Electric Feel
Electricity was erotic long before vibrating dildos. One of my current fascinations is early conceptions of electricity. In the 18th century, when research on electricity and its properties took off, demonstrations of its fantastical properties became popular with the elites. It was perhaps inevitable that these demonstrations would turn to the erotic when it was discovered that the human body could conduct electricity. This article describes the “Electric Venus” or Electric Kiss, invented by the German professor Georg Matthias Bose. He would select a beautiful lady from the audience, and have her charged with electricity, standing on an insulated stool. Males from the audience would then approach her, trying to kiss her, but as they came close, a spark would jump the gap between his lips and hers, discouraging any attempt, “while exhilarating the lady and the rest of the audience.”
Bose later developed a theory — whether serious or poetic, I don’t know — of male and female electric fire:
In his poem on electricity he presented an innovative explanation of electical phenomena based, not by chance, on the distinction between ‘male’ and ‘female’ eletric fire. The male fire, emitted by metals and animal bodies, was unusually strong and powerful: sparks, with their crackling sound, were visible manifestations of this kind of fire. The female fire, instead, was a weak luminous emanation, the kind of light that characterized the aurora borealis.
The connection between virility and electricity became so strong that people thought castrati couldn’t conduct electricity. This article details demonstrations with Leyden jars, one of which was performed for the King of France, and had a chain of 180 guards jumping at the same time when they closed a circuit with the jar. In 1772 Joseph-Aignan Siguad de la Fond directed a similar experiment for the Duke of Chartres, involving a chain of twenty people, including three castrati, to investigate the effects of virility on electrical conductivity. (You can guess the result.)
Those two articles include lots of other interesting examples from the history of electricity in the public imagination.
Electric kisses didn’t end with the 18th century. Coilhouse dug up an excerpt from the 1936 book “The Art of Kissing” earlier this year, detailing the practice of “electric kissing parties”. As Nadya Lev writes at Coilhouse, this stuff lends itself easily to a steampunk reimagining:
Some few years ago, a very peculiar kissing custom arose which deserves mention here because, from it, we can learn how to adapt the method to our modem devices. At that time, when young people got together, they held, what was then known as, “electric kissing parties.” Young people are ever on ’ the outlook for novel ways of entertaining themselves. In fact, when ether was first developed as an anesthetic, the young bloods of the town used to form “ether-sniffing” parties in which they got a perfectly squiffy ether “jag.” But to return to the “electric kisses.” An excerpt from a contemporary writer will, perhaps, give us some idea of what happened.
“The ladies and gentlemen range themselves about the room. In leap year the ladies select a partner, and together they shuffle about on the carpet until they are charged with electricity, the lights in the room having been first turned low. Then they kiss in the dark; and make the sparks fly for the amusement of the onlookers.”
This is a variation of Bose’s Electrifying Venus where both parties are charged, but instead of pulling away when the spark hits, the partners are supposed to resist and then kiss. This kiss is supposed to be especially pleasurable: “if you do not kiss the moment after the shock has been perpetrated, the pleasure will be all gone.”
Once you’ve mastered this, you’re going to want to up the ante, the author suggests:
Once you have practiced this for Some time, you will become so innured to the slight shock that you will seek more potent electric shocks. These can be obtained with the use of an electric vibrator or in fact, any device that is worked from a battery and a coil which steps up the weak 3 volts of the battery. Shooting galleries have electricity testing devices of this nature which have two handles. No matter what you use, the method is as following: first you take hold of one pole of the live wire, of the handle of the machine, if that is what you are using. Then, your partner should take hold of the other pole, or handle. This done, bring your lips together until there is about an eighth of an inch separating your lips. At this moment, turn the rheostat that increases the current. As soon as the charge is strong enough, a sudden, intense spark will jump the gap of your lips. Again, learn not to flinch but to seize hold of the opportunity of bringing your lips together in a grand, climactic kiss. The advantage of this, method is that you can regulate the electrical charges go that, when you become innured to one strength, you can increase the current almost indefinitely.
A word of warning, however, is apropos here. Be satisfied with the current generated by this battery set. Don’t be like a young friend of mine who discovered that the battery set, even at its highest output, was too weak for him and his partner. Being of an experimental nature, he decided to see what would happen were he to use the ordinary house current as the electrical stimulus. And so, together with his partner, he placed himself in front of an electric wall outlet into which he had screwed a plug and a wire whose end had been, frayed so that the two wires were separated. Taking hold of one wire, he advised the girl to take hold of the other., Then, using the usual “electric-kiss” technique, he bent over and started to bring his lips slowly towards the girl’s lips. He got as far as about half an inch from her lips, and that’s all. Because, a moment later, he saw a blinding flame sear across his eyes and he felt an enormous blow jolt him off his feet. When he came to enough to realize where he was, he found himself asprawl on the floor, his girl friend in a similar position a few feet away. The result was a pair of burned lips and a combined determination to stick to the old fashioned way of kissing. The burned lip will always spurn the flame.
