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“I used to tell girls in bars, too, not only because once entrenched in the sex industry, I fell victim to a sort of snow-blindness, wherein I believed that my dirty lifestyle had a kind of validity and richness that your average 9-to-5′er would find deliciously interesting, but because I was philosophically opposed to lying. I alienated the hell out of people for a couple of years there with my potent blend of narcissism, over-sharing, and reverse snobbery. It’s like I was a character on Girls. Ahead of my time, I suppose.” -
When I first started playing around with my voice, I had a guitar pedal that would loop. But you could only loop one thing. With the thing I use now, the RC-50, you can have three different ones going at the same time—a lot more dynamic. I just started making sounds. Instead of saying something on the spot, I would just sing, kind of like I’ve always done. I’ve done it my whole life. My mom does it too, humming, singing. …My first album is pretty much all those loops I made when I first started playing around with it. It’s completely wordless. I just liked the way it felt.
The Rumpus Interview with Julianna Barwick
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Rumpus: Why do you think it’s so hard for people to admit they have paid for sex? What does this mean culturally? Emotionally? Personally? I think that in the U.S., there is underlying respect towards anyone who hustles because of the materialistic nature of our culture, but also, historically, women mostly occupy the adult industry, so the current of sexism and disrespect also runs deep.
Sterry: I didn’t realize the enormous stigma attached to the statement to say, “Yes, I hire someone to have sex with me.” Easier to get people to admit they are a “whore” than to get people to admit they hired a whore. So I was looking for those stories.
Admit You’ve Paid For It: The Savage Honesty Of David Henry Sterry
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“If you ask a parent about their son or daughter—if they want their kids to be sex workers—they would never say, “Yes, I’d love for my kid to grow up to be a prostitute.” People believe it’s okay to dabble but not to get sucked in too deep. That shame is in our cultural DNA. I have friends who have sold sex, porn stars, strippers, surrogates, and some are very happy making their money doing this and some are looking to get out. The fact is, being a sex worker is a difficult job that is high-risk and high-reward, like my friend who works in the ER. Lots of people would not be able to do that job, or do the job of a firefighter. Not everyone is cut out to run into that building on fire. Sometimes you walk into someone’s life and his or her life is on fire, but you’re built for that job.” -
“I think the whore-client relationship is very influenced by our childhoods, our parents, what we bring to the table as it were. I had many clients who didn’t respect me, probably because of how they were raised. We’re all the walking wounded. But still, magically, somehow you made it all work. It was still a win-win situation even when it was all screwy and convoluted. We are all complex creatures.” —The Rumpus Interview with Annie M. Sprinkle, the first of four interviews by David Henry Sterry with some of the contributing writers from his current anthology, Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: Professionals and Clients Writing About Each Other.
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“Rumpus: My next question comes from the oracle, Beyoncé. Agree or disagree: a diva is the female version of a hustler.
Bernhard: A diva is the female version of a hustler?
Rumpus: Yes. This is what Beyoncé tells us.” -
“The language barrier made me much more aware of things that we don’t normally pay attention to. It taught me how magical language is. We take it so much for granted, but it’s incredibly sophisticated, a beautiful gift. If you stop to think about the fact that we’re capable of communicating our thoughts, having conversations, for me—switching from not knowing English to suddenly being able to talk—it just showed me what a tremendous power the human mind has.” -
“I have poems that I haven’t sent out for publication, mostly based on political/social issues. I just felt too unsure of myself—and afraid I’d hurt the wrong people. Not that a poem can “hurt” someone the same way a physical blow can or even a mean remark can…I just felt unsure that my tone would be taken the right way and/or unsure of my own writing, that I couldn’t maintain the tone I wanted. These aren’t exactly failed poems—I have a lot of those that remain unpublished!—but just poems that haunt me a bit.” -
The Rumpus Interview With Miracle Jones - The Rumpus.net
Rumpus: What advice would you give to a writer who wants to get their work out there, but doesn’t have an MFA or any publishing connections?
Jones: If they are young enough, they will not even know that you need to get an MFA or have publishing connections in order to get work out there. They will assume that literature is a meritocracy. Upon learning how many books get published merely because of academic or industry connections, they will become royally pissed and start to feel like there is no hope for them in this sad and fallen world. However, my advice would be to find some friends, start a reading series, record it, and get your stories out there the old-fashioned way. Buy every Jay-Z and Wu-Tang Clan album. Listen to them critically. Take notes. Pretend you are a drug dealer and the drug that you will sell are the hallucinations that you yourself produce.
You are gonna have to click through to learn more about that rubber vagina he is holding in what appears to be a mason jar.
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Rosen: I’ve always liked Twelve Dancing Princesses… I also feel the story highlights the particular difficulties for girls in growing up and the rite of passage into adulthood. I feel the bed acts a doorway to dreams and enchantment. I believe the beautiful visuals in this story, especially the description of the groves of the silver, gold, and ruby trees, represents how precious and valuable that transitional time is in our lives. By dancing the night away with princes, the princesses can act out grown-up roles, though they are not yet grown-ups.
Rumpus: Yeah, and I think the princesses, like a lot of young girls, feel ambivalent about becoming women. Their performance of adulthood only happens in a place associated with magic, and the princesses try to keep their maturation a secret. Culturally, we have this idea that girls yearn to grow up and become women, but the process of growing up is a scary and long process, and not all are ready when biology kicks in.
