Annie Sprinkle has come out with an over-sized deck of playing cards with Annie's erotic photos of women famous in the sex subculture (she says she'll do a deck of men which I'll be in).

To promote the deck, HBO threw a private party which they filmed for their show Real Sex. 100 people famous in the sex world were invited. Big bucks! A lot of food, booze, even blackjack tables (which were the most fun thing of the party).

BORING!!!

Everybody spent the night running up to one another to say a big HI! ... then running away. There was a phoney strip poker game with famous strippers sitting around a table bored. Every 20 minutes there was a fanfare, bright spot went on, HBO camera went on, a woman got up on the stripping block, and squirmed out of an item of clothes, then sat back down. Very unsexy! And they had so many clothes on, by the time they were approaching nude, nobody cared, nobody was watching ... except the HBO camera.

The high point was when Annie did a great Charlie Chaplin-style strip. But it was too much for the other artists who were billed to perform to follow. They bowed out after her act.

The whole party showed how in-grown at least this level of the sex world has become. There is even a level of not liking/enjoying sex in this circle. Sex has become again the means to power, fame, money ... and the means to avoid relationships, intimacy, needing other people. One woman actually said, "I don't like sex, I like faking it!" Most of the people just nodded their agreement.

Annie is beginning to feel this shallowness. The day after the party she called us and said her new focus is to get a relationship like Linda, Michael, and I have.

Now for the party of real slut artists who have fun with sex in both their lives and art. The next weekend, our friend, Barbara Golden had a party to celebrate her new cd/book package at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco.

She invited her musician friends to play covers of her songs. Barbara had us go on first (even before my guitarist had arrived) so that we would set the level of outrageous freedom for the other acts.

I had Bonnie on trumpet, Corey on piano (they are my Out of Isolation cast), and Toyoji Tomita on slide trombone (he has played with John Cage).

I sang Clit Envy straight .... Bonnie sitting on my chair. As I sang Boner Boy, I played with Michael's appropriate parts ... if you get my drift. Then for Trashy Girls, my voice became a horn. Linda did a going all the way strip to it which brought the house down.

The other acts were great musicians of very different styles, getting down funky ... everybody getting inspired by the others ... everybody eating Barb's food.

For the finale, Barb had us do an encore of our Trashy Girls strip act.

It turned out the sound guy was the Hotel Utah's booking guy who has refused to book me, calling my demo video tape the most disturbing thing he has ever seen (I'm flattered!) ... and why don't those (disabled) people stay in their place?! He sat through my set mouth open and hands over ears. After my set, he told the bartender, "After that, I need a drink!" I'm flattered!

Photo of Annie Sprinkle by Linda Mac • Other Photos by Alexi Malenky