Twenty-two years ago Madonna was more inescapable than ever. Her pulsating single “Erotica” was climbing the charts, an album of the same name had just been released (and it was even more sexual than any of the the singer’s past work), and the anticipation for her Basic Instinct knock-off ill-fated sensual thriller Body of Evidence was still high. But the project that was really causing a commotion was Sex, the icon’s notorious coffee table book filled with provocative S/M images of the entertainer cavorting with adult film stars, celeb friends — often completely nude — and indulging in all sorts of activities usually not explored outside of an urban fetish club.
It was a liberating time for scores of the pop queen’s gay fans. Among them was Greg Scarnici, familiar to Queerty readers by his pretty lady drag persona Levonia Jenkins, who felt so inspired by all the pro-sex and mostly pro-Sex coverage in the media that he swung open his mirrored closet door and told his friends and family that he was a big queen.
“Seeing a huge pop star shooting at The Gaeity Male Burlesque with my favorite porn star at the time, Joey Stefano, made me realize it was not only okay to be gay, but it was also okay to embrace my sexuality,” Scarnici tells HuffPo.
As the book remained a source of inspiration, Scarnici decided to pay homage to the 1992 tome by creating his own slightly more twisted version, which he’d appropriately title Sex in Drag. He donned a blond wig and enlisted a group of pals including Chris Harder, Dallas Dubois, Logan Hardcore, Bob The Drag Queen, Quamin Ellis and Z100’s “Uncle Johnny for a sordid sexy shoot in Fire Island.
Scarnici says he had a blast he had recreating his version of those tantalizing photos. He recalls:
“Even though a lot of the images were sexual, we were all hysterical laughing while shooting it: ‘Is my bush showing through the vodka bottle?’ The whole thing was so much fun. And while we were shooting it, no one on Fire Island batted an eye! They just looked at us like it was normal to see a naked man/woman eating a slice of pizza at the Cherry Grove pizzeria.
Learn more about the book or purchase your own copy here. See a few of the less explicit images from Sex in Drag below.
keepcalm
Sad.
Desert Boy
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So much better than Madge’s sex tome.
gauty
@keepcalm: Pray tell, why it’s sad? It’s a quirky ode to gender fluidity, and the woman who helped him come out. Fuck off.
jiljol
@gauty: “Gender fluidity” pfft, give me a break. “Gender fluidity” is the liberal counterpart to the conservative “gender roles” except the former is now being treated as supposedly liberating or groundbreaking when it’s the same old same old.
R. Mark Desjardins
At the tine that Madonna’s SEX book came out, buddies of mine commented that the “shocking” photos were nothing out of the ordinary that any gay guy would have been party to on any Saturday night. I appreciate Greg Scarnici’s send up of Madonna’s “ground breaking” book, but one must consider that Mae West’s play, SEX that had been staged on Broadway in 1926 brought her a 10 day jail stint. As much as Madonna might like to take credit for letting the genie out of the bottle, she certainly wasn’t the first!
NiceNCool1
jiljol, The guy’s hurting no one.
Tortugatoo
@keepcalm: Sad? Sad to who? Sad to you? If its sad to you then you should try to not let what other people do affect your emotions so much.
YesIDid
I would’ve stayed in the closet if I looked like that in drag.
jiljol
@NiceNCool1: Drag is the mockery of the lives that women are forced to live since the day they are born and is thus misogynistic and it impacts women and (in case you were not aware) gay men as well.
Yes, this whole gender drivel that is taking over “lgBTQ” (note caps) discourse is indeed affecting people.