It’s been two weeks…and I still feel like I was run over by a bus!

A ginormous, double-decker, furry LED-covered bus with a 100,000-watt sound system blasting acid house, no less. But before you start feeling sorry for me…if you’ve never woken up feeling like you were hit by such a bus…then you haven’t lived!

The name of this bus was Youtopia, which is what the San Diego locals call their annual Burning Man regional campout. In Burning Man culture, each major city or region of the country has its own community of local Burners, and many of the bigger groups host officially-sanctioned regional campouts, sometimes attracting thousands of partiers. We had our own regional in Vegas back in May, which drew about 900 people, and was a total fucking blast.

Since regionals are on a smaller scale than the real Burning Man, they are marginally less exhausting — and if you’ve ever wanted to go to Burning Man, they’re a great way to get a taste of Burning Man culture without going to all the hassle and expense of driving all the way up to the Black Rock Desert. In fact, many people never even bother going to the real Burning Man — which in many Burners’ opinion has already jumped the shark, and has become little more than a douchebag-infested rave. The regional Burns are considered by many to be more authentic.

The San Diego campout is one of the bigger regionals (around 3,000 attendees), so when a friend from the area invited me to come along and camp with his friends, I shelled out $180 for a ticket and headed over to see what it was all about. I was curious to see how it compared to the other regional events I’d been to in Vegas, Arizona and San Francisco…and I am here to report that it was fantastic!

Unlike Burning Man, which is held on a stark, treeless desert playa, Youtopia takes place in the beautiful, forested hills of an Indian reservation out near Temecula, far from the prying eyes of Johnny Law. People set up camp in little ravines and gullies among the scrub oak, and in the mornings the mountaintops are blanketed in coastal fog and mist, making for an otherworldly, mystical vibe. After dark, the landscape twinkles with colorful lights strung in all the trees, and you sort of wander around through the forest from camp to camp, like some kind of psychedelic-drug-fueled game of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s actually pretty magical!

But the location is a blessing and a curse — It can be kind of hard to walk up and down those steep hillside trails when you’re wearing platform boots and shrooming out of your gourd. Also, apparently last year a few members of the governing Indian tribe got drunk and stormed onstage at one of the dance camps to cuss out all the stupid white people flailing around in tutus and furry boots, making for a really uncomfortable scene what with all the guilty liberals in attendance. Unfortunately, nothing like that happened this year 🙁

Anyway, I’m glad I went — I met so many cool people; mostly from the San Diego area, but also many from L.A., Arizona, Utah and a few familiar faces from Vegas. But most of the attendees were locals from San Diego, including the group I camped with, who called themselves the Spillage Village and who were super welcoming and friendly. That San Diego Burner community is legit as fuck!

Spillage Village was camped on a hillside in a little forested valley, and we had some really interesting neighbors. On one side, we had the Frauditorium, who erected a full-on performance stage and hosted a talent show and an acro-yoga class taught by circus performers. Then on the other side, we had the Angry Brown Girls Bar, which was pretty much what it sounds like: a bar staffed by (understandably) pissed off women of color. Anyone was welcome to come in and have a drink, as long as you were willing to be enlightened…so of course I went in and sat down.

Well, things got really interesting when a group of well-meaning hippies set up a stand right next to them handing out slices of chilled cantaloupe and watermelon! One of the Angry Brown Girls stormed out and asked them to move, as they considered it insensitive to host a watermelon stand next to a brown girls’ bar. The chick who was handing out the melon was totally taken aback, as she truly didn’t mean any offense (handing out chilled melon slices is common at Burning Man)…but the Angry Brown Girls were pissed, and insisted she leave at once.

Unfortunately, the melon girl only made it worse for herself by sarcastically quipping, “Fine, I’ll take my blackface elsewhere!!”  Oooooh!!!!! It was pretty tense there for awhile, let me tell you.

Fortunately, there was plenty of feel-good lovey-dovey shit on the third side of our camp: a ginormous, obnoxiously pink heart-themed Goddess-worshipping compound run by a love guru named Halcyon. Halcyon has hot pink hair and a pink RV with giant wings airbrushed on the side and the legend “HUG NATION” emblazoned on the back, and he travels around spreading love and hugs all over the USA. Come to find out, “Hug Nation” was the name of a webcast he used to co-host every Tuesday with his 90-year old ex-Baptist-minister grandfather; apparently they touched a lot of people, and when his grandpa died, Halcyon mixed his ashes into the paint used to airbrush the wings on the side of the RV! You can see the whole story at GrandpaCaleb.com, and it’s actually pretty interesting.

Now, I had seen some of Halcyon’s videos on YouTube (he does a lot of stuff about Burning Man, which I watched when I was preparing to go up there the first time), and I kind of expected him to be a self-absorbed twat. So imagine my surprise when he turned out to be one of the coolest people I’ve ever met! I felt an instant connection with him, and we hit it off right away. One thing that particularly resonated was his theory about an “Optimism Tax,” which basically says that trusting people is OK, even if you get taken advantage of from time to time — it’s better than being a suspicious hater, and anything you lose is basically just a “tax” for being optimistic. Now, living in Vegas all these years has made me very cynical….but I do still believe most people are basically good, which is why I’m not afraid to do half the shit I do — go out to the desert with strange men, meet up with random strangers at hot springs, etc. Sure, every once in awhile I suffer a blow like the Jack Johnson debacle…but it’s a small price to pay for living an open life with an open heart. Sign me up, and pass the pink Kool-Aid!

Anyway, aside from all the interesting characters, there was also a lot of cool art at Youtopia; I made my own contribution to the scene by whipping up several ultra-dramatic batches of Vagina Coladas with my Electric Vagina-powered blender at the Art Bar one afternoon. But I also wore my Electric Vagina at night, with a silver space suit and a ray gun plugged into my crotch, and went around bathing people in gentle rays of estrogen, neutralizing all the testosterone and even bestowing temporary 48-hour festival sterilizations on the nutsacks of all the men: “Go ahead and fuck anybody you want — starting NOW!!!” Let me tell you, my services were extremely popular.

Because let’s face it: these Burning Man events are always a fuckfest thinly disguised as an art festival. Between the Orgy Domes, S&M dungeons and “Goddess Pampering Stations,” you can’t walk two feet without drowning in lube and pheromones; I guess that’s what happens when a bunch of half-naked people get fucked up on booze and drugs and lose their inhibitions. I don’t experience that effect personally… but then I run around naked on the regular, so it’s not such a big deal to me. Tits and nutsacks have lost their magical powers over me….ya know?

Not so for everyone else!! I had barely woken up the first morning there when one of my campmates came over with a pot of warm water to give me a sponge bath; I went along with it and laid back naked, tampon string dangling seductively from my twat, and listened as he told me all about this thing he practices called Orgasmic Meditation. Basically, it’s a sort of highly regimented cult-type thing where women lay back and let strange men with rubber-gloved fingers massage their clitorises in a very specific fashion for exactly fifteen minutes, with no eye contact and no emotional or personal component. Then both parties describe the exact feelings and sensations they had during the process, and some sort of enlightenment is apparently reached. Interesting!

Then there was this other guy camped across the way, who had set up a giant body-art pavilion where he would cover your naked torso/ass/tits/whatever in neon paint, and you would then roll around on a piece of butcher paper, creating “art” with your painted body. Now, the last fuckin’ thing I want to do at a three-day campout with no showers is get paint up my asscrack, but the guy was so earnest and persistent that I finally agreed to let him coat my nether-regions in paint, including my tampon string, so I could make an artsy imprint to hang on my wall. My intent was to make a sort of feminist statement, with the tampon string slashing between my labia…but the string didn’t end up making much of an imprint, and all the whole process ended up doing was getting him riled up to the point where he commented that this was “only the second time” he’d gotten aroused doing this. Remember what I said? It’s a fine line between an art festival and a fuckfest!!!!!!

I mean, you couldn’t get away from it! I was walking around one afternoon with a couple of my campmates when we stumbled on a Banana Blowjob Contest — whoever gave the best blowjob to a banana won some sort of prize, I guess. The contest was being emceed by a chick I know from Vegas, so when one of the scheduled contestants was a no-show, she called on me to fill in. Fuck!! I had no game plan — I mean, one of the other contestants had peeled and sucked her banana using only her toes, and another chick placed her banana in a crotch of some hippie and dry-humped him to much hooting and hollering from the crowd. How the fuck was I supposed to one-up that?! I ended up seizing my banana in a vise-grip, crushing out the innards in a gooey pulp, then flinging that pulp at the judges like an orangutan flinging its own shit at a zookeeper. Take that, ya oversexed perverts!!!!!

But lest you think me a frigid, humorless killjoy, dig this. Another camp called Porntopia or something like that had a party one afternoon, with all kinds of sex-themed hijinks going on (shocker!!): vibrator races, bobbing for dildos — silly stuff like that. But they also had a dome way in the back with a couple of Sybians inside.

If you don’t know, a Sybian is a sort of upholstered sawhorse with vibrators embedded in it, which women are supposed to ride, hands-free, until they get off. They’re popular with the Howard Stern crowd, and I’d always been curious to try one. So when a malodorous half-baked hippie kid came up to me and asked me if I’d go into the dome with him (you had to have a partner to get in, so he was desperately asking everyone who walked by), I actually agreed.

What a weird experience!!!! I didn’t even know this kid’s name, but we went into the dome and sat on this sawhorse together, facing toward one another, each of us astride our own personal vibrator with our own controller….and we fired them up and went to town. The kid kept trying to hug and kiss me, but I wasn’t about to get into all that; like I said, I didn’t even know his name, and I wasn’t attracted to him physically in the least. I’m just there to try the fuckin’ Sybian, bro!!! It was WEIRD — I felt like how I imagine it must be for a fuckboy; I got off pretty much right away, but out of politeness sat there sort of letting him manhandle my back and buttcheeks while he went on and on and on. He took so long that I ended up getting off again, and still had to sit there as he flailed about, trying (unsuccessfully) to kiss me between gropes. Meanwhile, the sun was going down and I still had to lug all my vagina colada gear back to camp, which was quite a distance away, so it was like, “Hurry the fuck up, kid!!”

Finally I’d had enough, and I guess the kid realized he was never going to get any nookie from me, so he gave up, too….and we dismounted and walked away, never to see each other again. WEIRD! I’ve never been one for casual or anonymous sex, and this only reinforced my conviction. NOW HEAR THIS!! All you swingers who constantly email me, inviting me to “play” parties and shit like that— I’M NOT INTO IT!!! I want love, dammit — or at least fondness.  And if I can’t have that…I’m not interested.

Anyway……….considering all this attempted kissing and groping and drink-sharing and pipe-passing, it wasn’t really a surprise when I felt my tonsils starting to swell up toward the end of the weekend — I was getting sick. That campout was one big Petri dish of bacteria, and it finally got to me. The Miso Horny camp was there doling out homemade miso soup, so I drank a bowl or three of that to try and stave it off….but it was no use. Three days of running around a drizzly forest half-naked and hopped up on shrooms and cheap wine is bound to do it….ya know?!

In the interest of not getting sick, I tried to hit the sack early on the last night… but when my campmates and I got back to Spillage Village, I accidentally set off a raging afterparty when I queued up Milli Vanilli on my cellphone, and everyone crawled under my shade canopy for a two-hour late-nite singalong, mostly to the music of Abba, of all things. Come to find out, everyone likes Abba! The worst part was, I’d been getting ready for bed and had already gotten undressed, so I was sitting there doing all of this in nothing but a microscopic piece of Victoria’s Secret buttfloss, surrounded by affable drunks and rainy forest. It was actually a total fucking blast….but like most fun things, it wasn’t good for my health.

Aaaaaanyway, that’s how I came to find myself limping back across the Mojave Desert to Vegas, feeling like I was hit by a furry, blinking bus. Just like the real Burning Man, Youtopia was an amazing party — but exhausting! Enlightening? Not really. Boundary-pushing? Not so much of that, either. But it was totally fucking fun….and I will probably go again next year.

And it’s not just because of the Sybian!!!!!!

I have a lot of unique desert locations I use for my artistic nude photo shoots; if you hire me for a shoot, I can take you to places like rustic old wooden buildings, dry lake beds, Joshua tree forests and red sandstone wonderlands. But to keep things fresh, I am always on the lookout for interesting new places! And since the desert is full of weird stuff, all it takes is a little exploring.

 

 

With that in mind, last Wednesday my friend Randy Fosth a/k/a Shutterbug Studio and I went out adventuring, scouting for new photo shoot locations — preferably within an hour’s drive from the Strip, to keep things feasible for visiting photographers. We meandered around the Mojave Desert all day, stopping here and there at an abandoned motel, a hot spring and an old town site…before finally stumbling upon an amazing find: a GINORMOUS abandoned mine, rusting away in the baking desert sunshine less than an hour from the Vegas Strip!

 

 

The scale of this place absolutely took my breath away: it is GIGANTIC! I have no idea what they used to mine (or mill, I’m not sure) here…but whatever it was, they did it on a pretty grand scale. The remains of the rusty old machinery is huge, on a scale so large that it can be overwhelming to a photographer, at first. But upon closer inspection, this is a fantastic place to shoot!

The first thing you notice is this ginormous rusty metal pipeline, cut into two pieces, that dominates the landscape. The rust patterns on the outside are beautiful at golden hour, and the inside is lined with beautiful fire brick, infused with gorgeous filtered light coming in from each end. It almost looks like the Roman catacombs — if the Romans had sent them into Outer Space!!!

There are huge sprockets at the ends of the pipes, which are very easy to climb up on, and make for a surreal, Stargate-like portal. The variety of photos that could be taken here is endless — Mad Max/post-Apocalyptic, Steampunk, rock bands…and of course, art nudes 🙂 Very versatile!

Aside from the giant pipes, there are also several concrete outbuildings scattered about; most of these house the remains of computer mainframes and control panels, and are not overly photogenic. But there is one building with a bunch of old sofas inside, and some fairly decent, colorful graffiti on the walls — and since one of the walls has been knocked down, the light is pretty good. There is also some interesting honeycomb-patterned sound-proofing on the doors.

There’s also a huge old electric transmission tower, long defunct, with the ceramic insulators all shot to pieces, laying in broken chunks on the ground (this area is apparently popular with target shooters and other local rednecks, as there are shotgun shells everywhere). Since it’s no longer electrified, it’s a great structure for climbing!

The tallest building at the site is this silo-like rusty metal tower, that apparently used to house some sort of super-loud generator or something — there is still a sign on the outside, warning that ear protection is required. Inside, you’ll find a bunch of exposed plumbing that is excellent for industrial-type art nudes. The only downside in here is that everything is covered in a thin film of white dust that will get all over you; in fact, the entire area is pretty fucking filthy, and you will feel the need for a boiling-hot bath or shower after rolling around naked at this site.

I’m not sure what was mined/milled/processed here, but whatever it was, the remaining debris and dust is undoubtedly bad to breathe — so beware! You don’t want to wind up with a case of silicosis, all for the sake of shooting some arty T&A. One of the huge pipes in particular is lined with a thick layer of this fine white silty stuff…so be advised. But I don’t think there’s anything overly toxic at this site, since there are no warning signs posted and the property is not even fenced. In fact, the only signage indicates that it’s on public land, and is open to target shooters — as long as they clean up after themselves (which they do not; as mentioned, the ground is littered with shotgun shells) (SHOCKER!).

 

So basically, other than dirt and possible contamination, you don’t really have to worry about shooting nudes here. On both my visits the site was totally deserted, and it’s far enough from any town that the likelihood of your being bothered is pretty slim…even though the access road is fairly easy to navigate, even in a regular car (it’s paved, but in severe disrepair…so just drive slowly and you’ll be OK).

Overall, this is my new favorite shooting location; it’s remote, bizarre, and beautiful in a very unorthodox way. I love it!! Hire me for a shoot…….and I’ll take you there 😀

 

As a freelance nude model, the two questions I get asked most are: “Isn’t it dangerous to go out to the desert with all these strange men?” and “Do you have any modeling horror stories?”

Sorry to disappoint you bloodthirsty fuckers, but the answer to both is…not really.

I have been doing a ton of photo shoots lately, with people from all over the world. Mostly, these have been full-day bookings – I offer a $500 deal where, over the course of an 8-hour day, I take you around the desert to shoot at red sandstone rocks, a dry lake bed, rustic abandoned buildings, Joshua trees and lonely desert roads. I’ll even drive, if you want me to. And because the weather here in the desert is perfect right now for outdoor shooting, I have been booked solid!

I usually meet the photographer in the morning — at his hotel, or at a pre-arranged meeting spot convenient to both of us — and either I get into his car, or he gets into mine, and we head off out of town to the first stop on my itinerary.

As mentioned, many consider this super sketchy…but I don’t just shoot with anybody; I have a pretty decent vetting process. In addition, I have a businesslike demeanor, concrete balls…and a hidden weapon 🙂 And anyway, realistically the photographer has just as much reason for concern as I do — for all he knows I could be a psycho killer, or even just an unscrupulous con artist who will drive him out to the desert, steal his cash and expensive gear, and leave him for dead.

Thankfully, I’m an honest person and a legitimate model – which I think most photographers can tell from my site and my Model Mayhem bio. And so far, I have never had one single bad experience with a photographer — other than being stood up a few times (YOU know who I’m talking to, jerks).

When I admit to a lack of modeling “horror stories,” people almost seem disappointed — apparently, the general perception of the amateur modeling biz is that it’s nothing but pervs, rapists, and murderers…or a thinly-veiled front for prostitution. Well, again — sorry to burst your bubble, but this really isn’t the case. Most of my clientele are professional types from other fields who simply enjoy indulging their artistic side as a avocation. They just want to take beautiful photographs; that’s all!

That being said…my tolerance for pervy shenanigans is much higher than most models’, and what other girls probably would call horror stories, I just chalk up to being amusing anecdotes; I have had some pretty gross experiences, but to me it’s just great blog fodder! Like the time that photographer asked me to kick him in the balls repeatedly, or the guy who jerked off while I was in the room. The humanity!!!

In any event, those kinds of shenanigans are very rare, and most of the photographers who hire me are super cool and very professional about their work; usually the worst that happens is a little initial awkwardness when we first get into the car together and drive off. But I can talk to just about anyone, so usually after about 15 minutes we are chattering away like old friends. I have met some really interesting people this way — I’ve spent hours driving around the desert with doctors, lawyers, mining engineers, software programmers and all manner of other professionals….and only a few pervs 🙂 It’s actually very interesting, and I’ve learned a lot.

Of course, sometimes there’s a language barrier; the other week I shot with a super nice Japanese man who spoke somewhat limited English, but we were able to communicate just fine, and ended up having a great shoot…especially at the end, when he broke out a traditional Japanese yukata for me to pose sluttily in, along with a weird Japanese fox mask and a towel from some Japanese girlie metal band called BABYMETAL. Whatever you say, boss!

Then another day, I shot with a South African couple who was traveling around the U.S. in a giant motorhome, photographing landscapes for five weeks. They, too, hired me for a full day desert tour…and they were absolutely enchanted with the locations I took them to. I love watching the expressions on peoples’ faces when I show them my beautiful locations — I really do love the desert, and I enjoy sharing it with others. I love showing tourists that there’s more to Vegas than just slot machines and shitty shows!

Anyway, that shoot was particularly interesting because both of them shot me — and they had two cameras apiece! So I ended up posing for literally thousands of photos that day; their style was to just let me do my thing while they blasted away.

As a model, the first few minutes of any photo shoot are always interesting in that you have to sort of suss out the photographer’s shooting style — are they the type who likes to carefully compose each shot, with attention to light, shadow and geometry? Or, as is the case with many beginners, do they just get nervous and start blasting away, giving little or no direction? (I prefer the first style, as “just doing my thing” non-stop for 8 hours is pretty exhausting.)

Also, you have to figure out your posing — are they the artsy type, preferring anonymous bodyscapes, downcast eyes and wistful expressions? Or do they prefer more glamour-type cheesecake, with direct eye contact and toothy smiles? (The former is more in line with my personal aesthetic, but I enjoy shooting both.) I usually figure all that out as I go along, and do my best to cater to the photographer’s preferences….which generally ends up being a mix of styles, so I never get bored.

Speaking of getting bored, you might wonder if I ever tire of going out to the same locations over and over again — I mean, last week I shot out at my red sandstone location four times in one week (and on two occasions was there for the full day, without hitting any other locations)! But the answer to this is no — because every photographer has a different eye, and each shoot turns out different from the last in one way or another.

In fact, one of my recent shoots was really different from the others in that is was pissing rain the entire time — and I don’t mean drizzling, I mean dumping. I messaged the photographer the day before, noting that thunderstorms were in the forecast, and offering him the option to reschedule or just shoot in his room, instead. But this crazy motherfucker was Ukrainian, and scoffed at my wussy Western ways — what’s a little desert thunderstorm?! Clouds just mean beautiful, diffused light!

So I sacked the fuck up, threw on a rain poncho, and headed out to the desert anyway…and along the way, the weather got even worse. At one point, I had my windshield wipers on overdrive, and I could still barely see 10 feet in front of the truck. Yikes!!! To make matters worse, the temperature had also dipped freakishly into the 60s — a full 30 degrees cooler than at my shoots earlier and later in the week. BRRRRRRRRR!!

But I had to give that crazy motherfucker props — even as thunder and lightning split the desert sky and rain literally poured all around us, he crouched in a red sandstone cave directly across from where I was huddled miserably/seductively in another red sandstone cave, and proceeded with the shoot. Every once in awhile the rain would let up ever so slightly, and we’d make a mad dash for another couple of caves — and so it went, from cave to cave and then from location to location. We couldn’t even shoot at the dry lake bed, because it had officially become a lake — I mean, this was a heavy-ass rainstorm, setting a new rainfall record and causing all kinds of damage. There was even half-dollar sized hail coming down near one of the locations we shot at; fortunately, this kind gentleman took pity on me after awhile and we headed back to town. (He really was a super nice, cool guy…I don’t mean to make him sound like a monster or anything.)

Anyway, that freak storm passed, and the rest of my shoots proceeded without incident. The worst thing that happened was that I cut my hand pretty badly on a splinter at the abandoned building location, and my ass got a little scratched up from all the climbing/scooting around on sandstone (I spent a total of 18 hours over 4 days shooting at the red rocks site, a personal record)! But I consider myself lucky……because things almost took a much worse turn.

You know how earlier in this blog I was bragging about how I’ve never had a bad experience with a photographer? Well, I should stop that kind of talk right this minute, so that I don’t jinx myself like I did on Wednesday.

I was hiking along at the red rocks site in my bare feet or my flip flops — I don’t remember which — talking to the photographer about how I’ve been lucky in all my dozens and dozens of desert shoots, and had never once seen a rattlesnake, scorpion or black widow. (The worst I’d seen was a ginormous hairy tarantula that lumbered into the shot once — which was creepy, but harmless.) Anyway, no sooner had the boast left my lips than what should I spy slithering into a pile of rocks just ahead of me but a snake!!!!! YIKES!!!!!

Neither the photographer nor I thought it was a rattler — it was a sort of mottled brown and on the small side, just chilling there peeking out at us non-aggressively. So like an idiot, I started talking baby talk to it (“Awwwwww…..who’s a cute little snakey-

wake?”) and tossed a pebble at it to get it to move. And when it turned tail to skedaddle, sure enough there was a rattle on its tail!!!!!!!! Y I K E S ! ! ! ! ! ! Did I mention I was wearing flip flops?! From now on I’m wearing BOOTS in all my nude photo shoots!!!!!

Anyway, despite the close calls with flash floods, lightning strikes, rattlesnakes and Hantavirus-covered splinters, I survived all my photo shoots this month — and indeed survived another year of living fabulously, as my birthday came and went while I was on yet another photo shoot, out in Death Valley with the guy with whom I’ve been working on that ass-trophotography series.

This was something like our 7th shoot, and each time our work gets better — I mean, check this shit out!! It has to be one of the most beautiful photos ever taken of me…I <3 it. Bathed in the glow of the Milky Way…ahhhhh.

The best part about shooting with that guy is, he always gets a room in Shoshone or Tecopa (little desert towns on the outskirts of Death Valley), and we hang out boozing and smoking weed all day in the pool or the hot springs, until nightfall, when we head out to a lonely spot in the desert nearby to shoot. He always has super-trippy music playing, like William Orbit, and truly exceptional wine and cheese for craft services. Now, that’s class!!

This time, we celebrated a little bit extra because it wasn’t just my birthday — it was his, too!! So on the morning after our shoot, we both ate some mushrooms and spent the day lazing about on the porch of our room at the Shoshone Inn, watching the Mojave desert tortoises crawl around as the sun slanted lower and lower. Finally, around sunset, we headed over to Tecopa to get something to eat at the new Death Valley Internet Cafe (I’m sorry to report that my beloved Pastel’s Bistro is no longer in business…but the good news is, a really cool artist couple is taking over, and it will eventually reopen under another name, but with a similar vibe).

Meanwhile, there’s this new Internet Cafe — which is amazing!! It’s run by another couple of Vegas refugees who enjoy cooking up fresh, healthy, delicious foodie-food-type meals with innovative ingredients and plenty of style. The cafe itself is full of funky locally-produced art, and they even host live music on a little stage in the dining room.

The windows in this place glowed cheerily in the dusk as we rolled in from Shoshone, and the beauty of everything on the drive over just made me bawl my eyes out — I think I was still worn out from Burning Man, plus it being my birthday made me melancholy, I guess, because the gorgeous pinks and purples of the desert sunset were all too beautiful, just like in the song “Itchycoo Park,” and I just wept from the overwhelming magnificence of life! There is so much I look forward to seeing and doing in life — I never want it to end. There are so many adventures to be had!

Anyway, the best part about all this is that to pay for these adventures, I get to roam around the desert with interesting strangers…which in itself is something of an adventure! So, my life is something like an self-fulfilling prophecy, or positive feedback loop…or maybe I’m just a hamster running on a wheel in a cage made of my own shortsightedness.

In any event, one thing’s for sure — even when I’m not running around the desert with strange men, making my monthly nut is always an adventure. The variety of gigs available to a gal here in Vegas is endless — just looking back over the past few weeks, I worked as a marijuana showgirl at the grand opening of a medical marijuana growers’ supply store, as a product demonstrator at the bicycle industry trade show, and as a hot dog server at the convenience store owners’ convention.

This last one in particular was a hoot — it was the proverbial sausagefest! Something like 30,000 convenience-store owners converged on Vegas to stuff themselves on free samples of pretzels, jerky, beer, nuts, donuts, Hostess cakes, Tastykakes, Little Debbie cakes, Oreo churros (!!!), soda, taquitos, pizza, sliders, nachos and of course delicious gourmet Chicago-style sausages and hot dogs. There was a huge contingent from Brazil this year — apparently, the C-store business is booming in Brazil. But there were people from all over the world at this show, and it was really interesting.

One of the funniest things about working these shows is the other models you end up working with. As a general rule, the lower-brow the show, the more scantily clad babes you see on the tradeshow floor; the convenience store expo is chock-a-block with hired T & A. Fortunately, the client I was working for was super nice and fairly low-key,  only needing four babes to serve their sausages — no skimpy outfits required, just wholesome attitudes and friendly smiles. I mean, we were serving freaking hot dogs! But you’d never know it from the attitude of some of these girls.

This one chick in particular was a real piece of work; I’ve worked with her before, and while cute as a button and twice as pert, she’s secretly a huge stoner, so we sort of bonded over that. She’s trying to break into professional spokesmodeling/TV hostessing, so I told her she should become the face of the legal marijuana industry, which as we all know is booming/soon to be booming. But when I suggested it, she was all “I don’t know…I wouldn’t want to jeopardize my title.” Title?! Turns out she was Miss [insert hillbilly state here] USA several years back…and apparently that honor is such a career-booster that she can’t risk being associated with marijuana. Meanwhile, the bitch is slinging wieners at a fuckin’ Kwikie Mart expo. SMH!!!!!

Then there was this little ninny I worked with at the bike show. She had just turned 18, and this was her first tradeshow ever; to her credit, she was very attentive and pretty damn sharp, and picked up the sales pitch and everything really fast, so she was great to work with. But in our downtime, we started chatting about modeling. She does some Model Mayhem shoots, but she won’t do any nudes with strangers — “I’m going to be famous,” she explained, totally serious.

For that same reason, she refused to sell her underwear to some guy who had offered to buy them off her; she didn’t want that kind of scandal coming back on her future Academy-Award-winning career. Then in the next breath told me how she actually did shoot some nudes last month for submission to Playboy, and was waiting to find out if she made the cut….and then when she found out I’d done extra work for those porn movies, she was all over my nuts for the casting lady’s info. When the tradeshow ended, she was giddy with joy because the casting lady had texted her back saying she could definitely use her in some scenes……so, you tell ME how this story’s gonna end!

Meanwhile, there’s realistic bitches like me — short on self-importance, but long on my savings account, my IRA and my home equity. A dollar’s a dollar, and fuck you if you don’t like the way I earned it! The way I look at it is, the more uppity bitches there are in this world, the less competition I have for the really interesting gigs. Like these freaky fucking vore videos I shot the other week.

If you don’t already know, “vore” is a genre of fetish involving devouring/being devoured; in the past, I’ve done videos where I ate little tiny men, chewing them up slowly, swallowing them, and then digesting them with my sexy little stomach acid. But this particular vore site was different; La Vore Girl features giant monsters eating sexy women!

The guy who runs the site is a really nice, down-to-earth Everyman who stumbled on this bizarre way of making money by chance; he made a few “monsters” out of upholstery foam, set up a studio in his dad’s basement, and now he’s on his way to fame and fortune — someone’s even making this awesome documentary about him:

Anyway, he hired me one night to come over, strip naked and get eaten by a couple of his monsters. How could I say no to that?!?! The setup was a classroom; in one video, I brought my pet monster to Show & Tell, and showed the class how I like my monster to eat me. In the other, I was a bratty schoolgirl who was trying to convince my monster teacher to change my “F” in Algebra to an “A:” “Isn’t there anything I can do to convince you, Mr. Cy-Eye?!?!?!?”

Unfortunately for me, I had to stretch my comfort levels a little and pretend the monster was actually having sex with me; I guess I’m not as free-spirited as I claim to be, as that kind of content kind of skeeves me out a little. But it was all very tongue-in-cheek (GET IT?); as Mr. Cy-Eye is giving it to me on his desk, I look back into the camera and deadpan: “This better get me an A!”

Besides all of that, the shoot was fascinating for another reason; the filming took place in this bizarre sort of kooky, sprawling compound just northeast of downtown Vegas owned by

none other than the king of ballbusting, Mr. Bryan Balldacious…a man who makes his living having his testicles abused by sexy models. To that end, his home studio is filled with all kinds of crazy furniture with holes cut into it for his nutsack to dangle thru; the chicks then box it like a punching bag, or otherwise attempt to destroy it, and he sells the videos on his website, BallbustinFootlovin.fetlovin.com. Say what?!! I’ve never worked for him myself because his stuff is very adult; the chicks usually end up blowing him. But as seen earlier in this blog entry, I have done some softer-core ballbusting videos in my day…and I have to say, I find them mildly therapeutic 😀

Anyway, when that crazy shoot was over I packed my bag and got the fuck out of there. As I was climbing into my truck in the front driveway, four Mexican cowboys came cantering down the street on horseback, drinking beer and chattering in Spanish in the dusky twilight. Considering all I’d just seen, I was sure they were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…but in reality, I was just in one of those weird, funky old neighborhoods in Vegas that are still zoned for horses, even though development has crept up around them on all sides. (Get it…..neighborhoods?!) And that, my friends, is one of the reasons I still love Vegas…even after all these years.

So to thank Vegas for all it has done for me, I decided to do one last gig…pro bono. You know, just to give a little something back to the community that has given me so very much!

This was the weekend of the annual Life Is Beautiful festival; one of those annoying music festivals featuring multiple bands, overpriced drinks, food trucks and hordes of chicks wandering around in high-waisted acid-wash shorts. Shudder! Worse, they hold this festival in downtown Vegas, not far from my house…but they fence it off from the rest of the neighborhood, in order to keep out all the poor people who live down there, and sort of pretend they don’t exist. Because Life is Beautiful…not Difficult/Scary/Sad, you fool.

But this year it was actually pretty cool; they had turned this shitty old no-tell motel down there into an art space called the Art Motel, with each room being curated by a different artist or art crew. I was invited to participate as part of the Intimately Female group exhibit in one of the rooms; the director was this super-progressive gallery owner here in town who dug my Electric Vagina shtick, and she gave me a free festival wristband in exchange for performing at the Art Motel.

OMG, legitimacy at last! I’m not even gonna pretend to be blasé about it; I’d never been presented as an “artist” before, and it was super exciting to be taken somewhat seriously. I dithered for weeks over how I was going to perform; I couldn’t really bring my blender and make Vagina Coladas, since I’m pretty sure that would have been a) a violation of the health code and b) a conflict of interest with the overpriced booze vendors onsite.

In the end, it didn’t matter; show management booted us out of our original room and into this tiny little broom closet under the stairs, almost completely hidden by a giant 3-D painting, and there was no room for me to perform anyway — so I became a mobile exhibit, free to roam the festival grounds in my costume and fuck with/ pose for photos with/ educate people about the Powers of the Feminine. It was awesome!!

Because they had moved the festival up to September (it’s usually in October), the weather was super fucking sweltering hot, especially because of all the asphalt, and I couldn’t wear my gold spandex bodysuit; at the last minute, I came up with a sort of Electric Showgirl costume to wear instead, that actually kind of tied in perfectly with my whole shtick about how Vegas commodifies women’s bodies — which, incidentally, I’m fine with…so long as I can go topless in public if I want to!!! It’s a two-way street, motherfuckers.

So for three days, my life went like this: I packed my Electric Showgirl costume into a messenger bag and rode my bike down to Fremont Street (parking was impossible during the festival, and it’s only a 10-minute sweltering bike ride from my house). I changed into my costume in the El Cortez bathroom (there was no bathroom or air conditioning at the Art Motel), and then spent the rest of the night hanging out at the Art Motel or just wandering around the festival grounds talking to people.

Most of the time, it was pretty straightforward: I had on a showgirl headdress, and people wanted a photo with me just because it was Vegas. But then when they noticed my outlet, that’s when the conversation got interesting! I had a dramatic little spiel I would go into, about The Power Of The Feminine:

“For centuries, THE VAGINA has been IDOLIZED… FETISHIZED… DEMONIZED…  and MONETIZED. But its power has never been fully UTILIZED… until now.

Presenting the solution to the global energy crisis –THE VAGINA! The ONLY truly renewably resource we have on this planet.”

 

Then I would hold aloft my power drill, with a little pink flag that read “VIVA LA VAGINA” waving from the end of my 11″ concrete drill bit…to mostly polite applause. It was great! I even actually made a positive impact on a few young chicks, by impressing upon them how much power they really do have — and I’m not talking about pussy power in the traditional sense, where some asshole buys you a car or some Louboutins or whatever in exchange for sex. I’m talking about real power!

Because it’s like this: let’s face it, men rule the world. Something like 85% of all the heads of State, Congress, Senators, whatever around the world are men — and many/most men spend their entire lives completely bewitched by/ chasing pussy (I should know; I spend my entire working life lazily milking this weakness). Careers have been ruined, families have been destroyed, fortunes have been pissed away because of this fascination.

Meanwhile, we as women own one hundred percent of the commodity men want — ONE HUNDRED PERCENT — but somehow, we’re still second class citizens who can’t even walk down the street without a fuckin’ shirt on — or vote/take birth control/drive a car/etc in many parts of the world. How the fuck are we letting this happen? WAKE UP, GIRLS!

I mean, Aristophanes addressed this theme in Lysistrata 2,426 years ago…and yet here we are, still bumbling along like idiots in stupid showgirl costumes, getting eaten by foam monsters, tripping over rattlesnakes and basically doing whatever we can to avoid facing the real issues. Sometimes, I’m really ashamed of myself. *Sigh!*

Aaaaanyway, astonishingly I managed to effectively communicate all of this to many girls and women over the course of this festival; but lest you think it was all hardcore feminist Sturm und Drang, rest assured — there was plenty of hijinks, too. I watched a few bands play, had a few drinks, met tons of interesting people in the Vegas arts community (yes, there is one)…and smoked plenty of weed.

One night, I got baked off a friendly passing stranger’s joint, and then met up with a food critic friend who tipped me off to some free tacos being passed out in one of the VIP areas; I was all about some free food, since by that time I had already blown my personal food  budget on a $12 Jack & Coke (remember, I wasn’t getting paid for this, so I had to keep a strict rein on my spending).

So I followed my friend into the VIP enclave, where all the bougie motherfuckers were swanning around sipping cocktails safely apart from the great unwashed masses, and stood in the darkness off to the side watching this semi-well-known chef demonstrate how to make pig cheek meat tacos. It was surreal! Remember, I was high as a kite, standing there in the night gaping at a brightly lit stage where a man in chef’s whites held aloft a glistening golden-brown bisected pig’s head, while a crowd of bougie white and Asian fanboys stared slavering in awe. “I’m here to tell you,” the chef intoned matter-of-factly, “there is no better meat than the meat on this pig’s face.”

He then proceeded to take the sous-vided fatty pig cheek meat and make tacos dressed with mayonnaise — three of the foods I despise most in this world: pork, fat and mayo. Shudder! But, alas…I was so high, so hungry, and so budget-minded that I ate no less than four of those fuckers. Sometimes, I really am ashamed of myself.

I know…I just said that two paragraphs ago. Don’t think I’ve forgotten; I’m just reminding myself to be a better person. Because when all is said and done, that’s all I really have.

Beauty fades, asses sag, and there comes a day when no one wants to pay you to run around the desert naked. Eventually, not even a monster made of upholstery foam wants anything to do with you — fuck; sooner or later, they won’t even let you hand out hot dogs.

So, I’m working on cultivating my inner beauty. Because I’m here to tell you….

There is no better meat than the meat between this idiot’s ears.

 

As the #1 Google result for “Las Vegas nude model,” I do a TON of outdoor photo shoots in the desert around Vegas. I have a few locations that I use for this — dry lake bed, abandoned buildings, fabulous red sandstone formations — but I am always on the lookout for new spots to shoot at. And the other day, I found a humdinger: the ancient bristlecone pine forest up in the Spring Mountains, just northwest of town.

Bristlecone pines are the longest-lived life forms on Earth — over 5,000 years old in at least one case — and over the millennia the winds have blasted them into gnarled, twisted shapes. The dead ones are the most visually striking, as they have lost all their bark and have these beautiful, whorled striations on their trunks and branches. The trunks are almost the same color as my skin in some cases – although they photograph most dramatically in black-and-white.

These amazing ancients are found only in Nevada, Utah and eastern California (other less long-lived species are found in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona) and I first discovered them several years ago, while hiking to the Raintree. The Raintree is this massive bristlecone pine in the Spring Mountains up near Fletcher Peak that is said to be 3,000 years old — making it (allegedly) the oldest living thing in Nevada…now that Joan Rivers is gone (ZING).

Anyway, the Raintree hike is one of my favorites in the Vegas area — after going about a mile and a half through a Ponderosa pine forest, you reach this amazing barren plateau overlooking all of the Las Vegas Valley and the surrounding desert; you can even see the Strip in the distance! It’s a huge flat area, and someone even built a little shanty out of fallen branches at the base of one of the bigger bristlecones. It would be an amazing place to camp out and have a drum circle or something like that!

But what’s really striking about this plateau are all the gnarly, dead bristlecones up there. Because it’s a windblasted ridge, they have taken on some really cool, twisted shapes…and I always thought they would make for some amazing art nudes. IF I could ever convince a photographer to hike up there.

Alas, however, I probably won’t be bringing (m)any photographers to this location. Although the trailhead is less than an hour from the Vegas Strip…the hike to the plateau itself is about 1.4 miles uphill with 1,000 feet of elevation gain, starting at 8,439 feet and ending up at 9,331 feet. And that’s just to the plateau — if you want to go all the way to the Raintree, it’s another 1.3 miles and 700 feet of elevation gain. The trail itself is technically fairly easy (I do it in flip-flops)…but it’s relentlessly uphill. You’ll have glutes of steel by the time you’re finished — did I mention I can crack a walnut in my ass?!

Anyway, most of the photographers who hire me aren’t up to the challenge…but I did convince my friend Randy Fosth a/k/a Shutterbug Studio to come with me the other day. And though he almost died doing it, we got all the fantastic photos you see in this blog…so I guess it was worth it!

Anyway, if you’re an adventurous sort, in moderately decent shape, and want to hire me for a shoot up here, I’ll be glad to

take you up on it. All you need is water and a camera — I’ll take care of the rest! As an added bonus, because the elevation is so high, you can shoot here even on the hottest day of summer — it might be 100 degrees down in Vegas, but up here it’s generally at least 20 degrees cooler.

But even if your physical limitations won’t allow for this hike, don’t worry: all my other locations are very easy to drive to, with minimal walking/hiking 🙂 We can still take beautiful photos…I got your back!

 

*Hike information taken from Jim Boone’s fantastic site birdandhike.com. Directions to trailhead can be found there as well…or see my video below: