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Thursday, April 5, 2007

Room Service: The W Dallas - Victory

filed under: Jet Sex, Room Service by Irene Kaoru | Leave a Comment

The other weekend I played jet-setter and hopped a quick flight to Dallas, Texas to attend the opening party for the new video installation at Victory Park. While there, I stayed at the W Dallas Victory, a 33-story hotel and condo that attempts to bring a slice of swank NYC to the cowboy kingdom and mostly succeeds. Sexy!

Atmosphere: The carefully-composed hipness of the W Dallas, like pretty much any W hotel, smacks you in the face from the moment you approach the building, blinding you with the giant gleaming chrome W sign, flattering you with the array of precariously positioned calla lily and tulip bouquets in tall vases, and trying very hard to impress you with low, sleek modern designer furniture and copious glittering chandeliers. The waitresses at the “living room” bar all wear high-heeled boots and short-up-to-there Kors dresses. Color changing LED panels adorn pretty much everything. This is clearly the place to stay and be seen for the twenty- or thirty-something set in the area; bared Texan flesh and the slinky oontz of techno club-music fills the lobby all night long.

Amenities: Free design and style magazines litter the desk (I came away with a new copy of *Surface and City mag to read on the plane) and tucked into the “snack box” was a $10 “intimacy kit”: two Durex condoms, two moist towelettes, and a mini package of lube. Bottles of Voss water were provided with chic glassware on silver trays, and a soft microsuede chaise lounge was positioned by the window for a nice city view while planning tourist activities or making out. Also, the 16th floor Bliss spa is available for manicures, facials or massages if you feel like dropping a couple hundred extra bucks.

Facilities: The well-appointed room (about US$264 per night) featured a queen-sized pillow-topped mattress, smooth white sheets with a satisfyingly high thread count, and five mirrors surrounding the bed. Yes, five. (The only thing to do with that many bed-facing mirrors is just let the inner narcissist loose.) Sadly, there was no bathtub, but the shower was large and featured an oversized shower-head, making it perfect for a couple to use together.

Overall: A-. The W Whatever/Whenever service is a great idea (and the front desk does cheerfully attempt to provide whatever you want) but a bit hit-or-miss (they lost our laundry, gave us free socks to make up for it, then found it again at the last minute). The waveless 16th floor pool was gorgeous–but we were shooed away when we tried to use it due to a private party. On the positive side, the decor was lovely, the staff friendly and helpful, the bed luxurious, and the walls thick. Once you’ve worked up an appetite in front of all those mirrors, be sure to check out Craft downstairs–the food at the Dallas location of Tom Colicchio’s high-end restaurant chain is every bit as tasty as at the 19th Street NYC location (try the melt-in-your-mouth foie gras, tender Canadian wild boar and the rich homemade-daily ice creams and sorbets) and the service is impeccable. Tout ensemble: a great place for a sexy getaway–just don’t stay long enough to get sick of all the hipsters trying to get into the painfully overrated and overpriced Ghostbar.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Unpersonals: Breaking Up, The Unpersonals Way

filed under: Web Sex Index, Unpersonals by Lux Nightmare | 3 Comments

I stopped following someone on Twitter when it became clear that his tweets were never going to lead to us having a “chance” meeting.

When things went south with an ex-boyfriend – the first and only person I ever met through Friendster – I removed him as a friend.

And let’s not even talk about the saga of LiveJournal’s relationship to my former relationships.

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing how Unpersonals can facilitate the beginning of a relationship – but what about the other end? How do Unpersonals come in to play as a relationship begins to wind down?

There is, of course, the initial response of changing one’s relationship status from “Taken/In A Relationship/Seeing Someone/Whatever” to “Single” (and by the way, this whole process is part of why I am loathe to list my relationship status on the Internet – it’s so incredibly annoying to change it back and forth, on a million different sites, as my status evolves): but that is, in some ways, too obvious, too easy a discussion.

More interesting, in the world of Unpersonals, is the question of whether or not to sever virtual ties with someone when the real world bond has deteriorated. When you’ve broken up with someone, do you delist them as a Flickr contact? Or do you just demote them, changing their status in your world from friend to contact?

How we manage our virtual social networks in the face of changes in our social lives says a great deal about us, both in terms of how we view our relationships and how we view our chosen Unpersonals.

On a site like MySpace, where random, meaningless friending is rampant (case in point: I am “friends” with MikeSpace, Jada Bloom, and Miz X, none of whom I recognize or actually know), is there really any point to going through the trouble of defriending someone just because you’re no longer fucking? Or does taking that toxic ex out of your Friend Space send the message that, yes, they are now worth less to you than Shitty Band #5?

My personal feelings on question of whether or not to defriend has evolved over time, and varies depending on the relationship (and site) in question. I unfriendstered two exes (both painful break ups) because their presence on my page was an unpleasant reminder of our past relationship; likewise, my LiveJournal has always been off limits to anyone I’ve severed ties with. But other exes – or at least, people I’ve stopped sleeping with – have remained in my world of MySpace, Dodgeball, Flickr, Friendster, or what have you friends. For relationships that simply fade away, the defriending seems unnecessarily harsh: it’s easier to simply let that person stay along for the ride, to passively remain friends as a gesture of good will, a suggestion of some kind of future friendship.

As for my Twitter breakup? I got tired of getting “This is what I’m doing!” texts from someone who wasn’t going to be including me in his plans – the onslaught of text messages constantly setting off my phone felt too invasive, too personal, too close. But even after I deleted him from my Twitter, I still kept him on as one of my Flickr friends: who knows, maybe there’s some hope for us after all.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

The State of Sex Ed… for Kids

filed under: State of Sex Ed by Lux Nightmare | 1 Comment

Through a news story out of Australia, I learned about a brand new book (put out by Family Planning Queensland) that’s intended to teach young children about, well, their bodies and themselves: Everyone’s Got a Bottom.

From what I can tell (the website doesn’t have extensive information) the book is something along the lines of the Everyone Poops of sex education, which amuses me to no end. Personally, I have some very fond memories of my first sex education book (given to me at the age of five).

Did you get a book about sex (or where babies come from, rather) when you were a kid? What was it? Would you recommend it to the world at large?

Monday, April 2, 2007

fuckplays

filed under: We Make Art Not Sex by Lux Nightmare | Leave a Comment

Theater about sex tends to be hit or miss (and more often than not miss), so it was with some apprehension that I approached fuckplays (billed as “a voyeuristic journey through 8 playwrights’ most private places and a sincere examination of our most basic carnal desires”). I was, however, pleasantly surprised: the performance (jointly produced by Working Man’s Clothes and The Thursday Problem) turned out to be thoughtful, entertaining, funny, and quite smart.

The eight plays (selected from over sixty submissions) each attack the question of sex — how we view it, how we feel about it, and (most importantly) how we talk about it — from a different position, providing the audience with a wide range of commentary, critique, and views about sex. From a Monty Pythonesque scene featuring two Victorian gentlemen drinking tea and conversing about sexual frustration (”The Impotence of Being Ernest”) to the story of a Muslim martyr arriving in heaven to find his promised 72 virgins not quite as he imagined (”Arms and the Octopus”) to the tale of a ventriloquist and the woman in love with his dummy (”Wood”), fuckplays provides a fresh, creative outlook on sex, sexuality, and the way it interacts with our lives.

[Geoff (Steven Strobel) and Buckminster seduce the lovely Simone in “Wood.”]

fuckplays runs from March 28-April 27 at the Ohio Theatre and Galapagos Art Space. Tickets can be purchased at SmartTix. For more information, visit Working Man’s Clothes.