Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – September 30, 2004

As you may remember from my first column, “Talk Dirty To Me,” I encouraged people to interact with porn instead of shitting on it. The latter leads to ignorance and threatens to push further underground an industry that needs attention and improvement. One reader suggested that people turn off their televisions and computers and instead explore each other for an evening.

I agree with her suggestion, and also with one gentleman’s online Shotgun comments that had tips about seducing the mind so the body will follow (hot stuff!). When I advocate watching sexy films, it’s to people who take issue with girls like me who are public and frank about sex and bodies. A later letter to the editor (September 2) grouped me in with CHOI and Howard Stern just because I talk about farting and fucking.

Fuck that shit.

Am I just a dirty girl, full of shit and sex?

If you are shocked by scat chat and sex talk in a column, how are you going to react when your girl brings on the kink or even the common – like her being open to letting you check out her anatomy with the lights on?

Will you turn her away and think she’s dirty?

I’m all for guys speaking up and for girls suggesting. But how many of us really do?

Or can? Or will tonight? Is it that easy?

It requires intimacy and being comfortable with everyone in the room. I’ve known guys who can whip it out in public and fuck all night long but are about as intimate and sensual as a bolo bat. And fuck like one too. A lot of lovers can more easily act out some part they saw in a porno flick than be themselves-being yourself can be too revealing. If you’ve got a sexual lout on your hands, why not relate to him on his level and work backwards? It’s not like putting on a Sarah McLachlan CD is going to work.

“Guys who are real macho are macho in bed – they want to fuck you in the ass, and they want it to hurt. Japanese are very sensual, very gentle, very sweet lovers.” Hey, I didn’t say this, Annie Sprinkle did.

She knows a few things about men and sex. Sprinkle encourages women to explore their vaginas with a mirror, or to take a picture of hers as she exposes it during her performances. She was one of CBC’s Brent Bambury’s most memorable interviews. She is a celebrated sexualite, a post-porn modernist breaking taboos and pushing limits.

One of her more famous acts, A Hundred Blow Jobs, featured her frantically sucking off a dozen dildos while a tape of abusive remarks like “Suck it you bitch!” played in the background.

Disturbing gagging and choking on stage culminated in a whole whack of women in the audience in tears, relating to the trauma. She has the ability to educate and rehabilitate through outrageousness.

Annie Sprinkle is the ultimate “dirty girl” and I call upon her to join me in spirit with two other talented performers on Friday, October 8 at the Mercury Lounge as we three hit centre stage, in-the-flesh, for a raunchy night of performance at Ottawa’s durtygurls event.

While neither Heather Birrell from Toronto, Montreal’s super talented Catherine Kidd nor myself will be performing fellatio on an impressive stock of Venus Envy dildos, the writing promises to be sexy and dirty.

Organizer Nichole McGill has defined durtygurls as people who “push boundaries whether they are sexual or societal. They are at the forefront of speaking about the unspoken … these writers use comedy, poetry, performance and narrative to get their thoughts across.”

To Oni the Haitian Sensation, who performed at previous durtygurls events and was scouted at a durtygurls gig to perform in the Vagina Monologues, “Dirty dames break beds while fucking and smack your ass with the debris. Dirty girls are scarlet and creative, sexually innovative, leather or lace, in your face, at home, or at the workplace … dirty girls make arrays of erections pop like bottled champagne under pressure with words.”

Frankly, I’m not that enticing, but over the years, durtygurls has featured some pretty hot women who have been able to turn on more than the stage mic, such as locals Melanie Noll and Megan Butcher, and Toronto’s Emily Pohl-Weary and Tamara Faith Berger. All telling stories about all kinds of situations with all kinds of insights.

In part, the night is about getting women to be comfortable with desire and challenging men (and other women) to let them be, without judgment.

Judgment and fear – that fucks you up more than cross-dressing, strap-ons, fetishes, kink, porn, and love ever can, no?

Liam Taliesin, editor of Ottawa’s Moist magazine that celebrates healthy sexuality’s dirty girls, dirty boys, dirty old women, and dirty old men, says, “Those who believe that sex is dirty, also believe highly sexed men are studs, while highly sexed women are sluts. Dirty girls know better. They take charge of their sexuality, embracing and reclaiming it as their own.”

Ya know, in Ottawa there are women who will only date hot studs with flashy cars. Then there are the rest who could value a Pinto if Buddy is cool enough with us gals taking over the driver’s seat from time to time.

Unleash your dirty girl, get filthy and roll around in the mud at durtygurls, October 8 at 8 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 56 Byward Market, $7. Limited open stage before headlining readers.

– Sylvie Hill