SMUT STAND REPORT: Oct. 9, 2014 (New Orleans)
WHEN: 5.75 hours (8:15pm-2am), Oct 9, 2014. WHERE: mural fence next to the Art Market, Frenchmen Street, New Orleans. OUTPUT: five custom works, including a sweaty softcore cowgirl scene; a strap-on getting tossed to the floor to make room for some clit-on-clit scissoring; and some rough alley sex (including choking) for a couple that wasn’t “really a couple”, but had been together for the past week and clearly were just getting out of their hotel room for a couple hours to air out the sex stink before they suffocated. (So they brought it out onto the street, YAY!)
Last night’s smutting experience could not have been a more amazing contrast to the Night of the Living Dead two nights ago, not even if someone had written it.
First of all, I got my first commission within 10 minutes after taping my signs up, before I even got to get my stationery supply organized. And the client was… it was beautiful. The woman was on a girls’-only vacation with her friends, and this piece was to be a birthday present for her husband, who she had married as an arranged marriage a year or so ago. When she mentioned the arranged marriage, it seemed that she was expecting me to be shocked in some way; when I wasn’t, she leaned in a little, wide-eyed and joyful, and said, “But you know, we actually fell in love! I wasn’t expecting that!” She had an answer to my question, about a recent or vivid discovery in sex, but ended up being too shy to tell me. Now I will forever wonder what it was.
Another customer gave me such good feels, when she asked for a piece to send to her new-ish lover. She wanted something as much cerebral as physical, which, fine, I can dig, but that’s not what made me so happy to do her piece. She and her lover are both technicians in big-budget traveling theatre, and so their paths criss-cross each other all over the US. It used to be they could meet up every couple of weeks; now it’s up to once a month. Please, if there is a patron saint for long-distance lovers and work-driven wanderers, let me be your channel for commissions like this. Let that story bring whatever love dust and magic they need right now.
In spot of occasional low-grade dodginess from one of the fence-dwellers (he kept trying to chat me up while I was working), I have made a couple of tentative acquaintances over there. I met the Art Market manager, who was VERY enthusiastic about the Smut Stand. She immediately understood and approved of the red-light visual metaphor, and even offered some suggestions about ways to beef it up. I think she will like the sign I made. Oh, and I made friends with an illustrator over there against the fence, who showed up a couple of hours after I set up. I asked if I would be stepping on his toes by being on that side of the street, and he laughed and said, “No, man, it’s not my sidewalk! I’m happy to have you over here, I like your style!” At the end of the night, we traded wares, one piece of cock-sucking microsmut for a slightly fantastical sketch of a guy with a big dick and a peacock feather. I feel that was one of the most appropriate swaps I’ve ever made with a fellow street vendor.