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Recently in Salon Health & Body

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Bug heads, rat hairs -- bon appétit
Do you know how many insect parts are allowed in your Fig Newton?
By Mary Roach
[01/14/00]

Urge
Whip me, spank me, gentrify me
A strange new romance is brewing between bourgeois taste and S/M styles.
By Annalee Newitz
[01/15/00]

Urge
Maxed out
Max Hardcore and other XXX pornographers awakened something dark in me. Or perhaps it was already there.
By Evan Wright
[01/18/00]

Sweets, wrappers and HIV
Zimbabweans renegotiate sex in the age of AIDS.
By Kai Wright
[01/20/00]

I can't help it!
We all do obsessive things. People with Tourette's syndrome just do it more.
By David Bowman
[01/21/00]

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One night, I nudged C., raised my eyebrows and whispered, "Should I ask?"

"If you want to," he said.

We looked at the shelves of videos, pretending that we were trying to make up our minds, until there were no other customers in the store. Behind the check-out counter a man sat grinning, his eyes fixed on the sitcom he was watching on a portable black-and-white TV. Summoning my nerve, I approached the counter and, in a low voice, asked, "What's in there?"

"That's our adult entertainment section," he said.

"Oh really," I said, trying to sound slightly surprised, casual and interested at once. Canned laughter came from the television set; the video man chuckled.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I wasn't laughing at you -- it's just, heh-heh-heh-heh-heh ..."

His belly bounced slightly. Swirls of smoke rose up from his cigarette burning in a large ashtray brimming with spent butts and ash.

"It's this show, heh-heh-heh. You ever watch ... never mind," he said wiping his eyes. "Would you like to have a look?"

"Um. Sure." I gave C. the signal to come over.

The man heaved himself off the chair, walked around in front of the counter and unlocked the door. C. and I followed him into a closet, about five feet wide by eight feet deep. Ratty, stained carpeting covered the floor; a single bulb wrapped in red cellophane hung above our heads illuminating walls covered entirely with video boxes that reached almost to the ceiling. Standing in the quiet, softly glowing redness of the narrow space was like being in the eye of a tornado, while a barrage of breasts, slick penises and tongues, splayed legs, rouged labia, lasciviously lipsticked mouths and bodies entwined and connected every which way swirled around us in super-saturated color. Numbers scrawled on pieces of masking tape in the upper corner of each box were the only indication that there were any sort of rules amid this orgiastic chaos.

"Here's how it works," the man said. "You write down the number of the video you want to rent on a piece of paper." He pointed to a pad on the back of the door and a pencil dangling from a string. "Then you bring it to the counter and I get the tapes for you. I'm going to leave now. When I close the door behind me, just turn the lock on the doorknob, will you? And don't forget to lock it when you leave."

The sound of the door shutting made the room feel vacuum-sealed. C. leaned over to turn the lock on the knob, then he turned to me. We looked at each other for a moment, wide-eyed, almost holding our breath, and a second later, burst into laughter.

"Wow," C. said, looking around.

We started reading the titles emblazoned on the boxes. Some highlights: "Wild Housewives," "Show Me How," "Both Sides Now," "All Aboard," "Organ Grinding," "Late Cummers" and "Horizontal Bop." After the initial bout of giggling, the mood turned serious, almost contemplative as we looked at the scenarios, the bodies and the faces, trying to decide which ones were going to do it for us.

"You pick one and I'll pick one. How about that?" C. suggested.

"OK," I said.

We both pretended to be shy, to be shocked, as our eyes took in the images before us. A kiss or an embrace would have been too romantic a gesture in this closet full of lust. I thought about grabbing C., fondling him, unzipping him and pressing myself against him -- the way I had once in the dark corridor of a nightclub, when we did it standing up against the emergency exit with our long winter coats wrapped around us, shielding us from view. It also crossed my mind that there might be a peephole or that the guy at the counter might wonder what was taking so long and barge in on us, catch us in the act and throw us out. It would be too humiliating to risk it.

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