Sex Club in the New York Times … Outed by Gothamist
Posted By jss on February 26, 2009
A source of amusement, disappointment and frustration for me is The New York Times’ review yesterday of “Brooklyn’s newest sex club,” (available of course on its web site, with a panoramic walk-through of the place; click graphic at right for that.)
I’m amused because The Times, for all its faults and failings, remains a standard-setter of sorts in journalism … if The Times is reviewing swingers and sex clubs, it makes for a good argument for other reporters in other towns to do so … and we MIGHT occasionally see sex clubs in the news for something besides legal difficulties, crime and pure titillation. And I imagine journalists in Keokuk, in Tuscaloosa … hell, even in Springfield, Mass and the various towns in Connecticut in which I have worked for daily newspapers, going to sex clubs and swing parties and writing, just as Alan Feuer does in The New York Times:
The pleasure grottoes at Brooklyn’s newest sex club tend to fill up only after midnight, when the hedonists on the dance floor have loosened their libidos with some disco, doused their inhibitions with a drink. This disputes the old saw that swingers are insatiable and will perform at any moment with any living creature that can count to 10 or blink.
It’s good to see old saws demolished in a lede, isn’t it?
However, I was disappointed when I read further on that Feuer didn’t name the club at the owner’s request, nor even the owner, identified only as “Mistress Wanda.” I’d hoped that in New York, at least, it was OK to tell the media that you run a sex club … that Miss Wanda would be proud to have her establishment in The New York Times. After all, as Mistress Wanda says:
Everybody comes here: cops, postmen, bus drivers … I went to a funeral last month and recognized a pallbearer. Everyone’s a swinger.
That is not quite right. Not everyone is a swinger. It would be accurate to say that anyone might be, though.
(And it was easy enough for another news site to “out” Mistress Wanda’s club … click “more” for more.)
My source of frustration … stems from the taboo that extends, obviously, even to hedonistic New York City. That even Miss Wanda asks that her enterprise not be recognized … that she does not want her real name in the newspaper, associated with her sex club … will say, to many readers, that she is ashamed of what she does.
Which she undoubtedly is not.
But Mistress Wanda doesn’t want notoriety. She doesn’t want to be the poster girl for sex clubs. She doesn’t want moralists preaching at her or using her as an example. She just wants to run her sex club and for her patrons, who aren’t ashamed, either, to be left alone.
Or so I imagine, because I hear that over and over again, talking to people who are non-monogamous, involved in sex clubs and businesses and parties. It is part of what makes working on Into Temptation interesting and worthwhile … all these people WANT to talk to a journalist, a writer “who understands” that they are OK and not ashamed … even though they don’t want anyone to know.
It is frustrating as a journalist, because my instinct is to name names, uncover and show and tell all that needs to be told. What I do now, often, is to step back from that instinct, find the people who can tell stories for those who wish to remain anonymous, find people who can … represent … others.
If it was easy, I suppose everyone would be doing it.
But as I’ve said before — swinging, non-monogamy and kink are everywhere and proliferating, hidden in plain view — and once the pseudoanonymous “Miss Wanda” was in The New York Times, it was just a matter of hours before her cover was blown by The Gothamist, ironically described by none other than The New York Times as a “marvelous, not-to-be-missed Web site” that “reflects everything worth knowing about this city.”
“Everything worth knowing …”
The Gothamist didn’t out Miss Wanda, per se, but the club is Casbar, at 117 25th St. Take the online tour, and here are directions. I suspect the place is in for a very busy weekend.
"Into Temptation" is a usually-but-not-always safe-for-work forum about evolving social-sexual networks and how they have changed and are changing lives. It will also loosely chronicle the research, writing and publication, I hope in 2011, of a book by the same name.
It sounds like the sex club has my philosophy – I’m out about my sex blog, but don’t put my face or name right on it. If you give enough clues, people will find you without spelling it out for them. Lends an air of mystery, a thin layer of protection from stalkers, cops, or the parents at my daughter’s school. I don’t want her teased for having the Slut Mommy.