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customer. Sometimes customers want to connect with me,<br />
and I’m not in a space where I want to do that. For the most<br />
part, eye contact is really enjoyable; the eroticism is much<br />
more powerful. No mat ter how much you talk about commercializing<br />
a sex transaction, you’re still talking about two<br />
people with their own agendas and needs of the moment,<br />
and that shapes the interaction.<br />
How much of your performance is you and your sexuality<br />
and how much is persona? ~ It’s both. Sometimes I’m<br />
dancing as me, a lesbian enjoying my own sexuality. Other<br />
times I’m playing a straight woman and how a straight woman<br />
is being sexual.<br />
What won’t you do onstage? ~ I’d love to go farther. I’d<br />
love to screw women onstage. I’d love to be screwed onstage,<br />
but that’s not permitted. I’d love to fuck myself onstage—that’s<br />
the big fantasy. Oh, God! I would just love to<br />
do that, really.<br />
Is there a difference in the customers’ behavior when<br />
they are alone or in a group? ~ Men in groups should be<br />
banned from the streets. [Laughs.] They exhibit this animalistic<br />
behavior, boosting of each other’s ego, and try to psych<br />
each other into believing that they actually are in control of<br />
the world. I find it truly offensive. More often than not we<br />
have them kicked out because they’re behaving like little fiveyear-old<br />
monsters. Men in groups always, without exception,<br />
further foster their aggression. I’ve never seen men come<br />
in in groups and not be aggressive and derogatory towards<br />
women. It’s infallibly that way. The only expla nation I can<br />
I was discov ering that my body could<br />
literally make men stop their cars in<br />
the middle of the street.<br />
come up with is that men...have been taught that they are<br />
constantly being examined by each other. So they are constantly<br />
trying to prove themselves when they are together,<br />
their prowess and their ability to command women, et cetera,<br />
et cetera.<br />
When they’re alone, that dynamic just isn’t there. I see a lot of<br />
men being really shy when they come in alone. I think when a<br />
man is alone, more often than not, he’s a little unsure of how<br />
to deal with the situation. Then it’s my job to make contact<br />
and bring them out of their shyness and let them know that<br />
it’s okay to communicate!<br />
learned it with my father. I learned how to entertain and titillate<br />
him in a way that was emotional, sexual, psychological,<br />
intellectual. It all meshed. But way into my teens I was always<br />
putting down and trying to hide my ability to arouse.<br />
When I ran away, I got a taste of a whole other culture. I met<br />
hustlers in Boston and became lovers with a boy who hustled<br />
men. That’s when I became more aware of being sexually<br />
explicit. When I went back to Vermont, I was dressing much<br />
more provocatively in tight pants and shirts. I was extremely<br />
thin because I had been living on coffee and donuts, and I had<br />
gotten very sick.<br />
In Vermont I gained a lot of weight and was very, very unhealthy.<br />
I had pneumonia for six months, and then I met this<br />
man who taught me yoga. It totally rehabilitated me and<br />
turned me into this voluptuous sex-bomb. I contin ued to wear<br />
fairly tight clothing; I don’t think I was consciously trying to be<br />
provocative as much as I was discovering that I was provocative.<br />
I was discov ering that my body could literally make men<br />
stop their cars in the middle of the street. It freaked the shit<br />
out of me. It felt powerful and yet terrifying. I felt powerful,<br />
but I couldn’t handle it. I gained weight again in order to protect<br />
myself from their gaze.<br />
Many people paint female sex workers as among the<br />
most obvious victims of male domination and declare<br />
that if you don’t see yourself as such, you are suffering<br />
from “false consciousness” and “delusions of the<br />
oppressed.” What is your response to that? ~ We’re all<br />
oppressed; we’re all part of the system. Men are oppressed<br />
because they are seen as the money-makers. They’re not<br />
supposed to be emotional, and their sexual<br />
per formance is separate from their emotional<br />
experience. That’s pretty oppres sive. Whether<br />
I participate in the sex industry or not doesn’t<br />
make the dynamic that the sex industry is part<br />
of go away. I find it very empowering to be able to make<br />
money to pay my bills. If you are in a situation where you<br />
can’t, you’re oppressed. It isn’t just about sexuality; it’s about<br />
so many things. If sex workers are the most obvious, it’s because<br />
the sexual power gender relations are undisguised. It’s<br />
going on in every aspect of society. We are not any more<br />
victims—we’re all victims of this situation. Sex work ers are<br />
no more victims than their customers. I don’t choose to use<br />
the word victim because I don’t experience myself as a victim.<br />
I experience myself as accepting the situation and being<br />
empowered as best I can.<br />
How did you first discover and use the ability to arouse?<br />
~ It’s weird because you learn it so early on; it’s not something<br />
you discover when you’re a teenager. You learn it in a<br />
variety of ways, at all these stages of development. I certainly<br />
Lusty Lipps<br />
Describe your first experience onstage. ~ It was kinda<br />
weird, all of these men looking at my naked body, but as they<br />
200 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS <strong>WRONG</strong>
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