TastyTrixie.com

Archive for July, 2008

We’re leaving in an hour or two to spend a couple of nights at a local bed and breakfast so we can do some shooting in a pretty(ier than our house) location. I’m super excited because the walls are PURPLE! Over the past five years of hunting for locations to shoot pretty, sexy photos the lack of color in people’s lives has dismayed me. Why would you own a house and keep the walls white? Why would you try to rent rooms to people and think it will be any sort of a vacation for them with the same uninspired absence of color? I don’t get it, seriously, except that it’s cheaper/easier to maintain white walls.

Anyway, we’re really looking forward to it; it’s been many months since we tried to shoot anything semi-fancy with nylons and stuff. Delia’s been saving a really slinky, beautiful ensemble one of her members sent her waiting for a nice setting to do it justice.

As usual I’m a little nervous about lugging all of our suitcases and light bags into the place. I hate stirring up suspicion amongst the locals; it’s already weird enough to them when people IN TOWN want to rent rooms, but probably looks even more sketchy when we bring many giant pieces of luggage for a one or two night stay.

We’ll be in and out of home to take care of the dog, download pics, fetch things we’ve forgotten, etc. In fact, the explanation I give the nosy people is that we are “getting away while staying close enough to home to check up on our pet.” One of the suck things is that we’ve grown to not even want to actually spend the night at these places; we just want to come home and get into OUR bed after we’ve done our shooting, but not staying the night would *definitely* set off alarms with these people so we’ll be imprisoned in boutiquey Victoriana until we’re back home full time on Friday. Maybe next time I’ll say that we’ve got construction going on at our house during the day that we want to get away from. It could happen, right?

During an idle search for free porn from one of my favorite porn stars, Chloe, I ran across the infamous Chloe Sevigny blowjob scene that I, for one, had never heard of until now even though the (art, not porn) movie (The Brown Bunny) came out in 2003:

I’ve always liked Chloe Sevigny so maybe that contributed to my feeling that the scene is very hot, real and intimate, but when I started googling to find out more about the scene and the movie, I found a blog entry CRITICIZING her “performance” as “sub-par at best”. The blogger went on to say that she could have done a much better job herself. Then her commentators decided the scene was probably faked, maybe even with a prosthetic penis (one said that Vincent Gallo didn’t seem “the type” to have that large of a cock).

Sigh.

I really despise people who sit at home on the internet criticizing the sex other people have. It’s not that I don’t appreciate seeing a really beautiful cocksucker with mad BJ skills, but that doesn’t take anything away from other blowjob scenes. It would never have crossed my mind to critique this scene in any way; I can only see hotness – she looks and sounds amazing and totally into it, and the action seems recognizably real (to me, at least). I seriously don’t understand what other people are thinking, but they strike me as bored, desensitized, horrid little people. Not that I myself have never seen sex scenes that have made me cringe, but Jesus CHRIST! If I were to go on my own rampage about the so-called “porn culture” I’d say this is one its most lamentable characteristics: judging all sex by some artificial porn-blockbuster standard.

Maybe I’m touchy about this because I’ve been on the receiving end of these critiques myself from people who think that because we have spycams and do live shows that we’re asking to be rated and critiqued like we’re in the fucking sexual Olympics or something. Regular sex just isn’t GOOD enough for some people anymore, even when it’s clear that the people having it are totally lost in it and enjoying themselves. I don’t even think it’s a “porn culture” thing so much as an “extreme sports culture” thing. Like if your actions don’t require a recommendation from safety experts for knee pads and a helmet (which of COURSE you will shun because you’re a porn/sport DAREDEVIL!) then you’re (yawn) BORING and under-skilled. And the internet invites everybody to be a critic and demonstrate BAD FORM in manners and humanity. Ugh!

Apparently Sevigny & the actor used to date, so they’d been intimate before this movie AND the scene was shot using remote cameras so they were alone in the room when they did it, and it does appear to me that something really hot and private (and probably still a lot awkward, which is also hot) was captured. The SADDEST part to me is that her agency dropped her after the movie came out and reading Sevigny say, “making it for me was not difficult but the reaction from the public has been very difficult for me to handle.”

She sucked her ex-boyfriend’s cock on film. What THE FUCK is the big deal? For real! I don’t get it. What business do other people have judging her for it? Clearly we haven’t become so pornified that people have discarded their fucked up judgmental senses of “decency” and emotionally retarded moral outrage. I know this was five years ago, but I doubt the response would be any different today. People. Suck. COCK. They always have and they always will. And FYI, a BJ has to be really REALLY bad to not be lovely.

On my walk to the bank I found a pair of dirty panties laying on the street by the elementary school in the crosswalk.

They weren’t dirty in a way that indicated a struggle took place while someone was wearing them, just dirty in a way that any discarded fabric would be if it spent time laying in the road. They were pink Hanes Her Way, definitely grown-up panties. A twig was ensnared in them and they were bunched up.

I walked past them quickly in a kind of shock, knowing I wouldn’t want anyone to catch me looking at them, but wanting to just the same. I left them behind, wishing I’d had my camera. I left them behind, but couldn’t stop considering picking them up and putting them in my backpack. I could use the twig to pick them up without touching them, or at least I could say that’s what I did so people wouldn’t know that it doesn’t really freak me out to pick up dead panties out of the street with my bare hands. I could bring them home and justify my strange behavior because I’m a pornographer and some people would like to see these panties I found. Because some of the people who read me online are exactly the people who WOULD have found a way to snatch those panties off the street, or would be jealous of my wild and crazy ability to defy convention and do so.

I’m always fascinated by the private things that are abandoned in public places. Grocery lists, for example. But it’s especially strange and fascinatingly intimate when underwear is discarded. Socks in parking lots. Panties used as toilet paper and dropped in conspicuous store locations. Shoes thrown over telephone wires. Panties on the street. I’m drawn to these things and wonder how they got there, just like I wonder why half the bad boys and girls on COPS are driving and wandering around the streets barefoot (not wearing shoes on the street is a much more significant sign to me that these people’s lives are totally fucked up than the drugs in their cars or their desire to run from the police). Are they leaving their clothes behind to mark their territory? Is it like movable pheromone-filled graffiti? Are they trying to fuck with me/people like me? Or are they just getting rid of things they don’t want anymore?

*****

On the way back home I thought about the place where I left the panties behind and whether or not they’d still be there. They were, and this time I actually stopped and peered down at them. There was blood on them. Not crime scene blood, but natural period-type spots. Did she buy new clean panties? Did she just decide to go without? Did she wonder what people would think when they saw them right there in the crosswalk? Was she laughing when she threw them? Was she alone? Did she get rid of them because she was proud to show them off rather than wash them after they’d already served their purpose? Or did she get rid of them because they disgusted her and she just wanted to leave them behind?

Or maybe someone’s son or younger brother stole them out of the laundry and brought them to the playground to show to all of his friends and they all laughed and threw them around after passing them to each other with grubby fingers wondering what it all meant. Or maybe someone sat in his car by the school late at night and jacked off into them, then threw them out. If he would have been caught he could have to register as a sex offender for committing that act within so many feet of a school. Even though it’s summer and school’s not in session. What was he thinking, throwing them out right there? What is anybody thinking?

Maybe they were just on the top of someone’s laundry basket in the car with the windows down and just flew out on accident.

*****

The panties will be gone the next time I go by there, and I’ll wonder who took them. A concerned mother picking them up with a plastic bag between her hand and the cotton like she’s picking up dog poop? The guy I’ve seen at the playground with a metal detector, scavenging for treasure? The same person who put them there? A lonely teenager in a trench coat taking a midnight stroll? I wish I could watch them do it without anyone seeing me.

*****

There’s a mystery just north of us of severed feet washing up on shore (see story: Retracing the Steps of the Severed Feet). I don’t know why, but I just happened to think of it.

One of them turned out to be a hoax.

*****

Here are a few more blog entries I posted recently:

What Failure Looks Like: Exhibit A

What Failure Looks Like: Exhibit B (in lieu of pics of the street panties)

Two alternative ways of purchasing membership to my site:
microphone = six month membership
laptop = lifetime membership

Thanks to our friend Nerdy Anna for pointing out this post on Feministe about porn sparking a discussion about whether or not “feminist porn” exists, etc.

Honestly? I only hastily skimmed the post and avoided taking a close look at the comments. Not because I don’t think it’s a worthwhile discussion. Not because I don’t want to help “represent” the feminist pornographers of the world. But because for me right now, the most feminist thing I can do is make money and be free of debt, because paying credit card companies tons of interest is totally not feminist. With that being my focus I view reading and participating in these oft-irrational discussions as a big waste of my time. I was much MUCH happier reading the Feministe post on The Golden Girls which I, of course, agree with.

WARNING: reading the following rambling may be a total waste of YOUR time, but it was highly therapeutic for me to write about it.

I’ve got a number of drafted blog posts and of course plenty of thoughts about sex, feminism, porn, and all that “good” stuff (or bad stuff, depending on your perspective). But I’ll take this opportunity to just briefly touch on a few of my positions and answer the question, in short form, of whether or not I think the porn *I* make is feminist.

*Making money (and especially being self-employed, and especially making GOOD money, ESPECIALLY if it’s better money than men are making and especially all of these things in THIS country and cultural context) is feminist. Even if you’re making money on something that seems totally counterproductive to feminism.

*The interesting thing — the KEY thing — is acknowledging that behaviors and products (and I use that term very loosely — could be a piece of merchandise or the end result of certain behaviors or a speech or whatever) can be feminist in some ways, and not in others. You can do something that makes feminist progress in one area, but is regressive in another. That duality is intrinsic to the movement(s) and anybody who thinks it’s possible to be and live and think and affect 100% feminist is fucking delusional. Because you can’t control other people’s reactions. Because sometimes making progress in one direction means distancing yourself from another point on your (or the group’s) carefully mapped travel plans. Because everybody has something unique to contribute, and while they might excel in one area, they won’t in another. THAT’S WHY WE NEED DIFFERENT WOMEN REPRESENTING DIFFERENTLY. Because it’s not feminist at all to think we all want the same things, or to demand that we pursue the same things. Because it’s humanly impossible to consistently put FEMINISM before yourself all the time. Because for some of us feminism means putting OURSELVES (specifically MYSELF or YOURSELF, in your case if you are a woman) first. Because life is just way more complex than “feminist” or “not feminist”.

Maybe it’s like a big scavenger hunt. There are tons of things on our list, things we should have RIGHTS to. Maybe you go look for education. Maybe sister over there goes and looks for health care. Maybe another goes and looks for safety. I hope there’s someone out there looking for reparations. MAYBE I WILL LOOK FOR THE MONEY. Maybe I will look for proof that my body is not YOUR body, and maybe you’ll be fucking confused because you think that if I sell my body to a man that I’m violating YOURS. Maybe I will have time to hold your hand and we can find RATIONAL THOUGHT together, huh? Wouldn’t that be nice. Maybe we’ll all accept that we all have the right to anger, and that a lot of it is righteously directed at each other.

Maybe you have no clue how often I advocate for some of the most unpopular feminist causes and rights while I am in some of the most hostile environments for doing so in the first world. Maybe you have no idea how much thicker the leather is on my militant boots than yours and your buddies, with your unproductive running-off-at-the-mouth. Maybe you underestimate how much more effective being feminist is on this platform than on yours. Maybe I love getting ALL. FIRED. UP! Maybe that’s why I suppress my work on it so often. Because that fire comes close to incapacitating me with screaming.

This is so not short or coherent the way I planned for it to be, but it’s making ME feel better, and THAT is feminist.

*Do I, Trixie, make feminist porn (if such a thing exists)?
I do think feminist porn exists/is possible. I totally disagree with anyone who thinks it’s a contradiction in terms. At the root of that mistaken belief is a huge double standard regarding PLEASURE, but that’s a topic for another time.

Many people would say, “yes, Trixie’s porn is feminist”. I personally would say that the the individual chunks of porn I/we make are only feminist sometimes. I will also say that I do not *want* all of the porn I make to be feminist. Because my sexuality and personality do not always cooperate with feminist ideals, nor do other people’s. Because our fantasy worlds cannot and should not be bound by politics. Because sex as we experience it/feel it TRANSCENDS politics (even if it never transcends politics in reality). Because sometimes you specifically fantasize about un-feminist things because your ideals have created such intensely taboo triggers. Because it wouldn’t be feminist to deny myself all of me. Because the most feminist thing I can do is MAKE MONEY and to represent myself as a feminist while I do it.

The major way my work is feminist (outside of or next to the money-making arena) is that I consistently remind people who I belong to (MYSELF) in contexts where it is unexpected. My body belongs to me. I consistently assert my will, my self-ownership, even when it is counterproductive to making sales. My work as a whole is feminist because I REFUSE TO BE A NON-PERSON or a partial person or a person only part of the time. Anybody who looks at my work as a whole (or even/often just in small parts) can see that I REPRESENT MYSELF AS A WHOLE PERSON. To an extent that I think very VERY few people, men OR women, in ANY industry or from any walk of life, are willing to do or are allowed to do or know how to do or are brave enough to do or have risked as much to do. I AM A WHOLE PERSON, and my work in porn is contained within that and presented from that place of wholeness. Being a whole person and INSISTING UPON wholeness everywhere is awesomely feminist. Paradoxically it means that I cannot BE wholly feminist or affect in feminist ways all of the time.

I could spend a lot of time describing what I mean by “a whole person”, but I’ll just clarify a little by saying I don’t mean “perfect” or “finished” when I say “whole” On the contrary, I mean I am and deserve to be and insist upon staking my claim on IMperfection, meeting my primitive needs, fucking-up, growing sideways and in general pursuing happiness.

You *can* make feminist progress in your own life and in others’ by making art that is gender conscious, class conscious, and power conscious EVEN WHEN your representations of it are stereotyped and politically incorrect (sometimes BECAUSE they are, especially if they’re totally campy and over-the-top). Especially when it acts as therapy and finds meaning/truth. And MOST especially when it’s presented in a broader context that is overtly or even covertly political and/or built on a feminist foundation or told by a feminist voice (even when some of those stories and characters played are distinctly NOT feminist).

I, presenting myself as a whole person, am the context. In everything I do. And I am feminist. That is the powerful truth in my life and work and someda
y I hope I’ll be better at articulating it.

When people make fun of The Golden Girls I always experience a wave of cognitive dissonance; they dismiss it as something “old” and irrelevantly feminine when I never did and WILL never perceive it that way at all. For me? The Golden Girls was a groundbreakingly progressive, hysterically funny, humanist show. Sitcom television at its very best next to a few others on my list: Laverne & Shirley, The Office, Married with Children and maybe a couple others. In terms of sitcoms having a major inspiring influence on me, The Golden Girls might actually be unparalleled (Laverne & Shirley would be a second, though).

I watched this show with my grandparents and at the time didn’t even realize how dirty, biting and often macabre the jokes were. I watch this show NOW and am amazed by how edgy it STILL is. To me, a pornographer. Suicide Girls? NOT edgy. Sex and the City? Not really edgy. Golden Girls? YOU CAN’T TOUCH THEIR EDGINESS! You can always count on Rose for some naively delivered bestiality stories or to be fucking a midget or a dead guy. One of The Golden Girls fucks a new guy in every episode, but not in that hyperfocused SATC way.

I’m guessing people who mock The Golden Girls have never watched it. If so, the reasons they mock it are telling; it MUST be bad if it’s about old people and ESPECIALLY bad if it’s about old people who are WOMEN. I can’t abide anyone who doesn’t appreciate The Golden Girls or dismisses that show with a condescending chuckle. It’s like a slap in the face from someone with really bad aim; it doesn’t physically hurt, but it makes my blood boil.

When we went to see Sex and the City the movie we all discussed which girl we are or which one other people think we’re most like. And you know what? I’D RATHER BE A FUCKING GOLDEN GIRL. And I don’t mean that as a huge dis to SATC, I really mean The Golden Girls are my idols. I believe that show was more proactively feminist than anything on network television. EVER. When I grow up? I want to be a Golden Girl. I can barely think of a higher aspiration.

Anyway, Rest in peace, Estelle Getty.

Here’s an email I got the other day from someone trying to decide whether or not to join my site:

Hey, sexy, I am thinking about joining your site. How many nice videos do you have in there? Do you do any fart video?

Out of all the emails I get that deserve responses, choosing to spend time replying to this one PROBABLY wasn’t wise or fair, but I did write back to say this:

Hi there! I don’t have any fart videos (well actually I have one, but it’s such a small and insignificant fart, it barely warrants mentioning). What I do have are spycams upon which patient voyeurs with audio enabled can sometimes hear me farting or even see me lifting my cheek to do so. No guarantees of when or how often or that you would catch it, though.

I don’t know how many videos I have at this point, and I’m not sure how many you would consider to be “nice” since that is a highly subjective term. Most people who join my site are into the whole “package” that I offer, both as a strange and wonderful human being AND as a porn site proprietress, and statistics barely enter into their decision of whether or not to join.

Good luck in making yours!

*Trixie*

It’s not that I think his questions aren’t legit, I’m just reluctant to hand out quantified guarantees of satisfaction to people who are reluctant to join without them since I doubt they will be happy with my site (especially in this case when I don’t have content to make a die-hard fart fetishist happy, even though I probably have MORE to offer him than other non-fart-focused porn sites).

Mostly I answer emails like this one because it’s so freeing to be flip, especially when the person expects me to do everything I can to convince him to buy and I’m just not going to. It’s so much easier to communicate with people I *know* I can’t make happy than it is to write back to the people who really want to hear from me and whose opinions I genuinely care about. I feel guilty for it, but there it is.

*****

I have a lot (even more than usual) of maintenance, (re)design, and promo work to do on a lot of our sites so that’s where I’m focusing most of my computer time. We have an appointment with Delia’s therapist on Tuesday to talk about coming out to her family about her transition so that will probably be our day off for the week since we have to traverse a few counties to get there/won’t be home most of the day.

Next week we’ve rented a room to shoot fancier photo sets with hosiery, etc. than we’ve been doing lately. I’m excited because the walls are PURPLE! You have no idea how much of my webwhore happiness depends on shooting in colorful locations. In the first two weeks of August we’ll need to focus on shooting a lot, too, so we won’t be posting galleries shot in the same exact place for two months straight.

I have a couple of really exciting things to blog about but just wanted to post something quickly today to stay in touch and let you know where we’re focusing. Twitter’s been down a lot so I haven’t been able to do it there reliably (and am worried Twitter’s downtime is effecting the way our members see our members-only area since it won’t load the rest of the page until it tries to load our tweets). I should redesign that, too, so twitter is the last thing to load, but it would so fuck up the balance. Sigh . . . I wish the twitter fuckers would monetize it already so they could afford to make it WORK.

We had a great visit with Delia’s family. My sister and brother-in-law loaned us Mr. Squishypants (their two year-old son/our nephew) which makes socializing so much easier; he’s beautiful, charming and a joy to be around. We had dinner together then went to a big park in Seattle and played until it got dark and we could see the full moon between the trees.

At that point Delia’s uncle, a slightly grizzled, mildly-boozy-from-dinner Iowa farmer, shook Mr. Squish’s hand and solemnly looked him in they eye, saying he’s a wonderful boy and hoped he’d see him again soon. Mr. Squishypants returned a firm chubby-fingered grip and nodded his own head in slow, somber agreement, his big blue eyes level as he said, “yeah”. He says “yeah” a lot these days. He used to say “dick” or “dickle” when he meant “yes”, but recently he replaced “dickle” with the standard “yeah”. Anyway, it was moving seeing an expression on his little face that conveyed something like, “we served in the war together, buddy, and saw things we’ll never speak of when we get home to our families, but I will never forget you. I’m glad I saved your life once, and you mine.” It was like unexpectedly witnessing a secret handshake between two people you never would have guessed had met somewhere before or had a common bond.

It just fucking amazes me how kids learn to communicate, not just with words, but by mimicking our nonverbal language. Sometimes by removing the knowledge of the meaning behind the language a kind of universal human truth is spoken. Mr. Squishypants and Delia’s uncle shared a solemn moment full of mutual respect and human connection that transcended what was spoken and understood. They made a connection and I witnessed it (because I was holding him in my arms at the time so they were face to face), the way his angelic little face dipped as he bowed his head slightly to say, “yeah” and he blinked his eyes for only a moment, the rest of the time maintaining eye contact — it was so full of intuitive wisdom. On one hand it makes you think about how little substance there is to our interactions, that it’s all a meaningless charade we teach each other and find compelling when someone does a good job of acting it out. On the other hand it makes you wonder how much meaning is created in a big and powerful way by the emotional response we have to witnessing and performing these interactions. Like when we smile out of obligation even when we don’t mean it and somehow we feel better inside for doing it. Yes, we’re machines whose behavior can be shaped, but why dwell on our mundane construction when our experiences FEEL so profound? I can intellectualize it and scoff at it as simpleminded copycatting barely more advanced than tricks you can teach a dog, but watching my nephew shake hands or raise a glass to his fellows and say, “cheers!” or high five people or DANCE is like cuddling with divinity, whether such a thing exists or not.

And have you ever noticed how much two year old bodies resemble monkeys? The way their legs and toes move. The way they bend at the waist. How can you avoid trusting, even if just for a moment, in both evolution and God when you see that? A little monkey with my grandma’s face, my sister’s face, his dad’s face, even my face. Layers of the gift of immortality, or at least its illusion.

*****

If I’m not pregnant, my period will probably start today. Also, here’s another post over on Fertile(?)Trixie if you’d like to read about my paranoia regarding orgasms and implantation.

We’re heading out to Seattle in a bit to visit my family AND to hook up with some of Delia’s family: a couple of cousins her age and her aunt and uncle visiting from the Midwest. It’s going to be awkward: no one in her family is aware yet that she doesn’t identify as male and is transitioning. She’s going to be in drab, pretending to be a boy.

Awkward.

I would be more than happy to skip it except that I *really* love this particular aunt of hers (I actually really like her whole family; I haven’t met these cousins yet, but I would honestly hang out with this aunt just for fun because I feel comfortable with her).

We’re also boarding our dog which is something we’ve not done the whole time we’ve been together. For awhile we had an excellent dog/housesitter but she moved to California and we’ve not found anyone we trust since. We just had to find someplace for her to stay on this overnighter because it’s summer and we can’t leave her in the car nor can we always foist her on my sister and brother-in-law with their own menagerie including two-year-old more than enough for their small house. Anyway, I hope the “pet resort” is fun for her and not stressful; we’re paying extra for her to have a half-hour of supervised playtime with other dogs which could be a good thing or a bad thing. She deserves some fun, though.

Time to get a move on . . . Delia has donned baseball cap, camo pants, and a Harley t-shirt to disguise her gender identity. It’s kind of funny. KIND of.

When I told Delia I wanted to take some pictures at night while the frothy white things were still in bloom, she explained to me that “those “blooming frothy things” are called oceanspray (Holodiscus discolor)“. I adore it when she gives me the Latin names for plants. She went on to tell me, “they’re a native shrub noted for their exceptionally hard wood. The local tribes used them for spearing fish and such.”

It was windy when we took the pictures so the blossoms are white blurs in many of the photos, but here is a small taste of what we were aiming for:

I love the way my white panties are gleaming!

FYI: the light source is an overhead street light. We have a lot to learn and practice with night photography but I really enjoy making the attempts. We would go back and try again, but the flowers are all getting dry and brown; we really shot this set of pics on nearly the last possible night to get the white froth. There’s always next year, though.

If you want a peek at something that encapsulates a lot of what’s magical to me about black and white, nighttime, small towns, intimacy, and taboo, here’s one of my favorite things from one of the most beautiful movies ever, To Kill a Mockingbird:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB0sjVN2Pic&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&border=1]

As if the opening credits weren’t enough gorgeousness, so much of the movie takes place at night. It’s spooky and vulnerable and wondrous. That feeling of trees with treasures holes and dark houses with Boo Radleys and curious little people wandering around at night when they shouldn’t, finding out sad, scary grown-up things . . . that is a feeling I love and something I would someday like for us to be good at capturing (but without the children, of course). It’s why my Keds and panties and my limbs lit up are so captivating to me in these pictures. Why I love the debris on the path. I love the nighttime. I love woodsy places in drowsy neighborhoods. I love being outside and awake when everyone else is asleep. Or *trying* to fall asleep. Or getting fucked really loudly, which is what we heard one lady doing while we were shooting — it was HOT BEYOND BELIEF!

I’ll be posting the full set of pictures for members today. If you’d like to see them (and support us in our erotic endeavors as we learn more about low light and night photography) but you’re not a member yet, you can JOIN HERE.

As usual I have lots of thoughts and news swirling around in my head, waiting to be blogged about but without adequate focused time to do it. Thanks for staying interested and continuing to check in with me during my dry spells.