Finally, my home office is up and running, and I am rested after a couple of insane work weeks. You all know I work 40 hours a week, right? Then after work I do things like try to work on books to meet the many deadlines I have this year, and I do other non-paying (but fun) work things like radio shows. In fact, last week (after a grueling 7.5-hour meeting at GV) I reappeared on Sirius OutQ Radio, as Derek and Romaine’s "official porn reviewer." Good times, I’m telling you.
Last week (after another long office day) I had the pure pleasure of attending a workshop at GV hosted by celebrity-on-tour, Dr. Ducky Doolittle. The topic was foreplay for lovers, and Ducky was a funny, insightful and excellent presenter. I thought I’d hide at the back of the class, but audience members recognized me and I wound up answering questions throughout the class. I have long wanted to meet Ducky, I have been a fan of hers for years, and in person found her to be sweet, smart and incredibly gorgeous. We took a picture together and I’ll post it the minute she emails it to me.
After the class, many people came over to talk to me. A sweet old man thanked me for my oral sex books — which prompts me to thank everyone who has posted a review to Amazon in light of the Christian/fellatio debacle. And thank folks who wrote in support and gave me your two cents’ worth on the whole thing. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
One of the audience members complimented me and asked if I wrote anything outside of sex guides, and I was momentarily stumped. Not because I don’t know what that means, but because I’ve been wanting to do that for years. A whole world opened up in my head when he asked me that, a teeming swirl of ideas and experiences, all of which I’d like to open up and excavate. I’d like to write about the intersection of sex and technology, something I know a lot about from working with the most skilled engineers/coders/fabricators in the world. In SRL I have worked with people who write code for teledildonics, fabricate fucking machines and artists who modify their bodies with technology to change their sensory worlds. I’m dying to write a full kiss-and-tell about my truly strange, disturbing and hilarious experiences working in the sex industry. Like the time I was treated like shit and ignored for two hours by the most famous sex personality in the business and found myself later standing quietly watching them clean dogshit off my engineer boots. Or being stalked by a RealDoll, hostile run-ins with women in the adult industry, the NY pornographer who is into shit and paint enemas and sends me videos, the mysterious Buddhist who lives in a residency hotel here in SF and owns a huge, expanding adult empire but has his meals brought to him because he will not eat in a restaurant… I’d also really like to write about how I got here, from being a child who grew up in a an environment that goes beyond a TV-movie, cooking my mother’s drugs for her at 12, and living on the streets from 13 until age 17, sleeping on rooftops, in parks and in abandoned cars, panhandling for food and money, dumpster diving, stealing, fighting, watching friends kill themselves in different ways, trying over and over to get off the streets, and writing the entire time. I also really want to write about working in the amazing world of SRL. Mark Pauline and I have written together over the years (that’s where I was after work a lot last week) and I’d like to continue that. But no, so far publishers only want me to write sex guides and edit anthologies, which is okay by me because it’s a lot of fun, and a dream job, at that.
And you can’t say all that when a stranger asks you a simple question, and you’re kind of at work, and it’s been almost 12 hours since you’ve been away from work and you’re really tired, and it’s not your workshop. You just smile big and say, "I’d really like to." Then you go home and when you try to fall asleep, your mind races around that little track of experiences and memories, imagining how you’d like to write it. I do, anyway.
Upcoming fun: On April 9 here in SF, RE:Search (the publisher that brought the groundbreaking book Modern Primitives) is hosting a 25-year anniversary retrospective art show for Survival Research Laboratories at The Lab from 7pm-midnight. There will be big, beautiful color prints of photos from historical shows, a few machines, and a couple of discussion panels. I might be on the a panel (still not sure what my role will be — as an eight-year member I might talk, or I might work the event) and the whole thing is going to be really cool and interesting.
Two weeks ago I finally got sick of feeling like an outcast at wedding time — being the female friend of the groom I always end up doing things with the ladies that make me wish I was hanging out with the guys. Never again — not since I crashed my first bachelor party in drag. My pal John Law got married, and dammit if I was going to read poetry and do a "ritual" with a bunch of women I don’t know. I drew on a mustache, packed a nice big dick in my pants, put on a tie and men’s clothes — and had a blast. Some men were not pleased, which gave me a thrill (there were over 100 men in attendance), and my friends punched me in the arm, called me "buddy" and laughed at all my stupid "let’s get some pussy" jokes. In solidarity, a couple guys drew on moustaches, too, and at one point when my hat had to come off and we all had to wear weird hats and funny noses, one guy re-assured me that all the cool guys were "wearing little sparkly barrettes these days." Phew — a metrosexual moment rescued my masculinity.
As if that wasn’t a treat, I got a chance to let out my inner Cindy Sherman at a joint birthday party for Hornboy and Chriso — and true to both of their individual superhero fetishes, the theme was superheroes. But with a condition: you had to come as the superhero you would be, not She-Hulk or any other icon. No problem — I spun around three times and became Roxy Mounds, Foxy Brown’s white sister. Drinking heavily and squawking "I’ll kung-fu your ass" all night was just what the doctor ordered, and I happily strutted around in a skanky blonde mullet wig, stuffed balloons into my tank top, and sported platform boots and gold satin bellbottoms. Sexy Hornboy was the nefarious Superconductor, controlling the tempo of anything that moved for his own sick pleasures. Chriso was Wonder Boy, Wonder Woman’s gay little brother, and he had it all worked out. Powers: flying, super strength, super speed, semi-invulnerable, just like his sister WW. Bracelets: repel bad taste in all its forms. Lasso: makes whoever is bound by it want to have gay sex. Belt: keeps WB fabulous in even the most harrowing of battles. Shoes: make WB just a little taller than he really is. Everyone squeezed my mounds all night, and they later ended up popped on the floor under the snack table.
There were dozens of excellent superheroes, from Super Jew to the PMS Fairy onward. The only one missing was the blonde, big-boobed T-girl I work with at GV, who promised/threatened to come as my arch-nemesis. She already jokes around at being my evil archenemy (she’s the one who thrusts the butt plugs in my ears when I’m on the sales floor and yells "CLEAR! CHARGE!"). She’s perfect for the job, the physical opposite of me: long platinum blonde hair, boobs so big they’re at the other end of the alphabet, and she’s much taller than me. Okay, lots of people are taller than me. But I found out that she had planned on coming to the party as Scarlet Red, enemy and nemesis of Violet Blue, armed with her books that were, in her universe, "total flops" entitled "The Totally Ultrafabulous Guide to Sucking Cock" and "The Incredibly Incredible Guide to Licking Pussy" and "How to Kill Violet Blue." She never made it — but hear this: someday, Scarlet Red, I will defeat you.
