As of tonight, my reign of terror on Fleshbot is over. Well, mostly. I’ve been filling in for Jonno for five nonstop days (of working from am to… am) and it has completely consumed me; add to this a very stressful wrap-up with my Best Sex Writing book that is still managing to be stressful and reminding me that being an editor is worse than herding pigs on ice. Also, Playgirl is flying me to NY tomorrow at 5am for meetings about who knows what… I’m feeling deep under water, with a lot of work and no pay.
It’s exciting about Playgirl, yet apprehensive. I love Jayme Waxman, one of their writers; she’s such a living doll and has a real sex ed background. But I’m not sure what they want from me, and I don’t know if they’ll want to hear my opinion about their magazine. I read the April issue, with a three page piece in it that slams Democrats and touts Republican values, especially in the bedroom, which I found very insulting and repulsive, even as a non-partisan person. *So* not wankable. Of course, I read this after I had agreed to write them a fiction fantasy piece, which I wrote (hot: a real fantasy about a marching band) and turned in last friday. I just don’t know what’s going to happen in NY, except that I have some pretty defined views about politics, women, sex and porn, and I only see a shadow of them in those glossy pages — but then again, I don’t see any hot porn magazines out there for chicks like me except openly gay ones, and the closest was Sweet Action (though I only saw the first issue). In fact, chicks like me have to really hunt for porn we like in general, but you know that.
It will be my first trip to New York. I’m cranky that my time will be completely occupied by work and I won’t get to sightsee or see people I know there that I really want to hang out with in their natural habitat. For instance, I’d like to see Times Square, the park, ground zero, the sex museum, the Daily Show, Steven Colbert’s banana hammock, and oh yeah, friends. Luckily my pal Carly will be there at the same time and she said she’d take me somewhere in the 2-hour window I’ll have free — anywhere! I don’t care!
As you can see by the pics, I did get time away from the ‘Bot to do some work with other bots at SRL; a much-needed respite, and a real need as we have a show coming up very soon. Inbetween Fleshbotting Wet Stewardess Orgies and Furniture Porn posts I’ve spent my time at the SRL shop getting greasy, cut, sore and exteremely happy working on the machines, getting ready for ‘the big push’ to showtime. There are a few key crewmembers missing from this show which means the knowledge falls to remaining core members, like me (and many others). Which is cool because I’m one of the younger ones there, and female. So I’m needed more than usual, which I really like ’cause I love that feeling of being needed and having a place where I belong and stuff.
About Knock ‘Er Loose: that’s basically a kind of Liquid Wrench, a liquid lube for loosening up screws, bolts and other stuck things. See, WD-40, that’s for housewives, just like those Slimline vibrators. Liquid Wrench is like those alien-looking Japanese vibes that hit all the spots at once, the kind with three prongs if you know what I mean. Knock ‘Er Loose is like this bastard lube that Mark got for free because the hardware store had to pull the product from the shelves because of complaints about the name; we keep a piece of the Knock ‘Er Loose box on the wall next to the bible with shotgun holes through it and a homemade pitchfork through the holes, left over from when we had our big bible burn. I digress. I worked over the weekend getting the Inchworm ready for its new hydropump, a 5-gallon tank of hydraulic fluid, and the gears had to be changed to accomodate the new and improved size. Because SRL machines are made as they are modified (they evolve, which is how they survive), everything is welded and bolted on as the machine breaks and modifies with new tech over the years. Getting one gear off and the new one on took two days because of the way history had decided the permanent placement of the shaft (now the dirty talk). Yes, I spent all weekend lubing up a shaft and pulling on it; a dream job if there was one.
We had to heat the gear to 400 degrees to get it to expand enough to pull it on the shaft, very dangerous and fun. Unfortunately the set screw in the gear was heated as well, making the screw seize up, and I had to get all lubey with the Knock ‘Er Loose to get the screw to move.
I’m still covered in bruises, scrapes and grease stains on my hands and arms; I hope they like it at Playgirl that I’m no manicured muffy.
So no Fleshbot for me while I’m gone, and a break will be nice — but I’m stoked that Jonno liked my work, and tonight he asked me to stay on as his co-poster. Yay! I love it. It was intense, searching for stuff all the time, making sure everything is fresh, current or unused, keeping up to the minute with sex news. (Aside: I have a new favorite blog I *love* to watch, Unscathed Corpse.) Very exciting. I even posted a celebrity nipple slip, which kinda make me throw up in my mouth a little but was still fun because I got to make fun, biting the hand that feeds. Then again, this may mean I’m on a fast downhill slide…
It was also very interesting to get so up on where and how to find this information in the blogosphere, and see the various media as they operate, watching sex stories hatch and travel around the ‘net, see how various people handle the topics — and see just how much Fleshbot is watched. I saw certain well-known sites pick up items I had posted, and regurgitate the material, post it on their own sites, and even in the same order that I had put it up, with no reference to Fleshbot. I experimented with them to test my theory. I watched sites try to slam, scoop or discredit things I posted. Facinating. Most of all it’s fun to put my POV out there in the porn world; a world that typically calls anal sex “a pop in the pooper” deserves a bit of indy punk, girl-powered, all-gender and all-orientation sex-positive upheaval. Plus it was real fun to post that Bruce Willis huffed rails off Lindsay Lohan’s ass for his 70th birthday. ‘Cause that’s what I would do. Dammit, that’s what I *will* do.
