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The Sex Blog Of Record
Thursday, January 23rd, 2020 -- by Bacchus
There’s a clever visual pun in this 1980s porn magazine centerfold poster of Annie Sprinkle posing (and peeing) next to an automatic sprinkler sign. Clever, that is, by the heavy-handed comedic standards of the porn industry of that era:
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Sunday, December 30th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
There’s a lot I don’t know about Annie Sprinkle, and you may not either. For instance, did you know that she used to publish a watersports/pissing ‘zine called The Sprinkle Report? I found this announcement for it in the August 1981 issue of Adult Cinema Review:
The rather precious blurb reads:
Urinationalists, welcome to the main stream! With the publication of Annie Sprinkle’s first Tinkle Report, your beloved hobby finally has a quality scholarly journal. Annie’s new newsletter, printed beautifully on beautiful paper, should be to the Golden Shower set what fire hydrants are to Golden Retrievers — an absolute must. Kinky pix, potty poetry, and art that’s strictly #1 make this a fund to read publication…
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Saturday, April 28th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
Last year Annie Sprinkle tweeted this photo of her at the famous Plato’s Retreat swinger’s club in Manhattan, taken some time in the 1980s by photographer Toby Old:
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Friday, April 7th, 2017 -- by Bacchus
Ah, remember when arts funding was really controversial? This is from Annie Sprinkle’s files, from back in the day, narrated in the breathless tones of the National Enquirer:
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Friday, October 23rd, 2015 -- by Bacchus
You’d be ornery too if you had to pirouette in those shoes:
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Thursday, September 3rd, 2015 -- by Bacchus
This dude is as happy as it’s possible for a trauma patient to be, with nurses Annie Sprinkle and Helen Madigan on his case:
According to Annie, this was for a photoset in Hustler magazine in 1976. My internet spies tell me it was the September issue.
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Sunday, May 17th, 2015 -- by Bacchus
I think this tweet speaks for itself:
Sure he did!
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Wednesday, September 24th, 2014 -- by Bacchus
Annie tweets:
“Busty blast from the past. Once I was an X rated Charlie’s Angel for CLUB magazine with Candy Samples and Julia Parton (Dolly relative).”
What her tweet does not tell us is that this photo appeared on the cover of Club in May of 1984 advertising a “3D Titzapoppin’!” feature with included cut-em-out-yourself 3D glasses. The claim “fifty pounds of juicy jigglin’ jugs” seems a mite hyperbolic, though.
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Friday, April 26th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
Today’s moment of Annie Sprinkle nostalgia:
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2012 -- by Bacchus
Here’s Emily Nagoski on what it’s like when the famous and fabulous Annie Sprinkle comes to campus to give sex tarot readings:
I expected her to be fabulous. She was. But beyond the fabulous was the warmth, the welcoming, the openness, the inclusiveness, the eagerness to connect, to give something of value to each of the students who swarmed around her perimeter, watching, attendant, like damp, frozen children waiting for cocoa after an afternoon in the snow.
So it was The Annie Show all the way, but she noticed that and she created space for us other sex educators to read Tarot with her, see, because she’s a cup of cocoa after playing in the snow; she is the mittens drying on the radiator; she’s whipped cream on the tip of your nose. And so I sat next to Annie as she engaged with each student, limitless in her welcome.
She would explain a card and then say to the student, “What do YOU think?” And then she would look at me and say, “What do YOU think?” And she would smile and say, “Wow, you’re good!” And I would get all warm inside. Because cocoa.
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Saturday, April 10th, 2010 -- by Bacchus
I’ve never done psychedelic drugs, but I grew up in a sort of odd little backwater of the counterculture, so I’ve always known plenty of people who did. My external impression has long been that these drugs “mess you up” in a fairly specific way — namely, nobody who has ever done a lot of them seems to be any damn good at fitting in, following the rules, or sticking to convention. Since I myself am something of an anarchist, I don’t regard that with any particular dismay. If LSD makes you unfit to be a cubicle rat, why, that’s a problem for corporate recruiters, but I’m not sure anybody else should give a damn.
Thus I was interested to read Annie Sprinkle’s article How Psychedelics Informed My Sex Life and Sex Work, in which she explains that she took to sex work in part because LSD had freed her from from convention:
At sixteen, I finally had my first real sexual experience. On that same night, I also had my first mescaline experience. My boyfriend Van was twenty-six. He owned a hippie coffee shop. He was kind, adoring, and wise. We rode his motorcycle to his beach house for the weekend. He offered me a hit of mescaline. We each took one. I half expected him to turn into a three-headed monster at any moment like with LSD, but the mescaline was more gentle and more sensuous than acid. We walked on the beach, hand in hand, and it was a magical experience. I’d never seen so many stars in the sky; the ocean waves and sand were filled with phosphorescent algae. The world was covered in multi-colored glitter. Van kissed me and I couldn’t tell where my body started or ended next to his. I felt big love.
After a romantic and transcendental evening on the beach, we went back to his place and he treated me to my first cunnilingus experience. Perhaps it was just timing, but the mescaline was definitely an aphrodisiac. I felt so open, aroused, and trusting. Each touch was amazing. It was the most ecstatic experience I had ever had. A few weeks later, when I turned seventeen, I happily got rid of my virginity with Van. I was expecting intercourse to feel as overwhelming and transcendental as a psychedelic experience. Nice as it was, it didn’t feel that way, although later in life it would. At eighteen, I was living a hippie lifestyle in Tucson, Arizona. I did more mescaline, more LSD, and became wildly sexually adventurous. In a famous Playboy magazine interview in 1966, Timothy Leary exclaimed that LSD was the most powerful aphrodisiac ever discovered. I don’t remember having much, if any, sex while tripping on acid. I did not find LSD conducive to wanting to be intimate or to be touched, although I’ve talked with plenty of people who have had mind-blowing sex on LSD. However in retrospect, I see that my drug experiences did free me up from following convention. When most of my schoolmates went on to college, I ended up working in a “massage parlor.” To everyone’s surprise, especially my own, I found my calling! I was already breaking laws by smoking pot and taking psychedelics (which I felt should be legal), so to do illegal prostitution was not that much of a stretch. I believed prostitution should be legal also, and became involved in the prostitutes’ rights movement. I enjoyed my “work” and it fit my needs at the time.
She also had this to say about MDMA/Ecstasy:
By the mid-’80s the Great Dying was well underway; AIDS had taken its huge toll on my community. I’d lost many friends and lovers, and was trying to cope. Being a very sexually active gal, I was desperately searching for new, satisfying forms of sexuality, which could be enjoyed without exchanging bodily fluids. I signed up for a three-day Sacred Sex workshop led by a Tantra teacher named Jwala. At the workshop, my workshop partner gave me my first hit of Ecstasy, and that’s exactly what I experienced–ecstasy. It’s no wonder “E” is extremely popular in the “sex community.” Before MDMA became illegal it had been used successfully during marriage/relationship counseling sessions. Therapists found that partners were better able to communicate with each other while on MDMA. It reduces performance anxiety to zero and creates a yummy, lovey-dovey feeling, and a nice shift in consciousness. Needless to say, I became a convert — to Tantra, and to Ecstasy.
I continued to take Ecstasy, once, twice, or three times a year. Jwala taught me about how to do ritual, about “preparing the space,” and stating one’s intention before making love. I used those same techniques when I would ingest a substance, which really helped make the experiences more satisfying. I mostly preferred taking Ecstasy alone. I used it as a tool for self-evaluation. Usually I would spend some time making love with myself and doing “sexual healing” on myself. The first time I did “E” alone, I fell deeply in love with myself for the first time, which was very good for me as I had a relatively low self-image. This helped me transition out of working in prostitution and appearing in mainstream porn films, and into doing more of the kind of work I wanted to do at that point. I also found myself desiring to connect with women, both sexually and in my work. I started making “feminist porn.” The second time I did Ecstasy, I heard a voice tell me to quit smoking tobacco, which I then did permanently, after 25 years of a heavy smoking habit. Another time, I sat naked in front of my mirror and looked at my repressed anger, and let it surface. I hissed like a snake for several hours, and witnessed my inner Medusa in a remarkably non-judgmental and fearless way. I realized how sexual energy and anger are connected. I realized that in order to go to the next level of my sexuality I needed to learn to better express my anger. I practiced, and sure enough, I learned to have long, extended orgasms. When I then produced and directed my own video, The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop (1992), I captured myself having an extremely intense five-minute-long orgasm. In retrospect I realize that I used a lot of psychedelic imagery in the video. The project was quite successful.
Although I did have some wonderful orgasms on Ecstasy, the experience of Ecstasy was not so much about orgasm or sex, as it was about looking deeply into my Self–heart, soul, and psyche. Each time I took Ecstasy I retained some key piece of information that I could utilize to grow as a person, and expand my (sexual) horizons. I found the lover I had been searching for so long–me! When I took it with lovers, I could feel a sense of empathy with my lover without doing anything. I experienced my body as a temple, and sex as prayer. Ecstasy took me into my heart the way that psychedelics took me into my mind and spirit. Also when on Ecstasy I would sometimes have wonderful, long “crygasms.” Ecstasy showed me a deeper kind of love, which I was inspired to create more of in my life, without the drug. And I did. A lover of mine who had studied Tantra in India for several years, told me that with Ecstasy “a person could get to similar ecstatic and spiritual places that took Tantra yogis a lifetime of strict disciplines to get to–if they were lucky enough to ever get to those states.” There is of course a down side to Ecstasy. I had some miserable hangovers. I slept with my best friend’s husband when I shouldn’t have. Oops. Some folks let down their guard and have risky, unsafe sex, and I’m told that a few people have had medical emergencies with extremely serious consequences.
I regard it as something of a pity that anecdotal, experiential writing about drugs isn’t more common. The social taboos against describing drug use in neutral or positive language seems to me to be far stronger than the social taboos against using the drugs in the first place. All of which tends to cede the literary field to the purveyors of hysterical reefer-madness morality plays — a development which does no good at all if you believe, like I do, that it’s best to provide people with good information and then leave them the hell alone to do what they will.
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Thursday, January 14th, 2010 -- by Bacchus
I’ve long been hostile to the idea of “sex addiction” because it strikes me as nonsense on its face. Sex is a core biological imperative, like breathing or excreting, making a “sex addiction” as nonsensical as a “crapping addiction”. Pathologizing normal behavior is something I recognize as a tool of control, a way to twist people up inside so that you can more easily guilt them into changing their behavior (joining your church, giving you money, working longer hours, whatever.) Thus, for me, concerned talk of “sex addiction” is a red-flag warning that the speaker is likely to be a sex-negative culture warrior or a woo-woo-therapy-selling charlatan.
I’m pretty good at being dismissive of nonsense, but I’m not always so good at patiently explaining why it’s nonsense. “Suffering fools gladly” equals a skill I was behind the door when they were passing them out. Fortunately, we have Annie Sprinkle to bear what I cannot, and she’s written a nice article succinctly explaining the nonsense that is sex addiction prattle. There’s lots, but this paragraph fragment is exemplary:
Sex addiction often makes a disease out of what is often quite reasonable sexual behavior. It emphasizes negative aspects of sex. It takes away some of the personal responsibility for sexual choices and blames problems on a ‘disease’. It offers simple solutions to complex problems. Marty Klein points out that, “Sex addiction legitimizes sex-negative attitudes and supports sexual guilt.” It can make people feel badly if they simply have an active and varied sex life. Sex addiction can be used as a way to put down socially disapproved of behavior.
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Friday, September 25th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
Sometime in the mid-to-late 1980s, Annie Sprinkle became somewhat famous (or notorious, depending on who you talk to) for her performance art show Porn Post Modernist, which included a bit she called A Public Cervix Announcement:
Personally, I’ve always thought she should have called it “Through Darkest Ignorance With Flashlight And Speculum”:
Well, it’s now twenty(ish) years later, in the age of the internet and digital cameras. Which means Annie’s groundbreaking work has been re-imagined, in the spirit of “citizen science”, as the Beautiful Cervix Project, with high-resolution color photographs taken daily over time, complete with a tip-o-the-hat to the “very talented boyfriend with a headlamp.” The only thing that feels 1980s about this project is the understandable but blogger-unfriendly advance-permission-required photo reproduction policy; in every other respect, it’s very much in the style we’ve come to think of as “Wikipedia Modern”:
Comic credit: xkcd.
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Friday, September 11th, 2009 -- by Dr. Faustus
In yesterday’s mail came David Henry Sterry and R.J. Martin, Jr., eds. Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Love, Life, Money, and Sex. And while I’ve barely had time to crack it open, the first thing I see is a very short article by the magnificent Annie Sprinkle (Ph.D., even!), entitled “40 Reasons Why Whores Are My Heroes.”
There’s a lot here, that run from the prosaic
21. Whores relieve millions of people from unwanted stress and tension.
to the humorous
36. Whores have the guts to wear very big wigs.
to the explicitly political culmination.
40. Whores are rebelling against the absurd, patriarchal, sex-negative laws against their profession and are fighting for the right to receive financial compensation for their valuable work.
But I guess I must just be some sort of economist manqué, because what really stuck with me was
6. Whores have careers based on giving pleasure.
Any artist, indeed any worker of any kind, should be proud to say the same thing about herself. You can read the whole thing at Annie Sprinkle’s site here.
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