CARNAL NATION

Nude Aid is the brainchild of Dr. Annie Sprinkle, legendary porn star and internationally acclaimed artist and sexologist. In 2005, Sprinkle collaboratively produced the first Nude Aid with Dr. Carol Queen and Dr. Robert Lawrence of the Center for Sex and Culture (CSC) in honor of the release of Sprinkle’s book Dr. Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex: Make Over Your Love Life with One of the World's Great Sex Experts . Each year since the inception of this fabulous interactive art project, the CSC has teamed up with a fantastic array of talented artists, models, writers, and sexy celebrities to raise money in a creative and playful manner.

The price of an admission ticket to Nude Aid entitles each guest to watch as artists make art inspired by live nude and fetish-clad models. The admission ticket allows each guest to choose one piece of art to take home. Additional tickets can be purchased (and usually are) to trade for paintings, drawings, photos, sculptures, collages, or body prints. Once a piece of art is completed, the artist places it in the designated gallery, signaling that it’s officially available to be claimed by any ticket holder. This is when the fun begins and when individuals who can multi-task seriously reign. Keeping an eye on the models and the art that is continually being produced over a span of five to six hours is a skill that only organized voyeurs can truly appreciate. I kept becoming too focused on the models to remember to grab the art I wanted. Due to my “pervish” ways, I missed obtaining a great drawing of writer Stephen Elliott in bondage and a classic portrait of performance artist Jiz Lee posed in nothing but a red jock-strap, both drawn by Suzanne Forbes.

In addition to being a voyeur and art collector at this event, I was also fortunate enough to participate for the first time as a model and artist. (I use both these terms loosely.) Once I heard that Miranda Maltenfort, one of the CSC’s summer interns from the Kinsey Institute, was planning a Nude Aid event with the assistance of Dr. Carol Queen, I became inspired to participate. Since I am by no means a visual artist and hardly qualify as a model, I knew I needed to find my own niche. Digging into the mental archives of my fantasy world, I instantly flashed on an erotic story I once read called “Thief of Cocks” by Susannah Indigo published in The Best American Erotica 2000 (edited by Susie Bright).

In this story, a young woman who owns an erotic art gallery and teaches workshops on the “secrets of fuckability” (which are all about women owning their sexual power) is sent to a mental institution and labeled “depressed, manic, and oversexed” simply because she believes her “purpose in life is to make men hard.” Due to her self-proclaimed obsession with cocks, the protagonist starts a personal handmade collection of hundreds of cock molds:

It’s an art. Each one is a plaster mold. But they’re strong enough to use as dildos after they’re painted and dried…This is what I tell the girls in my seminar: you’re going to be able to make a man so hard that he’d stay that way long enough for you to make a plaster cast of his hard cock if you wanted to. They always think I’m joking.

The combination of creative humor mixed with steamy physical yearnings described in this story by Indigo obviously did more than simply get me off. The story imprinted itself into my erotic fantasies. In fact, it made such an impact on me that when a man I know brought me a make-your-own-dildo kit, I knew that together we could certainly rise to the occasion. He told me that he had made a mold of his cock once before and auctioned it off for a sexuality-themed charity. “I raised $250!” he proudly exclaimed.

After I completed my first cock mold project with him and then used it in my strap-on to fuck him later that week, I knew I had found an art project that I truly could stand behind. So when it came time to choose which talent of mine to share at Nude Aid, I decided to pay homage to Indigo (and presumably Cynthia Plaster Caster), and start my own collection of cock molds for charity. Obviously, to make this collection truly swell, it will need to be an ongoing project with all the completed members of the collection donated to the CSC for auctioning off at future live Nude Aid events. All of those other artists are a hard act to follow, but I think I can rise to the occasion.

Thank you to participating artists: Suzanne Forbes, Bix Warden, Dorian, Carlo, Matt Sachs, Froghole, and Peter Lee.