Guest Hosted and Curated by Josh Ryley
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, event from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

Join us for a night of stories with the theme Like a Virgin, about first times in the sex industry. Guest curated and hosted by Josh Ryley.

Karl Marxxx is a Brooklyn-based performance artist, exhibitionist and sex blogger.  He has performed on numerous art and festival stages including recent appearances at Dixon Place (NYC), the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore), The Great Big International Drag King Extravaganza, Showgirls (Ptown), the Charm City Kitty Club (Baltimore) and CRACK (Washington, DC).  Karl also blogs for the Big Shoe Diaries (www.colbykeller.com), an artsy-fartsy gay porn blog featuring nerd-porn icon, Colby Keller.

Go-Go Van Go is an artist, go-go daddy and model. You’ll find him “making his art and shaking his part” at Sean McMahill’s Fire in the Hole, NYC’s party for ginger men and their admirers, on the last Thursday of every month at nowhere bar. In another life, van go is an accomplished stage actor, a librettist (his adaptation of Citizen Ruth won best musical in the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival), and a regular contributor to Poz magazine. Like his namesake, Van Go lives in a funky yellow house (in Inwood, not Arles) and spends his days sketching the locals (A train riders, not postmen).

Mike Albo is an author and performer who lives in Brooklyn, NY. His novel Hornito was published in 2000 (HarperCollins). His second novel, The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, co-written by Virginia Heffernan, was published through Bloomsbury USA in 2005. His novella, The Junket appeared as a Kindle Single in 2011. He has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, GQ, Details, Glow, Out, and many other publications and websites. He has been performing as a comedian and monologuist since 1995, and many of his acts can be found on YouTube. Mikealbo.com.

Guest Hosted and Curated by Essence Revealed
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, event from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

Join us for a night of stories about Survivors, during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Guest curated and hosted by Essence Revealed.

Essence Revealed is a dual degreed, former lap dance engineer of the upscale gentlemen’s club scene, from NY to Vegas & sweet, sticky places in between.  Essence Revealed, the solo show heads to the DC Back Theater Festival this June.  The burlesque dancer can be seen all over NYC (and the USA).  The empowering women in sensuality leading Head Chair Dancer in Charge of Sensual Essence Chair Dance Workshop (lovingly nicknamed Ass Class because of the popular booty twirk section) & blog is an on going adventure.  Follow her on twitter @essencerevealed & visit www.essencerevealed.wordpress.com

Sweet Loraine is an actress, performance artist, go-go dancer, & burlesque performer.  Catch her on a stage near you, teasing and pleasing all over NYC!   She loves the freedom that these types of performances allow in the realm of sexuality.  She is thankful for all the healing and self acceptance that this edition of the Red Umbrella Project promotes.

jaz is a social media professional, a dancer with Brown Girls Burlesque, and an ongoing student and advocate of reproductive justice. As the owner of Swirl Public Relations, she advises social justice organizations and non-profits on using social media for advocacy and communications strategy. She also created a blog and collective called Goddesses Rising, to provide an open space for women to discuss health, art, politics, social issues, and spirituality.

Aimee Herman is a former sex worker. She is also a performance poet, gender deconstructor, erotica writer and peanut butter enthusiast. She has performed at NYC venues such as Wow Cafe, Dixon Place, Public Assembly, Sidewalk Cafe, [le] poisson rouge, and Bowery Poetry Club. Her erotica can be found in Best Women’s Erotica 2010 (Cleis Press), Nice Girls, Naughty Sex (Seal), Women in Lust (Cleis Press) and the forthcoming The Harder She Comes: Butch/Femme Erotica (Cleis). Aimee can be found writing poems on her body in Brooklyn.

ben rosenberg is a multimedia/performance artist and designer who has spent the majority of his time getting schooled in herstory and urban development since emigrating as a refugee from los angeles early last year. when not cooking or making awkward quips about fighting the powers that be, he is usually working with [queer electro punk collective] lotus eater machine, as well as organizing PHAN[T.A.Z.]MAGORIA, a new immersive audio visual experience based on hakim bey’s model of the temporary autonomous zone.

Guest Hosted and Curated by Dominick
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, event from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

Join us for Both Sides Now, stories that tease out the comparisons among sex work and other kinds of work, transactional sex and relationship sex, and other oppositions.

Dominick

‘Dominick’ found his confessional voice as a regular at Dean Johnson’s ‘Reading for Filth’ series. He’s since participated in ‘Sex Worker Literati’ in addition to Red Umbrella Diaries. Dominick draws on his own diaries kept during his three year stint as an escort, delving into such topics as his lost sugar daddy, the evolution of his dominant guido persona, the digital transformation of the sex industry, eighties music, ass health- and of course, the clients, in all their splendor. After climbing the ladder in NYC’s real estate industry (where the art of the sell is supreme), Dominick currently blogs for rentboy.com, offering advice to johns and escorts alike. He recently appeared as a guest on Dan Savage’s podcast (#267) and is participating with HOOK Online in Rent U. 2012, a series of workshops on such topics as client management and adapting workplace skills.

Randi Newton

Originally from Omaha, Nebraska-Randi Newton lives in New York City with her fiancé, Eric, their urban shepard lab, Maximillian, and cockatiel, Squeaker.  She loves coffee, dry shampoo, and making people laugh.

Having a storied past…Randi has been featured in The New York Post, Radar Magazine, Penthouse Magazine (fully dressed), appeared Gayle King’s show on Oprah Radio, then went head to head with Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor…to name a few.

Randi has had the pleasure of participating in numerous storytelling events around Manhattan and Los Angeles, and her writing has been featured at XoJane.com, Pets Advisor, and Closets for Causes. You can read her blog, www.wallstreetstripper.com, which ranges in topic from reviews on“As Seen On TV” products, to expertise in beauty/dating advice and completely random other things.  She is working on her first manuscript.

Tweet at her! @WorldOfRandi

LeNair Xavier (pronounced HAH-vee-air) gained notoriety in the underground as adult entertainer, “Tré Xavier”(pronounced ZAY-vee-ur). But not for his being a sex object as much as his being an intellectual one. One that he still displays with his blog, “L’s X-Ray Vision“. His displays of intellect and honesty about the flaws of the porn industry led to his much-needed exit from studio-based porn in September 2009. Since then, that same intellect and honesty has led to a printed opinion in The Advocate, and creative endeavors such as poetry which spawned poetry readings, interviews for domestic and international magazines in 2011, and already a TV interview for 2012. So LeNair is now bringing his talents above ground (both erotic and non-erotic), and more accessible to all.

(702) 202-6060

Plus, tapas and specialty drinks. Stick around and dance to reggae after the show.

Jenny Heineman has worked in coffee shops, record stores, book stores, hotel rooms, haunted houses, hospitals, restaurants, peeps shows, sex shows, strip clubs, and offices. She currently works with the Sex Worker Outreach Project and the Nevada Public Health Alliance for Syringe Access. When not retreating from society in books on Kant and physics, you can find her dancing naked in bars to songs about safe sex and masturbation.

Vegan Vixen has experience as a sex worker in different sectors, including legal Nevada brothels, webcam, and exotic dancing.  Over the years that she has been a sex worker, Vegan Vixen has experienced different sides of the sex industry-positive, negative, and mixed.   A negative experience she had as an exotic dancer led her to the sex workers’ justice movement. She is determined to advocate for the rights and wellbeing of sex workers, and recognizes that multiple realities exist in the sex industry.  Vegan Vixen also had some positive experiences as an exotic dancer and still enjoys pole dancing for fitness, which she finds to be a beautiful art form and great form of exercise!  Though she came to into the sex workers’ justice movement looking for a support system, she has since become actively involved in both online and in-person forms of social and political advocacy.  She also writes a blog at http://veganvixen1.wordpress.com/ , focused on her passions, such as sex workers’ justice issues, vegan lifestyles, and more!

Jennifer J. Reed is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who specializes in sexuality, health, and the environment. She is a mother, grandmother, and avid social justice activist. Jennifer worked as an erotic dancer for fifteen years while raising her children. She is an active member of the Sex Workers Outreach Project-Las Vegas and a community organizer with Occupy Las Vegas. Jennifer is currently studying sexecology and the ecosexual movement, a new field of research and social movement spearheaded by feminist-porn-star and artist, Annie Sprinkle and her partner, art professor and environmental activist, Beth Stephens. She currently serves as the Graduate and Professional Student Association representative to her department.

Pollyana Pragma is a longtime social justice activist, positive and free thinker, Public Ivy Graduate who strives on evolving in all that she does. She was introduced to sex work during her senior year in college and in spite of since becoming a fitness instructor, massage therapist, animal massage and care provider, and published author and minister, her passion for sex work has not yet diminished.  She aims to continue in her involvement with the fight for sex workers rights and hopes to become the best resource for your legal questions in the near future.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, event from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

Sinnamon Love is an adult film star, fetish model, professional dominatrix, writer & single mom of 3 teenagers living in Brooklyn, NY. Since 1993, Love has appeared in over 250 hardcore movies, numerous men’s magazines and countless appearances on Playboy TV & Radio. In 2010, Sinnamon took on a year long tour with The Punany Poets of HBO’s “Real Sex” fame, a sex positive erotic poetry & sex education theater show. She is a frequent guest on Shade 45 on Sirius/ XM radio, and is currently a staff writer & relationship columnist for TheWellVersed.com. In 2010 she was inducted into the Urban X Awards’ Hall of Fame followed by induction into the AVN Awards’ Hall of Fame in 2011. Love is an outspoken Autism/ Asperger’s parent advocate and has recently taken on improving sex education in Inner City schools.

Since 2006 Tina Horn has worked in the Bay Area as a professional BDSM switch and porn performer. She is the co-creator of QueerPorn.Tv, a sex positive documentary masquerading as a hardcore-porn site; within a year of its launch it’s already a Feminist Porn Award winner and AVN nominee. Tina has led kink workshops in settings as varied as Good Vibrations, Evergreen University, Femina Potens, and the SF Citadel. Her writing has been published in AORTA, Whore!, and several Cleis Press anthologies. She is currently working on a Writing Masters in New York and thus cannot even begin to tell you how badly she could use a spanking right now.

anna Saini has lived many lives as a political scientist, radical activist and multi-media artist. She completed a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Toronto and McMaster University respectively. She works as a community organizer on issues of equality in higher education, drug policy reform, prison abolition, womens abuse issues, police brutality, and labor rights. Her writing appears in Bitch Magazine, make/shift Magazine, various journals and in her self-published anthology Colored Girls.

ben rosenberg is a multimedia/performance artist and designer who has spent the majority of his time getting schooled in herstory and urban development since emigrating as a refugee from los angeles early last year. when not cooking or making awkward quips about fighting the powers that be, he is usually working with [queer electro punk collective] lotus eater machine, as well as organizing PHAN[T.A.Z.]MAGORIA, a new immersive audio visual experience based on hakim bey’s model of the temporary autonomous zone.

The self proclaimed e-slut extraordinaire known as The Incredible, Edible, Akynos is a burlesque performer of almost 5 years. the newest member of the popular burlesque troupe Brown Girls Burlesque, she’s performed on stages from Symphony Space to the late great Zipper Factory. She’s a burlesque show producer and former stripper who aspires to strip again only if the money is right. She’s been a proud working girl and will write about her escapades in her graduating piece A Sexual Social History Involving Theory when she graduates from Goddard College this March. She’s scheduled to go on an east coast tour this spring and produce wonderful burlesque ensembles such as Darkie and Thick. You’d have to be pretty lucky to get a date with her but until then visit her on www.akynos.com

Join $pread magazine contributors, editors, readers, and fans to celebrate the five year run of this sex worker produced, all-volunteer, quarterly magazine. Though $pread is sadly shutting down, we are going out with a bang. Get copies of the gorgeous final issue of the magazine, which explores race and the sex industry, and hear contributors Violet Stonefish and Andrea Ritchie read their pieces from the issue. We’ll also be joined by $pread editors and contributors who will read from the magazine and share stories about the project.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, event from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

The Red Umbrella Project (RedUP) has roots in $pread magazine – RedUP’s founder, Audacia Ray, was a $pread editor from 2005 – 2008, and her involvement with the magazine laid the foundation for the work around media, advocacy, and personal storytelling that RedUP now does.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports media training for sex workers

Sam Benjamin was a proud member of the adult film industry for five years, following his graduation from Brown University. He directed hundreds of scenes, and met with as many memorable stars. His memoir American Gangbang: A Love Story (Simon and Schuster), hit stores in October 2011.

Mollena (Mo) Williams, “Delicate, Trembling Flower of Submission” © is
a NYC born and raised writer, Leatherwoman, actress, BDSM Educator,
fat fetish model and Executive Pervert. In the Kink and Leather communities, she identifies as a power slave who submits to only one. She is extremely honored to have served as International Ms Leather 2010 and  Ms. San Francisco Leather 2009 Active in the Leather and BDSM communities since 1996, she keeps it real all over the US, Europe and Canada on myriad BDSM, Leather and kinkcentric topics.A founding member of Crowded Fire Theater Company, she blogs on The Perverted Negress: http://mollena.com. Mo is authot of “The Toybag Gude: Taboo Play” and of the essay “BDSM and Playing with Race” which appears in Best Sex Writing 2010, has two essays appearing in Tristan Taormino’s Ultimate Guide to Kinky Sex and is co-author, along with Lee
Harrington of the upcoming book Playing Well With Others.

Anne Hanavan moved to NYC in 1985.  She started off striping at the Pussy Cat Lounge, did a few stints in some Brothels, and because of  major dysfunction brought on by a huge heroin habit, she hit the strolls of the lower east side and stayed there for just under a decade.  After kicking the habit 11 years ago Anne started making experimental sexually explicit videos were the artist aggressively confronts her past.  Hanavan continues to take steps towards self absolution by writing were she takes the reader inside her head to see, from her perspective, her  experiences of  street walking, tricking, rape, robberies, jail, and the many people she interacted with along the way.

Nicole (Nikki) Krempasky is a small town Ohio turnip turned Brooklyn-based activist and Nurse Practitioner in Women’s Health.  After a colorful upbringing and too long in the midwest, she relocated to NYC to find more of the stuff that her dreams were made on and that her life is. She now works as a healthcare provider in harm reduction and reproductive health settings.  She is an active member of SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project), PROS (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers) Network, National Abortion Federation, Clinicians for Choice, and co-hosts a feminist and pro-choice radio program called Voices and Choices.

L. Synn Stern has worked with New York City’s syringe exchange programs since their pre-legal days in the 1980s.  She owes her start as a health care professional to the AIDS crisis which made street youth like her desirable for particularly those skills which one previously hid from an employer: how to inject, how to sneak condoms on, how to sell sex to strangers (and get out of their cars paid and alive).  She is the author of Tricks of the Trade, a much translated and widely used collection of health and safety tips for street sex workers and the agencies that serve them.  She has earned both a Masters in Public Health from Hunter College and an Aphrodite Award from Annie Sprinkle.  She currently works as a Registered Nurse and Health Services Coordinator at Washington Heights CORNER Project, a NYC-based syringe exchange program.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports media training for sex workers

Amber Dawn is an interdisciplinary based in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), editor of Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) and co-editor of With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005). Currently, she is the Director of Programming for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival.

In 1986 in Albuquerque, Nancy Ava Miller started one of the first S&M support groups, PEP—People Exchanging Power. Later, she traveled the land, creating other PEP organizations in DC, Tucson, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, and St. Louis. Remember: this was pre World Wide Web and communion among kinksters was difficult back then! In addition, Nancy holds a Master’s in Education from University of Maryland plus she taught public school in the Washington, DC area for ten years. She is a former professional writer/photographer, now the author of the award-winning Pervert: Notes from the Sexual Underground, an anthology, almanac, album, memoir, and history of her life in the sex biz, with over 101 mostly never before published photographs. She is a certified clinical hypnotherapist to boot, and today remains active in her cherished BDSM community while still leading PEP, which continues its support and love for perverts everywhere.

Miss Shannon Lee is a former stealth escort/private dancer/domme turned queer porn performer/burlesque artist from the South.  With the move North, she has been able to come out of the last closet in which she’d been hiding, and network with more fellow sex workers.  She has become deeply involved with sex workers rights, activism, and outreach.  Additionally, this old school zine enthusiast has begun putting pen to paper once again, giving voice to her own experiences and lend context to the multiple iterations of being a sex performer for nearly a decade.

Episode 54 features Sophia Dazzle’s story of drugs, young love (or lust), and gross bosses.

Sophia Dazzle started working in the sex industry as a teenager, and has since become an avid sex worker activist, academic and performer. Though a born-and-bred New Yorker, she considers herself tri-cosmopolitan, splitting her time between three continents (North America, Europe and Asia). She read this piece at the Recipe for Disaster event on August 4, 2011.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports media training for sex workers

Josh Ryely is an escort in NYC. He was recently nominated for best newcomer and best website for Rentboy’s “hookie” awards 2011. He holds a BFA in Studio Art and a Culinary Arts degree and is always up for new adventures. When he is not in the kitchen or thinking deep thoughts in the park his other interests include porn, talking about sex, writing about sex, making artwork about sex- oh and having sex. He spent six years in exile surrounded by strollers and self-righteous mommies (South Brooklyn) and is happy to be living in a place where he can’t understand the language and there are ridiculous signs everywhere, Manhattan.

Eve Ryder is a former escort who has lived and worked both in New York City and Vancouver. She was a frequent contributor to $pread Magazine covering topics that ranged from pimps to penguins.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports media training for sex workers

Ceyenne Doroshow was born in Park Slope, Brooklyn  and raised by two equally homophobic parents. She fought very hard for her day to day survival in this world as a transgendered child. Her journey was wickedly hard but needed to build character and a back bone in this world of confusion when it comes to gender awareness or the lack of. People often back in the day looked away or simply closed their eyes.  She  finished school and graduated with a B.A. in social science. Now a grown trans lady from bklyn, she has been blessed to be an advocate caseworker program coordinator, advisor, parent, grandparent, X escort, lover. and friend.

Klawdya Rothschild is a curator, artist, advocate, and occultist. Klawdya has degrees in fashion, fiber/textile arts and museum studies, and has been seen curating the Baltimore Erotic Arts Festival, judging Miss Rubber World, and serving on the board of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF). The former House Dominatrix for BOUND, Klawdya has participated in the Sex + Community for over a decade as a model, performer, sex worker, sacred whore, and presenter. Klawdya currently offers custom latex and repair to New York’s rubber and vegetarian leather enthusiasts with her exclusive label KLAWTEX for Purple Passion.

Episode 50 (!!) features three-time Red Umbrella Diaries performer Dominick’s account of a New Jersey cop’s willingness to cross state lines, a great river, and several other boundaries to be with him. He told this story at the Law and Order themed event on June 2, 2011.

‘Dominick’ found his confessional voice as a regular at Dean Johnson’s ‘Reading for Filth’ series. Dominick draws on his own diaries kept during his three year stint as a sex worker, delving into such topics as his lost sugar daddy, the evolution of his dominant guido persona, the digital transformation of the sex industry, eighties music, ass health- and of course, the johns, in all their splendor. Since retiring from sex work, Dominick walks among civilians in NYC’s real estate industry- where the art of the sell is supreme. Dominick lives on the far West Side with his very understanding boyfriend.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports media training for sex workers

Josh Ryely is an escort in NYC. He was recently nominated for best newcomer and best website for Rentboy’s “hookie” awards 2011. He holds a BFA in Studio Art and a Culinary Arts degree and is always up for new adventures. When he is not in the kitchen or thinking deep thoughts in the park his other interests include porn, talking about sex, writing about sex, making artwork about sex- oh and having sex. He spent six years in exile surrounded by strollers and self-righteous mommies (South Brooklyn) and is happy to be living in a place where he can’t understand the language and there are ridiculous signs everywhere, Manhattan.

Sheila McClear is a features reporter at the New York Post. Her writing has also appeared on Gawker.com, the Daily Beast, the New York Observer, and the New York Press. She is the author of the book The Last of the Live Nude Girls (Soft Skull Press, August 2011) She lives in Brooklyn.

L.D. Sorrow was born on the same day as Dolly Parton and Edgar Allan Poe, and enjoys reading, writing, and driving very fast. She is currently studying to become Dr. Queer, Medicine Woman.

Sophia Dazzle started working in the sex industry as a teenager, and has since become an avid sex worker activist, academic and performer. Though a born-and-bred New Yorker, she considers herself tri-cosmopolitan, splitting her time between three continents (North America, Europe and Asia).

Annabelle Xaah is a bookworm that pops out of the library every once in a while to strip dance and kick ass, in order to sustain a healthy cashflow. It’s all to keep the nutrition channeling uninterrupted through the wormy tunnels of her stomach and brain, where, unfortunately, the flow is always a matter of life or death. As a fifteen-year-old former runaway and survivor of a hundred secret senses, she thinks of herself as a dishonorably discharged war veteran of sorts: old, crippled, and angry. “Don’t ask me any questions – I’ll kill you. Can you spare some change?” She prides herself on being a bit of an oddball ascetic, working minimal hours at maximum wage, and not really giving a fuck when her bank statements begin with the word “danger” in red letters – in other words, she’s the laziest hoe in the world. She supplements her salary with a little dumpster-diving here and a little couch-surfing there, on the luxurious floors of her university library; because materialism stifles enlightenment, and property is theft – excessive amounts of it anyways – stiletto boots notwithstanding….All this trouble, for a room of one’s room, or just a carrell, a small space of peace to shelter the life of the mind, while making her way through that American system of contemporary debt slavery, AKA education. While Annabelle spends her weekdays reading about social justice and revolution, she takes a biting pleasure on the weekends in practicing the techniques of rebel warfare on her very generous little old slaves.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports media training for sex workers

Starring:

From swabbing pools of disgrace to live sex acts on stage, outlaw artist/writer Guy Gonzales repeatedly penetrated the inner sanctums of smut. Though no longer on an intravenous of all-nite theaters, massage parlors, nude clubs and adult peep shows, the noir New Yorker continues to evoke the aesthetic of the broken mirror ball of that forgotten live-wire, the Deuce, the former 42nd Street, circa the 1980’s. Befriended by the brutal Mafia enforcer ‘Tommy Karate’ on a whirlwind of transgression, Guy navigated a gauntlet of undesirables reflecting that displaced period, and survived unscathed. Screw, Hustler, Vibe, The Village Voice, TimeOutNY, and New York Magazine, not to mention A+E Biography all chronicled his unusual experiences with articles and artwork. Last year the esteemed Sex Workers Literati honored Guy with a reading of excerpts of the soon-to-be-published PEEP MAN/DEUCE42, a gnawing exposition of detachment, on a debauched detour of an unforgettable Times Square.

Rachel Aimee is a former stripper and a founding editor of $pread Magazine , a magazine by and for sex workers. She currently organizes regular Brunch and Bitch meetings and know-your-rights trainings for current and former strip club, peepshow, and bachelor party dancers in New York.

‘Dominick’ found his confessional voice as a regular at Dean Johnson’s ‘Reading for Filth’ series. Dominick draws on his own diaries kept during his three year stint as a sex worker, delving into such topics as his lost sugar daddy, the evolution of his dominant guido persona, the digital transformation of the sex industry, eighties music, ass health- and of course, the johns, in all their splendor. Since retiring from sex work, Dominick walks among civilians in NYC’s real estate industry- where the art of the sell is supreme. Dominick lives on the far West Side with his very understanding boyfriend.

Cayenne Doroshow has dedicated most of her life to taking care of everyone but her, and she’s excited to share her talents with the world. She has been a social worker, and is an avid cook who is working on her first cook book.

Apologies for the month-long lag between episodes! We’ve been moving house, and it’s taken up a lot more time and energy than we thought. For the next few weeks we’ll be posting multiple episodes of the Red Umbrella Diaries each week. There’s a lot of great stories to get caught up on!

Episode 43 features Zawadi Nyong’o reading at the Boom and Bust event on April 7, 2011.

Zawadi Nyong’o is an activist from Kenya who read from “When I Dare To Be Powerful”, about which she says “Five audacious women, five compelling stories and what promises to touch, move and inspire many women in Africa and beyond. “When I Dare to Be Powerful” is East Africa’s first collection of herstories of women engaged in sex work.  Women who dare to cross the line, share their journeys of subversion, transformation and rebellion.  Women who express their love, pain, joy and ambitions.  Women who embrace sexuality, celebrate diversity, and refuse to tolerate adversity.  Women who weave through sexuality and its connections with many aspects and faces of women’s rights. May African women continue to tell their stories and break the silence.”

Download the whole set of stories for free here.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports Speak Up! Media Training for Sex Workers

Niesha Davis is a 24 year old writer who is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. After moving to the bay area for college she dabbled in sex work to make ends meet. While sex work proved to be a great stepping stone, it just wasn’t for her. She shifted her focus to writing and becoming truly happy with herself after moving to New York, and later Amsterdam. Niesha will be graduating from Eugene Lang College The New School with degrees in Theater and Literary Studies in May of 2011. Her writing has appeared in $pread Magazine, TimeOut Amsterdam Magazine, and on Bed-Stuy.Patch.com.

Hawk Kinkaid is a well-known secret. Living in New York, writing when he isn’t exploring social psychology, art direction and clutter reduction. Known by other names in various cities like Zach, Alec, and Abel, he is an outspoken sexworker activist, supporter and organizer (founder of the HOOK program). His work has appeared in sundry literary publications and spoken word/poetry collections. Mostly, he just disappears a lot. More information is available at http://www.lethalwhitetrash.com.

Annabelle Xaah is a bookworm that pops out of the library every once in a while to strip dance and kick ass, in order to sustain a healthy cashflow. It’s all to keep the nutrition channeling uninterrupted through the wormy tunnels of her stomach and brain, where, unfortunately, the flow is always a matter of life or death. As a fifteen-year-old former runaway and survivor of a hundred secret senses, she thinks of herself as a dishonorably discharged war veteran of sorts: old, crippled, and angry. “Don’t ask me any questions – I’ll kill you. Can you spare some change?” She prides herself on being a bit of an oddball ascetic, working minimal hours at maximum wage, and not really giving a fuck when her bank statements begin with the word “danger” in red letters – in other words, she’s the laziest hoe in the world. She supplements her salary with a little dumpster-diving here and a little couch-surfing there, on the luxurious floors of her university library; because materialism stifles enlightenment, and property is theft – excessive amounts of it anyways – stiletto boots notwithstanding….All this trouble, for a room of one’s room, or just a carrell, a small space of peace to shelter the life of the mind, while making her way through that American system of contemporary debt slavery, AKA education. While Annabelle spends her weekdays reading about social justice and revolution, she takes a biting pleasure on the weekends in practicing the techniques of rebel warfare on her very generous little old slaves.

Damien Decker‘s writing has appeared in $pread magazine and the anthology Unhoused Voices. He has been featured on The Daily Beast and is currently working on a memoir. Damien was born in Zambia but moved as a young child to Scandinavia to become one of the first black people in northern Europe. He recieved his degree in the U.S. and is a former college, semi-pro, and national team athlete.  Damien is a multilingual jack-of-all-trades who speaks fluent Swedish, Norwegian, English, plus enough French to not starve when in Paris and enough Swahili to know when mother was angry. He currently resides in New York.

In the week leading up to December 17, 2010 – the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers – the remains of four women who were killed while doing sex work were discovered on a beach in Long Island. Over the past two weeks, the remains of six more bodies have been found in the same area. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer has requested that anyone involved in the sex industry who may have information about the disappearance of colleagues come forward and share this information with the police. But there remains a rather large barrier: prostitution is criminalized, and sex workers have no guarantee that we will be protected from prosecution if we step forward. Therefore, we are calling for amnesty for all prostitution related offenses in Suffolk County until the killer is apprehended.

If you are a sex worker or an ally of sex workers, please contact the office of the Suffolk County Police Commissioner and District Attorney and make this request. The Police Commissioner has been speaking publicly about this issue, but the DA has the ultimate authority to grant amnesty. We especially need people who live in the New York City / Long Island area, especially Suffolk county, to make calls and send emails. In your request, you can feel free to personalize with information about your experiences or feelings about these cases.

Here is a sample letter, which can be emailed to SCPDINFO@suffolkcountyny.gov and infoda@suffolkcountyny.gov:

Dear Commissioner Dormer and District Attorney Spota,

I am a sex worker / ally to sex workers who lives in Suffolk County / the greater New York City area and I am writing to express concerns my community has about the lack of protection police are offering to sex workers. During this time of extreme anxiety following the discovery of the remains of at least 10 people, it is important for you to extend goodwill to our community.

We appreciate that you have invited sex workers to come forward with information that may help in the investigation of these crimes, but we are requesting that you formally establish amnesty for prostitution related offenses until the killer has been apprehended. Declaring amnesty would go a long way in demonstrating that the police are serious about prioritizing the lives of sex workers.

Sincerely,
NAME
Organizational affiliation (if any)
Email
City/state/zip code

Sample phone script - you can call (631) 852-2677 (SCPD) and (631) 852 – 2575 (DA’s Homicide Bureau):

Hello, I am a sex worker / ally to sex workers who lives in Suffolk County / the greater New York City area. I am calling to request that DA Spota formally establish amnesty for prostitution related offenses until the serial killer is apprehended. If the police motto is to protect and serve, you must work harder to extend this to sex workers.

The precedent: In 2006, when the “Suffolk Strangler” case was developing in Ipswich, England, the police department responded positively for a demand for amnesty put forth by the English Collective of Prostitutes. While the homicide investigations were underway, British police didn’t arrest sex workers. Here is a piece about the request, and a follow up piece in which Assistant Chief Constable Jacqui Cheer is quoted saying, “The welfare of the prostitutes working in Suffolk is my priority at this time.” Let’s put pressure on the nearer Suffolk county to respond similarly.

Rebecca Alvarez is a Brooklyn-to-Philadelphia transplant who totes around a panache for BDSM, a devotion to kindness, and a seat at her table for all sweaty freaks. She emerged as a fledgling sex educator in 2004 with the women owned-and-run sex shop Babeland in New York City. She went on to write a sex column for the Indypendent newspaper and the Sex Herald. Her love/disdain for the written word was tested during her tenure as a bookmaker/letterpresser with Booklyn and as the host of the NYC-based small-press reading series Cup and Pen. Currently, she works as one-third of the pleasure-based sex education collaborative ScrewSmart and a gynecological teaching associate while earning her dual masters degree in Social Work and Education in Human Sexuality at Widener University.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 37 features J.D. Ackerman telling a story about working in porn. This story was recorded during the Price of Love themed event on February 3, 2011.

J.D. Ackerman J.D. is a new media sex educator and sexuality writer with a Masters of Education in Human Sexuality. Not only is she a co-creator of ScrewSmart, Philly’s own pleasure-based sex education collective, she works online, creating a sex-positive community with HotMoviesForHer.com, a video-on-demand adult movie site specifically for women. With a focus on pleasure education and queer sexuality, J.D. spends her days making sure that every person is experiencing the most pleasure they can, as well as baking, sewing, crafting and pretty much doing anything else that involves her hands.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE
15% of the bar tab supports Speak Up Media Training

Starring: Zawadi Nyong’o, Ashly Lorenzana, Jincey Lumpkin, and Cayenne Doroshow.

Zawadi Nyong’o is an activist from Kenya who will be reading from “When I Dare To Be Powerful”, about which she says “Five audacious women, five compelling stories and what promises to touch, move and inspire many women in Africa and beyond. “When I Dare to Be Powerful” is East Africa’s first collection of herstories of women engaged in sex work.  Women who dare to cross the line, share their journeys of subversion, transformation and rebellion.  Women who express their love, pain, joy and ambitions.  Women who embrace sexuality, celebrate diversity, and refuse to tolerate adversity.  Women who weave through sexuality and its connections with many aspects and faces of women’s rights. May African women continue to tell their stories and break the silence.”

Ashly Lorenzana was born in Portland, OR in 1987 and grew up on the Oregon Coast for most of her childhood. In 2005, she returned to Portland and started out her career as a female escort, as well as dabbling heavily in drug abuse. She has recently began exploring other career paths as a result of her passion for writing. “Sex, Drugs & Being an Escort” is a personal memoir covering the last five years of her very unconventional life and all the relationships she has been a part of.

Jincey Lumpkin, Esq. is the founder and Chief Sexy Officer of Juicy Pink Box, a brand that is glamorizing lesbian sex by showing real lesbians in a chic way. The Daily Beast called her the “Lesbian Hugh Hefner”, Out Magazine recognized her one of the most influential gay people of 2010, and Time Out New York named her a “New York City Sex Icon”.   She chronicles her life as a pornographer in her column, “Naked Ambition” for The Advocate. Jincey is a former lawyer, a diva and a lover of breasts.

Cayenne Doroshow has dedicated most of her life to taking care of everyone but her, and she’s excited to share her talents with the world. She has been a social worker, and is an avid cook who is working on her first cook book.

Matthew Lawrence is a writer and former escort living in Providence, Rhode Island.  He has written for Carnal Nation and $pread Magazine. Currently he runs a small literary events organization and co-edits Headmaster, an art magazine for man-lovers.  His blogs are Mixtapes For Hookers and Naked Pictures Of Your Dad.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports Speak Up! Media Training for Sex Workers

Starring: Richard Berkowitz, Erin Markey, Drew Deveaux, and Melissa Ditmore

Richard Berkowitz is the subject of Daryl Wein’s 2009 documentary, SEX POSITIVE, which tells his story: coming out as a gay man in the 1970s amid the sexual abandon of the times, becoming a sex worker in NYC before the dawn of AIDS and how that led him to become involved in the invention of safe sex for AIDS. In May 1983, Berkowitz co-authored “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic,” along with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend and the late Michael Callen. Their 40-page booklet is widely regarded as the invention of safe sex as we know it today even though at the time many gay men considered safe sex an attack on their sexual freedom. Berkowitz majored in journalism at Rutgers University, writing for the school newspaper and using his position as the film editor to promote LGBT and feminist arts and issues. He spent two decades writing to promote safe sex, culminating in his 2003 memoir, Stayin Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex, A Personal History. That book became the inspiration for SEX POSITIVE, which won the Grand Jury prize for Best Documentary at Outfest. http://richardberkowitz.com/

Erin Markey is a Brooklyn-based writer/performer.  She recently starred in the NYC Premiere of Tennessee Williams’ Green Eyes at the Hudson Hotel.  She is a series regular on LOGO’s Jeffery and Cole Casserole TV show.  She often collaborates with theatre company Half Straddle. Her solo musical, Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail at PS 122 was nominated for a NYIT Outstanding Solo Performer award.  As a performance and cabaret artist, she has appeared at Ars Nova, The Kitchen, and regularly at Our Hit Parade at Joe’s Pub.  Her newest work-in-progress, The Dardy Family Home Movies by Stephen Sondheim by Erin Markey will have it’s world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival’s KinoTek live programming series in August of 2011.

Dynamic and androgynous, Drew Deveaux has been bending over and shaking up the porn world since her explosive first shoot for Doing It Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project. Through self-creation and self-exploration, Drew’s work explores gender and power, shame and transcendence, play and authenticity. Pushing boundaries and playing with edges, Drew is a master of dirty talk with a Master of Science and is equally in her element with her face gagged in a pillow or behind a lecturn. http://www.drewdeveaux.com

Melissa Ditmore has written and edited three books and numerous reports about sex work. She will tell the story of the prostitutes’ strike in Hawaii from her most recent book , Prostitution and Sex Work.

Essence Revealed is a dual degreed, former lap dance engineer of the upscale gentlemen’s club scene, from NY to Vegas and sweet, sticky places in between.

Episode 32 features Miss Darling, who shares a variety of emails from her prospective clients. This story was recorded during the Dirty Tricks themed live event on January 6, 2011.

Miss Darling is a cubicle-working, “productive member of society” by day and a sex worker by night (and weekends). By being involved with almost every form of online and in-person pay-for-play since 2008, she has been exploring her own sexuality by allowing others to pay her to explore theirs. Besides tantalizing the masses for a living, she is an activist, a staunch feminist, shoe whore, perpetual supporter of underdogs and an avid baker.

Living in sin and New Jersey along with her dashing partner in crime, Mr. Darling, she dreams of saving the world one orgasm at a time. http://allthingsdarling.com

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Welcome to the new blog carnival, with monthly posts curated for the Red Umbrella Project by sex workers and allies around the world. Our first curator is Kitty Stryker. Check out her blog here.

February’s topic at the Red Umbrella Diaries is The Price of Love, and there’s an excellent selection of performers at this month’s February 3rd event at Happy Ending in NYC. If you’re in the area, definitely check it out!

There’s always stories on how a bad client can ruin a sex act or a kink for a sex worker, particularly in their personal life. Well, this blog carnival starts with a great entry about the other side of that- when a partner ruins a fetish in someone’s professional life!

I don’t judge the ABDL fantasy as being abhorrent in any way. After all, why wouldn’t a grown man feel the desire to be nurtured and fussed over by a loving, dominant woman, and relinquish the grown-up baggage, responsibility (and possibly the bladder or bowel control) he’s become hampered with since his blissfully stress-free infancy? I understand it perfectly, yet the Adult Baby fetish still grosses me out. I just won’t do it.

And this isn’t through any fault of the poor old ABDL faction. Instead, it’s the fault of my ex boyfriend.

Now just to clarify, he wasn’t ever knowingly an Adult Baby (he was actually a wannabe-Dominant switch with a shoe fetish, abysmal communication skills, and a cock with a very short attention span). Anyway, he needed a lot of looking after. To say that he was emotionally high-maintenance would be a gargantuan understatement. Giving him the constant reassurance he seemed to require was exhausting, and much like so many men, he wanted a whore in the bedroom and a facsimile of HIS OWN DOTING MOTHER everywhere else…

-just a snippet from Be My Baby? by Ms Slide

Never mind that whether an escort or pro Domme, stripper or cam performer, sex work is about selling a fantasy of love and desire, and sometimes the performance is real enough to persuade us that there’s something there when there isn’t… or shouldn’t be. Relationships certainly get messy if your lover comes from the boundaries of a professional relationship into the different, subtler boundaries of a personal one, which is why many sex workers vow they’ll never fall for a client. Easy to say, but not always easy to do-

I never had a problem with the rule, myself, because I had never found a slave attractive. Ok, there was one particular session with a man who was tall, dark and nerdy, just my type, but the second he opened his mouth and started to swallow my guteral saliva like a baby bird, all fear of boundary breaking had vanished. I was safe from ever seeing those lips as anything but the flapping sides of a compulsively gaping orifice.

Harsh? Sure it is. But that’s how our internal sexual switches work. They’re not sympathetic, they’re more vicious than we are. As much as I hate to admit it, people have changed before my eyes when they exhibit unusual sexual behaviors I don’t like or appreciate. Despite how experienced I’d become in other’s strange, hidden desires, that didn’t mean I possessed any larger affinity for them in the bedroom. I thought, therefore, that I was safe from breaking the sacred rule. Who knew you could bring someone into your big, bad dominatrix world and turn them into a slave, without even meaning to.

-from Zombie Heart by Astrid Strega

All this seems to support the idea that love is  incompatible with sex work- many interviews ask the question “does your lover let you do this?” (as if sex workers lack agency of their own!) and pop culture depictions show the sex worker who “can’t afford to love”. But is that reality or a myth? Can sex work and love co-exist? Of coure it can-

You don’t have to choose between love or money. You can have both.

All you need is the emotional intelligence to engage in sex work safely and thoughtfully, the emotional integrity to choose a boyfriend who is strong enough handle it, and the emotional honesty to be open with him about what you do.

I suppose that’s a pretty tall order when you consider the circumstances of most sex workers, but still, it is possible.

-from On the Whore’s Fallacy, by Dear Coke Talk

What we seem to need, then, as a culture, is resources that support people trying to maintain this balance without burning out. Thankfully, there’s a video that makes a great start in creating a dialog about this topic. Sex workers and lovers of sex workers alike may enjoy checking out this video by Scarlet Alliance.

It’s a video montage giving advice on how to be a good date, lover, or partner to sex workers, by sex workers themselves.

The price of love in the world of sex work doesn’t have to bankrupt.

Come hear sex worker stories of the Price of Love on Thursday, February 3, 2011 at Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City. Doors at 7 pm, stories from 8-10. 21 and up – FREE. 15% of the bar tab supports the Speak Up! media training for sex workers. Starring: the ladies of ScrewSmart (Rebecca Alvarez, Kira Manser, and J.D. Ackerman), Aimee Herman, Matthew Lawrence, and Billy Pelt – hosted by Audacia Ray. Get more information and read performer bios.

Episode 28 features Fiona Helmsley, who tells a story about selling her panties on the internet and trying to avoid conversations with her mother about the work. This story was recorded during the Family Affairs themed live event on December 2, 2010.

Fiona Helmsley is a thirty-something momshell, navel-gazer and recovering fun slut. Her first book, There Are A Million Stories In The Naked City When You’re A Girl Who Gets Naked In The Naked City was released in June. A writer of creative non-fiction and poetry, her work can be found scattered about the print and online worlds while her irreverent fashion sense stays static at whatfionaworetoday.tumblr.com.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports Speak Up! Media Training for Sex Workers

Starring The Screw Smart team (Rebecca Alvarez, Kira Manser, and J.D. Ackerman), Aimee Herman, Matthew Lawrence, and Billy Pelt:

Billy Pelt is the lead singer of Billy Pelt and The Plaid Panthers, a cuntry and cabaret band based in the East Village and is the founder of the Grendel Socialist Music Theatre. He’s 5’10”, 160, 6.5c, versatile, bisexual and great in groups. He can be found on Men4RentNow.com #220965.

Aimee Herman, a performance poet, has been featured on radio, at various poetry festivals, and erotic salons. She currently works as sections editor of erotica for Oysters & Chocolate. Aimee has facilitated numerous erotica writing classes and writing workshops that reconfigure the language of the body. She has been published by Cliterature Journal, InStereo Press, and can also be read in the anthologies, Oysters & Chocolate Erotic Stories of Every Flavor (NAL), Best Lesbian Love Stories (Alyson Books), and Best Women’s Erotica 2010 (Cleis Press). She is turned on by Canadians, women with curly hair, and peanut butter.

Rebecca Alvarez is a Brooklyn-to-Philadelphia transplant who totes around a panache for BDSM, a devotion to kindness, and a seat at her table for all sweaty freaks. She emerged as a fledgling sex educator in 2004 with the women owned-and-run sex shop Babeland in New York City. She went on to write a sex column for the Indypendent newspaper and the Sex Herald. Her love/disdain for the written word was tested during her tenure as a bookmaker/letterpresser with Booklyn and as the host of the NYC-based small-press reading series Cup and Pen. Currently, she works as one-third of the pleasure-based sex education collaborative ScrewSmart and a gynecological teaching associate while earning her dual masters degree in Social Work and Education in Human Sexuality at Widener University.

Kira Manser traces her sex education roots from Miko, a feminist run sex shop in Providence, to her current position as an educator at The Velvet Lily, a sex-positive shop in Philly. Besides being a retail goddess, she’s worked as a high school peer sex educator and in legal sex-work.  Currently, she can be found working on a dual masters program in social work and education in human sexuality at Widener University. She brings home the bacon working as a Gynecological Teaching Associate (GTA) and is always excited to chat about her current labor of love, the sex education collaborative ScrewSmart.

J.D. Ackerman J.D. is a new media sex educator and sexuality writer with a Masters of Education in Human Sexuality. Not only is she a co-creator of ScrewSmart, Philly’s own pleasure-based sex education collective, she works online, creating a sex-positive community with HotMoviesForHer.com, a video-on-demand adult movie site specifically for women. With a focus on pleasure education and queer sexuality, J.D. spends her days making sure that every person is experiencing the most pleasure they can, as well as baking, sewing, crafting and pretty much doing anything else that involves her hands.

Matthew Lawrence is a writer and former escort living in Providence,
Rhode Island.  He has written for Carnal Nation and $pread Magazine.
Currently he runs a small literary events organization and co-edits
Headmaster, an art magazine for man-lovers.  His blogs are Mixtapes
For Hookers and Naked Pictures Of Your Dad.

Episode 27 features LeNair “Tré” Xavier, who shares a story about what his mother thinks about his life as an out bisexual porn star. This story was recorded during the Family Affairs themed live event on December 2, 2010.

LeNair “Tré” Xavier is a predominantly gay bisexual entertainer and author who writes about sex, life & love in his blog, Tré’s X-Ray Vision. While he has retired from performing in studio-based gay porn, his continued exhibitionist displays online and telling of his sexual adventures and explorations for his blog maintains his being considered an adult entertainer.

During his time in the industry, Tré’s writing skills at creating vivid pictures and expressing valid points has led to him writing blog entries for Pitbull Production’s ThugPornBlog, and more recognizably, MOC Blog, which he still maintains being a contributing writer for. He has also had his opinions published in a book review for FlavaMen Magazine, and in the Feedback section of The Advocate. In the vein of his published words on MOC Blog and in The Advocate, he is an active and well-recognized voice for racial equality in gay adult entertainment by way of comments on various websites like Fleshbot, Gay Porn Times, and The Sword. And since retiring, Tré’s voice fighting for that racial equality continues to be heard by the aforementioned, and even more places now as he has spread to fighting for it in gay mainstream entertainment as well, including most recently the gay cable channel, LOGO. All this while he resurrects his skills as an actor, dancer, singer, artist, poet, and songwriter. Most of which can be found on his YouTube channel.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 26 features Katelan Foisy, who shares a story about her mother’s brush with Playboy. This story was recorded during the Family Affairs themed live event on December 2, 2010.

Katelan V. Foisy is a visual artist, pin-up model, writer, and tarot reader living in NYC. Her fine art pieces have been displayed at The Worcester Art Museum, Ohio History Museum, Mae West Fest, MODA, Museum of Contemporary Art DC, as well as the A&D gallery in London. Her illustrations have graced the pages of the Grammy Awards, Scholastic Books, as well as appearing on the stage of Ensemble Studio Theater. She is the art director for Constellation, an astrology-based arts magazine, and released her memoir Blood and Pudding earlier this year. www.katelanfoisy.com

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 25 features Syd, who shares her story about growing up the daughter of a sex worker. This story was recorded during the Family Affairs themed live event on December 2, 2010.

Syd is a writer and photographer interested in youth led research, sexuality & social justice. Her masters thesis, “Beyond Risk: The evaded curriculum in sexuality education for marginally housed and homeless young women,” has helped shape and focus her lens through which she sees the power in education and knowledge. She has been a passionate photographer since the age of 14, continually documenting her life in New York City and Beyond.

She has a BA in Sociology from St. Lawrence University and her MA in Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State University. Currently she is working with queer youth in NYC, c0-creating and building a peer sex education program with 15 amazing youth interns.

Her photography has appeared in publications by the National Sexuality Resource Center and The Center for Sex and Culture and The Richard F. Brush Art Gallery. Her writing is published in $pread magazine and the San Francisco State University Library. She is interested in Photo Journalism & Art/Erotic Photography.

This Cuban/Greek sex geek lives in New York City with her Pound Pup, Henry Marie Elizabeth and is always on the look out for a new restaurant to try.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Come hear sex worker stories of Dirty Tricks on Thursday, January 6, 2011 at Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City. Doors at 7 pm, stories from 8-10. 21 and up – FREE. 15% of the bar tab supports Dirty Girl zine. Starring: Dominick, Hawk Kincaid, Miss Darling, and Sequoia Redd – hosted by Audacia Ray. Get more information and read performer bios.

Episode 24 is a special edition of the Red Umbrella Diaries podcast, featuring select speeches from the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers event held in New York at the Metropolitan Community Church on December 17, 2010. The event was organized by SWOP-NYC and was one of dozens of events taking place around the world. Audacia Ray hosted the evening, and the Red Umbrella Project was a co-sponsor, along with the Anti-Violence Project, Audre Lorde Project, Babeland, Counterpublic Collective, FIERCE, MADRE, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, The Queer Commons, PONY (Prostitutes of New York), PROS Network, SAFER, Sex Work Awareness, Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, SWANK (Sex Workers Action New York), SWITCH, SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project – NYC Chapter), The Space at Tompkins, and the Third Wave Foundation.

In this podcast, you’ll hear (in order) speeches by:

Audacia Ray is a media maker and advocate who is based in New York City. She consults on information and communications technologies for the Global Network of Sex Work Projects and hosts a monthly storytelling series, The Red Umbrella Diaries, where people who have worked in the sex trade gather to share stories and document their experiences. Audacia leads annual media training workshops with Sex Work Awareness.

Michael Miller developed and implemented a harm reduction intervention in peer education and peer outreach for LGBTQ youth of color that were engaging in street and internet-based sex trade. Through this work, Michael became one of the founding members of the PROS Network (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers) and is currently serving on the PROS Committee for Community Education. Michael is speaking tonight on behalf of the Counterpublic Collective, a peer-led workgroup that fosters thoughtful reflection and community-building around queer issues through discussions that are both academic and personal.

Chelsea Johnson-long is an artist/activist with over 6 years of experience in liberation theater and music therapy. She rests her head in Brooklyn via her homeland on the island of Oahu. She received her BA in Community Studies, Theater, and Feminism from UC Santa Cruz. As current program Co-coordinator of the Safe OUTside the System collective (a program of the Audre Lorde Project) she works with the LGBTSTGNC people of color community in central Brooklyn to address violence without relying on police.

Sarah Jenny Bleviss is a community organizer and co-founder of SWANK and SWOP-NYC. She read a piece by Stephanie Thompson, daughter of Catherine Lique, a sex worker who was found murdered in Nevada in 2003.

We also got some great mainstream media coverage. Watch an NBC segment on the event below:

This event and podcast is hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded by Chris Thomas and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports Dirty Girl Zine

Starring: Dominick, Hawk Kincaid, Miss Darling, and Sequoia Redd.

Hawk Kinkaid is a well-known secret. Living in New York, writing when he isn’t exploring social psychology, art direction and clutter reduction. Known by other names in various cities like Zach, Alec, and Abel, he is an outspoken sexworker activist, supporter and organizer (founder of the HOOK program). His work has appeared in sundry literary publications and spoken word/poetry collections. Mostly, he just disappears a lot. More information is available at http://www.lethalwhitetrash.com.

‘Dominick’ found his confessional voice as a regular at Dean Johnson’s ‘Reading for Filth’ series. Dominick draws on his own diaries kept during his three year stint as a sex worker, delving into such topics as his lost sugar daddy, the evolution of his dominant guido persona, the digital transformation of the sex industry, eighties music, ass health- and of course, the johns, in all their splendor. Since retiring from sex work, Dominick walks among civilians in NYC’s real estate industry- where the art of the sell is supreme. Dominick lives on the far West Side with his very understanding boyfriend.

Miss Darling is a cubicle-working, “productive member of society” by day and a sex worker by night (and weekends). By being involved with almost every form of online and in-person pay-for-play since 2008, she has been exploring her own sexuality by allowing others to pay her to explore theirs. Besides tantalizing the masses for a living, she is an activist, a staunch feminist, shoe whore, perpetual supporter of underdogs and an avid baker.

Living in sin and New Jersey along with her dashing partner in crime, Mr. Darling, she dreams of saving the world one orgasm at a time. http://allthingsdarling.com

Sequoia Redd is a 20 something sex worker, traveler kid, public masturbator, witch and self proclaimed dirty girl. Her one degree is in touching people aka “massage therapy”. She is an aspiring activist in the areas of environmentalism and sex worker rights. She believes there are many paralells between how society regards nature to its attitudes towards sexuality and sex workers. Originally wanting to be an escort and then ending up as a performer in mainstream porn to stripping and webcamming to finally escorting, she’s figured out that most of the exploitation and violence that goes on in the industry is due to lack of community and knowledge within the scene and lack of empowerment for the workers. Inspired by this realization, she’s looking to be apart of building visible sex worker community in her native South Florida. http://sequoiaredd.com

Episode 23 features Lily Burana, the author of the memoirs Strip City and I Love A Man in Uniform and the novel Try. Lily reads from her book Strip City in this episode, which was recorded during the Family Affairs themed live event on December 2, 2010.

Lily Burana is a punk rock girl turned writer and editor. Since starting her writing life as a columnist and editor at punk and alternative ‘zines, she has gone on to write for numerous publications including The Washington Post, GQ, The New York Times, Self, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, The Village Voice, Slate, Salon, and The New York Observer, and her reviews and cultural criticism have been picked up by magazines and newspapers around the world. She has been a Contributing Editor at SPIN and New York magazines. Her essays have been included in numerous anthologies.

Lily is the author of three books. Her first book, STRIP CITY: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America (Miramax Books, 2001) made Best Book of the Year lists in Entertainment Weekly, Salon, New York Newsday, and Rocky Mountain News, and was selected as a Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers title. Strip City was also named in the Top Six “EW Picks” in Entertainment Weekly’s 2008 “So You Want to Write a Memoir” roundup, which featured a thousand recent memoirs. Her novel, TRY (St. Martins Press, 2006), an alt.Western romance, was lauded by Kirkus Reviews as “a touching winter-spring romance set amid full Western regalia.” Her third book, I LOVE A MAN IN UNIFORM: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles (Weinstein Books, 2009) was called “a notable historical document” by the New York Times.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 22 features Goldschwanz, a German escort who is based in Berlin. The piece was recorded during the Bad Behavior themed live event on November 4, 2010.
Goldschwanz is a Berlin & London based independent escort, dedicated activist, writer & visual artist. She smashed her promising academic career to become a sex worker, and has since checked out the European adult industry, starred in scat movies and fetish clubs, and has been an usherette at porn movie theatres, a party host, and sex coach. She blogs at “Hookers’ Republic,” a dirty, entertaining, and revealing treatise on sex worker issues, and documents her life and travel with images, print columns, comic strips, and poetry. She also performs multifaceted stand-up comedy to crack mind-mapping and stereotyping and tackle political issues with grim humor. She has performed in London & Berlin and this is her debut in NY.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Join us in NYC for a vigil and community speak out

When: Friday, December 17, 2010 at 7:30PM – 9:30PM

Where: Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Sanctuary (2nd floor), 446 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018 btw 9th & 10th Aves. < http://bit.ly/dUenDt >

Who: Current & former sex workers, our allies, friends, families, and communities. This event is free and open to the public.

Join us in observing the 7th annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

Join us in remembering those we’ve lost to violence, oppression and hate, whether perpetrated by clients, partners, police or the state.

We stand against the cycle of violence experienced by sex workers around the world. Recently in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council reviewed the human rights record of the United States during their Universal Periodic Review. Uruguay’s recommendation to the Obama Administration – to address “the special vulnerability of sexual workers to violence and human rights abuses” – is the moral leadership we have been waiting for!

Join us in solidarity to fight the criminalization, oppression, assault, rape and murder of sex workers – and of folks perceived as sex workers.

December 17, 2003 was our first annual day to honor the sex workers who were murdered by serial killer Gary Ridgway. In Ridgway’s own words, “I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.” (BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3245301.stm)

We come together each year to show the world that the lives of marginalized people, including those of sex workers, are valuable.

• Speakers:
  • Audacia Ray, Red Umbrella Project & Sex Work Awareness
  • Chelsea Johnson-Long, Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project
  • Michael J. Miller, The Counterpublic Collective and PROS Network
  • Andrea Ritchie, Peter Cicchino Youth Project and Streetwise & Safe (SAS)
• Readings
  • Reading of the names of sex workers we have lost this past year
  • Memorial for Catherine Lique by her daughter Stephanie Thompson and read by Sarah Jenny Bleviss
  • Speak out: Bring poetry, writings or just speak your truth.

Light snacks, beverages, and metrocards will be provided.

The red umbrella has become an important symbol for Sex Workers’ Rights and is increasingly used on December 17: “First adopted by Venetian sex workers for an anti-violence march in 2002, red umbrellas have come to symbolize resistance against discrimination for sex workers worldwide.”

This event is co-sponsored by: Audre Lorde Project, Counterpublic Collective, FIERCE, MADRE, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, The Queer Commons,  PONY (Prostitutes of New York), PROS Network, Red Umbrella Project, SAFER, Sex Work Awareness, Sex Workers Project, SWANK (Sex Workers Action New yorK), SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project), the Space at Tompkins, and Third Wave Foundation.

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=110788105658599

For events outside of New York, visit: http://www.swop-usa.org/dec17

Episode 21 features multiple AVN Award winner Joanna Angel. The piece was recorded during the Bad Behavior themed live event on November 4, 2010.

Joanna Angel is a writer, producer, director, model and AVN award-winning adult film star – is more commonly referred to as the “Queen of Punk Rock Porn” in the adult world.

A nerd by nature, Joanna holds a B.A. in English from Rutgers University and although her name and brand are synonymous with a much more risqué art, she remains a director, writer, actress, adult entrepreneur and comedian. Joanna has been published in Carly Milne’s “Naked Ambition,” and was a featured sex columnist for Spin Magazine in 2006. She is also a diligent blogger who captures her daily experience for fans on the BurningAngel blog.

When forming the BurningAngel empire, she drew upon her strengths as a powerful, intelligent and creative woman, added her innate sense of comedic timing, and – with a lot of chutzpah and her unique vision – created a whole new genre of adult film. http://joannaangel.com

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

The Red Umbrella Project is looking for a Blog Carnival Curator for our monthly sex worker blog carnival. Check out what we’ve been doing with the Carnival so far here.

Duties:

• Write and circulate a monthly announcement about the theme of the blog carnival
• Curate pieces for monthly thematic blog carnival – curation may include targeted outreach like emailing bloggers, doing blog searches for posts that match the theme, other online outreach and research
• Outreach to online sex worker communities to promote the Red Umbrella Project blog carnival and podcast
• Stay updated on sex worker blogger communities
• Make recommendations for potential performers for live events in NYC
• Actively work to expand the representation of sex workers’ voices, ensuring industry diversity, and diversity along lines of class, race, gender, sexuality, and ability

Qualifications:

• Commitment to and excitement about sex worker storytelling
• Familiarity with the sex worker blogosphere – ideally, you are a sex worker blogger who participates in online communities
• Daily internet access, ability to respond to emails in a timely way. You can live anywhere to do this job.
• Familiarity with WordPress and social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Fetlife (please mention all you are active on in your application)
• Commitment to actively work on expanding the representation of sex workers’ voices, ensuring industry diversity, and diversity along lines of class, race, gender, sexuality, ability, and other points of diversity
• Priority for this position is given to a sex worker or former sex worker (self-identified) who is already actively engaged with sex workers online. Allies who have demonstrated commitment to sex worker rights are also eligible. You do not have to be out as a sex worker to apply; all disclosures in your application will remain confidential.

Time commitment: 5-10 hours per month, completely flexible – blog carnival needs to be posted by the last week of the month.

Compensation: $50 per month. Payable when blog carnival is posted.

To Apply: Email stories@redumbrellaproject.com with an introductory note that has links to online profiles and writings, as well as links to any special projects of which you have been a part. Also, please tell us who your three favorite sex worker bloggers are and why.

Deadline for applications is December 10, 2010 at 7 pm EST.

INFO ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Red Umbrella Project (http://redumbrellaproject.com) iwas founded by activist and former sex worker Audacia Ray on the belief that storytelling is a building block of movement building and solidarity. People who have spent time in the sex industries know all too well the social and legal stigmas that prevent us from being treated with the dignity and respect we deserve. While researchers, the media, and myriad others fill up page after page with stories about the sex trade, the voices of people who have lived this reality are consistently denied and erased.

Everyone has a story, and the people who are best equipped to tell the stories of people in the sex trade are the people who have personal experiences in the industry.

The Red Umbrella Project has several elements:

• The Red Umbrella Diaries is a monthly storytelling series in New York, where people who’ve tangled with the sex industry tell personal stories about the complications that arise when you mix sex and money. The event takes place the first Thursday of every month at Happy Ending in NYC.
• Podcast: New episodes, featuring recordings of stories told by performers at the monthly series and occasional guest stories, are released every Sunday. The free audio podcast is available on the website as well as on iTunes.
• The Red Umbrella Diaries Blog Carnival is a way for people who can’t attend the events in New York to share their stories, or for people who are too shy to share their stories onstage. Every month, host Audacia Ray selects a piece from the carnival and reads it at the event.
• Workshops: Trainings for communities that are interested in storytelling, media advocacy and messaging, and media production.

Episode 20 features Desiree Burch, who tells a story about her struggle to understand her power as a dominatrix. The piece was recorded during the Bad Behavior themed live event on November 4, 2010.

Desiree Burch is an NYC-based comedian, emcee, writer, and New York Neo-Futurist, best-known for her acclaimed solo show “52 Man Pickup” which has played alt-theater venues in New York and London as well as the Hollywood and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. One of New York Magazine’s “10 New Comedians that Funny People Find Funny,” Desiree has supplied laughter for MTV, VH1, NBC News, The New York Post, Comedy Central, Huffington Post and more, and can also be seen in the upcoming feature-length documentary “I Heart New York.” She is a Yale graduate and previously hosted/curated the reading and variety series Smut. (“Art that should carry a Parental Advisory Label” – NY Times). http://desireeburch.com

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 19 features Christine Macdonald, who reads from her memoir-in-progress. The piece was recorded during the Bad Behavior themed live event on November 4, 2010.

Honolulu native Christine Macdonald worked the darker side of paradise as a nude exotic dancer Waikiki. Her articles, The Customer is Always Trite, Embarrassing Stripper Moments and Stripper Scoop: your top five questions answered earned her cover spots as Editor’s Picks on Open Salon; she has also been featured and recognized as a rising author on the popular publishing site Scribd. An avid supporter of equal rights, Macdonald founded Another way to say it Greetings, a greeting card company that caters to her friends in the GLBT community. She plans to launch these cards following completion of her current project. Christine is currently writing a memoir about her experiences as a stripper from 1987 to 1996, and was selected as the October 2010 NAMW Member of the Month.She is a self-proclaimed stripper cliché and recovering narcissist.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports the New York City vigil for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17

Starring: Lily Burana, Tré Xavier, Katelan V. Foisy, Fiona Helmsley, and Sydney Seifert.

Lily Burana

Lily Burana is a punk rock girl turned writer and editor. Since starting her writing life as a columnist and editor at punk and alternative ‘zines, she has gone on to write for numerous publications including The Washington Post, GQ, The New York Times, Self, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, The Village Voice, Slate, Salon, and The New York Observer, and her reviews and cultural criticism have been picked up by magazines and newspapers around the world. She has been a Contributing Editor at SPIN and New York magazines. Her essays have been included in numerous anthologies.

Lily is the author of three books. Her first book, STRIP CITY: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America (Miramax Books, 2001) made Best Book of the Year lists in Entertainment Weekly, Salon, New York Newsday, and Rocky Mountain News, and was selected as a Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers title. Strip City was also named in the Top Six “EW Picks” in Entertainment Weekly’s 2008 “So You Want to Write a Memoir” roundup, which featured a thousand recent memoirs. Her novel, TRY (St. Martins Press, 2006), an alt.Western romance, was lauded by Kirkus Reviews as “a touching winter-spring romance set amid full Western regalia.” Her third book, I LOVE A MAN IN UNIFORM: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles (Weinstein Books, 2009) was called “a notable historical document” by the New York Times.

Tré Xavier is a predominantly gay bisexual entertainer and author who writes about sex, life & love in his blog, Tré’s X-Ray Vision. While he has retired from performing in studio-based gay porn, his continued exhibitionist displays online and telling of his sexual adventures and explorations for his blog maintains his being considered an adult entertainer.

During his time in the industry, Tré’s writing skills at creating vivid pictures and expressing valid points has led to him writing blog entries for Pitbull Production’s ThugPornBlog, and more recognizably, MOC Blog, which he still maintains being a contributing writer for. He has also had his opinions published in a book review for FlavaMen Magazine, and in the Feedback section of The Advocate. In the vein of his published words on MOC Blog and in The Advocate, he is an active and well-recognized voice for racial equality in gay adult entertainment by way of comments on various websites like Fleshbot, Gay Porn Times, and The Sword. And since retiring, Tré’s voice fighting for that racial equality continues to be heard by the aforementioned, and even more places now as he has spread to fighting for it in gay mainstream entertainment as well, including most recently the gay cable channel, LOGO. All this while he resurrects his skills as an actor, dancer, singer, artist, poet, and songwriter. Most of which can be found on his YouTube channel.

Katelan V. Foisy is a visual artist, pin-up model, writer, and tarot reader living in NYC. Her fine art pieces have been displayed at The Worcester Art Museum, Ohio History Museum, Mae West Fest, MODA, Museum of Contemporary Art DC, as well as the A&D gallery in London. Her illustrations have graced the pages of the Grammy Awards, Scholastic Books, as well as appearing on the stage of Ensemble Studio Theater. She is the art director for Constellation, an astrology-based arts magazine, and released her memoir Blood and Pudding earlier this year. www.katelanfoisy.com

Fiona Helmsley is a thirty-something momshell, navel-gazer and recovering fun slut. Her first book, There Are A Million Stories In The Naked City When You’re A Girl Who Gets Naked In The Naked City was released in June. A writer of creative non-fiction and poetry, her work can be found scattered about the print and online worlds while her irreverent fashion sense stays static at whatfionaworetoday.tumblr.com.

Syd is a writer and photographer interested in youth led research, sexuality & social justice. Her masters thesis, “Beyond Risk: The evaded curriculum in sexuality education for marginally housed and homeless young women,” has helped shape and focus her lens through which she sees the power in education and knowledge. She has been a passionate photographer since the age of 14, continually documenting her life in New York City and Beyond.

She has a BA in Sociology from St. Lawrence University and her MA in Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State University. Currently she is working with queer youth in NYC, c0-creating and building a peer sex education program with 15 amazing youth interns.

Her photography has appeared in publications by the National Sexuality Resource Center and The Center for Sex and Culture and The Richard F. Brush Art Gallery. Her writing is published in $pread magazine and the San Francisco State University Library. She is interested in Photo Journalism & Art/Erotic Photography.

This Cuban/Greek sex geek lives in New York City with her Pound Pup, Henry Marie Elizabeth and is always on the look out for a new restaurant to try.

Episode 18 features Alithea Howes, who talks about her experience running a Monday night burlesque show, Original Cyn. The piece was recorded during the Healing Touch themed live event on October 7, 2010.

Alithea Howes takes her clothes off in bars and teaches people how to be kinky. She has been performing burlesque since 2005 and stunning audiences with her creative twists on the art of burlesque. After becoming a professional dominatrix in 2006 she began teaching classes on the art of kink and has taught for TES, DSF, and GD2 among others. She is also a writer, a storyteller and an artist. Find her on facebook, fetlife (under the name Coraline) or look her up at www.marycyn.com

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

If you can’t get to New York to see or perform in our monthly live event, the Blog Carnival is a way for sex workers and their allies to participate in the Red Umbrella Diaries from afar. Every month, I do a carnival of pieces of writing on the upcoming event’s theme and then pick my favorite to read at the event and record for the podcast.

For the next event, which takes place on December 2, the theme is Family Affairs. Here’s a little something to get you started thinking:

The holidays are stressful for anyone. But what’s it like when you’ve got a secret life in the sex industry – or a life in the sex industry without the secrets?

Your piece should be up to 700 words long, and can previously published on your own blog or elsewhere. I can conceal your identity if you send me a piece that you can’t put your name on. The themes can be interpreted all kinds of different ways, I love to see creativity. Send your links or text to stories@redumbrellaproject.com by November 21st.

Want to read past blog carnivals? Check them out here.

November’s topic at the Red Umbrella Diaries is “Bad Behavior”…and this month, we have some amazing performers scheduled for the November 4  performance at Happy Ending Salon – including Joanna Angel (who will be autographing DVD’s prior to the performance!). And for those of you playing along at home, the blog carnival this month has some good stuff – plus some links to good writing about some of the bad behavior that’s been going on in the sex worker blogging world!

“The final reader is much more entertaining and current than those previous. He slips in a reference to Prince, which I find in hindsight insidiously sexually repressive. He makes a joke about supporting the autonomy of sex workers through his tips. But he would never want his daughter to become one.

I do not laugh nor do I clap as others do. I do not chuckle even. My profession is such that I get paid very handsomely for my clients to, on occasion, degrade me in fantasy. On the job I do not kiss on the lips, I do not do greek, I do not ever take dick without a condom. It is only in the company of career poets that my boundaries are rendered irrelevant, where I am violated with out appropriate lubricant or protection.”

-from Poets, whores and the thin line between, by Anna Saini

“The Eastern European woman jogs over to a dilapidated utility closet and begins to take out various objects. “Zis one? Or zis one?” she takes out two shiny rubber masks and lays them next to each other. The man puts down his cigar and walks across the room. One mask has an attached blindfold, while the other has holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. “Come over here” she commands the King and he bows his head at her as she begins to stretch the mask. His cigar is smoldering in the ashtray and he walks out of the room momentarily, exiting in pants, returning casually, carefully in a red latex dress, dagger sharp black stilettos. With his black mask now comfortably snug, he picks up his cigar from the ashtray in one swift motion. He greets the women as nonchalantly as if he had been wearing the dress all day.”

“Bohannan founded his own teen sex education site, “Caitlain’s Corner”, after getting banned from the forums on both Student.com (where he was apparently known as “Agent 69″) and Scarleteen.com (where he went by “Caitlain” and was known for being a creepy pervert.) “Alexa” wrote in an entry on RealPrincessDiaries.com (which has all since been deleted) in December 2009 or January 2010 that “she” did, in fact maintain Caitlain’s Corner. The site was listed on the blogroll under, “Learn How to Fuck”– which is his idea of an age-appropriate way to title a sexuality resource for (as “Caitlain’s” Myspace page refers to “her” target audience) “pre-teens, adolescents and young adults.”

Episode 17 features Tobi Hill-Meyer, who shares a story about her partner Briar. The piece was recorded during the Healing Touch themed live event on October 7, 2010.

Also check out Tobi’s piece My Year as a “Pimp”, in which she writes about her experience working security for her partner, an outcall sex worker.

Tobi Hill-Meyer is just about your average multiracial, pansexual, transracially inseminated queerspawn, genderqueer, transdyke, colonized mestiza, pornographer, activist, writer.

Having been less than thrilled with both her own experience in mainstream porn and the amount of representation trans women have in queer and feminist porn, she directing and produced Doing it Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project, winning the Emerging Filmmaker award from the Feminist Porn Awards in the process.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Workshop provided as a collaboration between HIPS and the Red Umbrella Project, led by Audacia Ray

Personal stories are powerful and essential elements of campaigns for social change and initiatives supporting the human rights of sex workers. Sharing personal experiences of the sex industry is key to connecting with people, both those who understand where we’re coming from and those who don’t. In this workshop, we will look at examples of effective storytelling in social change movements, identify campaigns that could benefit from storytelling, and do some basic storybuilding exercises to help us think how we can use personal stories to move people to action using independent and mainstream media.

Monday, December 6th from 7 – 9 pm.
$15 per person
At HIPS
1309 Rhode Island Ave, NE #2B
Washington, DC 20018
202.232.8150

To pre-register, please email audaciaray@redumbrellaproject.com

About the Red Umbrella Project
The Red Umbrella Project was founded by Audacia Ray on the belief that storytelling is a building block of movement building and solidarity. People who have spent time in the sex industries know all too well the social and legal stigmas that prevent us from being treated with the dignity and respect we deserve. While researchers, the media, and myriad others fill up page after page with stories about the sex trade, the voices of people who have lived this reality are consistently denied and erased.

Everyone has a story, and the people who are best equipped to tell the stories of people in the sex trade are the people who have personal experiences in the industry.

The Project conducts its work through monthly live storytelling events in New York City, a weekly audio podcast available for free on iTunes, a monthly blog carnival, and storytelling and media workshops.

About HIPS
HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive) was founded in 1993 by a coalition of service providers, advocates, and law enforcement officials as an outreach and referral service. HIPS mission is to assist female, male, and transgender individuals engaging in sex work in Washington, DC in leading healthy lives.

Utilizing a harm reduction model, HIPS’ programs strive to address the impact that HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, discrimination, poverty, violence and drug use have on the lives of individuals engaging in sex work.

HIPS is a nationally recognized program that meets the needs sex workers and assists them in their efforts to eliminate the transmission of HIV, increase sexual health, and reduce violence and harm associated with sex work and drug use.

HIPS programs serve an estimated 2,000 sex workers a year on the streets and in our drop-in center, providing a full spectrum of programs to address basic & immediate needs, long-term goal setting and life skills development.

Episode 16 features Sarah Sloane, who talks about her path to sex education and the sex business, through surviving and thriving after sexual trauma. The piece was recorded during the Healing Touch themed live event on October 7, 2010.

Sarah Sloane travels the US & Canada as a sex, relationship, and kink educator, sowing her wild oats (and selling sex toys) along the way. She speaks to thousands of people each year, and gets a total buzz from watching the “aha!” moments that happen to attendees during and after classes. She’s also a grudgingly prolific writer (with regular columns on Fearless Press and on other websites), activist, and sex-positive business coach & consultant. Her current adjectives include queer, butch-ish, curmudgeony, left-wing, and unapologetic introvert.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded edited by David Beasley, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 15 features Ducky Doolittle, who shares some insight on resilience, healing, and her path from peep show girl to sex educator. The piece was recorded during the Healing Touch themed live event on October 7, 2010.

With more than two decades working in the field of sexuality, Ducky Doolittle graduated from behind the peepshow glass to the front of the class. Today she is a celebrated Sex Educator and the author of “Sex with the Lights On: 200 Illuminating Sex Questions Answered” Ducky is also a certified Sexual Assault & Violence Intervention Counselor. Harvard University has cited her as their “favorite, most informative and hilarious” sex educators ever to grace their campus. MTV said, “Who do you want to talk about sexuality with? Ducky DooLittle. She knows it all!” Ducky is the President of Love U Parties, a healthy-for-the-body sex toy company.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by Audacia Ray, with podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Thursday, November 4. Doors open at 7 PM, reading starts at 8.
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports The Red Umbrella Project’s Storytelling Workshops

Starring:

Joanna Angel – writer, producer, director, model and AVN award-winning adult film star – is more commonly referred to as the “Queen of Punk Rock Porn” in the adult world.

A nerd by nature, Joanna holds a B.A. in English from Rutgers University and although her name and brand are synonymous with a much more risqué art, she remains a director, writer, actress, adult entrepreneur and comedian. Joanna has been published in Carly Milne’s “Naked Ambition,” and was a featured sex columnist for Spin Magazine in 2006. She is also a diligent blogger who captures her daily experience for fans on the BurningAngel blog.

When forming the BurningAngel empire, she drew upon her strengths as a powerful, intelligent and creative woman, added her innate sense of comedic timing, and – with a lot of chutzpah and her unique vision – created a whole new genre of adult film. http://joannaangel.com

Desiree Burch is an NYC-based comedian, emcee, writer, and New York Neo-Futurist, best-known for her acclaimed solo show “52 Man Pickup” which has played alt-theater venues in New York and London as well as the Hollywood and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. One of New York Magazine’s “10 New Comedians that Funny People Find Funny,” Desiree has supplied laughter for MTV, VH1, NBC News, The New York Post, Comedy Central, Huffington Post and more, and can also be seen in the upcoming feature-length documentary “I Heart New York.” She is a Yale graduate and previously hosted/curated the reading and variety series Smut. (“Art that should carry a Parental Advisory Label” – NY Times). http://desireeburch.com

Goldschwanz is a Berlin & London based independent escort, dedicated activist, writer & visual artist. She smashed her promising academic career to become a sex worker, and has since checked out the European adult industry, starred in scat movies and fetish clubs, and has been an usherette at porn movie theatres, a party host, and  sex coach. She blogs at “Hookers’ Republic,” a dirty, entertaining, and revealing  treatise on sex worker issues, and  documents her life and travel with images, print columns, comic strips, and poetry. She also performs multifaceted stand-up comedy  to crack mind-mapping and stereotyping and tackle political issues with grim humor. She has performed in London & Berlin and  this is her debut in NY.

Honolulu native Christine Macdonald worked the darker side of paradise as a nude exotic dancer Waikiki. Her articles, The Customer is Always Trite, Embarrassing Stripper Moments and Stripper Scoop: your top five questions answered earned her cover spots as Editor’s Picks on Open Salon; she has also been featured and recognized as a rising author on the popular publishing site Scribd. An avid supporter of equal rights, Macdonald founded Another way to say it Greetings, a greeting card company that caters to her friends in the GLBT community. She plans to launch these cards following completion of her current project. Christine is currently writing a memoir about her experiences as a stripper from 1987 to 1996, and was selected as the October 2010 NAMW Member of the Month.She is a self-proclaimed stripper cliché and recovering narcissist.

Episode 14 features “A Parent’s Story,” my favorite blog carnival selection from September. This piece came to me from Touching Base New South Wales, an organization in Australia -where sex work is decriminalized- that aims to facilitate the links between people with a disability, their support organizations, and the sex industry. The story is by Angie, mother of Elisabeth, about their family’s struggle to address the sexual needs of their daughter, who has cerebral palsy. The piece was recorded during the Healing Touch themed live event on October 7, 2010. Read the whole blog carnival here.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

If you can’t get to New York to see or perform in our monthly live event, the Blog Carnival is a way for sex workers and their allies to participate in the Red Umbrella Diaries from afar. Every month, I do a carnival of pieces of writing on the upcoming event’s theme and then pick my favorite to read at the event and record for the podcast.

For the next event, which takes place on November 4, the theme is Bad Behavior. Here’s a little something to get you started thinking:

People who police sexual mores tend to view everything outside of the bounds of heterosexual monogamy as a mortal sin. But people in the sex industry have their own moral codes, whether never kissing a client or taking care of their coworkers. So what do sex workers pass judgment on?

Your piece should be up to 700 words long, and can previously published on your own blog or elsewhere. I can conceal your identity if you send me a piece that you can’t put your name on. The themes can be interpreted all kinds of different ways, I love to see creativity. Send your links or text to stories@redumbrellaproject.com by October 28th.

Want to read past blog carnivals? Check them out here.

This month’s blog carnival leads up to the October 7 Healing Touch event at Happy Ending, starring Tobi Hill-Meyer, Ducky Doolittle, Laura G. Duncan, Alithea Howes, Sarah Sloane – and one of the stories below.

Episode 13 features the story “Ode,” written by the blogger Hooker Addict and performed by Red Umbrella Diaries host Audacia Ray. Every month I selected a favorite piece from the monthly blog carnival and read it at the live event. The piece was recorded during the Demand Side themed live event on September 2, 2010. Read the whole blog carnival here.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 12 features performance artist and poet Puma Perl, accompanied by Big Mike. Though he doesn’t speak, Big Mike cut up Puma’s dress as she performed – so listen for the scissor snips. The piece was recorded during the Demand Side themed live event on September 2, 2010.

Puma Perl’s poetry and fiction have been published in over 100 print and online journals and anthologies. Her first chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends, published in 2008, was awarded the Erbacce Press 2009 Poetry Award in a field of over 1400 applicants; a full length collection, knuckle tattoos, was published in early 2010. She performs her work in many venues, in and out of New York City. She lives and writes on the Lower East Side and has facilitated writing workshops in community based agencies and at Riker’s Island, a NYC prison. She believes in the transformative and healing power of the arts.

Big Mike is the author of 2 books, 81 Pounds and Sibling Rivalry and appears in the anthology One Millimeter, all published by Pretty Pollution Press. Big Mike is known for his performance art and was awarded Best Neptune in the 2004 Mermaid Parade in Coney Island.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 11 features Emma Lee in her public debut as a sex worker. The piece was recorded during the Demand Side themed live event on September 2, 2010.

Emma Lee is a writer and editor who has contributed to BUST, Elle, Marie Claire, Maxim, Radar, and other fine publications. She used to write a dirty blog that was featured in Rolling Stone, Playboy and TimeOutNY.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Episode 10 features Caveh Zahedi, director of the autobiographical film “I Am A Sex Addict.” The piece was recorded during the Demand Side themed live event on September 2, 2010.

Caveh Zahedi received a B.A. in Philosophy at Yale University and an M.F.A. in Film Production at the UCLA School of Film and Television. His feature-length films include A Little Stiff (1991), I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994), In The Bathtub of the World (2001), and I Am A Sex Addict (2005). http://cavehzahedi.com/

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Thursday, October 7. Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar proceeds benefits the Sex Workers Project

Starring: Tobi Hill-Meyer, Ducky Doolittle, Laura G. Duncan, Alithea Howes, and Sarah Sloane.

Tobi Hill-Meyer is just about your average multiracial, pansexual, transracially inseminated queerspawn, genderqueer, transdyke, colonized mestiza, pornographer, activist, writer.

Having been less than thrilled with both her own experience in mainstream porn and the amount of representation trans women have in queer and feminist porn, she directing and produced Doing it Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project, winning the Emerging Filmmaker award from the Feminist Porn Awards in the process.

With more than two decades working in the field of sexuality, Ducky Doolittle graduated from behind the peepshow glass to the front of the class. Today she is a celebrated Sex Educator and the author of “Sex with the Lights On: 200 Illuminating Sex Questions Answered” Ducky is also a certified Sexual Assault & Violence Intervention Counselor. Harvard University has cited her as their “favorite, most informative and hilarious” sex educators ever to grace their campus. MTV said, “Who do you want to talk about sexuality with? Ducky DooLittle. She knows it all!” Ducky is the President of Love U Parties, a healthy-for-the-body sex toy company.

Laura G. Duncan is a sexual health researcher, educator and writer currently living in Brooklyn. Her research deals with issues of sexuality within medicine, focusing on health literacy and accessibility among underserved populations. She has taught sex education at a high school, health non-profit and medical school and she currently works as an full spectrum doula with The Doula Project. She also performs a multimedia research presentation on teledildonics and sexual robotics in venues around New York City.

Alithea Howes takes her clothes off in bars and teaches people how to be kinky. She has been performing burlesque since 2005 and stunning audiences with her creative twists on the art of burlesque. After becoming a professional dominatrix in 2006 she began teaching classes on the art of kink and has taught for TES, DSF, and GD2 among others. She is also a writer, a storyteller and an artist. Find her on facebook, fetlife (under the name Coraline) or look her up at www.marycyn.com

Sarah Sloane travels the US & Canada as a sex, relationship, and kink educator, sowing her wild oats (and selling sex toys) along the way. She speaks to thousands of people each year, and gets a total buzz from watching the “aha!” moments that happen to attendees during and after classes. She’s also a grudgingly prolific writer (with regular columns on Fearless Press and on other websites), activist, and sex-positive business coach & consultant. Her current adjectives include queer, butch-ish, curmudgeony, left-wing, and unapologetic introvert.

The Sex Workers Project provides legal services and legal training, and engages in documentation and policy advocacy, for sex workers. Using a harm reduction and human rights model, we protect the rights and safety of sex workers who by choice, circumstance, or coercion remain in the industry.

Episode 9 features my story “The Johns,” which was recently published in the Kickstarter-funded anthology Coming & Crying, a book of true stories about sex edited by Melissa Gira Grant and Meaghan O’Connell. The piece was recorded during the Demand Side themed live event on September 2, 2010.

Audacia Ray is a media maker and advocate who is based in New York City. Audacia is the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women’s Health Coalition. She consults on information and communications technologies for the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. As a co-founder of advocacy organization Sex Work Awareness, Audacia leads annual media training workshops for sex workers. She is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration and has written and edited a variety of blogs about sexuality and culture, including her personal blog Waking Vixen, which launched in 2004. Audacia is a former sex worker who was an executive editor at the Utne Reader award-winning $pread magazine for three years.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

If you can’t get to New York to see or perform in our monthly live event,  the Blog Carnival is a way for sex workers and their allies to participate in the Red Umbrella Diaries from afar. Every month, I do a carnival of pieces of writing on the upcoming event’s theme.

For the next event, which takes place on October 7, the theme is Healing Touch. Here’s a little something to get you started thinking:

People in the sex trades are usually seen as being in need of public health interventions: condoms, HIV testing, and psychological counseling. But there are also sex workers who fancy themselves to be healers and who consent to participating in the medical profession in order to teach health care professionals a thing or two.

Send me a piece that is up to 700 words long, and I’ll pick my favorite to read at the event – and of course then I’ll put the recording in the weekly Red Umbrella Diaries audio podcast. Your piece can be previously published on your own blog or elsewhere, or you can conceal your identity and email me a piece that you can’t put your name on. The themes can be interpreted all kinds of different ways, I love to see creativity. Send your links or text to stories@redumbrellaproject.com by September 21st.

Want to read past blog carnivals? Check them out here.

Episode 8 features a short excerpt of Ignacio Rivera’s one person show, “Dancer.” The piece was recorded during a live event on September 3, 2009 that featured contributors to $pread magazine.

Ignacio Rivera is a Queer, gender fluid, Trans- Entity, Black Boricua performance artist, lecturer/trainer, activist, new filmmaker, sex worker and self-proclaimed sex educator.

Ignacio is the founder of Poly Patao Productions. P3 is dedicated to producing sex-positive workshops, performance pieces, films, play parties, panel discussions, social/political groups and educational opportunities that are specially geared toward queer women, transgender, multi-gender, gender-queer, gender non-conforming and gender variant people of color. Ignacio is also one of the founding board member of Queers for Economic Justice, a progressive non-profit organization committed to promoting economic justice in a context of sexual and gender liberation.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

This month’s blog carnival leads up to the September 2nd Demand Side live event at Happy Ending, starring Caveh Zahedi, Daniel Lukes, Emma Lee,  Puma Perl & Big Mike  – and one of the stories below.

Two Girls in SoHo, by Bête de Nuit

A couple of weeks ago I was in Soho but I didn’t intend to see a prostitute. I was sitting in Soho Square, a pleasant little park near to Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road. I thought to myself that, if I wanted to, in a couple of minutes I could be in a flat with a naked girl.

I had a particular girl in mind. I won’t say her name. I have seen her several times before and I know that she doesn’t like publicity. We have discussed the issue. She doesn’t have any reports on her on PunterNet.com. Also I read something recently by a prostitute where she wrote that she and others don’t like that kind of publicity.

Read the full post here.

Ode, by Hooker Addict:

But, she had stringent screening requirements. She is, after all, a professional. Part of her requirements for accepting new clients was having references from two other providers. At the time, though I’d done a fair bit of whore-fucking, it was girls whose names I barely knew, much less knew how to get in touch with again to ask for a reference.

So I set out to meet the requirements. I searched the boards for escorts with less stringent requirements. I found that even among the members of the small ‘community’ not everyone was willing to give a referral. Some providers preferred to keep their client list to themselves. So, I fucked a bunch of hookers. Oh well.

I fucked all different shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities, GFE’s and quickies. Always with an eye on the goal, the right references that would get me in to see the creme de la creme.

Read the full post here.

Memorable Ladies, Part 2 by Chevalier:

Ashley Apple is simply effervescent.  Picture a young, energetic, and very friendly puppy.  But also mature and grounded in a way that the younger ladies — and puppies — aren’t, always.  She always seems incredibly happy and I suspect it rubs off on everyone she’s around.  She has one of the most positive outlooks on life of just about anyone I’ve ever known, and I’m not restricting that to the P4P community.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a negative word from her about anyone.  I know this is a service industry and the ladies are purposefully in a positive, upbeat mood when they’re with us.  But Ashley’s level of cheerfulness still stands out compared to just about all of the other ladies I’ve known.  (In the same vein, she apologizes even for minor things that I shrug off; I think it’s not from a customer relations perspective so much as that she hates to disappoint not just clients but people in general.)  Incredible joie de vivre.  She always lifts my spirits and leaves a smile on my face, and I’m sure it’s the same with other people she meets.

Read the full post here.

Stories by Sex Workers

For William, by story:

the slow, the strange, the confused, the disabled, the ill, the unstable, the retarded, the insane, the special, the different, they do not stop being human; they don’t have less yearning.

this is why i do this work. the drunkards and horny frat boys are less obvious than william in their need. but it is all the same. our culture has created a void of touch. i normally can’t find the authority to ascribe moral characteristics to sex work, but i am sure in this moment with william that this is healthy. it is full of sweetness and longing and fulfillment of that longing.

Read the rest of the post here.

Quiet Riot Girl Interview with Emily Jones:

My favourite clients are up-front, succinct and polite – almost formal – in their approaches. They tell me the details I require and then it’s quick and easy to schedule a meeting. These ones are the most likely to follow my rather roundabout but important security procedures, too. They also understand that it’s not necessary to describe their physical appearance, or, god forbid, to send pictures of themselves – you wouldn’t ask a potential hairdresser if she minded your face,  would you?!

My clients usually also have that stereotypically British trait (no matter their race) of being adorably kind and almost apologetic in their caution not to hurt or offend me.

Read the full post here.

Pieces About Policy, Activism, & Research

State Feminist shaming keeps Swedish politicians quiet about sex-purchase law by Laura Agustín:

Every Swede knows that the famed law against buying sex – sexköpslagen – is a hot potato. Few politicians have commented one way or another on the evaluation of the law announced on 2 July, and only one government official claimed it proves the law is a success. Given that the report has been strongly criticised as empty of evidence and methodology but full of ideology in its very remit, debate has been curiously muted, even for the time of year.

Read the full article here.

Anyway, one of the questions I get asked a lot is how I think clients can help working girls. In the light of criticism around the often-recommended Swedish Model, the consistent shutting down of propositions in the Bay Area to decriminalize sex work, and the increasingly alarming laws being considered about the criminalization of clients in the UK, I figured now was probably a good time to offer up some suggestions on how to help people in prostitution by being a decent client.

Learn more and download the preliminary report here.

This piece is by story – check out her blog, The Story of Story.

most of the other girls sit in clusters during this part of the night. they know each other and share cigarettes. i don’t know them, i’m from far away, having ran away from home to get naked for money. i’m sitting alone near the door memorizing movements for stage.

a man walks in and hovers by the doorway behind me. i glance at him. he continues to hover. “would you like to sit with me?” i ask smiling. he talks slow and grips his soda hard. i pretend it is too dark to see him blushing with me. i speak slow back to him. there’s not a whole lot of room between us for small talk just awkward smiles. a child likeness. “would you like a dance?” i ask gently. usually i wait a little longer to ask that question but there is nothing left to say. “yes” he says softly. i hook my arm in his and we walk back. i know that i’m on stage in one more girl but there are too few laps and too many strippers to say “hold on, can we dance when i get off stage?”

he swallows hard and looks stunned. mouth open. he shook actually. and kept gulping. yes he wanted a second dance. he hasn’t paid me up front and i can’t quite figure out how slow he is. “each dance is $20, ok?” “yes”. i think to myself that i may lose money if he can’t pay but i only have one more song until i’m on stage and i can’t waste it not dancing. i just pray that he’s good for it. without warning he pulls up his shirt, quickly and awkwardly. “sometimes i do that” he says. “that’s fine” i smile and press my breasts against his belly. he shakes.

it’s my turn on stage. my shoes are off. and i’m naked. the d.j. stalls. i skip the top buckles of my heels. my little dress is tucked into my thong and i pull it out and straighten myself on stage. i’m a hot mess and the other strippers are laughing at me.

afterwards i go to him. remind me your name. it’s william. “does anyone ever call you will?” “yes” “do you prefer william” “yes” “may i dance for you some more?” “yes…” he pauses “would you like a drink first?” he is nervous. he wants to talk. so i say “…sure” i drink red wine. he drinks his soda. we talk slowly back and forth. he is a prep cook. “what is your favorite thing to cook?” without hesitation he answers “french fries”. there are lots of silences between us where we just smile and he gulps. he likes his grandmother’s cooking. he was adopted.

i dance five more dances for him. the first one i dance the way i normally do. the way most guys like it. but he is not like most guys and when i slow down he says “i like how you slowed it down” and i just get slower and slower. we look into each others eyes for a half minute at a time. i touch his neck. i move like clouds. like the earth turning. like cold sap. like something growing. my normally cool fingers are warm and i touch him. i press my thumbs into his palms. i trace his cheeks. i massage his shoulders “does that feel good?” “yes. thank. you.” he still gulps and shakes. i pull up his shirt and press myself against him and am still. this lap is all about touch. and eye contact. we smile shyly and take our breaths fully. i’m dripping wet.

at the end of each dance i ask if he would like me to keep going. politely. without the hustle. “mmm hmmm” he keeps saying and then he says how much he owes me, adding up the dances in his head “i owe you eighty after this one”.

“if there is anything you particularly like, you can tell me and i’ll do it” i say. “you’re doing really really good” he says softly.
i brush my face back and forth over his face. i stand up so slowly and put my stomach against his face. he kisses my skin. i cup him with my body so that the bouncer cannot see. i slide down and wrap my arms around his neck, put my face to the side of his. my face that feels like crying. we decide to take a break.

and i think: this is a man i could not be with. he is not clever nor particularly ambitious. he is not intellectual or funny. he is not socially adept though he is unendingly polite. but this is a man i want to give all sorts of love to. this is a man who will not get touched out in the world where sex is so mixed up. and tonight i can touch him. i couldn’t do this if i did not do sex work. but in this club in the dark corners, social norms melt away with the music, and i can lay heart to heart with him.

i remember a story i heard about another country more sensible than ours. where whores visit the mental institutions every month. the government pays for this sex, this touching, this connection. it is not prozac or ritalin. it is not in gel capsules or chewable. it doesn’t have to be taken with food. it is body shaped.

the slow, the strange, the confused, the disabled, the ill, the unstable, the retarded, the insane, the special, the different, they do not stop being human; they don’t have less yearning.

this is why i do this work. the drunkards and horny frat boys are less obvious than william in their need. but it is all the same. our culture has created a void of touch. i normally can’t find the authority to ascribe moral characteristics to sex work, but i am sure in this moment with william that this is healthy. it is full of sweetness and longing and fulfillment of that longing.

i check myself. because there is money. and i have to ask an honest question of myself: am i taking advantage of a man who is retarded? i don’t even think he is retarded but i don’t have the right word. and so i use it as a placeholder to check myself against my values.

i glean from our conversation his decision making ability. he lives with a room mate. he drives. he has worked at the same job for eight years.
he buys me another glass of wine. and we talk more. “i think i came on kinda strong there” he says. “when? why?” i ask. “well i was kinda kissin’ you” he says. i laugh “it’s okay. i blocked the bouncer from seeing with my body. it’s fine”.

i have my hand on his back because our bodies are comfortable even when our conversation is not.

when he pays for my drink he pulls out his money from a cloth bag he carries. there is a lot of it. i check myself and feel alright. he is taking care of himself in a really responsible way. he is paying for what he values. i am better than t.v., a bad porno movie, even a trip to the mall. what i can fulfill is full of worth.

he asks me two more questions. they weren’t small chat questions. they weren’t meant to make him sound like a man of character. his open face just wanted to know my truth.

are you happy here?

if you could be anything what would it be?

i answer them honestly. in a not abbreviated way. i ask them both back. he is happy most the time. “what makes you sad or not happy?” “not knowing my real parents”.

and anything that you could be? “a music composer”

in the bathroom i find myself wine warmed, my forehead pressed against the bent and battered stall crying. just because he’s beautiful and perfect and the whole breaths we take between moving and speaking have let me be beautiful and perfect with him.

back with him i say “ok. so do you know about the champagne room here?” “no” “see that room there? back there you can touch me. it’s $300 and i don’t want to pressure you but if you would like to do it i would like to do it with you.”

“well. i would want to know someone before i touched them. and i feel like we are getting there”

“i only want you to do it if you can afford it. we can do regular dances instead. i just wanted to tell you about it”

he pulls out his money and counts it. “that’s exactly how much i have. and i have enough gas to get home. tell me again how it works?”

“it’s just like the other room, we do the same stuff but you can touch me here and here and here. but not here and here”.

“okay. i would like to do it”

so i pay the bouncer man the money to use the room. and i know the bouncer man will act gruff with william because he is used to assholes so i tell william that the bouncer man will tell him the rules and will say it not-so-nice.

bouncer man says “so have you been explained the rules?” william says “kind of” “okay, well you can’t touch her anywhere where the bikini touches. if she says you can grab her butt cheeks that’s fine but no crack and no puss okay? and absolutely no kissing or licking”

william looks a little scared. “is that okay?” i ask. “yes” he says.

we go back and i sit on his lap and look in his eyes. he is shaking. and gulping. i move slowly. i pick up his hands and put them on my legs. he glances at the bouncer. i take his face in my hands and cup around his vision and tell him not to worry about the bouncer, just look at me, okay? he nods and whispers “he said no kissing” “it’s okay if i’m facing towards you so he can’t see. he really meant that we weren’t supposed to kiss on the mouth. ok?”
we ignore the music – move to our tempo. i continue putting his hands on me because he keeps forgetting to touch me. or perhaps he is too nervous. i put his hands on my belly. on my hips. on my rib cage. on my chest and shoulders. “your skin is so smooth and soft” he says.

when i rub his shoulders, he smiles into his idea, putting his hands on my shoulders and rubbing back.

for a half hour the world is a neon champagne room the carpeted wall insulating us from everything but what we chose to bring in here. when i’m not looking him straight in the face my eyes are closed.

my head buried in his neck and his hands on my back while i sway ever so slightly for minutes on end, he whispers “i think i am in love”. i pause “you can only fall in love with me for tonight. in the club. remember i am traveling through. so just tonight, okay?” “why not a lifetime of love” i pause again. i look straight in his eyes and slowly shake my head no.

and we keep holding each other in our small world.

until “story! it’s done” bouncer man calls. we emerge together. less lonely. a little shell shocked in the world of loud sound.

i sit with him. there are more men around but i still want to be near him until i’m called on stage. i come off stage. he has to go he says. i hug him goodbye. “well, maybe we could keep talking?” he says but i say no, i’ll walk him out this is a good goodbye. i blow him a kiss. he blows one back and i catch it. grinning i lay my palm over my heart. he gives me a thumbs up.

the night is lowing and i meet another man. i look into his eyes to see what he’s about. his whites are greyish, the blue hoops are whiteish and the black is blueish. a film of separateness. he says his night is winding down and i say its winding down with a lap dance and he agrees. i watch him and under my legs his face clarifies. he looks up towards me and his whites are white, his iris’ a clean and wanting blue, his pupils a clear black. i like this. i like that i make eyes change.

he growls into my ear “i think you’re taking it in the ass, honey”.

As part of an interview with Quiet Riot Girl, Emily Jones, an escort working in London, talks about the clients she works with.

Whenever I start writing about sex work, it makes my brain feel like it is folding in on itself. I have never known anything so complicated, or hard to explain, yet that makes me want to say so much.

My clients in particular are rather ‘cream of the crop’, because I am a picky bitch! I will only see the politest clients who have a certain amount of confidence. I’d say mainly guys in their 30′s-40′s, well-educated and with a ‘good’ job

‘Mature’ men tend to be more comfortable with the whole procedure and therefore make me more comfortable, too. Until I can hire a psychologist and a full-time live-in bodyguard to screen my clients and protect me from any psychos who might slip through the net, I have to rely on quite gross generalisations and stereotyping.

I also prefer not to see young/immature men – I’ve been asked more than once to help relieve someone of their virginity. The idea gives me the heebie-jeebies. What if they go home and cry afterwards? Also, what am I going to do with a guy who doesn’t know what he wants to do with me? Save, perhaps, the dreaded “I saw this thing in porn…”

Basically, if a guy seems like he might possibly cry, scream or have a mental breakdown after having an appointment with me, I will NOT schedule the appointment. I don’t want blood on my hands! And there are so many boring timewasters and creepy losers out there who just want to engage us slutty whores in stupid conversations. It’s always better to be safe than sorry. Otherwise you’ll just end up with a ton of crappy cock pics in your inbox but no bookings.

My favourite clients are up-front, succinct and polite – almost formal – in their approaches. They tell me the details I require and then it’s quick and easy to schedule a meeting. These ones are the most likely to follow my rather roundabout but important security procedures, too. They also understand that it’s not necessary to describe their physical appearance, or, god forbid, to send pictures of themselves – you wouldn’t ask a potential hairdresser if she minded your face,  would you?!

My clients usually also have that stereotypically British trait (no matter their race) of being adorably kind and almost apologetic in their caution not to hurt or offend me.

I definitely feel that some clients are looking for more than sex, but perhaps don’t even know it themselves. It’s partly the courtesan-style advertising’s fault – websites promise “Companionship!” and “I’ll be your perfect girlfriend!” and “Let’s be together forever!!”  So the puppy-dog face at the end of a booking isn’t always surprising, but it is a little silly. There are so many massively incorrect stereotypes about heterosexual male and female desires and behaviours that half of us believe them ourselves. I think a lot of guys just like women, but spend most of their lives having no idea whether they want to just get laid, or whether they want a full-blown monogamous relationship.

Now and then a client will be unable to achieve or maintain his erection during an appointment. Usually it’s more to do with self-doubt than nerves. I can tell because half-way through they’ll jump up and start interrogating me about whether or not I like my job – but I don’t feel like it’s part of my job to start telling someone that they SHOULD be fucking hookers, even if they are my client!

Many I think have a successful dalliance with seeing prostitutes. They can have a lovely hour or two with wine, conversation and hot sex, and then move right on with their busy lives without any weirdness. But for others, paying for sex can be scary, either due to nerves, moral issues, perhaps sexual issues; I am definitely not qualified to speculate any further there.

It’s a very complicated business, and perhaps too often the idea of the (usually male) clients having difficulty is dismissed. Punters are, possibly, more stigmatised in society than hookers. Definitely more stigmatised than us glamourous, middle class, Belle-de-Jour-types are. Although that’s another hugely complicated issue with evilly far-reaching tendrils…

Episode 7 features a story by Busty Kitten, “Ode to My Fellow Dancers.” The story was recorded during the Coworkers and Co-conspirators live event on July 1, 2010.

Busty Kitten is a theatrical know-it-all, muse and artiste, and feminist barstool philosopher. She co-produces and co-hosts The Giddy Multitude Vaudeville Co, a monthly cabaret of circus, music, dance, comedy, and burlesque. www.giddymultitude.com. Her work explores issues of sex and sexuality, body image, and constructed identies of femininity. She holds a BA from UC Santa Cruz and will be pursuing an MA in Applied Theatre at CUNY in the fall. She can be seen burlesque dancing at the usual venues around NYC and proudly earning her sweat equity at WOW Cafe Theatre.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by Audacia Ray, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Thursday, September 2. Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

Starring:

Caveh Zahedi received a B.A. in Philosophy at Yale University and an M.F.A. in Film Production at the UCLA School of Film and Television. His feature-length films include A Little Stiff (1991), I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994), In The Bathtub of the World (2001), and I Am A Sex Addict (2005). http://cavehzahedi.com/

Daniel Lukes is a British-born, Italian-raised, New York-based writer and educator whose work has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Decibel, Flux, Alternative Press, Terrorizer, Kerrang!, Forked Tongue and Il Manifesto. He is finishing a PhD in Comparative Literature at NYU, where in 2008/9 he co-organized “Man Enough: An Interdisciplinary New York University Graduate Student Colloquium on Masculinity,” which featured Genesis P-Orridge, Allanah Starr, Gerry Visco and Christopher Vitale among others. He will be presenting the paper “Global Sex Tourism and Abject Masculinity in William T. Vollmann and Michel Houellebecq” at the panel “Untold Narratives from the Global Sex Trade,” at the 2011 Modern Language Association Convention in Los Angeles.

Emma Lee is a writer and editor who has contributed to BUST, Elle, Marie Claire, Maxim, Radar, and other fine publications. She used to write a dirty blog that was featured in Rolling Stone, Playboy and TimeOutNY. This will be her public debut as a former sex worker, although she has been openly slutty for years.

Puma Perl’s poetry and fiction have been published in over 100 print and online journals and anthologies. Her first chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends, published in 2008, was awarded the Erbacce Press 2009 Poetry Award in a field of over 1400 applicants; a full length collection, knuckle tattoos, was published in early 2010. She performs her work in many venues, in and out of New York City. She lives and writes on the Lower East Side and has facilitated writing workshops in community based agencies and at Riker’s Island, a NYC prison. She believes in the transformative and healing power of the arts.

Big Mike is the author of 2 books, 81 Pounds and Sibling Rivalry and appears in the anthology One Millimeter, all published by Pretty Pollution Press. Big Mike is known for his performance art and was awarded Best Neptune in the 2004 Mermaid Parade in Coney Island.

Episode 6 features the story “Helmut the Maid,” told by Alex Kinney. The story was recorded during a live event on December 3, 2009.

Alex Kinney is an old whore who has prostituted himself in the Ivy League, America’s regional theaters, the Golden Hills of Hollywood, one cold Christmas in Dublin, and more lengthily, the South of the Slot in San Francisco. Alex is also a director, actor and playwright whose most recent play, Holy Hell, was developed at The Actors’ Studio.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by Audacia Ray, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or search for it on iTunes.

Episode 5 features the story “A Father’s Pain,” told by Mistress Astrid. The story was recorded during the Love and Pain live event on February 4, 2010.

Lots of people ask how they can be involved with the Red Umbrella Diaries if they can’t get to New York to see or perform in the show. The Blog Carnival is a way for sex workers and their allies to participate in the Red Umbrella Diaries from afar. Every month, I do a carnival of pieces of writing on the upcoming event’s theme.

For the next event, which takes place on September 2, the theme is Demand Side. Here’s a little something to get you started thinking:

Sex workers get all the attention for their exciting, messed up, complicated lives, and everyone wants to know: what made you do this? But what about the patrons, without whom there would be no business?

I’m looking for pieces of writing by sex industry clients, stories from sex workers about their clients, and analytical pieces that turn the lens on the demand side of the business.

Send me a piece that is up to 700 words long, and I’ll pick my favorite to read at the event – and of course then I’ll put the recording in the new Red Umbrella Diaries audio podcast. Your piece can be previously published on your own blog or elsewhere, or you can conceal your identity and email me a piece that you can’t put your name on. The themes can be interpreted all kinds of different ways, I love to see creativity. Send your links or text to stories@redumbrellaproject.com by August 15th.

Want to read past blog carnivals? Check them out here.

Episode 4 features a story by Guy Gonzales, “My Illustrious Career in Times Square Peeps.” The story was recorded during the Embarrassing Things I’ve Done for Money live event on May 6, 2010.

Guy Gonzales. Peepstar. Hustler. Notorious Nude Club Manager. Outlaw Artist and Writer. Warrior. From peddling firecrackers to live sex shows, legendary hardcore hustler Guy Gonzales was born in Manhattan of Asian-American ancestry. Despite the façade of a decent upbringing, he became enticed by the filthy streets. Flesh emporiums fueled his incentive; in 1982 Guy gravitated to Times Square, a reputed red-light district, and began as a cashier/mop-man in the adult peep shows. While swabbing pools of disgrace, he dated a Private Booth showgirl; subsequently they became a Love-Team, performing live sex acts on stage. On a mattress stained with bodily fluids, he penetrated even deeper into the inner sanctum of smut. Guy’s artwork, articles, and photo essays have been featured in Screw, Hustler, Swank, Vibe, the Village Voice, and Penthouse Forum. Featured in TimeOutNY as the leader of the Mortuary Squad, an elite task force that documents the underbelly; and the 40th Anniversary Issue of New York Magazine. A+E ‘Biography’ entitled ‘Times Square’ chronicled his unusual experiences, with interviews and illustrations. Exhibitions include ‘Erotopath’ and ‘Viewer Discretion Advised’. In 2006 he exhibited at the Ayala Museum, Makati, the Philippines, with former President Fidel Ramos in attendance. A noir New Yorker, Guy continues to evoke the broken mirror ball on the fringe of a forgotten Times Square, as his autobiographical account PEEPMAN/DEUCE42 nears completion.

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was edited by Audacia Ray, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or search for it on iTunes.

This month’s blog carnival leads up to the August 5th Red Umbrella Diaries live event at Happy Ending, which stars Veronica Vera, Lauren Wissot, Chelsea G. Summers, E.V. Fleurima (aka Ckiara Rose), and Michael Pollack – plus one of the stories below!

Sexerati Bed Death, by Sarah Sloane

And after sharing – nay, preaching – about the importance of personal boundaries when it comes to sex work of all kinds…imagine my shame and shock when I realized that I’d been screwing myself over for two. bloody. years. I let things that hurt push me back into the cavern of my sexual isolation – the loss of relationships and lovers, the stress of travel, the fear of being vulnerable, the ease with which I avoided possible entanglements involving lube or toys. And what I ended up with was feeling distanced not only from my lovers and from people who I really do like and really do want to play with…but also, feeling distanced from myself.

Read the full post here.

Advice for the New Kids on the Street, from the Girls who’ve been around the Block!, from the Three Naked Ladies series

Georgina Spelvin: Insist on condoms and save your money. Oh, and this is for everybody, not just sex workers, moisturize! All over. Every day.

Read advice from 16 other well seasoned ladies here.

The Rules, by Widow Centauri, who wrote this piece especially for the Red Umbrella Diaries blog carnival!

The first time I went to do an outcall I drove my 40-foot school bus deep into the suburbs of Denver Colorado.  I took my bag of toys and my husband to the door.  I told the client that my husband needed to sit in the other room, surprisingly he agreed and put my six-foot tall red bearded husband in the study.  I did my sexy little thing. I tied his wrists together with scarves. It was cute.  I was nervous. I was also $75 richer.

Now I won’t do an outcall for less than $500.  Oh how time does change perspective.  I would rather stay home and write than drive all the way into the suburbs for a guy who claims to have less than a hundred bucks for me.  No way!

I have rules. I am allowed to flirt with a trick, I am allowed to have sex with a trick, I am allowed to pretend that I like him, I am even allowed to like him but when push comes to shove this is my job.  I don’t give away my services for free.  Sure every now and again I slip, I stay a little longer, spend a night on the town with someone who should be paying me, I’m human, I fuck it up sometimes.

I am a dominatrix so maybe it is a little easier to say that I am experienced.  It implies expertise in my field, not hardened hooker. I know what I am doing because I have experience, I’m not a little girl, I’m a professional.  I know how to make an evening sexy, I know how to use my toys, I know how to make a grown man cry.

I also know when a client is bullshitting me. After years of working in the sex trade I have come to hear it in their voices, the way they are certain that they have no limits, or the way they hum and haw. I can even see it in their emails, they give themselves away when they claim to have experience but won’t say with whom, or when they have a laundry list of activities they want to do in an hour.  I see this and think “really? You want me to take you shopping, bend you over, have my way with you, pimp you out, smoke some cigarettes, use you as an ashtray and a toilet, call you names, dress you like a baby and play with another domme – all in an hour? Sure Mr. speed session.  Pick two.” I can tell when I am having my chain jerked and I’m short tempered about it.  I cut people off when they say that their wife wants me to come over.  “Is your wife there now?” I ask. “Have her call me,” I say and hang up.  He doesn’t have a wife to call me, he just thinks that I’ll give him more attention if I think there is a couple involved.  Maybe the neophyte dommes will, but not me.  I want to talk to the woman in the relationship, not the so-called submissive husband.  Why is he calling me? I have become jaded working in this business.  I’m alright with this.  I kind of like it. .

I’m not ashamed of who I am. I like my job. I take money for sexual favors, I like to pee on boys, I like to be paid to pee on boys.  I need lovers in my personal life but the people I choose to love are not the people I choose to do business with.  I can fall for anyone who has gender ambiguities.  I love transgender people and butch dykes.  I’m straight for pay.  I won’t date a client, even if that client looks dam good in a dress.

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Red Umbrella Diaries Podcast!

This episode features a story from Damien Luxe, which was told on July 1, 2010 during our Coworkers and Co-conspirators night.

Damien Luxe is a multi-media performer and artist who has worked in DIY/indie print, web, theater and audio production for over 10 years. She has performed all over Canada and the US, has two self-published music albums out, and from 2006-2009 she Art Directed the award-winning $pread Magazine. Currently, she is the Co-Head Madam of the NYC Femme Family, Co-Creative Director of the H[art] Collective, is completing a DIY MFA, and is touring work that honors feminine hero/ines. Check out her work at http://femmetech.org

Live events and podcast are hosted by Audacia Ray. The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Subscribe to the weekly podcast by RSS feed for a new episode every Sunday or on iTunes.

Welcome to the first episode of the Red Umbrella Diaries Podcast! Every Sunday, I’ll be posting a new episode – each one will be about 10 minutes long, give or take. Most of the episodes will have been recorded at the previous month’s Red Umbrella Diaries event in New York City, though occasionally I’ll drop in an episode from my archives.

The first episode features my selection from the June Blog Carnival on Coworkers and Co-conspirators, which I read at the live event on July 1. The story is written by Mona of the blog Civil Undressed.

For your chance to have your story read by me and included in the podcast, participate in an upcoming blog carnival. I’m always on the lookout for performers for the live events, which happen the first Thursday of the month in NYC. To get in touch with me about the podcast, performing, or any questions, email stories@redumbrellaproject.com.

The audio in this episode was recorded and edited by David Beasley, podcast bumper music by The Mercy Studio Project.

Click here to listen in your browser.

Subscribe to the podcast by RSS feed or on iTunes

Lots of people ask how they can be involved with the Red Umbrella Diaries if they can’t get to New York to see or perform in the show. The Blog Carnival is a way for sex workers and their allies to participate in the Red Umbrella Diaries from afar. Every month, I do a carnival of pieces of writing on the upcoming event’s theme.

For the next event, which takes place on August 5, the theme is Well Seasoned: Stories of Pros with Some Experiences Under Their Belts. Here’s a little something to get you started thinking:

Most people in the sex trade remember what it felt like to step into a dungeon, peep booth, dimly lit stage, brothel, client’s hotel room, or car for the first time. But what happens after the shine of being the new girl wears off, after the young hustler can’t pretend he’s never done this before?

Send me a piece that is up to 700 words long, and I’ll pick my favorite to read at the event – and of course then I’ll put the recording in the new Red Umbrella Diaries audio podcast. Your piece can be previously published on your own blog or elsewhere, or you can conceal your identity and email me a piece that you can’t put your name on. The themes can be interpreted all kinds of different ways, I love to see creativity. Send your links or text to stories@redumbrellaproject.com by July 15th.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Thursday, July 1. Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar tab supports PROS Network (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers)

Starring:

Damien Luxe is a multi-media performer and artist who has worked in DIY/indie print, web, theater and audio production for over 10 years. She has performed all over Canada and the US, has two self-published music albums out, and from 2006-2009 she Art Directed the award-winning $pread Magazine. Currently, she is the Co-Head Madam of the NYC Femme Family, Co-Creative Director of the H[art] Collective, is completing a DIY MFA, and is touring work that honors feminine hero/ines.

Christina Cicchelli has spent five years as a sex worker with experience in a myriad of industries, including phone sex and professional domination. As a Mistress, she has worked in several NYC dungeons and also visited clients on an independent basis. As a phone sex operator, she maintained a large amount of callers who enjoyed her guidance, creativity and experienced in fetish and role-play.

Christina is best known for her career as a porn actress. Under the non de plume, Simone Valentino, Christina has performed in a handful of sexy films. She received an AVN nomination for Best Actress for her role in Afrodite Superstar and won “Best New Starlet” at the Feminist Porn Awards in 2008 for her role in Audacia Ray’s The Bi Apple.

Christina is $pread Magazine’s “Media Whore” Columnist and her work is also featured on Betty Dodson’s website, Dodsonandross.com. She currently resides in New York City where she is hunched over her laptop spinning erotic conspiracy theories and sexual speculative fiction.

Rope Boi is the founding member of a household of queer, kinky women and bois in the Boston area.  She strives to live critically and to forge new arrangements of sexuality and relationality.  She is a student and an educator.  She will be presenting at TES Fest in Piscataway, New Jersey, on July 2-5, 2010.

Busty Kitten is a theatrical know-it-all, muse and artiste, and feminist barstool philosopher. She co-produces and co-hosts The Giddy Multitude Vaudeville Co, a monthly cabaret of circus, music, dance, comedy, and burlesque. www.giddymultitude.com. Her work explores issues of sex and sexuality, body image, and constructed identies of femininity. She holds a BA from UC Santa Cruz and will be pursuing an MA in Applied Theatre at CUNY in the fall. She can be seen burlesque dancing at the usual venues around NYC and proudly earning her sweat equity at WOW Cafe Theatre.

The PROS Network (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers) is a coalition of sex workers, organizers, direct service providers, advocates, and media makers. We exist to collaborate on programs and campaigns around sex work-related issues in the New York metropolitan area. We work with people of all genders who, by choice, circumstance, or coercion, engage in sexual activities for money, food, shelter, clothing, drugs, or other survival needs. Grounded in principles of social justice and human rights, the PROS Network embraces a non-judgmental, harm reduction approach. Check them out on Facebook.

Welcome to the first Red Umbrella Diaries Blog Carnival! I haven’t decided yet which one I’ll read, but I’m going to perform and record one of the following stories at the July 1st event.

Stay tuned for the line-up of the the live Coworkers and Co-conspirators event happening in NYC on July 1!

The relationship between the busboy and dancers is ridiculous. The dancers make way more money than the busboy, who happens to be an undocumented immigrant. They send him out for smokes and dinners and pay him only for what he buys, and never bother tipping. It’s fucked up. One day he had a few drinks, and started telling me that he really liked me.

-”Work with me now..” from the blog Civil Undressed, by Mona

I’m not a prostitute, nor am I a porn star. That’s not exactly the truth; we’ve all done a little something for money, gifts, dinner, or a little bit of fame. I am however a naked model, an artist, writer, tarot reader, and a muse. I’ve come up with random schemes and ran with them. There was the topless tarot, the “Red Bettie” go-go dancing, and other random jobs that involved me taking off my clothes and collecting money.

I find no shame in sex work and never will. The people I have met through the industry have become some of my most cherished friends. They’ve taught me more about accepting my body and the wonders of photoshop than any other professional type out there.

-”Take Me Down, Build Me Up“, by Katelan Foisy

Working in the field of sex makes you lose your filter very quickly and the “sexy” because the hohum. While we aren’t sex workers, our organization serves thousands of people with contraception, STD tests/treatment and abortions. Sex consumes 80% of our work life, the remaining 20% is the usual: who forgot to reload paper in the copier, whose turn is it to buy coffee, and why doesn’t this conference call number work?
I oversee the staff who answers weekly sex questions on a blog and runs the social media of a reputable provider in reproductive health.  Here are some samples of email exchanges that happen daily:

“This week, anal sex is a priority. Chlamydia simply has to wait.”
“There is a burlesque show that wants us to hand out condoms.  Who has bordello red lipstick and a Weimar Republic outfit?”
“Enough with the hets, already. It’s been, like, 3 weeks of breeder info.”
“Did everyone know extra-large condoms are just a gimmick?  Why don’t you people tell me this stuff?”
“Vajazzeling, again?”
“Anyone recommend a music video that goes well with an STD post?”
“I know it is late, but can you squeeze in a sex toy review? I hate to even ask.”
“Anyone ever find the emergency contraception costume?  We have an intern who is actually willing to wear it.”
“Wow.  Did you guys know you can get custom cockrings that are diamond studded?”
“This post on bondage reads like instructions on how to scrub your kitchen sink.  Can we please edit?”
“Did anyone else lick the cola flavored dental dam? Gross.”

-Naked Anarchist, about her work at a sexual health clinic

What is the “whore look”? It’s a look of disapproval mixed with snobbery and a twinge of sexual tension. The viewer thinks, “How sad. How dirty. How much for me? I’m cute. Free?” Vixen and Sera weren’t bothered; they were inspired. In the bathroom, drunk, giggling about “the whore look,” and noting their seemingly incompatible mirror images, they hatched their brainchild: “Mismatched Whores.”

-Sera Miles & Radical Vixen on “Mismatched Whores”

agency girl

cant you understand?
phone operator
LADY
aunt flo is
traveling

Me and him
broke
up.

I dont wanna fuck

today
I gotta

coldsore,
the last guy,
sweaty,
the dirt bags
Creeps

fungus
involved
and force

i am not a “party” girl.

careful
next time
you call
twist
a knife
get me on
schedule
might find
myself away
to

cut

you
too.

-Anna Saini, blogging as Phyrecracker at Hersight

The following post is by the lovely Katelan Foisy. Check out her website for her writing, paintings, and modeling.

“How many men would pay thousands of dollars to do to you, what I did today?” Mike asked me as we sipped wine from a bottle in the back yard of NYC punk rock history.

I’m not a prostitute, nor am I a porn star. That’s not exactly the truth; we’ve all done a little something for money, gifts, dinner, or a little bit of fame. I am however a naked model, an artist, writer, tarot reader, and a muse. I’ve come up with random schemes and ran with them. There was the topless tarot, the “Red Bettie” go-go dancing, and other random jobs that involved me taking off my clothes and collecting money.

I find no shame in sex work and never will. The people I have met through the industry have become some of my most cherished friends. They’ve taught me more about accepting my body and the wonders of photoshop than any other professional type out there.

Around the time I was go-go dancing I was living with a very toxic human being. For every step forward I took with modeling and dancing she brought me three steps back. Let’s for this story’s sake call her Annabelle Lee. Annabelle Lee wanted to be a model, and she had the looks for it too. She just didn’t have the confidence, so she spent her days taking mine. “You’re too big too be wearing that.” She’d say and then offer to go out and get ice cream. At my first go-go gig she laughed and made jokes in the corner while handing her phone number out to my contacts. I was destroyed.

Fast forward years later, ten pounds larger and I’m heading to a porn party. I’ve been nude modeling for two years, painting porn stars, and happily immersed in the community. I’m also completely terrified. All these gorgeous, glamorous, scantily clad, women on film will be there. I’m not trying to compete with them, just fit in. I text the guy I’m seeing but not sure if I’ll get a response, he’s in between being on tour and visiting family. It was just me and my body issues. I remembered Annabelle and all those times she knocked me down. Of course, I should have realized it then but she was dealing with her own issues.

Getting ready in the hotel room, my photographer snaps a few pictures. “You’ve really come into your own.” She says from behind the lens. As I pull up my fishnet thigh highs I start to feel more confident.

We get to the party and I’m taken upstairs to be interviewed. Gorgeous porn stars lounge on the couch as I speak into the recorder. Afterwards I’m taken downstairs and told to wait for Ron, yes, Ron Jeremy.

Ron is fascinating. The moment he enters a room people flock to him. He signs them, gropes them, and takes pictures. His wranglers move him away from the crowd and over to me. Ron is a business man through and through. In the midst of flash bulbs blinding us he whispers, “Do you have a boyfriend here?”

“No.”
“Then let’s give them what they want.”

He grabbed me around the waist and kissed me propping me up afterward to pose for photographs. The masses started to crowd and once again Ron is enveloped in a sea of young women exposing their chests. I’m asked if I can now become the wrangler and get him away from the crowd. I’m wearing a tight black skirt and shirt. I’m not wearing any underwear. I shimmy into the crowd and place Ron’s hand on my ass. “Follow me.” I whisper, while bloggers and journalist yell out “She’s from Queens too.” And with Ron’s hand placed firmly on my ass we make our way to the dance floor. “You’ve got a great ass,” he says. “The best in the business.” I laugh and smile, all the years of Annabelle’s words just melt away. I realize how crucial the sex industry has been to my positive body image, and not just by this one comment. The journalists, photographers, porn stars, and directors are all swooning over me. I’m in my element.

Back in the garden drinking wine with Mike I think of all this as we plan for our own shoot, his poetry on my body. We’ve spent all day with me naked and him on top of me. Pen to flesh. “How many men would pay thousands of dollars to do to you, what I did today?” He says. “Maybe a few.” I say, taking another sip.

Sera Miles and Radical Vixen sent me a special collaborative post for the Red Umbrella Diaries Blog Carnival about being sex working coworkers – and imagined what that might look like as a sitcom. Sera’s original version of the story appears here, Radical Vixen’s original appears here.

Sera Miles and Radical Vixen have a pitch for you, dear readers. Inspired by our LA adventures, we’ve developed a pilot for a titillating new television series: “Mismatched Whores.”

The idea hatched the night Latex Geezer (LG) and Radical Vixen picked Sera up for dinner. Although LG was supposed to be dressed in feminine attire for this exquisite dining experience, he wore a suit. Alas, he couldn’t follow directions. LG was “tired” because he had gotten himself and our Vixen lost while coming back from Dr. Feathers’—the booby doctor’s—office. Still, our trio headed to an Italian restaurant. LG became lost again, nearly wrecked the car, and snapped at the girls for attempting to give him directions. Our working girls got out and walked to the restaurant, leaving LG to find a parking spot in downtown Pasadena.

Sera had dressed carefully for the evening in a pair of black pants and a kimono top, replete with Kenneth Cole heels. (Radical Vixen once called them “Kevin Cole” heels.) Vixen wore a sundress and flat sandals. Sera had on a pound of make-up; Vixen had none. The waiter took one look at the girls, studiously wrote down the gargantuan appetizer and wine order, and ascertained the situation.

By the time LG came to the table the wine was being uncorked. To his credit, the Geez apologized for his temper. His grumbling returned when he sat down though, for his ass was still sore from his visit with Dr. Feathers’ hormone needles.

The waiter returned with appetizers plus what Sera terms the “whore look.” Though not prostitutes per se, our protagonists are young, dressed-up women dining with a much older man—and said geezer, or older man, is paying for everything. Apparently, all this implies: Whores!

What is the “whore look”? It’s a look of disapproval mixed with snobbery and a twinge of sexual tension. The viewer thinks, “How sad. How dirty. How much for me? I’m cute. Free?” Vixen and Sera weren’t bothered; they were inspired. In the bathroom, drunk, giggling about “the whore look,” and noting their seemingly incompatible mirror images, they hatched their brainchild: “Mismatched Whores.”

The next day was SPA day. To play up the mismatch, Vixen adorned herself in a tie-dyed belly-button baring top, patch-work bell bottoms, sandals, braids, and no make-up. Sera wore a leopard print tank top with a jewel-encrusted snake at the cleavage-baring bodice, skin-tight black pants with gold detailing, and ten pounds of make-up. LG wore a suit. But at the spa, he went by his female name. While Sera got her legs waxed, she explained “Scarlet” to the aesthetician. The wax was over before Sera could say “ow.”

For the pilot of “MisMatched Whores,” envision our heroines in similar attire. As pilot episodes usually set up the show’s exposition, we see Sera’s character as a child in, say, New Jersey. Little Sera plays in her mother’s make-up when a neighborhood boy snatches the red lipstick. Boom! Little Sera kicks him. Little Sera Dominatrix is born. And Radical Vixen, we see her as a child in rural New Mexico. She’s pounding a fence in around a tree that developers threaten to axe down. When the developer approaches her, she points a wooden stake at him and says, “Stay back, for I am the Lorax!” Boom! Little Radical Vixen Dominatrix is born.

We should also see how Radical Vixen and Sera Miles meet. Surreptitiously they enter the same five-star hotel, dressed as fits them, carrying heavy bags. A bellhop gives Sera the whore look, and she smiles wide. Vixen and Sera ride the elevator together, coyly sizing each other up. Only thirty minutes later, both arrive at the elevator bay again. After a pregnant pause, Radical Vixen says, “He never lasts the full hour.” The mismatched whores adjourn to the bar, where Sera pounds filthy martinis and smokes French cigarettes, while Radical Vixen sips locally brewed blueberry beer and waves the smoke away. Despite their differences, they decide to move into a huge house together, where they can entertain clients sans any whore looks, save for the look they give each other as the credits roll for “Mismatched Whores.”

And hilarity ensues.