Compiled by Brian Peters
(02/20/02)
Whether it's beneath the blankets as you join the Mile High Club, or breathless beneath a pounding waterfall, or naked to the sky while the waves gently rock a sailboat, or even crushed together in public lust on a rush hour subway, place is definitely a part of what moves us. And some places are just sexier than others.
We've assembled a good sampling, from staff and friends, of the sexiest places we know -- an erotic travelog with destinations to inspire lascivious thoughts. It's a much needed supplement to the good clean fun in those old AAA guides, but on Clean Sheets, of course.
Denver, Colorado
Coors Field: Baseball is sex to many of us who are diehard fans, so it's hard to explain to non-fans the sexual buzz I get from baseball games. I think that it's one part childhood memories mixed with another part athletic grace, blended with a dose of slow-motion poetry, fresh air, sunshine, and a concentration of focused expectation that takes the mind out of the thinking mode and lets it slide into a more playful place. Sex at a baseball game ("family" bathrooms highly recommended), sex right after a baseball game, or sex while just thinking about a baseball game, it all works just right while in that erotic zone. Susan Sarandon's character Annie Savoy explains it better than anyone ever will -- just watch her in the film Bull Durham.
--Susannah
San Francisco, California
One of the sexiest places for me is in the Mission in San Francisco standing on the back porch of my lover's apartment with a view of Twin Peaks smoking a cigarette after fucking and I'm naked and he has on a robe and he is standing behind with his arms wrapped tightly around me.
--Greg Wharton, Suspect Thoughts
Waikoloa Beach, Hawaii
Waikoloa Beach, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is sexy because it looks so otherworldly -- almost scary, with its jagged black lava rocks. You'd think the volcano had erupted only the day before. The sea is an insanely intense combination of blue, green, and gold. You can swim with sea turtles and watch whales spouting right in the bay. My lover and I were at Waikoloa during Aloha Week in the fall. At night everyone was celebrating at dances and concerts, leaving the beach totally empty. We walked along the sand between the sacred fish ponds and the ocean, ending up in a little grove of palm trees where we made love. Just as we were finishing, fireworks began going off overhead. We lay and watched them and listened to the sea, then wandered back inside without encountering a soul. Everyone and no one owns the beaches in Hawaii, but when I go back to that spot I always feel like I'm returning to our place.
--Roberta Carwin
Green Point, Ontario
A cabin at Green Point on Lake Superior in Northern Ontario. A true Finnish sauna with lake water steaming off the hot rocks, Bob Marley piped in, and homemade wine. Then a bonfire on the beach as The Sleeping Giant slips into misty darkness over the water and the fireflies come out and dance in the long grass that edges the black void of surrounding bush. Total solitude, the only noises -- the crickets and yourselves.
--Nola Summers
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
From the outside it's a warehouse, with a fenced-in courtyard behind
it. The only interesting thing that daylight reveals is a bright
purple door. Inside, it's a dungeon: a private club filled with odd
furniture, all designed to support the bottoms who languish writhing
within their tops' attention. Racks, cages, a suspension winch, a
rope bed -- all of them can take the weight of a couple madly fucking
on them. I've been there -- I've fucked there. The rope bed is
marvelous, the suspension winch can take you to just the right
height. And then there's the Sybian.... If you want sex with your
kink, and you can't -- or simply don't want to -- stay at home, Behind the Scenes is the club
to go to.
--A Satisfied Member
In Joy Still Felt
To me, the sexiest place in the world is wherever two or more lovers meet and consumate
their desires, be it a city rooftop, a cramped VW Bug, behind the billboard, in a city park
or beside the sussurating ocean’s tides. A room is a room is a room, so whatever is
sensually embued from the surrounding city is, to me, more an ethereal effect, but outside
is engaging to the senses: the trees, clouds, aromas, and sounds of a forest, for example,
or the cooled concrete bench outside a closed mall at night, barely hidden in its niche,
away from the passing street traffic. It’s the urgency of surrendering to the immediate
desires...wherever you and your lover find yourselves...that’s what makes a place sexy,
exciting. And forevermore, it will seem sexy in your memory.
--William Dean
San Francisco, California
Swan's Oyster Depot on Polk Street in San Francisco. It's a small, narrow, and usually crowded place with somewhat uncomfortable bar stools to perch on while listening to the banter of the boisterous, burly brothers who run the place and prepare the meals. But despite the rowdy ambiance, it can be wonderfully sexy to watch your lover sucking down that timeless aphrodisiac, succulent raw oysters on the half shell. Swan's also offers excellent lox layered on fresh sourdough, prawn and crab cocktails, shrimp louie, clam chowder, and fresh fish to take home.
--Orion Quinn
Edmonton, Alberta
The unheardof restaurant, Edmonton, Alberta. It's a fabulous little place to eat, which features interesting dishes (think buffalo and ostrich), an extensive wine list, and wonderful service. They serve a five-course table d'hôte that guarantees sensual food satisfaction. When the husband and I lived in Edmonton this was our place to go and celebrate. The meal always made us feel more than a little randy (there's something about being pampered that does that!) but we always found that we cared more for sleep than sex once we arrived home and realized how stuffed our tummies were! Still...a very sexy place to go and linger for a few hours.
--Laura
Amsterdam and Hamburg
Some people point at the City of Lights, but unless you speak perfect French, the Parisians will just point at you -- and laugh. London is still a swinging town, but there's always the nagging suspicion that the Brits make love as well as they cook. Tokyo is the city of the future, but to many is as sterile and cold as a bullet train entering a tunnel -- unless you're Japanese, of course. Barcelona is a hot town --so hot that the buildings seem to melt (look up Antonio Gaudi and see what I mean) but the Spanish and the Basques can also be passionate about killing each other -- or at least they were the last time I was there. Mexico City's heart beats to a Latin rhythm -- but only if you're a rooster and not a hen: stay at home, girls, and lock your doors.
If it's sex you want -- without the romance, the dysentery, a language barrier, culture shock or the risk at being dropped in a dark cell and have the lid slammed shut, there are only two places worth going to: Amsterdam and Hamburg
The northern version of Venice, Amsterdam is known for its charming houses on the edges of meandering canals, the Rijksmuseum (where to go for Van Gogh), open-air markets, excellent seafood and the red-light district. Women. Hundreds of women. Hundreds of women of rentable virtue -- all displaying themselves in every way, shape, and form. Behind huge glass windows, alerted to potential clients by rear-view mirrors strategically placed to see down the narrow streets. In clubs offering every kind of fetish, perversion, and amusement -- for a fee. But even without any guilders in your wallet, Amsterdam churns with sexuality -- its sensible government, bohemian populace, all understand that sex is a part of life, so you might as well make it safe as well as, naturally, profitable for those with those guilders.
Hamburg is a German oddity -- like Berlin: an un-German German city. A port city, Hamburg has had to deal with not only a daily invasion of hundreds of different cultures, but also hundreds of thousands of horny sailors. Thus, with foresight and acceptance they created a sexual Disneyland: the Reperbahn.
If Amsterdam is sex done quaint, then Hamburg is sex done industrial: tower-block brothels, three, four, five, six or more floors of apartments for literally thousands of women -- the lobbies and basements serving as a smorgasbord (to mix nationalities briefly) of femininity. Every sex, (just about) every age, shape, nationality, is represented and available. The entire district is nothing but clubs, parties, brothels, strip shows, swing clubs, S/M dungeons, and women -- women smiling, offering, suggesting, haggling about the price for their company.
Despite how you might feel about prostitution -- demeaning to women, empowering women, a necessary evil, the oldest career choice -- walking the streets of Hamburg and Amsterdam has an immediate effect: bizarre, disturbing, hallucinatory, nightmarish -- but for these cities that sex built or at least helped built, completely arousing.
--M. Christian
Winter Park, Colorado
Pick any moment of a great ski weekend -- on the slopes, in the hot tub, in front of the fireplace, at the Derailier Bar in the lodge at 4 p.m. drinking Irish Coffees, listening and dancing to the small but loud band. Maybe it's the healthy exercise that makes people look so attractive, maybe it's the escape from ordinary city days, or maybe it's just the primal experience of feeling so alive, but there are few places in the world more lustful than a busy ski resort mid-season.
--Susannah
Vancouver, British Columbia
Deas Island Regional Park, Vancouver, BC.... This small sanctuary of parkland sits surprisingly close to a major traffic-packed thoroughfare. The park has a few miles of isolated trails (part of which are delightfully shaded by arched trees on either side -- very lovely), a wide open field suitable for playing catch or having a picnic, and a lovely old-fashioned flower garden. Surrounded by water -- the Fraser River on one side and Deas Slough on the other -- the park is filled with picturesque scenery and romantic views. An easy place to spend a sunny afternoon with a loved one -- especially if you allow yourself to believe that the sounds of traffic are just echoes of the water!
--Laura
Hometown, U.S.A.
One of the sexiest places I've ever been was the park by my parents'
house. All through high school, whenever my hormones would surge
about my German teacher, I'd go to a particular spot under a
particular bush. I had a clear view of the lake, and the people
walking the path around it, but this hollow in the foliage was only
viewable from directly in front. I'd lay there in the spring heat,
surrounded by the shimmering, simmering green, and melt into my
libido, dreaming of being touched by this green-eyed worldly man who'd
surely know how to give my body what it was craving. The following
winter, I finally had a boyfriend; we fought, as most teenagers do.
In the frantic sexual need of the reunion, I took him there, to the
hollow. We dug out the snow and zipped our parkas together, and, with
barely disarranged clothing, fucked like mad weasels under the crystal
blue freezing sky.
--Alex M. Quinlan
Pompeii
The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii is...well, mysterious. I went to see it with a girlfriend, who seemed shocked by the paintings of a women's ritual -- a coming-of-age ceremony, it may be. The pictures aren't overtly pornographic, just lush and erotic in an SM-suggestive way. In one, a girl kneels mostly naked on the floor with her head in an older woman's lap. Is she being punished? Comforted? Whatever -- her slender torso and wide hips, and the lovely curve of her arms, make this one of the most stirring images in all the sad, spectacular ruins of Pompeii.
Outside the villa, we stopped for souvenirs. A shop offered bronze phallic symbols: perky little erect penises a few inches high with chubby balls and wings. The original "flying fuck"? I had to have one! My friend held back. "I'm not buying these from that kid." The only salesperson was a boy who looked around ten. He was totally unconcerned, though: just yelled into the back, "Papa! Quanti soni i phalli?" (How much are the penises?)
I have the cocky little statue on my desk right now.
--Roberta Carwin
