A ray of hope in the land of sex shows

A thoroughly non-scientific analysis shows that since the late 1990s, most Vancouver queer women’s sex shows have just not been that great. But the recent Diva’s Den show was much better than I expected, and made me cautiously optimistic that times are a-changin’.

There are three main blights that have been plaguing sex shows. First of all is the Skinny Naked Fetus Phenomenon, named after an indignant rant by the fabulous zaftig Bette Midler in which she refers to a young skinny woman as a fetus.

Don’t get me wrong, skinny young women are not evil as a group, or so they tell me. But hours and hours of them? I’ve gone to shows where all the tiny little performers just blurred together in my head into one life-sized Barbie doll. And I say Naked Fetus because all too often the strippers just whip their clothes off. It’s like they think people came to the show to see nudity and they forget about the power of slow seduction.

Here’s a tip for performers: Vancouver queer women are a willing and hungry audience and you’ve got us at your feet. Prolong the tease!

Then there’s the Don’t Worry I’m Just Kidding style. For some performers, it seems like the only way they can deal with putting on an explicitly sexual performance is to act like it’s all a joke.

Don’t get me wrong, humour and sex can be great together. But too much funny stuff sucks, especially when your goal is not only to entertain but to arouse.

On the other end of the spectrum are the Deadly Serious SM performances, in which black-clad pale creatures spend hours grimly sticking needles into each other totally out of view of the audience while Nine Inch Nails plays on a crappy sound system.

Now, Diva’s Den 2006 was not a perfect show by any means. There was a fair amount of speedy undressing and a few painfully serious un-hot acts. But there was also a super-hot butch/femme bit in which the butch actually used the pole with no joking around whatsoever, a slow and beautifully choreographed one-woman rope bondage act, a blonde burlesque super-tease, an acrobatic pole dancer with a glowing orange faux-hawk, and plenty of curvy women over 12.

Hell yeah!

Maybe this Diva’s Den is a sign that we still have the potential for women’s sex shows like we had in the early 1990s and before. Remember the double fisting, the flame throwing, the creative and theatrical drag?

There are great performers of all shapes in Vancouver who know how to put on unapologetically sexual entertainment, combining hotness and creativity with just the right amount of nakedness and humour.

More please.