fetish

It started when she was seen going into the lab, but wasn’t seen going out. Yale graduate student Annie Le (MED '13) entered Yale’s 10 Amistad Street medical building after leaving her keys, purse and phone in her office at the Sterling Hall of Medicine. For a few days, this beautiful, sexy, “sweet, spunky and smart,” 24-year-old, 4’11”, 90-lb pharmacology doctoral candidate whose parents had immigrated to California from Vietnam, was considered “missing.” Then, on Sunday, the day she was supposed to wed her college sweetheart, Le’s lifeless, strangled body was discovered stuffed behind a wall in the basement of the lab in which she worked.

The murder of Annie Le is fascinating, horrifying and perplexing people around the world. Maybe because I was once a young Yalie myself running around campus at odd hours, I feel a personal connection to this rare tragedy; the first killing of a Yale student since 1998. My heart goes out to Le’s family, friends and her young fiancé Jonathan Widawsky. The world has lost so much untapped potential in Le whose work at Yale involved experiments on mice that were part of research into enzymes that could have implications for the treatment of cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy.

Many are the mysteries of the heart. The heart of the soul and the heart of the body. The human body and the body politic. My Max and our cardiac culture.

What happened to Max could happen to me, or maybe even you. One day, you’re walking around, shopping, dancing, having sex, producing shows and making pesto, free and blissfully ignorant of the ticking time bomb behind your ribs. Then, for whatever reason, you take a “stress test” which reveals that your arteries are clogged with extreme “blockage” (no relation to me!). Next thing you know, you’re on the fast track to a quadruple coronary artery bypass, a prisoner of western medicine, in quite literal bondage to the masters and mistresses of cardiology. These are the high priests of modern society, the highly trained and esteemed men and women in the monogrammed white coats, wielding their stethoscopes, their angiograms and their very sharp knives.

Upon consulting your charts like educated gypsies reading high tech tea leaves, they bless and curse you with their holy diagnosis. The cardiologists talk to you like talmudic scholars, weaving scientific facts with emotional considerations, matters of the heart. Then there are the cardiovascular thoracic surgeons whose power lies in their hands. They're the car mechanics of cardio and, having performed “thousands” of these human valve changes before, they’re quite confident in their ability to fix whatever’s under your hood, or ribcage, as the case may be.

Like millions around the world, I was shocked when the news of Michael Jackson’s death hit me harder than I’d ever imagined it would. True, I grew up on MJ, enjoyed my first make-out session to the guiding notes of “ABC,” slow-danced to “I’ll Be There,” moonwalked to “Billie Jean,” jilled-off to “Beat It” and opened my heart to “We Are The World.” But throughout our lives, I had no problem taking Jackson’s music, his moves, his scandals and paraphilias in moderation. I always liked to dance – and make out – to his tunes (who doesn’t?), but I was never a huge fan, never even went to a live concert. He seemed so, well…commercial. And then there was his tacky taste in art, not to mention those bizarre pajama parties with boys the age that he was when he taught me my ABCs.

That all changed on the afternoon of June 25, 2009. As soon as I got the news, I caught the wave. Where were you when MJ died? Like millions, I was on Twitter. Within seconds of TMZ’s scoop, “RIP MJ” hit #1 on Twitter’s trending topics with “Michael Jackson,” “Jacko,” “Gloved One” and other nicknames occupying almost all the other top spots. From Farrah Fawcett to the Iran Election, all other news was kicked to the curb. Make way for the King of Pop!

Much as we enjoyed frolicking nude and sharing simultaneous orgasms in the desert, we were eager to return to our own hedonistic oasis here in the Soul of Downtown LA. To better understand why, check out this video of opera star/fetish couture designer Malena Teves welcoming us home with an impromptu rendition of “Come Rain or Come Shine,” first a cappella, then accompanied by Kozmic the Klown on my great grandmom’s (untuned) 1926 Steinway:

Isn’t Malena awesome? When stuff like this happens in your *living room,* why would you want to leave home? This is why I hardly ever leave the Speakeasy/Institute. But contrary to rumors, I'm not agoraphobic. In fact, I came back from Sea Mountain just in time to go out again to Erotica LA!

Follow the Bouncing Boobs

Addictions. Gotta love 'em. Gotta hate 'em too, sometimes. But first, we gotta love 'em, or we wouldn't have 'em in the first place. Addictions are the spices of our lives. Of course, too much spice spoils the enchilada. But without a little salsa, it's all just beans and dead meat.

Granted, addiction can certainly be a destructive force, wreaking havoc on your world, but it can also be the source of tremendous creative energy in human life. Sometimes, the only way to truly master something is to become passionately, obsessively addicted to it. Without the driving vigor of our addictions, we surrender to mediocrity, bureaucracy, and (shudder) mere functionality. The world's greatest artists, many of our greatest statesmen, certainly our greatest lovers, and even some of our greatest scientists have been notoriously addictive personalities, all living and dying in overheated pursuits of pleasure, power, knowledge and love.

Our addictions give us a taste of paradise. It may be a temporary paradise, and it may be an artificial paradise, a dangerous, even doomed paradise, but the pursuit of paradise, ecstasy, bliss, nirvana, heaven-on-earth - also known as “the pursuit of happiness,” as written into the U.S. Declaration of Independence - is one of the great natural drives of humanity, maybe even of all so-called intelligent life on earth.

The Seven Deadly Addictions