Purim Rising!

Featuring:Amor Hilton, Brianna Brooks, Dark Phoenix, Daryl Wright, Haley Sweet, Heidi Hollywood, Jesse Flores, Lya Pink, Max Hardcore, Tee Reel, Victoria Veil

It’s another amazing, erotic, educational Porn ‘n’ Purim Bacchanal in the Womb Room as the Commedia Erotica cast of porn stars, comedians, transwomen and Hollywood socialites reenact the sexiest story in the Bible (or the second sexiest, if you prefer “Song Of Songs”): the Book of Esther, aka Megillat Esther, which tells the tale of the ancient Persian Jewish beauty contest winner who saves her people from genocide by using her Weapons of Mass Seduction. The storyline might be familiar, especially if you got Bar Mitzvah’ed, but believe me, this is not your Bubbe’s Purim.

Keep in mind that, in true Commedia Dell’Arte tradition, this reenactment is totally improvised—no rehearsal, no script, no net but the Internet—with parts, costumes and sex acts determined just moments before our live-on-the-air performance! Fortunately for those players and viewers who don’t know a hamantaschen from a hard-on, you also get a little guided narration from your Irreverend Rebbetzen here who, once upon a time, was a Sunday school teacher. In a way, I still teach Sunday school, except now I do it on Saturday nights and half my class is naked. This Saturday turns out to be quite a lesson in human behavior—both during and after the Purimschpiel (Purim play).

I’ll get to “after” later; first let’s talk about the show—which happens to be one of our finest Purimschpiels ever (see Purim 2008 and 2011 for oldies but goodies)—exciting, provocative, ridiculous and erotic. Of course, with a cast of some of the world’s hottest porn stars, even reading Facebook’s Rules and Regulations would be erotic. But much of our Purimschpiel’s eroticism lies in the original story. This makes it stand out against most of the Hebrew Bible, aka the Old Testament, which is only “pro-sex” when it comes to procreation. Just about every other kind of sexual relation is presented as “unclean” or an “abomination,” often punishable by death or even fire and brimstone for the entire community. But the Purim story is a very sex-positive one: a feminist tale in a patriarchal time, beginning with the feast of a king and the disobedience of a queen and ending with the obedience of a king and the feast of a queen.

I won’t go into all the details (though if you’re a Purimschpiel fetishist, you can read my full erotic exotic interpretation of the Story of Esther here)….This ain’t Sunday School, though you may call it Sex Education Bible style…Sunday School Purimschpiels don’t feature golden dildo scepters! Basically, there’s this Persian King named Ahasuerus (sometimes said to be a version of the ancient Persian King Xerxes), who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia, and, once upon a time, he throws a six-month drinking, eating, gambling, and sex festival (and you thought Charlie Sheen was decadent). During the climactic week-long feast, King Ahasuerus, “merry with wine,” orders his wife, Queen Vashti, to display her beauty to him, his court, and his people, in an ancient version of striptease (i.e., naked). In a pre-feminist act of feminism or just an ancient outburst of bitchiness, Vashti refuses to strip down for her royal hubby and his drinking buddies. For this, she is banished or beheaded (depending on the translation), though our Bonobo Purimschpiel just flogs her royal naked body on the cross. In an ancient Persian version of “Who Wants to Marry a King?”, the king calls for a new queen, to be chosen from all the kingdom’s virgins (you can imagine the comic erotic possibilities of casting porn stars as virgins—thank you Ideal Image Management!). The king chooses Esther, a Jewish girl entered into the contest (aka pimped) by her cousin, the hero of the story whom I lovingly call “Pimpin’ Cousin Mordecai.”

Like I said, I’m not going to tell you the whole story (find those juicy details here), but needless to say, Esther arouses the king, and when she kisses the “tip of his scepter,” and wow, she gets him big and hard as an iron sword. But all is not rosy in Shushan (the magical city where Purim takes place), as the king’s evil right hand man, Haman, like a lot of ambitious politicians throughout history, has a thing against Jews who won’t bow down to him (like Mordecai), and he devises an extermination plan that would—and did—make Hitler smile. After a bunch of twists and turns—all illustrated with X-rated panache in our Purim play–Queen Esther fetes, fellates, sucks and seduces the king into saving her people from genocide. She’s quite a powerful sexual woman, Queen Esther, whether or not she really existed—right up there with Cleopatra and Scheherazade—and that is why we celebrate her and her Weapons of Mass Seduction here in Bonoboville. By the end of our Purimschpiel, the Jews have been saved, the king has been schtupped, and everyone has been treated to a healthy spectacle of Biblical sex… both on stage, and continuing into the afterparty. Whew, whatta lotta L’Chaim!

BUT…sad to say, there is a disturbingly dark side to Purim’s *happy ending,* as there is to our after-party. In terms of the story: Though the king revokes the genocide edict, he cannot call off the hordes of swordsmen hell-bent on killing Jews; he gives his royal permission for gangs of Jewish swordsmen to kill thousands of their enemies in “self-defense,” including Haman’s 10 sons, some of whom are too young to even lift a sword. According to the Bible, this awful orgy of bloody revenge is all part of the “gladness, feasting and holiday-making.” For a peacenik like me, who so appreciates Esther’s ability to seduce her king away from killing, this part makes me want to toss my hamantaschen. Is this what the rabbis mean when they tell us that, on this night, we should drink so much we can’t tell the good guys from the bad? Must the oppressed become the oppressor? Must the cycle of violence go on?

Not that I’m surprised. The Biblical and real histories of Judaism, like its offspring: Christianity and Islam, are densely littered with the dead victims of God-loving, righteous, racist mass murder. Check it out; it’s all right there in your Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita and other so-called holy books.

Which brings me to the dark side of Purim 2013 in Bonoboville, and it pains me like a heart attack to write about this, but I feel I should bloggamize the bad along with the good that goes on here, as I have always done. Anyway, on Purim, we’re “commanded” to drink so much wine that we can’t tell the difference between the good (Mordecai) and the bad (Haman). That sounds like a lot of wholesome inebriated fun, and usually it is, but of course, it can be dangerous. So, after a terrific Purimschpiel, several hours of erotic peace through pleasure, and too-enthusiastic an attempt to honor the Purim drinking tradition, one of our staff members “lost it” and became crazy-violent. It was a tremendous shock to the Bonoboville system, as violence like this has never happened here before in over 20 years of shows and wild bacchanals. Then it escalated, other staff members got involved and it got even worse. I certainly don’t want to go into detail here or name names. Not at this time. I do want to apologize to all of our guests who were here and let you know that, though we are devastated by this barbaric outburst, we are trying our best to deal wisely with the situation and ensure that nothing like this happens here again. It’s not easy, to say the least. I’m just grateful that no one was seriously injured–or worse. Fortunately, none of the people involved had guns (another reminder of how important gun control is in these psycho time)! But incidents like this painfully remind me of why I’m dedicated to the cause of peace through pleasure. It’s something I’m constantly studying, trying to understand in relation to bonobos and humans. Having such senseless violence explode in your midst—seemingly out of nowhere (though it’s never just “out of nowhere”) like a terrorist attack on all you hold dear—is a terrible trial by fire. Fortunately, some heroic members of our staff helped diffuse the situation in the most bonobo manner possible under the circumstances, so it didn’t get even worse. Thank you, Brothers and Sisters, we appreciate your efforts, we love you, and though we have been wounded, our wounds will heal, and we will get through this better than ever, as we have gotten through all of our fiery trials.

We’re also proud that this show, as well as all of our February shows, is part of Eve Ensler’s One Billion Rising movement to stop violence (including rape) against women and everyone else. We each have to try to stop the chain of violence in the world and in our own backyard, as we learned in this after-party. But I don’t want to let this stupid after-party incident take away from our marvelous Purimschpiel performers. So without further ado, here they are….

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