Sprinkle, 43, has experienced life and love to the extreme with fearless determination. The former mistress of “Deep Throat” director Gerard Damiano, she was also briefly involved in a passionate and intense relationship with a tattooed, fetishistic female-to-male transsexual named Les Nichols. “He was the kinkiest lover I’ve ever met -- and one of the sexiest,” Sprinkle once commented. 

More recently, Sprinkle has hooked up with publisher/artist Katharine Gates to produce the very popular “Annie Sprinkle’s Post-Modern Pin-Ups Pleasure Activist Playing Cards” (which feature Sprinkle’s erotic and outrageous photos of the most important movers and shakers in the feminist pro-porn movement, including Susie Bright, Lily Burana, Linda Montano and Lisa Palac), and two “Love and Kisses From Annie Sprinkle” postcard sets. 

The following interview was conducted from Sprinkle’s home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Shortly afterward, she moved to San Francisco. “In Provincetown, I was kind of a freak,” she joked. “In San Francisco, I fit right in.” 

Vaughan: Let’s start with a little background for the uninitiated. Who is Annie Sprinkle? 

Sprinkle: That changes day to day, month to month, year to year. At the moment I am a woman who has devoted 25 years of her life to researching and exploring sexuality in all its glorious and inglorious forms. I have documented and shared my findings through writing, photography, video, performance and teaching. My intention is to try to learn as much as I can because I see that sexuality is a major problem. But it’s also an answer. And of course I’m very concerned with trying to make the world a more happy, pleasurable, fun place. 

I’m also a pleasure activist and a metamorphosexual, which is a person who acknowledges change and cycles and rhythms. I don’t know exactly how to define it, but it’s definitely a word that describes me. It’s not about being gay or straight or bisexual. It’s more about exploring all the different colors and shades and textures (of sexuality). 

Vaughan: How did you become involved with adult entertainment? What were your first experiences with pornography? 

Sprinkle: I was 18, and I had a job at a movie theater selling popcorn. We showed Deep Throat, and the police closed it down. An obscenity trial ensued and I was a witness. I met Gerard Damiano and Linda Lovelace and it snowballed from there. I was interested in learning about film making, so I went to New York, where I became Gerry Damiano’s mistress. I started getting into porn films behind the scenes, and about six months after that I did my first film. I made about 50 features my first year. I was also already working as a prostitute, a very happy prostitute. 

Vaughan: How many movies did you make over the course of your career? 

Sprinkle: About 150 features and about 50 loops, and now some videos. 

Vaughan: Did you enjoy it? Was film making a fun experience for you? 

Sprinkle: Very much. Combining creativity with sexuality was what made it so much fun. And the money. It was a way to make money doing two things I love, which is making movies and having sex. I liked the people at the time, for the most part. Though I’ve changed so much that I can’t relate to most of the people in porn any more. 

Vaughan: How did being a sex worker/entertainer affect you personally? 

Sprinkle: I feel that you can learn about all of life through sexuality, so sex was just a microcosm for everything happening. It was like a funnel; everything in my life got funneled through sexuality somehow. 

It affected me in so many ways. It affected my personality very strongly. It affected my creativity. I learned a lot of skills being in the sex business, such as writing, public relations, diplomacy, some business stuff such as contracts, and of course film making. I learned a lot of skills. And it affected my politics because I discovered that sex was so political. And then ultimately it affected my spirituality. I started experiencing sex from different chakras, so to speak. I started coming at sexuality from different directions. It was a way to be free. I always felt very free. 

Vaughan: Was there any downside to it at all? 

Sprinkle: Absolutely. There were some people I met along the way who I didn’t like. You see, I was never an alcoholic or a drug addict; that’s probably why I had a more positive experience than some women. I wasn’t out of it. I was fairly conscious about everything. 

I probably should have gotten paid better for certain movies. And I met a few people who were disrespectful and exploitive, but you have that in every business. It’s funny because in my postcard book I have 101 uses for sex and 101 hazards of sex. All of those I’ve pretty much experienced in some way. As a sex worker there is a lot of prejudice against you. It’s like being black or Jewish or whatever people are prejudiced against. For example, today trying to rent a house, I was afraid someone would find out about the work I did and be prejudiced against me. But I don’t feel like I’ve ever done anything wrong. 
    
Vaughan: Let’s talk about your work as a prostitute. Why did you choose that avenue? 

Sprinkle: I think partly because I could. Not everyone has what it takes to be a prostitute, which brings me to another postcard, 40 Reasons Why Whores Are My Heroes. 

Vaughan: What time-frame are we talking about here? 

Sprinkle: From age 18 to about 38. Twenty years, off and on. Sometimes I’d hook a lot, sometimes just a little. 

Vaughan: Was this a positive experience for you? 

Sprinkle: Not always. But it was definitely a choice. In that 20 year period, I had one regular job. I worked in an art supply store for about three months when I thought I wanted to do something else. 

 What I did was, if I got tired of one kind of sex work, I’d go into another. When I got tired of prostitution, I would go into burlesque. And when I got tired of that, phone sex hit. And then I did pin-up photography as a model and photographer. So there was always a lot of variety. I was always lucky in that way. I was very versatile. 

Vaughan: Do you feel there will ever be a time when society as a whole is as open and free about sexuality as you and your friends are? 

Sprinkle: We’ve become a lot more open and a lot more educated. People know a lot more about sex now than they did before. But there’s also obviously a big backlash. I wouldn’t say antisex, because I have a lot of compassion for people who are against porn and sex work. I can kind of understand; they’re coming from 101 hazards of sex. They’re trying to protect people and they’re jealous. I’m not against Andrea Dworkin or Catharine MacKinnon. I like people who are on the front lines, even when I disagree with their position. That’s what makes me unique -- I tend to see things from all different angles. I’m not really strongly opinionated. I try to be open and understand that people have different perspectives, and that people can change. 
    
Vaughan: But at the same there seems to be so many forces actively working against everything you stand for. 

Sprinkle: Of course there’s going to be a reaction.  When phone sex first started happening, there was a huge backlash because people were really starting to talk about their sexual fantasies, and other people wanted to stop that. There always will be a reaction. But I’m starting to see all these incredible projects, books being published that are just amazing and artists starting to explore sex more than before. And porn is actually becoming more varied and there are a lot more different kinds. It’s a very exciting time. 

Vaughan: Do you watch adult films today? Are you up on the current crop? 

Sprinkle: Not at all. I only watch the ones my friends make, like Joseph Kramer and Betty Dodson and Candida Royalle. More of the eclectic, cutting edge, revolutionary stuff. I see very little of the more mainstream stuff. 

Vaughan: What are your thoughts on pornography today compared to when you entered the business 25 years ago? 

Sprinkle: Well, 25 years ago I was just so thrilled to see Deep Throat. I thought it was the most exciting, intriguing thing I ever saw. I loved Deep Throat and the Devil in Miss Jones, some of those early sex films. Just to see sex on film was so exciting. 

But what I liked 25 years ago doesn’t do it for me now. I’ve changed. Just the simple act of penetration, to see it was just such a thrill. Now that I’m older and more experienced, I look for more complexity and depth and creativity. I don’t want to say I’m becoming a snob because I really like that there are all different kinds of porn, but the kind I’m more personally interested in is not your mainstream porn at all. I like the cutting edge, avant garde. The stuff that’s coming from a more political, feminist, artistic direction interests me. 

Vaughan: You mentioned Andrea Dworkin earlier. What is your response to people like her and Catharine MacKinnon who say that all porn is abuse against women and should be eliminated. Do you feel their argument is valid on any level? 

Sprinkle: Yes, on certain levels. I’ve become more of a feminist over the years, and I can’t help but notice -- and I’ve seen a lot of it -- women being treated like shit by men sexually. Women are not respected, their needs aren’t met. They get used and abused and sometimes men will take out their anger and frustration toward women through sexuality. It can happen in reverse as well, but more often than not because of our history it’s men doing that to women. The rape statistics are alarming. 

 I recently was in Montreal, Canada, with my girlfriend Kim Silver to recreate John and Yoko’s bedpeace to stop the war in Vietnam. They got married and had a honeymoon in bed and invited the press to come. We tried to get the same hotel room they used, but we couldn’t when they found out we were two women. All the press came. We got more press than Sinead O’Connor and some high ranking politicians. 

What we were doing was calling attention to the war in people’s bedrooms. I have talked to a lot of women and heard some horrible stories. My own wife was sexually abused as a child. It’s reality. And it has to be looked at, it has to be talked about, and it has to be fought against. I don’t agree with the solutions proposed by Andrea Dworkin and others, but I’m glad they’re talking about it. I also think they can be very closed-minded and unwilling to look at other sides. My view is there are many different sides. Some of what they say is true, sadly, but they refuse to see the positive side (of pornography) as well. 

Vaughan: What kinds of experiences have you had with censorship over the years? What conflicts have you faced, and how did you handle them? 

Sprinkle: It happens all the time. It’s constant. The most serious for me was being arrested in Rhode Island for obscenity, conspiracy to create pornography and conspiracy to commit sodomy for a magazine I was working on, my own personal diary magazine. I was in jail for a couple days and then everything was dropped, though some friends still ended up going to jail. 

I’ve faced a lot of censorship issues as an erotic dancer. And when photographing a model, how erect can the penis be so it’ll get into Canada? And can you write about anal sex because sometimes Canada censors magazines. It goes on down to having stationery with a little nude drawing that the printer refused to print because he thought it was too sexual. Or my videos not getting through customs in different places. Or doing a show and the police encircling the theater and being told if I do such and such I’d be arrested. What happens a lot with my show is the fire department coming and causing a problem. A few months ago I was supposed to perform in a theater and the theater director got nervous and changed her mind. It became a big censorship issue. And there’s the whole Jesse Helms thing - did I get government funding for my performances? 

Vaughan: And did you? 

Sprinkle: In a round-about way. I’ve worked in a lot of theaters that got government funding. It didn’t go directly to my show, per se. I didn’t apply directly for grants like Karen Finley. 

 I experience censorship almost daily. I could go on and on for days talking about all the times I’ve been censored. It’s endless. 

Another example: Australia wanted my show. The last time I was there with my old show, I masturbated on stage with a dildo. That was no problem. But this new show has hardcore porn clips, and that’s illegal. I was all ready to do two months, I would have made a shitload of money, and I couldn’t go because they wouldn’t let me show porn. 

Vaughan: I’d like to talk about your work as a performance artist. What guided you toward that aspect of your life and career? 

Sprinkle: I’m a big fan of performance art. One of my favorite things in the world is other performance artists. Two of my favorites are Yoko Ono and Willem de Ridder. I love their style. So I studied it in college, and I also lived with Willem de Ridder. 

 That’s what grabs me, that kind of work. I really do have the soul of an artist. I’m not saying I’m a good artist. I’m certainly not a great artist. But I was born that way. Since I was kid I always made pottery or did little shows for my family. I was always a creative type. And my parents were very political and socially conscious people; pacifists and humanists. So I grew up with this idea that we’ve got to help make things better. That comes out in the work I do. I found that art is a good way to make social change. That’s what art is about - reaching people on levels that aren’t easily understandable or describable. 

 If you look at a great painting, it can change and affect you, but in a way you can’t always describe. But if you look at a porn movie, you can say, okay, that turns me on. I think there is little difference between bad porn and great art. It’s just classist. I think what Joe Pornography makes is just as important as what Picasso made. 

Vaughan: Let’s talk about your new show. What’s it about? 

Sprinkle: It’s called Hardcore >From the Heart: My Film Diary of 25 Years as a Metamorphosexual. It’s about the seven phases of my sexual evolution, using film clips from seven phases of my sex film career. I’ll come out on stage and show a clip, and then do a performance. Then I’ll show another clip and share something with the audience. There has never been anything like it. I’ve been doing it for about six or seven months, and now I’m about to rewrite it. I want to take it to the next level. 

I perform with the intention of teaching and learning. The audience learns about the different kinds of porn, and I learn from the audience response and doing the performance. And that way I grow. My personal motivation is social change, but also self-growth. Now I have to rewrite the show because it doesn’t fit who I am in the moment. I’ve grown. 

For example, to illustrate one of the phases of my film career, I show a film clip of when I was really roughed up. I did a film called The Devil Inside Her. It was shot in the country, and I’m really man-handled by these four guys, lifted in the air, fucked in the ass, fucked in the pussy, spanked and slapped. It was muddy and outdoors and it was really a heavy-duty scene. That was the one that made me the most uncomfortable watching. I felt sorry for myself. Of course, I agreed to do the film and I was into it in a big way. It turned me on a lot. But looking back 20 years later, it’s like, oh my God. I have a whole different take on it. I have a compassion because it was so rough. I chose it and I have no regrets - I would do it over again the same way. But it was important for me to show that film clip because I knew it made me so uncomfortable and I had something to learn from it. Some people can’t watch it; some walk out. It’s a really rough gang-bang. Now I’m not uncomfortable looking at it anymore because I understand it better. It’s an incredible way to grow. 

Vaughan: How did photo projects like Annie Sprinkle’s Post Modern Pin-Ups and the Love and Kisses postcard sets come about? 

Sprinkle: Those were collaborations with Katharine Gates, who is a fabulous artist in her own right. She also is a publisher; she owns a company called Gates of Heck. She contacted me because she wanted to do a project with me. I showed her my files of photos and suggested doing something with them. We both wanted to do the deck of cards. I wanted to do something to really honor the women in the pictures, because they’re amazing, fabulous women. I wanted to make something they would be proud of. We worked for about three months on it. She had it published, and they sold like hot cakes. It’s now out of print. I think it’s something that should be on everyone’s coffee table. It’s about an incredible movement of women. 

Vaughan: Were the post card sets a natural extension of that project? 

Sprinkle: I had done a book previously called Post Porn Modernist, which became kind of an underground hit. It was a revolutionary book in that it had incredible hard-core porn mixed with art and published very beautifully. Susie Bright told me it inspired her greatly. She said it was the first time she had realized that porn or erotica could be produced so beautifully. 

That went out of print, so the post cards were a greatest hits idea. We wanted to make post cards because there’s something kind of neat about sending this stuff through the mail. Katharine likes to make unusual products. It’s very eclectic, that’s for sure. 

Vaughan: Have you encountered any problems or opposition because of the cards? Has anyone had any trouble actually sending the cards through the mail? 

Sprinkle: I haven’t heard about anything yet. I did mail some of them out to people to see if they would get stopped, and they made it through. So I guess the post office is becoming more sex positive! 

Vaughan: You recently got back from a trip to Croatia and Slovenia. What took you there? 

Sprinkle: I was an invited guest to a couple of arts festivals. I perform a lot more out of the United States than I do in this country. There is a lot more money for the arts and respect for the arts overseas. And there just seems to be less censorship. Over there, they want to know what’s going on in the avant garde. Here, there’s a lot of prejudice against avant garde artists. People are more afraid of controversial art here. And in other countries, they really want it. 

I did Hardcore from the Heart. We got good press and good reviews. It was part of a festival that featured some really heavy body artists, like one guy who stands on stage and bleeds. It’s wonderful, incredible art, but it’s very challenging. Porn was nothing compared to bleeding. 

Vaughan: Did you find the attitudes toward sex and erotica different there? 

Sprinkle: The audiences were just lovely in both places. They were very welcoming and open and sat with bated breath. I would say they were much more fascinated than the average American audience. 

They do have pornography there on TV. Slovenia is famous for the polka, so I did the bosom polka on the David Letterman show of Slovenia, with the band and all that. They have no problem with breasts there. Censorship varies so much from place to place; you have to laugh at it.  

Vaughan: How do you define post porn? 

Sprinkle: Post porn is something that’s sexually explicit in some way, but isn’t necessarily focused just on the erotic. It can be erotic, but it could also include humor, politics, conceptual ideals or experimental visuals. It could include a kind of spiritual slant. By the way, I have another book about to come out titled “I Am My Lover,” published by Down There Press. It’s 12 photographers shooting women masturbating. 

I’m trying to think of who else makes post porn. There’s a girl named Ducky Dolittle. She’s a young artist who is making porn and erotica but in a unique way. And there is a group in New York called Body of Art. They’re from a dance background. It’s directed by a young woman named Diana Aldrich, who just did an evening to honor my 25th anniversary of being a pleasure activist. She had all these interesting artists doing these performances in my honor. They were all post porn modernists. 

Vaughan: You’re extremely free with your sexuality. Anything in the sexual realm you would like to try that has eluded you so far? 

Sprinkle: There are deeper levels of intimacy I would like to know. I have experienced some incredible orgasmic states and some incredible electric kundalini kinds of orgasms. But there are other realms of orgasm I would like to experience. 

I’ve accomplished most of my goals. But I don’t really know what’s around the corner. I’m not looking for something new to try, they just come along. I can’t predict what the next level will be. My sexuality has really changed a lot. Hormonal changes, being pre-menopausal. I think menopausal women experience a very different kind of sexuality. I’m not as genitally focused as I used to be, which is great. Now I have other levels of sexual awareness that I didn’t even know really existed or were important. So the quality has really changed. 

Vaughan: Who are your idols when it comes to feminism and sexual freedom? 

Sprinkle: Betty Dodson is at the top of the list. The ones who influenced me the most were Gypsy Rose Lee; Carol Doda because she was the first stripper I saw who did something different; Linda Montano, who is my favorite artist in the world. She does very avant garde performance stuff that is occasionally sex related. Xavier Hollander was a big influence. And some of my dearest friends are a tremendous influence -- Candida Royalle, Dolores French, Veronica Vera, Gloria Leonard, Veronica Hart. Margot St. James, the founder of COYOTE, because she brought out the politics of sex work. Kat Sunlove, who runs The Spectator (a California weekly sex news magazine) is a big influence. She’s doing amazing work. Most everyone in that deck of playing cards is an amazing person and I’ve learned something from all of them. 

Vaughan: What is your goal? How do you want to be remembered? 

Sprinkle: As someone who had a fun, playful, pleasure-filled, sensual, sexy life. And through that made the world a little bit better place. 

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