As I was enigmatically telling some of my friends about the "History Of Sex Through Art" tours I was working on, I once referred to them in an email as my HOSTA tours (I love acronyms of all kinds). Then I found out that "Hosta" is also the name of a plant which interestingly sometimes blooms during the night like some of my ideas quite often bloom in my mind late at night (I’m a night owl). Then another night I had the idea to use the symbol of the Hosta plant colored in red to put next to my tours to indicate the level of “coarseness” I will use during the tour depending on your tolerance/interest in that matter (sort of like Mexican or Thai restaurants which let you determine the level of spiciness based on how many red peppers you choose).

TEST: click you-know-where for the 2-hosta-version of this etching.

If I want to give you the option to choose how “spicy” my commentaries will be, it's again because

I DO NOT WANT TO SHOCK OR SCANDALIZE YOU.

My only intent is to exhilarate you for a few hours in an amusing,

sexually-oriented (though not prurient) and non-politically-correct world.

Again, there is nothing wrong with a zero Hosta tour of the Louvre or Orsay, as it's what I’m good at, and I honestly don’t need that kind of trick to get you interested and entertained. I have been a good guide (so I like to think and so I've been told) for over 30 years without sharing any of the Hosta information which I gathered for my own benefit during my numerous readings as a history buff.

If I’m ready to share those anecdotes with you today, it’s because:

1) In order to survive as an individual guide and not be crushed by all those gigantic Internet platforms which exploit interchangeable guides for lousy pay (as the platform keeps a very high percentage of the money you pay them), it is a matter of survival for me to differentiate myself from them by offering tours and options that they can’t compete with.

2) It’s a known fact: sex sells (and pays off).

3) I have been both amused and delighted to find out about the private lives of some of the great men who in the past ruled my country but what’s the use of having access to classified information if you can’t share that info with a few chosen people?

All I want is to amaze you and to trigger your Giggle-spot, I swear!

But, even though I intend, if you choose the three Hosta version, to give you all the crude details, I don’t intend to be as “vulgar” as Joséphine was when she referred to Napoleon’s semen... and I will always remind you how subtle and refined Josephine could also be on other occasions.

Because Josephine, like Napoleon, like you or me, was capable of the worse AND of the best.

Also because the "romantic pervert" in me kind-of believes that you need both romance and naughtiness to make one’s life remarkable. And the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine, like the one between Cleopatra and Anthony (which, chances are, I will mention at some point) was in many ways remarkable.

So tell me, about the number of Hostas, what will it be?

Now, to give you some examples, suppose you choose the “C’est si bon at Malmaison” tour (very good choice if you ask me), well, with the "one Hosta version", I will tell you who married who and who slept with who (that's the least I can do for a tour which is, by definition, non-politically correct). I will also tell you how naughty Josephine was while Napoleon was away in Egypt, so much so that Napoleon was  determined to get a divorce when he came back (I will also tell you how Josephine got away with it and made up).

If you choose the "two hosta version", I will tell you additional spicy information such as: when Josephine was blamed for not being able to give Napoleon children (as she had in the past given another man two children), her answer was " it's not my fault, it's Napoleon’s because his sperm tastes like water”...

With 2 Hostas also, at Orsay, I will show you Courbet's "Origin of the world" (which I normally skip).

And with the "three hosta version", I will tell you stuff which should not be heard by all ears... and show you engravings/pictures which are not to be shown to all eyes...

For example, at Orsay again, I can show you (on my phone or tablet or laptop) some VERY crude 19th-century-photographs which could (probably) have inspired Courbet for his “Origin of the world”...

Click here for the

if you dare...