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(1992) It’s the opening of his solo exhibition at the Bess Cutler Gallery in Soho, and Robert Williams is the king of prestigious West Broadway.

“As recent as two years ago, no one would give me a show here, even though I promised them it would be a sell-out,” he tells me.

Williams’ work has been criticized as: sexist (he likes to paint women in high heels and garters, particularly the dorsal view): violent (his social commentary sometimes involves humans exploding): or just plain not serious (the influences of Dali and Manet in his work bow to those of comic books and hotrods).

“How do you feel now?” I ask, knowing that true to his word every one of the show’s 30 oil paintings has sold, at prices from $7000 - $50,000, most before they were hung.

“Well, let’s say I’m not shedding any tears, “

The gallery is packed for the opening. Among the notables: Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Iggy Pop, cartoonists Leslie Sternbergh and Ned Sontag, sex mag editrix Dian Hansen, lensman Eric Kroll, Axel, sculptor of strange jewelry, author Larry “Ratso” Sloman, swingers Valerie and wife Ruth, fantasy facilitators, tattooists and human canvases, I brought along my personal French maid, Jennifer, prize student at Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want To Be Girls. We were all there to celebrate the success of an artist who has consistently gone against the establishment—or, as he states on his business card, “Fouling The Art World’s Nest Since 1957. “ With this show, he’s hit a home run.

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(1986) My in-depth look at Manhattan’s large and lively scene once known as ‘she-male’ subculture, including a meeting with Angie Extravaganza and members of the Harlem ball families

The language used in this article reflects the the common language of its time, including the terms that community members often used to describe themselves. In choosing to retain the actual language and terms of the time I chose to more accurately reflect our history as well as understand our progress. This story shows a community helping itself, forming families, living outside the law, considered freaky or fascinating, pitied and somewhat condoned, surviving. Today, Trans citizens are thriving, contributing talent and taxes to the public good. The Trans community has become a movement that is very aware of its needs, especially for its most vulnerable members. Needs cost money and the powers that be, those that hold the purse strings prefer to vilify Trans people calling them devils, evil, undeserving of financial support or even of life itself. This tactic supports the heartless greed, that dominates our current government. I prefer to live in the radical hope and community of love that I witnessed fifty years ago and believe in more than ever today.

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(VV’s NY, Adam,1986) When the place was Kelly’s Bar, I used to cross the street, to avoid walking into the winos with brown paper sacks who loitered out front on the sidewalk. Then it became a Chinese restaurant and later, “The Phoenix”, a pick-up bar for gay hustlers. “The Phoenix” seemed to be an appropriate description of the place. Like the proverbial phoenix it kept rising from its ashes to flutter its wings in still another incarnation. One day a new sign hung over Eighth Avenue just off the corner of Fourteenth Street, sandwiched between the stationery store and the flower shop. The Greenwich Pub was born, and with it all the spirits from its previous lifetimes seemed to come crashing together in one glorious melting pot.

I began to notice the posters when I went for my morning strolls. The Pub is a few blocks from my apartment. Monday: “Latin Night”; Tuesday: “The Gong Show”; Wednesday: “Go-Go Boy Contest” … But what really caught my eye were the portraits of the drag queens–“The Greenwich Pub All-Stars.” In Paris, in Rio, Hong Kong, Bangkok…in all the world’s great capitals, the most spectacular shows are those staged by the drag queens. “There could be a story here,” I thought as I looked at the Pub’s drab but still intriguing facade. What I discovered inside the Greenwich Pub was more than one story; it was a whole world.

The interior of the club is far from extravagant. There is a video machine and a jukebox. Movie stars’ photos dot ‘the wall-tributes to the real glamour girls; Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Gere, and a great drag queen, Brandy Alexander. A splash of color is provided by the fake Tiffany lamps that hang from the ceiling. The lamps are probably left over from the Pub’s days as a coffee shop. What the Greenwich Pub lacks for excitement in its decor, it more than makes up for with its clientele. Here is a place where people are free to be themselves-or even somebody else. Here is a place where boys will be girls.

Luscious Lucy eyes each new arrival from her strategic perch at the bar. She is the first to see and be seen. Scraggly yellow locks drop to her bare shoulders like a rumpled bed sheet. Her titties jiggle inside a flimsy blue summer blouse. She practically jumps on top of photographer Annie Sprinkle as Annie, our photo assistant Jennifer Blowdryer and I enter the bar ready for still another adventure in our unique brand of “High Heeled Journalism.”

Annie and Lucy once made a sex film together. At the time Lucy was a pre-op transsexual taking hormones to fill out her breasts and enhance her feminine characteristics. “I remember that particular day, I couldn’t get a hard-on,” says Lucy, recalling the hormone challenges. It is difficult to have a conversation with Lucy. The alcohol has loosened her tongue but she has no patience for questions. She slowly licks her lips as if to emphasize a better use for her mouth might be to slip a cock in it-or in the new cunt she is so happy to advertise.

“Crossdressing? I never crossdress,” she responds haughtily, “all I do is change clothes.” “I used to have a prick, now I have a pooh-sssy,” says Lucy, slurring the word “pussy” to make it sound very wet. “I used to give it in the pooh-sssy, now I can take it!”

Mykal Jones, the Club’s manager, printed special flyers announcing to the performers and customers that ADAM would be in to do an article. A full lineup of talent is expected.

“I heard there would be some ‘Runway Girls’ here tonight;’ says LaVale. LaVale Peters sits with her friend and escort for the evening, David. “I’m Patti LaBelle and this is Kitty Calor, sometimes David Bowie, sometimes Dolly Parton,” LaVale explains of her and David. “We’re performers from way back. It wouldn’t look that way. Were well preserved.” “Permanent-pressed,” chimes in David.

LaVale has a flawless dark brown complexion. “My mother was the first black model for Wilhemina,” she says. “My father is a sports instructor. I tried to lift weights. I tried to be macho. It just didn’t work. My body took this course by itself. So I said, ‘Let me make some money off it.’”

LaVale explains to me the relationship between the various groups in he club. The “Runway Girls” walk the runways at the balls. They are also called the “Glamour Girls” or “Ball Girls”. They enter all the competitions for body and beauty. The current queen of the “Runway Girls” is Raquel, snow-white skin, jet black hair and a body that won’t quit. Raquel, a transsexual, recently won the title of Ms. Man/Made. The “Illusionists,” like LaVale, perform as women. They are “female impersonators.” Besides Annie, Jennifer and me there are almost no other “genetic” (cis)women in the place.

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“There’s Chaka Savales,” points out LaVale. “She’s Donna Summer. And there is Shirley Bassey and there is Tina Turner. Oooo, the girls are coming through,” she says excitedly as she recognizes each face in the crowd and waves a greeting.

Some of the illusionists dress as women all the time, others do not. Crystal, who perfoms as “Tina Turner,” tells me, “By day, I’m just Chris-myself-just an everyday homosexual hairdresser!’

“The transsexuals are totally female looking,” says LaVale. “There are a lot of little cliques in this society. People are just starting to learn that we are not all the same. The cliques really don’t mix. Some people pass through. A boy may pass through from transvestite to transsexual but then ‘she’ might not talk to a transvestite again. The ‘families’ really don’t mix. Some.times there are jealousies. It takes a lot of guts to go from a man to a woman, without being ridiculed too.

“Some people get very confused. They get all of this surgery done and then they don’t know if it’s right and they take it out and they put it back again. There are a lot of psychological problems. People don’t know. They think it’s a whole bunch of fun. But you have to know what you are doing or you will go mad. You can wake up in the morning and not know what to call yourself: Sharon or Sam. It’s ridiculous. Lucky, my name is perfectly perfect. I was born with the name Val. It works both ways:’

“What would you call the queens who seem to be hustling guys at the bar?” I ask LaVale. She laughs. “Honey, they truly are just plain old prostitutes.”

The show begins. Emcee Chico Starr delivers a few pop tunes. He is as smooth as a Las Vegas lounge singer. His mood is relaxed. He banters easily with the audience but he also issues a warning. “Don’t conduct your business on the sidewalk in front of the club,” he says. “We are under surveillance.”

“Some of the queens are really not cool,”says Adrian “Legs” West, the hostess/performer who lives with her “husband” Kevin, the Pub’s bartender. “This is one of the few gay clubs in the City that still welcomes queens.” Some queens earn a living through prostitution. When they conduct their business in the bar, the bar can get closed down. “One queen closed down The Grapevine with a single blowjob,” says Adrian ruefully. “She happened to suck the dick of a vice cop.”

Out pops “Xerrocks” as the show continues. He is a short, slim, very hip black comedian. He imitates all the “girls.” “Here is how a Puerto Rican girls looks when she wants it,” he says. He lies on his back, throws his legs in the air and his ass towards the ceiling. The crowd hoots and hollers as the lavishly dressed ladies, all perfomers in their own right, jump up from their seats to applaud appreciatively.

The parade of beauties begins. Sandra as “Sade” flows like water, an elegant bird, graceful and sensuous. L’Oreal de Paris dances on the tables. Her thunder thighs bulge under blue sequins, high heels pounding next to bouncing mixed drinks. Raquel does a Latin number in a brief costume of sequins, beads and tassles. Her body is in a state of perpetual motion. The tassles glitter and twirl as she sends sparks flying over the room. Vernon Hart pounds the legs right off the piano as he and Donna sing live at the same time the illusionists perform their lip sync.

“The Greenwich Pub presents its first production number,” announces Chico. “Angie Extravaganza” lives up to her name. She sends a half dozen gorgeous “girls” in corsets to parade over the room. Angie joins them as the lyrics begin. They shake ass to the tune of “Big Spender”: “Bop … Bop … Bop-Bop … Bop … Bump…” Smooth boy/girl flesh bumps and grinds like the raunchiest whores. They crack gum. Wigs fly. Feather boas twirl about their necks. The sight is fantastic. In an hour, they are back strutting their stuff in thousand dollar gowns.

People from the audience get up to stuff money in the performers’ clothes. It is a sign of appreciation. It is also part of the show. For each one of these ladies who strolls into the spotlight to deposit a dollar in her girlfriend’s brassiere does not miss the opportunity to malke sure that everyone gets a good look at what she’s wearing tonight.

Fashion is as much a part of this scene as fantasy. Some of the queens are known for their skill as designers and seamstresses. Others have reputations as excellent “boosters.” “It’s amazing what some of these girls can carry out of a store in their Louis Vuitton bags,” says Adrian.

Adrian explains to me about the families. “I belong to the family of Avis Pendavis. Avis is my ‘mother.’ She is the head of our family and she has other ‘daughters.’ Earlier in her career, Avis passed as a female stripper down South, and she did that without hormones. Now Avis is the very best costume designer. She taught me how to strip, to drop my g-string in one easy movement. There are nieces and nephews, etc. in our family. For instance, Kevin, my husband, is Avis’ son-in-law.

“If I brought a new boy into the house, he would be my son and Avis’ grandson. We do not live in the same house. But we all belong to the House of Pendavis. There are other families: the Extravaganza Family-Angie is their mother; the House of Cory, and more… Each house has its ball, one always trying to outdo the other.”

Some of the men in the club look like they drove in from the suburbs. A big man in a cowboy hat eyes a pretty girl from across the room. She looks like an art student, all dressed in black. He walks over and when there is no chair available, squats down next to her as if to chat for just a minute. He stays on bended knee for an hour and half through the length of the show.

There is a friendly feeling in the club. Only one man acts belligerent when I pass the microphone in front of him. “I am not gay,” he responds before I’ve even asked him a question.

“I find it very funny that men will pay to see me naked and these are the same kinds of men who when I was younger probably tried to beat me up,” says Jeanette. Jeanette just began a new job today. She is working at Show Center, a new peep show on 42nd Street that caters to the clients who prefer to view pre op transsexuals and transvestites.

“Are you into hustling?” I ask Jeanette. She answers, “When I was younger I used to hustle but now, to be quite truthful, I take it as an insult. The younger queens are more into hustling. Myself and my friends are more into coming out for the evening to have a good time. If you meet a guy, fine. Like last night I met a guy but he asked me out for dinner, not home for the evening. There’s a big difference. Yes,” she emphasizes, “even in this world.”

“So you still have a cock?” I ask Jeanette. “Yes,” she answers. “For a long time I wanted the operation, but now I’ve decided that I don’t want it. I like the person that I am now. That operation would in my opinion have done nothing but mutilate me.”

“What about hormones?” I ask. “I’ve been living as a woman since I was sixteen. From years of taking hormones, I know exactly what they do for me. They don’t grow breasts on me. They fill out my upper leg and they make my skin look fabulous. I take them as a beauty aid.”

Since many queens who take hormones are known to be impotent I ask Jeanette, “Can you still get a hard-on?” “Yes,” she says, “I make it a point to do that. When I decided that I was not going to get the sex change operation, I decided that I have to like the person that I am. I used to be very heavy into taking Tuinols-you know, barbituates. But I stopped doing all that and now I’m on a health kick. I take vitamins. I do exercise. I’m a vegetarian.” She says the word as if this fact surprises even her.

“I have myself on a program of taking the hormones where I still can have a ‘normal’ sex life.” Suddenly realizing what she has just said, Jeanette begins to laugh hysterically.

“What about your family;’ I asked.

“My family disowned me after my mother died. I hope they see this. I really do. Let them know that I am alive and well and very, very happy.”

Not all of the queens left home at a young age. China tells me, “Even though I don’t have the sex change, I’ve lived as a woman since I was 14. I will be 29 this November and I still live with my parents and my younger brother. I don’t come from a broken home. My father is not an alcoholic. I come from the Walton family.”

Michelle Liemont is a classy lady. By day she is a woman in a largely man’s world, a professional optician. By night she is “Shirley Bassey.” “Honey,” she says confidentially, “I wish I had between my legs what you have between yours. What you have is a treasure and men will do anything for you until they get it. Once they get it, they stop doing. The reason I’ve gotten so far in the company is because they haven’t gotten it. And the reason they haven’t gotten it, though they don’t know it, is because I haven’t got it to give.

“When I was a kid in Puerto Rico my father took me aside. He pointed to a gay boy who was walking down the street. He said, ‘That’s what you are but that’s not what you are going to be.’ When we moved to the states a year later, he changed all of my papers. I went through high school, college and everything as a woman. But you would not recognize me during the day. I don’t look the way I do now. Show business helps me to release myself. There is a part of me that lives up on that stage and a part of me that lives every time someone says, ‘I can see with the glasses you gave me: My only regret is that I can’t experience motherhood. I think I would make a great mother.”

“The art of drag is like sculpting,” says Adrian. “You dress up. Then maybe you take some hormones. If you want to go further you can have the sex change operation. You can fill in the flat spots with silicone. Hormones cost me approximately $55 every two weeks. When I don’t get them often enough, I get very temperamental. It’s like I’m on the rag. All that’s missing is the tampon. As soon as I take the hormones again, my panties begin to smell very feminine.”

Candy Sanchez is a wide-eyed blonde. ”Your eyes are beautiful,” I tell her. “Oh yes,” she says. “And the body? And the titties?

“My father can’t understand it. Even when I came up to him and said (as she lifts her tit out of her dress), ‘Poppy, look at this! You can’t tell me I’m your son. You have to call me your daughter. And he accepted it. My family loves me.

“My body so far has cost me $4000 and I made all the money myself. I’m castrated now. It’s a step before you get the pussy. I’ve got a dick but no balls. You get castrated and then six months later you get a pussy. It’s one step at a time. Three years ago, I was a boy…I make my money by just walking around, meeting dates. One hundred dollars. Two hundred dollars. But all the money goes to myself. To the body. This dress is a Calvin Klein. Three hundred dollars.

“I don’t got no balls. When they put their finger in me they feel the hole and they think its a pussy. They don’t know. They feel the hole. But it’s not a hole.

“You don’t have to go to bars to make money. If you look good you make money just walking around. If you look good, they come to you. I’m having more fun as a woman…and as a blonde,” she says with a confident laugh. “Forget it!”

The world of the drag queens is an entire subculture, peopled with individuals each of whom as her own unique story of how she got there, where she comes from and where she is going. One thing these beautiful humans have in common: they make their dreams and reality come together.

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At that time, for a woman, the first step to employment in almost every field of endeavor was a typing test. In high school, I was in Section One. We were called “the intelligentsia,” groomed to go to college. Only the kids who took the commercial course were taught practical lessons, such as accounting or typing. My mediocre typing skills had not improved in college. A miserable keyboard score of twenty-six words per minute with ten errors killed my chances at every job interview. Desperate, I decided I’d better take a typing class. There was one offered at the YWCA at Lexington and Fifty-first street. I immediately enrolled. I still rode the bus every weekday, happy to be on the way to my new job: learning to type.

The woman who taught the typing course was Greek and since I was half-Greek, she especially liked me. One day she told me that a former student had alerted her to an opening in her husband’s office at 70 Wall Street. The firm was a small trading house, market makers whose specialty was buying and selling over-the-counter stocks. I was interviewed by Norman, the office manager, a big bald-headed man in his late thirties with a soft-spoken manner. He explained the job, which was that of a trouble-shooter, following up on paperwork errors from the trading room. This was Wall Street pre-computers. Transactions were hand-written in pencil on color coded paper tickets; the receptionist worked at a switchboard; and accounts were documented in large leather bound ledgers. The firm’s traders worked just next door to Norman’s office and I could hear plenty of shouts emanating through the wall

Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined a career in Wall Street. I was never proficient at reading a balance sheet, or even keeping a budget. This lack of knowledge regarding personal finance was a serious flaw. But my typing teacher’s recommendation went a long way with Norman and it seemed the job was mine if I wanted it. Sensing my hesitation and unfamiliarity with Wall Street, Norman told me the New York Stock Exchange was nearby and visitors were welcome. I stepped outside and felt dwarfed as I walked up the canyon of Wall Street, a narrow road bordered on each side by ornate stone buildings, each one trying to outdo its neighbor with gilt and grandeur. Broad Street was marked by the statue of George Washington at the Federal Building and across from that was the New York Stock Exchange, a marble palace. From the visitor’s gallery, I saw a sea of men, some in suits, others in matching blue or brown cotton jackets, all vying for attention, waving slips of paper while they danced around a few central kiosks. It brought to mind the biblical story of the golden calf. The action was exciting and though I couldn’t imagine myself being a part of that world…It was November, I had graduated in June and I was still waitressing at Newark Airport…

I walked back to 70 Wall, past the bearded man on the corner who held a sign that read “Jesus Saves,” inhaling the steam from vendors selling dirty water franks on every corner, rode the elevator back to Norman’s office and took the job. I imagined the bells rang at Trinity Church to mark the significance of the moment.

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No; rather than hustling cheesecake, Mr. Meyer’s attentions were concentrated on beefcake as the Dolphins and Chargers battled it out. Russ Meyer watched the football game and the world watched with him. This determination to do what he wants to do and to let the chips fall where they may has been the key to Russ Meyer’s success. True to his passions, he tapped into his own fantasies and his audience followed. Russ Meyer did not invent the world’s preoccupation with big breasts but he sure has made the most of it. Since the mid-sixties his films, which glorify as he might describe it “assault with a deadly bosom,” have scored legions of fans internationally.

I interrupt Mr. Meyer, who is also scribbling steadily into a yellow legal pad, to introduce myself and ask if I might call sometime to keep up with news about his company. “Sure,” he tells me, passing on the number, “and if I happen to be in Europe, you can talk to my big-breasted bookkeeper or amply endowed secretary”. The next time I am in Los Angeles, I telephone Russ Meyer and after some coaxing, he agrees to an interview.

I am with my high heel journalist partner photographer Annie Sprinkle in a Thai restaurant just off the Sunset Strip; we are drinking a delicious blend of iced coffee and honey while I write down some questions to ask Russ Meyer. For a moment we are silent and then both at the same time ask, “Wonder what he likes to do with those fabulous breasts?”. I write down the question, we pay our check and hop in the car to begin the trip into the Hollywood Hills. After getting lost a few dozen times, we arrive at the home/museum of Russ Meyer.

Mr. Meyer does not like to throw anything away. This house was purchased as a location for *Beyond The Valley Of The Ultra Vixens*, one of the two films Russ Meyer made for 20th Century-Fox, and it is filled with movie memorabilia; “These films are my legacy,” says Mr. Meyer, “they are my children”.

Also precious to him are the relationships he has had with people over the years, particularly his voluptuous stars. It is a very happy day for the filmmaker as he has just sent his autobiography off to his agent. The book is entitled *Russ Meyer, The Rural Fellini*.

He says, “The ‘rural’ aspect comes in because most of my films are mostly shot in some shitkicker circumstance... The girls have one dress and one set of underwear. The men are mostly fighting or making love... Lots of big girls and dumb guys, that’s my style.

“I have been fortunate to know so many great ladies who have contributed hugely to my career, my life and my films... I think the book will show them how important they were to me and how much pleasure they gave me”.

Russ Meyer has been married three times and had countless love affairs.

“Big breasts are absolutely mandatory... Without big breasts, I play cards”.

Ms. Sprinkle and I at 38” are mere small potatoes to the filmmaker whose dream girls measure 48”-21”-34”.

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My column Veronica Vera’s New York appeared each month for a dozen marvelous years as I chronicled my sexual milieu and that of my vivid contemporaries. I had not walked away from Wall Street with a lot of money but I was rich in stories, my true treasures. For the topic of my very first column I chose the world I knew well, Wall Street. “Flashes of Wall Street” my wry take on that experience laid the ground work for going much deeper in my memoir chapter “Wall Street Assets.” I plan to show other connections between my early sex journalism and my 80s memoir project so an aspect of this new substack will be a kind of collaboration with myself. Here we go….

(Adam, 1983) FLASHES OF WALL STREET

Broad and Wall (ph. Robert Maxwell)

Any tour of Manhattan should begin at the beginning: Wall Street, the southern tip of the island, financial pulse of the nation and the place where our Founding Fathers used to whore around.

In the district known as “Downtown” Wall Street is just one of many paths carving their way through the canyons of skyscrapers and squat landmark buildings. For those of you who have never been there. I will describe Wall Street in very familiar language. Think of it as the center of a woman’s crotch.

On one end just around the area of the asshole are the, waters of the East River. Follow the route straight up and you will reach the black spirals of Trinity Church, resting place of Alexander Hamilton and other revolutionary immortals situated in the position of a big dark clit.

Scattered along the path like fleas in the pubic hair are the New York Stock Exchange, George Washington’s statue in front of the Federal Reserve building and such noble economic fortresses as Brown Brothers & Harriman, Bache & Company and the Seaman’s Bank for Savings.

My career as a glamour girl began on Wall Street, number 70 to be exact, in a building that recently escaped being swallowed by a parking lot. If any area in Manhattan could be called the source of its energy that place would be Downtown. Not so much because of all the wheeling and dealing that goes on there but because of the in· finite variety of strong personalities gathered in the tiny space.

There are some that I remember vividly.

Lucy N. grew up poor in Puerto Rico. She has come to Wall Street to work in a brokerage house because she is determined never to be poor again. After taking stock of her assets, she has given her pussy a AAA rating.

Lucy knows that she is smarter than her older sister Eva, who has returned to Puerto Rico and is having an affair with a priest. She is luckier than her older brother Carlos, who lives in Spanish Harlem with a gay lover. Carlos might have been rich had be been born with the right equipment.

The hardworking hairdresser that Lucy married keeps her in fine clothes with tight skirts. When she sits down to any meeting, Lucy crosses at the knee a pair of long legs wrapped in sheer nylon. She dangles open-toed leather stilettos like pieces of meat in the face of the sharks. Lucy has a real sharp, dirty mind and every time she opens her lush full mouth to speak the perfume of her cunt floats up through her throat.

When she gets into over-the counter stock trading, she keeps her ears open as wide as her legs and finds out about all of the under-the-counter ways to make money. She makes enough to dump the hardworking hairdresser who was not such a picnic to live with in the first place. But her dreams of becoming as rich as her idol Liz Taylor elude her. She really does love to fuck and her hot Latin blood eventually overcomes her ambition for the dollar.

On a trip back to visit her family in Rio Piedras, she is impregnated by the handsome man who owns the local deli. Her high-heeled pumps never return to the pavements of Wall Street, but she was always happier in bare feet and a bikini anyway.

There are many topless bars Downtown and these are frequented by men such as Preston R. Actually Preston’s favorite place is further uptown at the Melody Burlesque. Preston is a lawyer but there are thousands of Prestons: stockbrokers, accountants, insurance executives, bank officers. They love to look at a naked woman-to look at her but not to touch her. Preston often frequents the Mardi Gras at the Melody where the girls walk through the aisles and encourage the men in the audience to stick fingers in their pussies in exchange for a few bucks tip.

Preston never slides his fingers inside. He tells himself that it is because he does not want to catch a disease, but it is really because he is too shy and his desires make him feel deliciously guilty. Preston is 30 but he’ll still be going to places like the Melody when he’s 65. Alone and anonymous, safe from the glare of the corporate fish bowl he luxuriates in the urgently sweet pleasure of his unruly cock as it presses against the confines of his white jockey briefs.

“When the stocks go up, the cocks go up”-or so the saying goes. But there is never a time when the libidos are forgotten. At lunch time on a sunny day around the New York Stock Exchange you can almost see the saliva dripping onto the sidewalk from the hungry mouths of the reporters and order clerks in their respective cotton smocks.

They stuff their mouths with dirty-water franks and enjoy the feminine scenery before returning to the loud fast circus on the floor of the Exchange. Stocks are not the only items up for sale on the Exchange. Some of the men are much more interested in such colorful sidelines as drug-dealing, bookmaking, gambling and, of course, loan-sharking, to name just a few.

Near the steps of the old Federal Reserve building a crowd gathers around a man who wears a top hat and a baggy suit covered with cardboard signs that proclaim, “Jesus Saves.” In Wall Street rumor has it that Jesus also invests.

Traffic flows very slowly against the throngs of pedestrians who fill the streets from nine to five. The best way to travel is by limousine, prefer.ably one that is owned rather than rented. Only the cars move slow. The people move fast, propelled by wet dreams of money or power or something nice and simple like a hard cock sliding into a juicy pussy. As a group they generate enough energy to fuel every computer and telephone line in the district

The photos which accompany this article are my own little Valentine to the Financial District, and that of my friend and photographer, Robert Maxwell. We both got our start Downtown doing far different things from what we do now. But as I said at the start of this story, in New York City it’s the very best place to begin.

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The 55th Anniversary of The Peoples’ Flag Show (PFS) at Judson Memorial Church spired me to come up with a contribution. The original PFS was a statement about censorship. This anniversary celebration invited artists to once again interrogate the American flag and its meaning in light of the present day. I decided to shed additional light on a work from my past that is still very relevant. The Post Porn Modernist Manifesto was first published as a page in the original program for Annie Sprinkle’s Post Porn Modernist Show which debuted in 1989 at the Harmony Theater NYC. Throughout the entire decade of the 1980s Annie Sprinkle and I had collaborated on many projects. We made magazines together, held Sprinkle/Vera salon events at 90 Lexington which was Annie’s home. By the end of the decade, Annie and I, still best friends, were each beginning separate projects. Annie was moving from porn to performance art and I had just seen the first student of what would become Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want to Be Girls. In 1989 the world was still very much in the middle of the AIDs crisis. In the United States sexual freedom was under attack and anti sex forces were blaming gays and sex workers for the plague. The sitting president Republican Ronald Reagan, for too long a time, did not acknowledge the existence of the AIDs pandemic. He also scrutinized funding for the arts and as a result members of Congress put pressure on the National Endowment to censure art that was considered sexually immoral. The newly popular field of performance art was particularly vulnerable in this atmosphere of fear.

Annie’s show was a celebration of sexual freedom. I had seen the rehearsals and knew all about its contents. Scenes included “10,000 Blowjobs” and “A Public Cervix Announcement.” In the spirit of our collaborations, and true to our motto of “Document everything” I volunteered to create the “playbill”, a program for Annie’s show. I wrote Annie’s two page bio, a friend Craig Russell contributed Annie paper dolls and a list of credits. Because of the political atmosphere, I felt there needed to be something in the program that would support Annie and her bold work which celebrated the healing nature of sex. It was important she not stand alone. Besides me, there were others who would stand with her. We belonged to a community of erotic artists, idealists and entrepreneurs. A guiding influence was the Dutch artist Willem DeRidder. In the early 80’s Annie’s lover Willem DeRidder, a member of the Fluxus, an international art collective of the 1960s and 70s was a mentor to both of us. Fluxus encouraged art born of everyday life. It was Willem who exhorted us to break free of the porn ghetto and to think of everything we did as art, a concept that guided the three of us in the making of the magazine Love 83 Post Art Art in America, now an archival treasure. The Fluxus movement reminded me of the Dada movement which had so fascinated me in college that I had made it the subject of my final term paper. The Dadaists included Marcel Duchamp who put a urinal on the wall of a gallery and signed it “R. Mutt, 1917.” Dadaists wrote manifestos to accompany their irreverent art events.The point that Fluxus and Dada shared was that art was free-flowing not regulated by an establishment. I decided that a manifesto would add some gravitas to Annie’s playbill, so I created one, type written on letter size white bond.

My words flowed easily. I championed all of the things that were under attack: our sexual bodies, sexually explicit art and expression, sex as an artistic medium. This was a shorthand for what Annie was presenting on stage. The only thing I denounced was censorship. We were in “the rubber age” because safer sex, sex with condoms was essential. I asked Rene Moncado, an artist with a great sense of humor and devotion to female anatomy illustrate the manifesto, so he drew theater curtains made of focused on a vulva with penile support. The night before the official opening I invited a bunch of friends and colleagues all of whom were engaged in erotic enterprises to have cocktails in my apartment. I presented the manifesto and invited those comrades to sign it. Present that first night were: Candida Royalle, Eric Kroll, Johnny Science, Edie Solow, Monica Napoleon, Linda Mac, Frank Moore, Alex M, Jeff Diamond, Smith, Michele Capozzi, Tuppy Owens, Rene “IATBA”, Leigh Gates, Annie Sprinkle. Added a bit later were Ms. Antoinette, Viqui Maggio, Gloria Leonard, Willem DeRidder, Emilio Cubeiro, Betty Dodson, Spider Webb, Veronica Hart. At the bottom of the page, I left one space blank so a member of the audience on receiving the playbill could choose to sign the manifesto. The program was used at the Harmony performances and then again when Annie performed the show at The Kitchen in New York. It wasn’t until very recently that I realized the manifesto had made its way around the world. A few years ago the Brazilian-American artist Eduardo Kac came to visit me. He told me that from 1980-82 when Brazil was under a military dictatorship, he and his cohort performed naked in the streets of Brazil as what they called The Porn Art Movement. He knew all about the manifesto and treated it as holy. I understood that if I searched on sites like Academia.edu I would find other mentions of the manifesto in other countries. This was tremendously gratifying to me. I began to share the manifesto. As a recipient of a 2016 Acker Prize, the award created by Clayton Patterson to celebrate New York City’s downtown artist community, I made copies of the manifesto on parchment, rolled it up as a scroll and included it in the Acker box given to all 40 winners that year. The PPM is among my archives now at the Schlesinger Library of Women’s Lives, Radcliffe Institue,Harvard U. More recently, I was invited to read a piece at the launch of Dirty Magazine’s issue 7, for which I had modeled nude and was interviewed about sex work and activism by associate editor Brynn Michaels aka “Prom Queef”. I could think of no more appropriate piece to read to those gathered than the Post Porn Modernist Manifesto. Dirty Magazine definitely carries on the PPM tradition. I brought extra signed copies and the audience clamored for them. With the ongoing culture wars of today I think we are in need of still more manifestos.

The Peoples’ Flag Show runs from November 9-November 15, 2025 at Judson Memorial. Entrance, 243 Thompson St. NYC. Flag viewing 5-9pm all week. Full schedule of events at JudsonCommons.org/arts. Opening Reception 11/11 6p.

As evidenced by a recent screening of “The Story of Joanna” the films created by erotic auteur Gerard (Deep Throat) Damiano Sr. continue to excite, provoke and disturb. The screening of Joanna was hosted by Gerard Damiano Jr. and his sister Christar. For the past five years the Damiano kids have made the restoration of their father’s films a personal project. Besides restoring these films, they are taking the movies to prestigious European cinema palaces where the work is eagerly awaited and celebrated, enhancing the legacy of their father, the man credited with starting the 70s porno chic era.

My personal history with Gerard Sr. goes back to 1982 when I popped my porn cherry and co-starred with my bestie Annie Sprinkle in the Damiano directed faux documentary “Consenting Adults.” I last saw Gerry in 2008 when Georgina Spelvin (star of The Devil in Miss Jones), Annie and I on the invitation of his children, flew to Fort Meyers to celebrate his 80th birthday. He was spry and still cracking jokes but a stroke took him not long after. I’ve stayed close with Gerard Jr. and Christar and I’ve followed the progress of their passion project, beginning with the 50th anniversary of Deep Throat in 2022 where I participated in a lively talkback. As a result I’ve met lots of young sex workers and erotic entrepreneurs who’ve supported these historic events. I’m proud to take my place as OG whore mom in this ever expanding community and they’ve attended pleasure activist events I’ve organized such as Sex Worker Sunday at Judson Memorial Church, a bastion of social justice and the arts where I am on the board.

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The NYC Joanna screening served as a kick-off to the Damianos’ next European tour. It took place at “Suckadelic Cinema” the creative funky lair of toymaker artist The Sucklord, located in New York’s Chinatown. The Sucklord told me his own family legacy was entwined with adjustable nipple clamps perfected by his mom and pop. I pronounced him a nippo baby.

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Invitees spanned the generations of sexual entertainment- purveyors, performers and fans. Dirty Magazine was represented by editor Ripley Soprano; multi-talented Brynn Michaels aka “Prom_Queef sported a new beau and skin-tight pants she’d knit herself. Model April Flores, performance art producer Caterina Bartha, Anthony Haden-Guest, author and cartoonist, socialite were among the very diversified crowd. Additional chairs were set up as the room filled to capacity. Just before the movie began Christar, decked out in black lace, asked how many of us had actually seen the movie. Only one person had and he had worked on the 4k restoration.

The Story of Joanna was Damiano Sr.’s loosely based version of the French S/M classic Story of O. More recently O has inspired Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels and prequels. In Story of Joanna tall, dark, handsome Jamie Gillis played Jason the millionaire. Terri Hall had so impressed Gerry with her skill as a ballerina, she won the part of the naive Joanna. The action took place at a sumptuous New Jersey mansion complete with butler Griffin (Zebedy Holt) and maid, Gena (Juliet Graham). Juliet was seated on a sofa in the front row as the evening’s very special guest of honor.

Gerard Jr. welcomed everyone and shared some of the film’s history including the history of those besides his father who were essential to the film’s creation. His knowledge is encylopedic and he could have gone on longer acknowledging the collaborative efforts involved but he knew we were all eager to see the movie which he and Christar had worked so hard to bring to us.

The 4k restoration was exquisite. The colors were rich and lush. There was a depth to the film that made you feel you could live inside it. It was thrilling to see and a throwback to the earlier era of porno chic when it was thought hardcore might actually crossover into mainstream and fulfill the dreams of many of those filmmakers like Damiano who hoped to also break through. But that was not the only throwback. The first sex scene in Joanna was clearly non-consensual. Joanna is taken from behind while she repeats “No, No, No, not like this, no” to an unheeding Jason. She says “no” until overwhelmed with pleasure she says, “Yes, Yes, Yes.” A fantasy that played well in the 70s but is cringe-worthy today. Seeing it reminded me how far we have come in sexual attitudes, etiquette and acceptable behavior.

At the movie’s conclusion the audience was slow to respond to the call for questions or comments, so I raised my hand. I felt someone needed to bring up the scene which I felt was the elephant in the room.

“I testified for freedom of expression in Washington in 1984, that said, I found the rape scene challenging.”

That said, I continued with plenty of reasons to applaud this movie, such as the extended ballet performed for the pleasure of Jason by Joanna and a male partner (Steven Lark). I had been blown away by young Jamie Gillis good looks and reminded those who might not have known of his heart throb status back in the day. I called the movie bold, and with that I gave up the floor to make room for other opinions.

Next, a woman about my age said, “My husband’s first comment was this isn’t porn, this is an art film with hard core sex scenes.” I was glad she had spoken because I felt what she had to say was so important to the artist’s intention. Gerry, always a bit of a philosopher, asked a question through this characters, “What is better... sex that grows out of love or love that grows out of pure sex?” The audience is left to ponder the answer. Following the unexpected success of Deep Throat Gerard Sr. felt empowered to make art, not porn. This is what inspires his children and fascinates a new audience.

Performer and intimacy coordinator April Flores commented on the beautiful props, location, costumes, make-up-Terri Hall as Joanna was swathed in furs, vintage jewels and elaborate gowns. (I had owned a smilar garter belt). Joanna’s eye make-up glistened with diamonds. Besides the de-rigeur girl on girl scene that featured Joanna with tonight’s special guest Juliette as Gena, there was a boy on boy scene with Griffin the butler “relaxing” master Jason at the conclusion of a massage. When the film came out in 1975 that blow job had to be cut from many screenings due to homophobia, but Gerard, Jr. included it in the restoration staying true to the original master/servant concept and the versatility of performers Jamie Gillis and Zebody Colt. Attendee, octogenarian Anthony Haden-Guest remarked how the massage and other offbeat sex scenes actually contributed to the story. In conversation later he did state his personal preference be that women be treated as equals in relationships. People remarked on the care taken in photographing the hardcore action, the extreme close-ups, the slow pace. The director of photography João Fernandes (credited as Harry Flecks) went on to a significant career in mainstream Hollywood. Gerard, Jr. hopes to reunite with him when Joanna screens in Brazil, part of their world tour. The final and best comment came from guest of honor Juliette Graham. She said, “When we were making this movie we didn’t give much thought to whether it would be remembered. We certainly didn’t think anyone would be talking about it fifty years later.” Yet, here we were.

The evening concluded with a presentation by the Sucklord of a work in progress, a town he was building with plastic like leggos. “Here is the movie theater, he said. He updated the marquee from '“Deep Throat ” and adding a tiny poster inside he said “You see they are screening “Story of Joanna.” He placed a tiny audience in seats to represent all of us. He added other shops and buildings then populated the town with weird little characters he had sculpted,formed from his imagination. Sucklord was making his own ideal world, a world that welcomed lust, fun, freaks and curiosity, just as Gerard Damiano Sr. had often envisioned. Sharing these movies and the conversations around them were keeping that vision alive.

The cream of Manhattan’s connoisseurs of kink gather to honor one of their own!

I was backstage alone in the dark. Leather straps secured my wrists and ankles to a big wooden X frame to which I was bound, spread-eagle.A red velvet curtain was suspended in front of me. The plush fabric rubbed softly against my exposed nipples. On the other side of the darkness a crowd waited with candles, hot burning bits of wax. Their voices murmured with excitement.

As the curtains parted my eyes were blinded by the bright fire of the candles flickering so near my naked breasts. The reflection of the flames danced over the gold locket dangling from the ring in my pierced left nipple. A single voice, that of my lover Mr. Vera, rang out in song and then every voice joined in to form a chorus that celebrated my name: Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Veronica, Happy Birthday to you!

Thanks to the love and generosity of my very good friends, my November 1983 birthday was one that has gone down in the sexual archives. The idea for the party came from my own darling, Mr. Vera. He had wanted to have the affair at his place, a high rise apartment we referred to as “the love nest in the sky” but when the prospective guests heard they might have to travel to the wilds of New Jersey they recoiled in terror.

Mr. Vera offered to supply everyone with a passport to guarantee their re-entry into the Big Apple. But short of hiring a fleet of limousines, those confirmed New Yorkers were determined to keep their collective ass on the east side of the Hudson.

The problem was solved when I visited Ms. Belle de Jour in connection with another piece for my Adam magazine column. The gracious dominatrix offered her bizarre salon for the occasion. I could think of no more perfect play land.

Belle’s well-appointed dungeon consisted of a large main room with a stage and complete sound and light system. This I foresaw as our disco lounge. A series of small rooms spanned the rest of the loft. One contained medieval torture devices such as a large wheel of (mis)fortune somewhat like those found at county fairs. On this a hapless victim could be strapped in and spun silly

Another room was the pride of Belle’s slave Donald who had constructed it. This was called the Pirelli room because it was completely lined in rubber. There was a hard rubber bed with shackles on each end and a pulley for tightening the shackles and stretching the victim at the same time.

The bathroom - no ordinary john -was outfitted with a doctor’s examining table and complete enema kit.-(For those in need of just a quick piss, there was another small toilet.) Just in back of the stage was the TV as in transvestite room with dressing table, make-up mirrors, wigs in all shades and ladies’ clothes in gentlemen’s sizes.

Relieved of the problem of location, Mr. Vera and I happily sent out the invitations to a real mix of people: my friends from the realms of porn, Mr. Vera’s Seventh Avenue garmento chums, several Wall Street tycoons, and assorted dominatrices and slaves. Even Adam editor Jared Rutter was coincidentally in town for the party which afforded him a real taste of my life, the source of “Veronica Vera’s New York”!

Being an experienced hostess as well as a dedicated glamour girl who does not like to break her fingernails I knew that I needed help in different areas. Slave Paul offered his services as bartender. He was in heaven as he sprinted about pouring champagne while checking out every beautiful woman in the room for possible future work. Megastar Candida Royalle found Paul’s number slipped into her jacket pocket the next morning with a plea that he be allowed to serve her.

It is no wonder that Paul was mesmerized by Candida in her sheer leopard dress. In fact, the poor man’s head was swimming from being in the same room with some of the most tantalizing women in porn, most of whom I’d come to know that spring at a baby shower for Veronica Hart. Gloria Leonard bared her legs provocatively in a very short, very tight black mini. Tiffany Clark wore her white leather suit like a second skin to reveal every curve. Samantha Fox arrived looking radiant after an evening of performing her sensational dance act, and my bestie Ms. Annie Sprinkle decided to dress somewhat conservatively in a plunging neckline that squeezed her bosom in gold leather

Master Billy Boy Blue manned the door with his dark, hulking frame. A 300-pound hunk of chocolate who dressed like a villainous cowboy, he wore all black except for the silver chains and handcuffs that dangled from his belt and the menacing silver studs that covered his hands. Master Billy had no problem discouraging prospective gate crashers whose cocks probably shriveled to the size of peanuts at the sight of our S&M Saint Peter. Only I knew that the best reward for this tower of strength would be to have a lady’s delicious golden shower drench his mountain of a body.

Our music was supervised by Bob, but when Bob showed up as Rhonda I did not recognize our bewigged and bewitching DJ.

Another exciting element had been added when just a few days before the party was to take place, my good friend Charles Gatewood, art photographer of the underworld, approached me with an idea. Two filmmakers had followed Charles’ career for a couple of years, filming Charles each time he went out to take some of his wonderful “forbidden photographs.” Charles suggested that the filmmakers be allowed to record the party as part of their documentary, Dances Sacred and Profane. They would shoot Charles while Charles shot the guests.

I thought it would be a great addition to the evening and so did every.one else. Tattooist extraordinaire Spider Webb, never one to be slow on the draw when there was a camera around, arrived with an entourage of rainbow-colored friends. He found an attractive new canvas when Mistress Anne Pierce arrived with her new slave Marta, a Dutch import

Just after Spider had put some finishing touches on the broad back of a willing client, Mistress Anne introduced Marta to all of us from center stage. The Mistress and her assistant Princess Kathleen stripped Marta of her clothes. All of the guests watched in fascination as Marta was tied up, played with and sensuously whipped.

After he sunk his teeth into Annie Sprinkle’s neck to anoint her with a vampire tattoo, Spider wiped a bit of saliva from his lips. Marta’s milky white skin, now made pink from the whipping proved irresistible so he proceeded to decorate Marta with flowers. (Anything more penetrative and the watchful Mistress Anne would have made mincemeat of the tattooist extraordinaire.

Though there was always something happening for the cameras, the party remained an intimate affair. Mr. Vera and I chatted with guests as I showed off his gift to me. It was a new gold locket I suspended from my nipple ring. On seeing it open to reveal our side by side photos, Gloria Leonard pronounced us the perfect match.

Not everyone at the party was experienced with S&M or familiar with the equipment in the loft, but every one was curious. A Wall Street financier walked in on a couple in the torture room. The man was strapped to the wheel and hung upside down while the woman sucked his cock. The financier, a true analyst, surveyed the scene and later wondered aloud to his wife why the woman had not choked when the man came in her mouth. His wife, a beautiful and adventuresome designer, led him back to the wheel where they might study the situation in more detail, first hand.

Porn star Marc Stevens also jumped on the wheel and everyone took great delight in teasing all six feet of Mr. 10 1/2 inches. Marc had always been very skillful at getting others to do what he wanted. Now we all had him under control and there was nothing he could do about it. He just kept laughing and spinning.

One of the busiest slaves of the night was Jim, who eagerly groveled at the feet of his Mistress Belle and with her permission offered himself to Mistress Brada.

Brada, in a Nazi cap, bore a striking resemblance to Marlene Dietrich. She showed Jim no mercy when she wrestled him to the floor and smothered his face with her leather clad rump

Jim offered his services again to coat the magnificent muscles of Roger the Bodybuilder. But I grabbed the olive oil out of Jim’s hand and passed it to Candida. (Some slaves can be so gluttonous!) The sight of Candida Royalle dancing around Roger as she made his body glisten excited everyone, especially Roger. He carried Candida off in his arms as a finale.

It was an opportunity for Mr. Vera and me to meet each other’s friends. His pals Howard and Fuzzy who showed up as a lion and a bunny rabbit respectively were among the hits of the party. Their costumes provided a nice contrast to the abundant leather gear. Fuzzy went home to fuck like a bunny with my friend Ms. Shapiro the geometry teacher. I just wonder if Fuzzy stayed dressed in his rabbit suit.

It was an unforgettable evening: Mistress Mir dressed as a rubber nun accompanied by her latex wrapped husband Tony; chef Robert Maxwell in a bowler hat with veil and a maribou feather jacket supervising Cynthia the six-foot-five TV maid; the delicious birthday cheese cake decorated so imaginatively by Annie Sprinkle (all the porn stars fought over the little lipstick tubes she had put on top). Mr. Vera danced a hot samba with Ms. Leonard, and I enjoyed rubbing my ass into the leather clad crotches of editor Rutter and he-man Dino D’Macho.

So that was how I happened to find myself confined in a tight-waisting corset and sheer crinoline, strapped to a torture frame while I struggled to blow out the candles on a big, gaudy cake. It was all just part of my very, very Happy Birthday.

Go to youtube: Dances Sacred & Profane Pt. 1 to view scenes from my birthday party.

New York’s AMC Empire 25 on 42nd street seemed the most appropriate venue to view Thomas Mignone’s Queen of Manhattan, a film that highlights the career of porn super star Vanessa Del Rio, nee Ana Maria Sanchez. The multiplex was next to the former site of the Avon 7, a notorious S&M theater where Bizarre Styles and some kinkier titles from Vanessa’s substantial oeuvre had helped fill the coffers through the 70s and into the 80s. Seated in my plush recliner, I was impressed with the half hour of trailers that previewed The Queen. Each featured powerful female lead characters and big names: Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Emma Thompson and Jennifer Lopez, another “Latin from Manhattan”…I was glad to see my good friend Vanessa sharing the screen with other major stars playing in LaserVison in a triumphant return to the ole Deuce. You may go to Thomas Mignone’s Queen of Manhattan expecting to learn how Vanessa del Rio earned respect and royal status in a business run by and for men. But this is no biopic. What you will see is a movie that’s more about the sleazy, misogynist, greedy, blood-thirsty New York world of fuck films. Other shows have explored the same territory with the same take. The Deuce ( with which Mignone had some involvement and for which I was a paid consultant with a cameo) had a more balanced look at the industry during the time because they spent three seasons moving us through the eras. Mignone zigzags back and forth through the timeline with little regard for accuracy, hurrying to get to the AIDS plague for optimum shock value

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Actress Vivian Lamoli who plays Vanessa is head- to- toe brown and beautiful, resembling VdR’s full lush lips, firm round thighs, rich dark mane -and she’s very believable as a potential sexpot. Ms. Lamoli is an accomplished actress with plenty of great credits under her garter belt. She’s a pleasure to see and she does a good job with what she’s given to do. The problem is, she isn’t given enough to do, or nothing very exciting. To move the plot along, Mignone has her pop out center screen in great costumes - glitzy stripper, domme, Latin dancer… and talk to the audience about which other character is gonna get whacked or how much she loves sex. But it’s too much tell and no show. This is a movie about a woman with a well-earned reputation as a wild, enthusiastic sex goddess with, alas, no exciting sex scene.

An early scene between Vanessa and Carley (Jesse Metcalfe) is powerful and could be complex, but it’s not further explored and they don’t meet up again. I wonder if some of Vanessa’s interactions with Carly or other male characters wound up on the cutting room floor to make room for the gore. Ms. Lamoli’s name is relegated to the bottom of the credits. The director wants us to get off more on scenes of violence than pleasure. (I instinctively covered my eyes a few times). Here’s where Mignone gets to use not only misogyny but homophobia as literal battering rams. The film begins in 1981 by which time Vanessa had actually starred in over fifty films, and won or been nominated for nearly a dozen awards, but we’ll never see that. It quickly hustles us back to the 70’s. I was never quite sure which decade we were in.

My date for the screening was my long time friend writer Viv Forlander who is Vanessa’s BFF. At the conclusion of the movie, we sat speechless as the credits rolled. Viv’s first comment was “I wish Vanessa had played Vanessa.” I stuck up for Ms. Lamoli. The problem: nobody was playing Vanessa. It just wasn’t in the script. “

“She actually planned how to be a sex goddess by studying her idol Isabel Sarli,” said Viv.

(A large poster of Argentine actress Isabel Sarli “the Glamour Queen” holds a place of honor in Vanessa’s home, today).

Isabel Sarli is mentioned by first name only and there may be a clip of her but all we get is cute little 8 year old Ana announcing gleefully “I wanna be a slut!” We don’t get any of the steps she took to achieve her ambition. Vanessa became an actual amazon when a romance brought her into the world of body building and she became marvelously pumped. The muscle was hinted at in a scene when VdR enters in a total white skintight pants outfit and Dominique (Drea DeMatteo) squeezes her arm clearly impressed. Would you have preferred to see Vanessa pumping iron with boyfriend muscleman Mike, the two of them hot and sweaty? I would. The scene of Vdr and her doomed friend Sandy so well played by Taryn Manning did not adequately spotlight Vanessa. In the scene, Vanessa and Sandy are sitting on a park bench with Vanessa giving Sandy one of her usual pep talks. They are interrupted by a fan who‘s hoping for a photo. He’s a tall, long haired white guy, kind of hippie looking. Since, as the movie tells us, VdR was originally promoted as a Latin bombshell to appeal to the brown and black communities, it would have been more illuminating to see three or four young Puerto Ricans clamor for her attention, bowing and dropping to the grass awe-struck before her, a harbinger of the legions of fans she has amassed. A mention of those early awards and nominations would have shown an evolution in the porn business and that was not the director’s vision. At the conclusion, we learn that Vanessa has come up in the world because instead of the trademark leopard jacket she’s worn throughout, she’s wearing white mink. Her amazing rise is cued as a fashion statement. Vanessa really was a queen (and still is) but we see that only in the movie’s title not the film’s execution.

The theater wasn’t crowded, just a handful of people (no pun intended) but these days folks stay away when they know certain shows stream quickly. As we turned to leave I noticed a well-dressed middle-aged black woman headed to the exit. Her name was Tamona and we chatted her up. Her comment: “Vanessa was EXTRAORDINARY; why did they make her just ordinary?”

Viv agreed. Yes, Tamona had nailed it. She told us that as a teen she used to sneak in to see Vanessa’s movies. Tamona told us she’s an educator who had previously written some off-Broadway plays. The movie was inspiring her to get back to writing plays. That’s the thing, a movie, doesn’t have to be great to inspire discussion, particularly when the movie has a strong sexual hook.

Tamona thought the director must have known the real Mickey character - played by veteran actor David Provall - or been fascinated by him. “The movie is really about him.’ she said, meaning the movie maker as well as that character. Mickey’s part of the story is a treasure trove of violence. Provall has aged and he looks even more scary. As for villains, I think he out-skeeves Richie Aprile, his memorable character on the Sopranos.

Another Soprano’s alumna Drea DeMatteo co-stars as Dominique, Vanessa’s supervisor and sometime confidante. Their scenes together are real and well-done but Dominique hints at a back story that would have been interesting to see.

Viv was worried about what to say to her Bestie as a review. Vanessa had asked us to tell her the truth. As it turns out, Vanessa was not surprised.It was exactly what she expected. She had not seen the completed film. She knew Mignone wanted to use her name as a way into the story he wanted to tell and to get other stars on board and raise more capital. She agreed to let him run with it. Esai Morales and other actors from hit tv shows signed on. Queen of Manhattan was completed in 2022. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Mignone made good on that run. Vanessa knew that her name would draw an audience and even if the movie wasn’t great her fans would want to see it and people would talk about it. All along she had told us that the movie really wasn’t about her. I guess we just didn’t want to hear her, we wanted to think otherwise because a well-crafted dramatization of the life and career of Vanessa Del Rio a true pleasure activist would be phenomenal.

Hope for the future

There are other films about women in pornography and they are initiated by women: a documentary about Robin Byrd with female producers is due from HBO. Gloria Leonard’s daughter Robin Leonardi has set up a Gloria biopic with a great production company and a Hollywood star. Artist photographer Barbara Nitke has written a feature which she hopes to shoot in 2026. A documentary about Club 90 the forty year friendship and porn star support group that includes Annie Sprinkle, Jane Hamilton (Veronica Hart), Candida Royalle, Gloria Leonard and me has a female writer and an academy award winning female director on board. The male take on the porn world is burdened too often with guilt and misogyny-filled cautionary tales. Women’s sexuality can be intimidating. I look forward to seeing more and more of the female gaze.

Anyone who would like to get deep inside Vanessa Del Rio can check out the book Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior the massive, fully illustrated, autobiography of VdR, edited by Dian Hanson, published by Taschen, in 2010. Her audiences can reach her via social media sites at Facebook and Instagram where she still charms the pants off tens of thousands of adoring fans. For a piece of Vanessa, visit http://stores.ebay.com/Vanessa-del-Rio-Memorabilia.

She personally signs each and every picture and on occasion will send a live kiss on a personalized thank you note. The movie Queen of Manhattan will begin streaming on October 14. I’d love to hear what you think..

In October 1982, I met Jared Rutter who was the editor of Adam, an adult magazine published in California. I had just begun my career in the world of pornography and I regaled him with stories of my adventures thus far. Jared interviewed me for Adam and advertised me on the cover as “The Sexiest Woman in New York.” I was so pleased with the intelligent yet outrageous tone of his interview that I proposed I be Adam magazine’s East Coast correspondent. Thus began “Veronica Vera’s New York”–my license to explore the sex life of the City for a dozen years. The column not only documented the demimonde, it was a chronicle of my life.

I reported on the people, places and events involved in adult entertainment and erotic art. I usually made myself part of the story, not an outsider. I was the star of a continuing movie in which I wrote all my own lines. Often, and especially at first, I found different photographers to illustrate my articles, or I took the photos myself. But the most fun and the best photos happened when Annie Sprinkle and I worked together. My best friend, Annie, had a great eye that complemented my take on the scene.

On one occasion, we went on the road to document an adult video trade show in New Jersey, and were accompanied by rock performer and memoirist Jennifer Blowdryer, author of The Laziest Secretary in the World, who served as Annie’s photo assistant. Taking a page from the gonzo school, we decided to refer to ourselves as “High-Heeled Journalists.” Afterward, Jennifer went off to pursue her multiple careers while Annie and I exploited the High-Heel Journalist identity and had business cards and postcards made up with that name.

I liked to say, “Times Square was my beat.” Times Square was the heart of New York’s commercial sex district. 42nd Street was its main artery, so the area was sometimes called “The Deuce.” In the first half of the 1980’s across 42nd Street near Eighth Avenue, marquee after marquee advertised the latest XXX flicks and performers like Marilyn Chambers in Insatiable, Blonde Heat, Kinky Thrill, Frisky Nymph, or Nympho Hookers, French Desires, and Hot Pink. They shared space on the block with Kung Fu movies such as Deadly Venom, Slice of Death, Savage Men Savage Beast…sex and violence reigned supreme. Times Square had the worst reputation in the City. First time visitors were warned not to go there. But it was the center of the porn world and I was drawn to it—especially to Show World Sex Emporium.

“Emporium” was a quaint word to describe this market of raunch, but it was quite accurate. Show World offered strip shows and live sex shows on stage, as well as opportunities to interact one-on-one with a performer in a peep show booth on the other side of a glass wall; private screening booths where film snippets could be paid for in three minute segments; a shop to purchase dildoes, platform stilettos, whips and handcuffs, plastic blow-up dolls and more.

Show World was part of a whole circuit of theaters in cities across the country where porn stars could perform solo acts on stage, usually as strippers. I referred to the circuit as the “Bumpy Burlesque Trail.” Show World was the most elaborate of all of these theaters, the jewel in the crown. I’d visited Show World on a few occasions to interview headline performers. Annie and I liked to brag that we could enter with a tape recorder and camera, get our interviews and photos complete with model releases, and leave “mission accomplished” in little over an hour. But I also liked to stay longer and cover the place more with more depth, interviewing not just one headliner, but the people who worked there on a regular or semi-regular basis. Sometimes I felt like an outsider, afraid that my questions would seem impertinent or, at worst, judgemental. I felt like I was different, not a real sex worker.

But I was very real and I decided to prove it, especially to myself.

Inside the Peep Show

The Walrus carried a brown paper bag into the glass booth. I call him “The Walrus” because his face was covered with long shaggy hair, sideburns, and a scraggly beard. The Walrus was not very attractive and he showed it by dressing like a slob. But armed with his brown paper bag and a pocket full of tokens, he was about to treat himself to a fantasy fuck.

He took his jar of Vaseline out of the brown paper bag and dropped a coin in the slot. The window shade rose very, very slowly to reveal me grinning at him from the other sid

The Walrus unzipped his baggy pants and pulled his big red cock through his fly. He spread the Vaseline over his penis and worked his hand up and down, up and down, over a familiar path. I leaned back in a high chair and planted a shiny stiletto pump on either side of the window. The Walrus extended his left hand to pick up the telephone.

“Hello,” he purred, sounding much better than he looked.

I cradled the phone under my chin, reached into my blouse and displayed my breasts. He stared at me from behind his thick glasses. I stared at The Walrus from behind my hard, dark nipples.

It was 1985, four years since the publication of my first explicit story in Variations, three years since I popped my porn cherry in a hardcore film. I enjoyed the sex biz but there’d been this little gnawing fear, this left over Catholic guilt, that one day I’d wind up a side-show attraction, a girl in a peep show. About five years earlier when I was spending time in Paris I had taken myself to a classic film called Lola Montez in which a notorious beauty looks back on her life and loves. She had many adventures and was even mistress to a king, but she is finally reduced to performing before rubes in a circus. It was based on the life of a real person and was a morality tale of what can happen when a woman lives outside the lines of propriety.

Would I be like Lola Montez? Would I have a sad fate and be punished for not following the rules laid out for me? When I decided to write about Show World–the 42nd Street sex emporium–I knew that I would put myself inside this cage, a tiny glass booth, where men drop their pants and their tokens to pay for the pleasure of seeing me naked. I guess what I wanted more than anything was to jump through this ring of fire to see if I could survive. The story was just an excuse.

The peep show was a seductive, rock & roll, neon cave that promised to all who entered some longed-for satisfaction. The customers sought an end to their frustrations. Most of these men walked around like zombies, their hands in their pockets, while through the disco dazzle the hawkers blasted promises through microphones:

“Hard core action upstairs in ten minutes! Girls! Girls! Girls! Wall-to-wall pussy!”

The people who work there were attracted, at first, by the money. It was a job, a way to pay the rent and put food and sometimes drugs on the table. But there were other hungers. Yes, each action was determined by the dollar. But there was also desire for affection and the need for a basic one-to-one human connection that motivated every person who walked through the door.

I learned a lot about The Walrus before he entered my booth. I interviewed him upstairs after we watched a strip show in the Triple Treat Theater. He was a bridge player. He read alot–one of those unwashed intellectuals. He even told me about his preference for Vaseline as an aid to jerking off. When he heard that I planned to spend a few hours working a booth, he ran across the street to Walgreen’s to purchase a king-sized jar of petroleum jelly.

The Walrus spent fifty dollars in my booth, pumping in one two-dollar token after another. He wagged his big tongue in circles up near the glass and pretended that we were kissing. His hairy mouth gobbled desperately at the phantom kisses. I was sorry for him, just for an instant, but then I felt a surge of power as I licked my lips and watched his tongue perform tricks in the air. He seemed to relish the kisses even more than the creamy explosion he left on the glass.

I interviewed Damian who came to work in a three-piece suit. He looked like he could have been a cocky young clerk on the floor of the [New York] Stock Exchange or a bright guy from a tough neighborhood who had decided to work his way up in a bank. Like any guy just starting out, he didn’t quite have his look together. A Brooklyn accent, patchy mustache, and the curls that crept over his collar gave him away. What Damian did have was plenty of ambition. His body jumped with it. Damian hoped to be a porn star. You might say he was perfecting his craft, tightening his act while he humped on stage in the Triple Treat Theater, for twenty five minutes, six times a day, sometimes six days a week.

His onstage partner was Baby Doll, a slim Haitian girl with a boyish quality. Her stiff black hair was cropped real short and her body was lithe, like a bow.

“We have some show stoppers, “ Damian told me. “There’s the sixty-nine we do with me standing up eating her and holding her upside down while she sucks my cock. We also have the ‘wheelbarrow’ – she bends over and puts her hands down on the floor, I stick my cock in her and wheel her around the room.”

“Don’t call them ‘teams,’” warned Ron Martin, the part-time poet and manager of the Triple Treat.

“You don’t hitch them to a wagon. These are performers.”

These performers, these teams, these women and men were engaged in a very unusual and controversial occupation–the Love Act. They did it for money.

Ivory and Major Motion had been working together for two years. Ivory called herself that because she wasn’t quite black and she wasn’t quite white. She was very beautiful, the color of strong coffee with cream. Ivory hoped one day to live on the island of Jamaica. When Ivory met Major Motion she was a virgin. They went out together for four months before they made love. Major Motion took his time with Ivory. He knew that she would be worth the wait. He wasn’t starved for sex because he had followed the family traditions established by his brother and got a job fucking on stage. Job opportunities for black men, especially those from impoverished neighborhoods, were in short supply. The men realized they had a better chance of making a living if they teamed up with a woman or women. The women understood a man could offer protection. Not long after Major Motion and Ivory became lovers, they began performing the Love Act on stage.

The men in the theater sat in quiet anticipation when Ivory entered the room. She danced on stage in a tight-fitting black dress. She was tall, very tall, at least 5 feet, ten inches, and most of it, legs–gorgeous long legs that came to perfect points at the tips of her toes. Her arms, legs and back showed a hint of muscle from workouts at the gym. Ivory wrapped her perfect body around the shabby back sofa on stage. Soon, she was completely naked. Her thick, curly hair formed a lush mane around her face. Her eyes were big dark almonds that looked out past the hypnotized stares of the audience.

She poured herself like golden rum over the couch. She lifted her ass high in the air and her dark bush became the focus of every eye in the house. Her cunt seemed to loom larger than life. It was a gateway to paradise and Major Motion was about to slide in.

He sauntered from the side of the stage to join his partner. While he casually stripped, she laid on her back, twisted her long legs toward the ceiling and played with her nipples. The Major’s thick, black tool popped out of his shorts. It was swollen with excitement, filled with the Major’s spunk and with the horny desire of every man in the house. The Major fucked Ivory gently. He fucked her hard. He kissed her nipples, her belly, her thighs. The Major buried his face between her legs. Ivory, the serpent, coiled around her man.

They were very careful to make sure the audience could see every move, could watch every inch of cock as it was swallowed by cunt. My pussy muscles twitched as if the Major’s cock was sliding in and out of my hole. A man a few seats to my left masturbated vigorously.

“Touch it, please touch it,” he begged me.

I admired his opportunism but ignored his request.

Major Motion and Ivory held back on the orgasm. They still had four more shows to do that day. The Major, like every stage stud, had to conserve his strength. Like the nutritionist in the health food store up the street had advised Damian:

“You’ve got to replenish your seminal fluids. If you don’t take care now, by the time you’re sixty, you’ll have shot your load.”

Ivory knew exactly how much money she could make from a full week of shows. She and the Major each made ten dollars for every twenty-five minute performance. They worked six days a week, six shows a day and sometimes double shifts. She said it was the money that kept her coming back. Her grandmother had left her a house and she had to pay off the mortgage. The men in her family all disappeared. But now there was Major Motion and he was daddy and lover and brother and lover. Ivory told me of her dream to open a body-building gym in Jamaica. I was rooting for her.

“There’s so much I want to do,” she said, “but I just don’t know how to get started.”

For Baby Doll, the money, too, was important. Baby Doll was twenty-one and the mother of a three-year-old daughter whom she raised alone. I asked her, somewhat timidly, if she ever regretted having a child without a husband. She told me:

“I used to feel bad when I had nothing to give my little girl. But I don’t feel bad anymore because now I earn the money to take care of her.”

Another dancer passed through the dressing room overheard her and added, “Right on, sister.”

I was so glad I asked.

Zoila who was called “Z” worked for a year as a booth baby before she was promoted to manager on the first floor. She was proud of her position. When I told her that I wanted to spend a few hours working in a booth, she looked at me like I was crazy. She had seen me all week, dressed in a conservative skirt and blouse as I interviewed her and all the other people in the three-tiered emporium. She was delighted, dollar signs dancing in her eyeballs, when I came downstairs, ready to work, in my black lace lingerie.

An eighty-year-old regular had a neat gimmick. He carried a big box of flimsy lingerie and offered to sell it to the performers real cheap. I had met him upstairs when he sold me a bra and then copped a feel when I tried it on. He entered my booth and pulled out his nearly one-hundred-year-old dick. It had a few hairs growing out of it that probably weren’t there when he was forty, but the thing still worked and he left a happy customer. As he made his exit, he pressed a buck tip into my palm. It felt nice to be appreciated. I later learned five bucks was a more common tip. Another man with a gruff voice and gold chains around his neck barked orders at me through the glass. He was the only one of a dozen who chose not to use the two way telephone. He only wanted to see my asshole.

Turn around. Spread your cheeks, Wider. Wider!”

He didn’t understand that I was a fucking goddess. I couldn’t wait for him to get off and get out. I thought,“You want to see an asshole, mister? Look in the mirror.”

Lines like that were made for guys like him. He was one of the few who didn’t ejaculate, but he was the one who could have used it most. He made me sorry I’d gotten into the booth and that was a good wake-up call. It made me realize that this could be a very, very hard job.

I got along well with the other women in the row of cubicles. Only one was pissed because until I showed up she was the only white woman on the downstairs block. The other white women all worked upstairs on the main level. The angry woman walked off the floor, an offense that rated a fine from Z. Z ran a tight ship. She was protective of the women who worked with her, but she believed in nipping trouble in the bud. When there were not enough women on duty in the booths, Z had to fill in herself and this manager had no desire to rejoin the labor force.

During my two hour stay in the booth, I took in one hundred twelve dollars out of a possible one hundred eighty if the book had been full, non-stop. My end was just under forty-five dollars. With minimum wage per hour in 1985 at three dollars, thirty-five cents, my twenty-two, fifty per hour looked pretty good for a couple of hours work. But could I do it for six or eight hours a day, five or six days a week? A lip-licking windup doll. Not all of the women could. The most reliable workers had well-lit spots on the main floor in a place nicknamed “the hill.” The women who showed up only when they felt like it worked in a dark corner referred to charmingly as “death row.”

When I returned a few days later to pick up my check, I stopped in to see Ron, the boss of the Triple Treat Theater. He told me that he had heard about my time in the booth and was sorry to have missed it. He offered me ten dollars to show him my tits. He laid a ten on the table. I unbuttoned my blouse, gave him a look at my naked breasts and scooped up the ten in my greedy fist. I had gotten the hang of this place. Ron saw the big smile on my face and decided he’d parted with his ten too easily.

“How about paying me ten bucks to see my cock,” he said.

I laughed in his face and said, “I’ve seen enough dicks this week to last me quite a while and every one of them got whipped out for free.”

In the game of sex and money, it was men who came up with the cash. Men also created the venues and made the rules. At Show World sex was a commodity. Transactions were efficient and there were rules. The labor force, which consisted mostly of women, were not allowed to work outside the rules. If a worker did, they could be arrested for prostitution. The men who set the rules wanted to have it all. Men ruled over women’s bodies. It had been the same in the church and the finance market, but it was most clear on The Deuce, in the sexual marketplace.

My allegiance was with women who broke the rules.

Miki Demarest was so excited she could not stand still. Breast pockets flapping, jumping like an aerobics instructor on firm, round thighs, she paced the front of the room, anticipating the start of the meeting. Miki was ready. She’d organized a contingent of sex workers to come to New York from San Francisco as convention delegates to the 25th anniversary conference of the National Organization For Women (NOW). Since its inception, NOW’s policy on pornography, as reflected in the group’s resolutions, has been that the sex industry only exploits and abuses women. It was time, said Miki, publisher of the San Francisco-based sexpaper Spectator, to put the record straight.

What better example of a porn star unscathed than Nina Hartley—beautiful, charming, articulate! If the sex industry had a recruitment poster, Nina would be on it, preferably smiling while offering that glorious buttocks view. Nina joined Miki, and so did Kat Sunlove who is a fantasy facilitator/Spectator business manager /Nina’s playmate. Also in the group is Bobby Lilly, Nina’s “wife”… (It’s impossible to keep the libidinous exploits of these San Franciscans straight, so don’t even try. We’ll all come together soon, I promise.)

Bobby Lilly is one of the organizers of Cal-Act (Californians Against Censorship) and publishes that group’s very informative newsletter. Writer Carol Queen and Samantha “The Safe-Sexhibitionist” Miller came as delegates. These two party girls about town were also the unofficial representatives of COYOTE, the National Task Force On Prostitution. Sociologist Wendy Chapkis provided a unique addition to this bevy of glamour girls. The lesbian author of Beauty Secrets, a book that details the politics of appearance, sported a blonde butch cut and full, lush moustache.

Miki had told me of her plans a few months prior to the conference. She had already begun working within NOW as the chairperson of NOW San Francisco’s Task Force on Sex Work and Pornography.

“Of course, you’ll go to the conference, right Veronica..?”

“Well…Miki…” I really wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of working within that very large group.

“But they influence government policies that affect all of us,” argued Miki.

I knew she had a point. But, of course, the real clincher was that I was sure that with all of those great women involved, we were bound to have fun. Annie Sprinkle organized a table where we could give away condoms and sell books, videos, magazines, buttons that would promote our propaganda—”our” being the name we took for ourselves, “The Union Labia—Sex Positive Feminists.” The sign hung proudly over our booth. P.O.N.Y. rider Tracy Quan and Annie cracked the whip over the P.O.N.Y. riders so that issue #2 of the P.O.N.Y XPress made it hot off the press to the conference.

P.O.N.Y.’s legal committee chairperson Vanessa Andressa forgot her vow to never again attend a NOW meeting—NEVER! NEVER!—joined us, as did Domine Blue, who is always on the lookout to broaden her career horizons. Betty Dodson, the mistress of masturbation, had put in her time at NOW meetings years earlier. She did not go to the conference, but she invited us all to her place on Saturday night to share her hands-on method of inspiration. We would also be joined on Saturday by America’s most exposed prostitute, Dolores French, author of Working. Dolores flew up from Atlanta.

All of us except Betty and Dolores were at the NOW meeting with Miki on Friday afternoon. It was an “issues hearing” to consider new resolutons on pornography and sex work. As extra ammo for our delegation, Miki arranged for Priscilla Alexander to fly in from Geneva. Priscilla was not only a former NOW officer, she was thoroughly committed to sex workers’ rights and a director of COYOTE. She’d begun working in Geneva a few years ago, when her experience in AIDS issues made her a prime candidate for a job with WHO (World Health Organization). Both we of The Union Labia and her friends in NOW welcomed Priscilla with open arms. As a special surprise, Annie presented her with P.O.N.Y.’s Aphrodite Award, our highest honor, given only to sex workers, in recognition of distinguished “sexual service to the community.”

The hearing on the resolutions provided us with an introduction to NOW lingo and procedures. Everything was run according to Robert’s Rules: motions and amendments, calls to question, and points of information. . . It was slow going. Some of the most popular words of the day: feminist, activist, patriarchy and violence. There were a number of meetings that centered on the problem of male violence, a favorite NOW topic. Another prevailing view reflected in NOW’s present policies is that pornography is a reflection of, or contributes to male violence toward women. In order to correct this idea, Miki and the women from San Francisco had come to the conference with a new set of resolutions that proposed NOW set up a task force to review its policies on pornography and sex work. We weren’t telling NOW how to think, we were just letting them know that not all of us NOW members agreed with present policies, and we wanted some time set aside to reconsider this subject which had already so split the feminist movement. This time we proposed there be some actual sex workers on the committee informing NOW’s opinion.

Our resolution passed this initial stage, its success due to the fact that it made sense, but more than that, to the enthusiasm and passion that came from Miki, Bobby, Priscilla…all of the sex positive fems who had spent many hours in research and preparation. I’d witnessed my house guest Safe Sex Samantha Miller, pore over the thick pile of studies and opinions that Miki had given her as background info. Reading most of that stuff was pretty depresssing and frustrating, particularly the gory stories that used faulty logic to prove the porn/violence connection.

A week prior to the conference I’d read rock writer Dave Marsh’s book 50 Ways to Fight Censorship (Thunder Mouth Press) in which he gives a great argument against this rationale for repression. “What about all of those serial killers who claimed they were led to their crimes by direct orders from god? Does this claim mean we must ban the bible?” Even without the resolutions and preparations, the mere fact of our happy, healthy presence at the conference counteracted the claims of the anti-porn brigade. My red and white, off the shoulder polka dot number was definitely the best dress of the day, perhaps of the entire conference, and helped to win us friends. Fashion statements can speak louder than words.

Our resolution, however, got bogged down in the plenary session on the last day. There were a lot of resolutions ahead of ours and all of them had to do with women’s bodies. Porn issues were number one in the minds of the Union Labia, but for the NOW directors, the primary issues were opposing the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and overturning the Court’s decision to uphold the “gag-rule” that prevents government-funded clinics from including abortion counselling in their services.

Thomas was described by NOW acting president Patricia Ireland, who quoted from a formal resolution, as “an insult to the legacy of Thurgood Marshall and a whole generation of work for human rights.” His record as the Reagan-appointed chairman of the Economic Opportunities Commission was cited as proof of his disdain and lack of understanding for the poor and minorities, including women. It was a foregone conclusion, according to NOW, that Thomas would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court Decision that protects freedom of reproductive choice.

Continuing the “we mean business” approach, for the first time in its 25-year history, NOW officially adopted a policy of civil disobedience. Referring to the planned march on Washington for freedom of choice, Patricia Ireland urged the one thousand women gathered at the opening ceremonies, “I want one million people in the streets in April, 1992. Will you be there?” The grand ballroom of the Hilton Hotel resounded with cheers.

“We Won’t Go Back” was the title of another resolution that was adopted into NOW policy. It referred to the days before Roe v. Wade, the days of wire hangers and unsafe, illegal abortions. The feminists are tired and pissed. “No more Daddy’s little girl, ” warned lawyer and prostitutes rights activist Flo Kennedy. a NOW founding member. As to Thomas, she recommended, “Kill him immediately… kill him politically.” Ever-practical, Flo called for women to stage a buying boycott, a holiday boycott —economic sanctions to pressure an unresponsive government.— “N.O.W. means now!” she said.

For all of the enthusiasm mustered at the opening ceremonies and later at the closing plenary sessions when the resolutions were adopted, my feeling about the conference in general was that the energy level was low. One thousand people did not seem like a lot to attend a national conference of “the world’s largest feminist organization.” Maybe it was the economic climate that caused a slump. At our Union Labia booth, we gave away lots of free condoms, but the sales of other products barely covered our expenses. Even the “Safe Sex Slut” buttons, usually as popular as blow-jobs, were moving slow. Nor did any of the other booths seem to be doing much business. Everyone, however. was very curious about our work and open to conversation. Any flack we might have gotten was absorbed by the F.B.I. who had a table in the next aisle.

NOW members were really pissed that the FBI had set up a recruitment table at the conference. “They were going to be here anyway,” respondsd Patricia Ireland, “so we figured we would make them pay.” Later she admitted that allowing the F.B.I. presence had been “a serious political error.” Career-minded Domine Blue took the opportunity to pick up an application for an F.B.I. desk job. I think she’d better stick to fantasy facilitating. “Agent Blue” sounds more like a laundry detergent to me.

One of the highlights of the conference was Saturday’s outdoor march and rally “For Women’s Lives.” But for the Union Labia, a far more exciting and meaningful event came a bit later in the day, not on the streets but in the temple of the goddess, the home of Betty Dodson, when eight of the Union Labia plugged in our vibrators and shared a ritual. We came together in a jill-off.

The idea for this get-together had come a few days before the conference, when Samantha and I visited Betty. It was a really exciting thing about this meeting of the San Franciso libido liberals joining the P.O.N.Y. riders, and a masturbation ritual seemed like the most natural thing to do. “Wait a minute, I don’t want to feel like I am working,” said Betty referring to her famous bodysex workshops in which she guides women into experiencing the pleasure and power of their vulvas.

Nina says that during her live stage shows, She gives her audience instructions in making love to her pussy. “My clit loves a soft steady beat,” she says.

Betty agrees, “Give me a steady beat,” she says. “This is my dance, don’t you go faster. I’ll do the dancing.”

Then Sam shows her lips. so fragile and delicately shaped. In the midst of all this pink, I lower my jumpsuit and show off my multicolored black and pink cunt. Betty calls it “the black orchid.” As the energy begins to shift in the direction of a more physical rather than philosophical evening, Miki and Bobby leave discreetly.

I get up to go to the toilet and decide that I’ll start the ball rolling by returning naked. No one says a word as I spread myself on the floor over some pillows. “Let’s lounge around like the goddesses we are.” That’s all the prompting the others need. It’s off with the clothes and out with the vibrators. Dolores has come prepared with a black lace peignoir, the rest of us are nude.

We send out energy to the NOW women, to Patricia Ireland, to Flo Kennedy, to Gloria Steinem. “Next year let’s have a “whorspitality suite,” suggests Carol Queen. “We’ll serve whores d’oeuvres,” says Vanessa. Dolores French likes the idea. “Annie can do her Sluts & Goddesses workshop.”

“I’ll cover the magazine rights.”

“I’ve got HBO.”

‘We can make a video right at the conference, invite enthusiastic amateurs to be in
it.”

“The Eager Beavers.”

When the giggling subsides, we plug in our Hitachis. There is one Panabrator and Dolores French definitely has the hots for it. Sometimes holding hands, sometimes alone, sometimes together, we ride the crest of our orgasms. Breathing deeply, undulating, appreciating ourselves and each other, owning our own bodies, our own pleasure, in this ritual of self-empowerment. The Union Labia is cuntpositive!

As for NOW, most important, we made our presence known. Our resolution might have been stalled for the moment, but we intend to see it through. Sex-positive feminists keep on coming.

From the appearance of that first ad my phone began to ring off the hook. At the other end of the line were “the often nervous, usually husky, sometimes breathy, mostly polite, and always excited voices of the Stephanies, Joanns and Denises…those who had been raised as men who wanted to find the woman inside.”* A year later, I decided to try a more mainstream publication by submitting an ad to New York Magazine’s “personal services” a classified back page that included massage parlors, escorts and houses of domination. My school was already named Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls, but as the magazine’s fees were based on word count, for the ad I shortened the name to Miss Vera’s Crossdressing Academy. Simple and effective, or so I thought. I was immediately rejected by the monitors of that section. Crossdressing as a term and an activity was a no-no on those pages and the word transgender was hardly in use and barely understood. I knew that plenty of crossdressers were visiting other advertisers - the dommes and escorts- and their needs were not being taken as seriously as I offered in my academy curriculum. In most cases the “dress up” consisted of little more than some tacky lingerie. Forced sissification and humiliation were often part of the scenario.This was just the opposite of what I offered. I submitted a revised ad that didn’t mention the taboo word “crossdressing”, “Explore your dreams in an uplifting environment.” The second rejection came swiftly. “Now we know what you do, so you cannot advertise.” I sat down and wrote the New York editor-in-chief a letter, highlighting the benefits of my project to a niche and eager clientele. I waited for a response, but none came.

In the meantime, my dear friend and mentor fashion designer Ms.Antoinette was coming to town to participate in the Retail Expo at Javits Center. Antoinette had been hugely instrumental in my education regarding all aspects of kink. I decided to throw a party in her honor. I was running my academy classes in the apartment I inherited from my husband which some friends, including early deans (academy instructors), were transforming into a pretty pink studio. With all the work that was being put into the place, I thought “Why not throw a party for the Academy with Ms. Antoinette as guest of honor. I had some reservations. My ultimate goal was to continue my career as a writer. I had only begun the academy to help finance that 1980s memoir. I thought if I call attention to myself with this crossdressing business, it’s such a flamboyant occupation, maybe no one will ever think of me as a writer again. But no publisher was knocking down my door, moreover, I was having fun with the academy project, bringing a subject out of the darkness into the light. With the help of my “Dean of Details” Miss Viqui an illustrator, I created a beautiful brochure with a portrait by Eric Kroll of me in wings as “Cinderfella’s Fairy Godmother”

There were also photos of students who consented to be “our academy supermodels”, like Jennifer James in a corset and pouffy crinolines, photographed by Annie Sprinkle.The academy had already begun to capture people’s imaginations. Jennifer and two other academy students, April and Raquel, begged to serve the party as French maids and I agreed. One of my best friends showed our spiffy brochure to George Rush, then a freelance reporter. George pitched the story of the academy and our launch party to his editors at New York Magazine. A different breed from the ad takers, they were intrigued by the story. (Perhaps my letter to the editor had helped). When they learned “guys in frou frou outfits” would be our French Maids they asked if they could send a photographer. My friends and I were far from camera shy. We were media whores! As for the maids Jennifer and April were fine with photos; Raquel said “Just my legs.” The result was a full page illustrated story that appeared in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer section in February, 1993.

Shortly after that story appeared, I went back to the personal services section and in a perfect example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, the monitors repeated “We’ve already told you we won’t accept your ad” I immediately referred them to our fabulous story on the Intelligencer page of their very own magazine. I was allowed to place an ad with the full name of my academy. I ran my ad a few times, but by then, I didn’t really need it. That editorial story initiated a publicity snowball that brought print, tv and radio media to our doors. More and more individuals called to schedule our private lessons. Courses ranged from a couple of hours to femme intensives that ran a couple of days. For the callers who were sincere but for various reasons might never attend in person, I created pre-recorded phone lessons. I offered a menu of eight lessons in such courses as “How to walk in high heels”, “How to apply lipstick” “Who is your femmeself?” Callers paid $2.99 per minute. This gave the student a more economical experience and helped subsidize my work. Those phone lessons would become the basis of my first book. Miss Vera’s became known internationally and gender explorers began to visit from across the country and around the world. Every continent was represented in our student body save for Antartica and Oceania. Myself and the academy deans continued personal classes for the next thirty years, during which time I wrote three books based on the school: Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want To Be Girls 1996, Tips, Tales and Teachings from the dean of the world’s first crossdressing academy; Miss Vera’s Crossdress for Success, A resource guide, 2002, and Miss Vera’s CrossGender Fun For All, 2016. All are still available. Though some of the terms have changed, the ideas are still relevant - perhaps even more so. In all of my writing, I’ve emphasized the ways in which nature and nurture, advances in science and medicine, societal stresses, religious repression and more all intersect and contribute to our understanding of gender in the present moment.

As for the memoir of the 1980s I’m thrilled to be completing that book now and I’m excited to be sharing my stories and memoir previews with you, my substack readers. Meanwhile, my papers are safely preserved at the Schlesinger Library of Harvard University. The history of our Academy, its students, the deans and our early influences are preserved at that other fine academy for the education and edification of all. These days, as fear mongers try to erase the progress made to acknowledge the lives and the rights of transgender folk, preserving that history is more important than ever.

I hope that history gives courage to the many who still live in the closet, and inspires the next generational shift away from an outdated and imposed gender binary. The censors could not stop my Academy’s progress 30 years ago - we are part of a movement whose time has come.

*Excerpts from my first book Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls, (Doubleday,1996).

Dear Readers,

This new substack is an opportunity for me to be free, to publish my immediate thoughts or the treasures from my archives. At this point in my long and happy life I have been known by many names and had different voices. Here you will meet the diverse aspects of me and hopefully come to understand my personal experience of womanhood and, even more, the complexity of what it is to be human. There’s little Mary, the good girl, and slutty Veronica, Miss Vera muse to gender explorers and dean of the Academy. There’s activist Veronica Vera and church lady Veronica Cottingham. I’ve been twice a blushing bride and twice a not-so merry widow. All will show up in my words. You can enjoy tales from my 1980s sex journalism, excerpts and lessons from my landmark transgender books, get an early look at my memoir in progress or discover an unpublished masterpiece.

Whether you are new to my life and art or somewhat familiar, I am thrilled that you might follow me on this latest venture, a coming together that I hope will inspire you in your own quest for truth and integrity. You are essential in this process and I’ll do my best to captivate you.

My Substack will offer:

• Vintage articles republished from my magazine column Veronica Vera’s New York which charted the outrageous NYC sex scene of the 1980s

• Behind-the-scenes stories of Miss Vera’s Crossdressing Academy

• Current thoughts on sex, gender, art and love

• Excerpts my forthcoming memoir, Bare Witness

Some additional things to know: I believe in magic. I believe in ghosts. I believe in intuition and visions. I believe in the wisdom of pleasure and the power of love. So let’s have fun!

With pleasure,

Veronica Vera 💋