Friday night I was out at a club, and about the time we all were getting tossed out (last call), I ran into that hot little trumpet player that I made out with (and got lovingly molested by), from the Marching Band. We hugged, and she promptly took me to task. "I read your blog about the other night. Was I girl number two, or three, or what!?" Uh oh. I did my usual backpedaling, "Well, I try not to ‘out’ people on my site if I don’t know it’s okay!" She smiled and mentioned something about getting better placement next time. I thought, *she said next time*! Then she mentioned offhandedly that she’d love to "get me up on some RSS." Now if that doesn’t sound like a hot nerd proposition… I said it sounded fun, and let it go, saying goodbye.

The next day she emailed me and said, hey give me your password info and I’ll install some software for you — and I did, and within almost minutes she was sending me a link to an interface that will soon be my new RSS blog! But right about the same time I was trying to upload a file and got an error message that my disk was almost full! Shit — so I called my hosting provider and turns out I was on an old plan from about four years ago, and to upgrade to "Premier" (unlimited everything) I’d have to move to a new server… so the past few days have been spent in a tense panic while my site has gone down for a minute. Tiny Nibbles was actually down for a few hours, but now I’ve got her back up on a pimpin’ new ride of a server, with lots of space and room for my bandwidth. Sexy Marching Band trumpeter Squishy — that’s really her dirty nickname in the band — has helped me with the move, and I think I might’ve gone insane without her. And what does a super-sexy trumpet girl get for geek work? A fat, I mean phat, load of porn ‘n toys for Valentine’s Day. And by the weekend, I hope to have my new blog up and running — which means no more delays in regular posting! Thank you, thank you, thank you Squishy!

Flame throwers. Biker gangs. Illegal boxing. I had no idea my weekend would end up like it did.

I finally agreed to go to the Saturday night Marching Band gig through the haze of a brain-pounding hangover, a self-induced temporary disability brought on by a sudden urge on Friday night to feel alive and excited — and to get drunk to celebrate a decent royalty check and new book deal. And a crappy week at my day job. By four o’clock Saturday, I crawled out from under a pile of erotica books (loaned to me by my publisher for the Cleis Book) to let Angel, a sexy little Asian band girlfriend, convince me she needed me there. I would do anything for Angel. And we didn’t need to be there until midnight, so that meant I could spend the next six hours rehydrating myself, eating eggrolls and showering.

It was freezing out, and I dressed in jeans and a light blue sweater/parka, with big 60’s snow bunny hair. Five of us piled in Hornboy’s car, which was big enough, but the horns and drums always get the best seats and we were on top of each other. The gig was in some warehouse in the worst part of Oakland, I’m still not sure where exactly, except that there weren’t many streetlights, no liquor stores or businesses nearby, and few homes except for housing projects sprawled around the giant windowless warehouses and train tracks. We found a streetlight near the warehouse, and jumped out of the car to haul abandoned signs and junk out of the street to park in the pool of light, the only spot on the block.

The front of the warehouse was so packed with motorcycles that we had to walk in a maze to get to the front door. Remember the Titty Twister in From Dusk ‘Till Dawn? Kind of like that parking lot, but darker, and no Cheech. Thankfully we were ushered in past the line of impatiently waiting bikers as band members, and walked into a huge gutted industrial space packed with easily over 100 black-clad denizens. Many were sporting an assortment of biker colors and vests. There was a makeshift tattoo shack giving tats to whoever came along. Two bars, one hard liquor and the other shitty beers in cans for a dollar that you had to dig out of an ice bucket, located in a shipping container in the back of the building. And in the middle of it all, a huge homemade boxing ring, about five feet off the floor, with thick twine ropes around the edges. It was all lit up, with the crowd pressed around screaming and cheering as men took turns beating the crap out of each other. It was a ’smoker’ — an illegal boxing party.

The first rule of fight club is that you never talk about fight club. But they weren’t bare-knuckling (yet), and I know you can visit a number of bars in the Sunset district where you’ll see flyers that advertise smokers — but it’s all on the down low. Punk bands were playing this smoker, on a stage at the same level, but about 20 feet away from the ring, a mowhawked singer screaming inaudible lyrics at the shirtless boxers. We got some cheap beers and watched. A trumpet girl came over to shout hello: "I can’t look at it," she gestured toward the men slamming each other in the faces, bloody, out of control. "But I think it’s really surreal. Is it surreal?" I told her yes. A trombone player wandered over, "Wow — this is so fucking cool!" At that moment one of the men in the ring got hit hard enough to propel him between the ropes and out of the ring, slamming through the crowd to split his head on the ground. I took out my camera and started taking photos.

Angel, tiny little Angel came bobbing through the crowd and found us, relieved. She yelled, "I lost you! I lost Van Rippen (her boyfriend). Everywhere I went the guys were making moves at me right in front of their girlfriends. Their girlfriends looked like they wanted to beat me up! I just tried not to make eye contact with anyone. I’m so glad I found you!" I told her not to go anywhere without me again, and we made a pact. In the ring, two biker clubs squared off with each other, three men on three. It was a melee. The audience was screaming at the fighters, which only added to the distorted blare of the punk band.

The fighting was nonstop and there were constant fights breaking out in the audience. We often had to move to avoid someone landing on one of us, or backing into me before a retaliation on whoever was coming at them. It was cold, dark, and the naked aggression was like a current that ran throughout the audience. I almost imagined I could taste it like iron on my tongue, like blood. I could see my breath when I exhaled. The Marching Band finally began their set well after midnight, with a full band bound in hats, scarves and thick coats, while the flag team (with only four members) rode in on a Duster fitted with a giant brass stripper pole. The crowd surged around the dancers, shoving, elbowing. Angel and I grabbed hands so we wouldn’t get separated; though I thought that if one of us fell we’d likely remain upright. I wondered how I got in the dead middle of it all and quelled a brief no-escape panic attack. As the band played their first song, I felt hands brush my ass. I checked for my wallet. I felt hands brush my ass again. I checked for my wallet. Hands stroked my hair. *Fuck,* I thought, a crowd like *this.*

The crowd followed the dancers to the boxing ring, and Angel and I were swept along, surrounded by the horn section. I found myself under the tuba bell, right in front of the stage for the next number, and I was stuck — so I took some video of the dancers with my camera — be warned that this is my first video with a new camera and I had the incorrect focus settings (and I was being shoved and elbowed a lot). Quicktime video.

The band started moving toward the stage, and Angel and I were dragged along again, holding hands like schoolgirls, gripping in a bond that managed to keep us connected despite the pushing and shoving. We tried to go up on the stage steps to stay safe form the crowd, but a huge biker bouncer waved us down — then almost clocked a guy trying to do the same thing. Angel and I moved to the far side of the stage, but when the band started playing, and the mosh pit began, I knew I was in the wrong place. I lost Angel. I got the fuck out of there. After I passed the flag team on my way out of the crowd, they started to turn and head back to the boxing ring. I walked over to the tattoo area, where I’d be able to watch from a distance and figured I’d brave being alone to avoid flying fists — at least fists I wouldn’t see coming in a surging crowd. As I was walking, the last flag girl in line to get in the ring was jumped by five girls in the audience and beaten to the ground. The flag team was having a hard time getting to the stage and no one saw — not even the band, as they were playing, and the mosh pit was moshing, It just looked like another mosh pit. Angel’s brother jumped in and tried to pull the women off her — then men jumped in, slamming Angel’s brother squarely in the face. He turned, a seasoned fighter and stood his ground. He told them to stop and asked who the "peacemaker" was in the crowd. It worked. The flag girl ran past me, bleeding, hysterical. The band played on; the noise was deafening. The dancers danced in the ring. Angel’s brother came over to me and we checked in about what happened. The flag girl was hiding back behind a shipping container, and people were asking me how she was — I said I didn’t know except that she was hysterical, and I waited by the door to watch for the girls who jumped her. I never saw them.

I stayed at the door with Angel’s brother, and Angel found us, phew. The band was still playing, but the dancers had left the stage (now three songs have gone by) and were running to get ice for the fallen dancer. We told Angel what happened and she went to get beer for the dancer, and for us. I said, let me come with you, and she said no, I’m coming right back, you stay together. The band began to come off the stage — I was so angry at the band, how could they keep playing? How could they not know? It all seemed irrational, everything. I wanted to find the girls who beat the flag girl — she’s not even a friend of mine — but I wanted to show them what it was like to fight a girl who *can* fight five girls and win. I was reverting to street mentality, I was sixteen again, when I got in fights all the time for sport — and survival. The six months I spent with a Filipino girl gang in the East Bay when I was fifteen. I felt insane. The violence was spreading to me. I ran up to a few members as they walked by and told them what happened, but I didn’t want to be doing that. A long time passed. I asked Angel’s brother where she was, he said he thought she came back. I said, no she didn’t. I went out after Angel. We found each other five minutes later — "They ripped my fucking shirt off my back!" Her shirt was torn. The five of us who arrived together were together again. Hornboy said, "Let’s go home."

On the way home, we put the pieces of the night together, and mused at the irony of contrast in their next gig — A mellow Jewish birthday party that they’re learning traditional songs for.

I finally figured it out. The gays do have an agenda. No, my good friends at Focus on the Family are wrong again, it has nothing to do with flamboyant sponges. On Tuesday I went into my favorite local gay video rental store, the really huge one in the Castro. I always have an interesting experience when I go in there, in the huge porn room. It has acres of gay porn, and a tiny, tiny straight/bi/trans section (and it’s really good), though I usually wander around all the sections. I am always the only woman there, and the typical reaction is that my presence clears out any nearby men; they noticeably move away from whatever section I’m looking at. It’s amusing more than anything; I wonder what kind of cruising scenario I interrupted, or if someone’s offended or embarrassed that I’m there — all very silly, in my eyes.

Anyway, I was on a mission looking to watch a copy of Chi Chi LaRue’s Str8 Shots. It’s a hot compilation of straight male porn stars jacking off for the camera, made and marketed especially for the gay market, making it unique and sexy as hell. It’s delicious, and highly recommended. But I couldn’t find it, so I asked. The cute Asian man behind the counter walked me over to it, and it was in stock. I said a little too loud, "Yay!" I was getting stared at by patrons. He said, in the middle of the porn room, "You know it’s just masturbation." I told him I knew and was very happy about it. He said quietly, conspiratorily, "It has Julian in it. We have a lot of Julian here; we want to carry everything of his." I recalled all the Julian videos I’d seen in their straight section. The clerk asked if I’d seen Jill and Julian, "it’s with his wife or something. It’s hot." I said, you know, they divorced and I think he’s single now. The clerk said "Oh! You know *we* want him. We want him," (gesturing to the store) "to come over to our side."

So then I realized that the gays do have an agenda.

Then I found out I may be on that agenda, or at least someone’s rainbow-stationary to-do list. I did my regular porn reviews on the Derek and Romaine show, and while Romaine and I exchanged our usual flirty banter, to my surprise, Derek jumped in and saucily asked if I’d like a switching, and that he’d be happy to "take me out back." Goodness, just when I think it’s safe; it’s like people are watching me onscreen in the movie of my life and shouting, "don’t look in the closet!" So then yesterday I decided to end a particularly melancholy week (all of my work gigs are more hateful than usual) by doing yoga and then going to Macy’s where a friend works at a makeup counter, and getting a makeover, just to try something different. Things aren’t bad — I accepted an exciting book deal this week; big SRL show soon; new podcast; Extra Action playing with David Byrne next month — but day job politics are making me feel like I want to quit everything and go back to working in a cafe.

I got assigned a very sexy makeup artist. Tall, nice voice, Latin accent, brown skin, black hair all sexy-messy, warm brown eyes — Mario (not his real name). He said, "Today we’re doing red carpet makeup, would you like to choose a celebrity you’d like to look like?" I said, that sounds boring. He smiled. He leaned in and said, "Yeah, they really look terrible anyway. So last year." I told him I was going out that night and wanted something fucked up and glamorous, that for nights like this I usually use a lot of smudgy black and glimmer. He grinned and told me to "pick a color, any color." I picked violet. He was clearly excited to have some fun.

While he worked, he told me about being in the closet all through high school. We talked the whole time. At one point he asked if was "a self-tanner girl," and I laughed, you mean like beach-ball orange Paris Hilton? No! I told him my new joke about her vagina detaching itself and running away and he said, "I’d never fuck her. She’s not hot at all, she’s not my type." He saw the glimmer in my eye and continued to tell me the female celebrities he’d never have sex with. I told him I was new to the concept of gay men doing girls, and he said, "you know I first tried it out of curiosity. And I was so surprised that I liked it, that it wasn’t gross like everyone said. My boyfriend doesn’t get it, thinks it’s funny that I steal men’s girlfriends sometimes, but I like to fuck their boyfriends too — it’s really best when it’s a couple." I asked how long he’d been with his man, and he told me nine years. He said, "I used to manage a Pizza Hut and fool around with this cook at night when things were slow — he moved away to Texas and got married, and once him and his new wife came out to visit." They stayed with Mario, and Mario never mentioned the past, until the wife brought it up — apparently the hubby had told her about it. Hubby walked in while they were talking, and the next thing Mario knew, he was making out with the hubby while the wife watched. Now, they get together once or twice a year for a week or a weekend. He told me, "she likes to watch us for a while before she joins in." I said, grinning, there’s a good reason that straight girls like gay porn. He told me that he prefers couples because "then you know everyone’s just a fuck buddy, and plus someone else can finish off the girl." I scolded him — but laughed while I told him he was bad. The whole exchange was while he was putting makeup on me, straddling my thigh occasionally, sometimes just a few inches from my face. Mario said that he and his boyfriend have an "open thing," and that sex was just playful for him. I told him I thought it seemed perfectly natural. He told me about his nephew who was a straight 20 year old that called him recently freaking out that he’d given another guy a blowjob, and did that make him gay? "I told him, you are what you feel you are, what you know you are." I said, yeah, often people just need to be told that; that experimentation and sex play doesn’t make you anything except curious, and alive.

It was quite a makeover.

Mail. Lots of mail. I’m getting so much mail from readers that I’m buried in it. Here’s a good one:

> Violet,I keep hearing about a position called "Dirty Sanchez" What is this position and how do you feel about it? Thanks for all the information you share, I feel you make this world a better place!

Me: Not a position! At the bottom of the page — a South Park page, but
the definitions are correct. See #4 Filthy Sanchez, which is actually
the most common name for the act.
http://www.spscriptorium.com/Season5/E507secrets.htm

and here:
http://askthecouch.com/slang.asp

And another email with nice linkage:

> vedroerende psychocandy 3, saa tjek den her:
http://wakingvixen.blogspot.com/2005/01/figure-study-in-red-and-black.html

And from an SRL member, this ad. And robots that kill. (Photo from the Ballerina Pie Fight Friday night.)

Speaking of killing, I didn’t die exactly how I wanted to last weekend. I’m sure that’s what a lot of people think, or maybe they don’t get to think it. But I wanted blood, gore, screaming, and a pathetic struggle against supernatural forces, or something. Nudity. Gratuitousness. Zombie Marching Band gang bang. French vampire lesbian trumpet players. But that didn’t seem to be what the movie was like. I mean, I showed up early as requested, but then ended up leaving after a few hours (I went home to take a nap), then came back when I knew the band would be there — the only people I knew. Then we started drinking beer. One of the trumpet players gave me a hard time, asking why I wasn’t just jumping in front of the camera. I was feeling out of sorts, a little shy actually. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do; I got in my meter maid outfit to look cool and hopefully be included in a death scene. It was really cold out and I hoped to get blood on me; there were puddles of fake blood everywhere. Eventually the band shot their scene — leading the revolt against the zombie meter maids. There was only a small group of us, about 20 or so, and it seemed like they all knew each other. Then the director told us we were going to charge out of the building, we had to defend the DPT (actually the Speakeasy Brewery). We were to charge the Marching Band, the band attacks us, we all die, the crowd cheers. But we didn’t have any zombie makeup on, or blood. I was confused. We charged, the band smacked us with instruments (I am no stranger to this; I have been accidentally hit with almost every instrument in the band) and we "died." I fell on a redhead and my hand landed on her boob by accident. She got really mad at me. I know there are girls out there that might like my hand on their boob — where were they then?

Anyway, my fantasy is unfulfilled. In the meantime I have a lot of porn to watch; I’m "doing" the Derek and Romaine show on Wednesday (yay!) and I’ll be reviewing porn… That’s at 5:15 PST on Sirius OutQ if you want to listen on your compooter. But, happily, I turned in my Best American Sex Essays book yesterday… phew. Now two more books to turn in by the summer and I can relax a bit. Except I’ve already got more book offers, and another (new) publisher calling me. But I’m feeling very slow and deliberate about what I’m working on next, and looking at the mainstream publishers’ veritable bloodbath of sex titles coming out this year, it will have to be a very worthwhile project to get me to put down the robots and the podcasting and the erotic antho editing. I have to read like a million stories for the Cleis Book of Erotica and get rights to reprint, and I have more submissions for Best Women’s Erotica ‘06 that I’ve ever seen for a single erotica book in my career. The competition is, well, fierce. Wow! The fun part is getting to read all that erotica, and for the Cleis book I get to comb through their extensive office library — kind of like being a kid in a candy store, if you’re an erotica lover — which I definitely am.

Great news — my cunnilingus and fellatio books are being translated into Spanish! That’ll be French, Spanish and ‘merican. Can’t wait to see what "tongue fucking" is in Spanish.

The response is overwhelming — Europeans love it when I do a fake Southern accent in my podcasting. How nasty! But can they tell the difference between the Jennas? (hot wet kisses to Jonno for the link)

A reader writes me, "If I had 2K to spend on sex toys, i’d buy this." Niiiice.

I’m in a spazzy mood. Favorite porn this week: Psychocandy 3 (not out yet, demand it!) and Art School Sluts. Favorite drink: ginger-infused hot sake at Tsunami. Favorite position: with my toes in my mouth. Favorite precautions: the fake security company magnet/sign for my car doors that I keep in my trunk, a spare handcuff key around my neck, and a warm packet of lube in my pocket. Weekly goals: auto-cunnilingus, death on Saturday (the Marching Band will lead the charge against the zombie meter maids, of which I will be one). New bad habit: biting the dildo when I masturbate. Retro addiction of the week: Pizzicato Five. Tonight: A kinky ballerina pie fight!

I got the call this morning. "This is that guy you met on New Year’s (actually the trumpet guy from the Marching Band but I licked his girlfriend’s boob on New Year’s) and if you want to die, it’s on Saturday, at (location in very rambling run-on sentences). The murder starts at noon, so get there a little early if you really want to get killed. Dress like a meter maid, wear a light blue shirt, black pants and a bicycle helmet." Ohmigawd, I am *so* there. I found out that the Marching Band will be playing in a parade, and they will get attacked and eaten by zombies. I hope I get to die and be a zombie! I want to eat the Marching Band! But where the hell am I going to find a cheap bicycle helmet that I can get blood all over, by Saturday? Meanwhile, still no word from Suicide Girls… my fingers and toes are crossed…

I found this picture on BBC America, it’s from a protest in Tokyo today. Laura Bush wore white, and I think that is just so fucking tacky. And Rice had on a mink hat. And the twins, what a pair of skanks. Someone needs to take out the trash, if you know what I mean. Nothing like a deliberate pageant to flaunt the pleasures of uninhibited excess in the morning. Nauseating.

I did something weird and fun today. Someone gave me a credit card and asked me to shop for sex toys for him. Not to use with him or anything like that, but kind of like a personal shopper. I know you’re thinking — who is this guy? He contacted me through Tiny Nibbles, and I made sure he wasn’t a stalker, and we signed a contractual agreement — he’s just a very rich web guy, a nice wealthy geek with a wife that I met and who knows all about it, etc. He gave me an idea of what he wanted, I gave him an estimated budget, and I cut loose. I shopped at each of the online adult retailers, the big ones and a few small ones, and bought him nearly $2000 in toys. It was really, really fun, and I got to see what shopping at all the main sex toy shops is like. Crazy. The funnest things I bought for him was a feather butt plug, a face harness, and a jewel butt plug. Those are the things I’d like to have bought for myself. I shopped at twelve online adult retailers, but I’m not sure I have a favorite — yet. I’ll give a full review when he gets his stuff and I find out if all the toys work, are made well, etc.

Oh, my. Have you been reading the comments in the photo album around here lately? Porn stars, sex toy inventors, porno directors, wanton women who want to ride my sex machine… it’s enough to burn a hole in my panties. Panty check.

Okay, still in one piece. Now that I have your attention, take a listen to my latest podcast (MP3 download), where with a (hopefully) adorably stuffy nose, I introduce Thomas Roche and he reads one of his funniest porn pieces ever — Phone Sex, which perfectly describes the torment of wanting to jack off to porn really bad but porn sucks so bad you can’t. Then I read another favorite by Thomas, called Panty Trick — and the mail about it is so positive, I won’t give away the hilarity and outrageousness of the piece, you’ll just have to listen for yourself.

The Bad Porn Fest was a huge success! I was flu-like and hoping for a small crowd, but what I got was a randy, rowdy crowd that filled the seats and were left standing, making it the biggest event the Center for Sex and Culture has seen yet! As a benefit it was a winner, and as a bad porn fest, well… it had people laughing hard enough to shoot beer out their noses, so there you have it. For one hour, I presented Very Bad Porn: the absolute hilariously worst I’ve seen in porn, from "so-bad-it’s-good" to painfully boring blowjobs, socks and sunglasses, and alien porn that is just indescribable. I paused in many spots to explain the evils the audience was about to witness, and lots of people yelled, groaned, and made jokes at the action in all the right places. It was like Mystery Science Theater 3000 with boobs, "pop shots," and beer. A very healing experience for me, all around. I hope to do it again sometime.

But now I’m going to do something I seldom do — stop writing before 10pm. The sun finally came out here in SF, which means that it’s freezing cold, with wind. I took a hot shower, used a bit of my favorite (extremely expensive, used only when I feel like pampering myself) soap, and made some tea. Now I’m going to slip into bed with my freshly washed, shaved and warm self and a vibrator, and I’ll do some reading. I’m excited about the weekend already and want to take it easy — I may be making one of my all-time fantasies come true.

You see, while other girls have fantasies about having a romantic love scene with Brad Pitt (koff!) or winning America’s Top Model, I have another dream… I’ve always wanted to die in a horror movie. A cheesy horror movie. With lots of blood and screaming. And this weekend, the band I’m kind of a groupie slut for (in my mind, anyway), the Extra Action Marching Band, is playing *in* a cheesy horror movie that’s being filmed here in SF. And one of the trumpet players *promised* me at my Bad Porn Fest that he knows the director, and can get me a death scene.

I know, I know… robots, sex writing, artificial intelligence, fetish modeling, and now this. Try not to think about it. Check out this guy who’s building a domestic robot. Peep at the tough babes on SheMuscle. Trump’s a chump — he should grow his own wedding ring. How about these amazing creepy-cool corsets…

A dismembered hand, gnarled, curled up in what could only be a death grip. A hacked-off pair of feet, seared together from what must have been scorching heat and violent fire, leaving only a tiny gap between. Horrifying torsos, with limbs chopped off in a gruesomely rude accident that must have involved astounding force and flying metal to have removed the parts as cleanly as a serial killer. And the genitalia, everywhere — severed penises, rendered-apart vulvas in various states, some with hair and some without, all with the ghastly color of dead flesh. All cool to the touch. Surely I had arrived late into the scene of the crash.

Or maybe I was standing in the middle of the Adult Video Expo in the business-to-business section, surrounded by the latest crop of sex toys. Okay, I was, but you get the idea. With all the parts on display in the other parts of the expo, and the Hannibal Lechter cooking hour assembly in the back, it was hard not to feel the disconnect. It was Thursday; I had checked into my oh-mi-gawd suite in the Venetian the night before, attended a terrific sex writer dinner with 25 people, met Jonno for the first time (in his bathrobe in his room, trying to get his lost luggage), gotten what would be the only decent night of sleep the entire time, and was making the rounds during the trade-only hours. Or maybe it was trade-only — the way the whole expo was run, and given how crowded and chaotic it was during the "exclusive" hours, I’d be surprised.

But if you want a pretty comprehensive recap, read Carly’s entry — I was with her quite a bit — the dinner, the Circle Bar, the boyfriend surprise, I visited the booth chaos a few times, the Hard Rock party, and more. But when invited out to Friday night’s exclusive party, I just didn’t have the will to clump into an entourage and try to get in, and when Jonno and Carly *told* me lovingly to attend the awards with them, I declined — I had been doing photos for nearly four hours with Thomas. That means I had been doing nude yoga in 7" heels, was very hungry and tired, and just couldn’t get it up to skip food and go stand around. Plus, I had Thomas, Carol, X and his girlfriend all staying in my room (a lot of fun!), and we all wanted to drink wine, eat and chill out to the music on my iBook.

For my complete Vegas photo album and mini-blog, go here. For the photos I did with Thomas, go here. Those are culled from over 800 photos — not counting the photoset we shot for Suicide Girls, and hopefully they’ll accept the set. If not, I’ll have almost 500 other photos from a set you haven’t seen yet, to share.

Overall, I had a really great time, but that’s all due to Carly and Jonno, who made sure I always had a party to go to, or someone to meet and hang out with, though there never seemed to be a shortage of people who knew me… which was odd. I was actually recognized by people who love Tiny Nibbles — and here I thought I’d be a ghost. And it was all so flattering I kind of wanted to shrink into a little ball and roll away. I would get interrupted by total strangers who wanted to take a picture with me — and I always thought they had mistaken me with someone else, but no. No one *ever* had me mistaken for someone else. Directors (famous ones!) told me my video book has a "place of honor" on their bookshelves — no shit! And after the editors at AVN told me my book was crap, a mistake, doomed to fail, this felt pretty good.

I least expected the adoration. I also did not expect to meet anyone cool — and I was totally wrong. A shout out to the people I met, my new friends: Jonno, Jonno, Jonno. *sigh* The second time I met him, he squeezed my breast (and in 7" heels, I jumped, making me rise probably two feet off the floor) and told me "That’s from Michael." Then, he and gorgeous, wickedly-smart troublemaker Jack abducted me to the backstage area of the Hustla Ball. Jayme, with whom I will be working in the future. Tristan, who I’m so glad we chatted in my room for an hour and put together the pieces of a friendship that should’ve began years ago. Paul, whose photos are astoundingly gorgeous and whose company was down-to-earth and much-needed. Benny, whose porn is so hot, and whose intentions are so punk, and pure and fierce, I just adore. Joel and his sweetie, who provided hours of conversation over beers about tech stuff and made me feel more at home in the caveman-like tech aura of Vegas. Las Vegas is primitive, primitive! Freddy and Eddy, who I’m definitely taking up on a home-cooked dinner next time I’m in LA. Alison, who I definitely owe drinks, dinner and more. Carly’s friend Sinfulrella rocked me hard, though I don’t have a link for her… yet.

Now I’m back, and I’m so glad. I really don’t like Vegas, and while my room was ultra-luxe, and I’d stay there again if I had the money, the Venetian is *scented*. That’s right, they pipe scent throughout the entire hotel, a sickly, sweet odor that permeates everything and you don’t realize it until you go outside and the regular air smells weird… Very yucky, and with the scent, lack of sleep, talking the entire time, drinking and second-hand smoke, I’ve been pretty sick since I’ve been back — tired, dry cough, tight chest. I missed everything in San Francisco, and with all the contrived decadence of the porn spectacle, I don’t want to go back unless I can bring the entire Marching Band with me, to show them how it’s done with talent and style. There was a serious style vacuum there, like there needs to be a Queer Eye for straight porn, or Vegas, or all of it. Like my new favorite site, Go Fug Yourself (thanks Chris!).

But I’m uneasy and feeling strange about a few things since I’ve been back. Carol wasn’t the only one of my GV coworkers there, but I had no idea she was going to be there representing GV until she told me as a friend. That felt weird, but not on Carol’s part. In fact, she slept on my couch. No, what felt even weirder was seeing three other employees *working* in a booth, and having no prior knowledge of it, one of them being the video buyer (I’m supposed to be the video reviewer). Think about how that might make you feel. Then Carly gets fired, after killing herself to make everything perfect — and it was, for me. Then when I got home I found out that AVN magazine reviewed my Sexual Fantasy book — and credited the book to the porn performer impostor who has been using my name for the past three years. AVN knows who I am, and they know who she is. They’ve reviewed my books before, I’ve been told rude things by their editors, and I’ve written a few articles for AVN Online — they’ve cut me checks, for fuck’s sake. So I have to wonder what’s going on. It really kills me to work so hard for so long (my first published article on porn was in 1999; by 2001 when the impostor’s first tape was released I had *three* columns on porn; she appeared in tapes previously as "Violet" and "Violet Lust") and have someone else get credit for it. So I have a bit of a fever right now, but with the artificiality of my past week, the smells, the bad expensive Vegas jail food, and the out-of-control feeling in my professional life, I just want to go into my grey, rainy backyard. I want to get on my knees in the patch with the overgrown weeds, feel the wet seep through my pajama pants, cold. I want to claw at the weeds and mud and earth, I want to paw and pull and dig at the ground. I want to press my face into the dirt and rub my cheek on it and smell it in my nose. I’ll come up to keep digging, feel the dirt and mud and rocks stuck to my face and watch pieces fall off into the hole. Fell the dirt hurting my fingertips, make them raw and cold and numb. Then I want to put my feet in the hole and cover my feet with dirt to the ankles, squatting as I paw the dirt over me. Then I’ll stay there, standing toward where I think the sun is.