Getting Dirty in tha D

Photo by Kitty Butler

If you're thinking to yourself, "I wish I could see hundreds of pictures, paintings and sculptures of pussies and cocks, fetish freaks of all stripes, floggings, rope bondage, burlesque performances, and the early nudes of Madonna, all in one giant warehouse," well, you can – in a place you probably didn't expect: Detroit. Specifically, at the Motor City's legendary Dirty Show, the biggest erotic art exhibition in the country. Dirty, as locals call it, has grown leaps and bounds from its humble beginnings as an underground art show in cramped office space above a mechanic's shop in the Detroit suburbs. It's now an annual five-day event that draws thousands of attendees - about 5,000 this year - and some of the top names in art, all wedged into a building that could house a football field. Why has Dirty surged past its competitors and grown to such substantial size and notoriety? For one, it offers more than just your standard selection of dicks and va-jay-jays in Technicolor glory or black-and-white artistry. There's the good, the bad, the slightly amusing, the slightly disturbing, the hot, and, of course, the "I didn't need to see that." And it's advanced beyond local artists - this year's featured artists included the likes of H.R. Giger, 50s pin-up/photographer Bunny Yeager and Japanese painter Hajime Saroyama.

But there's more to the Dirty than the art on the walls - at this event, the audience is part of the show.

Opening night scene at the Dirty is packed with wild characters. There's the pastie-clad cigarette girls, traversing the crowd with smokes, candy and boob- and dick-shaped whistles for sale; performance artists; thongs and a dildos, and the standard goth-fetish crowd dressed in rubber, lots of black eyeliner and big, stompy boots.

In one corner, a woman who's pushing 70 is rocking a tight-laced black corset, white hair pulled into an elegant chignon, one liver-spotted hand holding a cigarette, chatting with a group of twentysomethings.

Scattered throughout are straight-laced looking couples, seeming mostly at ease with the freaks and geeks surrounding them, with only the occasional double-take. That's the hallmark of the Dirty crowd: everyone's cool. No one's there to judge. The scenesters may be wild, but the scene is pretty tame - everyone's there to look at the art. Or, in some cases, be part of the art.

Early in the evening, a cluster of onlookers gathers around a young man named Leon, who's practicing Asian rope bondage on a string of willing volunteers, including some of the show's cigarette girls. Leon's intricate knots and patterns resemble the kind of macramé your great-aunt used to do, but for his subjects, there's another dimension to the constricting cords.

"It feels good," says a redhead named Cherry, as Leon knots his way down her thigh. "I like the texture of it, the tension of it, there's a little bit of immobility... I feel kind of hugged."

Nearby, a woman on stilts, dressed in a cat costume, is forthright about her fetish: macrophilia. If you're not familiar, that's the derivation of sexual pleasure from enlargement or reduction of the human form. That means she likes to be tall. Like, really tall.

"When I go out to these events, I love to create some kind of spectacle," she says. At 5'11" plus 22-inch stilts, it's hard to miss her, even without the cat get-up.

One photo by the artist DVS titled "Hentai" - in reference to the extremely kinky genre of Japanese animation - shows an actual dead octopus seemingly erupting from some goth chick's pussy. As wild as the sexy octopus imagery sounds, it's more common than you'd think, says Jerry Vile, who started the show nine years ago with co-founder Jeremy Harvey.

"There was a lot of octopus in the show," he says. "The octopus is the new gas mask."

Octopuses aren't the only emerging trend Vile has noted - "There's a lot of peeing going on out there. Pee has become very popular."

There's plenty of shock value at the Dirty, but Vile and Harvey remain concerned about art, about pushing the envelope, about bringing a new, fresh vision to the thousands that flock to the Dirty. But is there anything too dirty for Dirty? Vile says no.

"They can have stuff that's sloppy in the wrong way, or unprofessional," he says. "But sometimes stuff that's really wacked is great. There's one painting that was chosen for its complete lack of professionalism. We don't know if it's art, but we think it is."

In one corner, a riff on the children's game "Operation" offers passers-by a chance to play "Sex-Change Operation," removing the boy or girl bits from the long-suffering pasteboard patient. Another picture, titled "100 Beauties" - which Vile describes as "everyone's junk" - is a hundred mugshots of different pussies, and it's amazing how many stories each snatch tells.

"It's like 'The Vagina Monologues' in one piece," Vile says.

Before midnight, a troupe of burlesque lovelies have taken the stage, and one Miss Roxi Dlite is wowing the audience with both her ability to swirl the heart-shaped pasties adorning her pert breasts, and the cupcakes she passes out to audience members looking for sugar. Clad in an apron that's Bettie Page meets Donna Reed, Roxi's naughty housewife routine is clearly a hit. Hard to go wrong, it seems, when you mix cheesecake with cupcakes.

At midnight, the boys and girls of local fetish and leather shop Noir Leather take the stage, all dolled up in leather and chains. Whippings and beatings commence, complete with a set piece involving an iron maiden and a leather flogger.

One blitzed-looking onlooker named Gabe, who claims 22 but could pass for 16 and looks as innocent as an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue, can't take his eyes off the performances.

"It's kind of crazy," he says, eyes slightly glazed. "Kind of out there. The chicks are really hot."

Well put, Gabe, well put.