Last Sunday I had a BBQ and lots of friends came over, including my friends the good Drs. Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence. Carol and Robert are a total hoot, and are the light and life of any party they attend — both being walking encyclopedias of sex and culture. Which is fitting since they founded the Center for Sex and Culture. What’s really interesting is that since I had them trapped in my apartment with beers in their hands, a rapt audience and a fat fluffy cat blocking the nearest exit with his bulk, I got to quiz them about their latest coup de gras — the live Masturbate-A-Thon.
You see, about eight years ago, Good Vibes declared May National Masturbation Month to honor the then-firing of Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, who said nice things about jacking off and freaked everyone out who was masturbating instead of listening, and to also make a fun month out of a usual slump. Now it is a big PR pain in my ass. I mean, I love masturbating, like way too much probably and it’s amazing I get anything done since I watch porn and read erotica and test toys for a living. But it’s always chaos for my copywriting duties at Good Vibes (five years of Masturbation Month, argh) and all these journalists call and want interviews about the exact same things every year. What they always ask is where the Masturbate-A-Thon is. And every fuckin’ (wankin’?) year we tell them, no no, it’s not a big circle jerk, it’s like a walk-a-thon, you get one of our sassy pledge forms and take pledges and it’s all on the honor system and then you collect the money and we give it all to charities like AIDS organizations. When Good Vibes’ publicist calls me, I now hide in the bathroom, or under my desk and rock like an autistic child in fear of certain Masturbation Month journalist torture. Thank the gods that I’ve never had to talk to the radio shock jocks, though one year I was told I had to or else, and I think I tried to fake my own death by Hitachi Magic Wand overload, or lube drowning, or fatal braining by a falling Sean Michaels dildo or something. Actually, I got in a lot of trouble at work, though that’s nothing new.
But Carol Queen has no fear. This articulate, unbelievably intelligent woman talks to the shock jocks and stays cool, all though the insults, the sexism, the homophobia, the racist bullshit, the obnoxious sound effects, all of it, and still manages to get the names of the charities on the air. And after years of jocks asking where the ‘Thon was going to be, Carol and Robert decided to actually have one. So there.
So the Center for Sex and Culture rented a local cultural center, and with their permission, held a public Masturbate-A-Thon, with all proceeds going to charity. And it was a total wanking success. There were rooms for just women or just men, a room for mixed gender, and a live webcast with several different cameras. Reuters was there, and so were a bunch of other big news people. There were sexy buxom adult schoolgirls, guys who were hung in ways I’ve only heard about, regular people, sex pundits and local sex authors. (Not me, though — I was in a nunnery that weekend. Okay, I was finishing another book, and I’m a total hermit when I write. Plus I was scared.) The next day Howard Stern talked about it enviously, and Rush Limbaugh talked about it even more enviously, because we all know that Howard actually gets laid sometimes and Rush needs a Powerman 6000 now more than ever.
Carol and Robert raised a bunch of money for the UCSF AIDS Health Project, and they have been on the phone with journalists and shock jocks steadily, so my job is much happier now. But I think what’s cool is that they actually did it, and it was fun for all, and not sleazy, and well, kinda normal — in our San Francisco way… National Masturbation Month is still a pain in my ass, everything I do at work has to be masturbation-themed and it makes me want to drink Astroglide from the bottle, but now thanks to Carol and Robert I don’t need to hide under my desk behind a bin of bright pink butt plugs, or a stack of videos with titles like "Gush" on them — this month.
