Teasing puts the pizzazz and the mystery into sex. Otherwise, we’d just be rutting animals. And actually, even animals tease. Look at the stop-start, pounce-retreat mating dances of birds, cats, apes, even snakes. A good tease is erotic but indirect, building up to total seduction and surrender slowly. As that consummate striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee used to say, “Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”

A great tease has all the time in the world. And with a great tease, you never know IF you’re going to get the gold you’re going for. You might, but you might not. You have to be flexible with a tease. You have to remember the Golden Rule of Tease: You never know. The best laid plans may not get you laid the way you planned. Just go with the tease, please…

Teasing wears a variety of masks and hats and stockings. There’s the innocent tease who doesn’t even know she’s a tease, and is all the more devastating for it. There’s the experienced tease who spins her webs of seduction with great skill and sensitivity. I say “her” because, though men can certainly tease with the best of us, teasing is a feminine wile. It is manipulative and circuitous, considered womanly attributes, as opposed to aggressive and direct. Great teases never make pre-emptive attacks, unless they follow up with immediate withdrawal.

Some teasing is spontaneous, light as a feather. Some teasing is calculated, steeped in the sorcerer’s arts. Some teasing is loving and sweet, almost nurturing, like tickling a baby. Some teasing is playful and charming. Dazzling. Devastatingly witty. Some teasing is mean and nasty, even vicious and cruel. Teasing can be humiliating. Torture is a form of teasing. Some teasing really hurts. Rapes, murders, even mass murders have been committed by people—even children–who say they did it because they were teased.

Teasing is usually quite harmless too, of course. That’s why we say “I’m just teasing!” to insist we mean no harm. But, just to make matters more complex, it’s the dangerous aspects of teasing that often make it erotic. That, and the sensuous nature of revealing something slowly, gradually, then maybe not at all, then maybe a little more. It’s too dangerous to show more. Too hot to handle. That’s the Art of the Tease.

One of the greatest teases of history is Queen Esther of the Bible. That’s right, Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners, right there in your Bible, you can read all about Queen Esther of Shushan, in what is now Iran, who teased the great and powerful Persian King Ahasuerus into such an erotic frenzy that he freed the Jews of his Kingdom from a genocide edict. Cleopatra was another fantastic tease. She’s known for being a great fellatio artist. But it was her more subtle skills in the Art of Teasing that kept the Romans guessing and kept Egypt ruled by Egyptians until her death.

In modern times, teasing is the stuff of stars, Marilyn Monroe being the most famous tease of all; she still teases us with her sex, her comedy and tragedy. Bettie Page, sometimes called the Dark Marilyn, was another great tease. She still is a great tease. I was privileged to have her as a guest on my show a few years ago, and though she spoke with me on the air for over an hour, she refused to show her face. What a tease! She said she wanted us to think of her the way she was, young and beautiful. In other words, she wanted control of her image. And, yes, teasing is about control. Once you lose control, you’re not teasing anymore. It’s tough to tease when you’re mid-orgasm.

During that Bettie Page show, one of my in-studio guests was a lovely young lady all dressed up and with hair in bangs just like Bettie Page. She came with the renowned Mistress Antoinette, and she spoke to Bettie, and it was like communing with a heavenly spirits, yes indeed, Brothers and Sisters. It was like communing with the spirit of sexual beauty, speaking to the legendary Bettie Page. And this young lady, was in a way, blessed by Saint Bettie. And now she is a big star: an international supermodel of the vintage fashion and fetish world, burlesque performance artist, rock star girlfriend of Marilyn Manson and one of the great American Teases of the 21st Century. Her name is Dita Von Teese.

On another note, my darling bloggamist, we are starting to get some very promising candidates to play Eros on Eros Day, but I’m not going to say who yet (yes, I’m teasing you). Though I will also warn you that if you’ve been thinking about applying for the position, you should apply now, because we’re going to make our decision when Annie Body gets back from AVN in Vegas which is in just a few short days. And now for the most shameless plug of all, if you haven’t made your Eros Day Reservations, it’s time to do it now. The donation price will go up, and I’m not teasing.

Enough with the teasing. Time for a little orgasmic release: Beddy Time!