11/24/13

A Turkey Day Toast To The Male Harem

With the season of the turkey upon us, 45 million are about to be sacrificed at the altar of familial harmony this Thanksgiving. But as America gathers round the holiday table – moms and dads, grandparents and in-laws, exes and step-kids – to carve up and devour the stuffed and tethered foul, The Sultanette gratefully raises a glass to the members of The Male Harem who have so nourished her life. Not a turkey among them!

That’s not to say that a few turkeys haven’t infiltrated the harem along the way. And so I first offer some helpful tips for recognizing the genus meleagris, in the hope that learning from my mistakes, you may avoid similar pitfalls.

First, if you’re tempted to engage with a turkey, note that he has no external ears and so is a lousy listener. He can see in color but it’s not been determined if he dreams in it. If he attempts to get you into the sack, note that he’s been known to sleep in trees. And as for the prospect of unbridled sex, be warned that he’s prone to heart attacks, as documented with turkeys near an Air Force base that dropped like flies from the shock of passing jets.

As far as flying away with a wild turkey, he may become airborne but he’ll make it about as far as the nearest Duane Reade. And if you need to chase down a domesticated reprobate, be warned that he can reach a groundspeed of 0-to-25.

If as Plan B, you’re considering hooking up with an eagle, I refer you to infoplease which offers that Benjamin Franklin endorsed the turkey over the bald eagle as our national symbol. With his characteristic diplomacy along with The Sultanette bets, drawing from the example of the French madames whose Parisian salons he frequented, BF argued that while the turkey might be “vain and silly,” it offered a far better calling card than the eagle who was “a coward.”

Following on Franklin’s philosophy, if you consider that the 200-plus million turkeys raised annually result in over $4 billion of sales, they’re doing at least as much to prop up the economy as the turkeys in Congress and on Wall Street.

Nonetheless, The Sultanette remains filled with gratitude for the poultry-free Male Harem accrued over the past two years. And so as they go forth to their lives or wives this Thanksgiving to eat their Butterballs and sleep in the beds they’ve made, she gives special thanks to each and every one of them as follows:

To the W.A.S.P. Meister for hosting Harlem gatherings with impeccable style, and for his incorrigible wit that would induce multiple orgasms if laughing were sex.

Elizabethan Cat: The Widow, Frederick Dielman, 1847-1935.

To Dr. Zhivago, edgy mensch, urbane artiste, cat-whisperer, and sexy beast. I would love him even if he didn’t have the coolest boho chic rooftop in Manhattan.

To Monsieur Bogey for the extravagant Madison Avenue shopping spree after a long lunch and a puff on his cigar.

To The Aesthete for his art appreciation and cultural gatherings from boxes at Carnegie Hall to boîtes in Little Italy, and for his gorgeous accent.

To E-Laureate, ribald bard of email innuendo, rock-and-roll animal, and fellow thrasher in the retail lagoon.

To Biscuit Boy, for the song he wrote and recorded especially for The Sultanette, and for the perfect weekend with an Englishman in New York. He remains in my heart on my iPod Shuffle.

To Young Preppie for sending me the silliest card by snail mail to make me smile, just like in those Hallmark Moment commercials.

To the guileless but never clueless MOFW (Man Of Few Words) for his resourceful use of my candelabra as a sock rack.

Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch.

To Naughty But Nautical for 3D ruminations on the earthly and unearthly from Gurdjieff to Beelzebub.

To The Impresario for his erudition in all things sacred and profane, for revealing the eroticism in good manners, and for letting me let him always win.

To The Dervish for his fanatical artistry in our creative collaborations and for the bird painting that soars un-turkey-like in The Sultanette’s parlor.

To The Force who pumped up my mind and body with killer pushups and contraband Island rum.

To The Aficionado for lifting life out of the mundane with his musical passions, classical and classified.

To Nom de Plume for the sound bites on love and sex that I’ll remember long after dementia sets in.

And to two unconfirmed members of The Male Harem for enticingly dangling their carrots.

The Male Harem observes no holidays but feasts on appreciation of the moment at hand. Intimacies are uncontrived and mysteries allowed. The Force, all sinewy instinct and visceral wisdom once said to me, “Everybody has a private life.” So as you face each other across the groaning board this Thursday, consider perhaps the distance, and not the closeness between you. It’s the exclusive place where The Male Harem lives and plays. And not all are invited to dine there.

With that, I bid all of you who have entered the seraglio today a Happy Thanksgiving with all the trimmings. May you find more heat than from the oven, more gravy than from a baster, and more to life than turkeys. As for The Sultanette, she shall be gobbling up wild rice and Cornish game hens.

11/14/13

The Sultanette And The City

LATEST EPISODE: Pheromones released at a downtown gallery make for an orgy of creative intercourse on a November Sunday afternoon.

In case you were thinking that the life of The Sultanette is all high glam and male attentions put yourself in her stilettos on a bleak and solitary Sunday afternoon in November when the first icy winds signal the end of the City’s world-class autumn weather. Still clinging to that fantasy, I’d foolishly worn only a thin leather jacket to make the subway trek to the Lower East Side.

David Mann. Acrylic and oil on canvas stretched over board.

I’d convinced myself to venture out into this inhospitable grey to hear The Aficionado in conversation with artist David Mann about his show at McKenzie Fine Art, just at the border of China Town and Downtown Chic. Two trains and too many windblown blocks later I reached nirvana – the welcoming warmth of the gallery lined with Mann’s luminous, exploding synapses and a plastic cup filled with vin blanc.

Why had I accepted this mission when my preferred activity would have involved a martini and the Sunday paper? I’d meditated upon the ancient Sultanette axiom carved in perpetuity on the crumbling walls of the seraglio: Getting off in life = getting off your ass. And off I’d gone.

images — David Mann. Acrylic and oil on canvas stretched over board.

The Aficionado also provided high incentive. I’d followed him for a decade as he curated a rarified salon of classical music featuring gifted musicians, vintage instruments, and all the champaign and cookies you could consume. As thrilling as the live performances were, The Aficionado’s opening aria – an informed tutorial on the historical, personal, and whimsical context of the evening’s program – was worth the price of admission. Over the years, the association had evolved into a friendship and upon the inauguration of The Male Harem he had been immediately inducted.

Eager to hear every word he had to say about Mann’s provocative abstractions, I grabbed a front row seat and killed time reading about the latest art scam to get in the mood – a cache of Renoirs, Picasso’s, Lautrec’s and Chagall’s surreptitiously collected in a home in Munich from art the Nazi’s had declared “degenerate.” Whether they’d been looted or confiscated depended on your aesthetic sensibility but before he disappeared entirely, the collection’s owner had been last seen on a high-speed train between Zurich and Munich. No better foreplay than that.

The rest is best described in heady sketches: The Aficionado opened with who else but Beethoven? In struggling to translate his divine musical images from fingers to paper, he had slashed at the scores-in-progress with such violence the grooves are still visible in the original paper.

Riffing off of that, Mann said that he had once done a series of paintings based solely on Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet. Then fast-forwarded from Ludwig to Love Me Do, to explain how the layering in his images was first inspired by the double-tracking in the first Beatles recordings.

Not that creativity didn’t sometimes require making a mess of things. When asked how he worked his way through artist’s block, Mann replied that when a painting becomes constipated, he’s been known to throw a wash of paint at it to shake things up. Are there enough buckets of paint in the world, The Sultanette wondered, to toss at the images of half-realized dreams?

And so it continued as art imitated life. Mann talking about the significance of errors. (“So much of the experience of my art comes out of the making of mistakes.”) And about knowing when to surrender control of the process. And that a painting is finished when the light finds its way to the surface of the canvas.

With the early sunset, the gallery’s windows had become black reflections as the hour slipped by. On cue, The Aficionado remarked, “There are those moments in life that are so deeply pleasurable they change our perception of the passage of time.” In the intimate silence, he continued, “For me they are music, a delicious meal, standing in front of a work of art, a novel, looking out the window of a train, sex.”

And wasn’t it all sex on this bleak November day turned provocative by ideas charged with artistic passion? There is real sex of course and not to be underrated. But maybe the best sex is a mingling of the two. The Aficionado left us with a quote from a Wallace Stevens poem, “Peter Quince at the Clavier” about the music of desire:

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the self-same sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

Is music.

One of the last to leave, I blew an air kiss to The Aficionado who was perched on the window ledge on his cell phone, the profane having its way again. I zipped up my flimsy jacket and headed back out into the cold. But as I stood shivering on Allen Street waiting for a cab, I wasn’t alone. When the taxi drew up, Johannes, Wallace and Ludwig van, John, Paul, George, and Ringo all piled in with me for the trip home. There was barely room for us all.

11/1/13

Notice: To Those With An Appetite For More

The Sultanette has been knee-deep in a tantalizing foray that strikes to the marrow of Male Harem maintenance: The fine art of kicking ass and taking names, mainly her own. So as I hit a new stride, I offer a tempting assortment of new topics to tease you along this precarious, erotic and invigorating path of self-discovery.

Stay tuned fellow chain-jerkers, chop-busters, and cage-rattlers for future confections to chew on including: the joy of risk (savored only when you discover what’s next after you think you’ve lost everything); the exquisite pain of happiness (nirvana being not all it’s cut out to be); the power of making a world-class exit (only one carry-on of emotional baggage, please); and the thrill of cerebral foreplay (synapses and the single girl).

Also down the pike, the long-awaited follow-up to The Male Harem: FAQs based on The Sultanette’s most recent fieldwork – a guide to male harem membership levels for those of you contemplating curating your own.

In the meantime, if you have a request you’d like The Sultanette to riff on or an experience to share within the anonymity of the seraglio, I welcome your engagement. Who knows what other provocative themes The Male Harem will inspire as we continue on this road trip?

09/2/13

Whose monogamy is it anyway?

The Leggo Wedding. Image credit: InSapphoWeTrust.

So let’s dive into the mother of them all, that cherished myth of the committed couple – monogamy. At least it was mine for sixteen years with One and Only until I realized that though he wasn’t cheating on me physically, he’d been carrying on a liaison dangereuse with his past – a twenty-five year constipation over an insidious betrayal he’d never resolved. (Translation: baggage.) He denied it. He had to. He’d been deftly abused and lacked the metal or the wiles for right-sizing himself. So when I realized I was participating in a relationship with the ghost of his past I made a break for the present.

I thought my future was set with One and Only. We’d found a country house and submitted credit checks for a down payment when the betrayal bomb hit. (Grisly details to be revealed in forthcoming posts.) Now what? I’d earned full membership in the Embittered Ex Club and my ovaries were no longer hatching. I was free to write off men and curl up with a self-help book, join a cause, take up rosemaling.

And then it hit me: There was something I still liked about hanging around with a person with a penis. I liked the frisson of their opposite. Their instinct to obfuscate. Their appreciation for breasts of all kinds and their flair for masturbation. I was drawn to their simplicity, their strength and single-mindedness, their determination to remain clueless and self-absorbed. Their drive and lack of sentimentality.

So why throw the big babies out with the bathwater when it was just relationships they were lousy at? Instead of counting on The One, I would pursue being adored, indulged, inspired, and entertained by The Many. I would cultivate a Male Harem.

Which brings us back around to monogamy. I was suckled on it. Dad came home every night to whatever mom was serving up for dinner. They’d vowed to last forever and adored each other for fifty-six years. Well I’d had forever and it didn’t last. I was ready to have a whirl with the present. No vows. No expectations. The beauty of The Male Harem was that while I would no longer count on one man for all time, I could always count on one at any given time.

"The Terrace of the Seraglio." — “The Terrace of the Seraglio.”

Don’t be misled by the bravado. There are those Saturday nights when I yearn for the consistency of that One just being there. When I ache for a sense of security, even the illusion of it. And then I remember how lonely life was with a ghost, and I count my blessings and my harem.

So full disclosure: The Male Harem contains married men. In fact, judging by the husbands of all stripes and committed boyfriends who shamelessly populate it, I wonder if monogamy is an illusion. A male pretense to keep the peace while they get on with pursuing their appetites.

The American self-help industrial complex may tout monogamy as intimacy’s nirvana, but whose monogamy are they referring to? Have yourself a Google orgy on the subject and you’ll find British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggesting in his book, Monogamy, that ruthlessly high-minded fidelity might possibly degenerate into numbing routine and sexual complacency. Or see Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You by Notre Dame anthropologist, Agustin Fuentes. Or sociologist Eric Anderson’s, The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating. Might there be more original ways to navigate the relationship jungle than hacking away at one’s mate in couple’s counseling?

"Single Woman Bathed in Seraglio" by Théodore Chassériau — “Single Woman Bathed in Seraglio” by Théodore Chassériau.

While being wined and dined, flattered and fondled by The Male Harem, my world has expanded exponentially. I’m pursuing off-beat interests and devouring obscure books. On the physical side, I’ve developed a set of guns to rival Michelle’s and accrued a world class collection of lingerie. Erotic energy is spilling over into the rest of my life, infecting the way I approach my work, friendships and goals.

And speaking of intimacy, freed of the expected rules of engagement, men are opening up in unexpected ways. They share their passions and idiosyncrasies, unexplored feelings and past regrets, hidden sentiments and guilty secrets. And they’re talking about sex, the male version, having it and wanting it and who with. Sometimes the conversation is between friends. Sometimes it’s between the sheets.

The Male Harem has challenged me to question everything I’ve been brought up to believe about sex and fidelity, companionship and loneliness. If it’s my personal skirmish in the war between the sexes, it’s also my private seraglio where I am the Sultanette. The place where I find intellectual rigor, mental toughness, and emotional independence. That may sound lonely but it’s not an illusion. It’s a life I can call my own, enriched by the company of men. A life lived more fully, fearlessly, passionately, and not monogamously.

What’s your monogamy meter?

09/2/13

The Male Harem FAQs

In response to the relentless inquiries among friends, strangers, and soulmates concerning the how’s and who’s of The Male Harem, below is a compendium of most frequently asked questions.

Q: Do you have sex with all of them?

A: I may be The Sultanette but I’m not Mata Hari.

Q: Then what’s the point?

A: Happy to say this answer has eluded only one would-be member of The Male Harem, call him The Judge for his litigation creds in the courts of law. (Harem descriptions slightly modified to ensure anonymity.) Installed in his rural idyll where we’d been introduced by his well-meaning wife at a charity event, The Judge suggested he drive into the city for lunch to discuss a book project he was dabbling in. The next week at Blue Water Grill on Union Square, I offered writing advice, then broached the subject of The Male Harem, curious to see if this country gent would be shocked. Au contraire, The Judge’s immediate response was an enthusiastic, “I’d like to join!” The Male Harem wasn’t a club to be joined, I explained, but an experience to be cultivated. Objection overruled, he suggested we reconvene for lunch next week, venue TBD.

Early that morning, the phone rang. “What if,” The Judge opined friskily, “I picked up a bottle of champagne and a slice of pâté and dropped by your apartment?” Beyond a reasonable doubt, His Honor anticipated a convenient romp with a louche New York City woman (isn’t what these women did?) while his wife discussed Emily Bronte at her book club.

Time for some Male Harem rules.

Q: There are rules for The Male Harem?

A: Does the Pope wear Prada? Male Harem rules are crucial to preventing The Sultanette from slipping into sentimentality, suffocating expectations, and affiliations beyond the here and now. Hence, Harem members shall be one or several of the following:

Intelligent but not arrogant. Sexy but not cocky.

Either brilliant flatterers or accomplished liars.

Cultured hedonists. Wicked wits.

Genuine lovers of women, not pretending so they can get into their pants.

Apropos to the above, sex is never assumed but not ruled out.

Husbands invited, especially happily married ones.

If single, there will be no expectation of exclusivity.

Beguiling conversationalists. Topics concerning the throwing, hitting, or kicking of a ball does not qualify as conversation. (NOTE: It wasn’t her sexual prowess that spared Scheherazade’s life, it was her irresistible confabulations. Schehimazades welcome.)

Q: How do you meet them?

A: Experience has shown that the most effective method for collecting harem candidates is not to look for them. Thus, past harem encounters have occurred:

While eating oatmeal at Italian café near subway on way to morning meeting.

Attending summer course on history of English crime at Oxford.

Sunday afternoon lecture at Metropolitan Opera Guild.

Happy hour at Minetta Tavern after obscure Sunday afternoon documentary.

Backstairs of apartment building while working out at neighborhood gym.

Dinner at neighborhood watering hole after contents of refrigerator revealed nothing but cocktail onions and a yogurt.

All of the above share one thing in common: living life. How this philosophy was fueled by recent consecutive family deaths is a post in itself. For now let’s say that The Sultanette chooses to spend any precious time left after working to pay the gas bill on things that give her pleasure. Matchmaking websites that require being interviewed at Starbucks by hoards of randy males isn’t on the bucket list.

Not that I didn’t consider the dot-com market for harem hunting after One and Only. Hadn’t it become the single’s MO in the sixteen years since I’d been off the playing field? Yet I’d seen friends – beautiful, smart, candid – their self-confidence crushed after a string of inspections. Different specimen, same drill: the revealing of past-relationship CV, the reviewing of present interests, (“You like the blues, I love the blues!”), the wet, groping kiss, the promise to call that never materialized. Or worse, did.

I’m skeptical that instant fact-matching is more truthful or interesting or better foreplay than another person’s slow reveal. The Impresario has been in The Male Harem for over two years and I have yet to ask his age, where he lives, his wife’s name, or have any idea what he does on weekends. I want our physically exciting, intellectually absorbing, emotionally immediate connection, not his factoids or his dirty sox.

Yet after closing down restaurants with him over hours of conversation in a half-dozen locations across the globe, after observing from a respectful distance, the ups and down of our separate lives, and experiencing the non-verbal carnal intimacy of honestly passionate sex, I know him sensually and intuitively. And in some ways, not at all.

Yet who can say that in mystery there is less knowing? Did I know anything more of One and Only? In the end, all the dirty sox and deep familiarity inspired no longevity, loyalty or even integrity. Each encounter with The Impresario might be the last, but each present is more real than the illusion of lasting was with One and Only.

Call me a cyber prude, but don’t be so fast to write off Twanna Hines of Funky Brown Chick, wunderkind commentator on sexuality and its intercourse with culture and technology. Twanna has appeared on CNN and NPR, worked for Newsweek and BBC Worldwide, and lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, London, and Amsterdam. Her easy confidence belies her years.

On a panel at NPR’s Green Space last May about “How to be a Grown Ass Woman” she was asked about online dating by a world weary Millennial. Twanna’s message was: Get offline and on with your life. Or consider sites like meetup.com because it’s in the interest of your interests.

Q: So what do you do on those Saturday nights when life can’t comfort you, or cook you dinner, or just hold you?

A: Oh, those.

First I think about Byron, terminal romantic, who said: “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart. Tis woman’s whole existence.” And I get right-sized. Then I remember watching Chrissie Hynde, queen of thighs, crooning in a Pretender’s concert at Madison Square Garden: “Would you like sour cream on your potato, honey!” And I get a smile on my face. And then I hear Dylan, gritty gypsy poet, growling: “Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through.” And I get on with my life.

Q: But isn’t life only truly fulfilling when two people commit selflessly and exclusively for better and worse? How do you know you’re not deluding yourself?

A: I don’t. But If you’ve read this far, maybe you’re not so convinced either. This is the next best way for me. What’s yours?

Take a listen to Chrissie on a Saturday night …

The Male Harem

You've entered The Male Harem. So where are you?

Tag: seraglio

A Turkey Day Toast To The Male Harem

The Sultanette And The City

Notice: To Those With An Appetite For More

Whose monogamy is it anyway?

The Male Harem FAQs

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