The most recent thing on my mind is the prank I tried to get Good Vibes to play on the Johnson County (Texas) Narcotics Task Force. I thought it was a great idea, but like all my bright and shining ideas — okay, pranks — I knew the idea was destined to be shot out of the sky by my humorless editors and supervisor like a butterfly taken out by a cruise missile. I understand why it had to be changed — I just like my version better. It all started with an innocent vibrator saleslady in Texas being duped by narcotics decoys into selling them a vibrator and getting seriously arrested. She faces a year in jail, fines and punishment as though she were selling drugs to fifth graders. Um, that’s Texas, not Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, several months ago I was drafted into writing the Good Vibes national email newsletter, a weekly mouthful of Saltines topped with sand and cornstarch, a narrow white-walled confine for the insane into which I dread forcing my mind every Wednesday when I write it. It’s as boring as the Paris Hilton sex tape, and I often wish I could trade this weekly punishment with, say, eating a Men’s Cream sandwich, or drinking a warm cup of Astroglide. And believe me, I’ve tried to spice it up and make it outrageous, attention-getting and funny — and my editors edit the poor beast into a shadow of my original writing. I often look at the final product when it lands in my inbox, wincing as I open the email, and notice that they left in perhaps two or three of my original sentences. Don’t get me wrong — I truly love working at Good Vibes, it’s the coolest and most meaningful job I’ve ever had, but sometimes I don’t know why my editors even bother to have me write the newsletter.
I try to make it more fun by adding weird sex news items, usually ripped (and credited with links) from Daze Reader, Fleshbot, and regular news source programs I have searching for tidbits around the web. So this last week I covered Joanne Webb’s Waco-style vibrator bust, and wrote a call to action to send cheap vibrators to the Texas authorities in protest of this awful injustice:
Sell a vibrator, go to jail. That’s the message Texas authorities are sending people who dare to offer consenting adults tools to enhance sexual pleasure — buzzing pink plastic battery-operated novelties, natch. Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for selling the vibrator to undercover narcotics officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple in search of a sex aid. Webb, a saleswoman for Passion Parties of Brisbane, faces a year in jail and a $4,000 fine if convicted. ‘What I did was not obscene,’ Webb said. ‘We have a real problem with drugs in our schools,’ she said, ‘and they’re using our narcotics officers to entrap me for selling a vibrator.’
Obviously, a bust of this nature sends a call of alarm to us in the dildo-slinging biz — clearly, Texas authorities have never experienced the mind-bending, fist-clenching, hallucination-inducing orgasms made possible by a trusty and reliable vibrator. I’m answering that call by declaring a State of Orgasmic Emergency for all Texas authorities, and urging readers to participate in an Orgasms for Texas Authorities Drive. I urge each reader to buy one vibe, and give it (whatever you do, don’t sell it to them) to the needy Narcotics Task Force at the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, Administration Building 1102 E. Kilpatrick, Cleburne TX, 76021. Just think — three pennies a day for one year (like the year Joanne Webb might spend in jail) could be all it takes to give an inexpensive “Low Rider” harness and end this tragic state of emergency.
Read the original news article here.
I knew it would get deleted, and it might be a prank that could cause trouble, but dammit, Jim, I had to try, and it was fun. And delete it they did — but they replaced it with a 10% discount on products. I guess that’s where marketing copywriting and I part ways — I wanted to draw attention to the case, make fun of the Texas authorities’ flagrant abuse of power — power over sex toys. I never use the news items to sell product, just to have fun or point out something ironic, or increase awareness. But alas, I forget that my job is to sell product. A reader wrote as soon as she got the newsletter suggesting that the discount smacks of a sales gimmick, rather than help, which she suggested would work better in the form of 10% of all vibrator proceeds going to Ms. Webb’s defense fund. Indeed. Meanwhile, I still want to encourage people to send those vibes to the Narcotics Task Force. If I was rich, I’d not only give to Ms. Webb’s defense fund, but I’d also airlift in crates of much-needed marital aids straight to the Johnson County’s Sheriff’s Office.
Another thing I’ve been keeping an eye on is the Reich-esque American Family Association’s Homosexual Marriage Poll. This notoriously dishonest organization plans to present the results of their very scientific poll to Congress, to get them to never ever ever let gay people marry, because eeew, that’s gross, and I read on their website that if you touch a toilet seat a gay person used you’ll get AIDS and die, and you can actually catch gayness if you stand too close to a homo. But seriously, to the chagrin of the AFA, they have been unable to control the beliefs of the people taking their poll, possibly because the link is being sent around the web like a hooker in a men’s room with Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart. But their poll has a tight cookie on it, meaning that you can’t vote more than once from your computer — hard to cheat. So for the past few days I’ve been watching the “for’s” begin to beat out the “against’s.” Waiting for the AFA to take down the poll, I’ve been taking screen captures so I’d have a copy of the numbers if the poll disappeared overnight. Turns out, I’m not the only one doing this — and the people over at morons.org caught the AFA red-handed at tweaking the numbers in their favor. Praise the lord and pass the lube.
What else? I’ve been busy as a pair of vibrating panties. But not as wet. The Good Vibes Holiday ball was pretty fun (see picture below), though it was much on-the-clock meet and greet, and very little of the fun I had in the picture. Actually, that’s all the action I got that night, save for a hug and butt squeeze from Nina Hartley. The following weekend was insane, starting with a note and photo from someone I think is one of the smartest and sexiest women alive, Xeni Jardin, reading: “Your last book taught me everything I know about sucking on foreign objects, so i just wanted to return the favor.” (Xeni Photo credit: Katie
Wedlund.)
It took me a full day to get my hands to stop sweating and for my eyes to refocus. Then she gets me invited to the Surface Magazine party Friday night, held here in SF. That was also the same night as another invite I got to the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality’s private opening party for their Alex DeRenzy archive, a legendary classic porn director, and then later the last Extra Action Marching Band gig for several months as they go on hiatus for the winter. It was a rainy San Francisco night, the kind you see in movies, where the hills are all glossy and reflect the streetlights, the architecture, Victorians and old buildings look like the set of a Bogart film. It was strange frame for the very weird parties. The party at the Institute was odd; way too much champagne and many aging porn stars that looked like their faces might crack and shatter to reveal the weird crab-creatures that secretly animate the humanoid bodies. But I did meet one of my porn heroes, John Leslie, who makes simply some of the hottest high-quality porn in the world, and even though he made me nervous as a Jack Russell terrier, he knew who I was, and held my hand warmly (not creepily) while we chatted.
Hornboy and I escaped the weird scene to an even weirder scene, the Surface party. I’ve never seen so many anorexic people in my life as I did there, and the clothes and hair on the attendees would make the Queer Eye boys want to pound finish nails into their gums. It wasn’t just a fashion disaster — it was Auschwitz for the 1980s-retro hipper-than-thou crowd. We Hoovered up as many free drinks as we could stand, tried to get pictures of people puking into their Prada handbags, and watched the frigid dance of the uber-cool social set unwind predictably and rapidly into a pathetic and clumsy dance of drunken desperation.
Next it was off to the SOMA club district, sneaking and rushing into the club masquerading as a Marching Band member (as I have oh so many times) and spilling into the backstage area to find a scene like a lively, circusy opium den, with half (and fully naked) flag team members getting ready, horn players playing, someone improvising expertly on piano, and about a total of fifty people mostly in some sort of band uniform. All drinking, smoking, imbibing, laughing, putting pasties on each other, comically hitting on strangers and having fun. I found some vicodin in my purse and shared it, sending others and myself into a heightened state of relaxedness, slipping into my orange-tinted sunglasses and forgetting that people could see up my short skirt, past my garters and stockings, to my pink panties. Later, as the band played one of the most amazing shows I’ve seen, I got pulled onstage to go-go dance behind the band, closing the club down at three, getting forcibly thrown out by the club staff with the band, and getting home at four.
Sunday was a day I had been rehearsing all week — literally. For Mark Pauline’s 50th birthday, his wife and a few of us sneakily put together a surprise party, Vegas-style. We chose Vegas because we’re doing an SRL show in Vegas next February, the first-ever SRL show in Vegas (and the 25th anniversary of SRL), and it gave us an excuse to have a crazy theme party. I elected to be the evening’s MC, got together a showgirl outfit, and with a few other people learned cheesy dance steps and a lip-synch routine to a Madonna song. The surprise worked, which was a surprise to me — Mark doesn’t miss a thing, and I expected him to find out about it somehow, but he didn’t. The amazing Mr. Lucky was our official entertainment, absolutely the best lounge singer I’ve ever seen, and the evening was fun and fabulous. I got too drunk, but managed to stay atop my 7-inch heels. Some feral children were raised by wolves, and this one was raised by drag queens.
Okay, I’m beat. I still want to talk about my visit last Thursday to the Tech TV studios, but that weirdness will have to wait until next entry.
Photo of me and Johnny Depp from Mark Pauline’s birthday party.
