I'm opening with this picture because Johnny Sagan's Dance Marathon is going to be a blog about freedom.Taken by Livejournal blogger The Rev. Livejournal Oracle, aka Jameth, this is a digital photograph of a man who attended the Dore Alley Fair on Sunday, July 27, 2008.
The Dore Alley Fair (officially promoted as the Up Your Alley Fair) is a leathersex block party in San Francisco, a locally focused, gay man-centric premonition of the gigantic yearly Folsom Street Fair, a yearly celebration of pansexual kink in street fair form, also held in San Francisco by the same non-profit organization: Folsom Street Events.
Me, I found this picture by clicking links on Fleshbot, a sex blog in the mighty portfolio of blogging empire Gawker Media, and SFist, another blue chip blog in a big network.
I knew immediately that I wanted to save this guy and discuss him and his surroundings with others.
In this picture, I am first and foremost struck by the man's penis. It looks fake at first glance, doesn't it? It is so big and thick and blandly "flesh-colored", with the level of surface detail of a toy cast in rubber. His cock ring covers up the point of seamless connection that would convince us he is not wearing some sort of prosthesis.
One commenter on Jameth's original post, a very interesting guy named Delko, said he recognized the guy.
"ha...he's from Chicago and has (obviously) been around forever. He used to show up at the monthly underwear parties in the bar I worked at back in the mid-eighties...in animal print thongs."
The Dore Alley Fair! Livejournal! Monthly underwear parties! Blogs! The fact that Delko is an adjunct professor at the John Marshall Law School! These are just some of the 21st Century freedoms I want to celebrate on this blog.
What was I doing on the day of the Dore Alley Fair? Well, on Sunday, July 27, 2008, I too attended a sex-related event, The Sunday Night Sex Show at The Burlington, a bar on Fullerton Avenue here in Chicago.
Hosted by Miss Robyn and Allen Makere, The Show alternated between stage readings, raunchy answers to saucy questions from the audience, and rounds of sex trivia. I knew the answer to every single trivium except the one about sexually fetishizing trees.
What was the first movie to earn an NC-17 rating from the M.P.A.A.? Henry and June. I won a penis-shaped lollipop for that.
Who wrote Sex For One? Betty Dodson. What is the name of the elusive experience pursued by Isadora Wing in Fear Of Flying? The Zipless Fuck.
What is the name of the reactionary U.S. Senator whose reactionary views on sex provoked readers of the advice column "Savage Love" (www.thestranger.com/seattle/Author?oid=259) to make his name the new word for "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that sometimes slides out after anal sex"? Rick Santorum, now-deposed Republican then of New Jersey.
What was the first erotic novel to be published in the English language? Well, to be honest, I would have guessed My Life And Loves by Frank Harris, but when nobody else ventured a guess and Robyn gave the first part of the correct answer, "Fanny Hill: Memoirs Of A Woman Of Pleasure, by...", I raised my hand and said, "Can I give the second part of the answer, just so I can get my props? John Clelland Holmes!"
The final trivia question of the night was which sexual device had long been dubbed "the Cadillac of vibrators", and though I held my tongue for the split second it took for my new friend Becky to shout out "The Rabbit!", I was the very first to say "Hitachi Magic Wand!" for the win.
Somebody remarked, "You must be the world's greatest womanizer!"
