The mission was ambitious but seemed doable: Have sex every day for 365 days in a row. The execution proved more challenging than anticipated.
“I didn’t like the dates, I didn’t like the sex, I didn’t like anything,” 28-year-old Mischa Badasyan tells VICE.
Related: Gay Performance Artist Will Have Sex With A Different Man Every Day For A Year
Badasyan is a Russian-born, Berlin-based performance artist. About two years ago he came up with the idea to have lots and lots (and lots and lots) of sex as an art project. Now he’s finally talking about.
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“It’s almost impossible,” he says in hindsight. “I had to be so focused, so disciplined for the whole year. I slept with so many people. Isn’t it insane?”
Badasyan says he hooked up all sorts of guys, including a 76-year-old journalist, a Scottish yoga teacher, and at least one Serbian adult film star. He got laid in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, the Czech Republic, and Poland. But finding men to sleep with wasn’t always easy.
Badasyan first tried using apps like Grindr and Scruff to meet guys. After exhausting his options there, he turned to parks and streets of in search of someone, anyone, to have sex with. When he ran out of guys there, he went down to the Berlin’s Red Light district, where he hooked up with male escorts before eventually becoming one himself.
Related: Gay Student Will Lose His Virginity As An Act of Performance Art
“I became a machine,” he reflects.
The sex, Badasyan says, was not sexy or fulfilling. In fact, it often became violent.
“I had to use violence to enjoy sexuality,” he says. “I was punching people. They didn’t punch me, but they were screaming at me, one guy was about to hit me with a car, another smashed me with a bottle of beer.”
Then, of course, there was the constant fear of catching STDs.
“I was always scared of sexual contact with positive people,” he says.
Looking back on the project, Badasyan says it changed him, and maybe not for the better.
“My sexuality is very strange now,” he says. “I don’t go on dates with gay people anymore. The only way [I can] enjoy sex is voyeurism in men’s bathrooms, and by picking up of straight, bi, and undecided guys in the street in Berlin.”
Kangol
OK, so this was some sort of conceptual art project, I guess. Didn’t a woman artist already do this? Maybe not.
In terms of STDs, was he not using condoms? In terms of having sex every day, clearly it was to be with a different person every day, rather than the same partner. So why didn’t he just go to a bathhouse or sex club. There are tons in Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, etc.
A lot about this story sounds fishy, though, down to his claim that he had to become violent, that he can only get into voyeurism and, a Queerty fave, he’s now into “straight,” bi and “undecided guys.” Psychologists, give Mr. Badasyan your cards!
Stache
I guess if you were committed to it then sure. Why not. Proves you don’t have to be the most attractive to get plenty of sex too.
The last part I find hard to believe too. Then again maybe drugs were involved so anythings possible.
Xzamilio
Okay, who was this for? What was the point of this? I know art is subjective and maybe the “artistry” was fulfilling for him, but I doubt actual sex workers think of themselves as the Rembrandts of coitus. I hope he was a strict top or switching it up… I can’t imagine 365 days of anal pounding will be his friend in the twilight years. Or maybe we’ll be able to just pull out our rectums and slide a new one in by the time we’re all elderly.
Aromaeus
Unless he documented every single guy he had sex with and got some photo or video evidence of the encounters I’m gonna call BS on him successfully completing this task. If he’s counting blow-and-goes maybe but even that’s a stretch(pun intended)
robho3
Sounds like my life —- I didn’t know I was artistic.
DDstar1me
Hhhhhhh….why? Just why?
redcarpet30
Hmmm, who could have possibly predicted this wasn’t a great idea and certainly wasn’t worth the risks or trouble even given any artistic payout or attention in the news/ego stroking? hmmm.
charlie_jackpot
This isn’t art – this was him justifying his sexuality
Captain Obvious
Hipsters are drinking their own Kool-Aid now.
redcarpet30
You’d think he would have given up after the 150th bad dick he got.
Alistair Wiseman
Just another example of how aesthetic and objective standards in the excellance of art have been diminished to basic human body functions.
Be an adult, tell the truth and don’t hide behind an artists label just because you wanted to get your rocks off.
Caprice Goldberg
Yeah, I had a couple of years like this.
Still identify with the voyeuristic bathroom thing but I feel fine otherwise…
calpoidog
@Kangol: Do you use a condom for every skin to skin encounter? don’t know of too many guys who do. blow jobs, rubbing dicks together, etc can both give you STDs.
spankt
In Sydney that’s just called another year
tardis
Lol, okay.
JerseyMike
EWWWWW!!!!
ShaunNJ
Well, I was looking for a New Year’s resolution…..
Billy Budd
This is not art. Come on! He was just sex crazed and probably on meth.
Billy Budd
By the way, I have been very promiscuous in the past and I don’t regret a thing I did. But this guy and his reactions seem strange to me. Pathological.
Dave Downunder
What a deluded nut job. This isn’t art, art is something tangible that others can hear or see and appreciate. For many guys this is just a lifestyle and you don’t see them calling it art.
Bauhaus
Artful.
ErikO
Meh, he’s another queen that actually believes that hetero/straight men actually have sex with other men and needs that pipe dream fantasy.
I know gay and bisexual men who were hos some of them literally were hos but they are not into the whole bathroom scene or picking up random people on the streets, or bath houses for the most part.
Kangol
@calpoidog: You make a great point, but the risks of STD transmission are much higher if you’re having oral sex, anal sex, and anal/oral sex with random guys (which was his point) every single day for a year. So using a condom and taking PrEP should have been part of his routine if he wanted to lessen the possibility of contracting STDs, which he specifically mentions. In my own life, no, I have not always used condoms for skin-to-skin sexual contact, but I have tried to be safe(r). I also did not see myself as the Marcel Duchamp of gay sex, though, and turn sex into a conceptual project, with a different guy every single day for a year.
Kangol
Speaking of Duchamp, conceptual art, and Warhol: did he film these encounters? THAT would make an interesting art-house film, especially when he starts to go a bit nutso. On the other hand, there are authors who have basically written about doing exactly what he did, but made the experiences into art through artistic means, i.e., creating literature out of it.
ErikO
@Kangol: Yes those would be extremely interesting. I have seen pictures of both of them in drag.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Wow the Art market has really depreciated
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
How much and do they place the red sticker over his hole
itsmyhusbandandme
I’d be exhausted just changing the sheets.
JP
itsmyhusbandandme.wordpress.com
Mmmrrrggglll
Huh
o.codone
Art? hhahahaaha. A whore, just a whore.