In June, MOCA DC—the District's most nude-friendly art gallery—was informed it must vacate its Georgetown location after an incident involving nipple pasties. But last week, MOCA DC renegotiated its lease in its Canal Square digs—under the condition that it cover up. "Under terms discussed with RB Properties last Thursday MOCA DC will be staying put for the foreseeable future," gallery owner David Quammen wrote in a statement. There is, of course, a price: "In exchange for a lease in my name and a few improvements that they will make, I will not display nude figurative art in the lobby, make some renovations—which I had in mind anyway—and ensure that events will be contained in the rear portion of the gallery."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

When flurry over a nipple tassel (among other things) forced MOCA DC out of its Georgetown digs, gallery owner David Quammen promised to send the gallery off by replacing his standard eye-patch with the incriminating breast covering. Quammen sent over this photographic evidence as proof. "Wore it all night," he says. MOCA DC's final event at its current location, the "Artists & Models Ball," will by held on July 30 at the gallery space at 1054 31st St. NW.

Three Georgetown students (and another from NYU) have launched WorstHookUps.com, a website for anonymously airing your greatest sex fails. “After a traumatizing hookup experience, [we] looked for a place to post the story online and realized that no such website existed," a site creator (they won't reveal their names) told Chris Heller at Vox Populi. Of course, some of the entries are horrifying for all the wrong reasons—like this one, in which our anonymous contributor complains about hooking up with an "older black woman" whose breasts he describes as "straight-up National Geographic shit." The hook-up takes a turn for the worse when she expects him to help her orgasm, and employs a vibrator in this pursuit. Also? This "older black woman" is 27 years old.

Photo via rachelkramerbussel.com, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Georgetown has never been known for its eroticism. But in the brick courtyard of Canal Square—an upscale piece of real estate nestled between M Street NW and the C&O Canal—gallery owner David Quammen, 70, has carved out a space for the risqué. Since 2005, Quammen’s MOCA DC has exposed Georgetown passersby to paintings of childbirth, photographs of Playboy Bunnies, and sketches of Quammen’s own nude body, all via the gallery’s 12-foot-long front window.

But next month, the gallery may very well shutter its doors over a pair of nipple pasties. Why now? The modesty-preserving devices appeared on the breasts of a live woman, not in a work of art. “I think that having live nudity at an opening reception is akin to having it on the wall,” Quammen says. “But a lot of people don’t like what I do.”

Quammen has never figured out how to move very many nudes in Georgetown. So over the years, he’s learned to supplement his exhibitions with exhibitionism. Three times a year, the gallery hosts opening receptions for shows of figural art: “Erotica” in March, “The Celebration of the Figure” in July, and “Heads or Tails: Fine Art Portraits and Tasteful Backsides” in November. In the gallery’s front room, Quammen displays works by local artists. In the back, he conducts live erotic events.

MOCA’s rear room has hosted belly dancers, swimsuit competitions, walk-in body painting (one memorable human canvas had the words “Warning: Choking Hazard” painted on his sizable stomach, complete with an arrow pointing to his penis), live nude statues, and even Playboy model Angelina Leigh, who’s posed naked for photos on a MOCA rug. Quammen keeps the party lubricated with six flavors of boxed wine.

Quammen’s openings have survived by keeping the business in the front and the party in the back. But MOCA’s parties—which can draw hundreds—can’t always be contained.

On March 5, Quammen celebrated the opening of his “Erotica 2010” exhibit by staging a burlesque competition hosted by local strip-tease star Kitty Victorian. During the performance, participants and gawkers were confined to the gallery’s modest rear room, where their activities were shielded from unsuspecting Georgetown bar-goers. But at some point in the evening, one of the amateur competitors managed to wander out into the open-air courtyard wearing little more than a pair of strategically-placed tassels.

Soon, Quammen got wind of some corporate backlash from the courtyard display. Beyond MOCA DC, Canal Square also hosts a few more traditional art galleries, Sea Catch restaurant, and the offices for R B Properties Inc., the real estate management company which rents Quammen his gallery. On March 10, Quammen drafted a letter to Ted Vogel, vice president of real estate for R B Properties, in an attempt to preempt any pastie-based concern. “I understand...that there was a complaint about one of the performers last Friday night going outside without proper clothing,” Quammen wrote. “While she was not nude, her attire was improper and not authorized to be anywhere but the rear portion of the gallery.” Quammen promised to rectify the situation by installing a guard at the gallery’s front entrance to help herd scantily clad attendees toward the rear.

On April 7, R B Properties replied to Quammen’s letter with a list of administrative complaints. “While you recognized the inappropriate attire worn by MOCA participants on March 5th, there were other issues that we find unacceptable that were not addressed in your letter,” the response read. Beyond the pasties, the MOCA party represented an “unauthorized use of the plaza area.” Some MOCA patrons had also utilized the Sea Catch restrooms, which proved “very disruptive to the restaurant’s business” that night.

“We look forward to many well-managed events by MOCA...and appreciate your cooperation and attention for years to come,” the letter finished.

That was before R B Properties discovered it wasn’t stuck with MOCA for the long haul. This summer, Quammen learned that MOCA’s lease with R B Properties—which Quammen had overseen for the gallery’s former director, painter Michael Clark, since 2005—had been a month-to-month arrangement all along. So Quammen approached the company to negotiate a long-term lease in his own name. He got his reply last month, when Vogel arrived at the gallery to tour the space with a new potential renter. On June 24, R B Properties gave Quammen a notice to vacate the premises by July 31. Calls to R B Properties were not returned.

Quammen is convinced that prudishness is to blame: “For being a liberal city, there’s a lot of conservatism here,” he says. After all, R B Properties hasn’t always been leasing to an “adult” gallery. For more than a decade, Clark had run MOCA DC with a focus on contemporary art, with the occasional phallic piece. The nudity began in earnest in 2002, when Quammen established his Figure Models Guild to connect local artists with nude models. Since assuming director duties in 2005, Quammen has heard plenty of snide dismissals of the gallery’s increasingly disrobed offerings. Of the Canal Square galleries, “MOCA is the pig of the bunch,” says Quammen. But for nearly six years, he scraped up enough rent to make sure it stays that way. “Eroticism is the carrot that God gave us for going ahead with this thing, having some children, and raising them,” he says.

So when Quammen received his notice to leave the space, he sent out a call to the gallery’s 1,400 member contact list, asking them to help the gallery keep doling out carrots. Last week, Quammen held a meeting in the gallery to discuss MOCA’s future. Unlike his erotic displays, the administrative event was “short on attendance,” Quammen says; one friend stopped by the space, and a few more participated via live-streaming Internet video.

Meanwhile, Quammen’s own body threatens to fail him. He wears a black eye patch over his right eye to mitigate a childhood injury; recently, his left started going, too. Over the past two years, he’s fought both prostate and colon cancer into remission. After two heart surgeries, walking a block leaves him winded. “Even with that, I have managed to do more than many half my age,” Quammen wrote in a letter to R B Properties. He’s now seeking out more expensive locations in Arlington and Dupont Circle. He hopes to supplement the price hike with a PBS-style pledge drive. How many are willing to pay a monthly fee for Quammen’s previously gratis events remains to be seen.

The July 31 quit date will, at least, provide Quammen an excuse to throw a party. “As far as the artwork is concerned, I’ll make a statement. I’m going to put the most brazen things out front I can find,” Quammen says. But he remains dedicated to keeping the live demonstration under wraps. “I’m going to respect the right of people, who are coming into the courtyard for other reasons, not to have somebody shove nudity in their face,” says Quammen. He will, instead, use his own face as the scene of the protest: In place of the eye patch, Quammen plans to affix a nipple tassel over his right eye.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

This summer, District wrinkles are under assault with the opening of D.C.'s "first ever botox boutique." The Georgetown-based Luxxery Express Medical Spa will feature no-appointment-necessary injectable fillers for "D.C.’s on-the-go, beauty-driven community"—a local demographic that's been ignored for too long.

The man behind the needle is Dr. Ayman Hakki, who, according to a press release, "saw two alternatives as a career: become a plastic surgeon like Ivo Pitangue whose work on Sophia Lauren popularized cosmetic surgery or become an architect like Frank Gehry whose work evokes both pop culture and high art." Thankfully for the nomadic beauty-driven community, Hakki's "love of beauty and the human body" won out. The choice paid off: The presser touts him as "the first D.C. metropolitan-area plastic surgeon whose artistry was featured on MTV’s 'True Life: I Want Breast Implants.'" He'll be available to stuff your face at 2141 Wisconsin Ave. NW starting July 1.

Photo via JenniferCorey.com

According to the Examiner:

Five out of eight Washington-area universities reported an increase in sexual offenses to the Department of Education from 2007 to 2008. The University of Virginia and Virginia Tech as well as Georgetown, George Mason and Catholic universities reported an increase in sexual assaults—which include rape and any other sexual act against someone's will.

This is how the Examiner crunches that data: "Women are increasingly being victimized on college campuses across the Washington region, with romantic relationships behind most of the assaults, according to the FBI and statistics from local universities."

Nope. It's certainly possible that more women were assaulted at local colleges in 2008 than were in 2007. But equally possible is that more women reported their assaults to authorities. So based on the data, we're really not in a position to either panic or pat ourselves on the back here.

But let's take a closer look at the data. Of the eight schools the Examiner included in its data, five saw their sexual assault report numbers fluctuate by only one assault. At Virginia Tech, reports increased from 3 to 4 assaults. At George Mason, they dropped from 12 to 11. At Catholic, they increased from 1 to 2. At American University, they dropped from 2 to 1. At the George Washington University, they increased from 5 to 6.

Of the three remaining schools, The University of Virginia saw the highest jump in reports—5 to 16. Georgetown saw reports increase from 8 to 10. And at the University of Maryland, reports dropped from 21 to 17.

What do these numbers mean? Absolutely nothing, probably. Unfortunately, the Examiner's go-to campus expert, University of Maryland administrator John Zacker, doesn't help to clarify matters:

He said sexual assault on campus is much higher than data reveals—the number of assault cases ranged from three to 16 in area colleges during 2008, but only 5 percent of victims file a report.

Zacker said students are building higher thresholds for obsessive behavior and waiting longer to report incidents—if they report them at all.

"There are some [victims] that incur this behavior for months without reporting it," he said. He said the invasive nature of campus investigations also deters victims from reporting—especially considering only 10 percent to 25 percent of students found guilty of sexual assault face expulsion, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research center.

Zackler knows that there are huge barriers to reporting sexual assault on college campuses, so it's disingenuous for him—and the Examiner—to claim that a small fluctuation in the already tiny number of sexual assaults reported on campus has any sort of statistical significance. But even more bizarre is the fact that Zackler is actually arguing against the data's (likely insignificant) trend. If more students reported assaults in 2008 than 2007, where is the evidence that students today are "building higher thresholds for obsessive behavior and waiting longer to report incidents—if they report them at all"? Zackler may have personal knowledge that some victims on his campus have high thresholds for obsessive behavior and wait a long time to report their incidents, if they report them at all. But situating Zackler's observations as a frightening trend without presenting any comparative data is extremely misleading.

Freddie Fackelmayer, a 2005 graduate of the George Washington University, wants everyone to know that he's not a "womanizing jerk." Fackelmayer just finished up a stint as fake boyfriend to reality television star Whitney Port on MTV's "The City," a fake show about Port's real life working in the fashion industry, a career she secured by virtue of being a reality television star. Anyway, Fackelmayer recently granted an interview with the G.W. Hatchet about how his fake relationship with a reality television star was totally misrepresented on the T.V.!

"They can still make you look however they want," Fackelmayer told the Hatchet. "They made me be this sort of womanizing jerk, which is not really who I am," he said. How does that work? According to  Fackelmayer, MTV "never asked the cast to say or do anything, but the editing that followed skewed what actually happens." He adds: "You know they cut it up [into] little bits and they pick what they want to make it as interesting as possible and it's tough not to look like a jerk, I think."

I want to believe Fackelmayer that he's not the kind of jerk with a fake tan who summers in the Hamptons and cheats on his girlfriend for the purposes of a reality TV show, but how can we know for sure? Let's check out the other facts about Fackelmayer revealed in the story:

- He was on a reality television show

- He majored in finance

- He still acts like a GW kid [Full disclosure: I went there]. "When I first saw him I thought he was a bit of an Adonis, tan, beautiful, he's a real switch-up," one GW student told the Hatchet. "At first I was shocked to hear he was a GW student, but after I heard him talk and watched him for a while, it made a lot of sense. I feel he fits into what a GW student would be."

- He works for a commercial real estate company

- He was in a frat

- He recruited one of his frat friends to corroborate his story: "It's just that you can't really find out who someone is through like 17 minutes, or however long it is."

- This: "Fackelmayer, who said he arrived to GW in his khakis and flip-flops from Connecticut, soon became accustomed to jeans, Georgetown and the lifestyle D.C. has to offer."

- He's writing a novel. "I'm speaking with agents, and that's actually something that actually has been helpful, because agents, if you're a first-time writer, its really difficult to get your foot in the door, but I sort of skipped those really difficult first steps because most of them had heard of me."

Hmm. I don't know. Womanizing jerk, or victim of the media? You be the judge.

Tucker Max, professional sexist, swung through College Park, Md., and Washington, D.C., last month to help promote his new movie, "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell." Tucker Max events, you may be surprised to learn, can actually prove helpful to us feminists. Max has the power to gather all the local sexist douchebags into one convenient location for an evening, and that makes those people a lot easier to identify (and mock). But if you didn't have the heart to trudge out and ridicule the hordes of Tucker Max fans in person, it's not too late to get in on the fun. Max has graciously provided anecdotal and recorded evidence of the tour's douchiest attendees for us! See if you can spot any douches from your workplace, biology class, or overpriced Georgetown lounge:

[youtube:v=LVdOO_PnL6s]

Here's Max's video of the "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" premiere in College, Park, Md. It includes a douchebag who allows Max's video minion to shoot him in the face with a Nerf gun in the hopes of coming face-to-face with his douche idol. It also features a lady-douche who allows a gentleman-douche to spit his chewing tobacco into her mouth. She wins a beer bong. Over on the written side, Max informs us of one College Park douche who says he once had sex with a fat woman in order to finally seize the opportunity to tell a disposable sex partner to weave him a basket.

[youtube:v=i2y1oxAPQws]

Over at the Washington, D.C., premiere, Max's video minion ridicules both Vietnamese and African-American women, the former for being employed as a pedicurist, and the latter for having a name he finds funny. He also exposes several douchebags gathered outside the premier who can recite obscure details of Tucker Max's sexcapades, but are unable to name the second and third presidents of the United States. Max's douchey law-school buddies get in on the fun, but they ask Max not to repeat any of the shit they said, because they are douchey guys who went to law school. Also featured: An awkward night-vision shot of a theater full of douchebags writhing with glee when Tucker Max makes a joke about exterminating fat chicks, or whatever the fuck that guy does for a living.

UPDATE: Oh! Welcome, Tucker Max fans! While I'm not scraping the sand out of my vagina or feeding my cats, I'm composing more poorly-written articles about Tucker Max that you're sure to love. Clicky-clicky!

On Wednesday, American Apparel's Silver Spring store received the chain's latest threatening phone call in response to its anti-Prop-8 "Legalize Gay" T-shirts.

"Five minutes ago, I just answered the phone and got a death threat from a man with a bad phone connection," the female Silver Spring employee wrote to superiors in an e-mail. The caller asked the employee why the pro-gay shirts were still on display, then threatened to take action. He said, "If I didn’t take it down, bad things can happen to me, resulting in drastic measures," she wrote.

The hazy threats have made the nightly news, but the incidents have also sent some clearer-headed telephone traffic to the Maryland store. "[The employee] told us that she's received plenty of other phone calls thanking the store for sticking with the 'Legalize Gay' display," says Jonny Makeup, an American Apparel rep.

Makeup says the threats are an anomaly in the history of the T-shirt, which American Apparel first produced to support campaigns to repeal California's anti-gay-marriage measure, Proposition 8. Until this week, Makeup says that American Apparel has never received so much as a complaint about the shirts. "Not even in our Midwest mall stores," he says.

Now, the shirt's D.C.-area detractors will have more opportunities to get angry—and maybe finally get caught. A broken window and a couple of anonymous phone calls were enough to send American Apparel into "Legalize Gay" overdrive. Makeup says that the shirts, which the company often donates to pride groups around the country, are in-demand as ever—and that D.C. will see more shipments of the shirts in coming days. "We're putting them on display in all our stores," says Makeup. Also in the works? "We plan on making sure there’s more security," he says.

This week, hooligans targeted a couple of local American Apparel stores over the stores' prominent "Legalize Gay" T-Shirt displays. On Monday, a window at the Silver Spring location was shattered. Yesterday, an anonymous caller informed the Georgetown location that as long as "Legalize Gay" is on display, the storefronts can expect more broken glass.

American Apparel isn't scared.

Following the second threat, Silver Spring American Apparel manager Kassandra Powell told CP that the store had temporarily removed the anti-Prop-8 clothing from its window display. Last night, company spokesperson Ryan Holiday wrote in to say that "Legalize Gay" was there to stay. "The store employee misspoke about taking the display down," wrote Holiday. "[T]hose decisions get made in Los Angeles and we wouldn't want to give into something like this."

In a statement, American Apparel's Jonny Makeup made clear that the two local incidents would only strengthen its marriage equality efforts in D.C. The company will "continue to run Legalize Gay advertisements in papers across DC-Metro area," wrote Makeup. Some Washingtonians may even get some free stuff out of the deal: "We'll also send Legalize Gay t-shirts to any group in Washington DC that is fighting for gay rights,"

A local vandal may have found an antidote for the "Legalize Gay" T-shirts that have popped up in American Apparel window displays around the D.C. area—eliminate the window.

When Kassandra Powell arrived for work at the Silver Spring American Apparel store yesterday morning, she was met with a crowd, a police car, and a broken window. "I was told that the [security alarm] went off at 5:15 a.m.," she says.

Powell, a store manager, had reason to believe that the early-morning glass-shattering was more than your average retail break-in. Nothing was stolen from the store—including the anti-Prop-8 t-shirts prominently displayed on the opposite side of the glass.

This morning, the Georgetown American Apparel location experienced its own attack from an upset window shopper—this time, over the telephone. Around 10:30 a.m., visual merchandiser Walter Reed fielded a call from a male who was "enraged for no reason."

"He was like, is this the Silver Spring location? And I said, 'No, this is the Georgetown location, '" says Reed. "He said, 'You have some Legalize Gay shirts in the window there.' He said that he and his friends found it offensive, and that if we didn't take them down, they were going to break it—the window," said Reed. "I said, 'Is that a threat, Sir?' And then he hung up."

When Reed called the Silver Spring store to inform them of the threat, he was told that the location had already received the more forceful warning about its window display over 24 hours earlier. Then, Reed informed the police of the telephonic follow-up.

Reed was doing more than helping a sister store out—he personally assisted the Silver Spring location in styling its pro-gay display. "I helped do the windows there just last week," says Reed. "I know there was a Gay Beach shirt right there in the window."

For now, Reed's handiwork has been temporarily disassembled. "I took it down because of the threat," says Powell. "It’s not because we’re trying to comply with their demands or anything—we just don't want a broken window."

UPDATES:

American Apparel Windows Will Stay Gay

American Apparel Employees Receive Death Threats

American Apparel "Legalize Gay" Vandalism Inspires Support, Security

Molly Redden from The Georgetown Voice is exhaustively covering the university's "Sex Positive Week" over at student blog Vox Populi. Some Hoyas are pissed off that GU is helping fund the week's activities. So—what exactly are they upset about? What does "Sex Positive" mean, anyway?

Unfortunately, I missed Monday's opening panel discussion entitled "SEX POSITIVE... WHAT'S THAT?," which I'm sure would have answered all my questions. Thankfully, Redden's blurb on last night's "Torn about Porn" event provides a working definition: She describes sex-positive porn as "affirming rather than objectifying or exploitative, like sex-negative porn."

At the "Torn about Porn" event, participants were asked to judge whether porn site No Fauxxx was sex-positive or sex-negative. "No Fauxxx" bills itself as "an authentic underground porn site fed on love, art, and above all—raw, dirty, sexuality." It claims to stand for "Arousal," an "All-inclusive casting attitude," "High Art," "Accessibility," "Safer sex and consent," "Breaking stereotypes," "A female-friendly perspective," a "worker-friendly perspective," a "female-friendly perspective," "Trans-friendly," and "Respectful."

But without the mission statement, does No Fauxxx's porn look any different? According to Redden, "While you can construe the ten or so images in the slideshow as ‘offensive,’ the conversation was grounded, with most students concluding that porn is porn, and these images in particular are just 'porn with hipsters in it.'"

So, what is sex-positive porn? Just like regular porn, just more obnoxious.

Photo by miniroom549

Cuddler, eh? That's a pretty good nickname for a villain who holds damsels hostage, thwarts heroes, etc. (Redden credits the UMD Diamondback with first coining the name). As a real threat to a community, though, it's a bit of a misnomer. Oh yes, the Cuddler does more than cuddle. He also:

a) gains "entry to [a female victim's] residence by unknown means"

b) takes "a blanket from a bedroom," lays it "on top of the complainant," then lays himself "on top of her." [Incidentally, Cuddler, if you're reading, this is my number one greatest fear].

c) attempts to rape women (with varying success).

Aren't there other, more appropriate nicknames we could use to describe this menace? I submit:

a) The Georgetown Entry-Gainer

b) The Georgetown Blanketlayer

c) The Georgetown Rapist

CORRECTION: This post originally credited the Vox Populi post to Will Sommer instead of its author, Molly Redden. What can I say, I like them both.

Over at City Desk, Ryan Reilly reports on the demise of the online college gossipmonger "Juicy Campus." Apparently, providing a venue for college kids to punk their frenemies isn't very lucrative. In a presser, Juicy Campus founder Matt Ivester admitted that "even with great traffic and strong user loyalty, a business can’t survive and grow without a steady stream of revenue to support it."

Juicy Campus was a lot of things—potentially libelous, bitchy, unsuccessful. I'd like to think the story I wrote last year on the site's expansion to Georgetown brought out Juicy's lighter side. This was all the way back in Septeber, when Juicy Campus was still colonizing campuses with a bang instead of folding with a whimper. Oh, memories. Relive the gossip in all its glory here, before the site folds tomorrow.

Photo by TroyMason.

1. Is This Man Your Ticket to the Inauguration?
2. Man Madness: Brookings Institution Vs. Georgetown University
3. The Morning After: Go G0y! Edition
4. The Manliest Workplace Competition
5. eHarmony Fail

Photo via trialsanderrors.

Chibbaro writes that Abdulgader "faces a maximum sentence of five and a half years in prison" for the assault and weapon charges—the weapon in question was a "glass vodka bottle." Usually, an assault of this kind has a maximum penalty of three years in prison. But Abdulgader admitted that the crime was committed "based on his prejudice against the victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation”—meaning the sentencing can be heightened under D.C.'s hate crime legislation. In the District of Columbia, hate crimes can result in penalties one-and-a-half times stronger than non-bias related crimes.

More details from Chibbaro:

In appearing before Judge Harold Cushionberry, Abdulgader acknowledged a statement by prosecutors that he used a glass vodka bottle to strike a 23-year-old man in the face while making anti-gay remarks, knocking him unconscious in an unprovoked attack Oct. 3.

Police said the incident occurred about 3 a.m. along the C&O Canal in Georgetown after Abdulgader and co-defendant Saad Elarch, 22, approached the gay man and the man’s friend.
According to a statement released by the United States Attorney’s office, Abdulgader admitted in court that he and Elarch asked the gay man and his friend about their sexual orientation and “subjected them to homophobic remarks.”

“After the victim and his friend tried to leave, Abdulgader moved ahead of them and pretended to apologize,” says a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s office. “In the middle of making an apology, with no warning or provocation, Abdulgader hit the victim in the left side of his face with a glass vodka bottle.

If you have information on the crime, call Crime Solvers at (800) 673-2777.

Last month, I wrote a story about anonymous gossip Web site Juicy Campus hitting Georgetown University. I found the GU students I talked to split between the concerned and the insincere: Some were repulsed by the site, while others refused to take the platform seriously (that's two of Georgetown's Juicy jokers, Sean Baumann and Tom Hutton, above). Today, the Washington Post has a piece about some Georgetown students who take the site pretty seriously. On Tuesday, Juicy Campus founder Matt Ivester took questions from students. According to reporter Susan Kinzie, those questions included:

- Why can't you prevent people's reputations from being smeared on your site?

- Why don't you take down the racist comments?

- Do you know some students are so distraught about the things said about them that they might drop out of school?

- How do you sleep at night?

Ivester's defense? "I think they're going to have to start developing a sense of humor."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

The Georgetown University student newspaper, the Hoya, has a story this week about the phenomenon of on-campus "pleasure parties." Reporter Alex Lee writes about a pleasure party she hosted at her Georgetown townhouse:

Sitting cross-legged on my living room sofa here at Georgetown, Jenny Cancelado holds in her right hand twelve inches of vibrating, scintillating and writhing purple plastic. “This,” she beams, “is the Endless Pleasure. It is the Cadillac of our toy line.” After a litany of lubes, lotions and other little extras that were a part of the so-called pleasure party hosted at my townhouse, Cancelado had saved the toys for an encore.

I knew a girl like this in college. She was so "progressive" and "open" about her sexuality that she made sure to corner every dorm resident and explain her progressive openness to them. This openness came in the form of extensive PDA displays with her boyfriend, whose tiny single-room dorm she conquered shortly into our first semester; inappropriate butt-squeezing, from which no one was safe; and, of course, a  psychological void that could only be filled by offending someone by saying something "outrageous."

It wasn't long before the Pleasure Party invitation came in. As Lee explains in the Hoya piece, Pleasure Parties are promotional gatherings targeted at women. At them, sex toys and accessories "are presented to guests who are offered an opportunity to touch, smell and even taste products. . . . [the event] strives to create a setting where women can express and explore their sexuality openly and on their own terms."

In my experience, though, the Pleasure Party is actually the place where "exploring your sexuality" meets "exploiting your friends" through "pushing expensive product." I declined the invitation.

Photo by paper or plastic?