More articles by Brian JosepherSex in New York CitySex in New York City
In addition to this column, I author a sex column for another website. Sometimes those columns become more political columns than sex columns. Sometimes those columns become investigative columns. When that happens, I usually set it aside or erase it completely. After all, not everything written is suitable for the Internet, or the book publishing industry.
At any rate, I’ve decided to post the article here in this space. This is what happens when a sex columnist tries to track down a story on a busy weekend in New York.
A Sunday in April. The cherry blossoms in full bloom. The sunshine as bright as can be. Sunbathers filling the lawns of the city. The restaurants jammed. Broadway matinees sold out. Somewhere in the hubbub of New York City a story waits to be exposed. A sex columnist leaves his apartment with pen and paper in his backpack. His mission: to write a sex column before the day is through. This is the story of one sex columnist’s hunt for that elusive story.
8:30 a.m. The sex columnist enters the elevator for the ride down to the ground floor. He wears a blue linen suit, a button-down white oxford shirt, dressy sandals. He is cleanly shaven. He’s splashed on a little Paco Rabanne pour homme. Is this foppery? Indeed so. But recognize that the columnist has a big day planned, with events both formal and casual. How do you dress when your itinerary takes you from church to Central Park to Yankee’s Stadium to Moses’ (and Miriam’s) table? If it’s spring, you wear linen. This may be a sex column, not a fashion column, but trust me: When the warmer weather comes opt for linen.
The sex columnist catches a 1-train. He rides to Times Square and transfers to an S (for shuttle). The S-train lets out at Grand Central Station. From there, he walks north. He walks with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others. There are teenagers in the crowd. There are elderly folk. There are white and yellow papal flags and placards. Some in English. Most in Spanish. There are nuns. Lots of nuns. From all points around the world, it seems. Catholicism is a multinational smorgasbord. Nowhere is that more evident than on the streets of New York City.
Nearly everyone, our intrepid sex columnist notes, wears a cross. In fact, there are cross vendors walking within the crowd. The sex columnist buys a few, stuffs them in his pack.
The sex columnist arrives at his destination at nine a.m. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, for those who have never visited or seen photos, is the grandest edifice of religion in America. You can search this country thoroughly and you won’t find a building with such grandeur, such gravitas, such holiness. St. Patrick’s is more than the symbolic seat of American Catholicism. It is the citadel of God.
In disappointment, the sex columnist notes, there isn’t a sex story here. But that could change. After all, the Catholics are having some problems with priests and chastity.
At 9:05 a white pickup truck pulls up to the entrance of St. Patrick’s. This is a white pickup truck like no other. A compartment fills the bed of the truck. The compartment is made of glass (bullet-proof, to be sure). There is one raised seat within the compartment, and two lowered, unobtrusive seats.
In the raised seat sits an 81-year-old man. He wears a big smile. He wears all white. His clothes match the color of his hair. He does not wear a wedding ring, our intrepid sex columnist notes.
The world knows this man as Pope Benedict XVI and his automobile as the Popemobile. Benedict is the heartthrob of hundreds of millions of Catholics. In fact, Benedict redefines the word heartthrob. This man does not inspire romantic thoughts. This man is not the Brad Pitt of the Catholic priestly set. This man inspires piety. Who would have thought that piety could be sexy?
At 9:12 the Pope climbs the stair, waves to the thousands of spectators and enters the Cathedral. None of the spectators enter behind the Pope. This is a mass held for the invited only: priests, deacons, cardinals, bishops, archbishops. Oh, and sex columnists who come equipped with a press pass. Our intrepid columnist follows behind the Pope.
From within, the Cathedral is a lesson in verticality. The walls reach for hundreds of feet, seemingly. The arches are all narrow, creating the illusion of even more height. Our sex columnist has forbidden thoughts. People talk about the most forbidden and therefore best places for sex. On an airplane, otherwise known as the Mile High Club, seems to rank high on everyone’s list. Supposedly the atmospheric pressure increases the intensity of the orgasm. Well the atmospheric pressure of St. Patrick’s far exceeds 20,000 feet. The atmospheric pressure reaches for the heavens.
In his homily the Pope says, “The spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral are dwarfed by the skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline, yet they are a vivid reminder of the constant yearning of the human spirit to rise to God.”
He continues, “We can only move forward if we turn our gaze together in Christ. In the light of faith, we will then discover the wisdom and strength needed to open ourselves to points of view which may not necessarily conform to our own ideas or assumptions. Thus, we can value the perspectives of others, be they younger or older than ourselves, and ultimately hear what the Spirit is saying to us and to the church.”
Inspiring words? The mood inside the Cathedral moves toward awe. Unfortunately for our sex columnist, there isn’t a story here. The Pope isn’t calling for free love. Our columnist leaves early.
As the crowd waits for the pontiff to exit the Cathedral and wave and then climb back into the Popemobile for the ride to the Bronx, our sex columnist walks north. He enters Central Park at 72nd street at high noon precisely. From there, the Bandshell beckons in a sea of blue. A banner advertises, “Welcome to Earth Day 2008. BYOB.”
The acronym stands for Bring Your Own Blue. The organizers of Earth Day 2008 had an idea. Wear blue to raise consciousness for global warming. Wear blue to call for a moratorium on coal burning.
Fortunately for our intrepid sex columnist, he not only wears a blue linen suit but under his button-down white oxford he wears a blue t-shirt. Since the day is warm, he strips down to the t-shirt level. There are others, the sex columnist notes, going topless, with blue painted on to their skin. And an E for Earth in green.
Now this is the kind of place, our intrepid sex columnist thinks, where sex columns happen.
On the stage of the Bandshell, the band Big Head Todd and the Monsters performs “Bittersweet”:
“A little light looks through her bedroom window.
She dances and I dream, she’s not so far as she seems,
Of brighter meadows, melting sunsets,
Her hair blowing in the breeze.
And she can’t see me watching.
And I’m thinking: love.
It’s bittersweet, more sweet than bitter, bitter than sweet.
It’s a bittersweet surrender.”
Below the stage, there’s a crowd singing along. There are people swaying to the sounds. Further removed from the band, there are food stalls. You won’t find meat burgers or turkey legs here. You will find tofurki and meatless meat and corn on the cob and apples and pears, all organic of course.
Beside the food stalls, there’s face painting for the young, and not so young. With natural, non-toxic, chemical free agents, naturally. There’s composting demonstrations. There are kids digging in the mulch. There are crafts made of recycled materials. There are also eco-friendly sex toys.
Big Head Todd sings:
“We live together… But it’s different from my dream.
Morning light fills the room. I rise.
She pretends she’s sleeping.
Are we everything we wanted?
And I’m thinking love…
It’s bittersweet, more sweet than bitter, bitter than sweet.
It’s a bittersweet surrender.”
The sex toys catch the sex columnist’s eye. He approaches the stall. There are organic massage oils. There are hemp and bamboo sheets. He overhears the stall’s saleswoman talking about the sheets, “Bamboo is one of the softest materials out there. So you have that to consider. Bamboo doesn’t need pesticides to grow, and it renews itself extremely fast. When you add all of that together – pesticide free, soft to the touch, a nearly renewable resource – why would you choose anything else?”
The saleswoman turns to an article of clothing, GreenKnickers. “Why are panties made of synthetic materials?” she asks. “Why can’t we have eco-undies? Now we can. Not only are GreenKnickers made of hemp and therefore ecologically superior but check ‘em out. I think they’re sexy. What do you think?”
The ten or so people gathered around the table agree on the sex factor.
The stall’s saleswoman then introduces herself to the crowd. “My name is Lara,” she says. “I pronounce it as Laura but I dropped the U from the spelling. U is the chemical symbol for uranium. And as we all know, uranium kills.”
Lara then segues to other killers, “There’s a chemical called phthalates. Dildos and vibrators and condoms and all the rest, they’re made of phthalates. Why can’t condoms come natural, made of cocoa powder? Why can’t condoms be vegan?”
Lara answers her own questions by holding up vegan condoms, in green of course. She then makes her pitch for safe, ecologically friendly sex, “The world is so overpopulated. We can’t afford unplanned, unwanted babies. More mouths to feed are just as dangerous to the earth as chemicals and pesticides.” She then turns and speaks directly to the sex columnist, don’t know why, “Please, buy some vegan condoms for yourself, your friends, your loved ones. They are our future.”
The sex columnist buys a bunch. He throws them into his backpack.
Big Head Todd sings:
“I know we don’t talk about it._ We don’t tell each other.
All the little things that we need.
We work our way around each other.
As we tremble and we bleed.
As we tremble and we bleed.”
It’s strange how a song changes according to the environment. Our sex columnist used to listen to “Bittersweet” in bed with a girlfriend. They used to sing the song at the top of their lungs. “We work out way around each other” was always a powerful and meaningful lyric.
In the environment of Earth Day, the song seems to speak to a much bigger relationship: ours with earth.
1:15 p.m. now and our intrepid sex columnist waits at the 59th Street/Columbus Circle stop for a D or a B train up to the Bronx. Surreptitiously he scans the crowd, a sex columnist hunting for a sex story. Nothing jumps out. Instead, the smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken overpowers his story finding abilities. A couple nearby sucks on grease and bones. The sight of grease dripping off chin makes the sex columnist look away. He occupies his mind with the B-train. B for Benedict. B for baseball. The D-train arrives.
Our sex columnist arrives at 161st Street/Yankee Stadium at 2:02 p.m. Outside the famed baseball stadium, there are thousands of people milling about. They’re not waiting for a glimpse of A-Rod or Derek Jeter. They’re not waiting to jeer the arrival of the evil Boston Red Sox. They’re waiting for the man in white, Pope Benedict and his Popemobile.
The sex columnist does not wait with the masses. He walks over to one of the turnstiles. The security guard looks him up and down. “Didn’t you read your ticket?” the guard says. “You were supposed to be here by noon. I’m not allowed to let you in now. It would be a breach of security.”
Along with tickets to the mass, apparently, the organizers of the event sent along instructions. The instructions included: Gates open at 9 a.m., close at noon. The stadium prohibits backpacks, strollers, video cameras, metal, glass, plastic containers, outside food or drink. “Please note diaper bags are permitted,” the instructions ended.
The arrival of the Pope in his Popemobile creates a diversion. For the briefest moment our sex columnist thinks of jumping the turnstile and making a run for the inner confines of Yankee Stadium. Instead he flashes his press pass.
The security guard frowns. He’s actually disappointed that he can’t turn our intrepid sex columnist away. Contemptuously he searches through the columnist’s backpack. If he has anything to say about the condoms, he holds his tongue. Perhaps the power of the crosses transfixes him. The sex columnist enters Yankee Stadium with pack on back.
Yankee stadium looks beautiful. The place is filled to capacity, nearly 60,000 strong. On the infield there’s a large stage. The papal colors of yellow and white are everywhere, purple streamers too. The Vatican seal covers the pitcher’s mound. Andy Pettitte, a very religious man and the Yankee’s starting pitcher the next day, would be proud.
At 2:15 p.m. the Pope enters the stadium. The Popemobile cruises the warning track. The Pope waves to the adoring crowd. There’s a sense of benevolence in the air. There’s a sense of unity. There’s a sense of faith. There’s not a story for a sex column.
Still, the sex columnist lingers. As a Jew, he’s never attended a mass. Also, he’s curious as to how 57,000 worshippers will receive Communion. It turns out that 530 priests and deacons (yes, the sex columnist counted) serve the crowd in just over twenty minutes (yes, the sex columnist timed it too).
The sex columnist does learn, interestingly enough, that the symbolic body of Christ is made of wheat bread. For some reason he’d assumed the body was made of rye. Jesus, after all, was a Jew.
On his way out, the columnist drops some vegan condoms in the tithe jars.
At 6:30 p.m. the D-train carrying the sex columnist arrives back at 59th Street/Columbus Circle. The columnist transfers to the 2-train. He looks at his watch nervously. His next (and last) event begins in about a half-hour and he’s a good forty-five minutes away. To make matters worse, the 2-express train runs local on the weekends. Life can be frustrating in New York.
Almost an hour later the sex columnist arrives at his stop: Crown Heights in Brooklyn. He’s instantly transfixed by the rushing around. Hasidic Jews, late for the second night of Passover, are in sprinter’s mode. Those coat tails really flap when rushing, and yarmulkes fly off too.
The columnist follows some rushing Hasids. The Orthodox Jews and the secular Jew enter the same brownstone. The sign on the front of the building reads: The Shneur Zalman Chabad House. This causes the secular Jew, otherwise known as our intrepid sex columnist, some trepidation. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement makes up the largest number of Hasidic Jews. Shneur Zalman was the founder. The Hasidic brand of Judaism practiced by the Lubavitchers is fundamentally different than the brand of Judaism practiced by the sex columnist. Also, our intrepid columnist accepted an invitation from a group he’d never heard of. The group is called the Miriamists. Miriam was one of the few prophetesses mentioned in the Bible.
At this point in the evening, a question must be asked. What’s our sex columnist doing in a Hasidic building in one of the world’s most Orthodox neighborhoods on the second night of Passover? The answer might be surprising.
The Miriamists celebrate Passover with a remarkable twist. Yes, they tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh Ramses and bondage and freedom. Yes, they believe in the ten plagues, including the frogs, the locusts and the unhealable boils. Yes, they think that Moses parted the Red Sea and the Pharaoh drove his army into it in hot pursuit. Yes, they’re fans of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments up on Mount Sinai.
They just don’t believe that Moses did it alone. They believe that Moses had help, in the form of his older sister Miriam.
The Miriamists take feminist theology a few steps further. In recent years there’s been a great deal of attention paid to Miriam and her role in the Exodus story. For instance, while wandering in the desert Moses brings his parched people to a place of bitter waters. He turns to God for guidance to fresh water. Miriam, at this point, produces a magic well of water.
Moses might be good at the big miracles, rivers turning to blood and death to the first-born of all Egyptian families, but Miriam is the backroom negotiator. After all, in the desert, water is politics.
So is sex. According to the leading Miriamist, Rabbi (or Rebbe, since we’re in Orthodox Crown Heights) Mary, “Miriam’s sexuality was overpowering. And she used her powers to seduce the masses. Listen, why do you think they listened to Moses? Here’s a guy who comes down from the mountaintop. His hair is all frizzy and gray. He looks like he’s aged a thousand years. He’s carrying some supposedly divine words on some really heavy tablets. Sounds a little crazy, right? Well, it was Miriam who got her people to listen to her brother. All she had to do was to shake her hips.”
That hip shake, apparently, led to the Miriam Dance. In the Miriam Dance, you shake your hips like you’re spinning a Hula Hoop.
To further add to the image, Rabbi Mary offers a description of Miriam: “She had long curly red hair. She had deep brown eyes. She had high cheekbones and luminous skin. You couldn’t take your eyes off of her. She was the most seductive of Bible characters, and that includes Delilah.”
In the sex columnist’s mind’s eye, he studies the features. The curly red hair, the brown eyes, the healthy, glowing skin. The features form an image. Did Miriam of the Exodus story look like the actress Susan Sarandon?
Rabbi Mary did not want to confirm such a specific appearance. Instead, she sent the sex columnist home with a box of matzah.
His day ends with a 2-train back to Manhattan. He sits in a car at midnight. Aside from our sex columnist, there’s a homeless man stretched out sleeping on the bench and a young couple kissing rather passionately. Actually, that’s an understatement. The couple appears on the verge of orgasm. As an observer you either stare because it’s engaging or you look away because it’s disruptive. It all depends upon what kind of person you are, whether you can tolerate the titillation factor or not.
The sex columnist watches until he looks away.
He’s the first to exit the train. As he does so, he reaches into his backpack. He drops a cross on the sleeping man’s chest and a vegan condom beside the couple. Maybe the Catholic Church can help the man. Certainly the couple needs some protection. Ecologically friendly, of course.
The sex columnist keeps the box of matzah for himself. There’s nothing like unleavened bread after a long day hunting down a sex story. Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL spam free email
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