The Treats of Versailles

Catering the sex party

This is Dessert After Dark, a special collab edition of the Nightlife Review from Dirt and Cake Zine.

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The Treats of Versailles

Catering the sex party

By Arielle Gordon

As I took in the extensive spread at a sex party in Brooklyn last November, I thought about L’Autrichienne en Goguettes ou l’Orgie Royale ("the Austrian bitch and Her Friends in the Royal Orgy"), the 1789 anonymously authored satire—then called libelles—that portrayed the last Queen of France as a gluttonous floozy.

I hate arriving at a catered affair after I’ve already eaten, but I didn’t know what to expect, so I came to the party full from pizza. My mind was elsewhere as I prepared for the evening’s activities, preoccupied with how my sheer blue nightgown looked over my pink lingerie set and wondering whether my boyfriend’s novelty elephant trunk boxers would fit the evening’s Marie Antoinette theme. 

We nervously picked at cheese slices from Gino’s as my much cooler friend applied our makeup and decked me out in iridescent glitter. We ordered a car, I donned baggy sweats to obscure my négligée, and we headed into the night. 

For as long as humans have been having sex, we’ve fueled it with all kinds of sweets. Certain interpretations of the Book of Genesis portray Adam and Eve’s encounter with the serpent as the first-ever orgy, powered by a fructose high from the forbidden fruit. The Mesoamericans were believed to have used chocolate as an aphrodisiac, and when Spanish conquistadors returned from their first trips to the Americas, they reported that the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II drank fifty cups of chocolate daily for "success with women." Francisco López de Gómara, a historian of the time, claimed Moctezuma kept as many as 3,000 wives and concubines, so one can only imagine the sheer volume of Hershey's kisses required to keep him in fighting shape. Legend has it that in nineteenth-century Northern Italy, prostitutes looking to attract repeat customers also turned to dessert. Layering cocoa, coffee, mascarpone and sponge cookies, they essentially created an Enlightenment-era viagra, which would eventually be named tirami su, or “pick me up.”

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Read: Jocelyn Silver in Dirt on clubstaurants like TAO and LAVO.

Support: From Lino in opening their brick-and mortar panadería in Bethlehem, PA.

Read: Brookyn Magazine and Saveur’s round ups on independent publishing that feature Cake Zine.

Bake: Our friend Jenneh Kaikai of Pelah Kitchen is hosting a cake decorating class with One Love Community Fridge in NYC on 10/27.

Eat: Noreen Wasti and Arsh Raziuddin are hosting a pop-up with Z&Z at Huda in Brooklyn on 10/27, with all profits from print sales and pastries going to The Gaza Relief Fund via Healing Our Homeland and Nation Station.