Holding Hans with Brian Hansbury: The Museum Of Sex

Q: Hans, I’m running out of good ideas for dates. As much as there is going on in this city, every move from concerts to ethnic fairs seems cliché at this point. Got ideas?

A: Greetings, Dating Fan. And thanks for the lay-up. Just so happens your intrepid dater went on the most interestingly awkward date of his life this past weekend. I guess what I’m saying is if you can’t impress someone with a Mozzarepa anymore maybe it’s time you brought them to the Museum of Sex.

I met up on Saturday with a girl for an impromptu sixth or seventh date. I remember using the phrase “beat the heat” far too often and it was suggested we find a museum. If you replace the letter h with the letter m in that phrase, you quickly get “beat the meat.” This horrible innuendo is the only logical reason I can discern for how we ended up at the Museum of Sex at four o’clock on what previously was a very un-sexy afternoon. We were shocked to discover that several other New Yorkers had the same idea as we stood on a line twenty deep for tickets. A sort of anticipatory buzz seemed to grip the line (or just me) as it became impossible to not sexualize everyone and everything (after all, these were sexy people who make it a point to fill their free time with sexy activities).

Upon entering the first gallery we were met with a paper mache sculpture of a small ape with a pencil thin hard-on. Great date so far. The entire room was comprised of sculptures in the same fashion, reminiscent of the final project of the best student in your studio art class senior year of high school. There was a sculpture of a panda mounting another panda from behind only to be trumped by a piece depicting a doe mounted by a stag who was being taken by yet another stag. It had no title, but my best guess is “Bambi Orgy.” My favorite was the dolphin whose boner was penetrating the blowhole of another dolphin. This room took all of two minutes to experience and left my date and I wondering what we had just paid $8.50 to see. A trip upstairs confirmed for us that perverse amateur sculpture was not the main draw, rather the thing to see (as well as be seen seeing) at the Museum of Sex is lots and lots of graphic, hard-core porn.

Standing in a darkened room, in the middle of which hung a wall of televisions, our eyes were met with the moving images of anal sex, and not the wholesome, heterosexual kind (not your mother’s anal sex, if you will). To our left was an installation about celebrities in porn. I stood beside my date, as well as two girls who looked like NYU students and an awkward Korean thirty-something lady, as we watched Paris Hilton give head on a 54-inch screen. “Where is it you said your brother lives?” I asked while noting the impressive solidness of Rick Solomon’s member. My date wondered aloud as to whether or not Paris knew she was daily on display in a fancy, New York City museum and despite the setting, I have to say it did class up her image a little. Another video gave us detailed instruction in the art of sexual massage, or as I like to call it, hippie foreplay. As we watched clips from Deep Throat and saw some of the best money shots from the 70s, 80s and today I had to pretend, for my date’s sake, that I hadn’t already seen every one of these videos (even the one featuring water sports). I was honest enough to remark that the cost of admission just seemed like a surcharge on my normal, home Internet use. Truly, the most remarkable aspect of this date was not the awkward way I carried a book before my crotch the entire time, but the relative ability for the thirty to forty New Yorkers gathered inside this communal porn theater not to snicker or even act like anything out of the ordinary was going on. I guess seeing people dying on the streets has a way of jading a populace.

The last room of the museum is full of old-timey and new-timey sex contraptions. There are a few machines (read “power tools with dildos attached to them”) that can be activated by pushing a red button. They even have a Real Doll (think Lars and the Real Girl) torso behind plexi-glass with holes cut out so you can feel the realistic-ness of the breasts and vagina. You haven’t truly let down a wall with a new partner until you’ve taken them to a museum and had them watch you finger a technologically advanced blow-up doll. On the way out of the building there is of course a gift shop where all manner of sex toys and dong oriented coffee table books can be purchased (I smell Chanukah!).

So, there you have it. If you’ve been in a relationship for years and still haven’t gotten your partner to watch porn with you, suggest an educational trip to the “museum.” If you’ve been dating someone for a few weeks and want to experience vertigo brought on by discomfort, suggest an educational trip to the “museum.” Enjoy. And if you end up taking your date home immediately afterwards for libidinous sex, make sure you shoot me an email and tell me how you pulled that off (pun intended?).

-El Hans