Erika Lust and the World of Indie Porn

Dear Sluts, if you’re not familiar with Erika Lust, you should be, because she’s one of the pioneers of modern feminist porn, duh. Erika is an erotic filmmaker, writer and producer. While in college she noticed the lack of women’s voices in the male-driven, mainstream porn industry, and set out to change things. She eventually set up her own company, Lust Films, and has been making extremely sexy indie pornos ever since.

Erika (who was born in Sweden and now lives in Barcelona) also founded the online movie theater, Lust Cinema, where she curates a selection of her favorite indie adult films. So basically she gathers together all the best new, aesthetically appealing, innovative porn movies and makes them available to stream or download from her site. And it’s all (obviously) very sex positive, creative, and female friendly. So basc if you’re bored of Redtube and are looking for something a bit more… well, alt, you should def check it out!

I found out about Erika when I saw her incredibly sexy and sensual feature film Cabaret Desire. (I now own it on DVD–one of just three videos in my movie collection, which also includes The Dreamers and Mean Girls.) I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Erika about the world of porn, which you can read below.

P.S. Because Erika is awesome and loves the readers of Slutever, if you follow THIS LINK you can sign up as a member of Lust Cinema with a 50% discount :)


Slutever: What inspired you to make erotica aimed at women?
Erika Lust: You can find the answer to that in your video DON’T FEEL BAD, for Purple magazine. Basically, I’m tired of the guy behind the camera deciding what is sexy, how to behave, and how to fuck! I want to see women deciding how porn will represent us. I want to see women being women—women like you and me, women with feelings, jobs and educations, women who are mothers, married, divorced, single, young and old, thin and curvy–all enjoying their sexuality. Because the expression of female sexuality is powerful, and maybe that bothers some men.

So despite the abundance of female porn stars, porn is still a very male dominated industry, right?
Totally. Our society has a tendency to dismiss porn as marginal and insignificant, and to believe that it doesn’t impinge on other areas of life. But it does. Porn isn’t just porn. It’s a discourse, a way of talking about sex. It’s a way of seeing and understanding masculinity and femininity. But this discourse and the theory behind it are almost 100% male, and often sexist as well. There are almost no women’s voices in the universe of porn, just as there were no women’s voices in the worlds of politics and big business until recently.

I believe that women have the right to enjoy adult films, and so I think we have to participate in the discourse. We have to be creators—screenwriters, producers and directors. The mainstream porn industry has its own fundamental, deeply rooted beliefs about female sexuality. Women have to step up and reevaluate those beliefs ourselves, because the industry certainly won’t do it for us.

What do you feel is lacking in mainstream adult entertainment?
Mainstream porn lacks class, passion, taste, humor, intelligence, beauty, sexual intelligence, and respect for women. As a matter of fact, I think that the right question would be, “What positive values does it provide for our society, if any?” They are just crappy filmmakers, and most of them have really poor sex lives.

screen grab taken from Lust Cinema

Two of my favorite porn sites at the moment are Kink.com and X-Art.com. Kink gets me off when I’m in a BDSM/bound gangbang mood, and I go to X-Art when I want to see people “making love” or whatever. Also, I know there are many sex-positive feminists working at Kink (including two of my faves, Bobbi Starr and Dylan Ryan, both of whom I interviewed on the VICE Slutever show). What are your thoughts on these sites?
They are both very different, but both have one thing in common: they are male oriented (made by men for men). Of course many women can enjoy them, I do not doubt that, but it’s just not my thing. But if I had to choose to go to a desert island with one, of course I would choose X-Art.

Are you familiar with Cindy Gallop, who I interviewed on Slutever last week? She started makelovenotporn.com and is now about to launch makelovenotporn.tv, which is a porn site which aims to depict real-world sex, so basically real couples having passionate, awkward, hot, funny sex. No professionals and no performances for the camera. The point is to teach the world that what happens in hardcore porn is not real life, and also to get people off in the process :)  What do you think of her, and do you think her porn site will be successful, or do you think people just want to see sensational, beautiful, “porno” sex when they masturbate?
Cindy and I are actually friends. When I went to New York last Spring, to show my movie Cabaret Desire in The Museum of Sex, she invited me to her crazy/amazing/sexy/all-black apartment–seriously, Google it! I love the woman and her ideas. Regarding the site, I hope people dare to make real sex videos and show them to the world, and if they achieve that objective, it will succeed.

What turns you on?
Many Tumblrs [for example: http://www.erikalust.com/tumblr-treats/ and   http://reveriesdenuit.tumblr.com and http://geekypornygirl.com/ ], my partner Pablo, red wine, champagne, my job! I’m a lucky girl!

Is there anyone working in the world of porn at the moment who you admire, or whose work you appreciate?
I admire certain performers like James Deen and Stoya, but not many directors. And I like what you are doing, I like fresh stuff like yours!

Thanks! What do your parents think about what you do, and how does it affect your work? I ask this because I’ve had issues with my parents, but they eventually agreed to stop reading Slutever, for the sake of our relationship (which was pretty cool of them, actually).
Well, my case is different than yours, in that I do not undress :) But yes, my parents were initially disappointed! They didn’t understand why, from all the professions in the world, I would choose to shoot explicit movies. They were expecting me to work for the UN, since I studied political science. But now they follow me on Twitter, FB and my blog, and all is OK. They are Swedish, which probably makes them more progressive than the average 65 year old American mom though…

Do you have a default thing that you think about when you masturbate?
When I find time, Alexander Skarsgård tends to be on my mind. And also some BDSM fantasies :)

What are your plans for the future?
I’m finishing an erotic novel that will be published in Spain in February 2013, and also preparing my new film, The Circle of Lust, to be released next September.

Vice Slutever Show: V-Cards


What is the right age to lose your virginity? Who should you do it with? Should you wait and lose it to someone you love, or should you just get railed by a random? I don’t fucking know… let’s ask some experts, DUH!

Special thanks: Adri Murguia, Martina Boyeras, Greg Eggebeen, Mariano Carranza and Lessa Millet
 

Azealia Banks Blows Up

Photos by Sharif Hamza

I wrote an article about Azealia Banks for the cover of the September issue of Dazed and Confused mag. The cover image was very #controversial, and was banned in seven countries, due to Azealia smoking a condom like a cigar. That seems a bit strange to me, given that the world seems A-OK with the myriad images of half-naked women that grace 90% of fashion mag covers today. AND the condom is a symbol of safe sex! So what’s all the fuss about? Whatever. Anyway, read my article below!

Azealia Banks stomps onto the stage, flipping her butt-length green hair from side to side like the queen bitch in a teen movie. In her fishnet bodysuit, starfish pasties and knee-high leather platforms, she looks like some sort of deep-sea, S&M superhero. Behind her, dancers in fetish gear vogue for their lives. It’s a Sunday night in New York and Miss. Banks, the rising Harlem rapper, has transformed the legendary Bowery Ballroom into an aquatic carnival for her sold out Mermaid Ball–a vogue ball slash costume contest slash concert.

Banks is the personification of the rags to riches story–the little girl with a fierce, raw talent, elbowing her way to the top. Last September she won the hearts of millions with her viral hit, “212,” an infectious rap track with a house beat and some triple-X raunch. Just 21, Banks sits at the center of a Venn diagram of pop culture: the queen of a new school of budding female rappers, a muse for the high fashion elite, a fixture in New York’s emerging queer hip-hop scene, and a favorite on indie dancefloors the world over. She’s earned a bad girl reputation, known as much for her angry Twitter brawls, in-your-face sexuality and flagrant use of the word “cunt” as for her music. Back in the days before internet transparency, we worshiped celebrities for being better than us. Now we celebrate them for being as bad as us–we love them even more when they’re vulnerable and flawed. Banks doesn’t play by the rules, and that’s precisely why we can’t get enough of her.

Haters have been quick to brand her a one hit wonder, but it’s the forthcoming release of her debut LP, on Polydor/Interscope, that will confirm whether Banks is simply a flash in the pan, or something more: rapper, fashionista, pop star provocateur.

It’s the morning after the Mermaid Ball. Banks is marathon texting from the makeup chair of a Brooklyn photo studio, being groomed for her Dazed cover shoot. Her Rapunzelian hair near reaches the floor. “I played Summer Jam festival yesterday,” she’s saying through clicks of her gum, “and it didn’t go over so well. One of my dancers–who were all dressed sort of androgynous–was wearing these pants with the butt cut out, and as soon as he turned around the crowd started booing. They couldn’t handle the gay thing, which was kinda wack, but whatever. What are you gonna do, not be gay?”

Banks is the latest in a long line of female performers who have borrowed from voguing culture (Madonna and Lady Gaga are obvious examples). Since coming out as bisexual in the New York Times last winter, Banks has been loosely associated with a new crew of gay and trans artists in NYC who are reinventing ideas of hip-hop identity–rappers like Zebra Katz, Mykki Blanco and House of LaDosha (the latter appeared at the Mermaid Ball). Early this year, when Karl Lagerfeld invited Banks to perform at a party at his house, she did a cover of the Zebra Katz’ track, “Ima Read”–the queer rap scene’s break out hit. “I feel very influenced by ball culture,” she says enthusiastically. “A lot of my friends are in and out of that scene, and growing up my sister was really involved in it. She came out of the closet when she was fourteen, and her friends would always be over our house talking shit and dancing, and I would just watch them and pick stuff up.”

Banks grew up in Harlem. Her father died of pancreatic cancer when she was just two years old, after which her mother raised her three daughters alone, working long hours as a clerk at an art supply store to put them through school. “We didn’t grow up poor,” Banks asserts. “Sure, we grew up in the hood, but we had some money. But I moved out when I was fourteen to go live with my older sister, because my mom just had, well… issues.” She rolls her eyes melodramatically. “After my dad died, my mom became really abusive–physically and verbally. Like she would hit me and my sisters with baseball bats, bang our heads up against walls, and she would always tell me I was ugly. I remember once she threw out all the food in the fridge, just so we wouldn’t have anything to eat. It was like growing up a feral child, being raised by this person who was always yelling and screaming, hitting you and dragging you around and shit.” She pauses, sweeping her hair from her face. “Granted, she never had any drug or drinking problems–her house was clean, her hair was always done, and we had stuff–but she still fucked me up real bad.”

To keep herself busy, Banks turned to boys. “I’ve always been very sexual,” she grins. “Growing up I was so curious about boys. I just loved them. Like, loved them. I’d always get my recesses taken away for letting boys touch my butt in the lunch line,” she laughs. “I got in trouble for fooling around in school a lot. I just wanted to be touched, ya know? I just wanted to have sex. And my mom was always working so there was never anyone around to tell me no.”

But she was more than just boy crazy. At a young age, Banks took an interest in the performing arts, partly, she says, as an escape. “When I was in 5th grade I got given a flyer for a program called Tada!, this non-profit organization in downtown in New York. I remember thinking, ‘This is it, this is my way outta this life.’ It was the people at Tada! who later pushed Banks to audition for New York’s famous Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts. Often called the “Fame” school, notable alumni include Kelis and Nicki Minaj, as well as Jennifer Aniston, Robert De Niro and many others. However, when her acting career failed to blossom as fast as she’d hoped, Banks dropped out of high school to pursue music.

It wasn’t long before the neophyte rapper’s early Myspace tracks caught the attention of London based label XL Recordings, who signed her to a development deal under the name Miss Bank$. Early disagreements led to Banks leaving the label on bad terms. Discouraged and heartbroken over a recent breakup, she moved to Montreal with $75 in her pocket, looking for a change of scenery. The change did her good; it was there that she recorded the club friendly track “212,” rapping over a sample of Lazy Jay’s “Float My Boat.” Banks was working at Starbucks at the time, and coughed up the $30 it cost to make the music video. The result was a stark black and white video featuring Banks goofily dancing in front of a brick wall in a Mickey Mouse sweat shirt. Her questionable dance moves garnered over 23 million views on YouTube (so far).

And then the whirlwind started. Off the back of “212” Banks topped NME’s 2011 “Cool List” and was featured in countless magazines, and the song made Pitchfork’s list of “Top 10 tracks of 2011.” Gwyneth Paltrow and Kanye West were early fans, and the world of fashion embraced her with open arms. Mugler’s Nicola Formichett–Lady Gaga’s stylist–debuted her track “Bambi” during his menswear show at Paris Fashion Week. She performed for Karl Lagerfeld at his home, was shot by Terry Richardson for the New York Times, and the video for her second single, “Liquorice,” was styled by Formichetti and directed by Rankin. And all of this for this girl in the Disney sweat shirt. “I think the fashion world responds so well to me because I’m not intimidated by them,” she says. “I’m confident and sexually free, and I don’t care about wearing every fucking brand in the world. I still wear shit from Rainbow, ya know? Like I’ll take some Chanel, cut it up and stick it with something really cheap, but I’ll make it look mad official.” She flashes her bright white American smile–a grin that’s at once alluring and mischievous. “That’s just how I make things my own.”

Back at the Brooklyn studio, the photoshoot is moving at a snail’s pace. There are obstacles: Banks doesn’t like the clothes. Next the make-up. Now she wants different food. Unfortunately, she’s also on a strict time schedule, and slowly but surely expressions of panic begin to settle in on the faces throughout the studio. By the crafts service table, a photo assistant whispers something about a recent shoot with Beyonce having been less of a hassle. Banks is acting like a “diva” in the most rudimentary sense–something she is slowly becoming known for. One of her most attractive qualities, no doubt, is her ambition; she had the sort of furious determination representative of someone who has never having been handed anything for free. However that determination has a tendency to manifest as aggression. She’s becoming infamous for her public feuds with other rappers, and her Twitter account is prone to angry, Courtney Love style rants, with the brunt of her wrath being aimed at T.I., Lil’ Kim, and fellow newcomer, Iggy Azalea.

The drama came to a head early this year when Aussie rapper Iggy Azalea was awarded a place on the cover of XXL’s coveted ‘2012’s Freshmen class’ issue, after which Banks Tweeted, “Iggy Azalea on the XXL freshman list is all wrong.  How can you endorse a white woman who called herself a ‘runaway slave master’?  Sorry guys. But I’m pro black girl. I’m not anti white girl, but I’m also not here for any1 outside of my culture trying to trivialize very serious aspects of it.” The song Banks is referring to is “D.R.U.G.S.”, Azalea’s remake of Kendrick Lamar’s “Look Out For Detox”, where she raps a slightly altered version of Lamar’s original lyrics, saying, “When the relay starts I’m a runaway slave… master.” Though Azalea has since publicly clarified her pure intentions, Banks has continued to make it known that she is not a fan. “Iggy Azalea is disrespecting all of us very intentionally,” says Banks, “and if nobody else is gonna say it then I’m gunna fucking say it.” She pauses to take a deep breath, calming herself down. “Look, I realize I can come across threatening, but I’m not trying to be aggressive, I’m just very direct,” she says sincerely. “More often than not I think my good intentions are taken negatively.”

Cat fights, along with the presence of the archetypal “vengeful female”, are nothing new in the world of hip-hop. It’s a bummer, really, when you consider what a little girlpower could do within the heavily male dominated industry, especially in this post-Nicki Minaj era, rich with budding female emcees. But Banks is still very young, and one suspects that her occasional bratty behavior and public name-calling is less a product of a genuine mean streak, but more an emulation of how she thinks a superstar rapper should act. She’s playing up to the hype–this attitude of, “You call me a bitch, OK, I’ll show you a bitch.” As Joan Didion famously wrote of Joan Baez, “she was a personality before she was entirely a person, and like anyone to whom that happens, she is in a sense the hapless victim of what others have seen in her, written about her, wanted her to be and not to be.”

“I feel like the hip-hop world hasn’t really supported me,” she frowns. “I think people are upset that I showed up and got big, that I was making all these fashion friends, and that I was so open about my sexuality. People say, ‘Oh, you only have one song’, which is not true, I have a pretty full repertoire.” She stops, searching for the right words. “I just think about African American culture–where we are socially, and where we’ve come from. Everyone says ‘Oh, it’s 2012, times have changed’, but they really haven’t changed that much. I’ve traveled all over the globe, and I know that the world still has a slight animosity towards black people. It’s hard for us to do anything, to even get our picture in a magazine, let alone on the cover! So I’m out here working hard, and y’all are trying to pull me down. It’s sad, because you never want to turn your back on your people, but I gave up on the hip-hop scene, I really did.”

Banks’ debut LP, Broke With Expensive Taste, comes out next month. Her recent releases–the EP 1991 and mixtape Fantasea–saw collaborations with electronic producers like Machinedrum and Hudson Mohawke. Banks has also spent some time in the studio with Grammy-winning producer Paul Epworth, suggesting there might be some pop anthems from her in the foreseeable future. “I know it sounds really self-centered, but I’m sort of obsessed with myself,” she laughs. “I have to be, because it’s the only way I can stay focused. That’s really what the theme of the album is: if you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will. It’s about a girl who’s doing everything she can to achieve her goals, who’s gonna make it somehow, some way.”

Despite her talk of being rejected by hip-hop, what’s undeniable about Banks is her mass appeal. Though she raps, she doesn’t just appeal to rap fans. Her music is loved by people of all ages, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations. She is the master provocateur, the lovable rogue. Back in ‘94, her troublemaking predecessor Courtney Love told Spin: “Sometimes when people are bearing down on you so hard, and want you to behave in a certain way, you just do it because you know you can.” Banks is taking full advantage.

Gurl Crushes

1. Stacey Mark

I have a total girl crush on the NYC photographer Stacey Mark, which you may have already gathered from my frequent use of her photographs in recent posts. What I love about Stacey’s images is that they’re incredibly sexy, but at the same time remain so subtle and pure and feminine. They’re like photos from a 70s issue of Playboy, except dreamier and more cinematic. And she makes girls with all sorts of body types look fucking amazing! And Stacey is cool in person too: she has a really monotone, Daria-style voice, super long brown hair, and has mastered the comfy-chic tomboy thing that Charlotte Gainsbourg and Juliette Lewis do so well and I always wish I could do better. Sometimes Stacey and I hang out and chain smoke and talk about how stupid boys are, and the whole scene makes me feel like I’m the star of an alt teen movie in 1997.

Stacey shoots for mags like Purple, Oyster, Vice, Self Service, and Jacques. She actually took some pics of me for Purple, some of which you can see below, and we also made a video together.

 

2. Girl Crisis

If you’re hungover or on a comedown, or if you’re going through a breakup or your cat just died or if you failed a test, or if you’re just casually feeling suicidal, don’t worry, I have the perfect thing to cheer you up! Girl Crisis is an all-girl, indie supergroup from New York who perform covers of famous songs in alt living rooms and film it with a Super 8 camera. In the past they’ve covered artists like Nirvana, Leonard Cohen and (yes!) Ace of Base. I swear, these Girl Crisis videos are a saving grace whenever I’m feeling blue. They perfectly satisfy that whole nostalgic, teenage, Virgin Suicides, oh-it’s-so-hard-being-a-girl thing that sometimes you just need to give in and indulge, especially if you’re having a particularly angsty period week. Girls in the band include members of Chairlift, Au Revoir Simone, Class Actress and Apache Beat. Wistful sigh…




Aurel Schmidt Talks Art and Sex

Aurel by Terry Richardson for Purple mag

I recently interviewed Aurel Schmidt for Oyster Magazine. It was for their all-women issue, which also featured Lena Dunham, Tavi Gevinson, Shalom Harlow, Petra Collins, Stacey Mark, Cass Bird, Nite Jewel, Bambi Northwood-Blyth and a bunch more! Check it out, it’s on stands now. I wrote an advice column for it as well. I was really excited to interview Aurel because I’m a big fan of her art, and also partly because @DevHynes and I are always mentioning her in our weekly conversations about the “most authentically cool people in New York.” (Yikes, maybe keep it a secret that we actually have conversations like that…) You can read our chat about art, group sex and jerking-off below.

If you hang out in or around the New York art scene, you’ve probably been intimidated by the presence of Aurel Schmidt at some point or another. Her hyper-real pencil drawings, combined with her intentionally sleazy public persona and signature thick-rimmed glasses, have transformed Schmidt into a young icon. Her excruciatingly detailed artworks are typically decorated with the scraps of her life–stuff like condom wrappers, crushed beers cans, lipstick, Klonopin capsules, and her boyfriend’s chest hair. The result is something at once sophisticated, funny, girly and gross, powered by her incredible technical skill.

Schmidt is from the industrial city of Kamloops, British Columbia. Her career took off in 2006, rising to fame within a rebellious New York art scene led by artists like Ryan McGinley, Dash Snow and Dan Colen. She has since been handpicked by Jeffrey Deitch for a solo show, and was chosen as part of the 2010 Whitney Museum Biennial. At the moment Schmidt is working on a photo book of her husband, singer Donald Cumming of the band The Virgins, as well as creating a new body of work in preparation for her upcoming solo show, opening in London in the Spring of 2013.

What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve been making a new kind of art that’s very fast. Not many people know this, but I’m taking a year off from making the drawings I was making before, because it was getting too comfortable.

What’s the new work like?
I can’t really talk about it, because then it won’t be a surprise at the London show. But I’m having fun doing it, because it’s very immediate. Like if I feel sad and start drawing, right away I’ll be able to see this emotional landscape unfold, where with the old work, because it took so long to make, one part of a drawing might feel one way, and another part might feel totally different.

How much do you cater your art to what you know people want to buy?
It depends. I’m good at making money, but I’m also really good at saying no to people and not giving them what they want, which, paradoxically, I think is a key to making money and being successful. Because if you give people what they want all the time, then what’s left for them to want?

What else is integral to success?
You have to keep having goals. You can’t just hang around with people who think you’re cool; you have to constantly want to expand your peer group–to be around smart and talented people who challenge you.

Have you noticed in New York a common way to insult someone is to call them a “social climber”?
Yeah, everyone says that. I’ve been called a social climber since the first week I moved to this city. But if you’re interested in art, it makes sense that you would want to go to events where you can meet other artists, and become involved with a crowd you actually respect. I think every ambitious person in New York is in some facet a ladder climber, but I don’t think it’s bad. What’s the opposite: taking the moralistic path and waiting for some omnipotent figure to come down from the clouds and say, “I see that you are talented, let me take you to the stars”? That doesn’t exist; it’s a fantasy.

Something I’ve always admired about you is that you seem like a very sex positive person, and you’re confident in your body and don’t give a shit about being photographed naked.
I’ve always taken explicit photos. When I started getting press, I really resented that most of the press for female artists–and for females in general–was so sexualized. As a woman, even if what you do has nothing to do with what you look like, magazines and newspapers will try to create this image of you as the “cute” or “sexy” artist, because they want to sell issues. Whereas a male artist will just be photographed standing in his studio. That’s such a cheesy double standard, so I thought, “You know what might be better than trying to be cute?–just being complete slutty. You want a sexy picture of me? Well here, have a look at my vagina. I’ll just give you what you want right away. You don’t have to wonder anymore.”

Your public persona is hyper sexual, but you art doesn’t seem to reflect that side of you as much.
The art has sexual elements to it, like there’s some graphic sexual stuff within the drawings, like vaginas and dicks and condoms, but it’s done more to gross people out or make them laugh than it is to turn people on. If you want to get turned on by naked people you can look at porn–why would I try to compete with that? I would rather draw new ideas of what I think sexiness is. I love having sex, but glorifying how wonderful it is has been done many times, so I’m not interested in that as much. I’m more interested in the social complexities of things like gender roles, what people find sexy, the taboos around sex organs…

Sex as social commentary.
Right. And sex as something you can create an atmosphere around. I find it weird when people are so set on what they think “sexy” is, as if it’s carved in stone. The standard of what society deems “sexy” is so molded by capitalism–it goes in and out of style, just like everything else. But this freaks me out, because ideally sex should almost be sacred, because it’s free, theoretically. It’s not a commodity, like clothes. Or art.

Speaking of sex and money, is it worth it to buy a vibrator when you can just use your own hand for free?
Well, they can be really useful when you’re lazy, like when you just want to cum because you can’t get to sleep. But you have to figure out what works for you. Sometimes you have to put a piece of cloth in between you and the thing–you can’t just put in right on there.

Good advice. So you have a “type”, sexually?
Nope, I like all kinds of people. I’ve been with guys who are big, small, skinny, I’ve slept with multiple fat guys–whatever.

Have you ever slept with a girl?
Nope.

That’s surprising, you kind of have lesbian vibes.
I know, people say that. I feel like I’ve had the opportunity to sleep with very beautiful women, but it just doesn’t turn me on to envision going all the way through with it. Kissing sounds fun, but when it comes time to go home I’d rather just find some dude to fuck.

Would you ever want to sleep with a girl in a threesome situation?
Whenever someone I was dating asked me to have a threesome in the past, I always responded by asking, “Could we have sex with another guy?” And they always said, “Eww, no!” But that’s how I would want it to be.

I don’t think guys understand that girls want that.
It would be great! Like when I see double penetration in porn–I’m down for all that. You’re just getting so much attention, and all parts of you are being touched at the same time, it would be such a turn on.

Agreed.
I think the issue with having a threesome with someone you’re dating, though, is that it can create problems within your relationship. I had one friend a long time ago tell me that you should never have a threesome if you’re really in love with the person you’re with, because the minute you look up and see them fucking that other person, maybe it will turn you on, but there’s also the chance that it won’t and then you’ll be stuck with that image forever.

In the past I’ve considered being with other people while in a serious relationship, like having an “open relationship”, because it seems crazy to try to maintain a monogamous relationship forever. And at first it seems great, but then you think, “But what about me feeling abandoned, or scared of being left?” It’s a psychological quagmire, because when you love someone it’s almost like they become part of you, and you project your deepest fears onto them, so it becomes hard to be really tough and cool about everything.

And even if you set rules and say, “We’re allowed fuck other people, but we can’t get emotionally attached,” realistically you always run the risk of falling for someone else.
Totally. Also, I think for guys it’s normal to want to fuck a girl one time just because she’s hot, even if she’s a total moron. But “hot” is very objective for women–it’s not just a physical thing. For girls, if we think a guy is hot it probably also means he’s cool and interesting and has good style–

And is a little bit famous…
Right. So then you’re like, “Wow, I’m sleeping with someone cool and hot and famous… I want to hang out with him more!” And that’s where it becomes dangerous.

In the 70s Germaine Greer promoted the idea that women should start fucking like men, so more objectively–an idea that Madonna adopted in the 80s. Do you think it’s inherently harder for women to view men as sex objects?
A little bit, but I’ve done that, too. For a while when I was single I just fucked under twenty-five year old skaters. Sometimes the young ones aren’t so good in bed, but they’re so energetic and excited to be fucking you that it makes up for it. Whereas some older guys are really good at eating pussy, but their energy spans are really low and they’ve had sex so many times that they’re just like, “Yawn…”

That’s true. Wow, I feel like this has been so insightful in both an art way and a “sex advice” way.
Great, I’m glad!