05/11/16

Where Have All The Playboys Gone?

Giove seduces Olimpiade, fresco, Giulio Romano.

Giove seduces Olimpiade, fresco, Giulio Romano.

I remember the Playboy Mansion like it was yesterday. Gotcha, salacious followers! Okay, The Sultanette never wore Bunny ears and cottontail though I’ve been known to don the random, ribboned corset. And I did press my face against the wrought iron gate of Hugh Hefner’s Chicago chateau at 1340 North State Parkway in hopes of spotting a louche Leporidae.

Freshly graduated from Dairy State U, I was living up the street in a mansion that had been converted into apartments. On weekends, my roommates and I joined the throngs along Chicago’s Gold Coast single’s bars searching for Sex-in-the-Second-City. Read more . . .

10/20/15

Are you dangling your participle, darling?

Lewis Carroll's cat of Alice & Oxford

Lewis Carroll’s cat of Alice & Oxford

It’s a chilly Sunday night in Oxford and I’m in heated conversation over the American elections with a boy at least half my age who has cat whiskers drawn all over his ruddy English cheeks. He seems oblivious to the impact this feline façade is having on our serious political debate and when I ask him about it he replies, vaguely embarrassed, “Oh yes, I’ve just been initiated into my college.”

It’s back-to-school at Oxford and the Scholars Anointed have begun to invade the hangouts along Cowley Road, the main drag on the “town” side of the Magdelan Bridge (pronounced “MAW-dlin” or you are pitifully exposed). Read more . . .

09/16/15

Space Travel: The Sultanette Guide To Wanderlust

Cocottes,1905, Axel Torneman, repro PD Posse Stryngford.

Cocottes,1905, Axel Torneman, repro PD Posse Stryngford.

The Sultanette has survived harrowing abandonment, deplorable betrayal, and world-class hangovers. Despite enough bad behavior to raise a nun’s eyebrow, I’ve managed to get home in the morning with keys, credit cards and lip gloss. To quote French tart and woman of letters, Colette, “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

But who has time to reminisce? Now that The Male Harem has fueled my wanderlust, I’ll be heading for Mars on SpaceX as soon as Elon Musk offers in-flight Wi-Fi. Meantime I’ve signed up for another X-related adventure this fall. Read more . . .

08/23/15

Always A Happy Ending

Roman Orgy At Caesar’s Time, Henryk Siemiradzki,1872.

Roman Orgy At Caesar’s Time, Henryk Siemiradzki,1872.

The Sultanette Summer Reading Guide is here!

Too late for a summer reading list, you carp? Really? The Sultanette is willing to wager you’ve been more committed to polishing off pitchers of Margaritas than The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Besides, what I have to offer you, my discerning orgiasts, gives new meaning to the term, plot climax.

Clayton Cubitt’s Hysterical Literature is not so much a read as a voyeuristic read-to. A chance to sit back, plug into YouTube and make a dent in that literary bucket list. There’s Whitman’s Leaves of Grass read to you by Alicia, A Clockwork Orange (Amanda), American Psycho (Stormy), and Sleeping Beauty (Margaret). Read more . . .

07/14/15

Why Men Lie

Dishing with my colorist one day while getting a dose of honey blond highlights at a Mad Ave salon, we got on the subject of why men cheat on women. (I always build his invaluable gay man Male Harem advice into the extortionate cost of age-defying maintenance there.)

Joey’s brilliant take on men’s hot pants surprised even The Sultanette. Men cheat, he said, not because they can’t keep their dicks idle or because they can’t help from snacking on a pair of ripe melons or beefy buns. They cheat, he said as he foiled me up like a Christmas tree, because they like the intrigue.