Bukkake Boy

A performer on the set of a bukkake shoot, early 2000s. Follow me on Instagram for more of my photographs.

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How Rapper Iggy Azalea Is Making Money On OnlyFans

This article was originally published on Forbes.com on January 22, 2023.

Iggy Azalea is the latest celebrity to join OnlyFans. Once dominated by sex workers seeking to boost their brands and monetize their relationships to their fans, the subscription-based content service has seen a rise in mainstream stars joining its ranks, including Bella Thorne, Denise Richards, and DJ Khaled. Amber Rose, another celebrity on OnlyFans and a former stripper, has described the platform as “a digital strip club.” So it only makes sense that Azalea, an Australian rapper who has proclaimed that she is, in fact, the strip club, would sign up, too.

But Azalea’s OnlyFans isn’t just any old OnlyFans. It is a year-long, collaborative multimedia project entitled Hotter Than Hell that will feature music, photography, video, art, and, according to a press release, content from “her upcoming fourth studio album.” For $25 a month, subscribers will get a front-row seat to the project as it drops, before the rest of the world sees it. The concept was inspired by Pamela Anderson, 90s supermodels, and Madonna’s controversial book Sex and culminates with a coffee table book to be released in December 2023.

Curious to check out Azalea’s project, I signed up for OnlyFans and paid $25 to subscribe to her content stream. At the top of her feed, a small green circle appeared next to her avatar (which was an image of Azalea licking a cherry); next to her OnlyFans handle, it read: “Available now.” Was Azalea actually live on the site? Was I more proximate to her than I had been before handing over my money? It seemed possible.

The first post was the aforementioned cherry-licking photo and the words: “The sweetest angel”; below that, it noted how many likes the post had and the dollar amount of tips it had garnered from her fans. (Tips are another way OnlyFans creators can generate revenue.) At the time of this writing, that post had 2,501 likes and $233.20 in tips. There were more images to come: Azalea in green lingerie, Azalea getting her makeup done, Azalea posing seemingly nude next to a swimming pool while eating a cherry with her nipple discreetly hidden from view. One post featured a nine-second audio clip of Azalea — “Hey, babe,” she purred to me? us? her anonymous fans? — offering an enticement to be “a part of my VIP for a year by tipping $250 and receive a one-year link subscription and a free photo that’s just for my VIPS.” That post had 685 likes and a staggering $15,690 in tips. (OnlyFans takes a 20% cut of its creators’ revenues.) Maybe I should be on OnlyFans, I mused.

So it went over the days that followed. There were more images. There were more audio clips. There was a video clip of a scantily-clad Azalea that had been filmed through a window as if the viewer (me) was spying on her; the text with it read: “Working my angles [butterfly emoji, fire emoji].” When I didn’t check Azalea’s content stream, I got emails from OnlyFans telling me that I had unread messages from her, as if I had left her on read. When I logged back into OnlyFans, I discovered those messages contained locked content, another way the site’s creators can make money. With the Pay Per View feature, members must pay more to access locked content. One was $40. Another was $28. Yet another was $35. Each message had a come-hither note, but the visual content was behind an image of a padlock.

I thought about unlocking the rest of Azalea’s content, but I didn’t. By that point I had read that she had “sold her master recording and publishing catalog to Domain Capital for an eight-figure sum” late last year. She didn’t need the money, I figured.

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Data Baby in Fuchsia

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Love this Instagram post from @bookswithbrady featuring my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. Buy my book here, order a signed copy here, and read what people are saying about it here.

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Death of a Pimp

This article was originally published on Forbes.com on October 18, 2018.

Dennis Hof was a pimp. Perhaps he would've preferred the term "brothel owner," for that he was, too, at the time of his death earlier this week at 72. He was found dead in bed at his Love Ranch Vegas brothel in Crystal, Nevada, on Tuesday morning by adult performer Ron Jeremy. An autopsy will be conducted to identify the cause of his death, but foul play wasn't suspected.

It was a busy time for Hof, who was in the midst of a campaign to get himself elected to the Nevada State Assembly. Ironically, he may well be elected, despite the fact that he's dead, because, according to the New York Times, in the 36th District in which he's running, 45% of those registered to vote are registered as Republicans, compared to 28% who are registered to vote as Democrats. His Trumpian political platform included lowering taxes and defending gun owners' rights.

In June of 2017, I interviewed Hof for an article I wrote for this website in the wake of a news report that former FBI director James Comey had used the term "hookers" in a Statement for the Record released one day prior to testifying in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "Hookers" appears in Comey's summary of a March 30, 2017, call he received from Trump. "[Trump] said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia," Comey wrote. Was "hookers" Comey's word choice or Trump's? Interested to hear what sex workers and their minders thought of the high-profile disparagement, I reached out to Hof and his employees.

As it turned out, Hof had a Trump story of his own. "I met him 27 years ago," he told me. "I was in the timeshare business. He wanted to timeshare the [Trump] Taj Mahal, and he wanted me to come aboard to do that. I didn't do that. I said there's not enough money in the world to make me live in Atlantic City." It was hard to know whether or not to take Hof's claim seriously. Instead, Hof recounted, he became "the pimp master general of America," anointed as such by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. He'd voted for Trump and liked the guy—"We need a businessman," he said—but he preferred the term "working girls." Either way, Trump was good for business. "Business is humping," he told me. "We feel the difference with Trump in office."

It wasn't the first time I'd connected with Hof. Over the prior two decades, I'd encountered him at various events, from adult movie sets to X-rated conventions. The first time I'd met him was on the set of an adult movie being shot in the San Fernando Valley, the content of which was so outré that I won't detail it here. On another occasion, I talked with him at the Hustler Store in Hollywood. And he was a regular presence at the AVN Awards—the so-called "Oscars of porn"—in Las Vegas, Nevada.

He wasn't the first pimp that I met, and I'm sure he won't be the last, but he was like many pimps that I've encountered over the years. He was charismatic, likeable, friendly, a consummate showman, and the sort of person who could make you feel comfortable about anything, including, one presumed, showing up at one of his brothels in hopes of paying one of the women who worked for him a few hundred dollars, or more, to share some intimate time, in the parts of Nevada where that's legal.

In a way, he wasn't that different from sex workers I've known. For providing a service in demand across the country, they'd been publicly vilified and systematically ostracized. Hof was a larger-than-life character—a pimp, you bet—but he was also a businessman who knew well that if someone will pay for something, there's money to be made, and that's the American dream.

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Origin Story of a Sex Writer

This week in my newsletter I share an excerpt from my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. This episode takes place early on in the book. I believe it was 1997 or thereabouts. At the time I was living in the Bay Area, where I grew up. On this particular night, I ventured out to the strip clubs in North Beach in San Francisco. It would prove to be a fateful series of events.

I thought it would be interesting to write about the strip clubs in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. I was curious about these enigmatic clubs on Broadway that I had seen but never entered. As a kid in the back seat of my parents’ Dart, I had been driven through San Francisco and spotted The Condor (which, in 1964, became one of the country’s first topless bars). Out front, a towering sign featured a supersized blonde, impossibly busty. Her name, I would find out later, was Carol Doda. On the sign, she wore a black bikini with blinking red lights for nipples.

Doda was the opposite of my mother and her friends, who considered makeup, heavily styled hair, and revealing clothes tools the patriarchy used to subjugate and objectify women. But Doda wasn’t anyone’s tool; she was a legend. She was America’s first topless dancer of note, and her surgically enhanced breasts were billed as “the new Twin Peaks of San Francisco.” When I was in graduate school, I had seen an episode of HBO’s Real Sex about strippers, and I was struck by the revelation that strip clubs were places where intimacy was for sale. Sure, it was transient, transactional, and most often conducted between a guy with a handful of dollar bills and a dancer in a G-string and not much else who twirled seductively around a pole on a stage, but there was something real about it. The strippers reminded me of the girls I had hung out with in high school, whom everyone else had deemed slutty.

“Oh my god, Susannah, make up your mind!” Anne laughed as we stood at the corner on a Saturday night. Broadway was teeming with drunk guys, sailors on leave, and couples on the prowl for something more interesting than what they had already. I scanned the glowing signs. Roaring 20’s. Big Al’s. The Hungry I.

“This one!” We ducked inside. As we moved down the black hallway toward a red velvet curtain, I worried what someone else in the club might think. I, a woman, was in a strip club. As I pulled back the curtain, it dawned on me that wasn’t going to be an issue. There was one thing the men scattered at the small, dimly lit tables around the room were paying attention to, and it wasn’t me. It was the half-naked girl on the stage.

Nonchalantly, we took a seat at a table near the back. We ordered a couple of overpriced drinks. I took a sip: It was straight orange juice. The cocktails were alcohol-free, thanks to a California law that prohibited the sale of alcohol in fully nude strip clubs. It didn’t matter; my head was buzzing from the drinks we’d had at the bar around the corner.

In one smooth movement, the statuesque brunette dancer teetering on the highest heels I had ever seen peeled off her dental-floss-thin neon-green thong. She tossed the thong to one side, grabbed the pole, climbed up it. High above the crowd, she wrapped her thighs around the pole and bent over backward, throwing her arms open like an inverted angel.

The academic world in which I had grown up was right across the Bay, but it may as well have been a million miles from where I was. I studied a solitary businessman sitting at the next table. His tie was untied. His jacket was slung across the back of his chair. His eyes were glassy. He had been hypnotized. In this world, women had all the power, and men were at their mercy. I didn’t want to be a stripper; I was too shy, too insecure, too inhibited to take off my clothes in front of strangers. But I wanted what she had: the stage, the audience in awe, the men gawking at her. As a kid, I had longed for attention. This was an orgy of attention. As a pubescent teen, I was left to figure out my sexuality for myself because my mother was so unhappy. Here, sex was on parade, for sale, everywhere I looked. In the Block Project, I was the object, the one on view, the child studied by researchers from across tables in Tolman Hall’s austere experiment rooms. Now I was the voyeur, the looker, the scopophiliac. It was intoxicating.

As we sped back to the East Bay in the early-morning hours, I watched the city get smaller in the side-view mirror. My father was dead, but for a few hours I had forgotten about that. I could write about this. I could be a gonzo journalist, like one of my favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, and immerse myself in it. Sex would be my beat.

Buy Data Baby here. Read more about my book here. Listen to an interview with me here.

(This post originally appeared in my newsletter, The Reverse Cowgirl: “What Carol Doda Taught Me.”)

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Asian Mannequin

An Asian mannequin on Hollywood Boulevard. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.

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I, A Middle-Aged Woman, Went On A Sugar Daddy Dating Website

This article was originally published on Forbes.com on June 2, 2022.

I, a middle-aged single woman, have spent the last several years looking for love, a connection, something on dating websites and apps. You name them, I’ve been on them: Bumble, Tinder, Hinge. Over that period I’ve gone on 30 or so blind dates, with pilots and attorneys and one carpenter, most of them somewhere between mildly boring and temporarily entertaining, but nothing has really stuck. So the other night, after I’d deleted another dating app in frustration—Bumble, probably—I wondered what would happen if I signed up for Seeking Arrangement, a so-called “sugar daddy” dating website that earlier this year rebranded itself as Seeking and announced itself “the largest dating website for successful and attractive people.” (The unsuccessful and unattractive need not apply, one imagines.)

Seeking Arrangement had long been the dating site of choice for young women and older men hoping to find a connection that involved the exchange of money; what that money was exchanged for was up to its users. Now Seeking, which claims it has over 36 million users worldwide, was trying to sell itself as one more dating site. Was Seeking comprised of mostly forty-something sugar daddies searching for twenty-something sugar babies? Or could I, a middle-aged women, find something more romantic than transactional on the site? There was only one way to find out: gonzo journalism. “Start Dating Up,” which Seeking has trademarked, the website beckoned. I paid $19.99 for a 30-day subscription and created a profile.

In a way, Seeking isn’t that different from other dating websites. In fact, I recognized some of the men’s profiles from regular dating websites and apps I’d been on. Many of the men were younger than I’d expected. I’d thought the male users would be middle-aged, moneyed types on the prowl for young woman that appreciated the simplicity of a tit-for-tat exchange. Instead, I found a mix of tech nerds who’d struck it rich and whose screen names occasionally underscored their love of the blockchain and bitcoin, average Joe types hunting for something quick who figured it was easier to find it on Seeking than at a bar, and successful executives who seemed to be interested in a relationship they believed they could control through money.

But were these guys as wealthy as they claimed? On their profiles, they could share their net worth and quite a few claimed to have a net worth of $100 million or more, which seemed unlikely, given that a 2015 report from the Boston Consulting Group found that there were over 5,000 households in the U.S. worth $100 million or more. Some of the men wanted a sugar baby and said so. Some wanted something that might start out transactional but would turn into something more, even marriage, down the line. One, who was married, was looking for a woman who would move in with him and his wife. Another, a handsome young man who related he’d done well when he’d sold his last company, no longer had to work and wanted to find a girl who would travel the world with him on his dime.

I got a few messages, but only a handful. While the site had been rebranded, it was clear that most of the guys were looking for women who were far younger than me. Then I came across the profile of an older man who was looking for tall women with big feet. I’m 6’1” and wear a size 11 shoe. He was looking for The One, he wrote. Was I it? I tried to picture how it might work, me with my tall body and my big feet, and him, far away, with his interests and his self-proclaimed successes.

It was easy to get sucked into thinking about romance as transactional on Seeking, a place where it was normal to calculate one’s worth and then try to sell it. But something stopped me. Seeking was one more dating website, but one where sex and love were commodities. I began to feel grim and a bit cynical, which wasn’t how I wanted to feel. So I deleted my profile.

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Me and Brad Pitt

My breakfast, including a Brad Pitt celebralatte. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.

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The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star

This article was originally published on Forbes.com on April 23, 2012.

You might think being a male porn star is easy. Have sex for a living? That's a piece of cake.

So, what can some of the biggest woodsmen in the porn business teach us about work?

As it turns out, guys who get it up for a paycheck have something to offer when it comes to career advice.

I heard from seven of Porn Valley's biggest studs via email and got the secrets to becoming a successful working stiff.

TIP #1: Get your coworkers to like you.

In the porn business, it's doubly important your coworkers like you.

According to Brandon Iron, star of "Perverted Planet 7" and director of "Sex Crazed," getting along with your costars is the key to getting ahead in porn.

"The hardest thing about being a male porn star is convincing your female co-workers that you are an interesting, well-rounded, fun guy who they might consider dating in a parallel universe after a few drinks," Iron says.

TIP #2: Don't confuse the professional with the personal.

For male porn stars, the line between professional and personal can get blurry. If you think keeping the professional professional and the personal personal is tricky in your line of work, you should talk to a male porn star, who may have a wife waiting at home for him to finish his latest scene with another woman. 

Jeremy Steele, star of "Naughty Neighbors" and "M.I.L.F. Money," says the hardest thing is what happens when he's not working.

"[The hardest thing is] having a relationship with a significant other," Steele says. "The first time I told a girl I was in porn she disconnected her phone number the same night, and I never saw or heard from her again."

Not only that, changing career tracks can be tricky, especially if you leave the adult business and try to reinvent yourself.

"The second hardest thing is having a post-porn career that doesn't make you 'infamous' if or when it is discovered that you were a sex worker on film/video," Steele reports. "You can lose a job or not find one if you're too well known for having been a whore on camera, in spite of it being legal."

TIP #3: Be cognizant of how others perceive you.

Whether you're a twentysomething or fiftysomething, your age can impact how management perceives your abilities. Are you too young to be getting the salary you're negotiating for? Or are you perceived as too old to be promotable?

Dave Cummings may be the oldest working porn star on the planet. At 72, he's appeared in "The Sopornos 2" and directs his own series, "Sugar Daddy."

On the one hand, Cummings owns a niche market. On the other hand, his age can be an impediment.

Sometimes, Cumming says, he worries his coworkers would "prefer working with a younger guy than me."

TIP #4: Rise to the occasion.

Seymore Butts has had in his own Showtime reality series, "Family Business," and he's directed and starred in adult movies for years.

According to Butts, it's not the porn starlet, the director, the producer, the cameraman, or the production assistant who has the toughest job in porn. It's the guy who has to get wood -- or else.

Butts opines:

The most difficult part about being a male porn star is the hard-on. They have to get it up and off on cue essentially and all the while in between maintain [it] for two to three hours. This must be done under the most difficult of circumstances, including not being attracted to their female co-star, having sex in the most uncomfortable settings, i.e. on hard surfaces, cold/hot weather, etc., and/or having to stop frequently for direction or shot setups. They have to be in great shape in order to perform. It all adds up to being the most difficult job in porn, in my opinion.

TIP #5: Successful negotiations are key.

You may have seen Richard Mann in "Freaknic 2" and "Big Mann on Campus," but Mann says he and his brethren are getting stiffed when it comes to getting paid what they should.

"I'd say dealing with the fact that you don't get any royalties" is the hardest thing about his job, Mann says. "When you shoot, they pay you once, and that's it."

Will male porn stars unionize? Unlikely.

TIP #6: It's all about confidence.

Zak Smith is an artist, author, and male porn star. With his unique resume, he's found porn is a tricky industry because it breeds insecurity.

"Everything that happens [on a porn set] affects whether people will want to sleep with you," Smith says. "The stakes could not possibly be higher. Every other thing -- including things that might lead to losing the job -- are just subthings of that thing."

TIP #7: Perspective, perspective, perspective.

Arguably the most famous male porn star of the moment, James Deen's work can be seen in "This Ain't Ghostbusters XXX," "Simpsons: The XXX Parody," and "Batman XXX: A Porn Parody."

Deen's secret to success: a positive attitude.

"I guess the hardest thing about being a male performer is ... um ... I don't know," Deen says. "My job is pretty easy."

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Unicorn Love

This afternoon, I decided to go to an adult toy store. Awhile back, I had read about a line of sex toys that were, well, out of this world. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Creature Cocks, but they’re billed as “The Original Fantasy, Sci-Fi Monster Dildos.” If you’ve ever wanted to get intimate with a Radioactive Reptile Thick Scaly Silicone Dildo, a Gargoyle Rock Hard Silicone Dildo, an Orion Invader Veiny Space Alien Silicone Dildo, a Monstropus Tentacled Monster Silicone Dildo, or a Hydra Sea Monster Silicone Dildo, this product line is for you. In fact, I had seen Creature Cocks in the silicone flesh before. A few months ago, I had gone to an adult store in Sherman Oaks, and I had stared at a display of Creature Cocks, but I hadn’t bought one. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it. I had this idea I would keep it on my desk as a sort of talisman, but ultimately, I couldn’t decide on which one and left.

Recently, I read on AVN—which one could argue is the Variety of the adult business—that XR Brands, the company that produces Creature Cocks, was releasing even more Creature Cocks in new enhanced designs. These Creature Cocks were even more out there, among them a Sea Stallion Vibrating Silicone Dildo with Remote and, the one that really caught my eye, a Centaur Explosion Squirting Silicone Dildo. As a long-time watcher of “Shark Tank,” I had to wonder what need was being met. Was there really a demand for not just centaur dildos, but centaur squirting dildos? The answer was clear: Yes. In any case, I was curious to check out the new models.

When I arrived at the adult store, I was the only customer there. I said hello to the guy working behind the counter and found the Creature Cocks display between two doors marked Employees Only and under a sign that read DO NOT OPEN PRODUCT. (I wasn’t going to, but duly noted.) I scanned the boxes, considering the Swamp Monster Green Scaly Silicone Dildo (disturbingly, it had eyes), the Space Cock Glow-in-the-Dark Silicone Alien Dildo (were those blue … testicles?), and a Makara Glow-in-the-Dark Silicone Snake Dildo (I shuddered at its 18-inch length). A woman walked into the store and inquired about a remote-controlled sex toy. The guy behind the counter explained the cheapest one they had was $130. This was more than she expected to spend, she explained. I handled a large black box that contained a Mystique Silicone Unicorn Dildo. The toy’s rainbow color was aesthetically appealing, and it seemed like it would be hard to go wrong with anything unicorn.

At the register, I inquired about the new Creature Cocks products, but he explained they weren’t in stock at the store yet. “Do a lot of people buy Creature Cocks?” I asked, passing the unicorn dildo to him across the counter. “Yeah, people get them all the time, actually,” he told me. So, I wasn’t the only one. After I paid, I headed for the door. “Have a great night!” he called after me cheerily.

When I got home, I pulled the box out of the bag. YOU’LL BE ENTRANCED AS THE RAREST OF CREATURES, THE UNICORN, PENETRATES YOUR PLEASURE GARDEN! the front of the box promised. I opened the top and withdrew the dildo; it was nestled in a plastic container. I touched the dildo’s bottom tentatively (according to the box, this was the STRONG SUCTION BASE); it felt like rubbery flesh. I removed the dildo from the plastic shell; the toy was heavier than I had expected. I stood the dildo on my desk. It was thick and tapered, tan and blue and purple, covered in spiraling ripples. For some reason, I had expected it would do something, but this wasn’t a vibrator. Instead, it sat there, listing slightly, next to my keyboard.

RIDE THIS UNTAMABLE BEAST ALL THE WAY TO FANTASTICAL PLEASURE, the box demanded. I attempted to pick up the dildo, but it had suctioned itself to my desk. With a tug, it came loose. I waved the dildo around. It wagged pleasantly. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I was sure of one thing.

I had a unicorn dildo.

This post originally appeared on my newsletter: The Reverse Cowgirl.

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Blue Mannequin

A blue backyard mannequin in Lake Balboa. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.

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Upcoming Readings for Data Baby

I have a few upcoming readings for my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, in the San Francisco Bay Area. On March 27, 2024, at 6:30 pm, I’ll be reading at Berkeley Public Library’s North Branch, in Berkeley, CA: “Author Talk with Susannah Breslin.” And, on April 27, 2024, at 11 am, I’ll be reading at Book Passage, in Corte Madera, CA: “Susannah Breslin - Data Baby : My Life in a Psychological Experiment (Corte Madera Store).” Buy my book here, read more about it here, and listen to me talk about it here.

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Consider the Woodsman

“Two of the [male porn stars] I interviewed have since died.” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter: “The Hard Thing About Being a Male Porn Star.” Subscribe to get it Sundays in your inbox.

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Data Baby at Powell's Books

Thanks to Kevin Sampsell for sending me this photo of my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, at Powell’s Books. Kevin is a writer and artist; the publisher of my short story collection, You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You?, through his Future Tense Books small press; and a Powell’s employee.

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Porn Star in Fishnets

A porn star on the set of an adult movie in 2009. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.

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An Interview with Me About Data Baby on CBC Radio's "The Current"

CBC Radio’s “The Current” host Matt Galloway interviewed me about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. We talked about “The Truman Show,” growing up under a microscope, and the rise of surveillance capitalism. It was a terrific interview. You can listen to the whole thing here.

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Fuck You, Pay Me #6: Letters From Johns Revisited

This is part 6 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Letters From Johns, a 2008 project in which, over the course of a year, I shared emails that men sent me about their experiences paying for sex. (As you can see on the project’s website, by submitting their letters, the letter writers were granting me permission to share their letters, anonymously, of course.) This letters project was part of what would become a five-year project I called The Letters Project, and which included Letters From Working Girls, Letters From Men Who Watch Pornography, Letters From Men Who Go To Strip Clubs, and Letters From Cheaters. The Letters Project as a whole got a fair amount of media attention, including coverage by Salon, CBC Radio, and Newsweek. In a weird coincidence, I launched Letters From Johns on January 3, 2008, and then New York governor Eliot Spitzer was entangled in a prostitution scandal a little over two months later, the latter bringing some attention to the former. (That’s timing for you, I guess?)

In August of 2013, as The Letters Project was winding down, I published an essay about the project: “You Were My Studs.” I wrote about how the whole project had started with a shot in the dark: I had put out a call on my blog, asking readers why they had paid for sex. Within a few hours, I had my first answer: “The Night I Drove a Call Girl to Her Next Stop”; it begins: “I am writing because I can’t tell this story to anyone I know and retain my dignity, but since your soliciting I figured I can get it off my chest.” There were more letters to come. As I wrote in my essay: “Over the following year, I heard from over 50 johns. Their letters came at all hours of the day and night. They were from young guys and old guys, white guys and black guys, military grunts and corporate drones. The letters were poignant, exhilarated, nostalgic, terrifying, revelatory. They were all confessions.”

One letter in particular, “I’m a State Investigator,” struck me:

“I keep a coded diary, in case it's discovered. 1 dot is oral, 2 dots is vaginal sex, and 2 connected dots is anal sex. In the event that someone questions the dots, they are associated with good/bad days: no dots are normal days, 1 dot is a good day, 2 dots is a great day, and 2 connected dots is the best day for that week."

As I wrote: “Of course, the letters weren't about sex, or prostitution, or johns. They were about love and loneliness, from guys who just wanted to be touched and men who had gotten dumped, stories in which call girls really had hearts of gold and mercenaries cruised foreign streets in search of bodhisattvas-for-hire.” After a year, each letters project was closed to submissions, and while I received many letters, I rarely responded: “I surmised the letters were not for me; they were for their authors.” But, as I recounted, I did reach out to one john: “I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done.” In an email, I asked him why he had written a letter to me (a woman).

His response, in part:

“By that, I mean I never considered that I was writing my letter to a woman. You're Ms. Breslin, with a blog about john experiences. Like my several john experiences, I was reaching out to no one in particular; I was, in hindsight, trying to find some elusive unidentifiable emotion. Although I gave you 'a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that information at its sole discretion, including incorporating it in other works in any media now known or later developed including without limitation published books,' you cannot take from me the liberating experience you elucidated from three simple questions. Thank you. And again, thank you, if only for a few brief moments of experiencing ... .... ..."

Looking over the letters now, I remembered a lot of them, and how I got a kind of thrill whenever I received a new one. It was fascinating to revisit them today.

Like Letters From Johns’ “I Am a Gentleman”:

“There are many who would maintain that my philandering disqualifies me from claiming to be a good person, and definitely from being a good husband. Frankly, I don't care what they believe. I have a hobby that is infinitely more interesting to me than travel or theme parks. The ladies I prefer can hold conversations and appreciate the occasional session just to stroke their bodies. They do not judge. They do not become angry at requests. They treat the experience as an encounter between equals. There is no power struggle. There is no drama. There is privacy, and usually conviviality. What we do behind closed doors remains there.”

Or Letters From Working Girls’ “I Am Just An Ordinary Woman With The Knack Of Making People Love And Trust Me”:

“I am just an ordinary woman with the knack of making people love and trust me. These were just men who needed to love somebody who would let them. It's all so simple. Not complicated in the least. There were no perversions too perverse to get in the way of the trusting bond that was needed. Women suffer out loud, and men suffer in silence. Until we allow men to suffer out loud, many a wife will wonder where her husband is during his lunch hour, and in my opinion, a lot of those wives deserve it. (Not all of those wives.)”

Or Letters From Men Who Watch Pornography’s “I Was a Geek”:

“I've come to accept pornography as my surrogate sexual lifestyle: devoid of complication, disease, and odoriferous unpleasantness, and heavily populated with a wide range of women to satisfy every craving, it is a hollow yet adequate solution to my otherwise celibate bachelor existence. And while I am still aware of the inherent pathetic quality of being a man alone at my age, I would much rather be the connoisseur of an under-appreciated form of entertainment continuing to transcend the aesthetic limits hitherto placed upon it by forces of official history than a harried everyman, harangued by the burdens of emotional turmoil, personality conflict, atrophying sexual energy, and ludicrously inexcusable asinine conversations and circular arguments.”

Or Letters From Men Who Go to Strip Clubs’ “I Am Gay”:

“All of that is uncomfortable to witness, because none of it can be commented on nor helped without becoming far too intimate far too fast. The club creates the illusion of heterosexual intimacy, a coy game of it, but it refuses to actually allow or engage the real thing. So long as everyone involved simply enjoys the game, all is well; but the moment someone needs more than the game, they absolutely cannot have it, and so they stand there, open and raw and unable to share. Most of the other dudes are too engaged to notice, but the detached strippers and the detached gay man notice.”

Or Letters From Cheaters’ “I Have Always Been a Cheater”:

“Eventually, this split life I was living took a toll on my relationship. One day I pulled the plug. I tried to reform myself. I took up a daily meditation practice. I tried my best to avoid massage parlours, prostitutes and gangbangs. About eighteen months ago I met another wonderful woman. We’re talking about building a house outside the city, starting a business and, of course, having a child. I’m happy. But… I still can’t stop myself from looking at the online ads; I’m still not quite there, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I worry that everything is really just work and performance.”

Sometimes when people ask me what I write about I say sex or porn or the business of sex. The real answer is probably closer to intimacy. That’s what these letters, the best of them, anyway, the most real and raw and revealing, are about. Every so often, I think of one of the Letters from Johns that’s stayed with me: “I Have a Physical Disability.”

Here’s his letter in full:

“I have a physical disability known as Cerebral Palsy and am in an electric wheelchair. I have always struggled in my own existence, largely because I rely on a lot of people to assist me with the most basic tasks, such as dressing, showering, getting in and out of bed, and other basic things that many people take for granted. Although I am verbal, and highly intelligent, having acquired two university degrees at the age of 24, people do tend to judge a book by its cover when it comes to things such as dating and sex.

My entire life I have been trapped inside a body that I hate. It never does what I want it to. It always conspires against me. Although I am confident in my intellectual ability, I do not have a very strong self-image. This is largely because every girl I have asked out on a date has rejected me. Some were even cruel enough to say, ‘Why would I ever go out with a cripple like you?’ Even now, I still have not yet had a girlfriend.

A few years back, I was hanging out with a few other disabled guys who were less physically able than I was. They mentioned that they regularly used a pro because it was the only way they could get the release they craved the most. Most of these guys couldn’t lift their heads up on their own, let alone have the ability to please a woman the way they wanted to. They would go to a brothel and get a hand-job once every few weeks. One of them described his first time with a pro in a way that will stick with me for the rest of my life; he said that ‘It was the first time I felt like a real man.’

Sometime later, I fell in love for the first time. After pursuing her for several months, I was rejected once more, but this time was much harder to swallow than the others that came before her. After several weeks of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to do something about it. Remembering the words of my friends, I decided I would visit a brothel. However, unlike my friends, I knew I wanted more than a hand-job. I wanted to lose my virginity.

I searched through the phone book, found a brothel I wanted and asked about the processes involved. I soon discovered that like most things in my life, this could not be a total secret. If I wanted to have sex, I would need somebody to help me shower before and after, as well as to lift me onto the bed. This would put most of my other disabled friends off immediately, but it did not deter me in the slightest. Without a moment's hesitation, I asked my older brother if he could help me. Although he was initially stunned, he reluctantly agreed.

On the night we turned up at the brothel, we were two completely different men. I was excited, nervously anticipating what would await me. My brother, in contrast, was absolutely petrified, afraid that someone he might know would walk in. After a short while, some girls made their way out and introduced themselves. I picked one and we followed her into the room. She stepped out while my brother helped me get organized. I told him to go for a walk, and I’d give him a call when I was ready.

The whole experience was everything I hoped it would be. She started by giving me a massage, which eased my muscles that are normally tight and non-compliant. As she completed the massage, my body felt like it could do anything I wanted, something I had never felt before. She went down on me, and we had sex. She made me feel safe and confident in myself. For that portion of time, having sex with her (even if I had to pay for it) made up for a lifetime of rejection.

It was the most enjoyable experience I have ever had in my life. I would put it down to two things. For once I had gained control over my body, and it felt like I was in control of my life. The worst thing about having a physical disability is the lack of control I have in life. Everything is very clinical, get up at this time, eat at this time, have a shower at this time, and go to bed at this time. I have no control over these things. This time, I got to do things on my own terms. Second, it was the first time I felt like I was being treated like a sexual being with desires and needs that were important. All my life I have been viewed as an asexual being whose desires should be avoided or neglected. The trip to the brothel taught me not to be afraid of my sexuality and not to push it into the background.

I am now a regular customer, although not as regular as I’d like to be. This is mostly because my brother has moved overseas, and it is hard to find people who will willingly accompany me. However, each time I go, I no longer feel like a cripple. I feel whole.”

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Hope

Utility box art with a simple message: HOPE. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.

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An Interview with Me About Data Baby on Identity Theory

Matt Borondy of Identity Theory fame interviewed me about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. That Q&A is: “Secrets Laid Bare: An Interview with Susannah Breslin, Author of Data Baby.”

An excerpt:

“If you think of the main character of your memoir as just that, a character, she must be a product of her environment. In my case, she is studied by researchers who assign her a number and spy on her through one-way mirrors. She has a mother who touches her rarely and resents being a mother and sometimes says to her daughter: ‘I don’t want to be a mother anymore.’ Her father leaves her with her depressed mother who the main character feels like she has to parent or save or fix. Do you think this character is going to freely express her emotions, be vulnerable? No, she’s not. That has been studied, grinded, strangled out of her. There is no fixing her. She is what she is.”

Read the rest here.

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Breaker Beauties (1977)

A poster for “Breaker Beauties” at a sidewalk sale. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.

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