David CotnerFor more photos check out our slideshow, Nightranger: Gloryhole @ The Pleasure Chest (NSFW)
Forty years is a long time to be
excited about anything. Even sex. Yet here, in the sealed-off parking
lot next to the Pleasure Chest, it's less a 40th-anniversary party than
it is a bacchanalia for the venerably notorious West Hollywood sex-shop
landmark.
The essence of this celebration — and, ultimately, the
Pleasure Chest itself — is freedom. Free drinks, free feels to be
copped, and a free show within the furry, white walls of a makeshift
glory hole erected inside the store. Making things happen: It's the
American way. Sordid goings-on are revealed behind those walls in this
place, which caters to kinks of all kinds. It's a place where S&M
could just as easily mean salesmen and mechanics.
More pole-dancing; Credit: Lina Lecaro
Outside, a man with stilts duct-taped to his shoes easily cuts through the throng of
pornographers, modern primitives and the voyeuristically bemused. These
are people for whom the Pleasure Chest was intended: the rogue, the
renegade, the queer.
Event producer Lenora Claire, a noted bon
vivant with hair as red as the soul of an exploding star, trots up,
introducing me to a 6-foot-tall baby in an oversized, stained onesie.
His fetish is known as paraphilic infantilism. It's a fetish that has
led to a brisk business in making realistic latex infant masks that
cover the entire head. All those masks are sad babies, but such
one-dimensionalism is as insulting to kink as the missionary position.
The tears on the baby's face lend a brighter glow of realism to the
mask. It's just as quickly dimmed by the booze in the baby's bottle.
Paraphilic infantilism; Credit: Lina Lecaro
Inside,
two women test a stripper pole set up in the front of the shop. There
is some question as to its structural integrity. Far be it from the
Pleasure Chest to be some place where someone could get hurt.
There's
a whipping nook running like a well-lubed machine in the back, and a
little monkey runs around outside in the crowd, wearing a funny suit and
offering condoms. I point him out to Claire. (This is what passes for
casual conversation at a sex shop.) She recognizes the monkey as he
perches proudly on a pile of prophylactics and quickly corrects me about
the gender. “She. Her name is Zuni.” (Yes, it's always the women who
are the thoughtful ones. Even when you're entering into a sketchy ménage à trois in a cheap hotel somewhere in West Hollywood — they always buy you condoms. Then they weep bitterly. Hello, ménage à un.)
More partying; Credit: Lina Lecaro
A
bus sits at the far end of the parking lot. Various hedonistic revelers
emerge from it in multiple states of unbecomingness. After the baby
wanders off — apparently, his full name is Adult Baby Jesus — Claire
whispers, “That's Matt Cornell. He's also eXtreme Elvis, one of my
all-time favorite performance artists.”
Ever the peripatetic
producer, she adds, “I put together a 'sexual' circus for the Pleasure
Chest featuring Zuni, Cassidy Haley, the stilt walker, and Brianna
Belladonna, the foxy sword swallower.”
The whipping nook; Credit: Karen Jackson
Belladonna appears from out
of nowhere and proceeds to do her silverware-polishing thing. Unfazed,
Claire explains what happens on the bus: “I came up with the idea of
'Dancing With the Porn Stars' — an obvious homage to Dancing With the Stars.”
And
the stars are there, clouded in dark matter as they generally are:
pornographer and educator Nina Hartley; CyberSkin Voluptuous Pussy
mastermind April Flores; indie-queer music producer Sean Carnage; street
artist Buff Monster; and one of America's Next Top Transsexual Models
(always tops, never bottoms).
“If I had my way,” Claire says, “we
would have made giant, mirrored testicles as disco balls. But there's
never enough time to fit in every idea.”
The Pleasure Chest's wares; Credit: Lina Lecaro
So why such affection for
a sex shop? “I first became aware of the Pleasure Chest as a kid in the
'80s, when my parents used to shop there,” she says. “I remember
finding some naked lady pens in a bag that said 'Pleasure Chest.' I
started shopping there as a supergoth teen for bondage belts, and I
still shop there. It's the erotic epicenter of Los Angeles.”
I
literally bump into owner Brian Robinson (free drinks are plentiful
here). “We've been successful for 40 years because we've supported our
community's sexual growth and exploration without judgment,” he says.
“If it's worked for 40 years, we aren't going to change it now.”
Credit: Lina Lecaro
Director
of business development and strategy Sarah Tomchesson — yes, there is a
strategy to all this — butts in gracefully, echoing the sentiment. “Our
work has always been driven by a belief that everyone has a fundamental
right to pursue sexual fulfillment.”
As for achieving sexual fulfillment? That's another celebration entirely.
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