What makes a good fuck great?
Why, three things, sweethearts – art, willingness and temptation! As Oscar Wilde so memorably said, “The only thing to do with temptation is give in to it”, especially if you’re of an artistic bent. See, the plebians amongst us are content with the rush of squirting spunk in a fleshy hole, but for some, it’s the spark to paint the Sistine Chapel!
So how cum 99% of erotica – porn included – is trash personified? Well, because it’s tossing an easy bone to a dog, not using the bones to build with! But when imagination’s married to lust, or rather, constant desire, miracles like Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, Pasolini’s Salo and Bruce La Bruce’s Hustler White can happen.
Is that true across all the arts? Hardly! Erotic music depends on breathy, J’taime innuendoes, sculpture’s more cerebrally arousing, and (classical) dance suffers from pristine sexlessness. That leaves painting – more often sly and lubricious than life-changingly sensuous – and blatant arousal dancing, the bog-standard cesspit of easy wanks.
So where can a sensitive aesthete, or even fledgling, Dorian Grey queens, find a raw, uncut fix of Class A erotica? In four words, Alan Moore’s Lost Girls. Fusing the visual delights of film with the slower, deeper penetration of text, Moore – the doyen of comic-book writers – creates a hybrid, erotic masterpiece.
Taking three childhood classics ‘lost’ girls’ – the now-elderly Alice from Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan’s now-mumsy Wendy, and The Wizard Of Oz’s now good-time-girl Dorothy Gale – Moore has them gradually build a ménage a trois in a Austrian hotel on the eve of World War One.
That’s barely the beginning. A superlative metaphor for the elasticity of sexual desire, Lost Girls explores every (!) eroticism possible. Gay boys gleefully daisy-chain with lesbians, and an aged, supposedly straight male virgin learns boy-joys in spades!
Embedded in the shimmering, sexual jewels of Melinda Gebbie’s pastel and crayon artwork, this cascading wet dream of art, politics, and exposed desire is a fine-art feast for creative genitals! Screw Jean Genet – please, sir, can I have some Moore?
• Lost Girls by Alan Moore
• 5 Stars
