[Post Porn Modernist, by Annie Sprinkle, 128 oversize pages, perfectbound, illustrated, Torch Books (Prinsengracht 218, 1016 HD Amsterdam, Holland), 1991, $30. [Available (among other places) from Good Vibrations (San Francisco) and Logos Books (Santa Cruz).]
What happens when you follow the sexual muse wherever s/he may lead, follow with eyes open but with supreme trust, lust, love, and wonder? What happens when you open to the sex/life force fully and don’t panic when it leads you into realms that are unpredictably strange and wonderful and horrible and wonderful? What if you give the sexual force the right of way, and take as perverse anything that finds this offensive, instead of feeling vaguely perverse yourself? What if you make sex your art, make art your sex, and refuse to apologize for anything along the way? What if you surrender yourself to the life/sex magical wonderworld with innocence and wisdom and wonder and conscious awareness, and let yourself find out what the life/sex force has to offer?
What happened to one person who has done just that is the subject of Annie Sprinkle’s delightful, graphically illustrated, eye-opening autobiography, Post Porn Modernist, recently published in Holland and now available in the U.S. for the first time (see above). On one level, the story of Annie Sprinkle is a tale that only Annie Sprinkle could generate. She is, without any doubt, one of this planet’s uniquely wonderful human beings: slut/goddess, healer/whore, innocent/sophisticate extraordinaire. At the same time, as Annie notes at the beginning of her multidimensional saga,
“there was nothing in my childhood that would have led anyone (including myself) to believe that when I grew up, sex would become my obsession, main source of income, my favorite hobby, my politics, spiritual discipline, favorite subject matter, favorite subject of thought and conversation, and what I believe to be my best key to health and happiness.”
In other words, this could happen to anyone at all….
If there is any one thing about Annie Sprinkle that has endeared her to so many fans, while making her the bane of Jesse Helms and friends (one of Annie’s performance venues, The Kitchen, was put on Helms’ NEA hit list after her one-woman show there), it is her total nakedness, her unrelenting vulnerability, her willingness to show and tell everything about herself — which is to say, her total lack of shame in sexual matters. Post Porn Modernist is magical because in it Annie takes the most daring, outrageous, dare I say radical, sexual practices and situations, and describes them with such matter-of-fact, why-not candor that they come across as wholesome as apple pie. Isn’t it the ultimate heresy in these sex-shaming times to affirm without apology the simple goodness of sex — to honor sex in all its varied manifestations, respect it, follow its call without being muddied by the sex-negative hysteria that we all face every day?
Take something simple, for starters, like nakedness, public nakedness. Annie’s point of view is very clear, very direct:
“Exposing one’s body in public is something I highly recommend. I’ve enjoyed it for years. I do try, however, to do it at the appropriate place and at the appropriate times. I’ve made a couple of mistakes, but mostly it works out great. I’ve been accused of ‘relentlessly exposing myself and I like that sentiment. It is liberating, and it can also be defensive, aggressive, loving, entertaining, plus it can also be about breaking silly taboos. It can crate energy, and it can also be a turn-on. It leaves no secrets.”
What could be more clear? And why stop at nakedness? The same attitude can be applied, for example, to golden showers — peeing on your lover, if you both feel so inclined:
“When a couple is in the throes of love-making, feeling each others’ warm ‘love juice’ can bring immense pleasure and excitement. It is very intimate. It is saying, ‘all of you turns me on — your spit, your cum, your sweat and I don’t arbitrarily draw a line at your piss.’ You can stand over your lover and shower their cock, pussy, tits, chest… no muss, no fuss…. You can do it between their toes, in their belly button, in their hair, in their ear, on the palm of their hand, on their ass, the nape of the neck, or all of the above. Be creative. And you can always stop and start.”
Any questions? Annie follows up with a column of practical how-to’s for those that are interested.
The basic message: “Honor your sexuality and realize its incredible value…. Simply allow your sexual energy to flow freely, pleasurably, guiltlessly through your body.”
Combining this sexual openness with a truly creative and irrepressible imagination produces Annie Sprinkle the sexual artist, one of a new breed of creative spirits who dare focus on the one area that established art refuses to legitimate — you guessed it — sex. Annie’s sexual art is not limited to one discipline or form. There is her inventive, humorous, evocative photography: toy soldiers erecting an American flag, Iwo Jima style, on a hill of pubic hair; a ballerina in tutu and tiara seductively showing her naked vulva; the postage-stamp-sized “World’s Smallest Male Nude.” There are her performance pieces: “Post Porn Modernist,” “a ritual originating from the ancient sacred prostitutes which I re-create on stage, demonstrating the power of a woman’s sexuality;” “Public Cervix Announcement,” during which Annie inserts a speculum into her vagina and lets members of the audience examine her cervix with flashlights; the “Bosom Ballet.” There are her installations, like “Porn Star Fan Mail,” in which she invites the public to read and, if they want, answer some of her voluminous correspondence. There are her drawings — “self-portrait on an average day at the Burlesque theatre;” “self-portrait made on a bad day at the whorehouse;” her short stories — “How to Fuck and Type at the Same Time”; her poems; her erotic Bible readings, complete with vulva-on-a-crucifix sculpture and Annie masturbating “as the words from the Bible got hotter and hotter.” There is her “transformation salon,” where any woman can have the experience of turning from plain Jane to ultraslut model, with the help of a little encouragement, makeup, and attitude (and take home “before” and “after” polaroids to document the transformation).
Whatever the form — all these and more are given their chapter in Post Porn Modernist — Annie is continuously clearing new erotic territory, combining sex, love, innocence, and imagination in an on-going array of fascinating, playful, provocative, and often explosive combinations.
Post Porn Modernist documents Annie’s progression from suburban Ellen Steinberg (no relation, unfortunately) to itinerant hippie, porn actress, prostitute, pinup model and porn publisher, and then beyond the limitations of pornography into her created world of sexual performance and discovery. To the sex-terrified it might read as the ultimate horror story — the degredation of an innocent young girl via sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. But, as Annie’s telling makes clear, there has been no degredation at all. Quite the opposite. For Annie, the process has been one of self-discovery and self-empowerment.
“I was born Ellen Steinberg but I didn’t like ‘Ellen’ very much, so I invented Annie Sprinkle. Ellen was excruciatingly shy. Annie is an exhibitionist. Ellen was fat and ugly. Annie is voluptuous and sexy. Ellen desperately needed attention. Annie gets it. Ellen wore orthopedic shoes and flannel nightgowns. Annie wears six-inch spike heels and sexy lingerie. Ellen was afraid of men and sex. Annie is fearless.”
Post Porn Modernist demonstrates that even the most potentially difficult, inhuman, esteem-robbing circumstances can be transformed into life-affirming, human, even spiritual, ones by the force of sex-positive personal clarity and a refusal to be sucked into shame, fear, and embarrassment.
“I was a prostitute for three months before I realized it…. The job was so much fun and I liked it so much that I couldn’t imagine it was prostitution. I liked having sex with the guys after I gave them a brief massage. When it finally did occur to me that I was a hooker and I got over the initial shock, I enjoyed the idea. After several months, I called my parents and told them about my new job…. They were afraid that perhaps I was being forced into it, or that I was on drugs, but eventually they could see that I was O.K. and happy…. Now after having been in sex for nineteen years they realize that it’s not just a passing phase. They are proud of me.”
In addition to being Annie’s biography, Post Porn Modernist serves as a much-needed documentary of the late-1970’s/early 1980’s New York radical sex scene of which Annie was so much a part, together with people like Veronica Vera, Spider Webb, Jennifer Blowdryer, Charles Gatewood, and Marco Vassi. It describes Love Magazine, an uncensored, unedited, reader-generated sex magazine that resulted in Annie and several others being arrested in Rhode Island; the Hell Fire Club, “an illegal after-hours club for people of people of every sexual persuasion — gay, straight, bi, drag queens, sadists, masochists, fist-fuckers, masturbators, you name it — where anything sexual could (and did) happen;” the Sprinkle Report, a newsletter devoted to piss art; and the Sprinkle Salon Mail Order Co., which sold little bottles of Annie’s and Veronica’s urine, and “pubic hair of the stars” in a velvet box, “with instructions.” It was a wide-open, revolutionary, pre-plague time, one that has gone remarkably undocumented as compared to other social revolutions of the time, like the civil rights movement, the Haight-Ashbury, or the New Left. Having a taste of this history helps the spirit of sexual experimentation and adventure live on, even with the advent of AIDS and the Helmsmen.
Spectator, September 13, 1991
Copyright © 1991 David Steinberg
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