Queer n There	Queer n There Archive

"Think of a cock's thick shaft pushing deep inside you," urges Al Violi, "until it ejaculates uncontrollably in a gray spray of body fluid. Except the shaft is simply air. And the air is busting out of your nose and mouth at more than 93 miles per hour. And it's loaded with germs instead of sperms."

Violi's crotch bulges visibly through tight denim as he revs himself up. Set to be crowned April 1 as Mr. Iron Lung 2008 at Detroit's Wind Tunnel, Violi is an up-and-coming player on the exploding gay sneezing scene.

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As more and more clubs cater to sneeze fetishists, guys just dropping in for a drink or dance have to contend with unexpected sounds and expectorated spittle. Some wince and wrinkle noses at the new reality -- with no spasm of pleasure forthcoming.

"A sneeze wells from a place deep inside no penis can touch," Violi asserts. But still, the erotic potential of sneezing seems for many as obscure as Kleenex on snowdrifts.

Whatever the obtuseness of what scenesters dub "stuffed noses," the Right Wing is alive to -- and alarmed by -- a fascination with respiratory release that some call "epidemic."

"A sneeze is simply an orgasm of the lungs," declares Dr. Laura, who on April 1 launched Save Now Our Tots: Rally Against Gays (SNOTRAG), a campaign to dope school milk supplies with antihistamine.

Family-values conservatives point out that there's no denying the satisfaction of a sneeze. From pinches of snuff to snorts of coke to springtime blooms, sneezing and pleasure have a storied history together, prohibitionists note. Which is why, they contend, the practice is ethical only within the sacred bonds of allergies and flu.

But Violi says to hell with morals. He admits he can't get enough of the activity. "Some people -- the lucky ones -- sneeze when exposed to sudden light. Others sneeze like cuckoo-clockwork after orgasm."

Yet unlike orgasm -- which nature doles out stingily -- the sneezing reflex never tires, as Guinness record-setting marathon orgies at Wind Tunnel and other "snotspots" are making clear.

With everyone capable of a hearty kachoo!, the sneezing community is attitude-free and flexible. Many events become orgies of communal release, the air thick with baby power. On the edges and in corners, revelers often break away for more intimate action.

"The fun is in the build-up," says Violi -- the accumulation on delicate nasal membranes of pepper, of pollen, of talcum, of tension.

For sneezing tops it's all about wielding, say, a pepper mill with the aplomb of an accomplished waiter. For bottoms the challenge is self-mastery and deferral. "Sneezing is all about control and trust," Violi waxes. "The dance of top and bottom is like ballet."

Dressed for a dousing

Except most performances of Swan Lake don't end in an explosive mucosal spray. When you consider the drenching of an unguarded sneeze, it's no wonder many come to the fetish after first pausing to explore the leather, latex, or tissue scenes.

"Guys find they've accumulated thousands of dollars of equipment -- raincoats, gas masks, haz-mat gear," notes Michel N. Pirelli of the Palm Desert rubber emporium Galoshes Plus. "And then they wake up and they realize that, for them, dealing with infectious aerosol biohazards is child's play. And that maybe sneezing was the real underlying fascination in the first place."

But as the scene grows more sophisticated, sneeze fetishists are perfecting their own specialized implements.

"Pepper mills are passé," declares Emmett Paine of Amalgamated Titclamp & Cable. Last month, the San Francisco-based SM supply house unveiled the NoseGay 2000, whose eight inches of fiber-optic filament boasts tiny pincers at the business end. That's where users put their nasal irritant of choice -- a dandelion seed, perhaps, or a bouquet of cat hair.

"Slick rainwear is nice, but the residue from playing with 50 sweaty guys hawking things up rinses out readily in the wash," says New Yorker Rex Sty, a regular at the Damp Handkerchief on the Upper East Side.

"Getting mucked is half the idea," Violi asserts. Players who've broken the bank on protective gear sometimes feel resentment toward their confreres enjoying the fun in street clothes, guys who sometimes face the epithet "Gesundteitwads."

Shaken to the core

But the point of sneeze-play isn't the gear. "It's about pleasure," Violi croons.

Sneezing's satisfaction has biological roots that reach and tangle deep into the soils of time and human anatomy, experts say.

Biologists contend that before the rise of the penis, males ejaculated their sperm by sneezing it into the air -- like pollen, which would then accumulate in the female ear, precursor to the vagina.

"The autonomic nerve pathways that govern sneezing share 'wires' with the orgasm reflex," says anatomist Dr. Arten Lung of the University of East Angina. For the rare individual, he says, the crossed ganglia make a post-coital sneeze the cherry on orgasm's hot fudge sundae.

But for most fetishists, sex and sneezing melt and swirl together only after experience and experimention.

"In New York or Chicago, gay men often discover sneezing in their early 30s," says Prof. P. Ness Sounze, who studies fetishes at West Hollywood State. "But ironically it's just the opposite in less-developed regions, what with farmers' fields spewing allergens, and the weed-strewn lawns of abandoned exurban townhomes." In rural America, Sounze explains, "the sneezing scene is actually a way-station on the path to advanced, urban gay life."

We traveled to North Cornsilk, Kansas, to find out. At Jesuit-run Blessed Virgin University, there's no GLBT group, and the gay scene centers instead around furtive mutual-masturbation and auto-asphyxiation. It's a seemingly meager smorgasbord. But as at many rural schools, Blessed Virgin's showers and toilets are a feast to those stuck in surrounding communities.

The school's missionary role is not lost on leaders of the campus-based Christian Sneezing Network of Outer Topeka (C-SNOT). "We welcome participation from all the area hayseeds, not just students at Bless U," declares B. Ron Kiel, the club's president, who's studying to be a pulmonary therapist.

"A fascination with sneezing inspires all we do," Kiel goes on, pointing out his group's "Please Sleeze!" campaign to promote "safe sn-eez-ing into slee-ves rather than hands, which transmit filth to everything they touch." Some say C-SNOT's schedule of rap sessions and faith-healing support circles for asthmatics has a fetid, pre-Stonewall feel. It's a far cry from the open, sophisticated scenes now rollicking urban centers.

But increasingly, the two worlds are linking up and cross-pollinating.

This upcoming Memorial Day, Al Violi and his clubmates at the Wind Tunnel are renting a train and going on tour. In the airy "Pullman-ary" cars of what's being dubbed the "Achoo-choo," the clubmen will gust through the historic Dustbowl regions of Oklahoma, the ragweed swamps of eastern Mississippi, and some Superfund sites outside Couer d'Alene where the sky hazes with asbestos tailings. On the way back, they'll whistle-stop in North Cornsilk to fraternize and evangelize sneezing -- not into sleeves or even cupped hands, but proudly open-mouthed.

B. Ron Kiel grants he's not sure about that radical agenda, but says he's looking forward to Mr. Iron Lung's arrival like a deep whiff of cayenne. "Even if I tried, I don't my enthusiasm could be stifled."

On Wings of Sneeze

Top spots on the international sneezing circuit

Lexington's venerable Hanky Code (239 Reflex Road) is the shining jewel of the Central Kentucky sneezing community for over 32 years, drawing both tourists and a backslapping neighborhood clientele. Wednesdays bring Big KY-Choo competitions with $100 prizes. "Pulmonary satisfaction is our aspiration," is their motto. The funky crowd includes former coal and gypsum miners, who throng here for cold beer and puffs from the tanks on the patio oxygen bar.

Spyoo Tum Yum (674 Loogie), a bar/bistro on the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown, is a longtime pioneer in the scene, from before homo rhymed with Castro. In back is a chilly, drafty, dusty darkroom that hosts heavy sneezing, hawking-up, and spitting action. From comfy banquettes in front, you can enjoy the goings-on over closed-circuit radio. There in the cozy eatery, the air is moist and fragrant with Spyoo Tum Yum's delicious pan-Asian broths and pho soups, all with a certain je ne sais quoi.

At Berlin's Club Ezeëns (Heimlichmaneuverstrasse 78) the late-night play gets inspiration from an aromatic range of Moluccan black, red, and Ceylon white peppers pulverized to a fine dust in their signature cold-fusion-fired grinders. During summer, the action spills into the flower gardens of nearby Thoracic Park.

Zurich's Magic Mountain (Jugendtoten Strasse 14) brings to cutting-edge contemporary fetish play the storied elegance of turn-of-the-century tuberculosis sanitaria. Come down from a fit of zany, ripsnorting outta-control sneezing with a relaxing mustard chest plaster. The polyglot discussions over the bar can get quite philosophical.

Kerchief/Kerchoo (1300 Spruce) is trans/drag "Sneezing Central" in the Philadelphia Gayborhood. Watch big-busted bosoms heave and jiggle like silicon-fortified Girlzenberry Jell-O in the backseat of a Range Rover speeding over rutted fields of ragweed. Pink baby powder is the irritant (or elixir) of choice, but a range of snuffs and peppers is also on hand.

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com