Babylon and Jam

[smokingboot]

So I found I couldn't do it - two events in one night, a party book launch where I could meet Maxine Saunders, famous witch of the Alexandrian tradition of Wicca, and a birthday bash at Club Sin. larians was down in London, and the birthday girl was a chum of ours so Club Sin it was.

Club Sin is an alternative goth/fetish venue down at Tottenham Court Road. It's a multi-levelled maze of red walls and gold mirrors following a floorplan from the Escher school of interior design. One room had the live (or at least only partly dead) goth band, one room had the industrial thrash stuff, one room had all the trad, and other rooms had, er, other things...stiltwalkers offered vodka jelly (wot, no absinthe?) and free lollipops, the Theatre of Sin was suitably decadent and everywhere, everywhere there was someone worth staring at - or worth hiding from, like, forever.


A big built blonde guy dressed as Alice through a different kind of looking glass, a rubber clad Mad Hatter not far away, a guy naked save his boots, bowler hat and dignity, a woman dressed in pillbox hat and pvc polka dots, an elegant lady in a long scarlet rubber evening dress, dwarf women dressed like victorian dolls, a white rubber first aider with kitty cat ears, a nazi with a riding crop and eyepatch, various members of the RAF, lycra sailors and copious numbers of beautiful bustles, exquisite corsets, leather masks and piercings.

The Theatre of Sin was the highlight, with good strippers (one of them was really excellent) and intriguing set pieces. I must admit that while I wasn't expecting smurfs at all, vampire porno smurfs who spurted with blood when bitten, ate fire and attacked their plated groins with buzz-saws were a memorable first for me. I nearly sat on what I thought was a black lace couch, when it yelped and revealed itself to be a woman on top of a dwarf. I apologised and backed away while she very courteously gestured towards her mount - I think she was offering me a go. I declined. Call me repressed.

Alongside the many beautiful people there were those sad others: they say age is not kind to women, well it clearly doesn't smile on men either, especially those men who have learned nothing from watching the beautiful girls de-garment on stage; gentlemen, learn as the ladies have learned, if you're going to display your entirety in public, there is no point shaving yourself from neck to toe ignoring the back and bottom. Do none or do all. But there they were, half shaven and hoping. In the play room, one man was tethered to the wall with a note pinned on him (I forget where) saying 'Ladies please write on me'. Enterprising souls had acceded to his request, one even drawing red lines where his pubic hair should be. His chest was a wall of graffiti. Not sexy.

None of it was sexy actually. There was a lot of fun and a lot of beauty, as well as plenty of ugliness. But I found myself admiring the outfits more than the bodies they covered, cos flesh is pretty (if we're lucky) but flesh isn't enough. If Babylon is breasts in harness and penises poking out through rubber shorts (subtle, eh?) then Babylon can't turn me on, and I watch it all like an alien wondering when I'm meant to get excited. Still, a pretty dress up night and certainly a place I would return to in the right company.



I have a show tonight, which unfortunately means I will be missing motorpickle's party. My only consolation is this excellent plum jam made by ellefurtle's mama; it has no pectin/ sugar/whatever does the whole preserving in preserves, so it must be consumed swiftly. And I am giving it my best shot...

Comments

[squeezypaws.livejournal.com]

Gosh that all sounds quite alarming. I wouldn't have known WHERE to look. I love the fact that some old guys are comfortable enough in their own skin to bare all when the opportunity arises but there is something sad about old men's pasty white little bottoms. Not that I have seen many. Or even one. Where on earth in my subconscious did that visual image come from? I dread to think.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Knowing where to look's easy, cos everyone wants you to stare at them!

See, the guy with the bowler hat was nonchalent enough to carry it off. He wasn't looking to be oiled/peed on/possessed/admired. He just liked himmself.

But some of them were deeply forlorn in their neediness. It would be tragic if they didn't look so comical. How cruel am I?

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

A surfeit of exposure can never compete with the power of imagination... Decadence, however, is surely more about the bitter taste of the surfeit than the intrigue of suggestion-it is the over exuberant exposure of tired flesh and decaying fantasy. That actually sounds very appropriate for a 'club sin'. Almost more a Jan Saudek experience perhaps, rather than an a Steve Diet Goedde or Eric Kroll?

I suspect that the erotic is more likely to be found when the fetish appears amidst the everyday- a hint of fetish attire in an ordinary shopping trip, a brief flash of flesh on a train. If it is everywhere and readily available it looses its magic, it is translated from the forbidden and teasing desire into the language of over indulgence- a sort of erotic equivalent of eating far too much chocolate and then being frightfully sick. In such times only the ugliness is left. Babylon is a place for people for whom excess is god, not beauty. Where truth is warts and all rather than a subtle whispered idea.

Where there are exceptions it is generally because the excess has actually been carefully stage managed to exclude anything that does not fit with the object of desire-it can exist only amongst 'perfection' of body and the expression of the ideal.

Thanks for the post- very thought provoking. As an artist ideas of beauty and truth are very important to me and always beckon to be explored.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

As ever, you give me something lucid to consider, and I think you are close to the right of it. I do not always desire the beatiful -I don't know what it is that draws my desire out - but the piling up of flesh, whilst I observe, does not touch or shock me.

I suppose the traditional power of Babylon is the shock of knowing you can have it - and in knowing you can have it, that it's free and there and easy makes it every day, and I find myself ogling the outfits, not dreaming of bodies. But this suits I think; Babylon should be brash and gilded, opulent and posing, yes its fun, but it isn't sin - or maybe I am too used to Babylon to recognise the sinful!

What it lacks is the forbidden element, from the combat clad skinhead fellating his mate in a skanky toilet with no door, to the seeming opium girl beginning to tumble out of her silk jimjams, pipe to one side,legs not quite parted. All this in rooms next to each other... Boot Babylon would be more intimate - and more likely to get shut down on the opening night!

[hooverpig.livejournal.com]

Once again, just cannot thank you both enough for coming down for this. Was fabulous to see you and I hope you had a decent night out.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

As you can see above, I had a splendid time! Thanks for inviting me:-D