EROTIC RARITIES. Prowling the back pages of The Village Voice, I noticed an intriguing item in Tristan Taormino's kinky, linky Sexy gift guide 2005: "a nine-foot, early-20th-century JAPANESE SCROLL with ink and watercolor sketches of a blind man's fucking contest that, well, defies description." So I found my way to Erotic Rarities, squinted at the fascinating $5,100 scroll (what's that $100 for?), checked out the rest of the site, and decided that it was a classy enough operation to bring to your attention, sensitive reader.

Photo: David Marc Fischer