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Return to Writings & VideosNote: This interview was published in different forms in the Washington Blade (DC's gay weekly in 1992) and in a new British bi anthology, Bisexual Horizons in 1996. The Blade took out all references to female ejaculation and men having trouble using rubbers and the Brits took out the references to Wash., DC and her performance here.
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Annie Sprinkle came to town last week to promote Monika Treut's new film, My Father Is Coming, which she stars in, as herself. The film opens today at the Cineplex Odeon-Dupont Circle. Pursuing women directing their own erotic videos is how I first met Annie several years ago. But having received my own sex-ed from the women's movement, I was not at first aware of her fame - her previous life as a porn queen in the 70's and how she had, with an impresario's skill, both built that persona and transformed it into photographer, writer, teacher, comedian, video producer and performance artist in the last decade. As always, I was amazed by how she performs her daily transformation process on herself. It is not something that happened just once, when she got out from under control of the porn bosses, but something she continues to do, using the skills she learned in the sex business about fantasy and arousal, and turning them around in a real way, to teach people about how to improve their sex-lives and heal themselves in an age when more and more people are becoming afraid of sex.
Annie helps others build confidence in their own sexuality so well because it's an art she daily performs on herself. The quiet, non-descript girl-next-door I met before her Fifth Column performance Wednesday night was not the same prancing sex goddess who mounted the stage at the club several hours later, and yet she was. Annie came to DC to promote My Father Is Coming, yet it was clear that neither the distributors nor the club could give her work the proper venue. So DC merely got a taste of what sell-out crowds in New York and Europe have seen.
However, when she came on, the bar shut down, and the music stopped. She stood up there in her red high heels and short black dress, and extended her dayglo elbow gloves to release her tits. After performing her Bosom Ballet, she introduced the audience to her breasts. "My breasts have very different personalities," she said, "the right one absorbs all the pain, anger and violence of the world. It hurts and doesn't want to be touched. Three years ago I discovered a lump in this breast, but I haven't decided what to do about it yet. The left breast is different. It's friendly, child-like, playful. It loves to be touched." She held up the x ray of her lump while a hugh color slide of a breast with lump exposed was projected behind her. She picked up a knife in her right hand and pointed it at the audience. "This breast wants to fight back and defend itself against all the pain and suffering women feel." This breast is frightened." (Directing the knife at herself.) "It doesn't want to be cut off!"
Annie intended to talk more about cancer statistics next, but the leering drunks and the bad lighting distracted her. She became quiet momentarily, giving herself a little shake and moved into her Tit Prints routine, announcing that the prints were being sold to benefit WHAM - Women's Health Action Mobilization in New York - a group that advocates for women with breast cancer and for reproductive rights and other women's health issues.
After the show we talked about her role in My Father Is Coming, and about her life.
A: My Father Is Coming is an important film because it has all the sexual varieties - gay guys, lesbians, straights, kinky people, transsexuals, all in one film, which is the way the world is, a mixture of things. It's very sex positive. That's such a rarity in the world.
L: And it's inter-generational too. Is it the kind of film a woman could take her father to see?
A: Why not? My father asked me would it be ok if he went to see it. I usually say no. But I said yes, see My Father Is Coming. So they're excited that they're going to see a film I'm in.
The female-to-male transsexual in the film is based on my ex lover Les Nichols, who was a woman who became a man. Transsexuals fascinate me. One of the women's workshops I host is Drag King For A Day, which is taught by a friend who's a female-to-male transsexual. He's very good at making up women to look like men, cause he's spent his life trying to look like a man. They learn to walk and talk and act like a man. Then we all go out afterwards to a club. One night, when a lot of the women who'd come were ex strippers, we went to a Topless Bar. I felt like such a sleazeball being a "man" in that place, I felt like we were being so disrepectful to the women. Here are these goddesses on stage and you're waving a dollar bill, looking like a jerk.
L: Did you all pass?
A: Yeah, but after awhile things became a little suspicious. A few of the men were kind of whispering to each other, and looking at us kind of weird, but it was a lot of fun.
My apartment is a center for women to explore their sexuality. Shelley Mars, the male impersonator who was in Monika's film, Virgin Machine, taught an Erotic Massage workshop there, and we do Ecstasy Facials and Oceanic Tantra workshops. I'm just really happy to offer my space for women to explore their sensuality and their sexuality. It's like my gift to the community I guess.
L: Your community, is that a community where there are sharp divisions between women who identify as lesbians and women who don't?
A: Certainly not when they come into my space. Pretty much all these events have both. The lesbians work right in with the hets, it's so hot, it is so incredible. I did a Sluts and Goddesses workshop in Australia with 24 women. This woman who used to have a fetish clothing store brought baskets full of the most gorgeous fetish clothes. It was so fun and erotic to see 24 women running around in these fetish clothes. That was the slut part, right before we got into the breathing. There was a fireplace, someone threw a bunch of wood on the fire right before we got to the breathing part. (Usually we wear goddess costumes, colorful loose wraps.) There was this raging fire, so of course everyone took everything off. And there was this sea of naked women undulating and breathing, coming all over the floor. I said, I can't believe my life!
L: These were straight women?
A: Yes!
L: Were they straight when they left?
A: Some of them did mention that they were interested in being with women, exploring that possibility.
L: What's this new video you're editing?
A: Oh, Sluts and Goddesses, it's so exciting, women of all shapes, sizes, colors and ages, all safe sex, very hot, very fun, it just expands the concept of what sex is.
The main thing I'm interested in now is teaching women's workshops, it feels so good. I worked with men for a long time. As a prostitute I did a lot of educating, a lot of giving, although it was more subversive. Now I've accepted the role of teacher.
I try to get people in touch with their own sterotypical notions of sex workers. Just like we're all in some sense racist, we are all in some sense conditioned to think a certain way about sex workers. I have it myself. If I hear someone's a prostitute there's a little part of me that says, "How can she do that?", that looks down on sex workers. If I have it, being as sex positive and pro-sex-worker as I am, I know that a lot of other people have that prejudice. And it's no different than racism or being prejudiced against someone's religion.
L: Because why?
A: Because you aren't going by the person. It's not the person it's your idea of what that kind of person is.
L: You mean, because there's nothing wrong with selling sex?
A: Why should it be wrong to sell sex when it's right just to give it away? It's just absurd. It's perfectly fine, well, better than it's been in a long time for a woman to go out and have sex with 3 guys in a day for free. But if she takes money for it she's liable to get her children taken away, liable to be put in jail. Now to me, that simply says, that society's trying to control women so that they don't make money.
I had my first REAL lesbian sex with another woman I worked with in a massage parlor. I mean, I'd done it in movies, but this was my first time just for fun. There's a lot of lesbian prostitutes. More and more young women now.
L: Do they identify as lesbians?
A: Yes, totally. I'm hardly ever with men anymore, unless they're gay or bi men. As my friend Shannon Bell (she did that film "Nice Girls Don't Do It" about female ejaculators) says, "I can't figure out who's having sex with hetero men anymore!"
L: So women do ejaculate?
A: Yes. I do, not all the time. In the beginning I didn't know really it was ejaculation. I'd have these really giant orgasms. I would gush fluid but I was also real into golden showers so I thought, well, maybe it's just urine, but it was definitely different. It was clear, and it felt real different, totally different. It only happens with a vibrator or with being fist fucked, for me. Fluid builds up in the glands around the urethra. If you push out it'll squirt.
L: You're pushing out like peeing?
A: Yes. I'm really into the idea of women ejaculating because I'm into women being sexually knowledgable and powerful, if they want to be. We're just in kindergarten when it comes to sex. (I'm in 6th grade cause I've been studying this more.) I love the idea of women ejaculating and men not ejaculating. I'd like men to learn how to have orgasm without ejaculating, which is what good male lovers can do.
When I do my performance I do a Questions and Answers part. I always say, "How many of you women out there ejaculate?" and there's always 2,3,4, sometimes 10 women who raise their hands. Women are again starting to ejaculate. Which is really exciting, cause when you ejaculate with orgasm it's very intense, it's very pleasurable.
There are many kinds of orgasms and they all have different uses. Every 4 months or so I have a therapy orgasm, with breathing and kegels. There'll be a certain amount of built-up emotional energy. I'll use the vibrator and someone's got to midwife this orgasm by finger-fucking me. It has to be someone who can handle intense energy, intense emotions and is going to be supportive. It's not about connecting or intimacy, it's about midwifing my emotional release and clearing out all my chakras.
It looks like you're in pain but to me it's beautiful. Most people can't handle it, just the way most people can't handle female ejaculation. Most people can't handle women's orgasms, including their own, themselves, though gay people are often better at this than others. So I'm interested in building up our capacity for pleasure and intense orgasms. And you know, we're capable of hour-long orgasms. A lot of people hate when I say that because there's women who don't have any orgasms.
L: And it's hard to get beyond the fear sometimes; women feel inadequate cause they don't ejaculate or aren't multi-orgasmic, men feel inadequate if they're told they need to learn how to come without ejaculation when they're still afraid they can't even keep it hard with a rubber on.
A: And a lot of people who enjoy sex aren't aware of the higher levels, the spiritual, therapeutic levels, healing levels. We're not taught about sex in this society. So my job is to teach about those things. Each summer I teach a 4-day women's Sacred Sex workshop in upstate New York with my tantra teacher, Jwala. It's so fulfilling.
L: What do you teach about breath?
A: Most people hold their breath and focus all their attention on their genitals, so that's where the orgasm is, just in the genitals. If you want to have a more full body experience you learn to work with your own breathing. And when you take deep breaths it pulls the energy up to your heart, your throat, then the top of your head. You go on to much higher states of ecstasy. The more you breathe the more sexual energy you're going to have, the more it's going to go throughout your body. And it's totally safe sex.
Again, it's not for everyone. It's just a technique, but simple techniques do work when you practice them.
L: Have you ever done an all lesbian workshop?
A: I run some workshops probably half lesbian, half het.
L: If I were there I'd probably tell you some of the lesbians were also bi and some of the hets too.
A: That's probably true. I'm sure a lot of the women come to my workshops because they want to be erotic with women, it's an all women's group.
L: It's safer.
A: And there's no actual sex, yet it's totally ecstasic. In the 4-day one it can get pretty wild though. But people don't consider that sex because they're not going down on each other, it's just breathing on the floor.
L: But they come.
A: Well to me that's sex, to me everything is sex, but, in their terms, it's not partner-sex. To me, the television is sex, the bed is sex, the sky is sex, you're sex, I'm sex, everything is sex.