2/11/2008

The Reich Stuff: Melbourne's Porno Lanes

One of the more curious aspects of Melbourne’s structure is the proliferation of ‘adult’ shops along Swanston Street and its lanes. Of course it is to be expected that Melbourne, like any major city, will have a sex quarter, but that it occurs along the main drag is quite strange, rather like displacing Soho’s vice dens onto The Strand.

All of which makes me wonder if, in the past, someone high up in the city’s planning department was an avid follower of Wilhelm Reich. Surely if Reich was correct, and Orgone energy is the key to health and happiness, and the best means of accumulating Orgone is through sexual orgasm, then wouldn’t it make sense to line the main arteries of a metropolis with erotic boutiques? Perhaps those men in stained raincoats are flushing the city with streams of pure Orgone. They are not sordid, they are our saviours! Certainly I have always felt that Reich’s ‘Orgone Accumulators’ look like booths to house peep show voyeurs (in this light Einstein’s dalliance with them seems even more bizarre).


While on this theme can any readers enlighten me as to what happens in a Ram Lounge? This feature seems to provoke sufficient pride in those erotica venues that possess one to plaster it all over their promotional signs. A natural timidity, a disapproving girlfriend and a suspicion that I may be of the incorrect sexual persuasion have prevented me investigating first hand, but revelations from those with stronger stomachs are welcome. It would put to an end my mulling over some very bizarre scenarios…

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