The Erotic Literary Salon pounds with words,
those
words, the ones not usually uttered in polite company - or in private without a blush.
But few at the Bohemian Absinthe Lounge at Time, a restaurant-bar at 13th and Sansom Streets, look particularly shocked.
Not Lou Ludovici, 70, of Fox Chase, a commercial radio engineer in the middle of a divorce. Nor Rachel Fogletto, 24, a social work student at the University of Pennsylvania who's interested in "anything on the taboo side."
And certainly not clinical sexologist Susana Mayer, 61, a Ph.D. in human sexuality who lives in Center City and launched the eroticafest in 2008 - third Tuesday evening of the month, all welcome, she says, as if promoting Scrabble night - with one goal in mind:
"I want to mainstream erotica."
Note to shrinking violets: Erotica is considered art (literature, music, film, etc.) that includes substantial sexually arousing scenes, often in detail. Many see little difference between it and pornography, but connoisseurs insist erotica is more highbrow, not explicitly describing sex for sex's sake. To paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, you know it when you read it.
Since its start, the salon has grown to 40 to 50 attendees, both faithfuls and newcomers, with a dozen courageous enough to read each time.
"Every single month, it's different," says salonniere Mayer, by way of introduction to those who have paid $10 for two-plus hours of love letters, sensual poems, comic monologues, and graphic pillow talk. "Sometimes you'll squirm, sometimes you'll cry," says this mother of a college grad, divorced and "independent" (which she prefers to "single"). "Who knows?"
Mayer, dressed smartly in slacks and sweater, black-framed reading glasses and thick, wild brown hair enveloping her face, likes to say that if her "chosen mother," a 92-year-old friend, is able to present her own erotic writings, albeit under a pseudonym initially, anyone can.
"Don't be shy," she urges in one post on her blog, www.theeroticliterarysalon.com.
Fewer of us are.
Consider: Harlequin, bastion of buxom women, chiseled men, and romance, launched Spice Books in 2006. The erotica imprint that targets women has grown from an initial five titles to an anticipated total of 42 by year's end.
At the Chester County Book & Music Company, the erotica section takes up two sizable bookshelves, and Amazon features 23,522 items under the subcategory, including Guilty Pleasures (one in the best-selling "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series), the Vladimir Nabokov classic Lolita, the writings of Anais Nin, and Zane's mass-appeal urban erotica novels that feature African American characters and have garnered attention in the New York Times.
"Every sexual human being wants to engage in fantasy," said Meghan Aborn, a relationship and sex therapist for the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. Erotic lit "is going to act as a vibrator for the mind, and it's going to be a break from daily life."
The salon has few rules on what's read. Anything goes: original or classics, playful innuendo or every explicit detail, what Mayer calls the "edgier work."
"Nothing shocks me," she said. "I've heard it all, truly heard it all."
Readings are limited to five minutes, and Mayer likes to jump-start the evening. This time, she read a piece from the popular play The Vagina Monologues that rants against douches, pelvic exams, and thongs. The program continues with pieces on sexual and political gratification, a story on a gay bathhouse orgy, epistles on unrequited love, a scene with S&M.
Cassendre Xavier, 41, of Drexel Hill, who works the door, is the featured guest this night. The founder of the Black Women's Arts Festival performs music and reads a series of original poems, "Panther," "Mango Breast," and "Peach Mountain."
Xavier is nervous. ("I was talking about my body, about pleasure, stuff I hadn't said to most people in my life," she said later.) But the audience listens attentively, even solemn-faced at first, before loosening up and laughing appreciatively at comic riffs, issuing a few welcome catcalls at the naughty, naughty scenes.
If it all sounds a little too weird, Xavier and others say that just because the language here is provocative doesn't mean "I don't hang out with my nieces on weekends and bake cookies. . . . We have families and jobs and partners, even if we have three partners," she adds, slyly.
First-timer Michael Thummel, 33, of Mayfair, said he was looking for a fun night. The clinical supervisor for a substance-abuse program in Philadelphia read one of the sweeter - and printable in this newspaper - pieces, a poem about a friend.
"You put your hand in mine," he reads. "Bodies locked together / Jigsawed origami / My arms, my unconscious / Enveloping your anima / With adoration / Patiently anticipating / Counting seconds until / I will taste your kiss / Again."
"You're not so weird when you're around everybody who's weird," Thummel said. "And if it gives you a couple of ideas to have fun at home with, that's not a bad thing."
The salon grew out of Mayer's dissertation research, in which she explored solutions for postmenopausal women with stalled libidos, she said. "I realized I was very comfortable with erotica," said Mayer, who has a fledgling private practice in Fitler Square and calls her philosophy The Ageless Sex Life. "But some women are not. I want women to have choices."
She envisioned the salon as a safe enclave for women, but opened to both sexes when the initial location, another bar, balked at excluding men. Now she attracts 50-50. Surprisingly, men often write and read innuendo, she said, while women lay it all - and we do mean all - out there.
Some use pseudonyms, fearful of a spouse's reaction. Others bring the whole family.
Serena Kaschak, 35, of Huntingdon Valley, said she cherishes free expression, the subject of sexuality included, though some S&M stuff offended a bit. Still, she said, the salon is "done in a way that's surprisingly comfortable. I don't feel any creepiness."
Mayer, the daughter of Austrian immigrants, grew up with free access to books. "I read explicit sex in novels at a very young age," she said, recalling Henry Miller's works. She moved on to erotic poetry and as an adult pursued the Kinsey Reports and other academic tomes on human sexuality.
In 2000, Mayer said she became acutely ill (she'd rather not publicize the condition). "I came out of it knowing exactly what I had to do in my life": Study sexuality.
In 2009, Mayer completed her doctorate from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.
Salon devotees praise her for the space she has created. "I think Susana is doing a very brave thing," said Ludovici, who has shared his first sexual encounter and love letters to a lady met on a cruise.
While an Erotic Literary Salon may be unusual, hot and heavy literature is gaining a leghold at a time when the culture is becoming "more and more desensitized" toward sexual images, sex therapist Aborn said.
Shows like Sex and the City, Dirty Sexy Money, and The Cougar hardly raise an eyebrow. Posting a revealing picture to Facebook is nearly a rite of passage. And did anyone care about last summer's threesome on the Calvin Klein billboard?
The harsh economic times make escapist literature particularly appealing, opined Michael Ray Smith, communications studies professor at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C.
Women in particular, he said, "are feeling a need to be empowered, and they want to explore literature that has this dangerous quality, danger and pleasure. It's providing an outlet, a release, but it's also giving them a chance to have an adventure."