One of my favorite photo shoot locations used to be this fabulous old abandoned silver mine out in the desert — all weathered wood and beautiful rust patterns, with nothing but Joshua trees and cactus for miles around. It was the perfect complement to succulent naked flesh, and every photographer I brought there absolutely loved it.

But over the years, the place has been steadily declining, slowly and surely falling apart — the facade is sagging, gusty winds have blown off most of the roof panels, and one of the walls is completely gone. What was once charming dilapidation has now veered perilously close to total collapse; sooner or later, I was bound to drag some poor photographer all the way out there to find nothing but a pile of rubble.

Don’t think I don’t see the symbolism!

But you know me; I’m proactive as fuck. Between punishing sessions at the gym to stave off any personal dilapidation, I also took the initiative to scout the desert around Vegas for a replacement location to that old silver mine — which is how I discovered the abandoned cement plant. Screw the silver mine — this new site has proved to be something of a gold mine for me personally; everyone wants to shoot there!

When it comes to my favorite locations, I usually keep them pretty close to my chest, only sharing them with clients who have hired me for a shoot. The last thing I want is every half-assed bozo on Model Mayhem cluttering up my workplace; before you know it, some dumb nitwit will trip on her stripper heels, fall off a rock and break her neck…and my beautiful ruins will get torn down for being a hazard.

Thus, I’m pretty cagey about sharing these favorite locations — and can you really blame me? After all, I’m running a business here! Take a quick look at the Las Vegas Area Nude Photography Location Guide on this very website — I already give out a TON of free information; why should I give up all my hard-earned trade secrets?

Alas, however, I underestimated the craftiness of certain dogged motherfuckers in town.

One recent afternoon I was out at the cement plant with a really cool client who was shooting infrared film. Mid-shoot, I had just climbed up on top of a ginormous section of the old rotary kiln, when off in the distance I spotted another car approaching. Shit!

In my past experience, on the rare occasions other cars had stumbled onto the site, they had usually just been curious looky-Lous who drove around, gawked, snapped a pic or two and then continued on their way without really interrupting my shoot. Assuming this would once again hold true, I advised my client to just pretend he was taking photos of the industrial wreckage, and I would stay put, sort of molding my body to the top curve of the kiln, camouflaging myself like a chameleon.

Well, imagine my consternation when the car drove in, cruised around as expected…but then pulled right up and parked directly underneath where I was hiding! Holding my breath, I peeked over the jagged edge of the kiln and watched as a guy in a ball cap got out and started snapping photos with a small point-and-shoot. Come on, man!! I thought to myself. Get outta here and let me finish this damn shoot! I’m freezing my ass off up here!

Then, he looked up.

Peering over the edge, directly at him, I had to laugh. Not only was it someone I knew from town — it was a photographer I’ve shot with many times, and consider a friend.”Hiiiiiiii,” I drawled, dangling one leg over the edge. Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about being reported to the police for public nudity! “How the hell did you find this place?!”

It turns out this motherfucker was even more determined than I — he had taken what scant information I’d made public about the site, and had logged six solid hours on Google Maps, scanning the desert in all directions around Vegas until he’d found it. Now, that’s dedication! I had to hand it to him.

To his immense credit, after chatting for a few minutes, this classy gentleman got back in his Jeep (which I thought I’d recognized) and drove away, leaving me to finish my shoot in peace. But, dammit…..the cat’s out of the bag 🙁 Now it’s just a matter of time before every Tom, Dick and Harry starts bringing every Barbizon dropout on Instagram out there for edgy portfolio shots.

Anyway, I didn’t have much time to fret over it because soon afterward the weather grew too cold for outdoor shooting anyway, and the 2015 Outdoor Nude Modeling Season basically came to an end. I don’t usually shoot outdoors at all in December; not only is it too fucking cold, but most guys have more important things to spend their money on that time of year than photographing naked ninnies in the desert. So I generally end up taking most of December off.

This year, however, instead of just sitting around guzzling spiked eggnog and stuffing cookies in my face, one of the readers of this very blog alerted me to a competition in which I might be interested: the annual hunt for the $10,000 Jingle Bell Rock!! Apparently, every December for the last 13 years or so a local radio station has hidden a giant rock with their logo on it somewhere in the desert within the Clark County boundaries…and the first person to find it wins $10,000!!!! OMG — how have I never heard of this contest before?!?

Because I had all this time off, I decided to devote my energy to finding this fucking rock. It’s been a while since I won any big money — my last windfall was at the end of 2012, when I won $10,000 in that Downy fabric softener scavenger hunt. I teamed up with my friend Shutterbug Studio — what with all the remote outdoor shooting we do, the two of us know the desert around these parts better than most. In fact, it was with Shutterbug that I discovered that damn cement plant!

I just knew we were gonna find this fuckin’ rock — I could already hear the voice of the radio DJ announcing it: “A nude model and photographer with a long shared history of exploring the desert are this year’s winners of the $10,000 prize!” What a great story it would make! And what a great blog!!!

The way the contest worked was, every day for three weeks they would read clues on the radio at certain times, plus post additional written clues at various sponsor locations around town. Shutterbug and I listened religiously, writing down every clue and driving ourselves crazy trying to figure out what they meant. The clues were intentionally very vague, but at first we thought we had it narrowed down to somewhere in North Las Vegas (which is a separate city from Las Vegas). One of the clues was “in friendly surroundings,” and Shutterbug had seen an Internet meme where a sign reading “Welcome to Friendly North Las Vegas” was juxtaposed against a photo of the North Vegas police beating the shit out of some guy — aha!! Another clue was “circle gets the square,” which we figured referred to the old Hollywood Squares TV show; Hollywood Blvd. is a street that lays partly in North Vegas…so we just knew it had to be around there somewhere. Especially when another one of the clues was “let’s spoon,” and we found a place called Spoon Exhibit Services up in that same area.

Shutterbug works a full-time job, so most of the actual searching fell to me — I spent my days running, walking and biking every damn trail and park in North Vegas; any public area where a rock was likely to blend into the surroundings. But aside from gaining a newfound appreciation for the astonishingly nice and sorely underused trail system in northtown, I came up with nothing. Another clue showed a bowling alley in an Elks Lodge, so I spent quite a bit of time searching around the northtown Elks Lodge, too…probably freaking out the old people. But after awhile, I gave up looking….aside from sitting on my ass at home poring over Google Earth (I should have called my other photographer friend, haha).

As the contest wore on, the clues now seemed to start pointing south, toward the Hoover Dam: there were clues like “row, row, row your boulder” (Boulder City is the town by Hoover Dam — and it has its own Elks Lodge) and “power to the people” (the Dam, of course, generates a shit ton of electricity). Many of the clues also referred to writing and ink — so I started focusing in on Hemenway Wash, an area of open desert down by Lake Mead just west of the Dam.

I thought for sure I was on the right track when I went down there one morning and saw several other idiots out hunting around the same area; my heartrate skyrocketed and my blood pressure went through the roof as my insane competitive instincts kicked in. I had to find that fucking rock!!!! Then it got even worse — as I was casually bumbling around the desert pretending to be “jogging” (have to throw those other fuckers off the trail, ya know) I saw a metal spoon stuck in the ground!! And it was right next to a broken section of chain-link fence — other clues had been “the weakest link” and “back on the chain gang.” HOLY SHIT! The $10,000 was so close, I could taste it!!!

Alas, though I searched around for hours that day, I came up with nothing. When Shutterbug got off work that evening, even though it was pitch black and freezing fucking cold outside, he insisted we go back down there with flashlights, and search some more!! We were stumbling around in the darkness like idiots when a security guard came up to us: “Can I help you??” Apparently, we were near some kinda storage facility for Hemenway Harbor, and he thought we were trying to rob the joint. “No, we’re just looking for the Jingle Bell Rock,” we assured him.

“Oh, was that you guys down here last night, too?”

So others were onto this area!!!! Now we knew for certain we were on the right path, and our efforts became even more frenzied. I actually got up the next morning at 6am (!!!) in order to get down there by daybreak, and beat any other fuckers to the prize. I had to find that rock!!!!!!!

 

 

But curiously, when I got down there the following morning, I spent all day searching around…and didn’t see another single person looking. Hmmm! Had someone already found it? Or…was I looking in the wrong area, after all??

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t dedicate as much time and energy to this treasure hunt as I would have liked, since I kept getting interrupted by photographers wanting to shoot with me! In December! As previously mentioned, I don’t usually shoot much at all that time of year, let alone outdoors — but this fucking cement plant was proving to be so alluring that I ended up going out there what felt like every other day!

And boy, was it cold!! You might not realize it, but despite its being in the middle of the Mojave Desert, Vegas gets chilly in the winter — there’s no moisture in the air to hold in any warmth. Daytime temps get down into the 50s and 40s…which may not sound that cold, but when you’re standing or lying around naked, I’m here to tell you — it’s fucking freeeeeezing!!!!!

 

One guy hired me to wear a latex gimp hood while he shot me on some kind of weird, super-arty large-format film….so with the latex at least keeping my nose cozy, that wasn’t so bad. Then another guy hired me to wear a sort of slutty Russian scientist getup while he backlit the crumbling Chernobyl-esque scene with eerie red light — and again, the scraps of sexy clothing helped insulate me somewhat. 

But then this other guy rolled in from Minnesota, with three other models in tow who were from Michigan, Wisconsin and Denver. Uh oh!!!! I thought I was totally fucked, hanging with this crew of ice-people from the frozen tundra…but fortunately for me, naked girls from Wisconsin get just as cold as naked girls from Nevada, so we were all equally miserable. And the photographer was very cool and very understanding, and didn’t torture us too much 🙂

Anyway, with all those lucrative interruptions in my hunting schedule, I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to search for the fuckin’ Jingle Bell Rock….and next thing you know it was the last day of the contest, December 21st. No one had turned in the rock yet; it was presumably still out there. And to make matters worse, they released a final clue: a photo of a bag of Blue Diamond almonds. Blue Diamond is a major highway on the southwest side of Vegas, and also the name of a small town on the outskirts of Red Rock Canyon– about as far away from Hemenway fucking Wash as you could get. Dammit!!!!!

But since I hadn’t been concentrating on that area, I had no clue where to even begin looking; worse, I was supposed to drive up north to my mom’s house that very day for Christmas — a ten-hour drive, so I really couldn’t leave too late, as we had planned to celebrate the Winter Solstice the following day. But how could I give up hunting now?!?!?! With my truck packed and ready to leave town, I wasted a few final hours tooling around Blue Diamond in a vain, last-ditch attempt to find that fuckin’ Jingle Bell Rock…before finally, über-reluctantly giving up. I hate giving up on stuff; I hate losing!! ARRRGHHHH!

As I made the long journey north, I kept checking the radio station’s website — and sure enough, a few hours out of town, it turned out that someone had found the rock — the previous day!! @#$#%#$#%!!!!!!! I knew I’d been wasting my time, dammit. To make matters worse, because I’d needlessly pissed away so much time hunting that morning, I was really late getting to my mom’s house, and almost fell asleep at the wheel.

Thankfully, once I got to my mom’s and started celebrating the holidays, all the wine, cider, eggnog and assorted other booze helped ease the sting of my miserable defeat. Still, for a while there I didn’t think I’d be able to even write about the whole mess, at all — I hate losing that much. If I’d won, it would have made an awesome blog — but who wants to read about some idiot losing a contest?! No one!!!

But when I finally sat down and looked back at the events of the past month, I realized something: the real treasure wasn’t the Jingle Bell Rock at all. Sure, it would have been nice to win half of that $10,000 — I could have bought a new camper for Burning Man, and paid for the $700 worth of fillings that my dentist claims need replacing. But I was trying to be all forward-thinking and Zen, and look at the journey as the reward in itself: I got a lot of fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, spent a lot of quality time with Shutterbug, and discovered a lot of fun new trails around town. That in itself is a reward…right?

Um, yeah….sure. Zen, I am not; I’m not talking about the fucking journey, I’m talking about the cement plant! That fucking location is the gift that keeps on giving; the goose that lays the golden egg. Every photographer wants to shoot there; if I can only keep all these other meddlesome motherfuckers out of the way, I should be able to milk that location at least until next summer….by which time I will have made more than my half of that paltry $10,000 prize. Fuck the Jingle Bell Rock; Shutterbug and I had found the real prize months ago!

As with many such greed-crazed harebrained adventures…the treasure had been under my nose, all along. And I’ll be happy to share it with you…..if you hire me 🙂

 

As a nude model specializing in outdoor shoots, I do a lot of posing in traditional desert landscapes — dry lake beds, slot canyons, sand dunes. But my most popular locations are ruins — abandoned buildings, old mines, the abandoned waterpark, the old cement plant. There is something about decay that really seems to appeal to many photographers; the juxtaposition of succulent nubile flesh vs. rusty old ruins is a time-honored trope that will probably never go out of style. Dudes will always have an inexplicable hardon for a tight ass in a busted landscape.

The deserts of the southwestern US are a real bonanza of postapocalyptic ruin– thanks to our vast empty spaces and sunny climate, old shit tends to linger longer out here than in other areas of the country. With a little exploring, you can find some truly exceptional wreckage to photograph….and when it comes to ruin porn, the area around the Salton Sea is pretty much the gold standard. It’s like a Disneyland of tetanus and despair!

If you’ve never heard of it, the Salton Sea is this giant lake in the southeastern corner of California — a sun-nuked, dusty, forgotten part of the state that is as far removed from Hollywood as Uranus. It’s the biggest lake in California, but few have even heard of it because the entire area has basically been forgotten and abandoned due to its being a malodorous environmental catastrophe and architectural eyesore. Have I sufficiently whetted your appetite?!?!

The Sea was created by accident back in 1905, when irrigation canals fed by the Colorado River overflowed and flooded the Salton Sink — a vast dry lake bed separated from the Gulf of California by a godforsaken stretch of desolate borderland. Over a period of about two years, the Colorado river basically poured straight into this desiccated basin, and the Sink became a Sea.

In its early years, the Sea was an astonishingly beautiful anomaly — a vast, brilliant blue lake in the middle of the sun-drenched California desert, not far from Palm Springs and within jaunting distance of L.A. As such, it soon became a popular recreational getaway, and before you know it scores of motels, resorts, marinas and housing developments had sprung up all along the shore to meet the needs of fishermen, boaters and water-skiiers.

Over time, however, the Sea deteriorated into a stinking morass of dead tilapia and existential despair; because there is no natural drainage, and the only incoming source of water is agricultural runoff, municipal discharge and industrial dumping courtesy of a couple of heavily-polluted Mexican rivers, the salinity of the water has increased over the years. The fertilizer in the agricultural runoff adds massive amounts of algae and bacteria to this foul soup, to the point where few life-forms can survive in it; mass quantities of tilapia die off in periodic waves, perfuming the air with the unmistakable stench of failure. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

But from a distance, the Sea is beautiful. Its immense glassy surface reflects the region’s amazing desert sunsets, and sparkling white beaches beckon like a travel brochure; it’s only upon closer inspection that you realize the beaches aren’t sugary sand at all, rather acres and acres of crushed tilapia teeth and bones. Far out!!!

Anyway, as mentioned there are tons of abandoned settlements dotting the perimeter of the Sea; once the stench grew unbearable, the various motels, resorts and housing developments gradually shut down, and nowadays everywhere you look it’s nothing but crumbling, graffiti-covered cinderblock walls and busted-up trailers strewn with broken glass and the indomitable plastic detritus of crushed lives: scratched CDs, unspooled VHS tape, World’s Greatest Grandpa license plate frames.

Jarringly, amid the chaos you’ll spot the occasional well-maintained home — there are still people living on the shores of the Sea, hanging onto whatever semblance of normalcy they can salvage; either they sunk their life savings into the property they’re tenaciously clinging to, or they simply can’t afford to live anywhere else, so they’ve dug in their heels. These poor souls water their plants and mow their lawns and wearily tolerate the crowds of ruin-porn tourists and looky-Lous intrepid enough to wander the streets of their mostly-abandoned developments; to them, this is home…so if you do venture out here, please respect them.

My own history with the Salton Sea area goes back to 2010, when an ex-boyfriend and I stopped in a for a couple days. We checked out all the usual sights — the abandoned housing developments, the tilapia-tooth beaches, a nearby Arts & Crafts religious monument called Salvation Mountain and the neighboring permanent-itinerant encampment known as Slab City. On the last night of our stay, the miasma of doom took its toll and we ended up having a horrible argument and breaking up; beware! The Salton Sea is that kind of place.

I went back a few years later with my sister, but had not returned since then — and had never done any photo shoots out there, though I’d long wanted to. So when my friend Randy a/k/a Shutterbug Studio informed me that he had some time off work and wanted to go on an adventure, I knew exactly where to go: to the Sea!!!

From Vegas, the best approach to the Salton Sea is through the Mojave National Preserve, so we started our trip cruising through that barren wonderland, stopping off at one of my favorite abandoned farmhouses along the way. This farmhouse was especially poignant for both of us, as we’d done one of our first-ever shoots together there back in 2008 or 2009; we made a point of reprising some of the exact same poses we’d done there back then, as most of the decay was sitting there baking quietly in the sun exactly as it had lain seven years ago. Like I said…..shit lingers longer out here!

From there, we continued south to historic old Route 66, stopping for a few photos at the iconic, über-Instagrammable Roy’s Motel before heading on down to the Sea via my all-time favorite kooky corner of the desert, Wonder Valley. We didn’t really have enough time to stop in Wonder Valley, but I’m sure I’ll be back out there in the spring when and if my friends Käpt’n Rummelsnuff and First Mate Christian come out from Berlin for their annual desert retreat at the Cat Ranch.

 

Anyway, thanks to our lollygagging we didn’t roll in to the Salton Sea area until sunset — with barely enough time to find a suitable chunk of wreckage at which to exploit the fabulous light of golden hour. Thankfully, you can’t walk 100 feet without tripping over a fantastic location out there, and we got some amazing shots in Salton Sea Beach before heading up north to nearby Palm Desert, where our hotel was. We grabbed some dinner and hit the sack early, in order to be up in time to fully maximize the following day’s planned itinerary of shooting at Salvation Mountain, Slab City and Bombay Beach. So much to see…so little time!

So the next day we headed off to the eastern shore of the Sea, toward the little semi-abandoned town of Niland, where there was said to be an International Banana Museum, with amazing banana milkshakes. Alas, however, apparently the proprietor was in Costa Rica or something…and according to the lady at the adjacent liquor store he’s hardly ever around anyway. Boo!

But our disappointment was short-lived and tempered by our subsequent discovery of an amazing abandoned warehouse just down the road, which was full of creepy old dolls and fabulous graffiti, and which in and of itself would have made the entire trip worthwhile. That place was amazing, and we got some really great shots in there! Now completely fired up, we continued east through Niland toward Salvation Mountain and Slab City, where I knew from personal experience there were plenty of cool photo ops.

We ended up bypassing Salvation Mountain, which as mentioned is a sort of ginormous Arts & Crafts monument built of plaster-coated hay bales covered in colorful latex house paint to reflect a variety of hippie-Christian ideals — God, Love, Jesus Saves, etc. It just didn’t seem very respectful to pose nude around there; say what you will about me and my lack of class, I do have restraint when appropriate! But I have toured this astonishing monument in the past, and I highly recommend stopping here, if you’re in the area. The wonderful kind old man who built it has since passed away, but you can still drop in for a tour from one of the volunteers who work to maintain the space. It’s a really, really neat place.

From Salvation Mountain, we continued eastward to Slab City, also bypassing the local hot spring pond — which, even for a hotsprings fanatic like me, is simply too gross to consider wallowing in; first off, the bottom is carpeted (?!?!!), and secondly, the pond is basically the town bathtub for all the filthy hippies and off-grid methheads squatting in Slab City. Shudder!!

 

 

Instead, we tooled on into Slab City itself, which as mentioned is a sort of permanent-itinerant encampment of hippies, bums, RVers and on-the-lammers who have built an unofficial community on the concrete slab foundations of a long-demolished and abandoned Marine base. The land technically belongs to the state teachers’ retirement fund, but since it’s so remote, bleak and inhospitable, no one wants anything to do with it, and squatters basically have the run of the place. There are tons of unofficial ramshackeldy compounds scattered about, including an internet cafe, a library and a main stage area which is apparently host to a Saturday-night open mic jam that I have always wanted to check out; aside from these rickety structures there is little else out there but RVs in varying states of driveability dotted among creosote bushes and piles and piles of trash. There’s no running water or electricity, but people live out there for months or even years at a time, for free, with no fear of government interference. It’s really the final frontier of the old Wild West!

Shutterbug and I dicked around Slab City for a bit, but our real interest lay on the northern outskirts — a little enclave of found-object/mixed-media artists known as East Jesus, which is basically like a giant, permanent Burning Man camp with all kinds of the most astonishing art strewn about. I mean, there is some really, really cool art out there! When I visited with my sister in 2014, one of the residents gave us a tour, and even showed us the “backstage” area where the caretakers live, and it was actually amazingly nice; they had a solar power setup, raised beds where they grew veggies and whatnot, outhouses and a really gemütlich common lounge area (for TONS of photos from that visit, click here).

This trip, we didn’t take too many photos as the midday lighting was pretty unforgiving, so we mostly just looked around for awhile before continuing on. A friend had tipped me off to the existence of some supposedly amazing graffiti murals on the side of some water tanks on the backside of Salvation Mountain, so we headed south a few miles to see if we could find them. After passing the outskirts of Slab City, we continued on along a fairly well-graded dirt road before ill-advisedly turning off onto a less well-used dirt road into the desert, where we could see the water tanks off in the distance.

Now, a word about my friend Shutterbug and his off-road cred: he normally drives a Jeep, and in fact is the one who eventually came out to extract my truck from the mud where it had gotten bogged down on a “dry” lakebed outside Vegas a couple months ago. But his Jeep was in the shop, so on this trip we were driving his backup car, a 2WD Pontiac Aztek (basically sort of a crossover-SUV-type car made famous as a hideous failure; a metaphor for the Salton Sea if ever there was one). Anyway, the Aztek doesn’t have the Jeep’s capabilities when it comes to driving on uncertain ground…..and sure as shit, wouldn’t you know it, just when we had decided to turn around and go back, we got stuck in the soft sugar sand. And I mean stuck! The front wheels were sunk in up to the axles — it was hopeless!!!

So there I was, stuck in the middle of nowhere for the second time in 6 weeks. I know what you’re thinking — what a dumbass!!! But in my defense, at least I wasn’t driving this time! In any event, this situation was much more dire than my previous jam, as the dry lake bed I’d gotten bogged down in was only 45 minutes from Vegas; the place we were stuck in now was hundreds of miles from ANYwhere!!!

Well, no use sitting around fretting — might as well get to work trying to dig ourselves out! The worst part was, we were just far enough from the Slab City outskirts that there wasn’t even any of the ubiquitous garbage laying around; if we’d been closer to “town” we could have grabbed some old carpet or something to get some traction. As it was, the only thing for miles around was creosote bushes and a few spindly tamarisk trees; we gathered branches from those and tried to jam them under the wheels along with the floormats, but it was no use. Despite our best, sweaty efforts, we only managed to dig ourselves in deeper.

Now starting to get worried, we considered our options. We were miles from a paved road, so roadside assistance wouldn’t help….and we didn’t feel like shelling out hundreds or even thousands to a tow company in the area. Vegas was 5 hours away, so calling any of our friends for help was also pretty much out of the question. Slab City was about a three-mile walk, but the residents we had interacted with that morning were either prickly and irritable, or reeked of booze…so neither of us really felt like throwing ourselves on their mercy, either.

Meanwhile, my sister had just moved to the L.A. area, about 3.5 hours away…so one idea was to have her drive out in her 4×4 4 Runner and maybe try to pull us out. To her credit, she was willing to drop everything and come on out….but that whole plan was super-iffy anyway, as her rig is only a V-6 and as mentioned, we were stuck up to the axles. What to do?!?!

 

Thankfully, at least we were in cell range; there was a tower nearby, and in fact I had full 4G reception. So in desperation I did what I always do in times of need: I turned to my vast network of Facebook “friends,” on the slim chance that someone would know someone in the area who would be able to offer some assistance.

Now, I put “friends” in quotes because I know how it is with Facebook; people who are your friends on there aren’t necessarily real friend-friends; for example I personally have close to 5,000 Facebook friends, but still usually end up driving myself to the airport. You know what I mean! Just as the ancient Greeks had multiple words for “love,” I feel that modern times call for the coinage of a new word for a “friend” of the Facebook variety.

 

But I’ve had great success in the past when calling upon my Facebook network for help, so I figured I’d at least try. So I put up an SOS post….and then went back to digging. Shutterbug and I took turns scooping out sand on the sunny side of the car; it was in the 70s that day, and kind of hot. In no time at all we were both sweaty, filthy and had sand in every crevice (thanks to being mid-photo shoot, I was just wearing a loose sundress with no underwear or anything, so my ass and pudenda were out for the world to see).

After digging to the point of exhaustion, I stopped to take a brief break and check my SOS post to see if there were any leads. And would you believe that by some astounding miracle, it turned out that one of my Facebook friends was actually in Slab City at that moment, less than 3 miles away?!?! Even better, this guy had just gotten stuck in the sand himself the other day, so he was sympathetic to my plight. And even better, he happened to be driving an immense 4×4 F-250 with a tow strap at hand!!! Hallelujah!!!!!!

Best of all, this was a person I had actually met in person on several occasions, so I knew he was good people; many of my FB friends are people I’ve never actually met in real life, and that can go either way. But this guy used to work for a certain famous magician at whose show I used to take souvenir photos, so we had interacted in real life back in Vegas. Nowadays he runs a zipline operation out at the Sturgis bike rally every summer, and had traveled to Slab City to help out a family of hippies who had worked for him at Sturgis as temp labor refurbish their schoolbus home.

Anyway, my friend and the bad-ass mom from the hippie family came out in his truck to help pull us free. The hippie mom had spent a lot of time at the Slabs, so had quite a bit of experience extricating vehicles of all kinds from the sand; apparently it happens all the time out there. And sure enough, in less than an hour they were able to free us completely from our hopeless predicament . YAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Let it never be said that social media is a waste of time; in my experience, time and again it has proved its worth as an invaluable resource — sort of like an online village. Sure, all the villagers might not know each other personally…but when crunchtime comes, they’re generally willing to help each other out. And as I have learned the hard way by now….it takes a village to be me!!!

After we were freed, we gave my friend a wad of cash to thank him for his efforts, and followed him back over to the hippie family’s schoolbus encampment in the Slabs. It was amazing — mom, dad, kids and something like 4 full-grown Great Danes and a puppy were all living in this converted school bus. Meanwhile, my friend had this badass new 5th wheel travel trailer he’d just gotten at an auction, which is what he uses to stay in at Sturgis, and he invited me to come up and work his zipline operation next summer — apparently the RV sleeps 6 people, so there’s plenty of room. Hmmm!

Anyway, we hung out bullshitting for a while, basking in the glow of adrenaline and relief, and then took off to celebrate with some food and drinks — we were starving after all that!! We had planned to wrap up our day of shooting with a sunset session in Bombay Beach (another one of the deserted settlements along the Sea shore), but we were both too dirty and tired to even think of shooting any more photos…so instead, we headed to the legendary Ski Inn — a quaint little watering hole serving the remaining locals in Bombay Beach, Niland and the surrounding areas. OMG was that place amazing!!!

The Ski Inn is one of those picturesque little local-color bars you see at the side of every lonely desert highway, like the Palms in Wonder Valley or the Bagdad Cafe in Newberry Springs — full of interesting locals, walls covered in signed dollar bills and other passing-thru-tourist memorabilia. And I am pleased to report that just like the Palms, the Ski Inn definitely delivers!! We had a couple of really good cheeseburgers cooked to order by the owner’s awesome wife, and enjoyed a couple celebratory cocktails served by a super-nice bartender named Steve. I’m not just saying that because I’m happy to be alive; those burgers were amazing, and Steve was one of those people with whom I felt an instant affinity — someone I really liked on a weirdly deep level. If you’re reading this, Steve, know that a shameless hussy named Sarah Jane in Vegas thinks you’re amazing, and will definitely be back to visit and talk longer! <3

After finishing our food, we signed a dollar bill, stuck it to the jukebox, and hauled ass back up to Palm Desert to soak in the Jacuzzi and decompress. I had a glass of wine and a pot cookie, and never felt better — what an amazing day! I still couldn’t get over my insanely good luck; I guess all those deposits I’ve been making into the Bank of Karma finally paid off. Maybe the $150 I lost in Ballarat ghost town last month tipped the balance in my favor; who can say?

In any event, the day hadn’t gone as expected, but still turned out wonderful…an incredible adventure, and we got a shit ton of amazing photos to boot. In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing we got stuck in the sand; as it was, Shutterbug was busy editing photos for the next two weeks with what we’d already shot…he couldn’t have handled much more! Plus, on the way home we stopped off in Joshua Tree, at the Noah Purifoy outdoor art installation,

and shot a bunch more pics…so it all worked out perfectly. We rolled back into Vegas late that afternoon, tired and sore and with a few grains of stray sand still in our asscracks (well, at least in my asscrack)…and chalked it all up to another fantastic chapter in the Book of Wonderhussy.

It’s a great book…and I hope it never ends 😀

 

 

 

People are often ashamed to be seen with me.

Don’t get me wrong — people enjoy hanging out with me, because I’m attractive and charismatic and fun as fuck. But because I live such an openly unorthodox life, many are skittish about being publicly associated with me: they don’t want me to post about them, they don’t want to be in photos with me, etc. I totally understand that not everyone lives by my policy of radical transparency, so I always honor these requests, but…sometimes it gets lonely, being me.

The irony is, many are attracted to me because of my freewheeling existence; I am often told “I admire your honesty so much!” and “I live vicariously through your adventures!” Well, guess what? Vicarious is so 2014!!!  Why not tell society to fuck off, and put your money where your mouth is??

Well, recently, one guy did put his money where his mouth was — but in an unexpected way; he actually paid me for my discretion. To honor his request, I am purposely fudging the dates and have waited a considerable amount of time to blog about my experience with him…but, now it can be told.

Several months ago, I received a booking request from someone with an anonymous hush.com email account. According to their website, for as low as $34.99/year Hush.com provides “Secure email with built-in encryption, no advertising, and unlimited email aliases.” Hmmmmmm.

As a freelance model, this set off alarm bells — the email address I was contacted by sounded very swinger-y/cheating-on-my-wife-y…and despite public opinion, I really am a MODEL; nothing more, nothing less. I am not a prostitute, I am not a swinger. I just pose for nude photos, theoretically in the name of art. I do not have sex with photographers.

But over the course of our email exchange, I came to believe that this person (who called himself “Steve,” which I have since learned is not his real name so I feel fine using it here) was legitimately interested in booking me for a photo shoot — no more, no less. So I agreed to shoot with him on two occasions one weekend — first, I was to pick him up at the airport on the afternoon of his arrival, and take him out to the desert for a sunset shoot…before stopping off at Walgreens so he could buy V8 and such, then dropping him at his hotel (what am I, an Über driver?!). Then, two days later, we would shoot together for a full day, after he had completed an athletic competition for which he’d traveled to Vegas. For the second shoot, he had also hired my fellow Goddess Collective member Lolita…so I felt comfortable knowing there would be someone else onboard who had my back (even someone who only weighs 98 pounds, lol).

But when I picked this fucker up at the airport, things were tetchy from the get-go. When I pick up a photographer to go out on one of my desert location shoots, it can sometimes be kind of awkward at first; I’m in the car with a complete stranger for up to an hour, but I’m pretty good at making conversation, so things usually warm up after a few minutes. Not so with this guy!

I started in as I always do: “So, where are you from?”

“Ehmmmmmm……..” he sort of hemmed and hawed in his distinctive European accent, finally coming out with “Perhaps I pay you for discretion??” What he meant was, he didn’t want to tell me anything about his personal life, as apparently his entire world would be shattered if it were to get out that he was photographing a nude model…even for Art’s sake.

Well all right then. I thought I recognized his accent, so I tried again: “Well, where are you originally from?”

“Ehmmmmmmmm…….”

Stymied again! The most I was able to get out of the cagey fucker was the country and region of his birth; I have no idea where he lives now — I forgot to snoop on the baggage claim tag dangling from his suitcase. In any event, between his nervous paranoid giggling and his Über demands, I was starting to get annoyed…so I basically gave up trying, and left the conversation up to him. Honestly, WTF do I care? As long as your money’s green, I don’t need to know your life story — I’ll drive in silence, if that’s what you want. And this guy paid me CA$H, up front.

Fortunately, he was actually a fairly personable, intelligent guy, and we were on the same page politically speaking…so in a real switcheroo of the usual, politics turned out to be the one thing we could talk about. And he really wasn’t bad to talk to — so long as you didn’t try to pry any personal info out of him! I’m telling you, out of all the photographers I’ve shot with, this guy was the most paranoid ever. He had several friends in town that same weekend, and apparently if they found out what he was up to, his life was over…so we basically had to sneak around like we were having an affair or something. It was creepy and kind of depressing — I’m already sensitive about not being a “real” model, and this only exacerbated my sense of self-doubt. But my bills have no such existential qualms — they need to be paid, by hook or by crook. So to speak.

So after dropping his cagey ass off that first evening, I came back to his hotel a couple days later for our full-day shoot. In the interim, he had not only completed his athletic engagement, but also sent me a text or two asking if I could go buy him a battery charger, as he’d forgotten his at home (I didn’t have time, so said no). Jeez!! His sense of entitlement led me to believe he must have been well-off, and used to having people do his bidding (he must have been well-off to hire both me and Lolita for a shoot — Lolita doesn’t work for cheap!). Now I was getting curious about this guy — what the fuck was his deal?

To his credit, like I said he ended up being a pretty cool dude; he mentioned more than once that he’d read and enjoyed this blog, so I knew he couldn’t be a total dumbass. Indeed, once I was safely in his room, away from the prying eyes of his other friends that were in town, he loosened up considerably. Because the weather was shitty that day, we decided to just stay in the room and shoot there; he had some far-out ideas he wanted to try with lighting, etc, so it worked out fine. And as the day progressed, he let his guard down a little — he still wouldn’t divulge many personal details, but when I went to the bathroom I saw his name on his toothbrush (HA!), so I felt I knew him a bit better.

The shoot went on in a fairly typical fashion; he was really into musculature, and in particular my back (I do get a lot of compliments on my back), so we mostly did art-nude bodyscape-type poses, against this super-funky backdrop he had fashioned out of athletic accoutrements.  Curious, I asked him what he planned to do with the photos; since he couldn’t display them anywhere without shattering his reputation, what the fuck was the point? He said he might release them in 20 years…but until then, they would be locked away on come encrypted hard drive somewhere that could only be seen by someone with a subpoena (his words)! I’m telling you, this guy was paranoid!!!

In any event, after awhile I inexplicably warmed to his weird nervous giggle and paranoid shtick, and started to feel sort of sorry for him. I’m sure whatever he had going on that would be ruined by his association with me was fabulous — family name, professional reputation, jealous wife, whatever — but I’ll take my life of open transparency any day of the week over whatever it was. I may be broke, directionless and single…but I’m free. 

And interestingly, as I warmed to him, apparently he also warmed to me. I don’t judge, and I can be very discreet when needed…so I guess that’s why people (often total strangers) tell me their deepest, darkest secrets; I can’t tell you how many weird personal details people in the community (sometimes semi-high-profile people) have confided in me. It’s like I’m a safe place for weirdos — for better or for worse, I’m basically a trash can waiting to be filled with the puke stream of any given id. And so it was that finally, even this cagiest of all cagey motherfuckers warmed up enough to tell me what he really wanted to do — and surprisingly, it wasn’t have sex/suck my toes/have me kick him in the balls…or anything sexual at all, for that matter!

All he wanted was to be naked in a photo with me…and he asked if I would be OK with that.

Now, I’ve seen so many naked bodies of all types at hot springs and Burning Man and places like that, that being naked around other naked people doesn’t faze me at all — women or men, young or old, fit or fat. It makes no difference to me — it’s just flesh! Moreover, I’ve actually been shot by at least two other photographers who were also naked at the time, and everything was totally cool — no hanky panky, no weirdness. Some people just like being naked!

Just to clarify, however, before agreeing I asked him to specify exactly what type of poses he had in mind — I wasn’t into any kind of romantic/erotic stuff. But all he wanted to do was stand next to me naked — in his weird, ultra-nervous, paranoid way, he was trying to make some kind of artistic statement about physical beauty and nudity, and in fact trying to desexualize nudity. So, why the fuck not? I saw no harm in it. I mean, I’ve posed nude with male models before…so what was the difference?

Before he took his clothes off, he warned me not to be alarmed by a certain distinguishing physical characteristic he had (he made me promise not to mention it here, as it’s very identifiable) — and I wasn’t, but it was a very noticeable characteristic that some might find embarrassing. But apparently not this guy! As nervous as he was, he was oddly confident in his nude state; as an athlete, he was fairly fit, so I guess that might have been part of it.

Anyway, he tried to take some photos of us together doing really weird poses like making funny faces, pretending to box, flexing our biceps, etc. but it was too hard to do it in the mirror. So when Lolita finally arrived for her part of the shoot, he asked her if she would take the photos!

And so it was that I ended up being party to one of the (if not THE) weirdest photoshoots I’ve ever done — me and this paranoid, giggling bundle of nerves, flexing our biceps naked, while one of the most beautiful nude models in Vegas photographed us. Bizarre — and not wholly unenjoyable (it was a little creepy, as I was constantly expecting him to try and cop a feel or something…but I kept a polite distance, and nothing ever happened).

Now, I know many of you reading this probably think there is no way this guy had no ulterior motives, and that he must have gotten off doing this; but if he did, it was not apparent in the least, and he displayed no outward symptoms of arousal. I think he just genuinely enjoyed the freedom of being naked in front of a camera, in front of people who wouldn’t rat him out or mock him. I mean, this guy was goofy!!!

Anyhow, the shoot went fairly quickly after that — after our joint nude session he put his clothes back on and shot Lolita and I together for awhile, and then we all three just sat around talking; he had apparently really warmed up at this point, and let slip a few more tantalizingly vague details about his apparently high-profile life. But I didn’t press him, and he never offered up anything concrete…so I still have no fucking idea what the fuck was going on there.

Afterward, I went to the ATM and deposited my cash, and went on about my business living my life of radical transparency. Sure, I’ll never be a teacher, a mainstream sitcom star or an elected official of any sort….but who gives a flying fuck?! I’ll take an open life over all that bunk any day! I always feel so bad for those poor assholes at Burning Man who freak the fuck out whenever someone busts out a camera; apparently the “Ask Before Photos” policy up there is in place because many Burners would lose their jobs if a photo of them in a tutu were to get out. I would hate to live my livelihood hinge on something so innocuous as a tutu!

And really…why all the shame? What is so evil/dirty about a naked human body? How the hell has this fucked-up society evolved to a point where it’s perfectly acceptable for people to know you shoot African rhinos/drink whiskey/believe that a talking snake gave a magic apple to a woman made from a man’s rib……but people seeing you without clothes is a LIFE-ENDING DISASTER? Whence the baseless shame?!

I’ll tell you whence: FEAR. As good old Nietzsche said, fear is the mother of shame. I guess people are afraid to be seen stripped bare, without the protective armor of clothing. Afraid of being judged, afraid of being laughed at. Afraid of being vulnerable.

Well, guess what? I’m as vulnerable as the next person. Ever since I was 13, I’ve been self-conscious about my flat chest — when all the other girls were developing, I was sitting there frantically stuffing Kleenex into my bra and doing pectoral exercises: “I must — I must — I must increase my bust!” But try as I might, my tits never did grow beyond a 32AA.

Despite my mosquito bites, years later I somehow ended up pursuing work as a nude model — against all odds. Now I was even more self-conscious about my breasts — but the nice thing about modeling is, it makes you insecure about all your body parts…so my proportionally short/stumpy legs took some of the heat off my tits. I’m really not built to be a model…but I have succeeded (more or less) by dint of sheer determination.

And now, after modeling for 7 years, I find myself constantly scrutinizing my face and body for signs of decay. Each and every new wrinkle, dent and pockmark impacts my saleability…a reality of which I am fully aware, and which makes me more vulnerable than ever before.

But per my m.o. of radical transparency, here I am…admitting my vulnerabilities to the world, because I will not let fear rule my life! Fear of getting old, fear of being mocked, fear of someone seeing me in a tutu…or in a porno movie…or standing naked with some giggling paranoid freak in a dimly-lit Vegas hotel room. I will not be afraid, and I will not be ashamed.

Because as another famous Teuton said… shame is a soul-eating emotion 🙂