After knocking back a gin and valium, slip into something sensual and lie back, taking in the pulsating sounds of Erogenous Moves. VBC DJs Clitina aka Georgina Titheridge and Flapunzal aka Tammy Stretton are presenting erotic literature every Wednesday from 9-10PM on the VBC.
Flapunzal says “We’re taking the piss the whole time. It does get quite full on and explicit, but we tone it down by being quite silly in our delivery.” This delivery, which sees them take on a range of characters, is aimed at giving “aural pleasure – it’s erogenous, it really tickles on the old funny parts, the intimate parts,” Flapunzal says.
It was a book given to the pair called Sex Bar that inspired the idea for the show. Clitina says it “is a really sexy novel that wasn’t actually that sexy at all, so we started reading it out and thought it would be funny to do an erotica show reading bad erotic literature.”
Since this first offering, the girls have sourced material from a range of places, including from under family members’ beds, the public library, fan fiction sites, Whitcoulls, Mills & Boon, and second hand book stores, which they claim are the best for “really good, cheap, used, soft-core erotica.”
To get themselves in the mood, the two like to lubricate their vocal chords with a glass of wine before they settle into the tongue in cheek sensuality of the Erotica Show, where they combine readings, critiquing and discussions of their chosen texts. Flapunzal reveals that the bed of music their stories lie on is usually quite bad 70s music, and they do have a staple that works with any story. Flapunzal explains the album, called Erogenous Moves, as being “quite ambient. It’s got waves crashing in the background and it slowly builds up with pulsating and then it gets quite sexual. Then it goes into the moaning, and then there’s a hymen breaking, or something,” she jokes.
Over top of this music, each week they usually share about four books worth of stories with their listeners, which are presented in the range of accents and characters the girls slip into. Flapunzal‘s favourite impersonation is Helen Clark – who she likes to take on for “the really dirty bits” and Clitina likes to enter the mind of a Spanish temptress or any sort of grating Kiwi accent. Both do the “whorey Australian beast-woman” exceptionally well.
While they admit that most of the stories they present are cringingly bad, they do share a personal favourite they have presented on air before. Clitina explains the two found the story quite disturbing, and had not read it before presenting it live on air – they say the story is about the bizarre exploits of a man who finds sexual arousement in wearing nappies. This makes for some great quotes as they presented this story in their ‘Dazza the Australian’ voices, of which Flapunzal gives a fine example, bellowing “can you, ah, pin my diaper up?”
Through their weekly explorations into erotic literature, they have come to find great entertainment in synonyms for erogenous parts and can easily differentiate between what is written by men to women.
Flapunzal says “we found that when we first started out a few months ago a lot of the fiction we were reading was by men. The language is so funny – they write it pretending to be lesbians. It’s not that it’s really masculine – it’s just gross! Like, it’s the language of dirty old men at the pub, whereas when it’s women it’s really quite beautiful and descriptive and sexy.”
Future plans for the Erotica Show may include a trip through the ages, where they can expose the literature of “the dirty Greeks and Romans,” such as Flapunzal’s stash of Roman porn from her days of studying Classics at University.
While the duo have found the weekly show a most liberating experience, they do admit that their wild combination of ridiculous synthesized 70s music, beat poetry, singing, and stories about diaper-obsessed men means “the quality is questionable, but we feel cool at the time.”
Tune into the Erotica Show, every Wednesday from 9-10 PM on the VBC 88.3 FM. Or stream it live from www.vbc.org.nz.