[The title for this post is a quote from Lee Harrington, from the amazing relationship roundtable titled "Your Girlfriend SUCKS!... for Money!"  The context of his quote was among commentary on those of us with the overlapping traits of being sex workers, kinksters, and polyamorous/non-monogamous.]

It's no secret that my spring was really shitty.  I had two bad splits from people I was involved with, and wasn't feeling motivated to do much of anything besides sleep.  My summer, however has been amazing: filled with travel, good friends, excellent food, partying, sex, and seeing inspiring people fighting for various issues.  If I was a low-IQ midwesterner, I'd label the season "chicken soup for the soul", but since I'm a city-dwelling vegan rationalist, I prefer "come shots for the sapient."

At the end of July, I spent 10 days in Las Vegas - which is the most loathesome place in the entire world - and ended up loving pretty much every moment of it.  I was there primarily for the Desiree Alliance conference, but as coincidence would have it, the 2010 whorecon overlapped precisely with a couple of nerd conventions that I've attended in the past.  I don't think I'll ever have more people I love occupying the same city at the same time.

Thank you so much to the Desiree Alliance conference organizers, volunteers, speakers, and attendees for carving out a wonderful place to be in Las Vegas for a week.  I liked that an over-arching theme in so many presentations (I was mainly interested in the business tract, mind you) was the importance of working independently, and how empowering it is to be calling your own shots.  I couldn't agree more.

One of the things I want to praise is the conference's expectations form, which all presenters and attendees were required to read and sign at registration.  This policy was apparently based on an agreement from Dark Odyssey, at the suggestion of Sarah Sloane.  It's a kick-ass statement on the rights and responsibilities of participants at a sex-positive event, so I'm quoting it in full.  (Same list of expectations for attendees as for presenters/volunteers, just different titles for each form.)  Readers know that I've long had a huge bee in my bonnet about people/conferences not being real allies to sex workers.  Consider this a starting point for making your events safe spaces for sex workers.

Our Expectations of Presenters and Volunteers:

Our presenters and volunteers are the public face of Desiree Alliance, and we ask that all presenters and volunteers agree to support the following ideals during their time at the conference:

A) As a presenter or volunteer, you are in a position of trust regarding attendees' identities & levels of privacy. In order to protect all attendees, we ask that you:

-Respect that some attendees have separate identities for separate parts of their lives; do not disclose personal information about them without their express permission.

-Do not share with people outside of the Desiree Alliance conference any information about who is and is not in attendance.

-Identify them at the conference with the name that is on their badge, even if you know them by another name.

B) You understand and agree to practice the principles of Desiree Alliance including diversity, respect, tolerance, acceptance, openness, and non-judgmental support. You understand and agree to not make any assumptions as to the sexual orientation, partner choice, physical ability, race, spiritual affiliation or belief, class, kink or sex work interests of any attendee.

C)  You understand and agree to practice a gender neutral policy. Desiree Alliance is committed to being a safe, inclusive, welcoming, and positive space for people of all genders. We ask that you do not make any assumptions about someone's gender identity, genital configuration, or the pronouns they prefer. Please respect everyone's self-identification. If you are unsure about how someone would like to be referred to, please just ask them.

D) You will take your role as presenter or volunteer seriously and professionally. Know that you are a representative of Desiree Alliance. You will not use your position to practice or promote classist, sexist, racist, homophobic, or other kinds of bigoted behavior. You will abide by the rules of the conference which include local laws and hotel policies.

I was involved in a couple of presentations, both of which seemed to be quite well-received.

The first was one I did was titled "Solo girl: An introduction to operating your own porn site".  I was nervous about being able to condense all the material I wanted to cover into a 40-minute time slot, but amazingly, I did so, with 4 minutes to spare.  I skipped out on all the personal storytelling, and went at things point-by-point, hitting the most useful and practical advice I could think of for aspiring indie pornographers.  I will not be posting my slides or notes for this presentation online.  It remains my opinion that if you're serious about starting a business, you can be serious enough to travel to an industry conference for your new chosen profession.

The second was a panel I did with Amanda Brooks, Dr Brooke Magnanti (Belle de Jour), and Alex Sotirov, titled "Safety for Sex Workers Through Personal Privacy: Digital and Real-World Techniques For Safeguarding Your Identity and Your Life".  I believe that a recording of this panel will be made available soon, and I'll post that once it appears.  Brooke and Alex are also planning to expand a bit on the material they covered at the conference, and I'll post their notes here.  (Not sure if Amanda plans on posting her materials on her own blog, but she highly recommended the book "How To Be Invisible" by JJ Luna.)  I'll also post a separate entry covering my portion of the panel.  This topic could have easily been a half-day workshop, but I think the four of us did a kick-ass job of narrowing things down to the most important basics that every sex worker needs to know.

To get a feel for what else went on at the conference, see the schedule here.  Personally, my favorites were Dr Joycelyn Elders' keynote, Kimberlee Cline and Mariko Passion's talk on coming out to friends and family, Kirk Read's keynote (watch video), Serpent Libertine and Bebe's ethical sex worker discussion, Nina Hartley's keynote (watch video), and the roundtable on sex workers and relationships.

I especially liked the relationship discussion because it's a subject that's been extra-present in my life this year, and it's good to be amongst other people who've experienced similar issues at some point or another.  I had been with a primary partner/dominant I was in love with, but no matter how happy I was at any given moment, there was always an unspoken expiration date on our relationship.  What he was really looking for for a girl who restrains her kink to the bedroom, her weirdness to an annual trip to Burning Man, and was, overall, a person with a non-embarrassing occupation with whom he could have a litter of children in the suburbs and share a mostly heteronormative life.  That is not now, or ever will be me.

The transgressions I've made against traditional society (as a sterilized, clamorous, out-and-proud sex working pervert) aren't things that most people can deal with.  They're not piercings you can remove, tattoos you can cover, funny-colored hair you can dye back to normal, or the occasional tab of acid you can plausibly deny ever having taken.  They're not surface-level personality quirks purchased from Hot Topic - they're the things that define the core of who I am as a human being.  Through the experiences with my main ex, along with having another guy ditch me solely on the grounds of my being a sex worker, I've been coming to realize how deeply and permanently totally fucking aberrant I am in the eyes of society, and that I need to work even more diligently at repelling mates who aren't okay with who I am.  (I already knew I was weird, and tried my best to warn people of that, but I'm apparently not working fervently enough at this task.)

My contribution to the relationship discussion was pointing out that those of us who are sexually different in some way or another are basically in two camps when it comes to finding mates.  You can try to gently ease people in - such as another person's suggestion that one start out by telling a partner that they used to be a dancer and see how the they react, and then consider telling them the whole truth from there.  This has never been my strategy, because it means hiding who I am by default, and the whole dynamic seems designed to put sex workers on the defensive about the lies and omitted truths upon which they founded their relationships.  It's too sneaky and dishonest for me.  My strategy is one I flatly referred to as the scare 'em away plan.  I am upfront with anyone I consider dating or hooking up with- I want them to run away, as soon as humanly possible, if they know they aren't going to be okay with me making a living taking my clothes off for strangers.  I don't want to build a sexual and romantic relationship with someone - pulling a bait and switch, essentially - and tell them the truth only after they've gotten attached to me.  Such a dynamic seems doomed to fail and hurt all parties, although it does work out for some sex workers.

And anyway, why would I want to fuck someone who might be anti-sex worker?  A few years ago I had a brief tryst with a guy whom I later learned to be a homophobe, and I felt so icky that someone like that got to have his dick in my mouth.  I can't imagine wanting to set myself up for such potentially disgusting and hurtful discoveries every single time I got involved with anyone.  I don't want to fuck or love people who might despise me if they actually knew the truth about me.  So yes, please- let them run screaming, because I'd be running away screaming, too.

Dating/mating as a sex worker isn't easy.  I wish we could have a weekend retreat or unconference on this subject, open to sex workers and their partners.  I wonder if there would be many takers for such a thing if I tried to cat-herd people into doing that at some time in the future?

I'm still on the road this week, but I wanted to post a quick "I'm still alive" in the wake of the amazing Desiree Alliance conference last week.  I'll have a proper blog post on the conference shortly, but I thought I'd share a few photos in the mean time.

Myself and Larry Flynt's gold wheelchair at The Erotic Heritage Museum:

My self-modified guest badge to attend an event at Blackhat, a hacker conference going on at the same time as whorecon:

The day after our conference, Kimberlee Cline suggested that we go to Lake Mead so her dog, Stella, could get some exercise.  Thus began an afternoon of jokes involving wet bitches and hot whores.  Here's Elizabeth from Detroit, Kimberlee, and myself, photographed by Don:

On the way back from the lake, I spotted a Walmart-sized megachurch and insisted we pull off the highway for a photo op.  Here's Kimberlee in the hat and me in the red dress:

I sometimes worry that I come across online as a mean and spiteful person.  This is an inaccurate picture of me, but it's my own fault for not creating enough filler content about myself.  The thing is, I simply don't feel moved to write an impassioned treatise about a great marinara sauce I made, or a funny video I saw on YouTube, or even a hot fantasy that popped into my head while masturbating.  (I'm simply awful at trying to translate sexual experiences into arousing and readable text.)  I'm someone who writes about things that really upset and engage me.  My mental subtitle of my blog is a quote from one of my heroes' standup routines: "This is just a series of things that are pissing me off."

To balance that out a bit and make me seem less like an insane bag lady always yelling at buildings and statues, here's a more harmonious post on my life as a pornographer.

The time: 6 months ago.  The setting: a Russian boat doing a cruise of the Antarctic peninsula.  The goal: editing a lot of porn and seeing a lot of cute animals.  (The resulting non-pornographic photos?  Here.)  The following are a few thoughts I wrote during my voyage and have had hidden away in my drafts folder.  Now that it's oppressively hot outside, it's time to remember getting cold.

To start, here's a snapshot of me in my small top bunk, editing a scene for Cocksexual.com with Bella Vendetta, Jiz Lee, and Syd Blakovich:

On our first day of sailing in open seas, passengers didn't have much to do besides attend lectures on things like different types of seabirds and why global warming is bad, which I mostly skipped so I could do some work.  I was in the middle of editing some photos of Calico when an announcement came on that a group of three female humpback whales was off the side of the boat.  I closed my computer, put on my fuzzy boots, and joining dozens of other people racing up the stairs to get a quick glimpse at the whales as they moved into the distance.  It's a strange and wonderful thing to be interrupted from editing pornography by whale sightings.

It had been my intention from long before my cruise was booked that I make strapon porn in Antarctica.  I had wanted to do it actually out on the ice, but during our off-ship excursions, we ended up being much more supervised than I thought we would.  (Which is a good thing- I'm glad staff told people to not try to harass penguins or scramble around on delicate areas.  Though, it was amusing to watch the Japanese couple repeatedly pretend they didn't understand English only when they were told to not try and pet the penguins.)  As the days went on, I also couldn't sniff out any real perverts or oddballs on the ship to help me out behind the camera with shooting some naked or strapon photos.  I asked the cute Australian guy I'd been chatting up and he got all blushy and said that would be too "awkward" for him - despite my repeatedly asking him.  Poor normal boys - scared of my cock.

With a number of people around all the time, I accepted that getting naked off the ship would mean exposing myself to them.  Not a worry - I'm not shy.  So, on a "warm" day, I asked the nicest guy on the cruise, "Can I borrow you for a minute?"  We tourists were always doing this - flagging someone down to take our pictures in front of something.  He knew the drill and trudged over as I handed him my camera, asking, "You're not offended by nudity, are you?"  He was not.  I quickly stripped off my many layers , including my boots and two layers of socks, and ran out into the snow.  He quickly shot some photos of me as a staff member looked amused but slightly uncomfortable, and then I raced to put my clothing back on.  My feet hurt for the rest of the day - not officially frostbite or anything, but I felt like I was walking on pins.  But look at the glory that resulted:

I think I became the gossip of the trip after this.  I even had one woman pull me aside excitedly a few days later and ask ,"Is it true what they're saying - that you got naked?!"

So, my first pornographic mission was accomplished, but I was running out of time and desperate to make use of my pretty new white Joque harness.  While it's one thing to ask a person to shoot some nudes of you, it's another to ask him to shoot photos of you jerking off a big strapon.  I ended up taking those photos myself, aboard the ship.  These were shot off the coast of Deception Island, which is off the northern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.  I returned on an early boat from that morning's outing so I could make use of the side decks while people wouldn't be milling around on them.  I don't know if anyone saw me, but it would have amused me greatly if one of the elderly couples decided to go for a stroll on the deck at that moment.

Success!

(See more of the nudes by joining FurryGirl.com, and the rest of the strapon set by joining Cocksexual.com)

My trip to New York City was a whirlwind of amazing, and I've barely had time to wash my clothes and read my email before I'm back to the airport tomorrow- although, this time, for a family visit.

I knew I was going to visit New York this fall to shoot for Cocksexual.com, and the universe was especially kind in putting together a great week of pervert events so I could have fun in the evenings, too.  Alongside a full dance card of taking pictures of cocks, there was also a sex-positive drinkup, the Sex Worker Literati reading series, the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar release party, and Audacia Ray's second screening of her Pay As You Go collection of shorts.  (Thank you to the organizers of these events!)

I was able to shoot 8 new models for the site, from cute boner-filled posing to an amazing double-penetration scene.  (This was my first time shooting a DP, and I found it challenging to know what to focus on when there's so much hotness happening all at once.  I love meeting new challenges!)  The cheapie light kit has been great to work with- it packs down small enough that I can fit everything in a large backpack.  In spite of some hurdles like missed trains, lost models, and the A and C subways not operating, everything still ended up working out, and 23 gigs of great porn was shot.

I feel as though I was dragged quickly through a massive scrumptious buffet, and barely had a chance to stick my fork in but a few trays of food as I passed.  I met and caught up with many great sexual intellectuals, but it was all so short.  Ten minutes of conversation here, a late-night dinner there, a quick hug and "nice to see you!" shouted in a crowded bar in the middle, and I have found myself back at home, wondering what happened to me.  As a bit of a recluse, that level of constant social interactions dazzles me, and I wonder if that's actually just what every week is like for normal people- the ones who don't work at home, in fleece pants, cat on their lap, with podcasts to keep them apprised of the outside world.

I've officially declared February 1st to be the launch date of Cocksexual.com, so that's when you'll get to see all the great stuff I've been doing.

As always, I am seeking models, but right now, I am most interested in finding cisgender (non-trans) men to work with in the Bay Area or Seattle.  If you are a cisguy, partnered to one, or know one who might be interested in being pegged on camera, check out my casting page.

A parting shot:

I was recently in the Bay Area for two noble purposes: shooting strapon porn and attending the third Arse Elektronika conference.  And, somewhere in-between, accomplishing plenty of eating, drinking, and socializing with many of my favorite nerdverts.

On the porn end of things, I got a lot done.  I shot my first five models for Cocksexual.com, including this lovely lady:

There was much cuteness to be had, as well as hot cocksucking, fucking, drag and gender play, jerking off, and a certain amazing woman who can suck her own dick.  (You'll have to wait until February 2010 to see who!)

I also had a great time at Arse Elektronika.  Here's Annalee Newitz (currently of io9.com fame) presenting her talk on the history and future of love, with potential scenarios for how we might be having relationships 300 years from now.

Thank you to all of the awesome people with whom I had a chance to re-connect or meet for the first time!  It would take me too long to list you all, but know that you're still my beautiful and unique snowflakes (of frozen sexual secretions).

One of the themes of conversation for the weekend was how We (in the most royal and vague sense) would like to live in a world where They accept our kinks, geekery, genders, and modes of sexual expression.  While I was in that frame of mind for the conference, many San Franciscans were spending their Saturday having a daytime rave.  The BART into the city was besieged by young people in their best "freak" outfits comprised of shiny/neon things from American Apparel.  They were there to have fun and play weirdo dress-up for a day, and then go back to being frat boys and Forever 21 clerks or whatever it is that normal young people do.

It was a contrast that highlighted an important social division for me.  Some of us try to de-stigmatize our communities, while others work to stigmatize themselves (in shallow, temporary ways).  It's interesting to observe which subcultures revolve around which approach.

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