Worst. Expo. Ever.
As many of you may already know, the Exotic Erotic Ball (& Expo) came and went last weekend. Les and I had been excited about attending until about two weeks beforehand, when it became clear the organizers weren’t very, um, organized. It didn’t help that my and Viviane’s polite inquiries concerning VIP/press passes met with utter indifference—way to reach out to the community guys!
Les and I chose to spend our night elsewhere. Others were less fortunate, but every cloud has a silver lining: people’s frustrating EEB experiences made for some funny and trenchant observations. We’ll begin with Dacia’s incisive post mortem:
But anyway – the Exotic Erotic Ball. Speaking of awesome – it really wasn’t. Being immersed in my little bubble of people who are highly critical of the sex industry while also loving and embracing parts of it in a rabidly idealistic way, I forgot that there are lots of people who aren’t totally jaded by it and are in awe of porn stars and whatnot. We call these people “civilians†in a slightly derisive tone – (the royal) we are not very nice. There wasn’t dress code to the evening, so people like me were dressed to the nines, but there were also many, many dudes wandering around in tank tops and shorts. Not to mention the high numbers of people in Halloween costumes – and not in a fetishy way, either. Peculiar and sort of amusing.
What was not sort of amusing, but probably something I’m going to have to get used to (diva-on-the-rise alert), was the way that said civilians acted around me and mine – there was lots of “stealthy†photo taking. Dude – I can see you, especially when you are dressed like a viking and the flash on your camera goes off when you are pointing it at me, and it is only polite to ask “Can I take a picture of you?†This is a little thing called objectification – and I felt it cut me like a creepy knife last night.
Dacia’s right on here. Reading sex blogs and such, it’s easy to forget that the porn world—and the average rabid porn fan—isn’t as (to put it delicately) liberated and sex-positive as we might like. I have nothing against porn conventions per se, but when your event caters to compulsive wankers rather than hedonists you’re going to end up with a room full of shut-ins and creeps. A New York Press article on the Expo paints a vivid portrait of the kind of people I’m talking about:
... A swarm of eager men gathered around the booth, flush from being so close to their favorite girls, and feeling safe in their sympathetic community. In that, it wasn’t unlike a Star Trek convention, or perhaps a Harry Potter book signing.
Whether it was the expo or the ball itself, the same people were in attendance. The men who bought tickets looked like they worked out too much or not at all, and wandered around in tight packs with their camera phones ready to fire. The women came with their hair dyed and their bodies modified, and their tattooed boyfriends stayed close by. Wherever they came from, not enough of them showed up.
At the ball on Saturday night, maybe a thousand people were there, made smaller by the voluminous, empty space in Pier 94 that echoed around them. ... The crowd surrounding the main stage was subdued, and many of them came to the costume ball without any costume. With no mob to get lost in, people refused to abandon their inhibitions. Instead, most were content to remain mere spectators, searching for anybody they could stare at.
Yikes. On a lighter note, Joe Brandi takes the prize for the funniest writeup:
I arrived Sat night at approximatley 9:30 PM and left at close to 2 AM out of boredom. The most exciting part of the night was watching some drunk guy with maskara and a pot belly get slapped in the head by a guy who knew that the drunk wouldnt slap back, then having KSEX’s Wankus with stripped pants on looking like a Ice Cream man stand in between and trying to get the guy who wasnt going to do anything anyway to walk away.
I basically stayed for the time I did waiting for something to happen….anything! After 3-4 hours I decided to leave and go to a regular bar. When its 12:00 on a Sat night and people are leaving who flew in from California to go back to their hotel rooms you know it sucks.
At the end of the New York Press article, someone opines that perhaps New Yorkers are “weird about sex.” It sure doesn’t seem that way from where I sit: I know of at least four other sex-themed events that were taking place on the very same night as the Exotic Erotic Ball.
Nevertheless, I do hope the organizers learn from their mistakes and give it another try next year. Maybe next time they’ll get to know the locals first.
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