Build it, we will come

Dear Canadian Government,

I’m on to you. Don’t think I don’t know what the hell is going on here. It took me a while to figure it all out but I finally did. My only regret is that I didn’t sniff out your devious scheme sooner. Then I could have stopped you before you carried out your evil plan. I could have acted and mobilized the public before you destroyed the greatest advancement in man-machine relations since Jesus invented the Internet. Well, it’s too late now, the damage is done. You did it. Congratu-frickin-lations. You demolished the Sex Machine. Happy now?

I must say I’m a little relieved. For the last while now, I’ve been opening up the paper and getting severely bummed. Why are we still in Afghanistan? Why are we still going along with China when they’re being such an environmental jerk? When I arrived at the corner of Ste-Catherine and St-Laurent recently, it all became clear: every news item I’ve been fretting over was part of a greater conspiracy. An elaborate smokescreen orchestrated by the powers that be to distract us from the real issue: the utter destruction of one of the greatest technological discoveries in the history of Canada.

Where there was once a corner building that featured a projection of a gyrating stripper’s silhouette, now lay ruins. Where there once were stairs that led men, young and old, to one of the creepiest, most surreal pitches of all time—an epic five-minute monologue that included gyrating, panty flashing and finger-pumping—there is just a small pile of rubble.

Now where will tourists and local men go to pay an exorbitant amount of money to insert their member into an industrial strength pump built into a wall of clear Plexiglas in the shape of a woman, while an actual naked woman gyrates behind it? What are we going to do now, have sex the “normal way”? Well, unfortunately, not all of us have access to a load-bearing crossbeam that can support a harness lined with baby yak belly fur.

My question to you, Canadian government, is “Why?” Why did you have to tear down this shrine to Canadian ingenuity? Maybe you had a personal vendetta against inventor Patrick More, whose inspiration came from getting a stiffy from polishing his car with an industrial strength buffer? Or maybe you’re miffed that it cleverly exploited the legal loophole that it wasn’t intercourse with an actual woman but rather a Han-Solo-frozen-in-Carbonite version of the female form?

I know that you’re trying to clean up Montreal by getting rid of some of our seedier sex trade establishments. But don’t you know what happened during prohibition, when people started making dangerous moonshine at home and doing seedy business in unregulated booze cans? Do you really want the guilt of the numerous fatal accidents that will surely start cropping up? Hundreds of lonely men dying at the hands of their cobbled-together makeshift unregulated sex machines? Well let me tell you, it’s a horrible way to go. I mean, I already got electrocuted by my own Handivac creation last week.

Is cleaning up the downtown core that necessary? Have you been to Times Square? Is that what you want? A bunch of morbidly obese families gawking at a neon $4.99 shrimp scampi special at a suped-up Red Lobster? Not on my watch.

This isn’t over. That’s why I’m starting up SHM: Sexual Heritage Montreal—a group of sex trade enthusiasts dedicated to preserving the establishments that make this wonderful city the hedonistic paradise people have been seeking since the 1920s.

We’re out to save all the spots that truly make this city what it is. We will be donning our creepy guy trench coats, hitting the streets and making some noise. And let me tell you, there will be nothing stopping us from marching down Ste-Catherine and getting our word out, besides maybe a 15-minute break to watch the female mannequins get changed in the windows of Simon’s. In solidarity, some of us are going on a hunger strike, refusing to eat anything at the Super Sexe hot and cold lunchtime buffet.

So, my dear government, you might try and storm the faux-iron gates of the Château du Sexe, and you might be looking to give the Calèche du Sexe its last go ’round the block, but you’ll never stop the true perverts from finding inventive ways of getting off. For every Sex Machine you level, more topless breakfasts, shower shows, peep shows and jack shacks will crop up.

Mark my words: if they build it, we will cum.

Signed,
Anonymous

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca