Report on Kinsey,
the Gay Chef Store, and other Sexy Finds in
Bloomington, Indiana

Bloomington Indiana is a nice springtime place. Fragrant flowering trees line the streets. The weather borders on scorching. Shootings are confined to 4a.m., and people are only rarely attacked with skateboards. On the whole, not the sexiest place to be, except that it's home to the only gay-themed chef store and the offices, archives, and library of the Kinsey
Institute, where Alfred Kinsey was the first biologist to take the study of human sexuality seriously.

Finding the gay chef store was easy. Rainbows. Slogans. "Let your inner chef out!"

Finding Kinsey was difficult. I had to ask a dozen pedestrians before even one knew where to send me. The curator of the museum said this was a mixed blessing. "It makes it harder for anti-Kinsey people to find us."

"Are there really that many anti-Kinsey folks nowadays?"

"No."

She showed me around the juried art exhibit and the hallways lined with erotic art. I was amused by some of the earliest gay photographs (French, of course). I also asked about Chinese art. There was some. Then she took me to see the Head of the Library, who is from Sichuan.

There I explained to both of them that we had already communicated over email about my departed friend "Ritch" and his erotic art, which I will be donating to the institute in the near future. We hit it off.

An Ancient Erotic Adventure

The next day, I returned to the library because the Head of the Library had something special to show me. It was an old book of Chinese erotica called Su'e Pian. It follows the erotic adventures of a young woman and her lover, nephew of the empress. The sexual teachings are Taoist in nature, and were probably meant to be as erotic as they were educational. It was published in 161o, and, as far as Kinsey staff can tell, is the only copy of the book still in existence.

Opening the book at random, we stumbled across "Chapter 22: People, Goats, and a Cart Pursue Pleasure." There were Su'e and her lover embracing in a cart pulled by two goats, bumping over a bamboo path. "A natural vibrator," the librarian informed me.

In erotic adventures of my own, I found the modern-day Taoist sex manual "The Multi-Orgasmic Man" to be quite eye-opening. But those details are not the sort of thing I should share with you, my gentle readers. We wouldn't want to get too hot and bothered.