The Musem of Sex in New York
Two weeks ago, I visited my friend Josh Kahn, who I met during a vicious scavenger hunt in our undergrad. He currently lives in Manhattan, so I flew to Newark (what a paradise!) and took the train into the city. I did a lot of things in New York: I watched Pulp play as a band in America for the first time in a decade, I got drunk with some retired cops in Chelsea, I visited High Line Park and sang “One Headlight” in a karaoke bar with a capacity of 20 people. And as titillating as watching Jarvis Cocker’s tiny pelvis thrust across the stage to “This is Hardcore” is (while fantasizing about nearly shattering that tiny pelvis), perhaps the most outwardly sexual thing I did was visit the Museum of Sex.
Located at 233 5th Ave. in Manhattan, the Museum of Sex, or MOSEX, has everything you need. Booze, candy, novelties and the exploration of carnal desires.
The first exhibit we visited, “Action: Sex the Moving Image,” was an exploration of pornography, from the first on-screen kiss to the Golden Age of Porn through the latest in smut. Plenty of clips guide us through sexual metaphor, subtle sensuality and blatant hardcore pornography. Gay, straight and taboo, a gentle stroll will have you looking at Linda Lovelace one moment and the “squeal like a piggy” scene from Deliverance the next. The exhibit contains a nod to beautifulagony.com, a site dedicated to close up, face-only shots of women and men reaching orgasm during masturbation.
Next, we visited the “Sex Lives of Animals.” Animals are just as kinky as humans. They have same sex relationships, group sex and elaborate mating rituals. Sometimes, dolphins do each other in the blowhole.
Highlights:
- A photo of an adorable Spanish Ibex. Blowing itself.
- Kees Moeliker’s accounts and photos of a male duck attempting to in-flight rape another male duck who crashes into a window and dies. The aggressor doesn’t let the duck’s death stop him. This case of duck necrophilia won Moelicker the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology 2003.
- Garter Snakes have orgies.
- A sculpture of a bonobo with a raging erection offering sugar cane for sex.
“F#ck Art” was a delightful collection of erotic street art that’s really best seen more so than described. My favorite? A series of homoerotic stencils (a leather man, a cock, a butt plug) where one reads “Jesus hates fun.”
Next, we took a look at the “Universe of Desire,” which highlighted Rule 34: If you can imagine it, it exists as Internet porn. I’ve been trying my whole life to break that rule. We perused a list of the top 100 most searched for sex terms (Youth was no. 1, but Incest ranked surprisingly high at 12. I was pleased to find 86 being claimed by those who are down with the clown.) You can also read the entire transcript of Anthony Weiner talking to Lisa Weiss about banging during “The Daily Show” and listen to a series of audio recordings of lewd diary entries read aloud through a number of red telephones.
MOSEX also has Spotlight, their permanent collection. Here, you can see (and touch) some real love dolls, as well as peruse an assortment of photography and kink items including a furry mask and various S&M and pony play accouterments. My favorite piece here is Mike Sullivan’s The Sex Lives of Robots. This guy turned dolls into creepy robots fucking away in a dystopian future. In the piece, a number of robots sit in an adult theater and watch films of other robots flash by.
When you’re finished touring the museum, take a trip downstairs into the Oral Fixation Lounge where you can try some small desserts, an aphrodisiac soda or a sexy cocktail. My partner in sleaze had a Devil in a Blue Dress while I had the Get Laid. Of course, they also have the “Get Creamy,” which is a float made of ice cream and Raspberry Lambic. Genius.
For less than a $20 admission fee, MOSEX is probably one of the cooler tourist-y things you can do in NY. Way better than that French statue or that really tall building anyhow.
Here‘s a flickr gallery of photos we took. Obviously, some of the photos will be NSFW.