« Pour Some Sugar On my Blog | Main | En-Titled »
August 04, 2003
Gettin' a Slice of the Action
Amongst the many and sundry things I did over the weekend, I managed to catch up with my friend Laura. Laura and I did theatre together back when I still had hair. Ah, those were good days, before I was follicle-ly challenged. Sniff. I liked those days. Course, back then I was 6’3’’ and 170 pounds, which meant a stiff wind would blow me over. I’d be like, you know, walkin’ to class, chillin’ with my posse, and poof, the next moment I’m danglin’ in a tree thanks to an incoming Nor’easter. Prep school life: it’s FANTASTIC.
Anyways, so we’re walkin’ down memory lane, Laura and I, this past Saturday night, leafing through my old photos albums and my high school yearbook. Seeing as how my parents paid a good chunk of change for my high school education, we had nice little benefits such as a third of a page all to ourselves in the yearbook. And no, this didn’t justify the costs of tuition; the appointed slaves that bathe us however were a nice perk. Ha, I’m kidding. They were homeless people.
So, we’re leafing through, and lo, we hit my page. Ah, sweet youth. Sweet ignorance. Sweet typos. Yes, typos. God love the crack whores who put together this yearbook, in that they made more typos than me trying to spit out the names of all the people on the cover of the “Sgt. Pepper” record. Just not pretty. So, here’s the transcription of what the yearbook put as my final quote:
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last book
Before we say goodbye
---Don Henley, “The End of the Innocence”
Book??? BOOK??? I spent most of my Senior Week bemoaning this typo like I had contracted Ebola, herpes, and SARS all at once. Just….ugh. As if I needed to solidify my bookworm status for all posterity as is. But I digress.
Thumbing through these photographic memories, Laura and I collectively remembered roughly 100 people that, before this little excursion down memory lane, had utterly escaped our conscious mind. Names, places, events, associations…all these came flooding back. Turns out we knew a few anecdotes about these people as well. So and so got married. Person X is getting their MBA. Lady Y just gave birth to a flaming porcupine at a NAFTA rally. You know, so and so forth.
When you’re in school, it’s fun to play the “What will this person end up doing?” game. It’s only natural. You dub people “Most Likely to Succeed”, “Most Likely to Get Hitched First,” “Most Likely to End Up on Springer”, “Most Likely To Appear on Sewer Cam”, and so forth. Very few people are pegged, “Most Likely To Start a Feminist Fetish Club in NYC”, but lo, turns out someone I know has done just that.
We’re flipping through my pictures, and we came across a picture of the cast of my directorial debut: my high school Senior year production of Durang’s “’Dentity Crisis”. Well, turns out that one of my leads went to college, go her feminism on, got her fetishism on, joined up with a friend, and started a group called Cake. You can check out their website here (not really work friendly, just a warning), and an article about them here (this is OK). (That’s my former cast member, in the gray shirt.) Wow, how quickly they grow up. Sniff. I mean, she’s not a “sexuality professional” like her co-founder, but she’s only 23. I have high hopes for her.
(While we’re on topic, I wanna know if Kaplan offers a course to be a “sexuality professional”. Seriously. What test do you take, the G(Spot)MAT? These are serious questions for serious times.)
CAKE, so near as I can tell, wants to promote the idea that feminism and female sexuality and not, in fact, antithetical. I’m all for this idea. I’m totally willing to help. If any girl wants to come to my place and give an empowering display of sexuality, I’m here to help you. That’s how dedicated I am to this pursuit. CAKE says they embody “the politics of choice”: well, I’m giving you the choice. There’s your slogan, people:
Ryan: The Choice of a New Generation.
Hopefully this generation is wearing fishnets, but really, I’m in no position to be picky.
But seriously, it's an interesting endeavor, to say the least. I'm not sure if I get the theory and the practice (as exhibited in pictures and videos on the site) as inherently linked, but the theory is pretty solid, in my opinion. The ideas of sexulaity and power as intrinsically linked are not by any means new, but always worth considering and discussing. And any feminist group who have porn gatherings make it that much easier for the rest of us to argue that "exploitative" popular culture works such as "Charlie's Angels" are anything but.
Cake seems to be about reclaiming sexuality as a shared right for both men and women, not as an entity exclusive to one or the other. It is, moreover, a quality which you arrive at, not something which is imposed upon you. It's simultaneously feminist and humanistic. And sometimes it involves rubber suits. Rock on, I say.
Posted by Ryan McGee at August 4, 2003 11:54 PM
Comments
Unfortunately for you, Ryan, Cake's politics of choice come with a female-only requirement, and a $100 membership fee. I think it's great and all, but can't women have empowering displays of sexuality for, like, free??
I'll have to root through my highschool pics to see if I can find one of the guy who's now a girl.... no, really.
Posted by: laura at August 5, 2003 01:05 PM
* tries to resist joke about offering cash-strapped girls empowerment for free in my apartment...fails...miserably... *
Posted by: ryan at August 5, 2003 01:07 PM
Oh, and I don't know about Kaplan, but I bet you could become a Sexuality Professional through one of Sally Struthers' correspondence courses. The diploma would look great on your wall, right under the one from Harvard.
Posted by: laura at August 5, 2003 01:27 PM
I bet Heidi Fleiss would love to be their spokesmodel. She's was on VH1 stating she was looking to get back into the business.
Posted by: jada at August 5, 2003 05:08 PM