it. She described it as “gray rape.” Thanks a lot Laura Sessions Stepp.

So Hunter wrote an anonymous letter to the school newspaper, not naming her assailant, which quickly became the talk of the campus. Soon Shaw-Fox’s name got out. It turned out many other young women had had similar experiences, and I don’t know how you call them gray. But before anyone could file an official complaint, or a police report, students started a Facebook group outing Shaw-Fox as a rapist.

My first reaction is that this is the wrong way to go about things. I have this thing about due process. And I remember our historical tendency of accusing innocent men of rape when they’re, you know, the wrong color. But friends who’ve been victims of date rape say there’s no other solution. I’ve watched murder trials where the guy gets off and “everyone” knows they did it. At least in those cases, someone filed charges.

Tuesday night, I had the privilege of attending Musselman’s Apple Sauce Presents: The Music of Seal on Ice. I had been anticipating the event for weeks–ever since I first set my eyes on the event’s glorious promotional shot, pictured at right.

Damn you, mastermind photoshop artists: You have fooled me once again with your impressive fonts and your smirking representations of Seal. Sure, Seal–a towering vision in white–finessed the mic. Yeah, people skated or whatever. But the whole thing came off as a little bit half-assed, less a true marriage of Seal and Ice than a hastily-assembled feature for television that didn’t require any pesky unionized writers (check out the broadcast on New Years Day, NBC, 4-6 p.m. EST). When a skater’s bottom grazed the ice or Seal led the audience in a markedly off-rhythm clap, you could almost hear the event promoters sighing, “Meh. We’ll fix it in editing.”

Moments of synergy–at one point, a skater sailed over to Seal’s stage, where the two exchanged a sick high-five–were rare. Mostly, the event suffered from a serious lack of focus. Given the expanse of the Verizon Center ice rink, it was hard to tell where to look: Do you choose to watch Brian Boitano shimmy across the ice while swathed in restrictive skin-tight leather pants? Or do you choose to watch Seal triumphantly pump his fist while “Amazing” builds to finale? One thing’s clear: Nobody should ever have to make that choice.

But midway through the program, The Music of Seal on Ice made the choice for me. In an astonishing turn, Seal disappeared backstage for a staggering five songs while skaters performed their routines to canned Seal records. Playing recorded Seal while Seal is in the building is like staging an ice dance routine without any axels: It’s just bullshit. I’m interested to see how NBC deals with this; I’m betting they just loop one clip of Seal clapping his hands over his head and stomping his foot to the songs he didn’t actually sing. Just add in the “15 to 20 seconds of [forced] enthusiastic applause” the Verizon Center audience was instructed to record, and TV viewers won’t know the difference.

Still, the male audience member who screamed, simply, “Yeahhhh, Seeeeeaaaaaal!” across the arena after each song had a point: When everything’s said and done, Seal’s awesome. New single “Amazing” is a surprisingly catchy dance number, his back catalogue is stronger than you’d think, and his package alone has the power to make supermodels fall in love with him and want to have his babies.

Near the end of the show, when Seal serenaded Kristi Yamaguchi to “Kiss From a Rose,” everybody in that arena felt it. This time, the 15 to 20 seconds of enthusiastic applause was uncued.

One more surprise from our new owners this week: our new health insurance doesn’t cover birth control. That’s $50 a month (instead of about $30).

But whoa, serendipity! This pile of one-time-use prophylactics has magically appeared in our lounge. Two female condoms, two male condoms and little packet of sugar-free, flavored lube. The ladies left on staff could all have sex once a month on this new plan.

The sort of message I love to see in my inbox on Monday mornings:

“Your penis will make more shadow than a tree.”

Finally.

I had a good time watching Richard Kern in the hot seat last night at the Modernist Society conversation series at Bourbon. Kern, a longtime producer of arty softcore porn, sat down for an hourlong interview with Jason Mojica, who totally outed me as the author of a kind of haterish blog post about the photographer. Mojica, a fan, admitted he was asking softball questions and turned to the audience for help. (At one point he just dragged the mike in front of me but I’m not a very good projector.) The audience, lubricated by an hour of free booze, was eager to participate. One of the best, from Liz Glover: Do you sleep with all of your models? (Answer: No. But he is married to one. And he said something mildly creepy about his seven-year-old son masturbating.)

Kern sort of admitted that his photos aren’t as edgy as they once were, but he blamed that on the girls. “They don’t have tattoos anymore,” he said. He said the idea of getting naked for some dude with a camera just isn’t shocking these days. Someone in the crowd asked me how “hard” I wanted the girls to be. I’m no porn-hound, I swear, I just think that if the style and packaging promise something more interesting than an Abercrombie ad or a Penthouse spread, the girls should be doing something that makes you think. He has one shot of a girl doing a headstand in a toilet. I admit that’s impressive. And there are the skinny French girls making out in a forest. But really, zzzz. I asked Kern who he likes in his field and he mentioned Terry Richardson, who takes pictures of girls drinking from cow udders and creative blowjobs. I tried to get him to describe the photos for the audience and begged off. I think Mr. Smut is a little shy.

Really though, this guy I set out to hate turned out to be very likable. And I know I’m conflating the art with the artist but I don’t care. I’m not a critic, so, bah! Even though his work hangs in real galleries, he shied away from calling himself an artist. He obviously considers himself a professional and he likes his job. Can’t argue with that.

While the country is on the topic of bathroom trysts, it may want to peer into the archives of Washington City Paper. This piece, by yours truly, provides a deep look at the scene at the MLK Jr. library circa 1997. Give it a read.

Last night, I attended a screening of Superbad at Regal Gallery Place. The film featured Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and one of the most powerful movie-theater-talkers I have ever encountered.

Sure, Gallery Place is notoriously loud. But strangely enough, at this particular showing, the audience was fairly quiet, save for this one man. He was tremendous: a massive, booming presence. He sat alone. And he was seated directly behind me.

The man’s commentary track began almost immediately, precipitated, strangely enough, by the first sign of cleavage. “Mmm-MMM!” the man announced. “Aww, yeah, baby!”

This man was there, it seemed, for one purpose: He was there to speak for us. At a time when—owing to the oppressive imposed silence of the movie-theater environment—we had no voice, this man stepped forward to provide the entire audience’s verbal response to the film. “Mmm!” the man said, over and over and over again. Depending upon the situation, the man also provided a resounding “Aww, no!”

After a good two hours of constant exposure to this man’s verbal remarks, I was able to pinpoint their nature. The man’s comments, I determined, served two functions. They existed (a) to encourage boobs; and (b) to discourage potential homosexual behavior. (”Oh, no!,” the commentator announced, as the two boys in the film moved to hug each other. “Oh, no! Oh, don’t do it, man!”) I began to think that I had this man figured out. It got to the point that, when a pair of breasts appeared on screen, I began to think it—”Mmm-HMM!”—before the moans even boomed out from behind me.

As the film neared its end, however, I was forced to amend my binary theory. As one of the boys began to engage in foreplay with a girl—a girl whose breasts, of course, had already earned a sharp “MMM!”—the man stepped away from his standard homophobic/boob commentary to offer a remark of a different nature.

“Oh, no, man, come on,” our commentator yelled. “Oh, come on! Don’t come in your shorts, now!”

Our commentator, it seems, also provides (c) sage advice.

I recently attended a D.C. Women Journalists happy hour. Even though I’m still clinging to my 20s, I was easily the matron of the bunch. I ended up sitting next to a congressional reporter who was telling a story about an annoying saleslady. “She was older,” my unknowing colleague said, “like 30.” Ugh. Once I got over being wounded about my age, I realized I was sitting at a table full of whip-smart women. And sadly, no grand dames of our craft were in attendance. We don’t have the kind of club the boys have in this town.

Later at home—and I know this may be trite—I pulled out the old Dorothy Parker as a substitute. I had a hankering for some of her dialogue-clogged stories, especially the proto-snarky bits where she reduces both sexes to their preening, self-centered selves. You read her and think, Damn, we’re so much smarter and better than the rest of these bitches. But then I opened the book randomly and came across two examples of Dorothy indulging in a little wounded hating on the cool kids and some very girly self-loathing. It made me like her even more. The first was a poem about, basically, hipsters. One line from the poem “Bohemia” reads, “Playwrights and poets and such horses’ necks/Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.”

The next was an entire short story about how she wished a guy would call her, and she knew he liked her less because she had called him earlier that day, but she didn’t care and still spent the night staring at the phone. Not that I’ve ever done that.

They keep the water bongs out front at B & K News Stand in Adams Morgan, but sex and Tom Clancy, it seems, trump weed. For that you’ve got a pay a buck.

Several times during the past two weeks, I have stopped by the store looking, unsuccessfully, for the September issue of Outside.

Each time, after marveling that High Times isn’t the only stoner glossy, I’ve noticed the sign by the red saloon doors demanding a dollar to pass into the back room. Today, I paid up and took a look.

Here at City Paper, our spam filter doesn’t snag very many of the continual come-ons for penis enlargement, performance drugs, and all the rest. So I though I had a good idea of what was available.

Wrong. B & K has quite a collection of goods, from the traditional flesh-toned 19-inch double dong, to a shorter one that straps, inexplicably, to your chin. They also have the truly bizarre “clone a pussy,” a $39.99 plaster caster rip-off modeling set.

B & K might be a little late on their shipments of outdoor adventure mags, but their issues of Buttman and Tranny Times are contemporary, their collection of vintage Playboy and videos vast. The only pedestrian fare beyond the red doors is the rack of yellowed Clancy novels next to the stroke mags.

But why the special room? And why the dollar? I asked Tony, the guy behind the counter for an explanation. The entrance fee, he says, has something to do with window shoppers.

“You buy something you get your dollar back,” Tony says. “You just look I keep the dollar. It helps pay the rent.”

Fair enough. As a neighborhood museum of the bizarre, it might even warrant a buck.

Kids fuck. You wanna know what kids in the District think about fucking and getting tested for HIV? I’m not sure you do. But Metro TeenAIDS worked up a survey of 13-to-24 year olds and released the somewhat-disturbing/somewhat-expected results on its Web site recently. OK. Recently is a bit of a stretch. Try June. But it’s August and no one here has a thing to say about Merv.

So the news nugget for those not reading Merv obits: A surprising number of young gay/bi males opted to get tested but failed to show up to get the results of their tests. You can find the full survey here.

Remember Dr. Christopher Warner, he of “vaginal rejuvenation” services? Well, Dr. Warner is not a man to rest easy, content to spend his days merely tightening up vaginal canals with his magical laser. Behold his newest offering: G-SPOT AMPLIFICATION!

G-SPOT AMPLIFICATION

Washington, DC- Dr. Christopher Warner, M.D., FACOG, founder of the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of Washington D.C., is now offering a new procedure – G-SPOT AMPLIFICATION. The G-spot has been the subject of lore and controversy since it was first identified in 1950 by the German gynecologist Ernst Gräfenberg. Some sexologists believe the small area behind the pubic bone and accessible through the anterior wall of the vagina is an erogenous zone that when stimulated leads to heightened sexual arousal and powerful orgasms. The G-SHOT® is a revolutionary scientific break through that enhances and enlarges the G-Spot. This is a safe, drug-free, fast, painless and effective procedure which takes less than 30 minutes in the doctor’s office. After the G-Spot is injected with THE G-SHOT® women have claimed to experience a peak in their sex drive and have noticed a heightened state of arousal. In our pilot study, we foun7% of the women reported that the G-Spot AmplificationT (GSA) procedure significantly enhanced their sexual gratification. They had a more intense feeling of sexual pleasure after receiving THE G-SHOT® Injection.

8 p.m., Cactus Cantina, Glover Park

LNSer: I didn’t want to be the first one there, so I took a long time picking out my shoes—the boats or the floppers? I went with the boats and was a half-hour late. Of course Hipster was even later. Probably couldn’t decide on an ironic T-shirt.

Hipster: I went with a T-shirt for the date. I mean, I think “Pork Chop Sandwiches” pretty much sums up how I feel about being made to go to effing Glover Park. I hope we see Tucker Carlson.

LNSer: To be honest, she was cute. She had Brenda’s body, but Kelly’s eyes, and not a touch of Donna.

Hipster: Winston was hanging out by the tortilla machine. I think he asked the woman churning them out if she could come over and clean his condo on the weekends. But, seriously? I kind of dug his shoes. My last boyfriend had dress Chucks. The left one only had one hole.

LNSer: She said she likes whiskey. I usually go with an RBV. In the interest of compromise, we ordered two pitchers of margaritas. The small talk was pretty lame until we figured out we both secretly love Dawson’s Creek. I’ve decided she’s more Jen than Joey.

Hipster: He works on the Hill, of course. It turns out, I was just there. But when he started talking about his job with “The Senator,” I poured myself another margarita. And then another. And then he brought up Hillary.

LNSer: I should have known better than to get into politics with Jen/Brenda. I mean, Hillary is a fat cow. She’s at least a size 12. How could any chick with thick ankles seriously think she can be president?

Hipster: I asked him if he wanted to go to my place and fuck.

LNSer: We went to Pound Town.

UPDATE: “I invited her to become a member of LNS. Now when I see her at the Deck, she won’t give me the time of day. Bitch set me up,” LNSer says.

Until last fall, condom-buyers at many CVS locations were required to ask a grumbling attendant to leave the counter, trudge to the back aisle, and take out a selection from a locked case. Public health students at George Washington University didn’t think anyone should endure that, especially since D.C. has the highest AIDS rates in the country. Last October, they confronted CVS management with a survey showing that the 20 stores with locked displays were in the neighborhoods with the most cases of AIDS.

The drugstore chain promised a change and responded by installing displays called “power wings,” which let a customer take out one package at a time. CVS has also installed displays that dispense a package when you pull a lever.

But that hasn’t satisfied the students—they claim that the people and the rubbers are still being kept apart. “We’re saying that, having power wing or no power wing, it doesn’t work,” says Shumaya Ali, a health communications graduate student. “CVS has a mission that says it will be the easiest pharmacy retailer for people to use…and it just contradicts everything they are doing with locking condoms.”

Ali’s group, Save Lives: Free the Condoms, argues that the one-package dispensers—which hold a limited selection of brands—are inadequate. “People still want other brands, and they have to go and ask,” says Carolyn Watson, a public health graduate student. “They just have to grin and bear it, so to speak.” The group also found in April that 11 stores were still locking their inventory. CVS spokesperson Mike DeAngelis says that isn’t the case now. “There are no CVS stores where condoms are completely behind a locked display,” he says.

So browsing D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s phone records, I see she called Washington City Paper’s main number no fewer than 31 times for a total of 162 minutes.

UPDATE, 4:10 P.M.: I’m not the only one on to this scoop! A CP employee working the reception desk received a call from a Channel 7 employee asking who exactly we were.

After tolerating the Euro scene at Russia House Friday night, we wandered across the street to the Royal Palace, a strip club at Connecticut and Florida Avenues NW. My first experience at a D.C. nudie bar had been so pleasant, I thought I’d continue my tour.

Sorry to say, I was a bit disappointed. The girls were subpar. I’d describe them as a little on the thicker side. A stomach fold is acceptable for a dancer, but not full-on rolls. The slim ones, while a few were quite pretty, just didn’t have the moves or the rhythm to hold our attention. I think we just continued a conversation from across the street, about writing or something. The waitress didn’t help either. I’d ordered my usual dirty-old-man scotch-and-soda and was sipping it, mindful of the vodka martinis I’d already consumed, and she kept coming by to ask me if the drink was too strong. “We make our drinks really strong here,” she said, implying I didn’t have the fortitude to handle the cocktail—or the performances. A Scottish man with us at one point remarked that the dancer in front of us, leggy, pretty and uncoordinated, had an ass like Serena Williams‘. I think he’d had one too many.

On a trip to Georgetown the next evening—long story—I got a glimpse of an even grimmer performer: