I’m usually pretty disciplined about managing my jet lag, but a short nap turned into a long, nightmarish sprawl and I woke up to the imagined sound of a shrieking cat.  I’ve been in a semi-sleep state ever since, and my memory’s a motion blur of architecture and art nouveau typography.

Prague’s a great city.  My legs are sore from walking up and down cobble-stone hills, from standing lock-kneed in front of paintings, and from wandering in and out and through labyrinthine streets, mostly dodging the tour groups that fill the squares. It reminds me of when I lived in Venice, that need to duck into side-streets every time I see someone raise an unopened umbrella.

Fucking hell, those tour groups are obnoxious.

I’ve been subsisting on palačinky, a kind of thick crepe with a sturdy, satisfying texture, usually folded with Nutella or jam. And I’ve also been reading the memoir of Václav Havel, a playwright who played a role in the non-violent Velvet Revolution in 1989 that led to the overthrow of the Communist government in Czechoslovakia.  He went on to become president, and while politicians don’t usually interest me, non-violent dissidents always do.

When I was walking with a friend last night, we were approached by someone encouraging us to enter a cabaret featuring a “banana show.”  I wasn’t sure what a “banana show” was, so I asked, thinking it involved a lot of cock.  The guy’s response: “Japanese midgets!  And the monkey fucks the midgets!”  Convinced he was just making shit up at random, I had to go in (you get in for free!, he said), but my friend shook his head and said, “I’ll wait for you out here.”

I decided I would go in on my own later, at least until I got back to the hotel and looked up “banana show” on the internet. Now I’m pretty glad I didn’t go in.  I like weird shit, but I also like fruit.  That show would’ve put me off of bananas forever.

I’m in Prague right now, struggling to learn a few basic terms like “please” and “thank you” and “I really need some coffee” and failing. I think one of the books I brought with me said that Czech is one of the most phonetic languages, which is great, but I’m hung up on the phonetics.

Děkuji

S dovolením

Nerozumím

I’m too jetlagged to grab a full night’s sleep, so I’m up in the middle of the night with CNN/Sky/BBC on in the background. They’re cycling through the same Mumbai updates, how many Americans have died, whether the bombers were British (they say no), what this means for the cricket teams. Bloomberg has something on about tanked economy. Rai’s got a documentary on about Native Americans. TV5 Monde is covering Mumbai – earlier, it was an arts documentary. Sky News is calling the Mumbai situation “India’s 9/11.”

The German channel has an infomercial for ProActiv. One of these channels, maybe a local channel, is showing images of topless women.

I have a browser open to FGT, the webby lovechild I’ve formed with Kasia that we’ll launch just after the holidays (can’t wait). I have a copy of New York Magazine on the bedside table open to the article on the burlesque venue The Box (online here), and I’m pretty intrigued by what’s happening there. I’m meeting up with a friend later who’s in Prague to shoot Czech models for a Latin American sex magazine. Sex is on my mind; reminders of death and mortality drone loudly in the background. What I should be doing is going over these Czech flash cards.

Děkuji. That’s “thank you.” I’m going to repeat that expression over and over with the hope that it’ll stick before dawn.

Since I’m pressed for time and since American Apparel’s sexy sexed-up ads are a revived topic of conversation here and elsewhere, I’m going to leave you with my favorite AA ad, which can be found on the back of S Magazine:

My general feeling is that all ads use sex to sell. AA just does it unusually well.

Whoredom, whoredom, everywhere. Sawyer’s interviewing Dupre, McLennan just released a book, Quan’s got a series coming out, Showtime’s sniffing around for a reality show. I also just read the line, “Sawyer’s ongoing and extensive investigation of prostitution” and realized that she was only just getting started with her first broad-stroked swing at American hookerdom. I’m curious to see how her interview with Dupre goes, though I have a feeling I already know exactly how it’s going to go.

I’m itching to leave town and it’s probably because of all of this, or because it’s winter, or because of the holidays, and I’m thinking about going to Prague. I’ve always been interested in Central European art and architecture, kunstkammers, and the history of the Habsburg Empire (especially under Rudolf II), but, more importantly, there’s a sex machine museum. So, in a sense, it’s my calling.

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Celestial Globe by Gerhard Emmoser, 16th c.

A few people have asked for my thoughts on the CNBC doc last night on high-end prostitutes, and I can only give a partial response. I caught it for about fifteen minutes, then stepped out, hailed a cab to Brooklyn, and watched the rest at my destination.  From what I saw, it seemed decent.  It didn’t seem to have the same all-prostitutes-are-victims agenda Diane Sawyer had in her 20/20 documentary (a term I’m using loosely), and from what I saw, they did their research and talked to the right experts, like Amanda Brooks, who wrote a handbook to escorting on the internet, long-time activist and advocate Carol Leigh (Scarlot Harlot), and Martha Nussbaum, a phenomenal philosopher/scholar specializing in law and ethics, who’s given considerable thought to sex laws. The documentary also acknowledged the range of experiences and degrees of autonomy when it comes to sex work, something 20/20 failed to do in its attempt to be as reductive as humanly possible, and it touched on the decriminalization movement and the weird warped way its opposition continually conflates trafficking with prostitution (two vastly different crimes). And they did a much better job at concealing the identities of their anonymous interviewees. If I have any complaint, it’s that it did glamorize sex work a bit, but then that tends to happen whenever you cut to someone fingering a wad of hundred-dollar bills in a nice hotel room. That said, they did address some of the risks, like arrest, the IRS, physical danger, and social isolation.

Seeing that, as well as the piece up on CNN.com, which considers two very different sex work experiences, I’m starting to think that it’s finally coming across that sex work is too broad and complex for reductive, finger-wagging blather. To me, that’s a positive step.

As an aside, I really love Martha Nussbaum. I recently finished her book Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, which examines these emotional responses in legal judgments. It’s hugely interesting, relevant, and – to my mind – important, since we see disgust and shame frequently inflect legal and political judgments concerning pornography, homosexuality, prostitution, and so on, even though the response is irrational, subjective, and inappropriate for a society that places importance on the social equality of its citizens.

There’s been a lot of prostitution-talk in the news lately. I think I’m burned out. I feel burned out. I think Gabriel’s burned out by proximity. So here’s a photo of a topless man (probably Louis Garrel) by Hedi Slimane:

A great group of sex writers and bloggers recently posed for a pin-up calendar to raise money for Sex Worker Awareness, a non-profit which works to improve understanding of sex work and advocates for sex worker rights. Needless to say, I support the fuck out of it, but it also makes me happy to see people who aren’t directly involved with sex work being so supportive of sex workers. In some circles, it’s a divisive issue, but here I’ve seen it embraced with intelligence and open-mindedness.

The pin-ups include Tess of Urban Gypsy, Lux Alptraum (founder of Boinkology and editor at Fleshbot), Audacia Ray (author of Naked on the Internet and co-founder of SWA), Twanna Hines of Funky Brown Chick, Jamye Waxman (author of Getting Off: A Girl’s Guide to Masturbation), Desiree of Baser Instincts, Rachel Kramer Bussell (editor of Spanked), Diva of Debauched Domestic Diva, sociologist and activist Elizabeth Wood of Sex and the Public Square, Riese of A Girl Called Automatic Win, Mariella of In Medias Res, and Sinclair of the excellent Sugarbutch Chronicles. You can read more about the pin-ups/bloggers here.

By the way, check out Jamye’s Wonder Woman outfit.  Love that.

The calendar is $20 and all proceeds go to SWA.  You can buy a copy here.

Better yet, go to the launch this Friday, November 14, from 6.30 to 9.30 at the White Rabbit (145 East Houston, NYC). Performing at the party will be Jezebel Express, Weirdee Girl, The Luvley Rae and Darlinda Just Darlinda, plus you’ll have the opportunity to meet the pin-ups in person. And there will be gift bags and a raffle with excellent prizes (like the SaSi and the Njoy Eleven) and, no doubt, a sexy and open-minded crowd.

For more information, see the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar website.

It looks like Spitzer won’t be charged, and you can find Susannah’s write-up for Boing Boing here. If only gubernatorial hypocrisy were against the law.

And San Francisco? Securing 42% of the vote is great news. You’ll get there.

We went for a road trip over the weekend as a kind of pre-election release. It was interesting watching the regional politics shift in the signs posted on the front lawns. Just outside New York, we saw plenty of Obama but as we traveled northward, it was increasingly McCain country. Eventually, we ended up north enough to be surrounded by stale snow drifts and sleepy livestock and open fields, and once the sun set, we pulled over into a motel and screwed.

Why are motels so sexy? Maybe it’s the spontaneity. No reservations, no paper trail, and that faint aura of creepyness. Turns me on.

Eventually we grabbed something to eat at a restaurant with dishes that ended in ™ and ® and returned to the motel to play and talk and screw some more. I woke up sore with chapped lips and a bruised cunt, and then we spent the morning in a strange museum full of dead animals. Like a hunting museum. There were bears and two-headed calves and I bought a print of an angry wolverine which, I learned, is the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family.

*

I have some thoughts on the American Apparel topic.  I should mention that taking their ad was a conscious decision. I’m familiar with the harassment talk and Jezebel’s patent disdain for Dov Charney. I’m also familiar with Claire Salinda’s piece for Radar defending Dov Charney (and I’m all kinds of disgusted by the comments she received). So I’ve got thoughts, and while I wasn’t planning on getting into it, maybe I should.  So I will in a bit, once I come down from my Obama buzz.

So I made the move to debauchette.com.

I’m still tweaking the template and I’m not 100% happy with it, but for me, it’s an improvement. It gives me a lot more flexibility, and it lets me post bits and notes on what we (Kasia and I) are working on for FGT in an area called “asides” on the front page. There’s also a gallery area in the first sidebar – I’ll probably get a lot of use out of that since I’ve got a mountain of photos to play with. And then you’ve probably noticed the naked blonde unzipping her bodysuit for our enjoyment over in the sidebar on the right. That means I’ve taken an ad, but a good ad, a naked ad for a company characterized by sex and controversy and sexual controversy, but especially sex.  And clothing.

I’m going to see how it goes.

More soon.

I desperately need to clean house, clear out old history, bad memories and assorted detritus.  Used clothing.  I’m also in the midst of moving this blog to a new location with, I think, a new template (same-ish domain). As I’m preparing to do that, I’m going through the hundreds of drafts I never posted, either because they felt too raw or because I never finished the thought.  And god, there’s a lot of them.

I’ve been reposting some of the old stuff, mostly previously published posts that I pulled down for reasons that no longer apply. I think one of those posts appeared briefly as a new one for some reason, though it was actually well over a year old, something about my engagement and my fuckbuddy.

It all reminds me of how much things have changed in a year.  This time last year, I was breaking off an engagement.  Or pseudo-engagement.