I am sure Teddy thinks this is ceramic hyperbole but I think I should have waited to marry a Peruvian. Maybe I will keep an eye out for my second Peruvian husband at the airport?
This is a post which I wrote some time ago but didn’t publish and it follows on from our Postcard from Lima, Peru
The Museo de Larco was set in what looked like a private estate with beautiful gardens and flowers. After we had completed our tour of the main building, our guide said, ‘and now we are going to the sex museum’. The three of us, in our group, looked at each other with eyes wide open and followed her obediently. On route to the museum we got chatting to our fellow tourist who was Jewish New Yorker whose family emigrated from Ukraine to the US. He was in Lima for business with a couple of extra days for pleasure. His notebook had two pages full of gourmet restaurants that he had been trying out so we guessed that he was certainly a foodie but also a writer. I had the impression that he was gay but he didn’t confirm it until I noticed what he photographed most in the museum.
Our middle-aged guide was most likely an academic, perhaps a historian. Like the other guide she was very straight forward and told us later that we had 7 minutes to look at the shop and take photographs! Not 5 or 10, precisely 7 minutes; ‘Yes, Ma’am!’ With a mixture of excitement and trepidation, we followed her into the building. My, these ancient Peruvians were a liberal crowd! Every possible type of sexual activity between humans (and animals) of both genders was immortalized in ceramic. Our guide started describing what we were looking at. ‘Here we have the man pleasuring the woman with his mouth and here we have two animals mating’. If we were young enough to have blushed we probably would have. She reminded me of my sex education teacher at Catholic high school. At this stage (age 13) we were all girls, separated from the boys by annexes. Our teacher was a doctor and she taught us about the birds and bees in a very anatomical and brusque manner. I remember thinking that I may as well become a nun because I certainly wasn’t going to be doing anything like that with a boy! A few years later, it all seemed much more feasible.
I was sneaking glances at our New Yorker friend to see what he was focused on and Teddy, too. I suspect my husband was thinking, ‘don’t give her ideas’. It struck me that the museum and its artifacts were not a guide to pleasure, such as the Kama Sutra, but more of a ceramic documentary of sexual behavior between humans and animals. The artists were depicting what they observed. In one exhibit, the people were disfigured and our guide explained, ‘these are humans dying of sexual diseases’. Ah well, I guess you never could have your cake and eat it, too. In case you are wondering, it did give me ideas. Lima was a fun destination!
Missionary animals?
Click on this link to see some other erotic ceramics but open with discretion. HUACO EROTIC CERAMICS
Postcards from Kerry 