SAN FRANCISCO: Chloe on "satisfaction"...

 
And if we needed a reason to go "adults only", above is the first from an intimate yet performative series of gallery-ready self portraiture snapshots that Chloe has taken over the years waiting for clients to arrive in hotel rooms. Also, I've heard from several of you via e-mail with interesting comments on Chloe's thoughts, but would love it if you would post them here to the blog so we might all participate. I think these interview segments certainly challenge a lot of assumptions (and raise a few eyebrows!), and I think everyone would benefit from hearing a range of reactions, even if they are contrary. We all benefit from civil and open discussion! :) - Kyle

What satisfaction does your work give you? What do you give to your clients?

My work is immensely satisfying. I get to make people cum and make money at the same time! How fucking fabulous is that?? I derive great satisfaction in knowing that someone leaves my apartment relaxed, with a smile on his face, feeling smugly satisfied at having gotten away with something naughty and I can pay my bills and save some cash and buy myself those new Louboutins or take a trip to Paris for my birthday. It's also great to get my own sexual needs taken care of while I'm making money - definitely two birds with one stone. I save so much time not having to pursue sex, but rather let it find and pay me!

I give my clients different things depending on who they are, of course. In general though, I always give my clients genuine emotion and affection. I have a stable of more than 30 regulars who come to see me on a regular basis. That could be once a week, once a month, even once every two months.

Regardless of the time frame, these are all people with whom I've been having long-term, emotionally and sexually-fulfilling relationships. Stop and try to wrap your brain around that! Most of us can barely even maintain one relationship! I suppose I just have A LOT of love to give. I know my client's real names, their wive's and children's names, their professions, even sometimes their addresses - trust me, nothing makes a client hotter than being buttfucked by a gorgeous tranny in his own bed while his wife and children are away visiting her sister Sally in Indiana!

SAN FRANCISCO: Chloe speaks..."prostitution"?

How do you feel about the word "prostitution"? 

According to Webster's it has a couple of meanings:

# The act or practice of engaging in sex acts for hire.

# The act or an instance of offering or devoting one's talent to an unworthy use or cause.

I can't really argue with the first one.  Yes, that's what I do - in the most perfunctory sense.  Although it reduces, if not flat out eliminates, the hugely emotional aspect of the work I do.  Sex is rarely, if ever, just sex - especially when there are specific expectations of how one should look, act, and perform. 

As cliche as it sounds, we actually do a lot more in my sessions than just suck cock or fuck.  We talk.  I listen.  I advise.  I stimulate the imagination.  I ask questions.  I engage their minds as well as their bodies, and hopefully forge a connection between the two, which is not a natural state for most men.  And not to sound too kumbaya, because I am NOT that kind of person, but we share a sacred space: my clients with me are often at their most open, yet ironically private and vulnerable, place.

 In order to be good at what I do, I have had to teach myself the art of non-judgement.  I do not judge people or their sexual attractiveness based on body size, dick size, age, weight, skin color, hairiness, smoothness - basically all the things that people have fetishized and formed into a small checklist in their heads about what constitutes a person's sexual worth or fuckability. 

As a true professional, I have eliminated those checklists and taught myself to be able to find something attractive about everyone.  Imagine what a cool world we could live in if everybody did a bit of the same.  So it is with this in mind that I truly take offense at the second definition of "prostitution."  It suggests that if I'm considered attractive and people want to have sex with me, and I have sex with someone considered ugly, or older or obese or physically disabled, then I am doing something beneath me; when, in fact, it's really quite the opposite. 

I think it's transcendent and spiritually-fulfilling, actually.  I have brought immense pleasure to someone else who might never have otherwise been allowed to experience his/her fantasy.  It's not completely selfless, because I've profited financially, but it's definitely a symbiotic relationship.

 I often challenge people who are outwardly and aggressively against sex work or brutishly disdainful of sex workers with the question: "Do you think everyone has a RIGHT to a sex life?"  They almost always say yes.  Then I find the most unattractive person (by society's standards) within viewing distance and ask, "Do you want to have sex with him/her?"  When they say no, and they always do, I say that I do and we should be able to have sex and give each other pleasure because everyone deserves to feel those amazing feelings associated with sex.  EVERYONE, not just the people that turn us on based on a culturally-based, externally-defined checklist! 

Evolution makes us human; Sex makes us humane.

SAN FRANCISCO: Chloe speaks... an intro

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FOURPLAY: The Real Queer Eye

My friend Andy Campbell, "Modern and Contemporary Art & Visual Culture" lecturer at Texas State University and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, compiled for me awhile ago a great list of his top-ten queer artists. Check it out, it's definitely in line with the FOURPLAY agenda, and a treasure trove of links! Be forewarned, some of these are explicit! - Kyle

1. David Altmejd - He's the one I was telling you about. Werewolves and chicken men. French-canadian... crystals symbols of growth energy and light click here and here for some images.

2. Catherine Opie - an oldie but goodie, you may remember the work where she cut a kids-like drawing into her back, but her recent series of surfers in the ocean are sublime and I think a queer vision of landscape.

3. Cary Liebowitz -funny, funny, funny, Woody Allen self deprecation. Also: works for sothebys (or Christies) in print dept. so he knows his shit.

4. Assume Vivid Astro Focus - Can be trite and over-hyped, but there's something about the aesthetics that really interesting.

5. Christian Holstad - Incredible collage and craft

6. Monica Bonvicini - revealing the masculinist bias behind architecture... hottttt.

7. Monica Majoli - Painstakingly constructing paintings and watercolors... non normative sex.

8. Cady Noland- Ok not sure . she's queer, but it's all regurgitated americana - certainly in a queer way.

9. Robert Gober - Love love love EVERYTHING is hand crafted. Painstaking.

10. Martin Wong -Bricks and sign language. NYC. AIDS.

11. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. I mean, really, no queer art list would be complete with out F G-T. Soooooo very amazing. Quotidian object... subtly homo... poetic to the extreme.

12. Matthew Ronay - Again, not sure if he's queer but his stuff certainly is...

SAN FRANCISCO: Aliya Speaks PT01

The first part of a brief interview I conducted w/ actor Paul Soileau, who plays the character of Aliya, the transvestite sex-worker in SAN FRANCISCO. Paul is known around Austin and the whole USofA for his character creations of Christeene and Rebecca Havemeyer. Checkout Christine's new video, shot by PJ Raval as part of their Three Dollar Cinema collaboration, for "Tears from My Pussy", off of Christeene's soon to be released "Soldier of Pleasure" album. Funny... and frightening! - Kyle

FOURPLAY: How much have we lost?

After running w/ a friend the other day, I got into a discussion briefly that at one point centered on the inability of American people, via their popular culture, to critique themselves. That some sort of apex of investigation and potentially transformational critique had been reached in the 1960-1970s and we have always, as children of the 70s, been living in its wake. Also, how much I strive, how much I yearn for this kind of introspective, how much I in my own small way aspire to deep, lacerating, critique and investigation, a chance to tell painful truths to myself and others so that we might see where we were once blind. O.K., a little too Christian there, but that was the tradition in which I was raised. I think, this clip from Norman Lear's radical television intervention MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN (I can't bring myself to call it a "show", since it was more a Trojan horse culture bomb), says everything I want to say tonight and I keen for what has been lost. May we find it again, this country, this culture, lost in delusion and denial. Stick with it till the jaw dropping end, and wonder when we will ever see anything like it again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQWufjVHn6k