Is the Great White North really that frigid?

As this post goes to press, so to speak, I'm boarding a WestJet flight to Edmonton, Alberta, and from there to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. I will be within erection distance of the Arctic Circle for the rest of the week.

The Northwest Territories. To me, just the sound of that is incredibly exotic. It's not even part of the recently-created Nunavut province; it's still a damned "territory." Ooo.

When I was a kid in Brooklyn, I loved maps. Still do. And I have a faint memory of being bent over my desk, poring over atlases for hours and hours as my imagination ran wild, and I do remember looking upon the Canadian north and wondering how life would be in (what I figured was) barreness.

It's a family trip; Kara flew there last week to visit relatives, and I'm tagging along because I can. Because we'll be in tight lodgings and her urchins are with us (and I write this teasingly and with a smirk), I have my doubts about how much sexplay we'll get to have. I'd love to slip out of her family's place during the perpetual twilight, find a glen near the banks of Great Slave Lake, and take her from behind at the base of a black spruce. Feel her tightness grip me as I watch her claw the bark, hear her pant as she squats, bent-over, with my hands gripping her hips and tugging her backward to me. Mm.

I think the sexual anthropologist in me might be a little frustrated on this trip, though. I love to travel, and part of that pleasure (if I'm in a city) is to learn about and explore the seedy nightlife. It's a sport, probably enhanced by my first eye-opening (and cock-awakening) experiences when I cut class in high school to cruise around Times Square.

Stripclubs, sex shops, BDSM networks, lingering skanky porn theatres that refuse to die in this DVD- and internet-age... they become unspoken additions to my personal to-do lists, simmering underneath my plans to find excellent pubs, museums, historic sites, and galleries. For fun, I'll explore Craigslist postings from escorts in a given area, not because I'm necessarily seeking them out (no, really), but as a visual and voyeuristic taste of the women who'll be around me there. (Shuttup, no, really.) It's a game, and now that I've been doing this sexblog thang for the last few years, sometimes I'll share my results with you. I did this before past trips to Chicago or back home. Some people collect tchotchke shotglasses or refridgerator magnets; I look for pix of gorgeous, interesting local women and post them there. My little hobby.

But Yellowknife, Yellowknife, Yellowknife! You're freaking me out! I'm going to totally love being with my woman. I'm going to totally love meeting her family. A chance to perhaps see bison or bowhead whales in the wild? Sign me up! I'm going to be thrilled to experience your 23-hours of daylight, to meet and hang out with your Dene First Nations folk, to get a beer and a bison burger at the landmark Wildcat Cafe. But I've been looking through the 'net, Yellowknife, and I'm dumbstruck. Flaccid, even.

I did find an obscure inventory record of historic buildings. It includes the "Old Prostitutes Log Cabin" at 3804 Bretzlaf Drive, built by John Stakston in 1938. John lived there until the 1950s, and we might readily assume that he was a local pimp because the house "became a prostitution den when this street was Yellowknife's red light district, known as Glamour Alley." Now that can be good and fun sexual history to discover.

But I am learning that many of the 18,000 or so folks in "the Knife" aren't exactly the sex-positive type. I've found one blog covering queer issues there. One. Jason tweets me to say that "western Canada, in general, is much more prudish than Toronto or Montreal. That's not to say "things" don't happen. It's discrete. Yellowknife is filled with well-traveled, educated, adventurous people. It's very diverse, inclusive and friendly."

Yet a local pro-atheism blog recently detailed an account of discrimination against gays by a religious zealot.

And speaking of religious zealots, it seems that the Catholic school board there refuses to administer HPV vaccines to female students despite statistics apparently showing that young women in Yellowknife become sexually active at earlier ages than in the rest of Canada, and that STD infections are eight times the national average there. Suffer the little children.

Yellowknife. Jason suggests that your discretion is the better part of your valour. I hope so, because I'm wondering: have you no healthy sexual consciousness, no sex-positive venues, no reasonably enticing sensuality for the erotically adventurous, woman- (and queer-) respecting, blog-posting, kink-conscious, I'm-really-not-trying-to-be-such-a tourist? Dammit, Yellowknife, inquiring minds want to know!