SEX BUNNY ADVICE

After reading all this blogging hullabaloo about Deaf Sex Bunnies last Saturday night, I found myself reflecting on romance, sex, porn and the differences between men and women. I'll back up a little and confess I became hopelessly hooked on opera decades ago when my hearing wasn't as bad as it is now.

What a lot of people don't realize is how visually stimulating opera can be. The stage sets are always changing. Furniture moves, walls are added, floors are raised and lowered between scenes. A couple years ago, when I went to see Macbeth, the walls bled! Lights, shadows, colors convey a mood. The choreography is lively or graceful, and the costumes dazzling. The acting is way more dramatic than Hollywood acting. (Yes--I'm going to talk about sex-- I promise.)

Finally, because opera is usually (not always) sung in a foreign language most metropolitan productions are subtitled, so I don't have to ask for extra accommodations. It's the one time I can just be part of the crowd without feeling deaf. 95% of the audience doesn't understand the story line without reading it either. If you're used to watching captioned TV, it's a breeze-- especially since they take forever to say one simple line because they're singing it, and they repeat it fifteen times.


Sunday's production was Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. An unusually short opera that began with a sweet erotic love scene, it included a rare circus performance in the second act, then ended with a sudden double homicide. All in all, a fairly typical story line, except the circus act. Neither composer or opera was well-known to me, which was a treat because I've seen most all the popular operas at least twice now. However, I learned a bit of dirt about Leoncavallo later-- that he had once been accused of plagiarizing, since he wrote an opera titled La Boheme that was basically the same story as Puccini's. It was never proven, but is rarely performed today. (The sex part is coming up! Be patient!!)


Opera was considered racy in its heyday. In earlier times, women weren't allowed to act or sing on stage, so males had to play the parts of women. Castrati (males castrated before puberty) with high voices dressed in female costumes, and sang all the soprano parts on stage. It was considered an honor to be chosen to be castrato, even though it meant painful sexual mutilation at age ten. Highly paid and valued, they were pampered, spoiled, demanding, fussy and difficult. Opera parts were written specifically for castrati, whose voices were unique in their range. The practice of castrating little boys for opera finally ceased in the early 19th C. No one alive today has ever heard a castrato sing. Ironically today's operas sometimes feature women dressed up as young males to play former castrati parts, which sometimes have been tweaked a bit to allow for soprano voices, since castrati no longer exist. It doesn't matter to me because I can't tell the difference anyway. (Obviously I don't attend the opera for the music, though I can hear a good share of the baritone singing and many of the base instruments because of my good low frequencies.)

You might think it affected their love lives, but going under "the knife" benefited the castrati in love. Because efficient birth control was lacking, castrated males were in demand. Upper-class married women whose husbands left town for extended periods enjoyed the services of castrati. Wealthy unmarried women -- perhaps "old maids" and widows-- also depended on castrati services. (Realize "old maids" and "widows" could be all of twenty-three in the mid- 18th century.) The use of Castrati ensured no messy unwanted pregnancy. Love affairs, rolling around in the sheets, enjoying a boy toy-- this is nothing new in the 21st C. Woman have always loved sex and and have been in touch with their sexual side since before Cleopatra. (No-- I would never, ever, ever WANT a castrato! Thank God for modern birth control!! The SEX TALK IS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH)

I had to laugh at the suggestion some men recently proposed in a blog about "Deaf Porn" -- that porn could actually be a "good thing" for women because it might "help" them enjoy their sexuality. What?! Could they be that clueless? If you are a guy reading this, I hate to tell you, but if your woman doesn't like sex, it's not HER, it's YOU. Get a clue! She LIKES sex, just not with YOU.

We aren't that complicated. Shakespeare got it right with Romeo and Juliette. Wooing a woman is all about romance and chivalry. That's why groups of us go to operas to salivate over Rodolfo in La Boheme. Put those porn flicks AWAY and pick up a chick flick for once! Practice what you see THOSE guys doing. Notice how tenderly Roldolfo treats Mimi. Act like Rodolfo or the Flying Dutchman, or even Superman. You might be surprised by how your woman starts expressing her sexuality. (No you don't have to fly!) What every woman loved about Superman was he cared enough about Lois Lane to be there when she needed him EVERY TIME. It was never about his super powers. Clark Kent simply missed the boat! He was always too busy in that phone booth when she needed a man. Two words. Foreplay = Romance. Trust me. I'm a woman. I know way more about it than a bunch of guys who make porn.

The Flying Dutchman--OH What a MAN!

I went to see The Flying Dutchman on Sunday. I know some of you might be wondering why
I would be interested in the opera since I cannot hear worth a darn. I must first elucidate a bit about hearing.

Sound is made up of two components-- volume and pitch. (In truth, it's way more complicated than this, but we won't go there today-- if ever.) Volume, as you know, relates to the loudness. Pitch has something to do with the frequency of sound vibrations. We hear pitch as sound
differentiation-- the difference between a piccolo and a tuba, for example. If you think about a piano, there are keys that make high pitched sounds and keys that make low pitched sounds. If you strike a piano key hard, this will make the volume of that key louder than if you strike it softly. A very high-pitched key can be struck hard to create a loud high-pitched sound. In life, some loud high pitched sounds might be sirens, fire alarms and telephones. High-pitched does
not always mean quiet. Sometimes people have a hard time understanding this, and assume all high-pitched sounds are quiet.

Low pitched sounds can be very quiet. A lawnmower makes a low-pitched sound, and is loud when you are right next to it. But if the lawnmower is mowing on the next block it could be a quiet low-pitched sound. A school bus is low-pitched and is very loud if you're right next to it, but three blocks away it's much quieter, yet it is still low-pitched.

You might be wondering why I'm explaining all this. It's critical to understand, because people who have hearing loss do not often hear all sounds equally. A person with normal hearing will have a flat horizontal line running along the top of their audiogram somewhere between 10-20 dbs. Others can be profoundly deaf in some frequencies (pitches), moderately deaf in other frequencies and have perfect hearing in still other frequencies. In fact this is quite common.

My hearing is near perfect in the low tones (pitches), but I'm deaf to high tones. So what does this means in terms of the opera? It means I can hear most everything below middle-C pretty well with my hearing aids.

I heard Greer Grimsley's base-baritone voice just fine, and OH! He was SO fine! I'll take him over Johnny Depp any day. Unfortunately for me Jay Hunter Morris' voice was drowned out by the orchestra. He was the tenor who played Erik, Stenta's jilted boyfriend.

I was curious how the others perceived his voice so asked the couple we went out with about
this. They have perfect hearing. (My husband, like me, is losing his hearing, which is why I didn't ask his opinion.) The other couple felt Morris' volume was just as loud as Grimsley's. This was how I knew the problem was with my hearing, not Morris' performance.

I always keep my opinions about the music and performances to myself for this very reason, because I can't trust my ears. Still I was not disappointed in the production. I hear horns, but not piccolos; drums, but not violins. Wagner is heavy on horns and drums, so this opera was much more musically enjoyable than usual for me, even though Erik's (Morris') voice was drowned out. Grimsley and what I heard of the orchestra was fantastic! Also there were some good chorale parts. Again I picked up on the baritone harmony. Our friends mentioned the chorus of women in the workshop. Lost on me.

One really nice thing about opera is the sets and costuming are so very creative, colorful, and visually stimulating. I love to watch the way sets change and to note any small symbolic details. I am fascinated by the way simple tricks of lighting or props can suggest changes in space and time. The stage challenges my imagination in ways film can't.

Finally, my hometown opera offers subtitles, so I don't miss a bit of the story line. Since I can't go to plays (they do not usually offer subtitles), this is one great way for me to enjoy the arts! And I love it!

Afterwards we all went to dinner at a Thai place. I made everyone shift seats until there was no glare behind any heads or shadows running across lips. Then I ordered a tofu dish with only one star because my delicate constitution couldn't handle any more heat after Grimsley's blazing performance. Oh my!