by Jon Pressick
Copyright © 2015 by Jon Pressick.
Foreword copyright © 2015 by Belle Knox.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press,
an imprint of Start Midnight, LLC,
375 Hudson Street, Twelfth Floor, New York, New York 10014.
Printed in the United States.
Cover design: Scott Idleman/Blink
Cover photograph: Robin Lynne Gibson/Getty Images
Text design: Frank Wiedemann
First Edition.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Trade paper ISBN: 978-1-62778-086-5
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62778-101-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Permissions acknowledgments for the essays reprinted in this book may be found on page 224.
Molly Hannah Rachel Donna Jessie Thank you
CONTENTS
Foreword • BELLE KNOX
Introduction
Captain Save-A-Ho • FIONA HELMSLEY
How a Former Porn Star’s Sex Tape Helped Him Reclaim His Sex Life • CHRISTOPHER ZEISCHEGG AKA DANNY WYLDE
What Should We Call Sex Toys? • EPIPHORA
We Need a New Orientation to Sex • CORY SILVERBERG
I Am the Blogger Who Allegedly “Complicated” the Stuebenville Gang Rape Case—And I Wouldn’t Change a Thing • ALEXANDRIA GODDARD
Porn Director: I Changed My Mind about Condoms • NICA NOELLE
Pregger Libido • EMBER SWIFT
The White Kind of Body • ALOK VAID-MENON
Sex, Lies and Public Education • LYNN COMELLA
Sharing Body Heat • JOAN PRICE
Being a Real-Life Accomplice • CAMERYN MOORE
Oops, I Slept with Your Boyfriend • CHARLIE NOX
Pump Dreams • MITCH KELLAWAY
Prostitution Law and the Death of Whores • LAURA AGUSTÍN
Fisting Day • JIZ LEE
Tell Me You Want Me. • MOLLENA WILLIAMS
The Gates • TINA HORN
The Choice of Motherhood and Insidious Drugstore Signage • STOYA
Kinky, Sober and Free: BDSM in Recovery • RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL
Crazy Trans Woman Syndrome • MORGAN M. PAGE
Let’s Talk about Interracial Porn • JARRETT NEAL
When I Was a Birthday Present for an Eighty-Two-Year-Old Grandmother • DAVID HENRY STERRY
What an Armpit Model Taught Me about Sexual Language • JON PRESSICK
Growing Through the Yuck • ASHLEY MANTA
I Was a Teenage Porn Model • LUX ALPTRAUM
Disability and Sex • JASON ARMSTRONG
Fumbling Towards Humanity: How “Trans Grrrls” Helped Me Open Up to My Partner • AMY DENTATA
In Defense of Celibacy • LAUREN MARIE FLEMING AKA QUEERIE BRADSHAW
No Restrictions • DEE DEE BEHIND
About the Authors
About the Editor
Foreword
Belle Knox
Sex. A simple enough thing from the outside but our desires, our humanity make it so complicated. We use sex to sell everything from fast food to power tools, music to insurance; sexuality is commodified, packaged, sanitized and sold to us from every angle. It permeates every facet of our lives while remaining the most common social taboo. We use sex and the promise of intimacy to sell; however, actually selling sex or intimacy remains a hotly disputed and stigmatized topic.
In 2015, sex remains one of the most polarizing topics in the world. It’s easy to forget that outside of our own, seemingly normal sex lives, the world has thousands of different stories and experiences to share that we may not otherwise have imagined. My own story is well-known enough: after being outed as a college student who moonlights as a porn performer, I was met with intense ridicule, harassment and shame. But most overwhelming was being met with curiosity. People are fascinated by sex, drawn to sex and sexuality, and perhaps the sex they are not having is the most interesting. Daring to express and expose our sexuality is not without its risks; our consequences for sharing this most intimate part of ourselves with others can be extreme. We accept pregnancy and disease as a given, but the social ramifications of what we enjoy can be severe and disturbing.
Fortunately, telling our stories can also be personally rewarding. By relaying our experiences and stories, we work towards a better understanding of ourselves. By giving up these parts of ourselves, sharing what we would normally keep secret, we become more free.
The discussions we have about sex and sexuality speak to who we are as people, from the most basic of moral concerns to our most visceral desires. In this wonderfully diverse collection you’ll find pieces by Alexandria Goddard, Lynn Comella and Alok Vaid-Menon that address the wider world of sex and sexuality: who do we want to be as people and what our sex—and how we go about obtaining sex—says about us. The obligation of educators to provide people with accurate information on sex and sexuality is at the core of my beliefs, though I’m not unaware that essentially I sell fantasy, deliberately and carefully removed from context.
From Dr. Laura Agustin’s passionate and thought-provoking piece on stigma and the sex industry, “Prostitution Law and the Death of Whores,” to Morgan M. Page’s “Crazy Trans Woman Syndrome,” these incredibly diverse and personal stories strike very close to home for me. The gravitas, the pain, the outsider nature of these words wrought large on the page draws me in and speaks to me. Most of all, the authors share their deepest vulnerabilities, fears, hopes and visions with us in a demonstration of our interconnectedness as human beings.
Sexuality is extremely complex, ethereal and at times ineffable. These expressions of sexuality, however socially unacceptable we may find them, are wonderful because they expose our fantasies for consideration and the endless possibilities of pleasure and intimacy that lay beyond our narrow experiences. I hope that after reading this collection of essays, articles and narratives, your mind opens to the possibility that sexual freedom is paramount to the happiness and fulfillment of the self. Whilst reading this marvelous collection, I have gasped, laughed and at times welled with tears. We all have our stories to share and these deserve to be heard. I can only hope they give you as much as they gave me.
Belle Knox
Introduction
Jon Pressick
Sometimes I play a game. It is an easy one, and I think it is one we all enjoy—at least secretly. When I walk through neighborhoods, I wonder what is happening, right at that moment, behind the doors and curtains of a particular house. Sometimes I’ll even stop and really think about it. A few of my friends will humor this game and maybe even play along. It can surely result in some laughs, but I’m serious.
I really want to know what people are getting up to. I want to know what they’re doing in there. I want them to tell us.
Take a listen to Tom Waits’s creepily mesmerizing track “What’s He Building?” from his album Mule Variations. It was released around the same time that a friend and I happened upon an exhibition of photos of Australian fetishists. Both stirred my inquisitive juices. Both brought me to a world that I rarely knew of. Waits was telling me to actively wonder what was going on “in there” and the exhibition was actively telling me what was going on “in there.”
Of course, it all makes me think of sex. Even if the photo exhibit had not been directly about sex, it would have made me think about sex
. There is no more guarded, more secretive, more hidden subject in our society than sex. For many, sex is a conversation that just doesn’t happen. Sex is the word that gets tucked under the mattress so that neither friendly visitor nor sneaky peepers will catch a glimpse of it. Sex makes us vulnerable so we hide it away as far from prying eyes as we can.
Or, at least we used to.
Sexual media has changed a lot since Best Sex Writing came out in 2005. At that point we were certainly intrigued and flirting with the Internet and telling stories. Remember Livejournal? But back then, if you were talking about sex on the Internet, you were predominantly talking about porn. Of course, porn is still an ever-present part of our online experiences, but out of sites like Livejournal grew an interest and passion for sex stories and sex writing.
Much is made of the Wild West nature of the Internet, it being an anything goes playground rife with the most meaningless and thoughtless content. But at the same time, it was that very abandon that allowed sex writing to become a daily fixture in our reading lives. Whether it be blogs or information sites or daily digests of sex-related news, the Internet has allowed us all to interact with sex content as often as we want—as opposed to waiting for our favorite magazines or books to cover sex topics.
Sure, magazines and books are still tremendous sources of content about the wild world of sex. But more and more, those blogs, information sites, daily digests and much more are becoming the must reads. Which is why the writers and curators of online content figure so significantly in this collection.
And while the number of outstanding sex writers and creators has exploded with the availability of our digital media, so too have the topics being highlighted. Topics that might otherwise have been considered too risqué or too bland are now freely discussed. Traditional media has always been focused on the middle of the road with the occasional foray into something like BDSM or fetish to get some attention. But the Internet has thrown open the doors of what should be talked about, from very niche and specific sexual practices to cultural critiques to the simple aspects of sex that we all missed in repressed or nonexistent sex education.
How many essays need to be written about enjoying masturbation? As many as it takes to help those who are troubled by the concept.
How many articles need to be written about which surfboard bags are best for bondage and personal confinement needs (something I remember from the photo exhibit)? As many as will fulfill that audience.
Let me tell you, there is an audience. Many different audiences, some of whom overlap and some who seek out specific content. So much sex to read about, so little time!
But that’s what I’m building in here. I’m building—with the words and thoughts of so many fantastic writers—a collection of pieces that will speak to individuals, groups and cultures. Some of the topics you will read about here are very specific while others speak to all of us. Bringing them together is an attempt to throw open those doors. Pull the thoughts out from under the mattresses. Talk about sex in meaningful, thoughtful and creative ways.
After reading these works, maybe you’ll open a few doors of your own.
Jon Pressick
Toronto
Captain Save-A-Ho
Fiona Helmsley
I never know what to say when I’m asked if I knew anyone who died on September 11. It’s a conflict that cuts right to the strange nature of sex work—the intimate anonymity, the intimate indifference. I could be standing in front of a client’s name on the Memorial Wall at Ground Zero and never know it as I never knew his last name, or have long since forgotten it.
I’m pretty sure Stephen died on Sept. 11. He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, a company located on the 101st—105th floors of Tower 1. Six hundred fifty-eight employees, most of the people in their offices that morning, died in the attacks. I was seeing Stephen two to three times a month through the outcall escort agency I worked for in New York City, and after August of 2001, I never saw him again.
I met Stephen at a bachelor party. I hated bachelor parties. I hated them because the elements that made them such a good time for the men in attendance—the randy women, the booze, the feeling of brotherhood—conspired to bring out something very ugly in them: bravado.
The bachelor party immediately got off to a bad start. A friend of the groom called the woman who I was doing the party with—a voluptuous Latina in a platinum-blonde wig who went by the name Moët—“hefty,” and she freaked out, storming off to find the friend of the groom who had set up the party, demanding an apology before she would perform. The party was held inside some kind of shipping/receiving warehouse in Manhattan and I didn’t know Moët at all. I had met her just minutes before outside the warehouse, and when she stormed off, I assumed she had left me. Standing there, all by myself, in a transparent slip dress and heels, I felt like carrion for a pack of hungry wolves.
“How much for a blow job?” one man barked.
“Will you let me snort coke off your ass?” asked another.
“You and the fat one—you eat her pussy?” inquired a third.
To make matters worse, I wasn’t much of a dancer. I had tried stripping once, and hated it, finding my fit in sex work that was much more one on one, much less all eyes on me. Though most of the other escorts at the agency liked doing bachelor parties because of the tips and party atmosphere, I avoided them, viewing them as frat parties for grown men. The only reason I had agreed to do this one was the soothing words of the phone girl: it was only a few guys, she’d sworn. Hastily organized. Not even a real bachelor party, more a last minute nightcap on festivities. From their voices on the phone, they sounded so drunk, she doubted they would be standing up. And Moët—bachelor parties were her forte. She was a pro.
From where I stood, Moët-less, flanked by a group of at least ten men and counting, all of whom stood upright and alert unless electing to sit in one of the circle of fold-out chairs in the middle of the room—the phone girl’s assurances had been a con job, tailored to placate my insecurities. The men had probably requested a white girl for the party, and I was the only one available. Though confident I could handle the situation, I felt vulnerable and extremely uncomfortable, the primary reasons I chose to avoid bachelor parties in the first place.
“Hey! I got an idea!” a man called out from behind a large desk in a corner of the room. “Let’s all play strip poker! ”
“Shut up, Steve!” a sweaty man in a suit jacket whined. Most of the men were clad in subtle variations of the same ensemble, pants and suit jackets that had probably appeared much nattier earlier in the evening. “Come sit on my lap, baby, and rub those titties all over me. I know you’ve got some great titties under that dress,” the sweaty man beckoned, crooking his finger in a come-hither motion in my direction.
“That’s not fair, Ray!” the man behind the desk scolded, standing up. He looked to be about fifty, with a paunchy stomach and khaki pants worn high on his waist. He took off his suit jacket and draped it on the back of his chair dramatically, a la Demi Moore in Striptease. “Why should she be the only one who takes her clothes off?” he said, jiggling his big belly and unbuttoning his shirt to an imaginary beat.
“I don’t know Steve, maybe because she’s a stripper?” a voice in the group growled.
The man with the large belly opened a drawer of the desk and gestured towards me. “We have our company poker night here,” he said. He reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a basket filled with unopened card decks. “You know how to play?” he asked.
I shook my head no.
“I’ll show ya,” he answered with a wink, handing me an unopened deck. He lowered his voice, and I leaned in closer to hear him. “It’s been a looooong night, hon. We’re just getting back from the casino, and I’m pretty sure the groom’s puking in another room. Everyone here’s nice, just wasted. Just do your thing, hon. These,” he indicted towards the cards, “should keep the heat off of you a little bit.”
“Let’s play STRIP PO
KER! ” he yelled out, rolling his belly and wiggling his hips as he threw the card decks to the men in all directions. “I can’t wait to see what you’re working with, Hector!”
In light of Moët’s MIA status, the man’s gesture made me feel like I had an ally, though one could never be sure in this business. As the men grumbled to themselves and dodged the flying card decks, I moved to the center of the chair circle, ready to start my slow, drawn-out removal of garments. There was no music, so the men’s obnoxious inquiries and demands would have to serve as my soundtrack. Suddenly, Moët burst back into the room, the groom, supported by the best man, following behind her.
“Come on now, Kenny,” the best man slurred. “You have to apologize to this lovely lady! Look at those lips! She could suck the chrome off a bumper!” He had lipstick on both sides of his face and wobbled on his feet. His fly was partway unzipped, and I could make out the tartan plaid of his boxer shorts through the opening.
“I never said anything to her, Mike! I swear. It was all a misunderstanding,” Kenny stammered. “I was asking for a Hefty bag, for the beer cans...”
“Well, she’s ready to show us all a good time, but only if you say those two magic words. Otherwise, she’s out of here, and it’s going to be all your fault. Right, Moët?”
Moët appeared to be in much better spirits upon reentering the room, and was wearing a man’s tie around her neck, its knot perfectly aligned with the ample swell of her cleavage. Her spandex minidress looked to be at least three sizes too small and barely touched the tops of her meaty thighs. She marched over to Kenny, a slight man with feminine features and large glasses that threatened to overwhelm his face, and straddled his lap.
“Do I feel heavy to you, baby?” she purred, her large posterior extending far past his knees.
“No, baby, no! You feel just right!” Kenny exclaimed, his voice going up a few octaves as his small frame was engulfed by so much Moët.
The best man looked at me. “You gonna show us a good time, too, Courtney?”