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Archival Abby
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Annie Sprinkle
An Interview
From the Last Issue of Porn Free
AE: Explain "Pleasure Activist" and "Post-Porn Modernist."
ANNIE: Pleasure Activist. Well, basically it's acknowledging that we're
a pleasure-negative society, and it's about making the world a more
pleasurable place. Sometimes, there's a lot of resistance to that.
We're much more comfortable, as a society, with suffering. It's
amazing, I travel around the world and do different shows about
sexuality and you'd be amazed at all the shit I get. So that's just one
example. Another example is, we don't really have heroes that are happy
and in ecstasy. How many role models are there for people who lead
really pleasurable lives? People get jealous if you're happy, they want
to put you down if you're happy and having fun. We don't respect that
and think that it's a waste of time. I think I was a Pleasure Activist.
I don't think I really am anymore, as much as I was. I used to be more
of a sex positivist and a pleasure activist. See I'm always changing.
AE: Do you still consider yourself a sex radical?
ANNIE: No, if I had to pick a label, I'd have to say artist--who's
concerned about the sexual state of the union, to put it in Susie
Bright's words. The state of sex in the world, I'm very concerned about
it. So I'm now more busy learning about average people. So I'm not a
sex radical so much. At the moment I'm exploring intimacy. I'm
monogamous now, for two years. That's not very radical.
AE: For you it is!
ANNIE: [laughs] A Post Porn Modernist is a term a friend of mine in
Holland came up with to describe certain kinds of people who make
sexually explicit material that's perhaps more experimental, political,
humorous, avant garde, strange, eclectic, than the usual, which is
basically erotic...or attempts to be erotic.
AE: The XXXXOOO: Love and Kisses from Annie Sprinkle volumes 1 and 2
are postcard books, but the press release says that even after you mail
them, you have a copy, with text, left over. How's that?
ANNIE: There's like stubs in the book, nice size stubs, so that you can
still read them. I'm going to be doing reading, with questions and
answers. It's rather informal. People are welcome to come and hang out,
watch and listen, chat with me and get their book signed.
AE: What does it feel like to have so many people following in your footsteps? I'll bet you never anticipated that.
ANNIE: I don't know if it's just my footsteps. I think there's a whole
movement. I think more people are following in Madonna's footsteps. You
know her book, Sex, that's what influenced people more than anything to
go into sex. If you go to colleges, which I do a lot of now, a lot of
students are making porn and exploring sexual issues. My special unique
area is that I'm one of the few people who come from the sexual
underground, the sexual subculture, and into the mainstream world.
That's what makes me a little bit unique. I'm not really that
interested in mainstream porn anymore. I'm more interested in sex
education and sex art. And creating a vision for the future. And sexual
healing, of course. I've got a workshop coming up in a couple weeks at
Gabriel's Guest House, here in Provincetown, called Sacred Sex.
Gabriel's Guest House is a wonderful house.
AE: How do you feel about the Internet as an avenue for sexual exploration? You have a web site, right?
ANNIE: Yes, Katharine Gates made the web site for me. Any expression of
sexual issues or desires, any kind of talk or thinking about sexuality
is a positive thing, because it's taking subjects that are very hidden
and in the dark and bringing light on them. However, it's limited.
There's no body contact. A large part of sex has to do with the body. I
don't think you can really explore sex fully through the internet. I
haven't had much time or experience, because I've been traveling. But
it was fun to put my cervix online. Now I don't have to show it anymore.
AE: Now you're global! Your cervix is global.
ANNIE: My internet Public Cervix Announcement.
AE: Most of our products are visual. Do you think that's the most
common medium for sexual experimentation? That the visual aspect is
important?
ANNIE: I think everybody has different senses that they like to
explore. I'm a very visual person. My girlfriend is very audial, aural.
She likes sounds, she's a musician. There are people who are very
tactile.
AE: The people who like listening fascinate me. There are people who
sell audio tapes of themselves. One woman would put a tape recorder
under her bed while she was having sex. So that tape would be her moans
and groans and the bed squeaking.
ANNIE: That's pretty hot! I've made all kinds. One of the stranger
experiences I've had was a client who paid me for sex. He was obviously
a big phone sex user. And the sex was liek having sex with a person on
the phone. It was like I put on a tape recorder. It was just pure
chatting, like he was acting out a phone sex call. I felt sorry for the
guy, actually, because he wasn't in the present, really. I think
there's something for everybody, and all expressions of pleasure that
are consensual and with good intentions are a positive and wonderful
thing.
AE: Do you think that the people who don't take you seriously. have some sort of resistance to opening up to pleasure?
ANNIE: I'm not taken seriously a lot, in a lot of different ways. I
think there are many reasons for that. I'm not understood in the porn
world, in a way. I'm not understood in the art world, in a way. People
have a lot of resistance to sex and porn. I used to not care, but I'm
starting to care a little bit. There are people who should come to my
shows, that don't, because they know there's porn in it. But yet, the
people who are knowlegeable and do come are quite surprised. It doesn't
conform to the performance art standard. That's okay. I don't want to
put energy into that, actually. It's just the same as if you say you're
black, or gay or Jewish. People have really stereotypical,
preconceived, judgemental prejudiced notions.
It's a civil rights movement. It's really similar to the gay rights
movement. If you look at movies and Hollywood, if all have these nasty
ideas of,say, prostitutes. I just came from the Internation Conference
on Prositution. It was an incredible conference, the second one I went
to. It's just amazing the struggle, and how people's human rights are
violated, the struggle of people in the sex business. It must be
decriminalized. That's really clear. It's really unfair that it's
illegal. There are issues, like public nuisance, or condoms littering
the streets, or whatever, that have to be dealt with. There are
problems surrounding prostitution, like drugs, al those things. But the
actual act of having sex with money, which is what most marriages are,
that is totally outrageous and unfair.
AE: Are people closer to being in touch with their sexuality today than they were in the 60s? 70s? 80s?
ANNIE: I think that there's a lot of knowledge. I've been doing it in
the sex world for 25 years. People are more knowlegeable. There are
more options, in terms of pornographer, erotic, sex books and art. But
I don't know if we're really any closer to sexual satisfaction in our
society. It's very complicated. I've devoted 25 years of my life to
learning everything I could about sex, and now I realize that I don't
know anything. I was once at the point when I thought I knew a lot, and
then more doors open and you go, Jesus, I didn't know a thing. It's
just so complex, as complex as life itself. It's mutifaceted and vast
and individual. The fact that sex is seen as sex is strange.
We separate sex from other things, from intimacy, love, caring,
connection. I realized that a lot of the tricks I turned weren't really
about sex. The sex was just an excuse for people to get other things,
to get other needs met. Sex is actually very unimportant compared to a
lot of other things that sex is an excuse for. For being seen, close
with someone. People just really want attention and love and intimacy,
quite often. We need to learn as much about those things as about sex.
We've learned a lot of things about sex, but that's not really what we
need to learn.
AE: Have we taken a step backward in our sexual development?
ANNIE: No. But there's a constant tug of war, push and pull, between freedom...
AE: Dr. Joyce Elders was fired for merely mentioning masturbation as a topic of conversation.
ANNIE: She was the keynote speaker at the whore conference. She was
fabulous. She's so real and smart and tells it like it is. There's anb
example of a pleasure-negative society. She says that 86 percent of men
masturbate and 74 percent of women masturbate and the rest lie. She was
accused of saying that children should be taught to masturbate. And she
said, No one needs to be taught to masturbate. You're born knowing how
to masturbate. Babies masturbate. No one has to be taught." She's just
telling the truth and acknowledging what's there. But you can't do that
in office, I guess. That was real sad that she got fired. Stupid,
absolutely stupid. I was shocked that Clinton fell for that. But I
guess his advisors...
AE: He seems to be a pleasure seeker. If he were left alone, things would be much different.
ANNIE: Someone said he gives great hugs. And I think, wow! He looks
like he'd be a very sensuous lover. Juicy and hot, feeling person. He
looks like a kinescetic person to me. I think Hillary's probably
feelin' good.
AE: Is it ever a burden being the underground goddess of sexual and spiritual enlightenment?
ANNIE: Wait a minute! The what? Well, thank you for that. Goddess of, what was that?
AE: You seem to have managed to join all the angles of sex together. The marketable commodity, the act of love, spiritual, etc.
ANNIE: Well, what's amazing, is I'm coming to New York and all these local artists are doing a tribute to me.
AE: That's Dianne Aldrich's Body of Art. I'll be there. I've been to a
few of her shows. You'll love it. It's got a real good vibe.
ANNIE: Well, that's good. I was quite tickled. I just got an award up
in San Francisco at Good Vibrations' Twentieth Anniversary party. I was
so blown away by the appreciation I got, which I never expected. I'm
always quite surprised. There are a lot of people who aren't supportive
or don't respect me. But there are a handful.
AE: The people who know, though... You've been away for a while, it
seems. And now there's a whole new crop of people college age or even
younger exploring their own sexual expression. People have compared
Ducky DooLittle to you.
ANNIE: Oh, I like her stuff. She does nice work. My work's kind of
eclectic. It surprises me, because I don't feel like I've done that
much that people would know about. I did tons of porn, but all that
stuff kinda came and went.
AE: The porn kind of faded into the background. It was much more your
whole persona that you created, ex-porn star Annie Sprinkle, etc.
ANNIE: I did hundreds of magazine articles and hundreds of magazine
layouts for years, movies upon movies. But nobody has even seen any of
that.
AE: No one has the Super 8 projectors to see it all. How many orgasms do you think you've been responsible for?
ANNIE: Oh, God, let's see...one, two, three, four, five. Thousands, I
guess. I think I have good karma because of that. I don't know. That's
a funny question. It depends on what you consider an orgasm. There are
a lot of different kinds of orgasms. Thousands that I know of. Where I
acutally saw sperm shoot out... It's funny, in my travels I'm running
into all these young guys (actually they look old) who say, "Oh, you
were the first porn movie I saw!" And it is so bizarre. The hotel
manager where I stayed told me that, and the guy who curated the Whole
Life Expo. People I never...
I was their first porn movie, or caused their first orgasm. But there's
something quite strange about it. Wonderful and strange. Like we've had
this intimate connection. I know how I feel about Linda Lovelace,
because she was the first porn star I saw, and Harry Reems, and how
special that was for me. Deep Throat was the first porn movie I saw. So
I'm quite delighted when I was someone's first.
AE: You posed for the centerfold of Sluts & Slobs. That didn't go
over too well on the newsstands. Do you think people would be more
receptive today?
ANNIE: [laughs] That's funny, you know. In my new show, which is called
Hardcore from the Heart: My Film Diary of 25 Years as a Porn Queen,
it's got a clip from Sluts and Slobs, you know the vomiting thing.
AE: Richard Jacomma still goes on about what a fabulous job you did, styling the shoot and everything.
ANNIE: Oh, I don't remember styling it. I'm really proud of it. People
laugh hysterically when they see it. For a brief moment I went, why did
I do that But now of course I love and adore it. It's one of the things
that I'm most proud of.
AE: It didn't got over too well then. Do you think it would do better
now? Have you seen Splosh! magazine? What do you think of the messy
chick fetish?
ANNIE: No, what's that?
AE: It's a British magazine that addresses the fetish of messy chicks.
Chicks in baked beans, with molasses all over them, in a pie fight. I'm
actually in the most recent issue.
ANNIE: Wow, you really are on top of the latest things.
AE: I think people would have a better sense of humor about Sluts and Slobs now. Maybe you could reprint it.
ANNIE: Yeah, I wonder what happened to the photos. I'd love to get some of those photos.
AE: They're probably in Harvey Shapiro/Casey Exton's boxes.
***************
ANNIE: Well, I guess I spent so many years stripping and stuff, and the
porn fans, God bless 'em. But I've really found much more of a home in
the art world. I feel like I can be with a lot more like-minded people.
Not the mainstream art world, but the experimental. There's so much
more freedom in the art world than in the porn world. You don't have to
be just erotic all the time. You can be whatever you want. You don't
have to follow a formula. I saw Latex and that was pretty impressive.
AE: They spent a fortune on that one. But there are lots of movies now with the classification of Couples' Appeal.
ANNIE: Couples' Appeal? They said it would never sell! The porn
industry was so against the concept of couples' erotica. Candida got so
much shit. She's a real pioneer, Candida Royalle. She's my hero. She's
trying to do something so outrageous. People think she's trying to be
soft and woo-woo. But she is a true revolutionary, because she's
talking about the things people don't talk about. When I was talking
about that it's not just sex, it's something else. It's love and
tenderness and affection and caring and intimacy, all those things.
Which is what I think most people ultimately want, but don't know how
to do it or get it. So the fetishes or sex is the closest they can
come. I don't think sex is the be all, end all. That's what I've come
to realize. Even though I thought I'd found the answer. But then I
realized, nope, that's not it.
AE: Candace and Veronica have pretty much established themselves as
businesswomen. Would you consider yourself a businesswoman as well?
ANNIE: They're also artists and visionaries, as well. But yeah, we're
all trying to get some money out of all this that we've been doing for
so long now. And to be treated fairly and do contracts and all that
stuff. So yeah, it's a business now. There are a lot of things I still
want to do. I'm going to Croatia and Portugal and all sorts of places
with my show. It's really exciting. I'm going to the Canary Islands to
do a workshop. I still am very passionate about what I'm doing. But
ultimately, I'd rather go fishing. I live in the most gorgeous place.
My greatest joy is being in nature and staying home.
AE: I'm always interested in hearing the exact words people use. What do you say to people who say porn exploits women?
ANNIE: I have a performance in my new show about this. Many of the
things that the anti-porn feminists say are actually true. And many
things that the pro-porn women say are also true. I absolutely don't
agree with the idea of censoring anything. They have totally different
solutions. One says censor, one says don't censor. I do think that a
lot of the things anti-porn feminists say are true. Women in many
movies do look like bimbo, piece of meat sex objects. They are
manipulated and abused and all those things. I've done movies like
that, I know. If I look at my old porn movies, they are politically
incorrect. I didn't see it at the time. Now I'm older, wiser and more
of a feminist. And I do, they were right. Those anti-porn feminists
were right about some of it.
AE: I always thought that it might set people up to be disappointed or disillusioned.
ANNIE: Well, theya re sexist and violent and all those things. I used
to make them. But they're a reflection of what are society is about. It
is sexist and violent and misogynist, so you're gonna see porn like
that. But at least now there are a lot of alternatives. There's stuff
that women are doing. Nina Hartley does great stuff. Now, there are a
lot of women who won't do that kind of porn. And then there are other
options. Women are starting to make some porn of their own. And young
men with a feminist consciousness are making better porn. I'm
interested in sex education and of course, I am a feminist. Do they
exploit women? Well, in my show I say, yes, I've been exploited by
porn. But it's also paid a lot of my bills.
AE: I think working as a receptionist for $16,000 a year without even
having a break for lunch, barely able to go to the bathroom, that's
being exploited.
ANNIE: Yeah, and so is being a fashion model or a movie star. I don't
like to compare sex work with working at McDonald's or other low end
jobs. But there are some pretty classy sex work jobs that don't compare
to that kind of minimum wage job.
AE: To me when I was bartending and working in porn, I was catering to man's bases instincts. But I was bringing pleasure.
ANNIE: Being in sex work can be a lot of fun and really wonderful. And
it can be really horrible. It depends on the person. It's the same with
any job.
******
ANNIE: The books make great post cards. A lot is recycled from Post
Porn Modernist. It was a limited edition. It's a rare book. The plates
were lost by the printer in Europe, so we can never reprint it. We took
some things out of there, but there's also new work. Anyone who missed
the book will love the post card books. They're very unusual. They
aren't like anything else.
[Written in the late '90 sometime...]
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