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 Maxed Out
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| Looking towards the Manhattan Bridge from Adams Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Photo: JH. |
The British seem to have the biggest appetite for Sex Scandals, in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the area known as kinky. The Americans love a scandal but most of ours are in the milder adulterous, extra-marital department like the current walk-out of Madonna and A-Rod. Our politicians are especially vulnerable as many Americans, far holier than thou, hypocritically entertain the idea that politicans, like the clergy, should be sacrosanct in their behavior.
Do as I say, not as I do. The French think it’s all very amusing. And the Spanish and Italians, we know, don’t have scandals, at least not acknowledged. And the rest of the world: more of the same to various degrees of extreme. Usually the women are blamed. Even if they’re not around.
The British, however, seem to have a tendency to conducting elaborate ritual in something alluding to sex, be it cross-dressing, sado-masochism or homosexual orgies. At least this is how it appears from the British tabloids’ point of view.
The current scandal which has the British (and European) public riveted is about S&M and involves a man named Max Mosley who up until recently has been in the racing/Formula One business.
Mr. Mosley is a trim and dapper, goodlooking man of 68 who, in a courtroom, looks the very modern British aristocrat that he is. From a very famous British family, he’s related by blood and/or marriage to several famous British families. Furthermore his late father, Sir Oswald Mosley was a reviled British fascist who married his mother, nee Diana Mitford, in the presence of Adolf Hitler at the home of his propoganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
Before that marriage, Sir Oswald had been married to a daughter of Lord Curzon (Viceroy of India) and Diana Mitford had been married to Bryan Guinness of the stout Guinnesses, as well as being one of the famous Mitford Sisters: Nancy, Jessica (author of the ground-breaking “American Way of Death”), Deborah, now the dowager Duchess of Devonshire, and Unity Mitford who had the hots for that authentic weirdo, Adolf and tried to kill herself over him.
Max Mosley was born in 1940 about the time that England was going to war with the Nazis. His mother and father were incarcerated for their pro-German/Nazi activities. His mother was marked in the press as “the most hated woman in Britain.” The infant was separated from his mother because of that. Winston Churchill, however, no friend of the fascists, but a friend of the Curzons/Mitfords/Guinnesses, etc., stepped in to see that the child had contact with his mother.
The Mosleys were freed after the war and eventually moved to Paris where they lived for the rest of their lives.
Their son Max grew up with a very unusual set of parents, pariahs to some and nevertheless friends to others (including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor). And a historic association with perhaps the greatest monster of the 20th century. This is a lot of baggage to carry around in the name of the father, the mother and all their ghosts.
He chose as a profession the business of racing cars, to get as far away from the source as he could. Over the years he worked for Formula One as their chief executive and most recently for one of the important automobile associations in Europe who organize all these things. He had been married to the same woman 48 years (since he was twenty), with whom he had two grown children, and a good life.
Then the you-know-what- hit the fan when it was revealed on video, on YouTube for godsakes!! That Max Mosley was not only into S&M with $200 an hour hookers (he’d hire five at a time) but it was on YouTube for godsakes! And for millions and millions to see and squeal and giggle and be revolted by. Uhhuh.
Well, we live in the age of video. It would be nice to think that Paris Hilton, young and nubile, phlegmatic and blonde, who would make a video of herself doing sex, was the only one. But Paris was merely the messenger. A lot of them are doing it. All ages, sizes, squeezes and squozes. Why this is, I do not know, but that only means I don’t have the imagination for it.
Back to Max Mosley. So the News of the World comes out with the goods and rocks the world. Many of Mosley’s friends found out for the first time. Including his wife of 48 years and his two grown children. Think about it: your wife and your adult children find out you’re a committed lifelong card-carrying “sado-masochist.” That might put you (and them) off a bit. That true, Dad?
However. Mr. Mosley was not about to take this lying down. If you’ll pardon my French. He was outraged. He felt that the News of the World (which makes the NY Post look like the Christian Science Monitor) has No Right to do this to him; that he hadn’t done anything to harm anyone (but maybe himself), that it was between consenting (indeed even well-paid) adults, and so he filed a lawsuit against the paper.
The trial has begun. Mr. Mosley’s argument is this. He acknowledges that he has had a “lifelong interest in sado-masochistic sex” as a “harmless pursuit” whose practitioners have the same right to privacy as anyone else. His lawsuit against the News of the World is pushing for “exemplary” damages to deter “all newspapers from intruding into people’s sex lives for the titillation of the readers.”
In the case Mr. Mosley has also testified as to the nature of sado-masochistic sex and what it involves. Knowing nothing about the subject personally, and being one of those who has never had a curiosity about it personally, I was surprised to learn how almost rudimentary it is in the way it is carried out by the participants. Mr. Mosley said, for example, that the pain caused was not excruciating, and even often non-existent; and the blood drawn, if there were any, was about as much as if one nicked himself shaving. If. From Mosley’s description it was clear that it was about the eros of the drama and somehow that was what caused the impact.
I was reading this thinking of a well known American, now deceased, who late in his life was found out to have a mistress with whom he engaged in a various of sexual scenes, including some with other people participating -- and in some cases very well known, even world famous people.
I might have told this story before but: This man lived in Los Angeles. I was living there at the time the scandal broke. A very social woman I knew out there, who also happened to be a lesbian told me one day that she had a friend, another very social Los Angeleno, who was also a lesbian and who preferred girls she picked up on Sunset. Hookers.
One day one of this woman’s hooker-friends called and asked her if she’d service a “john” with her. The man liked to be whipped. The socialite thought the idea was a novelty and agreed to join.
The catch was they had to meet at five in the morning. Weird, but okay. So they did. And when they did, the socialite-joiner was amused to see that the “john” was somebody she’d known all her life socially,” a friend of her parents actually.
So she said “hello” as if they’d bumped into each other at the Los Angeles Country Club. However, then came the ritual, and as it was described to me, there was a very naked “john” (oh gawd whatta sight that musta been because he was no beauty and he was also a “house”). And he crawled across the floor while the dominatrix brandished a whip, and so did the socialite. And there was a lot of yelling and threats. And then the “john” acted out the same scene with the girls.
No one got hurt and in an hour it was over and everyone went home as the Sun was rising in the East over the San Gabriels. The socialite also learned that the “john” liked to do it at five in the morning so he’d be fresh for his wife at the breakfast table at 8 o’clock. "Top of the morning, my dear."
Max Mosley also said (back to Max Mosley): "You have to understand that people who do this a lot become very sensitive and bleed very easily and the pain involved in that, compared to all sorts of things, is very modest," he told the court. "I'd far rather do that than jump into a cold swimming pool. The level of violence is minimal, the drawing of blood a little like cutting yourself shaving."
News Group Newspapers contests Mr Mosley's claim for breach of privacy on the grounds that the public had a right to know about the private activities of a prominent figure who presides over one of the world's most popular spectator sports. Just because. A pillar of their defense according to the Independent of London is the disputed claim that Mr Mosley, whose mother and father were admirers of Adolf Hitler, introduced a Nazi theme into his sexual role-playing.
Mr. Mosley begs to differ. After a lifetime of trying to get out from under the yoke of disgrace his parents brought upon themselves and the family name, the last thing he was attracted to was anything Nazi. He also had some of his hired “associates” testify to the same thing.
What caught my eye, however, was his remarks about his wife and his children. They never knew, he said; and now there was no way he could explain something that they could never comprehend, and had this never come out their lives would be never be forever upset.
You could argue that had Mr. Mosley not engaged in this activity in the first place, this never would have happened. You could argue also that people should not engage in sexual activity that is anything other than conventional and only that which is sanctioned by one’s religions or state laws. I am not arguing against anything having to do with children or anyone in the situation of victims. I am talking about Mr. Mosley’s subject, which was “consenting adults.” You could argue till the cows come home but you couldn’t argue that it is any of your business to know.
However, thinking about that American man out in Los Angeles, someone who was a very pillar, a dynamic member of the community (and the national community) and yet had this complex and almost funny (to me) extra-marital sex life, also wanted to be home to breakfast with his wife.
Makes you think that on some good level, he loved his wife. When you read about Max Mosley’s plea you get the same feeling. He’s been married to this woman for almost a half century. There’s been some success there. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a man who had just celebrated his 71st anniversary. “The first 50 years are the hardest,” he joked. For Mr. Mosley, there will never be another joke.
For the sex police among us – and there are lot of us out there in a variety of disguises – and even more on the internet, many pretending to be broad minded and open minded -- I always wonder what their “secrets” are; what they don’t want anyone else to know.
Personally I don’t want to know. I know a man who used to be a close friend who, after he married his recent wife, became the subject among a lot of people because his and his new wife’s predilection for “scenes’ and “orgies.” Whether or not this is/was true, I have no idea. I wouldn’t ask the man because it is none of my business. And secondly it doesn’t interest me.
In our country over the past decade we’ve experienced a few, mainly a couple of men whose extra-marital sex lives have been the subject of public discussion ad nauseum. Many years ago, a much older woman, a Polish countess, with a face for the ages and a bearing of wisdom, on the subject of someone’s shenanigans, said to me in her husky pronounce-y English/Polish: “men will f**k anything ... even mud, if that’s all there is.”
Everyone at the table that night, even the nay-sayers among us, laughed, and had another round of drinks. We need another round of that these days. Drinks optional, of course; but laughs required. |
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