“Oh dear… when allies do not feel the alliance, it is so sad. I think this is an ongoing issue with progressives, but that’s not what I’m thinking about today. Today it’s trannies and tranny-chasers, transfolk and transfans, and sex (or really people’s reactions to sex) making things complicated in unexpected ways. Here’s what I’m talking about….”

Read the entire blog HERE or HERE!

Do you like your erotica short and sweet? So do we! And, if you liked Five Minute Erotica, you may want to put More Five Minute Erotica on your radar! Due out in December, Carol Queen is bringing us another collection of explicit shorts! (Fun fact: a sex therapist has written about using it with couples to get them talking!)

Check out this exclusive sneak preview by Carol Queen herself!

Art Gallery

by Carol Queen

At the gallery everyone clutched a plastic glass of wine and moved around the room, communing with each piece of art: a sculpture resembling a medieval orrery with a fresh red apple speared William Tell-style, suspended in the center of the revolving bands; a solarized nude perched on a log over a forest stream; wild paint-gobbed canines looking like they’d leap out of the canvas howling with mad dog glee. One had a little red hard-on.

In the center of the gallery, a bed. Velvet ropes around it made a little fence to keep us patrons a distance away. We needed to be herded back because the bed’s occupants – more the artistic focus than the bed’s tacky sheets, which threatened to come off the corners even before the couple climbed on – needed room to move.

They had just walked through the crowd serenely. She wore cute lingerie which reinforced her look: strawberry blonde and pert, though if you looked again you’d see tattoos as evidence that she was really a girl from Bohemia, not next door. He had no body marks like this; he looked clean-scrubbed and, except for an arty haircut, wholesome and young like her. He wore boxers and socks.

If the gallery people got these two from the art school, they chose well, I mused as I held Robert’s hand and studied them. Maybe, already boyfriend and girlfriend, they had jumped at the chance to do something arty and naughty. They now lay together on the bed and talked to each other softly, laughing a little bit now and then, stretching into each other like red-blonde cats and starting to touch. Maybe the gallery people got them from craigslist, advertising for exhibitionists. But they didn’t seem in any hurry to take off their underwear. Maybe this was it, maybe this was all they were going to do.

They touched languidly and whispered. No clothes came off. One by one gallery patrons, including Robert and me, turned away; the other art was rather good, and we had yet to study one whole wall full of Surrealist works whose method I couldn’t quite discern: were those photos collaged with a computer program, then painted over? Fascinating.

Another sip of wine, and when we turned again, she lay naked and purring and he stroked now with more focus. I found his socks distracting, though her nipples promised to become the center of everyone’s attention soon. Certainly his, as he began to lick them, and as we all watched, it seemed evident they were the main thing for her as well: she arched her body up to get her small breasts into his mouth. One long arm behind her to support her in the feline arch, he used his other hand to knead her belly while he sucked. In her navel glittered a little jewel.

I saw his erection as soon as its shape formed inside the boxers. Plaid cotton boxers with a youthful cock inside: so American, so hopeful. And here at the gallery his hope and ours would be rewarded. She fished down the waistband to feel it and squeeze. She helped him pull the boxers off, his artistic material now fully revealed, and she handled his cock like she knew it already, so maybe the craigslist theory was wrong, or at least they had taken the opportunity to practice a time or two before the gallery opening. His cock lay tight against his belly, long and wide enough that I wondered, that slim little woman, would it fit?

Oh, of course it would. It fit in her mouth, at least. We surrounded the bed, pressing against the velvet ropes enough to make them sway. We gazed. A murmur of approval as he pushed her over, caught her labia between two fingers, bent down to feast every bit as avidly as he had on her nipples. She kept hold of his cock but sometimes seemed to lose her grip as his tongue moved incessantly. I stood close enough now, Robert pressed in behind me, to see his foreskin slide voluptuously up and down, though probably in too erratic a rhythm for him to be able to come.

Anyway, she came first. With little mews that escalated louder and louder, then began to subside.

As he flipped her over to enter her she pressed back against him and came some more, or at least made more sound, her cries bouncing off the gallery walls that usually housed such contemplative quiet. But we all stayed still, only a slight rustle and whisper to disturb them as they began in earnest to fuck.

The gallery-goers crowded around, I saw, whenever something of the tableau changed: when one of them began to pant, when they assumed a new position. Static movement, motion that did not change for stretches of minutes, arms holding him up in one position, hers curling around his back, hips tracing a restricted if escalating trajectory, caused the audience to move away. I could feel my attention loosening, my gaze traveling over the peach curves of their bodies to study that dog on the other wall. The artist had built the paint up so thickly it was practically 3-D; no wonder the dog looked about to leap toward us.

But a flurry of movement yanked my attention back: she keened again in orgasm, bending back into a salacious, almost helpless-looking yoga pose as he knelt between her legs, held her hips up to receive his fast thrusts, and did not seem to register at all the people surrounding him as he gazed down on her, breasts arched out, arms thrown back over her head and moving, too, with the power of the fucking, little jerky moves that reinforced what we could clearly see: she was completely, perfectly absorbed in her cunt, its sensations, the orgasm that radiated and took her.

At home in a bed his come would no doubt have followed fast on hers. We could all see how close he was. But it did not. Maybe he couldn’t help it, more conscious of us crowding around them than he seemed.

No one said anything, but one by one, two by two, we drifted back to the walls. Some of us really looked at the art. It had not seemed especially erotic at first, but now the arrow-speared apple seemed an allegory, the dog’s little erection a crucial part of the artist’s paean to animal energy. I did not so much as glance back at the bed until I heard the springs resume their creak. The sheet had come half-off by now. “They should have taped it down,” I whispered to Robert, pointing. It made the tableau more realistic, on one hand: look, even the linens begin to lose control.

Raised over her, sweat beading up on his face, he gazed down into her eyes and she gazed up. Our presence again meant nothing to them, though if he had lifted his head, it would have been my eyes locked with his when he came.

The minute I saw the headline on SF Gate.com, I knew there’d be a buzz in the office about it on Monday morning.

In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, an article about G-spot surgery had made the front page. In the article, about “G-spot Amplification,” a 22-year-old (!!!) woman has her G-spot pumped with a small dose of collagen to make it swell, in hopes that her sex life will be more satisfying.

According to the article, the procedure was invented and trademarked in 2005 by Dr. David Matlock, an L.A. gyno and plastic surgeon, and to date, about 250 women nationally have had the procedure done.
Dr. Matlock opened the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of America, where he performs such procedures as labia reduction, hymen restoration, “Brazilian Butt Augmentations” and a “combo meal” of sorts known as “The Wonder Woman Makeover (TM)” which includes: vaginal rejuvenation, labia reduction, “liposculpting” with the Brazilian Butt (what does that mean!?) surgery, and breast augmentation. Sounds like a fun day at the hospital, doesn’t it?
Now, I’m not a doctor, nor an expert in sexuality (only sarcasm), so I knew that our resident Sexologist, Dr. Carol Queen would have the best response to this article, and indeed she did…..
Click here to read our official press release and click here to get to Carol Queen’s blog…she’ll be posting about the G-spot surgery very soon, so make sure to keep checking back for more from Carol Queen!

Update!: Check out this article on Eroszine.com by Carol about G-Spot Surgery:

And, for more information about the G-Spot, visit our Sex Ed pages:

About the G-Spot

The Good Vibrations Guide to the G-Spot

G-Spot Ejaculation

Nitke, a fine-art photographer whose most recent work explores the erotic and emotional dynamics of BDSM play within relationships, may be the perfect plaintiff for such a case. She is a noted artist, respected in the academic and professional photography communities. She also makes photos that, because of their edgy subject matter, might well fall into the legal gray area that is commonly called (without much definition) “obscenity.” As we’ve noted here in the Good Vibes Magazine before, images can be called and taken to court as obscene in one town or region that would never be legally problematic in another. The notion of “community standards” protects most images in San Francisco, but might not be understood the same way in Dubuque or Biloxi. This is confusing enough for artists who work with sexual imagery, commercial porn producers, and everybody else. But on the Internet, what do “community standards” mean?

The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom brought the lawsuit to try to make the government answer that question, and to argue that online, where people gather together to communicate even when they live far apart, the idea of “community” is not a geographical one, but has more to do with philosophy or affiliation.

I have been involved with Nitke vs. Ashcroft for a year and a half. Like many other writers and artists in the sexuality community who are familiar with these issues, I agreed to serve as a witness for the case. Though I’m testifying by affidavit, not in person, I hope to be in the courtroom later this month to hear the case argued.

Other witnesses will be familiar names to Good Vibrations customers and Good Vibes Magazine readers. Author and therapist Patrick Califia is on board, as is photographer and editor David Steinberg. (His book Photo Sex, which our publishing arm Down There Press released last year, includes photographs by Barbara Nitke.) Dr. Charles Moser is an academic expert in BDSM, a medical doctor, and the author of Health Care Without Shame. Many other experts from around the country have agreed to take part.

My testimony centers around my training in the discipline of sexology — the academic study of sexuality, or, as they used to say at The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, from which I got my doctorate, “the study of what people do and how they feel about it.” Nitke’s work, I said (and that of other artists who endeavor to show BDSM or other sexually misunderstood behavior in a documentary, fact-based way), allows people to understand forms of sexuality better, especially those we don’t get much public information about. It helps document the sexual interests, behaviors, and mores of people at the time the art is made, which is significant because so little sexual material survives into the future. Furthermore, it may be especially important for people whose own desires lead them to be attracted to BDSM-oriented images. These people have likely not learned positive information about their own sexual and partnership choices. Nitke’s work in particular, so obviously grounded in couples’ love and passion, could truly change peoples’ lives for the better.

Whatever happens in New York at the end of this month, Nitke vs. Ashcroft will almost certainly go to the Supreme Court. John Wirenius, lead attorney for case, notes that “the CDA is vulnerable to attack on several theories: (1) the definition of obscenity cannot apply to Internet materials, as there is no way to select which community’s standards are to be applied; (2) even if such a selection could be made reasonably, Congress [when they first passed the law] failed to make such a selection, rendering the definition so vague as to be violative of a speaker’s right to know what speech is banned and what is not; (3) the policy reasons supporting such a localized standard does not apply to the Internet, rendering the definition inapplicable; and (4) if any community’s standard should apply, it is that of the Internet itself, which permits free and frank discussion of sexual matters.” Because the Court has left these issues up in the air in past cases challenging the Communications Decency Act, it can expect this new case to try to tie up the loose ends. (Ahem! No pun intended!)

In the process, everyone involved in the case hopes that the American public will learn something more about art, eroticism, sexual difference and sexual civil rights. The lawsuit has been surprisingly low-profile up until now, but it will be hard to ignore so substantive a challenge to Ashcroft’s worldview less than a week before the November elections. I’ll bring you an update after the case is heard! In the meantime, if you’d like to know more, you can check out John Wirenius’ site at http://www.wireniusreport.net; read up on the background of Nitke vs. Ashcroft and read up on the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom’s other activities at http://www.ncsfreedom.org; and learn about Barbara Nitke’s evocative work by visiting http://www.barbaranitke.com. (Or order Nitke’s new book, Kiss of Fire, and see for yourself.)

Now Darren James is at the center of the adult business’s latest HIV scandal, making it likely the gentleman will not work in the industry again. James tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS after a working trip he took to Brazil in March. Porn companies shoot outside the U.S. for various reasons: lower costs, new faces, more exotic locations.

But testing standards may not be as exacting in other places as they are at home in the Valley. The 12 women who did scenes with James between his Brazil trip and his positive test have become the first generation of a possible porn industry outbreak. One of these women, Lara Roxx, tested positive shortly after James’ status became public knowledge. Several others have tested positive in the weeks since.

HIV tests in the porn industry are conducted by the AIM Clinic, founded by former porn star Sharon Mitchell after she’d been at risk during one of the HIV scares in the late 1990s. Now armed with a Ph.D. in sexology, Mitchell has spent a lot of time this week talking to the press — and to the terrified porn performers she tracked down because they had had sex with James, or with someone who had. “The AIM system is set up to detect and prevent HIV in this industry, and it worked the way it’s supposed to” in the James case, says Mitchell.

The adult industry seeks to police itself largely so it does not have to make condoms mandatory, which industry spokesmen say will turn off the fans. Only two companies making heterosexual porn (about 1% of the industry) require condoms; others leave it up to the performers; while most count on negative test results from AIM and a largely closed pool of talent to stop the spread of disease, a sort of huge-scale monogamy among the 1200 or so performers in the business.

This number doesn’t count talent from Brazil and elsewhere, however, nor performers’ partners. As James’ case shows, HIV can enter the supposedly closed system at a variety of points, and then, instead of everyone being safer than a randomly chosen sexually active group, everyone is put at some degree of risk.

Many have criticized this strategy. Voices were raised as early as the mid-1980s that recommended porn performers use condoms. Most of the industry has agreed to a 60-day moratorium until exposed performers’ test results are in. But many charge that the conditions that allowed James to seroconvert won’t change unless porn producers take safer sex more seriously.

San Franciscan Peter Rogers of Cybernet doesn’t see a problem with that; he advocates condom use at all levels and requires they be used in his sex shoots by everyone but couples. “Companies in LA will pay more if you don’t use them, or won’t hire you at all if you insist on them,” he says. “In this country there’s not very good sex education, so people learn about sex from porn.” Rogers is concerned they’re getting an unhealthy message.

But many LA producers see an outside problem that can somehow be avoided. “Many make offensive and dangerously wrongheaded statements about HIV being a ‘gay’ disease,” says Violet Blue, author of The Ultimate Guide to Adult Videos. “In the realm of portraying healthy and safe sex porn often fails, because pornographers want to give viewers fantasy sex they demand.” Blue’s book and website, tinynibbles.com, includes a chart that shows the STD risks associated with many common porn sex practices.

The industry may not be given leeway to self-police for much longer. The LA County Department of Health Services has called in state work site safety regulators California Occupational Health and Safety Administration; reportedly, government intervention might be around the corner. “As in most American employment sectors, sex work involves some occupational risks, which one learns how to control,” says worker injury expert Peter Rousmaniere. But some outbreak watchers worry that because porn and other forms of sex work are considered non-mainstream, OSHA might urge restrictions that would adversely affect the industry’s ability to function at all.

Mitchell is complying with legal requirements, but with a great sense of concern. “We fear government intervention at this time because we feel self-regulation is the best way to go. We agree with Cal-OSHA standards but don’t believe government seizure of records is the best way to get cooperation from this community.” Her concern — that this may drive the industry underground and make performers afraid to be tested — is echoed by others.

Industry insiders Ernest Greene and Nina Hartley point out that porn’s HIV transmission rate has been zero for the past seven years: “AIM has administered literally thousands of tests to adult performers, who have gone on to engage in tens of thousands of on-camera sex acts without a single instance of HIV transmission as a result. This is one of the rare and great public health success stories in the tragic history of the HIV epidemic.”

But this strategy relies on a certain amount of faith. As Hartley and Levine note, it’s far better than doing nothing. But its very success breeds a kind of complacency, even naivete. “I thought porn people were the cleanest people in the world,” Lara Roxx told avn.com’s Mark Kernes.

The effect the outbreak will have on the adult industry remains to be seen, but two angles are especially interesting. First, testing and tracking done by the AIM Clinic make this a true in vivo research project. Perhaps at no other time has it been so clear under what conditions heterosexuals might pass HIV to one another, so this outbreak may have implications for education and testing far outside the borders of the insular porn business.

Second, after 20 years of enormous struggles within the HIV community, the Los Angeles Health Department may have just dealt a blow to the principle of confidentiality in testing. The lives of Darren James and Lara Roxx and the other newly infected performers have just been changed forever, and it’s worth wondering how much more change may lie ahead.

Sometime this month the legendary Lusty Lady exotic dance emporium and peep show, a fixture of North Beach’s sex life since the 1980s, will undergo major changes. As I write, negotiations are still underway between the performers and support staff and the ownership — at issue is whether the staff can and wants to form a collective or cooperative to run the business, or whether the show will stop.

Real Live Nude Girl A couple of months ago the ownership informed workers, many of whom are unionized, that it intended to close the club, citing lower profits since the recession began. Indeed, there’s no doubt that most San Francisco businesses don’t bring in what they did during the height of the dot-com boom, and the LL is probably making less than it used to. But the timing, following the negotiation of a new contract with the union, seemed suspicious to some of the dancers I’ve contacted, and it almost looked like a union-busting maneuver — until talks began that brought the possibility of the workers taking control for real. Interested dancers and support staff called in co-op members from other businesses like Good Vibrations and Rainbow Grocery that are worker-owned and democratically operated, and staff have been putting in long hours to see what they’d have to do to acquire the business.

I worked at the Lusty Lady, as truly longtime readers will recall, back in 1990. I met the woman who was show director in those days, Attila the Honey, at a lesbian-safe-sex video shoot — except it turned out that none of the women there were actual lesbians. We were all bi girls and frisky sex workers. Well, if truth were told, that’s who performs much of the explicit action for lesbians and their admirers, and anyway, when it’s all-girl action, who cares what peoples’ sexual orientation might be? Attila told me I could come audition for a job at the LL any time, and eventually I took her up on it. It was a time of great change at the Lusty, the historical moment at which the management decided to concentrate on hiring women who were “girl next door” types. I was, more or less — well, sometimes I even shaded into “lusty librarian,” even back then — although I was 10 years older than many of the women who worked there.

Apparently in the late 1980s the place had been wild — even wilder than it was when I showed up. In a decade when strip clubs were decidedly not an acceptable social phenomenon, the women who worked at the LL were a very mixed crowd: more of the dykes and biker chicks who still populated the place when I showed up, plus many of the devil-may-care “fetish” types who decorated their bodies with piercings and tats. There was a greater range of body size, too. Sometime very late in the ’80s the management decided the customers were too weirded out by this sort of diversity, though I heard a number of customers say they missed it.

Horny? San Francisco In fact, though this is the sort of thing you’d expect from a strip club, the LL was still a far more woman-friendly place to work than most. The show directors, our immediate management, were ex-dancers — or, in one case, still filled shifts. The middle manager, who worked out of the LL’s sister business in Seattle, had also been on the floor herself. And the business had originally been opened by a guy with a decidedly politicized sexual freedom lifestyle. In the very earliest days of the LL, men and women were on the floor together! But that idea was way ahead of its time. By the time I arrived the place was homogenizing, but not to the degree that many clubs already hired only girls of a particular type. You’d never know to watch women walk into the club in their street clothes — Doc Martens stomping, hair cropped close or shaved off, safety pins holding together clothes or, sometimes, sported in an earlobe — that soon wigs would go on and the dykes, skate girls and punks would turn into Girls Next Door.

I applied for, and got, a job at the LL when I was well into my PhD program at the Sex Institute. When I arrived and they asked me which stage name I wanted to use, I said I didn’t need one — I was happy to be known as myself, didn’t feel the need to hide my identity behind a nom de porn. But they insisted — stage names were a rule at the Lusty, not an option, and in a way it equalized everyone. I chose Minx Manx (I wanted a cat name, and all the cats with tails were already spoken for). Indeed, Minx, though only a thin gloss over Carol, was her own person, and quickly grew to love the LL: if not for the endless stories and erotic trips the customers were on, for the rowdy co-workers.

Besides, specializing as I did in the Private Pleasures booth, where voyeurism and exhibitionism flowed like water over a dam, I spent most of my time at work masturbating! I ask you, what’s not to like?

Not all the women at the LL really loved the work, but I think we all loved each other. And many of my alumna went on to great things — those of you who keep a close eye on sex workers’ ads in Spectator and elsewhere would recognize several of them, especially the very well-known blonde dominatrix who was an undergrad at San Francisco State when she worked at the LL. Some went off to grad school. One owns a trendy bar. And I am not the only LL veteran who’s a writer: The fabulous Lily Burana, author of Strip City, danced next to me as she plotted world domination through her wonderful ‘zine Taste of Latex.

Together we all gathered backstage and dished about the more interesting customers: that guy who puts a candle in his ass and lights it; the one who gets in a yoga pose so he can suck his own cock; the guy who could put his own dick up his own ass! The ones with amazing or creative stories, and the ones with great cocks or bad manners. We were not required to give a show to a rude or pushy person, and I like to think we helped teach a generation of men some sexual social skills: You know, you can usually get what you want if you ask nicely.

I am still nostalgic about my time at the Lusty Lady — in fact, just this week I was in Madison, doing my solo performance of “Peep Show,” a look behind the scenes of the club in its early-’90s heyday. But my trajectory took me in another direction: into more focus on Good Vibrations, which was becoming a co-op even as I began to cut my LL hours so I could work across town, no doubt selling vibrators to LL customers’ wives.

Bedroom Games Gradually, as I moved into my 40s, it became less fun to go over to the Lusty and “entertain the troops,” as Robert and I always called our action-packed visits to the booths. (You can do a lot in there, you know, if you’re willing to stand up to do it.) It became less fun partly because, as we became a middle-aged couple, ever-younger women were less enthusxiastic about the shows they gave us. We were their moms’ and dads’ age, after all. And the club was forever altered by its bitter fight to become unionized. While I supported that fight — far be it for me to give my support to management and not workers — after the battle was won, it seemed the place was not fun for the workers any more. The stress of an us-them situation never really abated. Becoming unionized was a big and important thing, and it sent an important message to the management, the customers, the entire community — not to mention all the other sex workers who heard about it and saw new possibilities for their own lives. But it ended an era at the Lusty Lady, and now, it seems, that era is also about to end.

As a member of a co-op business myself — I’m one of the three or four original Good Vibrations owners left, 10 years later — I am hopeful for the LL’s staff as they rush to get funding, write bylaws, find the right attorneys, and figure out who’ll do what task. The notion of owning your own labor at an exotic dance club is undeniably appealing, but it’s also a challenge. This is the sort of job that’s built for frisky youth, here today and off traveling the world, going to grad school, or chaining yourself to a redwood tomorrow. If tomorrow is to bring us a newly energized passel of lovely lusty ladies, naked, naughty and nasty, it will be because behind the scenes, these live nude girls are putting their noses to the grindstone of business and their sweet asses on the line for our entertainment. You know how much you’d miss them if they went away, so let’s give them all our support so they can boldly go where no naked women have ever gone. And don’t forget to tip!

It’s May… Time to Masturbate!!

This year, the National Masturbation Month theme is “I’d Rather Be Masturbating!” Truer words were never spoken, eh? In fact, if you like, I can just wait right here for a few minutes so you can run off and wank. Come back when you’re finished and I’ll catch you up on all the fantastic National Masturbation Month festivities.

Aaaah, the pause that refreshes.

National Masturbation Month is a consciousness-raising event invented eight years ago by Good Vibrations to protest the firing of then U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Elders, the first African-American and female Surgeon General, was a Clinton appointee who fell afoul of her boss (or rather of his conservative critics) for stating in response to a question about teaching youth about safer sex that “masturbation is something that perhaps should be taught” as one of the elements in a safer-sex lifestyle. (It’s a damned good substitute for both fucking and abstinence, too, as any of you who were teens without enough social skills to get laid may vividly recall.)

Elders’s comment was eminently sensible, the sort of thing safer-sex educators say all the time, but the notion of being open about discussing masturbation with kids was seized on by the right wing. Elders became the canary in the sexual mineshaft of Clinton’s presidency — if he’d known how the Right was going to go after him a scant few years later, one wonders if he might have had the balls to stand by Elders. After all, many Americans feel that Clinton should have masturbated more and fucked Monica Lewinsky less. But perhaps Clinton is one of those good ol’ Southern boys who feels interns are hired at the White House to keep presidents away from the temptation to masturbate — ‘cuz we all know that masturbation is wrong, y’all, but the leader of the free world just sometimes gets so friggin’ tense.

Yeah, and moistening your cigar using a young lady’s pussy lips isn’t sex, just sophisticated.

As “firing the Surgeon General” entered the irony-loving U.S. lexicon of slang and took its place right next to “paddle the pickle,” Good Vibes stepped in. We got several of our sex-positive sister stores to co-sponsor a month of festivities in support of masturbation, and the number one reason to do it was to get North Americans talking about it. So we started a Masturbation Hall of Fame to honor sex educators and celebrities who made masturbation a positive or open part of their discourse; we sponsored a contest for Favorite Masturbation Euphemism (my all-time fave, beating out “pet the kitty,” is “tossing the pink salad”); I put together a show of masturbation porn clips. Come As You Are in Toronto, Grand Opening! In Boston (and newly open this year in LA), and Toys in Babeland in Seattle and NYC signed on as co-sponsors. I did dozens of drive-time radio shows from coast to coast, and since National Masturbation Month’s inception, we truly have made a mark on the way Americans think of — and talk about — masturbation.

I should blushingly disclose here that I have been a Masturbation Hall of Fame honoree since the year of its inception, inducted for my video Carol Queen’s Great Vibrations as well as for including many glowing mentions of pink-salad tossing in my erotica and other writing. “Peep Show,” my solo performance about working at the Lusty Lady, is all about masturbation, too.

The Masturbate-A-Thon!

A couple of years into it, we decided to up the ante and use National Masturbation Month to raise funds as well as consciousness. The Masturbate-A-Thon was born, and boy, did the drive-time shock jocks love it. As with any sort of charity ‘thon, participants in the Masturbate-A-Thon get pledges from supporters. But instead of going on a long walk, M-’Thon fundraisers save their feet and stay home to masturbate. For every minute they go, their sponsors fork over the pre-arranged amount of money. These funds are sent to charities — different ones each year — chosen by the local Masturbation Month sponsors. This year’s Good Vibes charity recipient is San Francisco’s AIDS Health Project.

Sound like fun? Print out a pledge form and start collecting pledges! This year’s Masturbate-A-Thon weekend is May 16-18 — and frankly, no one will disqualify you if you decide to jump the gun and start bishop-flogging or bunny-patting right now. The M-’Thon is all on the honor system. But who’d want to cheat? It’s so much fun to masturbate, it’s not like you won’t do it and then say you did.

Fun facts:

• Participants from Nunavut to St. John’s have come together (well… actually they’ve mostly done it by themselves) to raise over $25,000 for important health initiatives.
• Number of Masturbate-A-Thon pledge forms distributed since 1998: 65,000.
• Number of people who participated (those who returned pledge forms with money): 1570. (This means that well over 60,000 people are still trying to get up the nerve to ask someone to pledge — it just proves National Masturbation Month is still a necessary educational tool!)
• Number of countries with Masturbate-A-Thon participants: 6, and by far the most come from the U.S. and Canada.
• Largest amount raised by an individual: $1000!
• Longest time recorded by a participant in the Masturbate-A-Thon: 6 hours, 15 minutes.
• Number of television, print and radio interviews conducted regarding Masturbation Month: 375 — and I’ve done more than half of them myself, including two with Chicago’s notorious Mancow. He didn’t actually want to talk about masturbation, oddly enough — sometimes you can just tell when people don’t take enough quality monkey-spanking time.

The press interviews, particularly those with the drive-time shock jocks, yielded the next wrinkle in the National Masturbation Month celebrations. They all clamored to come to San Francisco for the Masturbate-A-Thon. They wanted to be judges. They wanted to bring their radio crews and broadcast it live. In vain did I say, “This is a private event! It’s not like we hold this at Crissy Field!” Each jock’s head was dancing with visions of legions of masturbators, the jocks wandering around holding stopwatches and channeling Howard Cosell.

Masturbate-A-Thon — Live!!

Good Vibes was not going to sponsor such a thing. The muddled boundaries of our poor befuddled society are such that we have rather more contact with masturbating people than we would like to have. (Dude who keeps calling my answering machine while you’re wanking — this means you. There are phone sex lines for that, and I’m sure your phone professional won’t have any problem if you want to call her “Carol.”)

But someone else could sponsor one. In fact, one group Masturbate-A-Thon had already occurred, though not a publicly accessible one. You want your true sexual innovators, you’ve gotta go to Salt Lake City, Utah. That’s right, once those people throw off the shackles of Mormonism, baby, all bets are canceled. You never know what they’ll do next — and three years back, they held a group Masturbate-A-Thon. Now, is San Francisco going to let the title of Masturbation Capital of the World be snagged by the likes of SLC? I think not! We, after all, are the originator of that fine old (and sadly defunct) organization, Mother Goose Productions, purveyor of Jack-and-Jill-Off Parties from 1987 to 1992 or so. I got my group sex groove there, and so did many others.

This looked like a job for The Center for Sex & Culture.

So we sponsored a live Masturbate-A-Thon, and it was a grand success. A fabulous time was had by all, money was raised, and we made some new friends. So we’re doing it again — and soon!

Here are the details: The live Masturbate-A-Thon, a benefit for The Center for Sex and Culture, is happening Friday, May 2, from 8 pm-2 am. It’s at The Jon Sims Center, 1519 Mission between 11th and South Van Ness. Bring a pledge sheet or pledge yourself — suggested self-pledge is $20 and up. The Masturbate-A-Thon will be televised (on the web), though at this writing we’re not sure how it will work — who’ll host, how people can pay. But the Masturbate-A-Thon site will have those details.

Feel free to invite everyone you know, provided they have the social skills to have sex in a group atmosphere in the first place. For ordinary masturbation you only need to get along with one person — yourself — and I have a feeling many people actually declare a temporary truce in a life of low self-esteem to do even that. In a group atmosphere, of course, you have to know how to be in a group. Naked. Wanking. Without forgetting that the whole scene was not set up for you personally. So no grabbing, wandering around in your street clothes staring at the masturbators like they were bonobo chimps or any other sort of boorish behavior. We’re all going to play together nicely. There’ll be men’s space, women’s space and mixed, plus an area for the webcast (other participants will be in no danger of being videotaped against their will — you have to consciously go into a separate room and sign a release to be part of the web show). There’ll be a clothes check, DJs, at least one fuck machine, and outlets for your power tools. And there’ll be the brilliant freedom of masturbating with others. See, you’re not the only one who does it!

If you read this after the fact or can’t come to the live event, feel free to have your own solo Masturbate-A-Thon on behalf of the Center any time in May. Get in the group spirit — do it with your partner or invite a few friends over! If you prefer, participate in Good Vibrations’ ‘thon instead. But solo or group, remember, you’d rather be masturbating, and you might as well “Come for a Cause!”

Links to the Good Vibes Masturbate-A-Thon and a live Portland, Oregon event (which will be held at the end of May), as well as more information about The Center for Sex & Culture, can all be found at Masturbate-A-Thon.org.

Those sorts of things aren’t very safe for the vagina either, though the vagina is stronger, more muscular, and has thicker walls than the anus. But there’s more: the Get Lost factor.

“Here are the anal toys,” I announce to the trainees, “mostly beads, butt plugs, small and slender dildos, and vibrators with flanges. Many people really love anal vibration — anuses are richly endowed with nerves, are very sensitive — but you have to use a vibrator with a base to avoid it slipping all the way in.” I hold up a Tiffany Mini Smoothie so they can compare it with the anal vibes. Its size and shape are similar, but it has no base. “When I worked in the store, I got to the point that I always asked people buying this vibrator whether they intended to use it anally. Nine times out of ten they’d look at me all surprised, like I’d read their mind. But this vibrator is one of the most unsafe things you can use anally. It’s small, slender, and tapered, and it has no base. I warn people about it and they say, ‘Oh, I’ll keep hold of it.’ They forget they’ll have lube on their hands and that with orgasm, the anus contracts and can pull objects in. And if a vibrating object slips inside the anus, it’s a medical emergency. Do you know why?”

By this time the trainees are pretty wide-eyed themselves. Mostly they hadn’t considered that coming to work at Good Vibes would put them in the ballpark of medical emergencies. Isn’t solo sex supposed to be safe? If anyone ventures a guess, it’s usually to say, “Because they won’t be able to get the vibrator out by themselves.”

“That’s part of it. The rectum doesn’t end, like the vagina does, and it’s possible that the vibrator will continue to move up into the persons’ body so that they, or even a friend who tries to help, can’t reach it. But the real problem is that the vibrator is on. They’re designed to shed heat into the surrounding air so they won’t get too hot. Inside the rectum, there’s no place for the heat to go. A vibrator could conceivably get hot enough to melt. The nice hospital personnel will triage you right up with the knife wounds.”

Their eyes are really big now.

“Of course, this is just another variation on an interesting sexual theme. Have you ever seen the web sites dedicated to listing the things emergency room personnel have removed from people’s anuses? Anal horniness must have a special quality to it — some of these people just did not think things through. I mean, quick-dry cement? A guy went to the hospital because the cement dried and he couldn’t get it out.”

Nervous laughs and a gasp.

“Robert’s dad is a doctor in rural Ohio. He’s seen guys with juice glasses up their butts. Light bulbs. And a coffee mug.”

“A coffee mug?”

“I guess he thought since it had a handle on it, he’d be able to take it out when he was done. But then, of course, the handle slipped in too. See what an important contribution to sexual safety you all will be making? You’ll be able to tell everyone how important it is to use only anal-appropriate toys. Keep people out of the emergency room. Even though the emergency room people have seen it all before.”

It’s true — of all the sexual emergencies that need quick hospital treatment, anal mishaps are among the most common. Partly, this has to do with those special qualities possessed by the anus and rectum: its tissue’s relative delicacy, the fact that it can expand greatly and contract suddenly. But I think there’s more to it than that. Good Vibrations has declared Anal Sex Month partly to speak up against the conditions that create such anal mishaps, and the number one problem is the social taboo that leads to secrecy about one’s anal desires.

I remember this well. When coming into my sexuality I got almost no information about anal play, even though it was part of my masturbation from the get-go. I never spoke up about any desires I had to be touched or penetrated — and when it finally happened, with a guy I’d picked up at a Texas biker bar, I was grateful for only a split second, because we didn’t have any lube. Vaginal dry-fucking was bad enough but this was excruciating. I was out of there like a shot. It was at least a decade later (with no more anal play — the pain of that one brief attempt at penetration scared me to pieces) before I even heard a mainstream reference to lube: that you should use it with condoms. Well, who knew? It wasn’t on the shelf in the drugstore, although you can find it in most drugstores today. Thinking back, I can only assume my biker pal hadn’t seen Last Tango in Paris — or maybe he didn’t like to butter anything, even his bread.

This lack of information about all things anal changed with the advent of the HIV epidemic. Suddenly we needed to talk about anal sex, though I don’t remember any acknowledgement in the early safe sex brochures that people might masturbate anally and that there would be safety considerations even for those who played solo. When they talked about “safety” they only meant disease transmission anyway, not accident or mishap. Further, for many in the mainstream, anal sex meant anal intercourse by definition; it was something gay men practiced because neither partner had a vagina and they had to make do. Not for years did we hear that more heterosexual women than gay men had had anal intercourse — many people have probably not heard this statistic even now — nor that plenty of bisexual and heterosexual men, not just gay men, wanted anal penetration and prostate stimulation. Even I was surprised when Bend Over Boyfriend became the biggest-selling video at Good Vibes, though I really should have expected it. Homo, hetero, bi, male, female, and everybody else — “What I like about assholes is,” purrs a transgendered character in my erotic novel The Leather Daddy and the Femme, “everybody’s got one.”

But you sure wouldn’t know it to look at most sex ed materials, which still mainly focus on warning people away from the dangers of anal intercourse. Given that everybody’s got one, it’s richly endowed with nerves, and it’s capable of such hunger that people suddenly think it’s a good idea to sit on their gearshift lever (I only hope they don’t elect to do this while driving, but you never know), don’t you think we could manage to give everybody the basics?

So I think the key to strange sex mishaps, particularly anal ones, is this lack of acknowledgement and information. It’s the fact that so many people have misinformation and shame about their anal desires that even people who are partnered don’t tell — until they have to explain to their lover why a favorite coffee mug is missing and there’s an emergency room charge on the credit card. It’s what makes us think the nice doctor will believe us when we say, “I was driving home from the Farmer’s Market when a car rear-ended me, and the next thing I knew that cucumber had lodged itself in my rectum.” (Meanwhile, the doctor puts a tick mark on the emergency room chart: one more check next to “cucumber, rear-end collision,” which is listed along with “mopping floor, slipped, penetrated by handle” and “using hairbrush, startled by doorbell” and “coffee mug left on sofa by mistake.” The chart is surrounded by X-rays taken of odd items found in peoples’ butts.)

What are these people thinking? For one thing, that anal masturbation is rare; that they’re just about the only person who ever did something like this; that the nice doctor hasn’t seen dozens of lost cucumbers, deodorant bottles, and flange-less vibrators.

In my perfect world, we’d have public service announcements on radio and TV: rock stars and ex-presidential candidates declaring, “Two words: Anal Beads!” or “Lube it!” Ordinary household objects would come with labels: “Sure it fits, but can you get it out?” Hemorrhoid relief commercials wouldn’t sell ointment, they’d sell butt plugs (just like in England — only there they call ‘em “pessaries” and I’m sure they come in tacky colors, not like our beautiful silicone jewels. On the plus side, the National Health Service pays for it).

The secrets of the anus are out — it’s among the most common of the guilty pleasures. Just about everybody has one, and a lot of us want to play with them. It’s high time the anus came all the way out of the closet. We deserve safe, pleasurable stimulation for any part of our body that craves it, even where the sun don’t shine.

Moving to San Francisco was a big deal in another way, too. It meant I was coming home, joining the tribe in the only city in America I felt might hold a place for me. I moved to San Francisco because I was chasing a doomed relationship, but that was just my excuse for packing the truck. Really, I’d been slowly moving to San Francisco all my life, from the time I heard my mother croon the Tony Bennett ode: She’d left her heart here once, and I think that set me on an emigrant’s path even before I heard about the Summer of Love or Castro Street.

My first big Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender event was the San Francisco Pride parade I trekked down to see in 1978. I was just about to turn 21. Contingents passed down Market Street endlessly — who knew there were this many queers in the whole entire world? I was thrilled by the drag queens in their towering hair, the Dykes on Bikes, even the Gay Republicans.

A couple of years later my girlfriend Ellen and I visited again. We wound up on Castro Street after the march, looking for fun — the street was packed from sidewalk to sidewalk, mostly with shirtless gay men (the lesbians had obviously gone somewhere else and failed to invite us). Ellen and I had to clutch each other hard as we moved down the street in order to not be forcibly separated by the tide of guys. I marveled that I had never before been one of the only women in a crowd of men and felt so safe. I treasure that memory now because so many of those men are gone — the AIDS-overwhelmed ’80s changed the Castro, but I’m glad I got to see it in its heyday. Being among all those sexy queer men also pointed me in the direction of a kind of bisexuality I didn’t then know existed, because in the ’70s we thought it was kind of like a grafted tree: you’re gay with some straight attached, or straight with a gay part. My response to those men was erotic yet not out of the gay mindset in which I lived in those years: It told me attraction to men didn’t necessarily mean feeling, or being, straight.

In those days Gay Pride was one of the forces that moved me through the world. I was lesbian-identified (though was happy in those days to let “gay” stand for “gay/lesbian/bi/trans” — I used the term the way we later used “queer”) and was politically active in practically all the gay movements that touched Eugene. I had co-founded a gay youth group in 1975. I ran the University of Oregon’s Gay People’s Alliance. I helped teach Gay Studies. I worked for antidiscrimination laws on city and state levels. Gay Pride meant that gay was good, one of many alternatives for sex and loving — and also that we needed to stand up for ourselves, introduce ourselves to the world instead of staying hidden in the closet, and fight homophobia and intolerance.

None of that has changed since the ’70s, except now we often say “LGBT” or “queer” instead of “gay”; those terms acknowledge diversity a little better. And no one can deny there’s a lot of diversity in our communities: of gender (both kinds), sexual desires, and political philosophy as well as class, race and culture, relationship preference, and desire to create a family. Everything that distinguishes people in the big world outside is present within the queer communities. Back in the day we often wanted to downplay all this difference, or failed to understand it. We had challenges relating woman to man, gay to bi, color to caucasian, and many other culturally significant divides. While there may always be more room for improvement, we’re getting better at bridging and respecting our differences now — which, I am certain, is one underlying reason that I could be elected one of this year’s Grand Marshals of San Francisco Pride.

I’m not the first bisexual Grand Marshal, but it’s still a bit unusual for bi folk to be selected for this honor. I think I might be the first Grand Marshal so closely identified with sex toy sales, and so if you come to San Francisco for the 2001 Pride march (or even if you just catch it on TV), look for me on a float with my Good Vibes friends, celebrating sexual independence and erotic pride for everyone.

Maybe the biggest change in my conception of Pride is this: I used to think only people who had to fight for self-respect because they were queer (or different in some other way) needed it. Everybody else had it already, right? After all, the culture labels some people and groups acceptable, others not. But now I realize that most heterosexuals aren’t really encouraged to develop pride in their sexuality either — sure, they can say they’re better than somebody else, but they often don’t get adequate education or support any more than queers do.

We all need pride, the sense that we’re good and valuable people just the way we are, making a unique contribution to the diverse mix of humanity. Pride implies that we can love and value ourselves because we don’t hold others in greater or lesser esteem: it implies equality, or at least striving for it. Living in San Francisco has taught me that Pride works: We’re a diverse and remarkably tolerant city, still, after all these years, exporting notions of acceptance and sex-positivity to the whole world. I’m proud to be here, to be a part of a community that teaches those lessons to others. This year I’ve traveled to places that most people don’t think of as progressive or liberal — Tennessee, Salt Lake City, Columbus (Ohio) — and in all of those places I found people who look to San Francisco as a model. They’re queer, they’re sex-positive, they value diversity, they’re “straight but not narrow.” They have carved out their lives to feel pride — and in the doing, they teach their neighbors and families more about acceptance — and possibility.

While I’m riding the float down Market Street, no doubt brandishing a Magic Wand instead of a scepter, I’ll be thinking about those people, all the folks who visit San Francisco at this time of year to get a dose of pride strong enough to last. I’ll be looking for the folks who just moved here because they realized they needed more acceptance and possibility in their lives than they feel they can get back home, wherever that is. And I’ll think about the Pride celebrations in dozens or hundreds of towns that are smaller than San Francisco’s, but no less exhilarating and necessary. And I’m sure I’ll think, like Dorothy, “There’s no place like home.”

For more about San Francisco Pride, visit www.sfpride.org.

My hair girl is way too young to remember firsthand the slick magazine pages I have in mind when I say, “My partner likes it when you cut it Breck Girl.” She grins, though; all the hair people, even the ones who weren’t born yet, must know about those pastel pictures of women with hair too good to be true, or maybe she’s remembering the TV commercials of the ’70s. No, I couldn’t even pray for hair like that, but maybe she gets it anyway as she lifts the limp wisps away from my face and then leads me to the long communal basin. She leans me back. She’s femme, but has a trace of the mistress too: she puts my head in the basin’s groove, moves me bodily until I’m at the right angle to shampoo. Then, familiarly, she washes my hair, using four times as many sweet, slick hair products as I ever do at home. Her fingertips find tight muscles and rub them looser. It’s so intimate, and though I know everyone at this salon gets the same treatment or some variation of it, it still feels like I’m being taken to a place of great openness, like I could open my eyes and an erotic adventure would have started instead of a haircut.

But she’s still dressed when I get up to go to the chair, all the other salon workers and customers too, and I settle in. For some reason I don’t open my eyes once during the whole cut and style, no chatting today, just reverie and feeling her hands. She is really quite masterful: moves my head around to suit herself, hands right on my neck and scalp or else using my hair like fine pony reins, putting me where she wants me. I always like that. It’s one of the reasons I want to have long hair, giving my tresses up to a lover so he or she can grab the reins and ride. I like having my hair pulled — not yanked, usually, but just like I love it when my limbs are positioned for me and I’m turned into a fuck-doll, I love having my hair treated like it’s there for the taking. In real life it won’t grow long or thick enough, it’s too fine to really haul me around by, but I can dream.

I’m not a hair fetishist, not really. I love Robert’s hair as it is now, daddy-short in a flat top, and as it was when it was so long that he, too, wore it all gender-fucky in plastic clips. It was softly curly then. His hair now is animal, especially when wet, some indescribable place between bristly like a hedgehog’s and soft like a cat’s, I think more like a seal though I’ve never touched a live seal so I can’t be sure. My first girlfriend had a perfectly straight, thick drape of strawberry blonde

hair; it obscured her fingers moving on her guitar’s strings, obscured her face as she sang. Another girlfriend had hair so much finer, even, than mine that it was like spun silk, the only remotely femme thing about her; when we drove in her old Peugeot with the sunroof open it would fly crazily skyward as if trying to escape. It haloed her in gold, an angelic sign on a woman whose hands were always stained with motor oil.

I can’t even feel the hair girl’s hands on my head or in my hair. Although I feel my head changing positions so I know she must be adjusting me, exposing my nape so she can snip it bare, side to side where I can read her deliberation in the slow sni-i-i-ick of the scissors. She’s delicate, though, precise. I’m sure it’s going to be a good haircut. Even Shakespeare had a thing for good hair: “Only God, my dear/Could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair,” he reminded someone whose tresses inspired not just him, but everyone in the region, perhaps to these same thoughts of pony reins I have now — a blonde Elizabethan pony that everyone in town wanted to ride.

I’m not a hair fetishist, not really; I’ve never chosen a lover specifically because of her hair. I’ve never turned on to a man just because his hair was long, straight, curly or fuzzy, as we used to sing way back when, when hair was, if anything, even more important than it is today. I’m not really a hair fetishist, but I can be impressed. Our girlfriend J’s hair was thick and hennaed red, luxuriant and somehow just begging to have hands sunk into it, palms cradling her cheeks. I’m not very toppish in real life, but hair like that — or maybe it was the look in her eyes the gorgeous red hair framed — just made me want to fist my hands in it, pull her in, devour her.

And then the last time we had a date with Jack and Linda I started marveling at their long hair, each so different — hers dark and sculpted, laying down her back like a smooth waterfall, and his long, light, wild, a silvery cascade.

Linda’s not really tall though she seems that way sometimes, and the hair adds to her length. Her limbs are slim in my hands, such a good fit, the way it felt the first time I held a woman in my arms, realized sex would have whole new dimensions now that I would sometimes be the same size as or even bigger than my lovers. Linda’s touch is so sure, so practiced and cool, and she is so practiced in her body, too. I know what works for me but don’t always ask for it, would prefer to take the train ride into the magic tunnel to see what will happen, if the stars are lining up. If they’re not, I can always reach down and touch my own clit. Last time a nirvana moment happened while I was lost under a curtain of Jack’s hair, like mosquito netting in a tent in paradise, another place and time. He fucked me into such a perfect arc of taking it, of I want it, that somewhere mid-yell the talisman he wore around his neck, which had just been tapping and teasing my nipples before he rose up higher, slipped into my mouth, and suddenly I was fucking it too, lost under that wild sweep of hair.

Of course it had to occur to me, lost that way, that his hair would make perfect pony reins, head thrown back and back arched, rising over him and fucking his ass. For that matter, so would Linda’s. For that matter, Robert could do it while I watched, making the kind of perfect circles on my clit that Hair Girl made when she did my temples, hands slick not with cunt juice but shampoo.

I carefully skirt the notion of using Hair Girl’s hair like reins because I think hair girls and boys, captive audiences as they are, should be the ones to make the first move. So a cascade of possible images that might otherwise sweep through me when she pulls my head back again by my hair are kept at bay, barely.

I finally open my eyes. Oh, what a cute haircut, a sleek sweep over my eye, a completely different look than I walked in with. I’m in a rather different mood now, too. My dad, who used to be a barber, would call this “pixie-ish.” Are there still pixies? Am I one, even sometimes?

At home Robert says, “Oh, I always want to fuck you when your hair is all Breck Girl.”