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Coitus Bostonius
Caesar’s Roman Orgy offers nudity, fondling, and all the whipped cream you can eat. Will it prove to be more than we in Boston can swallow?
BY CHRIS WRIGHT

I’m gonna need a bigger toga here!"

The woman who hollers this, a slim blonde clad in a skimpy pink toga-type thingy herself, is getting a little tetchy. And you can’t blame her. She’s been wrapping pasty flesh in white linen for a while now, and it looks like hard work. The guys (mostly guys) are as fidgety as toddlers, only much larger. Moreover, it soon becomes apparent that tying someone’s toga requires entering into an intimate relationship with that person’s armpit.

"I NEED a bigger TOGAAH!"

You also have to sympathize with the bigger-toga guy, who’s left standing there — bare-chested, arms folded — while alternative drapery is secured. The guy, after all, has shelled out $35 for the privilege of wrapping a sheet around his bulk and bobbing out, along with about 150 others, on the chill Boston Harbor for what has been billed as "a wild bacchanal." For him, it’s not getting off to a particularly auspicious start.

Caesar’s Roman Orgy — "New England’s Naughty, Sexy, R-Rated Party Cruise" — has been doing business for two years now. It’s run by an outfit called Comedy Theater Productions, which is generally given to providing more wholesome entertainment — an "Irish Mystery Cruise" called "Oh Danny Buoy!", another called "A Pirate’s Life for Me" ("Ahoy, maties! Captain Roger invites ye to join his terrifying and detestable crew!").

"We’re not always on the cutting edge," says marketing guy David Goldstein. "So it’s kinda fun to have a product like this."

Quite.

Caesar’s Roman Orgy, as its name suggests, is about sex. Or about the idea of sex. No actual sex is supposed to take place on the cruise. Sort of. They call it "environmental theater," but even those who run the thing seem unsure how to characterize it. In simple terms: it’s an occasion to get naked, to indulge in a little fondling here and there, and maybe partake in a spot of whipped-cream licking — or at least to stand around in a toga watching others do these things. An inherent risk with this sort of event, of course, is that you’ll end up with 150 guys standing around watching each other.

"One of my issues is the crowd," says Goldstein. "You don’t want ... you know."

Perverts?

"Mmm."

To deter undesirables — the sullen pervs, the drunken oglers — the organizers refuse to let men come on the boat alone. "We get a huge amount of bachelor and bachelorette parties," says the show’s artistic director, Kevin Prentice, who also oversees the cruises in the guise of Licentious Caesar. "The crowd tends to be people in their late 20s, early 30s. On a normal night, it’s a real cross section: we get a lot of swinging couples looking for like-minded people."

Tonight, however, is not a normal night. E! Television has a crew on board to tape a segment for its Wild On series, a basic-cable combo of travel show and soft porn (girls flashing pixel-obscured breasts in New Orleans, donning next-to-nothing swimsuits on the Spanish Riviera). Because of this, the cruise has attracted more frat boys than usual, which in turn leads things to get a little more wild than even the Wild On people had bargained for.

It all starts off sedately enough. In the boat’s bar, would-be debauchees mill about sipping Captain-and-Cokes and giving each other the once-over. Some wear their togas over clothing, while others appear to be naked, their tattooed shoulders pimpling and puckering in the harsh light. Though it’s not what you’d call an unattractive crowd, you get the sense that many of these people might be more familiar with floppy disks than firm flesh. And then there are the college boys, one of whom is nursing three — count ’em: three — Bud Lites at the same time.

There’s a sense of possibility in the air, but also an undercurrent of what-the-fuck-are-we-doing-here? Before long, Prentice — sorry, Licentious Caesar — arrives on the scene to tell us. Caesar’s toga is nicer than most, and he has one of those crown-of-leaves things on his head. He also has the worn look of someone who has seen one too many orgies. The first thing Caesar does is announce a caveat emptor (those who are offended by nudity should get off the boat). "Not only is nudity allowed," he bellows. "It is encouraged!" This news elicits a loud "Yay!" from the crowd. He goes on to add that there are rules, however, which in turn elicits a loud "Boo!"

Caesar’s first rule has to do with touching. Fondling is allowed, he says, provided the fondler asks permission first. (Over the course of the night, this leads to the spectacle of guys walking around saying things like, "May I touch your breast?" and "Mind if I grab your ass?") Caesar goes on to add that touching oneself is always acceptable, and invites us to give it a try there and then. Nobody does.

To get us in the mood, there is some pre-orgy entertainment: a lumpy male dancer named Gluteus Maximus, and a short belly dancer named Panacea. After this, Caesar does a turn of his own, inviting people up on stage to be slapped on the ass with a long pink dildo. One woman takes the dildo in her mouth and there is a pattering of applause, the sort you’d hear for a classical quartet. As things get more raunchy, though, people mostly convey their appreciation by yelling.

A woman whips her left breast out and lets Caesar suck it and the togas yell, "Hail, Caesar!"

A woman lifts her toga up to reveal a red, white, and blue–striped G-string and the men chant: "USA! USA!"

In ancient Rome, orgies had as much to do with food as they did with sex. At this orgy, though, the food is largely ignored — all except the Miracle Whip that’s being licked off the pierced nipples of the young woman who has prostrated herself on the buffet table. Inevitably, perhaps, a guy gets ahead of himself and nibbles instead of licks. "Ow!" the woman says. "You asshole!" She slides off of the table in a huff and disappears. The E! Television people, meanwhile, are beside themselves.

"They’ve been searching for an event with a nude woman on a buffet table," says Prentice. "They’ve been looking high and low, and they finally found it." This explains the manic determination of the cameraman, who muscles his way to the table like an offensive lineman. At one point, in the midst of filming, he says, "I need fresh batteries," and his face reflects what can only be described as horror.

Other than the nibbled nipple, though, the orgy has been pretty mild. The only real groaning so far comes in response to a pun: "Her pussy tastes so good, he’ll be glad ’e ate ’er!" Then there are the silly-saucy parlor games: a "Strip Quiz"; a mock auction for the services of a slave ("Can anyone go higher than a hand job?"); and a "Wild Night Out Scavenger Hunt," which involves such tasks as: "Get a stranger to flash you their private parts in public," and "Streak through at least two decks of the boat wearing only your birthday suit and a smile."

Still, there hasn’t been a single instance of ball-bearing, pube-parading nudity yet (at least not that I’ve seen). A few breasts are exposed. One guy whips his willy out before a table of women ("They didn’t laugh," he says, "so that felt pretty good"). Some of the braver souls try the "May I fondle?" routine, with varying degrees of success. Mostly, though, the togas stroll about as if wondering what to do with all this sexual freedom.

"There’s usually a lot more nudity," says Goldstein. "A lot more nudity."

Soon, a sense of not-so-quiet desperation has gripped some of the college boys, their Bud-fueled libidos causing them to act like cartoon characters: steam shooting out of ears, eyeballs boinging from their sockets, baseball caps spinning. Many of the less-excitable togas seem content to stand around making small talk. One guy gripes about the inefficiency of the Postal Service. Then things take a sudden turn for the sordid.

"Moon Over Mesopotamia" is an exercise in creative mooning. Contestants are given markers and sent off to create designs on their own booties, which they will then reveal to the crowd. Though most of the asses bear wobbly, spidery scrawls, nobody seems to mind— it’s the canvases we’re interested in. One guy bops with such enthusiasm, his testicles whomp his own backside. A woman with a pink streak in her hair, meanwhile, seems determined to show off more than her artwork, turning around every now and then to provide us with a frontsies shot. When she gets off the stage, the woman drops her pants and just stands there.

"Hail, Caesar!"

Before long, a crowd has gathered. Breasts appear. A penis. Miracle Whip is consumed from unspeakable places. "I’ll take care of the ass!" yells one guy as others take care of everything else. Now this is an orgy. And then, and then, and then ... And then the boat docks. The pants come up. Togas are adjusted. With a collective ahem, it’s all over.

Back at Long Wharf, as the uneaten food is scraped into trash cans and the togas are discarded, as the orgy-goers file out into the night wiping whipped cream from their chins, a sense of something approaching embarrassment hangs in the air. "That was one of our wilder nights," says Goldstein. "Our wildest ever," adds Prentice.

Meanwhile, the woman with the pink streak stands quietly by the dockside, waiting, she says, for her friend. I ask her if she had a good time. "Mmm," she says. "Mmm." And then her friend shows up and the two walk away. There is hardly a sound now, just the lapping of the water on the dock and a distant "Woo-hoo!" Otherwise, it’s as if none of this ever happened. Which is exactly how we in Boston like our orgies.

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com

Issue Date: May 23 - 30, 2002
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