Sex & The (Sin) City

Under the scorching Vegas sun, a secret sexy oasis awaits you

I ’m sitting in a dark, circular room. Surrounding me are dozens of screens playing graphic pornography. I count 30, maybe more.

Some of it looks new, like it could have been filmed days ago. Some of it is grainy and in black and white. Some of it has aliens with tentacles for testicles. All of it, combined, is somehow more fascinating than unsettling.

The screen directly in front of me shows a woman wearing a white gown, surrounded by four men. The men are all naked, and the woman has a whip in her hand. I can only imagine what’s about to happen. None of this arouses me, but I’m deeply entertained.

I’ve stumbled upon this treasure trove of erogenous media in Las Vegas’ Erotic Heritage Museum. The museum was founded by Harry Mohney, proprietor of a multinational chain of strip clubs. Dedicated to documenting the history of erotica, the museum today functions as a 24,000 square foot library of the most explicit imagery mankind has to offer.

Leaving the woman and her whip to sort out her posse of nudes, I walk into the next room and am startled by an extremely lifelike exhibit of two mannequins engaging in fellatio in a photo booth. Coming around the corner, for a second I thought they were real.

It’s strange to think that twenty four hours prior I was doing ninety through a Mojave desert dust storm, through 112 degree temperatures and pouring rain; witnessing Mother Nature in furious glory throwing literally every weather phenomena possible at us in a span of 30 minutes.

And now I’m watching pornography. With my friends. In a sex museum. In Vegas.

It’s really about as Vegas as it gets, if you think about it. Even more so than the grandeur of the Bellagio and Caesar’s Palace, the fact that some random rich white man decided to dedicate his life to amassing the largest collection of erotic art in the United States really speaks to the absurdity that is Sin City.

Vegas is an experience of extremes. It slaps you in the face before you even arrive, forcing you to drive through one of the hottest and most desolate places on Earth before it springs from the cracked earth like a glowing, neon fungus.

It shouldn’t exist, yet it does. As fungi often do, like the black mold pervading your shower drain even after being sprayed with copious amounts of bleach. No amount of drought, heat, or combination of the two has been able to topple it.

That is really the overwhelming feeling you get when walking through the Erotic Heritage Museum: Wow, this… exists.

It’s really all you can say about it while you’re there. There is a certain genre of pornography that reads more as documentary than erotica. Where you learn that some people have figured things out sexually that you had no idea could be done (and, perhaps, would have been fine not knowing.)

Did I need to know that Catherine the Great employed “foot ticklers” in order to help her get aroused? No, but I don’t know where else I would have learned that. The museum is really a testament to “knowledge is power,” because although I don’t know how much practical use I’ll get out of the things I learned there, I left feeling like I knew something I shouldn’t — like I’d gained a dirty societal secret.

Shockingly acrobatic displays of sexual congress aside, perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Erotic Heritage Museum is its politics. Throughout the museum are statements of consent and monuments to LGBTQ+ rights. There are exhibits ranging from an exploration of the trans experience to queer identities in antiquity.

Vegas, while being coined “Sin City,” oddly does not feel like the safest place for a queer person to exist. People come here to escape the societal confines of their hometowns, and sometimes those confines can include masking bigotry and hatred. Mix in the limitless amounts of drugs and alcohol one can find there, and you’ve got a frothing cocktail of people being their most… unfiltered selves.

The museum feels like a refuge from the comparative chaos found on the Strip (maybe because most people who come to Vegas didn’t come for the museums, no matter how sexy). The absurdity of its mere existence drowns out any controversy it could possibly create with its progressive ideas. It knows its audience.

And that, for me, has to be its biggest accolade. This could have been another “Wrigley’s Believe It or Not?” exhibit. They could have shown me a thousand giant dildos and said “Look! This is the most dildos ever collected in one room!” and I would have left both rattled and bemused. I definitely saw a lot of dildos, but more than that, the Museum of Erotic Heritage is a rare beacon of acceptance in a city that capitalizes on just how unacceptable everything it offers is.

A home for sexual deviants (or those who want to learn how to become one), the Erotic Heritage Museum is a must-see for anyone fascinated by human sexuality (and who doesn’t mind watching pornography with a bunch of strangers).

Words: Niko Frost

Photos: Niko Frost, James Nguyen