Hello, it’s me. Binghamton, have you missed me? Being across the pond has been pretty interesting so far, but perhaps the most surprising aspect of London is its love for sex. All things sex. It’s on every street corner and I know what you’re thinking: that you could see the same thing on any street corner in New York. But not like this.
In Binghamton, for example, the only sex shops you see are down Court Street in the seedy side of town, where a huge billboard protrudes into the sky with “ADULT” in red emblazoned onto a yellow background; where in the parking lot, cars with older “gentlemen” sit all day and night waiting for who knows what; where private booths are advertised and anal beads are used as a curtain for the doorway. That side of sex is secretive and filled with an inner shame. You enter with your head held low and you pray your grandmother never finds out you stopped in to pick up some lube or poppers.
Well, let me tell you, that’s just not the case in London. Currently, I’m sitting in a well-lit, proudly licensed sex/book shop. I’m not talking about porn magazine books — just regular old books. From Charles Dickens to J.K. Rowling. Full bondage suits are on mannequins right across a display for the best contemporary poets. When you think of sexual openness, you think of Parisians, not Londoners, but take my word for it, there’s sex everywhere here and it’s even more creative than in New York. I never thought I’d be able to top some of the “unique” performance artists I’ve seen throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan, but here I’ve seen a naked man wearing a pig’s head demanding to be spanked, a heterosexual couple standing bare across from one another, wearing only glitter and slapping each other across the face for five minutes, an archer with a dildo for an arrow — and don’t get me started on the drag queens. In this country, it seems that no one is trying to pass for a woman, but rather a being from a world that’s much greater than our own.
In New York City, regardless of how open it all seems to be, anything that goes against the norm is just that. It’s still going against the norm. Here, it doesn’t seem so taboo. It doesn’t seem so vulgar. When I wear a bondage choker to the theater I get complimented on my nail color rather than odd stares from elderly people thinking I need to find Jesus. They may still be thinking it but at least they’re not screaming “faggot” at me. From the other side, sex is exactly what it should be: celebrated and everywhere.
What I was most surprised by was how intertwined gay life and straight life are here. Gay bars and the famous Soho (their version of Greenwich Village) are not exclusively for gay people. Not that they are mixed as much in America, but I find that in New York City, straight people heading to a gay bar is more of a novelty. Here though, they want to go just because it’s a nice pub or because the music is better. The schism between gay and straight seems to have already shifted. Perhaps America will follow suit, but I’m not holding out for a hero on that one.