Turn and Flee

From Sensuous Spaces: Designing Your Erotic Interiors by Sivon Resnikoff, page 95:

The bachelor pad: success or failure?

If the success of an environment can be measured by the length of time it lingers in the memory of one who experiences it, then the bachelor pad must be declared a masterful design concept. Remembering her first encounter with a bachelor pad over twelve years before, a New York woman was able to give a detailed description, of not only the furnishings, but the mood of the space and her reactions.

The colors, textures, and furnishings are listed in the order she remembered them:

1. Red everywhere.
2. Mirrors on the walls and over the bed.
3. Fake fur.
4. Large bed, filled with water.
5. Bean bag chair and pillows.
6. Music throughout.

Her emotional reactions to the space remained equally vivid: an instant feeling of being trapped, followed by the overwhelming urge to turn and flee. She felt “repulsion” at what she described as an “overkill” not unlike that of a used-car salesman trying to score on a weekly tally sheet.

There’s a needle I’ve been trying to thread with my boudoir redecoration project: I want a space that feels sexy, but not sleazy; I want the room to feel like a place where you could hold an orgy, but entering the room should not feel like you’re being propositioned for one.

The obvious side of this is fitness for purpose; mirrors on the ceiling and a shelf with a row of butt plugs lined up like hummel figurines will make it clear that the room is a fucking-centric space. If the boudoir is meant to be a place where people lounge and chat and drink without then also having sex, that should be evident in the functionality of the room.

But the more difficult part of this to define is the “used-car salesman” vibe; the desperation and impersonality of the space. The description of the bachelor pad conjures an image that’s vivid but also strangely generic; we know that the bachelor in question really wants to get laid, but little else. And I think this is emblematic of the “horndog vs pervert” divide:

a horndog celebrates their own sexuality. a pervert sees themselves as sexless and imposes sexuality onto those around them

— Justin Falcone (@modernserf) August 7, 2017

A horndog’s room tells you about who they are, not just what they want. The room is a window into their mind – their personality, their self-image, their flights of fancy. Sensuous Spaces describes this in terms of “fantasy” – not in the “wizards & castles” sense, or even in the erotic sense, but in the sense that a sensuous space is a setting for shared imagination and idealization.