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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Sexerati Interviews: Audacia Ray

filed under: Erotic Elite, Sexerati Interviews by Lux Nightmare

Here’s a funny story: I met Audacia Ray years ago, back when we were both dating the same loser boy. Since said boy was a loser, he did his best to keep us from being friends. Years later, when we’d both ditched him and moved on to better things, we ran into each other at a show and reconnected. And now she’s one of my favorite smart sex people and a good friend to boot. I got ahold of her recently, and picked her brains about making porn, writing about sex, and being public about your private life.

Complete the following sentence. Audacia Ray is..
A New Yorker (going on 8 years), a sex worker rights advocate, kinda-former alt model, safer sex educator, professional porn watcher, curator, porn director, Executive Editor of $pread (a magazine by and for sex workers), contributor to Fleshbot, and a ham-and-cheese sandwich aficionado.

You have a book, “Naked on the Internet,” coming out. What’s it about?
My book is about female sexuality and the Internet. Most media done about this topic is polarized into two camps: the Internet is coming to get your daughters! OR the Internet is a glorious, hedonistic playground! I attempt to go beyond this and explore the ways in which both of these statements are true and false for different women. Most importantly, my book is about the real ways that women use the Internet in their sexual (and sex industry) exploration. I really loathe the overuse of the words “cyber” and “virtual” in mainstream media, because I think that though digital, interactions and explorations women participate in via the Internet are very real and hold a lot of emotional weight for women.

Do you think the Internet has altered our relationship to sex? What’s changed? Has any one group been affected more than others?
Absolutely. The Internet makes it possible for people to engage with their sexualities on a prurient as well as intellectual level, and encourages the exploration of previously taboo subjects. Most importantly, people can create spaces on the Internet to explore desires that they may have thought they were alone in having, and can use it to connect with like-minded people who they may not otherwise have met.

You have a blog, Waking Vixen. How did you get into blogging? Has your relationship to your blog — or to blogging — changed over the years? Has your blog affected any of your real life relationships?
I started my blog in July 2004, after I’d spent a few years reading sex blogs. Initially, my blog was a way to record and make sense of the weird complexities of my life: I was just about to start graduate school, had recently started doing sex work, was slutting around a lot, was involved in my first open relationship, and was doing PR, model and production management for a porn site. The blog quickly took a turn for the highly personal – I told intimate details of my sex and love life as well as my experiences as a sex worker. This has shifted a lot over the years I’ve been writing – due to my wanting to keep some parts of my life to myself, partly because of the number of real life friends (and family members) I have reading the blog. It has definitely affected my real life relationships – I’ll never forget the aftermath of telling my parents about my “other” life, when they read everything and my dad said, “The world doesn’t need to know that you sucked three cocks at once!” That is forever burned into my brain.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the idea that the Internet — and, specifically, sites like MySpace — has changed our concept of privacy, making us devalue the idea of a private self. Where do you draw the line between public and private? How much of yourself are you willing to put out into the public space?
I put a lot of myself out there for public scrutiny and consumption, though I think I am just beginning to learn how to balance my public and private lives. I don’t buy into the sensationalistic idea that the Internet is inherently a threat to privacy (though it can be), but I do think the Internet is assisting in a shift in what privacy is and means. What people expose online, though to some it may be highly personal, is usually just a piece of the picture – a representation. Just because someone blogs about her sex life or posts naked pictures online doesn’t really mean that the world knows and understands here. Although two-way online interactions (correspondence, instant messages) can create real intimacy and connection between people, one-way interactions (reading a blog, looking at photos) creates something very different. Of course a reader/viewer can read between the lines and understand things that the person putting that stuff out there may not fully understand about himself, but that doesn’t mean the reader/viewer knows that person – the person doing the exposing still has privacy.

Your first ever porn film (”The Bi Apple”) came out in late February. Was it strange to make the shift from participating in online porn to working in film porn? What are some of the differences between the two businesses?
Actually, it really wasn’t that strange. I’d been on sets for both online and film porn before so I kind of knew the drill. One of the major difference for me was working for a big company instead of just myself and the fact that the process towards releasing a DVD takes what seems like an eternity to someone who is used to having pictures posted hours after doing a shoot. The other big difference was the fact that I actually had a budget to make the movie – I had never done a project with a budget before, I’m used to scraping together money when I need it. That was totally awesome, and it made me really proud to actually be able to pay people for their hard work.

Any advice for aspiring porn directors?
Recognize that porn is a business and make the best business deal you can when you’re getting ready to make your movie. Hire someone to do production management on the days of your shoot and the days before so you don’t have to think about paperwork and lunches and what not. Expect things to go wrong and have a plan B (and C and D). Respect your performers and the difficult job they have. Have a sense of humor – making porn is weird and funny.

Any other projects you’d like our readers to know about?
I am in the process of curating the second annual Sex Worker Visions art show, which opens at Arena Studios in New York City on Tuesday, May 1. The exhibition will show art work by and about sex workers and takes place in a working dungeon. We are showing fine art like we did last year, and we’re also accepting arts-and-crafts submissions: sex workers around the country (plus Canada and elsewhere!) are encouraged to send painted, decorated or otherwise mutilated dildos for display in the show. Submission guidelines to both parts of the show are posted at $pread magazine.

And lastly: what, in your opinion, is the most important part of a healthy sex life?
One word: communication.

Intrigued? Catch up with Audacia over at Waking Vixen.  Photo courtesy Niesha Studio.

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