Spy Emerson: performance artist, salacious sex goddess and owner/purveyor of the infamous Hook-Up Truck, adorned the stage of Albany’s historic Ivy Room Monday, for an iterative performance of Happy Forever, her vaudevillian, burlesque-esque variety-and-game show of sin, surrealism and surprise. Happy Forever has taken numerous shapes and forms over its 20-year

Welcome to Brain-Throbs & Blow Jobs, a brand-new column that will be highlighting the great minds and perspectives of Bay Area sex workers through interviews and photo portraits. A few short years ago, adult film performer Stoya released two tweets that broke the porn industry’s silence about sexual violence and

IT PAYS by Allyson Darling   Violet-colored feathers encircled my eyes; the elastic tied around my head pulled at my hair — a Mardi Gras mask wasn’t exactly the item I had imagined wearing to protect my identity. I lied on my stomach with my feet splayed out on a

Several years ago when I was what could only charitably be termed as a “baby” queer, I had gone to meet some friends for a drink at the carpeted mineshaft that was the former incarnation of the Midnight Sun on Pride Friday.  The Castro was already pulsating with hundreds of

You met someone cute! And funny! And super open minded! But before you let yourself get attached you know you have to tell them that sometimes you have sex with other people, for money. Or maybe you don’t. Sex workers have been keeping these kinds of secrets for eons. It was easier

The best part about being a woman in the 21st century is having whatever kind of sex you want, with whoever you want, and no one will burn you alive for witchcraft! It helps you weed out the douchebags faster, and we have the medical technology to both prevent and

Lifetime TV, which launched some three decades ago as the “network for women”, (as in real life desperate housewives) has grown into a platform which is unafraid to tell real life stories that the major networks no longer have the guts to address. Lifetime has, on occasion, presented in-house productions