Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is showing portraits of Supermodels from the 1970s and 1980s taken in 2009. Timothy writes: “I have always been interested in how we deal with aging in our hopelessly youth oriented society. These beautiful and amazing women, now in their fifties, were once the reigning queens of American beauty, and the ultimate icons of world-wide marketing.” The exhibit is at the Steven Kasher Gallery in NYC from January 28 to February 27.

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My first job after graduating from college was as a social worker in a nursing home. I was 20 years old and I spent 8 hours of my day with people 4 times my age. I sat with them and talked with them about their lives. They showed me photos of themselves when they were young and told me their stories. I met a former CIA agent (she was senile, so I couldn’t get any stories from her), veterans of World War 2, farmers, housewives, journalists. Their generation saw the most change in the history of humankind. Born in the early 20th century, they were alive through the two World Wars, and witnessed the accelerated pace of technological innovation that was characteristic of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Spending a year working in a nursing home taught me to see the person, not the age. Often I enjoyed the company of old people more than people my age who worked at the nursing home. It was the stories! I’m a sucker for good stories.

At that moment I decided I would make it my mission to live an exciting story. Someday I will be old, and when that happens, I want to have amazing stories to tell.

Here’s a video Jay sent me of an old lady who reminisces about her past, amid flashbacks of footage of her in 70s porn. The old woman is Georgina Spelvin, star of 70s classic The Devil in Miss Jones. Soundtrack: Massive Attack’s, “Paradise Circus”.

Massive Attack Paradise Circus from sabakan on Vimeo.

Before I became a mother, I was naked all the time. Well, not all the time. But a lot. At home I didn’t bother to dress. When it was cold I draped a blanket around me and was perfectly fine that way.

Now that I’m a mom, I dress during the day. Something about teaching my kid to wear clothes. At night I still go to bed in the nude. My daughter asked me once why I get to sleep naked and she has to wear nightclothes. I said, because I stay under the covers and she kicks the covers off in the middle of the night, and she’d get cold if she wasn’t wearing any nightclothes. That answer satisfied her, though once in a while on a whim she goes to bed naked and that’s all right with me. How could I begrudge her the wonderful feeling of bare skin against silk sheets?

Despite my dressing during the day, there was a stage when my daughter ran around naked at home refusing to be dressed. And it didn’t matter how cold it was. Like me, she would run around wearing a blanket around her on cold days. It made me wonder if habits like that could be passed on chromosomally.

I remember one particular instance, when a roof repair guy was supposed to come over and my then four-year-old refused to get dressed. It really bothered Jay so much that she wouldn’t dress, and he yelled at her so terribly. The roof guy didn’t even need to come in the house, he was up on the roof and really had no view of her. I thought it was more embarrassing that Jay was bellowing so much.

Jay is not comfortable with nakedness at all. Most of all his own. Sure he sleeps naked, sort of out of necessity, because he is a furnace! The man burns hot in bed, literally. But you will never find him lounging around without his clothes on. It’s very rare he even has his socks off. It has to be a very hot day before he’d bare any part of his body. It must be his strict New England upbringing.

Not that I was raised by heathens. I had just as strict a childhood as his. I grew up in Catholic Philippines. No one walks around naked there. We always had household help, so it’s a little strange to be nude around them.

Lately I’ve been wearing pajamas to bed. For the past month or so Jay and I have been sleeping in separate bedrooms. I get cold all alone in bed. Sometimes he begins the night sleeping with me, warming my sheets, heating me up to orgasm. But at some point in the wee hours of the morning he goes back to his bedroom so he can sleep more solidly the rest of the night. When he does, my sheets are warm enough and I can sleep nude till morning.

I really like being naked. I don’t prefer nudity to clothing. I like clothes, too. Clothing can really fire up the imagination, create seductive scenarios, express personal style. But once in a while I like the innocence of nudity. No make up, no jewelry, just skin touching the world all around me. Naked as the day I was born.

Coincidentally, I received an email from a young woman from University of the Philippines working on her Masters thesis on the subject of Feminist Pornography. It amused me that she thought at first I was an urban legend. “And finding you, an educated woman of means, doing it as a deliberate and informed choice is certainly a cause for much interest,” she wrote.

I thought I’d share her questions, and my answers:

1. What are your beliefs regarding pornography?

Porn is as important to society as sex is important to the human experience. I believe pornography is a celebration of life, procreation, love. Why is depicting sex on film so taboo? Larry Flynt brought up this argument: Sex between consenting adults is legal. Yet depicting sex on film is illegal. On the contrary, murder is illegal. Yet depicting murder on film is legal.

2. Some feminists have criticized pornography for making money out of women’s bodies, but now there are women who make pornographic films “to show sexuality through a female’s perspective.” What are your (personal) reasons for making and doing pornography?

Anyone who enters a career, whether it’s in the sex industry or otherwise, thinks about whether it’s a viable way to make a living. We all have to make money. We all choose something about us, a talent, skill, or knowledge to market as a commodity. I started out as an actress/singer performing on stage and TV. When I got married, my husband and I played around on cameras as crazy newlyweds and got giddy posting stuff online. We really enjoyed it!

Performing sex for an audience came naturally to me. I was good at it, and willing to learn more “stunts.” I enjoy sex in many ways. I think everyone dreams of being employed in a job that one enjoys.

The main advantage to making my own porn at home versus being employed in legit shows is that I call the shots. I decide who I have sex with, when and how. Time is the biggest advantage. I’m sure you know that doing shows on stage and TV takes up so much time! I get to be a stay-at-home mom and raise my own child. It’s a challenge scheduling work around when my kid is at school, but at least I’m in control of my schedule.

I think feminists who criticize porn for “making money out of women’s bodies” have good intentions, but their criticism is not targeted correctly. It’s not porn that is the problem, it’s slavery in any form – it could be a domestic helper that is not being paid just wages, just as much as it could be a sex worker. If a woman decides to make money using her body, whether it’s for sex, or household chores, or performance, or athletics, that is her choice and she deserves respect. Respect means that she gets compensated well and treated well as a person.

3. In your entry, Give Up Porn? Dated October 12, 2007, you corrected several assumptions regarding pornography. Can you cite other examples of how you have been stereotyped or criticized for what you do, and how you reacted to it?

When I first started people assumed that because I have a porn site, I was willing to have sex with anyone. Some people think all I do is spread my legs. People forget that running a successful porn site requires technical skills and marketing savvy. Check Angry Woman (another one of my blog entries) for a little more about this.

The most criticism I get is from my menstruation site – On My Period – I like criticism. It means I get people’s attention, make them stop and think, polarize them into having an opinion… do I like this or not, and why? Most of the positive critiques I’ve gotten are well-thought-out. Most of the negative criticism have been knee-jerk reactions of disgust. At first I’m a little hurt, but I remind myself that my work is just a mirror. People will project their own feelings and ideas into my sites. People’s perceptions reveal more about themselves than it is about the subject.

4. How do you feel about being objectified, as a woman, and as a Filipina?

As I wrote above, we all objectify ourselves to make a living. By that I mean, we look at ourselves in an objective way, make a list of strengths and weaknesses, and if we’re smart, we capitalize on our strengths to create a good life for ourselves and the people we love. There is nothing more empowering than accepting who we are and making the most of it.

5. What advise would you give to the modern day Filipina?

Be proud. Be real. We are amazing!

After I’ve been with another man, Jay can’t keep his hands off me. His palms erase any trace of the other man’s touch. He licks my pussy and ass tirelessly, cleaning me thoroughly. His cock gets bigger and harder than usual, engorged with primordial jealous rage, that stuff that causes horned beasts to ram their heads against each other. Jay fucks me and fucks me every way he can, claiming me, marking his territory. My body is used, exhausted, spent beyond what I can give.

When we have other lovers in our bed, we tend to over think the situation. I’d even consider a camera another lover. You are my other lover. I think about you when I take you to bed with me. I think about what you want, what you need to see, how to satisfy you. After it is all over, Jay and I relax, fall into each other and lose ourselves. My orgasms are more intense when he and I are alone.

Jay always says, “Mischief!” We share that spark of naughty excitement that keeps us young and sexy to each other. We’ve defined marriage based on who we truly are instead of being stuck in the trappings of what a marriage is supposed to look like. Our marriage is 100% handmade, homemade, us.

In college philosophy class we defined that love is not a feeling. Feelings are fleeting, they come and go like the wind. Love, I have found, is a commitment. It is staying through good and bad weather. It is being willing to get ugly in front of the other. It is accepting what is ugly about the other and saying, “Ok, I can deal with that. I still love you.” That is love.

I’m reading this book right now. It’s almost 20 years old. It’s called “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. It feels like I’ve been reading it forever, because I keep stopping to take a look within myself and my life. The subtitle of the book is “Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.” It contains ancient folklore with a timeless message: nurture your soul.

One of the stories is about the Skeleton Woman. Let me paraphrase. A fisherman hooks a bunch of bones from the ocean, it is the Skeleton Woman. He is terrified, he rows as fast as his fear could take him back home. The faster he rows, the faster she follows helplessly tangled up in his hook. At first he hides, then eventually he comes out, perseveres in untangling the fishing line and mess of bones until there she sits, the Skeleton Woman, and he finds she is not as scary as before. He sleeps and weeps in slumber. She drinks his tear and it fills her, remakes her into a fully fleshed woman. He wakes, they love each other forever.

I love that story, and there are many more poetic elements I decided to leave out for the sake of brevity. But I love it because it’s about seeing what is ugly and fearsome about one’s beloved, and still persevering, trusting, and working on the relationship. That is the kind of relationship that bears deep and fruitful rewards.

Jay and I have a friend who has had many many good relationships that lasted years. Her latest one just broke up, and I remember her saying that she wanted to break it up before it got to the point when they couldn’t be friends anymore. I understand to some extent. Memories are indelible. Harsh words echo in the mind long after they’ve been said. I wonder, though, if their relationship could have survived the ugliness if she only gave it a chance. I have a feeling she has done this all her life. Every time she found a mess of bones in her fishing hole, she threw it back overboard. The sad truth is that without investing in bringing the bones home, looking the ugly heap over, and patiently untangling it, there is no chance of discovering a treasure that will last her lifetime. Her only hope is that someday she will hook someone who will follow wherever she may run and take the effort of untangling the messy bones she has become.

When Jay and I first started dating it was clear we had sexual chemistry, but we were really quite scared of each other. Deep inside us, we knew we could change each other. There was something about us together that felt catalytic. I remember early on we were walking to the Staten Island ferry one winter afternoon. He bent down to pick up a plastic batman ring on the ground, and impulsively put it on my left ring finger. The finger. The gesture struck us both with fear. We walked in silence, terrified of what just happened and what it meant. The wind howled and whipped all around us. It felt cosmic. It felt like the old me was dying right there, and a new me was being born.

Jay and I don’t have a perfect relationship. Sharing our deepest and darkest selves with one another is not always a pleasant experience. We are individuals with our own sexual, creative, idiosyncratic needs that sometimes meet in harmony but also sometimes clash. Every layer of self-revelation takes with it a risk: will he still love me after this? When he and I fight, it is fierce and ugly. Few of our friends have witnessed it, and those who have cower from the crossfire. (Sorry, you know who you are!) But no matter how hard we fight, how primitive our ways of communication descend to, we keep communicating, we keep listening, we keep forgiving, and we keep taking that risk of becoming truly ourselves with each other. Neither of us would settle for less.

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10 Years

I met Jay in a dive on Staten Island. It was open mic night and he was singing his songs while playing guitar. My friend Tomo brought me out there because she was meeting this guy named John Cid who was also playing that night.

At that time I was living with my Aunt in Chelsea. These photos were taken in my room there. It was a very sparse apartment. Neither of us had much stuff. She had just moved to Manhattan from Texas and she let me live with her for free. She worked all day and I was out all night. It worked out pretty well. I was performing in experimental theater shows in the East Village. Taking and losing jobs waiting tables, making coffee and selling clothes.

Before that I was at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, taking dance classes, singing classes, acting classes. I lived on the Upper East Side and spent my free time wandering around Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Every Sunday I crossed the park to attend Mass at the Saint Ignatius Cathedral on the Upper East Side. I liked listening to the choir sing.

Mae West as Batgirl precedes any of the Batgirl comic book depictions by more than a couple of decades.

I’m not sure how my fascination with Batgirl, or any depiction of a bat-winged woman began. One of my earliest childhood memories involves a Batgirl costume I wore, not just on Halloween, but all the time, everywhere. All right, I don’t mind if you laugh a little, but don’t judge! We were all four years old once, and I’m sure you have your own stack of embarrassing childhood photos you’re just twitching to share on facebook.

As I grew older, Batgirl continued to capture my fancy. I love every incarnation of her comic book character. She’s strong, smart and intuitive. Out of all comic book super heroines, I identify with Batgirl the most because I’m kind of a quiet person who has a dark secret nocturnal life.

Here’s another Batgirl who inspires me. The Gilded Bat by Edward Gorey is a story of transformation from an awkward young girl to a mysterious star.

Bunny Graffiti

Originally uploaded by maylingsu

I’ve been getting into a bunny kick lately. Everywhere I look I see bunnies, rabbits, good, bad and ugly. The thing with bunnies is that you can’t just have one. When I was a kid my brother came home with two bunnies from the fair. A male and a female. It wasn’t long before we had millions. Our male bunny would try to hump the mama just after she’s given birth. I mean, that’s dedication! His balls were huuuge!!!

So of course when we got bunnies for Christmas we had to have a whole case of them.

Ayieeeee!!!! We love these Smorkin’ Labbits from Kidrobot. They’re badass bunnies!

Jay’s been modding his toys lately and was so sweet to mod a smorkin labbit after me.

I don’t smoke, but I’m smokin’!

So how was Christmas?

My dog got sprayed by a skunk on Christmas Eve. What a stinker!!! I had to bathe him Christmas morning.

Other than that, I had a great time. Fun morning playing with toys, then party at my folks’ at night. I missed them so much last Christmas when we were in Maine. It was exciting having a white Christmas, but there’s nothing like my family parties. Everyone in my family parties like it’s 1999. My 82-year-old grandma was getting down line dancing with my aunts. The 4-year-old nieces are puking chocolate cake. The chihuahuas are chasing each other in the living room. My uncles are taking turns playing drums, guitars, karaoke, singing and beatboxing. One of my uncles just grabbed a broomstick and started hitting the cymbal with it. There’s a lot of spirit and a lot of spirits *wink wink nugde nudge*.

And one more thing about my family is that they are all gorgeous!!! I mean, drop dead gorgeous. The girls and the boys. I get all insecure about my looks everytime I’m around them, they’re so gorgeous. I start thinking about getting a new hairstyle, or a manicure, or a whole new wardrobe. I feel like such a dweeb next to them.

I tried growing my nails this past week, and was thinking about getting a manicure. Because here’s a fact about me: I’ve never ever gotten a manicure. Ever. I’ve always kept my nails short. Well, because when I was a kid I bit my nails. And then when I outgrew that stage, I just was always doing things with my hands. I don’t have time to sit around getting my nails painted. So I do admit I’m a little curious. Though I’d probably be impatient with the process and itch to surf the internet on my iPhone the whole time I’m getting this done.

So yeah, hanging out with my folks makes me feel like I should go shopping, get my nails done, get my hair streaked blond, cut, blowdried and styled at a salon while reading celebrity and fashion magazines. Or at least just pay more attention to my looks. I mean, it’s really depressing when the men in my family are prettier than I am. Goddamnit.

Time to visualize myself in the year 2009.