The Erotic Waffle

     We stayed in a hotel called The Evelyn, 27th Street and 5th Avenue, on our recent visit to New York. I liked the place: the room was so small it couldn't become messy. There was a serviceable little gym in the basement that I used several times. The front desk handed out free bottled water and tangerines. When we left the bellman gave us directions to take the subway to LaGuardia that were better than the mess Google Maps offered.
     My wife picked The Evelyn for its location — convenient to Jersey City and our son and daughter-in-law, to Brooklyn, where the wedding festivities (the son of a college buddy, not one of mine, this time) were held. We walked as far north as Times Square and as far south as the Battery, to the West Village and nearby Madison Park.
     But one aspect of its location had not been anticipated, an adjacency I neatly summed up upon arrival.
      "You booked us next door to the Museum of Sex," I observed. We went about our business. Saturday night, got back to the hotel about 10 p.m. after coffee and cheesecake at Caffe Reggio. Investigating the place seemed in order — here, you enter through the gift shop. We were greeted by a woman holding a large dildo — this is New York City after all — who said that tickets to the museum itself cost $36 and included the special exhibit, "Super Funland: Journey Into the Erotic Carnival."
     Had I been wearing my columnist hat, I of course would have ponied up to experience the wonder. But I was wearing my frugal traveler after a long day hat, and so we both saved the $72 and skipped the place. It is expensive — you can get into the Met for only $30.

     I did think of EGD earlier, passing the shuttered Erotic Waffle cart above. Maybe because we parsed the word "waffle"here previously. Though honestly my curiosity centered around the word "erotic" — not heard in popular culture as much, lately. My guess being that it's like "oriental" — a term that once described a certain realm of exotism that has been banished in our world, fragmented into a hundred identities. Fifty years ago Bridget Bardot in a French maid's outfit could be described as "erotic" — now of course that would reflect cisnormative supremacy. What would erotic even mean anymore? The "to whom?" part is too immediate and variable.

     Not that "erotic" hold much interest, etymologically. From eros, obviously, the Greek god of love, though I'd better confirm, since it's what you think you know that trips you up. "Of or pertaining to the passion of love," is how my OED puts it, tracing the word, not to any divinity, but to the Greek word for "sexual love," no gods involved. That's why you always check.

     Perhaps damningly, I did not wonder what an erotic waffle could possibly be. In fact, I wondered whether the cart could be a mere decoration — a prop that did not actually open and serve commestibles.

     Wrong again. It did, and leaving the Museum of Sex, we saw what the an erotic waffle consisted of. Rather binary of them, now that I think of it. I took a few photos, though my wife worried that social media, which can be astoundingly prudish when it isn't peddling pure smut, would permit its posting. We'll see. You have to look closely; too close, I hope, for an algorithm to notice and take offense.