AKA William

Reader Jose sent this to me, and I thought he was, well, misinformed. He was not.

Yes, in the NYT Arts section, in the header ad at the top of the page and a square ad on the right of the page, are interactive glory holes. How are they interactive? Well, when you hover your mouse over one of them, um, it beckons you . . . in? over? closer?

The glory hole, which is actually a creepy sculpture called “Noisette,” is featured in the ad campaign for the New Museum’s Urs Fischer exhibit. Urs Fischer, apparently, loves glory holes:

Noisette is of course, also seriously naughty. It is surprising to realize that many viewers don’t quite perceive that the sculpture refers to a bathroom glory hole, that classic “meeting” place for cottaging gay men. The piece intermittently shifts from humor to more profound issues such as loneliness, compulsion, repression and self-loathing. But the surface, sideshow quality of the sculpture is so satisfying as to be worth the visit.

I don’t know if I ever “cottaged” a gay man before. I guess I can learn how. So can you. Watch the interactive, tongue-y, glory-hole-y video.

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