The sight of several posters in my neighborhood never fail to infuriate me: Total XXX announces one billboard on the right when I’m driving to the Whole Foods on National Blvd. It pictures a really hard-bodied woman with fake everything and a leering smile. Best Gentlemen’s Club in LA, boasts another on the walk to the movie theatre on Pico (a strange fact of life in LA is that the mile and a half walk to the movie theatre takes less time than driving there and winding one’s way down in a queue of cars in the fume-ridden parking structure.) You hail a cab in New York to get someplace fast. In LA, if it’s close you are far more likely to arrive on time if you walk the ugly mean streets that were never designed for the human foot. Or the human anything.
The gentlemen’s club called the “Silver Reign” is closest, across the street from Staples, in back of a little mini mall that features a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, a burger joint that’s been there forever, and is next to “The Wag’s Club” a doggy day care center, that won’t let you come in and look around. I tried once. You have to have an appointment. (Henry isn’t allowed there anyway, because we have yet to do the dirty deed on him.)
I think they should switch names. “Silver Reign” is a nice name for a plush and expensive place to house man’s best friend for the day. “The Wag’s Club” is a far more appropriate name for a place to observe man’s worst enemy having a sexual encounter with a pole.
Whatever they are named, gentlemen’s clubs (also known as fraternities, stag parties, men-in-funny-hat lodges) have long had a tradition of hiring spicy entertainment to liven the boys up.
I was in an all woman’s book club once. No strippers appeared. Nobody talked about naked men. Sometimes on someone’s birthday at Conde Nast, though, which was 95% women, there was some crummy cake from the erotic bakery and a lot of tittering when the slice containing the penis was served. I hold fast that no men were actually exploited in the baking or eating of those cakes.
In recent years, in my coed writing group, I remember overhearing a group of actors and writers talking about online porn. I marched myself right into the middle of the men and declared, “my husband doesn’t do that!” He visits woodworking websites!” They all laughed at me. One patted me on the back and said, “Mary, you’re living in a dream world!”
That evening, when I went home, I asked my husband if he ever did online porn—if he was part of this massive, online gentleman’s club. When he blushed I was totally shocked. I’m still shocked. Especially since I don’t know the password to his computer. Or his phone.
What does it mean that you never see a poster of a guy with a loin cloth and a huge, ever-erect artificial dick on your way to the movie house? Most of the time, “XXX-rated, fully exposed,” is going to mean a woman’s body is exposed and vulnerable. Not a man’s.
If sex is for sale, the majority of sellers are going to be women. Is this the same old, same old gender inequality?
Or do we have a long way to go baby?
by 
