Britical

NYC

“There will be a lot of sniffing, tasting, and licking here tonight, ladies”, announced Dawn-Ellen, a distinctly un-petite blonde from Cincinatti. Us “ladies” are sitting in a worryingly group therapy-esque circle in my friend K.’s sitting room. “Ladies”, she persists, “whether you have a husband, a boyfriend, whether you’re dating or even if you have a man but just don’t like him…” (Of course, less charitable souls than I might say this last category covers pretty much all the lovely ladies on Park Avenue.) It was going to be a bumpy night. I poured myself another glass of wine.

Ignoring, for now, the little black “sateen” covered coffee table just visible behind her, piled high with all manner of cheesy fun - little pink plastic bottles, pink butt plugs, pink vibrators and so on - our proudly zaftig Pure Romance “consultant” then told us we were all going to play a little game “to warm you all up!” Uh-huh. We each had to write down “a household chore” we hated doing and say why. We would take turns reading out our reason but with one catch: we had to to preceed it with the words, “I hate sex because…” !! Uh? Didn’t she mean I like Sex Because? No, she did not. My own badly acted offering, muttered between clenched teeth ( “I hate sex because, uh, the maid does it..?”) was lost in the almost audible bewilderment and dismay of a bunch of smart, horny, Manhattan women suddenly aghast to realize that perhaps they’d been all come schlepping down to the far West Side on a chilly Tuesday night as part of some cruel and ghastly trick. Apparently we were not to be encouraged in yippee filthy, mindblowing pig-in-a-trough sex after all, but rather to be assured in flat, Mid-Western tones that we too could get sex over and done with as quickly and painlessly as possible. Alas, smart, perceptive women like I said.

As the products were passed gingerly round, we were told to designate one hand for sniffing, the other for licking. “You can lick your sniffer, but not sniff your licker!”, said Dawn-Ellen whose delivery resembled that of a cheery, slightly leering flight attendant demonstrating the tedious safety procedures, but low on blood sugar and verging dangerously on hysteria.
We gamely sniffed at and pretended to taste endless sickly-sweet lotions, body sprays, and “vanilla”, “strawberry” and “cherry” product flavoured substances which are surely manufactured in some New Jersey lab, or perhaps in the Glade candle factory. Their sole vocation is seemingly to cover up the allegedly nasty, smelly experience of sex, to smite down and wipe clean the furious, howling muck of depravity with a bunch of “easy to use, ladies!” products that render blow jobs, shagging and even the nagging sense of shame at your own malodorous self completely non-existent. Awesome. Thus everything is guaranteed to come up smelling if not of roses then at least of those hateful car deodorizers that hang so prettily in the windows of taxis. “Febreze” for the sex act, if you will.

There were sprays to make your legs look not only tanned (which is one thing) but “just like you’re wearing panty hose!”. Hot! There was also a tube of who knows what containing the cure for premature ejaculators. A bit of a curve ball for me, this, because all the other noxious concoctions seemed almost psychotically hellbent on achieving just this disappointingly “Oh- oh-Oh yes…Oh!…oh..um…sorry…” brisk conclusion to matters in the bedroom.
There were various things Dawn-Ellen assured us would “have his leg shaking and his eyes rolling back in his head - and then ….. it’ll be time to sleep!!” “Or time”, my friend L. whispered darkly, alarmed as I was at this creepy mental image, “for hospital”. And so it went. A sad, pink procession of pheremone sheet sprays (they’re big into “pheremones” at Romance, and yes, I resisted the impulse to nerdily ask poor, know-it-all sex queen Dawn-Ellen to define what a pheremone is), pearberry “Coochy” spray, and Piggy Parfait - the latter because, as our operatically full-figured consultant chirped yet again, “it doesn’t smell too good down there, ladies!” Romance: not dead!

There was a merciful break before the threat of vibrating toys was to be made good on. (I had already peeked at a couple of them and, with their trailing wires and odd appendages, they looked stimulating only in a disturbing, Abu Ghraib sort way.) I checked my cell and found J.L. had texted, offering to drive by and rescue me. I punched in, “Yes! Please!!!!” like the wicked Blue State whore I am, and slunk guiltily back upstairs.

The Krystal Dolphin, the Sealion, My First Dolphin, the Jelly Ultimate Eager Beaver. A whole cuddly section of the animal kingdom snatched from the hands of innocent babes and co-opted to push machinery to less innnocent babes, and designed, I suspect, not to enhance your pleasure, but rather to save getting your hands all annoyingly sticky. Ditto the oddly tactile and absolutely fascinating (to me at least) jelly-like sheathe created, I kid you not, to place over some lucky man’s penis (perhaps the one you “just don’t like very much”?). In this way you can not only give a sort of hands-free hand job to avoid touching the dreaded member, but afterwards, have the revolting thing roll up into a handy ball and just rinse it under the tap without soiling your little lady hands, thus freeing your mind to ponder flowers, whale sounds and pretty things.
Then, to my alarm, and at the pleasingly plump Dawn-Ellen’s suggestion, the woman next to me reluctantly put some icky-flavoured lube on her index finger and invited me to place the sheathe over it and … woah … hey! Novel and unpleasant. Thoroughly irritated by now, I was more interested in lobbing the joke shop-ish device against the wall to see if it would stick - ha ha! - but was dissuaded by the “don’t you dare!” look I got from the host.

Relating all this to a guy friend of mine the next day, he laughed at my descriptions of things to make it go slower/quicker/not at all and said, “So no one is ever satisfied! Too quick, too slow. How’s about we just have a nice key party? Hasn’t anyone in the Mid-West heard of a shower??” Of course, he could not resist interrogating me about the pusher of these horrors and, being a guy, asked me what she looked like. “Was she hot? Should I host one??” I told him she was probably, as my dear brother was wont to remark in mock-tactful fashion, “at her greatest density”. Maxim lad J.S. laughed in triumph and said, “Ha! So the pig was trying to sell you a dolphin, ha ha ha!” Nice. No wonder some of these poor, “wholesome” women want to do “the wild thing” with the lights off.

So what’s with all the squeamishness? I hate to spout this cliche but I suspect it’s the same old Puritannical Middle America thing. This bizarre “Romance Party” enigma, modelled after the Tupperware parties of yore, transports the reluctant and ashamed back to the 50’s when sex was to be merely endured. “Lie back and think of England” went the old joke, advice to wives as they performed the conjugal chore (”I hate sex because…”). Any mention of the “act”, especially by women, was considered a bit outre and racy at best, and certainly this was the intended effect last night. Except it didn’t play too well with us particular ladies. Unfortunately for Romance, Inc., we were all raunchy Manhattan girls raised on Sex and the City and thus perhaps more likely to revel in the inherent dirt and filth of, not household chores (hell, no!), but sex itself. Said a rather stunned Dawn-Ellen about five minutes into her schtick, as we all stared at her goggle-eyed and full of irrelevant, awkward questions about whether, say, the Mitsubishi motor in the vibrator was *that* Mitsubishi (it is, although, interestingly, she wouldn’t tell us): “Gosh! You ladies warmed up pretty quickly!” (I’m sure there’s a nice cherry flavoured lotion for this too.)

“But I don’t want things to smell of cherry and banana!” whined L. when it came time to pony up the cash for some mortifying little doo-dad, quick! anything, from the coffee table. “I like things to smell like they’re supposed to…” Quite so. I recognized a sister in arms, but it was time to put on the blindfold and get a cigarette. The two of us trudged downstairs to “the private purchasing room” where, amongst a little, bemused unprivate group of us, and flummoxed by what we could possibly want, need, bear to have in the house, or justify throwing cash away on, we espied a couple of books. Books! Who knew! I resentfully grabbed ‘Tickle His Pickle - Your Hands On Guide to Penis Pleasing’ - and fled into the darkling night, to J.L. who, Knowing me and knowing what is good for him, would take one look at the book, toss it into the back seat, and tell me I could have written it myself. True romance indeed.

 

 

Copyright Britical 2006