Dating Confessions by You "Callin' me baby when I'm trying to get over you doesn't help. I just don't have the heart to ask you to stop because my heart skips a little each time you say it to me."
Dating Advice from . . . Animators by Chantal O'Keeffe Q: Is there a way to enjoy the primitive game of cat-and-mouse without crossing any lines? A: Well, if the mouse starts picking up ironing boards and frying pans...
REGULARS
posted 3/13/2002
Remember when wacky director John Waters turned up on the Tonight Show with a copy of Splosh! magazine under his arm? Neither do I. But Bill Shipton does. Shipton is to sploshing what L. Ron Hubbard is to scientology. Spawned more than a decade ago, Splosh! is a cartoonish vision of what would happen if Benny Hill and Gallagher ran riot at the Playboy mansion. I called Bill at Splosh! HQ, situated in the sleepy English village of St. Leonards-on-Sea to find out what's going on.
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Grant Stoddard: Most people in the U.S. are probably completely unaware of sploshing. Could you give us some kind of definition of what it is?
Bill Shipton: It's best defined as lurking around with messy or wet things food, mud or paint or just getting wet with your clothes on. Sploshing forms two categories. There are people who do it in a sensual way, as a form of foreplay. That side is quite mainstream. At the other end, there are people who like to take a terribly formal situation and destroy it. For them, the fun is the sheer anarchy of acting out a formal role-play situation, which they destroy by having a food fight or rolling around in the mud in their wedding dress.
That's the side we see in the magazine?
We try to do the over-the-top stuff that people don't try so much at home. However, I have heard a lot of seemingly sane people say things like, "I've always wanted to throw a custard pie at someone." I think it's because, as kids we're always being told, "Don't play with your food" or "Don't get your shoes messy," etc.
Where does sploshing, the verb, come from?
Er...me! The title of the mag spawned the verb. We wanted something onomatopoeic. Splash! was too wet-sounding, Squash! was too solid. Splosh! seemed to feel right. We haven't got an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary yet, but "splosh" recently turned up in the crossword of the [London] Times. In the U.S.A. sploshing is also referred to as W.A.M., which stands for "wet and messy." There are a lot of American Wammers.
How did you become involved in sploshing?
Originally, I was going to do a fun magazine on record collecting, because I needed a niche market. And then I thought I should stick to what I know, and I knew a bit about sex. Having worked at sex magazines, I had read letters about people mud wrestling and so forth, so I knew people liked it. We started in 1989; the videos came later.
There's something about the fetish that seems very familiar. When I first saw Splosh! I thought, "Yeah, this makes sense somehow."
Yes. It has always been in the background, but we're the only magazine that's entirely about people being messy. I wanted something that was a good laugh, and I wanted people to be turned on without realizing it.
Can you tell me a little more about the videos?
My favorite is Messy Missies. It's a parody of a guy spending the night watching TV, just going between channels, and it's an excuse to skewer different TV programs, like tennis or the BBC news. Everything on the TV has obvious messy consequences. It's a bunch of short sketches, with real pie-in-the-face type comedy. It's meant to be both funny and sexy at the same time.
You've only spoken so far about heterosexual people doing sploshing . . .
Oh, it's actually more popular in the gay community and with transvestites. I think a lot of gay people are more willing to try things than straight people. It's particularly popular in the transvestite community because they get fantastically dressed up, and the idea of completely destroying it is terrific. With them, it really starts to become a piece of performance art.
Splosh! Studios is in St. Leonards-on-Sea. I hear that a major journalism school was built there because it's deemed the most boring and un-newsworthy place in England. If only they knew!
Our studio is two doors down from the school! It's funny because most people here know what I do, because it's a fairly small place. It's an old-fashioned area, but everyone here is very tolerant.
Why do you think that the U.K. is the world leader in sploshing?
Our sense of humor. And, broadly speaking, we're a nation of reserved people, and this is such an affront to that. I know a few sploshers from France who profess that throwing British food around is vastly preferable to eating it.
I'm definitely splosh-curious. What tips do you have for a first-timer?
It really is one of the few fetishes where you can buy all the equipment you need at your local supermarket. There are no embarrassing items you need to get. I would recommend going food shopping with your partner, and find things that taste good to the both of you. It's squishy things you are after, like creams and custards. Things like beans and spaghetti can also work nicely, but the key is not to use them together. I wouldn't put anything together that you wouldn't use together in a meal. You also have to make sure it's something you'll be able to clean up afterwards, so I wouldn't go over the top with a bucket of porridge. Don't pick anything with a strong smell, like ketchup. It may have a great color, but if you're using it in large quantities, you'll smell like vinegar for a few days. I would stay away from anything with strong artificial color. There's a famous story over here about a couple who went out and bought a jam with blue food coloring in it, smeared it all over themselves and came out looking like Smurfs. Certain things like batter mixes may seem like a good idea, but when they dry, they form a sort of solid lump. Before you know it, your balls are turned into a piece of unleavened bread. Something you really ought to try as an easy starter is Cool Whip. It's fantastic. I would recommend buying a lot of it, getting naked with your partner and slowly lowering yourself into it.
Do you recommend doing this inside or outside?
Most people do it inside. If you're going to do it to the extent that we do it here at the magazine, put plastic sheets down. Or you can do it in the bathroom or the kitchen, where you can wipe things off easier. This might destroy the spontaneity, but you can actually make setting up your place a part of your foreplay.
I'll do that. Does one person go first and the other person goes afterwards, or do we just go crazy on each other?
Well, it's just like sex. If you go at it like crazy, it'll be over in 30 seconds. It has to be a slow build-up, getting progressively more and more outrageous.
Where does the actual traditional sexual activity enter in to the act?
Usually it happens at the end.
So it's a slow crescendo of messiness until you both wind up on the floor?
The good thing about this is that sex has become such an important thing these days, and people get quite intimidated by it. You know, people get so scared about whether they're having sex the right way, or having the proper amount of orgasms, etc., and sploshing brings it back down to just being fun. You can't really do it wrong.
