Working Sex

by Annie Oakley

  btw, i don’t think i’m schizophrenic if i define myself.

  to those who asked, my 9mm is a tokarov made in china. i guess it’s not a very good gun. i don’t know, it was my first one. the .38 special is a Wesson thing, i think. all i know is they shoot, and that’s good enough 4 me right now . . . but i really have to learn more about them and how to clean them and stuff. like my song says, “and could u send me sum money money money, i’m out of ammunition . . . ”

  MARCH 17, 1998

  maybe i’m letting too much information seep into my life. but, it’s two-way . . . i can’t stop reading those damn bbs because i’m so curious as to what rotten things they will say about me next. it’s a strange addiction!

  there is an article on me in the online-edition of DER SPIEGEL. and i did an interview with a freelance writer for penthouse. She was doing a piece on webcams, not just me.

  i just woke up from a dream that i was in a ufo and i brought my cordless phone with and it still worked way above the city of new york. i tried to get them to fly past my friend’s window. i had another dream that i was singing this fantastic song that was very “dead can dance”-ish and diamanda galas came up and congratulated me on my fine singing. then i used her bathroom on the plane.

  i dream about famous people a lot. i think i must have dreamed about every famous person by now. most times i am comforting them for some reason.

  APRIL 11, 1998

  i barely even have time to write this ANAlog! aaaa!!!! i’m getting so super busy now with my music! i’m going to be playing in las vegas in the middle of may. and other tentative cities are san francisco, los angeles, new york, and philadelphia . . . i’ll let you know any details as soon as i know them!

  also, i’m going to be appearing on a variety show called VIBE on UPN (hosted by sinbad). can life get weirder? i’ll be singing on this show . . . and it might be happening in as soon as two weeks! i have SO much to do, it’s insane. i have to pull this all together and practice my ass off! so, that’s what i’ve been doing and why i haven’t been home much or if you see me home, i’m typing or on the phone . . .

  i’m trying to figure out how to bring my cam with to all of these things . . . and eventually this WILL happen. so hang on to your hats for some bizarre adventures! my life is in transition . . . therefore, so is anacam . . .

  ummm, what else . . . oh ya . . . i was in USA Today magazine . . . on thursday or friday . . . it had a big picture of me . . . but i still haven’t even had time to find a copy!

  MAY 12, 1998

  I got interviewed on E! for an hour long special they are doing on “women of the web.” so i had to get my make-up on and sit very still under these bright lights while trying to be as coherent as possible. my mouth was all dry and my lipstick was too glossy, but i think i made it through. i got to do one of those E! ID things . . . i had to say “if it’s happening in entertainment, it’s happening on E!” (this was an extremely funny thing for me to say, if you are decadent enough to get that little drug joke there.)

  JULY 26, 1998

  i went to new york last week for a party that yahoo/intel had. I did a heck of a lot of interviews for magazines and stuff. i met so many people that i didn’t get to have any “real” conversations. who interviewed me? i wish i could remember! i do remember that i did something for electronic musician, vh1, details, and . . . 10 other things.

  i made some pretty cool pix when i was in new york . . . you can see some of them in “arcana.” that was when i had the most fun . . . when i’d return to my hotel and play with my cam. i missed my boyfriend a lot, even though i was gone only 2 days . . . so i took an earlier flight home. then the plane got stuck on the runway and we had to get towed back to the airport. i turned my cam on in the plane and left a message of my plight! funnily enough, after all my interviews, a reporter from the new york times approached me as we transferred planes. she said that she had noticed my shirt which i had written across it in permanent marker “yes, they’re fake.” she was going to do a story on the increasing popularity of breast implants . . . so i sat by her on the way home and gave her my story.

  we had a great conversation about new mexico and the strange flash floods, too. and how this one place is so quiet that u can hear the sound of a bird flapping its wings overhead, if one passes by above u! i so much want to experience that kind of silence. i’ve never been to a desert, and i want to visit them all. i want books about them, photographs of them, aerial photographs especially! i was totally taken by the look of the desert between las vegas and los angeles, so much that it brought tears to my eyes!

  but back to the new york times . . . so that article ran a few days ago. i now have this quote to add to my resume: “Ms. Voog’s breasts are round, high and firm looking.”—the new york times

  SEPTEMBER 14, 1998

  WHAT DOES “GRACE” MEAN TO YOU???

  OCTOBER 28, 1998

  right now i’m in the middle of “all nude all week” week. i’m on day 3! i just did it spur of the moment as just a funny thing to do to celebrate “the harvest.” thank god it’s been an unusually warm week for october. i guess i just wanted to see if i could even go a whole week without wearing clothes . . . and it’s actually hard to do! now, on day three, i’m starting to feel a bit overexposed, i’m missing that nice cocoon feeling of clothing! my skin isn’t used to feeling everything all the time! i wonder if by day 7 i’ll start curling up like an armadillo?

  DECEMBER 16, 1998

  on the anacam page, jason put up a link to a rating site called “camdepot” that so far today was bringing in 150 new people to my site. i don’t know how i feel about that . . . “voting” and “being ranked.” of course, everyone likes it if they’re the most popular, and i definitely like new people to find my site . . . i’ve decided to keep the link up for now at least to see if anything comes of it . . . or something. i went to the page and it seems pretty nice. some guy listed on there has a ferret cam and that’s cool.

  my stripper year

  Stephen Elliott

  First there was Toni in his sparkling cocktail dress, serving drinks at Neo on Clark Street. The bar was dark, there were no windows, only a blue-lit clock. Toni had thin legs covered in track marks beneath his fishnet stockings. He brought me elegant-looking drinks on a silver tray. I hid in the corners or in the middle of the dance floor. I went to Neo alone and Toni sensed my loneliness and wanted to mother me to health but it didn’t happen. Toni died at three in the morning in a stranger’s apartment in Humboldt Park lying next to a broken needle, blood streaming from his nose, emerald skirt riding in waves across his hips, tights ripped, a slipper dangling from his toe, eyes wide open.

  Then there was Toni’s friend Tony. Tony worked at Berlin, had tribal tattoos covering half his body, long, thick black hair like a horse’s mane, and every year the free weekly paper voted him best bartender in the city.

  I had friends but they were sleeping, and they weren’t real friends. Tony didn’t charge me for drinks either and I hovered near his bar, an oasis next to the entrance. I danced close to Tony. I never wanted to go home. I said, “What kind of boys do you like?” and he said, “Straight boys,” and I smiled.

  Tony had a fashion show and I walked the runway at Berlin in striped shorts with thin straps over my shoulders. There were so many people there, all of them high on pills, dehydrated, and watching. I danced slowly past them. It was like being perfect, which is always an illusion. I was followed by a man in a straw hat, his gown covered in pale green bulbs. “Do you have any more swimsuits?” I asked Tony. “I want to go again.”

  “You are so vain,” he said, patting my ass. I gave him a quick, sly kiss on the lips, before climbing back on the stage.

  It was my stripper year. My heroin year. I danced Thursday nights at Berlin. Two sets, three songs, free whiskey, $75, occasional tips. They called me a go-go boy but I was really just decoration, cheap art. I scored heroin on the west side, piloting my giant car through the
burnt-out landscape, home of the ‘68 riots, the stained remnants of an assassination in Tennessee, the empty lots like broken teeth. Trash and parts everywhere, pipes protruding from the rubble, chassis on cinder blocks, men in lawn chairs on corners in front of vacant three flats. I got robbed. I got beat up. Things weren’t going well. Nothing made sense. I was having the best time of my life.

  I didn’t make enough money on a podium at Berlin. I danced at the Lucky Horseshoe, a front for prostitutes on Halsted Street. We weren’t allowed to sit between sets. We had to mingle with clients at the bar. “They like it when you pay attention,” the owner told us. “Open seats are for customers.”

  So we would stand and they would sit. I met a man who bred dogs. He stuck $5 in my thongs after my first dance. “It’s like selling people,” he said, laying a rough hand on my waist. “Only it’s dogs, so it’s legal.” Then he let out a monstrous laugh.

  The going rate was $20 a day plus tips. The going rate was $80 for a blow job down at the Ram, a dirty theater with private booths six painted steps below street level a block away. There were sugar daddies who came to the Horseshoe but it was up to you to parse them from the fakers and dreamers. They said, “What do you want to do with your life? I can help you.” If you were a writer they were an agent. If you were an actor they were a director, a producer. If you wanted to go to school they would give you a place to stay while you got your act together. They knew someone on the admissions board. The clients at the Horseshoe were whatever you might need. But I needed to be found attractive. I needed to be loved unconditionally. And I was very angry about something.

  I had a college degree.

  This is all true.

  It was 1995, the hottest summer on record, or so somebody told me at the time. It’s a fact I’ve never bothered to check. They were carrying dead seniors by the dozen in a phalanx of stretchers from the nursing homes on Touhy Avenue. I lived in a squat above a garage a bullet away from the project buildings. I could make out the top of the Sears Tower from my porch. I had a roommate and during the day we would go to the slab along North Avenue Beach and lie there like seals, diving into the water every twenty minutes or so until the sun went down. We lay on the warm concrete watching the sunset and then the stars. “Life is good,” he said.

  Sunday afternoons I danced between films at the Bijou. Twenty minutes of porn then one boy on the stage, one boy in the audience. The men pulled their penises out, stroking themselves, sliding a dollar in my pants with their free hand. The Bijou smelled of bleach. I climbed over the seats barefoot. I was like a spider, crawling along armrests and chair backs, never touching the ground. I stayed away from the older men. They had been around too long. They were looking for a good deal. I paid special attention to a fat boy who sat in the second row. He was probably my age. His hair was flaxen and I worried that nobody loved him the most. I was projecting my own feelings. I sat on his lap, squeezed his shoulder, kissed his neck. I wanted to be capable of loving him for more than a few minutes but I wasn’t. He gave me a dollar and I hugged him, pulling his nose against my naked chest. “It’s okay,” I said.

  There were rooms above the Bijou. Offices, a movie studio. The manager kept a picture of me in his desk drawer. He asked me to act in a bisexual porn movie. I said I didn’t mind. I was put in a room and given five minutes to get a hard on. This was my audition. The room was giant and empty with slanted beams holding up the roof and great windows looking across Old Town. I jerked off, paging casually through the porn next to the bed. The director burst in with a Polaroid camera. “Yes,” he exclaimed when he saw my hard-on.

  The pay was $300. I was told it was very important to be nice to the woman. She was a queen. I wanted the money but I was ambivalent about the film. What I really wanted was to be tied up. I wanted to be humiliated on tape. I wanted women with strap-ons to grip me by the throat and slide inside of me. I wanted to be wrapped in cellophane, like a present, unable to move. That was the kind of film I wanted to be in. But I didn’t know how to say that at the time and people who don’t know how to ask rarely get what they want.

  I danced at the Manhole on lights-out night. I was four feet above the floor on a square pedestal. I had to be careful not to step over the edge. Hands came from everywhere, palms stretching below my balls, fingers trying to find my asshole. I couldn’t see past the elbows.

  “Stop it,” I said softly. The music was so loud, nobody heard me.

  It was my heroin year. I shot bags next to the couch and slept on the living room floor. I missed a night at Berlin. Then I missed another one. Summer was over. We stopped going to the beach. It got darker earlier. It was almost Thanksgiving. I dated Stacey, a Barbie-doll stripper with a bad coke habit and implants that didn’t take, they felt like twelve inch softballs inside her breasts. She made $400 a shift. She knew about bars in Cicero that never closed. She crashed her car and the barmaid asked if she spilled her drink. Her other boyfriend was a police officer. “He’s very violent,” she told me. “He wants to put his gun in your mouth and ask you some questions. He broke the lock on my door. Do you want to come over?”

  After Stacey I dated Zahava. Zahava came from a good Southern family. She had been a pom-pom girl. She had been to finishing school. It seemed like she was always happy. She was the only person I knew with good posture. She wanted me to go to law school. I turned her on to heroin. Years later she would tell me I was the first bad thing that ever happened to her. Zahava said I was handsome. I told her when you’re a stripper you don’t worry about your appearance. You always feel attractive when people are willing to pay to see you naked. It was the biggest lie I ever told. I stared at the other strippers, the bricks in their stomachs, trapezoids like baby mountains. It made me nauseous to think about. I wasn’t good enough looking to dance at the Vortex but they let me in for free. I was low-rent and I knew it. I had an eating disorder and long hair. The only advantage I had over anybody was that I knew how to dance.

  I never made the movie. I was in a small room with dark wood floors on top of a big house in Evanston near the lake. I took a hotshot and passed out with blood streaming from my nose and foam gurgling at my mouth. Just like Toni a year earlier. My friend turned me over so I wouldn’t choke on my own vomit, then he left me to die.

  But I didn’t die. Firemen came the next day. They were strong and good. They strapped me to a chair, carried me down three flights of stairs. “Where’s your family?” the owner of the house asked as they hauled me past her. “What’s your parents’ phone number?” I didn’t tell her. It was the first good decision I made that year. I was paralyzed for eight days and the nurses let me piss all over myself. When I was discharged from the hospital I walked with a limp. I told people I fell down a flight of stairs. Eventually the limp went away but it took time. And it took time to learn how to eat. I lost thirty pounds.

  I didn’t strip again. Or shoot heroin. I got a master’s degree. I moved to a ski resort and the customers would sit at the bar unbundling their scarves. I wore black pants, a white shirt, and a patterned vest like all the other employees. We looked like dancing monkeys. Every day someone would stare at the mountains while I refilled their cup. “I wish I could trade places with you,” they would say, maybe dropping a dollar into the plastic pitcher sitting empty on the counter’s edge.

  songs

  Vaginal Davis

  Everyone wants to be able to sing along to the new songs I’ve written with my Berlin-based, proto-Marxist, postpolitikal art rock band Ruth Fischer. Ruth Fischer was the famed feminist forerunner, and head of the German Communist Party of the 1920s. This new project began late 2005, and is a supergroup collaboration between me and the members of the German art kollective Cheap, and the Albanian folk group The Super 700s.

  PRESENT PENICATIVE LYRICS BY VAGINAL DAVIS

  The shakiest gun in the west

  dammit

  the shakiest gun in the west

  with that limp limp wrist

  he is a meek
dentist

  to fight oral ignorance

  dammit

  smut and moral corruption

  spewed forth like garbage

  from the lecherous, vile,

  lewd and licentious

  mind of a child

  filthy little d

  de-generate.

  Dammit

  the shakiest gun in the west

  the shakiest gun in the west

  Look at his face—the face of a smut-monger.

  Look at his body

  wasted away by the dissipation

  and debauchery

  life of unspeakable depravity

  alienating, superficial conformist.

  distinct individual flamboyance

  invisible art culture influence

  notions of sexual liberation, anti-authoritarian

  behavior,

  expression of indifference,

  from the shakiest gun in the west

  expressions of indifference

  the shakiest gun in the west

  reduced the gay political agenda to doctrinaire sloganeering and politically correct rhetoric which resulted in an anti-intellectual, anti-dialectical ontology,

  ambivalence and paradox had heretofore been one of our most effective strategies.