Excerpts

From the Introduction

Knit Shirts at the Fetish Ball.

It's nearing midnight at the Power Exchange, San Francisco's, and maybe the world's, only open-to-the-public "mixed" (men and women and transvestites and transgendered) sex club, a 9,000 square foot former Pacific Bell switching station now done up in Inexpensive Brothel Moderne. The various dungeons, theme rooms, cells, niches, mattresses, have emptied out, and the patrons – mostly clumps of silent, single men, who have paid up to $75 for the experience of pacing around the place, looking for someone, or something, to do – have now gathered on the top floor, usually the gay male playpen, but now, thanks to a wrestling ring turned into a crude stage, a showroom. The time has come for the Kinky Couples Contest.

Josh Powers, 21, the shaven headed son of Mike Powers, the club's owner, takes the stage. A former straight-A, Eagle Scout Mormon kid raised in the Central Valley of California, he came up to San Francisco two days after his 18th birthday to join his father's business. He hopes to be the Christie Hefner to his father's Hugh, creating a multi-media empire based on that elusive, pervasive dream: a place you can go, any time you like, and get laid.

Josh takes the mike, and it immediately becomes apparent that his first rung on his ladder to fame and fortune will have to be: learning a little stage presence. "Uh, hey everybody, welcome to the Power Exchange Fetish Ball Kinky Couples Contest!!" Most of the people watching don't look like they're interested in fetishes. Some of them wear knit shirts or T-shirts; more of them wear club wear: silk jackets for the men, revealing dresses for the girls. All of them have a kind of wary, curious look on their faces.

"Uh, okay, uh... time to get started! It's going to be, uh, hot! People have signed up... to show their stuff, and uh, okay. Let's get started!" He consulted a piece of paper in his hand.
"Julie and Jim!"
Nothing. Silence. Crickets.
"Bobby and Terry!"
Nothing.
"Guy and Friend!"
Around the corners of the room, the club's attendants/security guards, wearing t-shirts that read "Sex Squad," looked at Josh impassively.
"Darren and Ron?"
Everybody in the room looked at the empty stage, waiting for the fun to begin.

In the long war between Vice and Virtue, Virtue has been met on the battlefield, routed, defeated in detail, occupied, and re-educated in prison camps. When last seen, Virtue was working on the Strip in Las Vegas, handing out color fliers advertising in-room exotic dancers. She says she's happy, but he doesn't meet your eyes.

Consider, as a case study, the sad, strange case of William J. Bennett:

A one time high-level government functionary, Bennett changed careers late in life to become a pious Tribune of Virtue; with best-selling books, innumerable media appearances, anthologies, specially licensed "Pin the Opprobrium on the Sinner" party games, you name it; he made quite a living for himself by constantly condemning wrongdoing in public life. Of course, these sins were almost always committed by supporters or members of one political party, but what the heck, it narrowed the scope of his research, and saved him valuable time.

And, worn out from the back-strain caused by heaping shovelfuls of opprobrium on his various enemies, who had all failed to live up to the Highest Standards of Western Civilization, he, like all of us, needed to relax from time to time. Which, we eventually learned, he did by playing high-value slot machines at casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Repeatedly. For hours. And for big losses, if we can assume the laws of mathematical odds were not suspended on his behalf in much the same way as he was allowed, as a courtesy, to cut in line at the buffet.

Why in the world would he do something like this?

Why didn't he stop, at any of the innumerable chances he had to do so?

And why would anybody play slot machines anyway? Particularly the ones that cost $500 a pull? The only less enjoyable way to dispose of $500 is to have it taken from you by knifepoint, and even that provides a good story to tell later on.

As the host of a weekly news quiz, I have marveled at thousands of stories of people indulging appetites that should have gone ignored. In 2004, conservative Congressman Republican Ed Shrock abruptly resigned, after a website posted an audio recording of this upstanding married family man asking for company, in strangely clinical terms, a gay phone sex line. In 2006, it was finally revealed that Representative Mark Foley, a Republican who spent his work hours on sexual exploitation of children, devoted a considerable number of his private time to that subject, as well.

Sinning, of course, is not limited to the halls of power. In Delmont, Pennsylvania, you can drive up to the Climax Gentleman's Club, show your proof of age to an attendant, and then drive forward to a window where you can enjoy a private strip tease, from the comfort of your car, at the rate of $5 a minute. If you're a fan of alcohol, but don't like pesky hangovers, why not try the AWOL (Alcohol Without Liquid) breathable alcohol system, which snoggers you via face mask? Clearly, the better angels of our nature have given up and flown off, saying they needed "to devote more time to their families." Of cherubim.

Two hundred and thirty odd years ago, a progressive thinker of the 18th Century Enlightment envisioned a utopia, and in America we have come near to perfecting it on earth. Where ever the Marquis De Sade is now, he must be proud. I imagine him wandering through the Power Exchange, eyeing the copious bowls of condom and lube, the porn playing in continuous loops on monitors and the walls, and saying, "Truly, this is the paradise that I envisioned... But why does everybody look so confused?"