Dearest Pornlanders,

Greetings from Barcelona! Where I am up late in my little room in an ancient castle that, with its Catalonian tiles and threadbare bedding, wreaks of local color. And piss. I am having a wonderfully sensual time in the old world (it´s crumbling), sucking down fruits of the sea, sweet Spanish wines, and the strongest sludge-like coffee any midwesterner ever encountered. I have seen the angry albino gorilla and Antonio Gaudì´s truly awe-inspiring modernista architecture. Most importantly, I am a long ways from that monkey-brained U.S. Supreme Court, and so wish you were here!

Why does the Supreme Court think that naked ladies are threatening our vastly varied and certainly amorphous moral nation? Why does the highest law of the land insist, against all reason and statistical evidence, that nude women have inimical “secondary effects” on our violence-obsessed culture?

Here in Europe, sex is everywhere. It´s in advertisements in the metro, snuggles up against 14th century walls, flaunts itself on stages for tourist dollars, and, most plentifully, it happens in the world´s finest art museums. Furthermore (Surprise!), the Europeans don´t seem morally compromised because of it.

In Paris, at the Rodin Museum, one walks into a room and is greeted immediately by the gaping cunt of Iris, Messagère des Dieux. Children gurgle past her, unharmed by her rawness. Goofy Asian men pose for snapshots with their hands on her when the guards´ backs are turned.

The Louvre is overflowing with sexual imagery from every culture. Except ours. The only American painting I recall seeing was Whistler´s Mother, which neatly summarizes America´s puritanism with its gray, gloomy palette, stark setting, and stern subject.

Paris also boasts the morally-questionable cabaret—with its naked ladies and ribald parlance. But it’s simply accepted as the huge tourist draw that it is. Camera-toting masses trek to Montmartre for two reasons: the lovely white church, Sacre-Coeur, and the rusty red Moulin Rouge. Even retired Americans seem to think sex is okay so far from home, and pose for a photo or two beneath its red-lit awning.

In Barcelona´s Picasso Museum, an entire floor is dedicated to the man´s late-period etchings—two hundred virtually identical scribblings of cunt after cunt after cunt. Some hairy, some smooth. Some gaping, some tiny specks. And by that miracle of cubism, which deconstructs the 3-D figure and allows every naughty part to be shown at once, each slit is accompanied by a neat asshole, just like they all really are! And the good Americans were noticeably uncomfortable.

Oh, well. I wouldn´t trade us for the world. I´ve spent years mulling over what is so special about the American conscience, which, for all its quirky hang-ups and desire to be clean and regulated, still has an easy familiarity with freedom that is not found in Europe. Trust me. If you live with the Europeans (or watch their crappy TV) long enough, it becomes apparent. This ineffable sense of freedom resides deep in the American subconscious, stemming from our historical freedom to tell our government to FUCK OFF! And the more ridiculous that they, the government, get, the more emboldened we are to do so. Land of the free, home of the brave is like an equation. Less (sexually) free = more brave. Or, as in Europe, more (sexually) free = less brave. And America´s obsession with violence fits neatly into this equation as well.

In our new legislative obsession, where SEX is the greater sin, things can only get weirder. What of the pigeons, swans, and peacocks I saw copulating at the Paris Zoo? Or the simian cunnilingus? What about all the pregnant women walking around, shamelessly parading their sexual activity before God and man (many of them not even married)? Henceforth, I shall look at such women with horror, vehemently show my disgust, and spit, “You filthy rotten WHORE!! You dirty slut! You´ve been having SEX, haven´t you?!¨” Well, America, how do you like me now?

More Viva!

April
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Dec. 99
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