I’m still catching up. Last Sunday I had the sheer pleasure of speaking at San Francisco Sex Information, the local (though national) sex hotline. They are one of the most needed and fantastic resources in the world — you can call or email them with literally *any* question about sex imaginable, and they have a staff of thoroughly trained sex educators to answer your queries. It’s totally anonymous and if they can’t answer you (which is rare, I assure you) they refer you to where you can find your answer. They should be a national treasure, and I think they are truly on the front lines of sex ed. So I got to talk to their students and feel like a sex ed badass. Or maybe that’s just "ass."
The interesting part was the panel of speakers I was on and the topic at hand: fetishes. I talked about fetish dressing (no, it doesn’t go on your salad), and the other panelists spoke about extreme pony fetish, furry (plushy) fetish, bodily fluids and sex (piss, shit, blood, and yes, vomit and a sentence or two on snot), bestiality, infantilism and necrophilia. Unlike any other forum, book or video, the discussion was about the attraction to these forms of sex, the practicalities involved and things to keep in mind when talking to callers about the subjects — no judgments involved, no psychoanalyzing, no ghettoizing.
It was fascinating to learn the practicalities of necrophilia, for instance; one should avoid cadavers deemed for medical use because of the high amounts of formaldehyde — ouchy on the genitals. And male cadavers do not get boners after death unless they died having sex, though formaldehyde can make penis skin firm feeling. Also, you cannot catch feline HIV from having sex with a cat (!). In fact, there are few things you can catch from sex with animals, save a jail sentence.
I could tell you more, but PayPal yanked my account today, so I’m feeling sheepish (no pun!). Apparently I’m in violation of their "Mature Use" guidelines, though I think they’re the ones acting immaturely. They’re retarded if they can’t tell a sex ed site from a hardcore porn site. I just hope they’re not closing my personal account for eBay use, because that wouldn’t be fair.
I was the most boring one on the panel, I think. I was there to speak as a fetish dress practitioner, a fetish model and someone who gets turned on by dressing in fetish clothes. I described my first experience trying on a corset. I bought it in a used clothing store in Upper Haight ten years ago — that I put it on when my boyfriend wasn’t around (he thought fetish stuff was for posers). And when I put it on I had a direct, immediate physiological reaction; I became aroused like a light switch had been flipped. And no, I had no experiences with corsets or binding as a kid, grandma never made me wear a corset while she spanked me, or any of that cliché BS. I have no explanation for it; it just is. It just worked for me. Now, it turns me on to wear rubber dresses and high heels — the outfit becomes a hyperextension of my feminized sexuality, sending a direct message to viewers, making my curves more obvious and jiggly, and the heels make my legs long, butt curvy, and the height gives me a feeling of erotic power.
That’s what I talked about, and it felt unusual because it was so personal. Anyway, it was a great class, I learned a lot, and afterward I got to entertain everyone with my LA trip descriptions, flapping my arms for emphasis and making faces of disbelief. I bet it would’ve been funny to watch me tell my story with no sound. It was nice to relate my experience to other sex educators, it felt good to hear their comments like, "was there, perhaps, a guy riding though the house on a unicycle, juggling?" The episode airs in September on Playboy TV, and it’s going to be awesome.
I really do have some awesome pictures from Wired’s Nextfest to post, but I’m too swamped to wrangle the 100 or so photos I shot — I will. I’ve been finishing the final edits on my next book The Ultimate Guide to Sexual Fantasies (due in a few days, release end of July), which has the world’s best cover. Okay, I got to pick the cover photo, so I really like it — but it rules over the covers of my other sex guides, whose covers I don’t really like. But they weren’t up to me, so what can you do? I am thrilled with the new book — it’s everything I want in a how-to book on sexual fantasy. I’m not going to go into the details yet, but it’s really a practical guide to making sexual fantasies come true, every fantasy you can imagine, all the ones in Sweet Life, etc., and I’m pretty proud. After having writer’s block for two days I finally wrote the introduction last night, and now can move on to the other books on my plate… The wonderful hour-long conversation I had yesterday with Tony Comstock surely helped, as did his offer to send me a nice bottle of Scotch — now *that’s* the light at the end of the tunnel.
In fact, it’ll be the perfect reward; I don’t drink or party when I’m on deadline, and I’m especially not drinking because I’m doing some fetish modeling this weekend. I’ve been dying to do some modeling, and my pal Thomas Roche has entered into a new phase as an erotic pin-up photographer. And his photos are stunning — check them out. It’s not a paying gig, but will get my ya-ya’s out, and I’ll be styled by a really cute and sassy gal-pal of mine who teaches at SFSI.
I can’t wait for this week to be over. My problems never went away at work, they got worse, and now I’m being CC’d on emails as a way of communicating with me — it’s an awful feeling. Maybe it’s time to find another sex ed magazine to edit — or here’s a new concept; maybe I could work less? I don’t know if it’s physically possible, my brain might explode. I might miss something fun, or have to stop writing and reading and thinking about sex. Gasp!
