You may know her as Portland’s famous stripper, that MySpace celebrity, the anonymous Wikipedia alternative model, or the Wendy O-looking lady who’s always walking her miniature pinschers. I can’t tell you how many times people have insisted on telling me their oh-my-god-I-met-Malice-one-time-and-she’s-like-sooo-nice stories. It’s true; she is the sweetest, most approachable badass you could hope to meet.
Something that you may not know about Malice is that she’s really funny. (Her deadpan is the greatest.) I was able to catch up with her on a recent trip to Portland, where she made a week-long cameo at Sassy’s (strip club) and picked up her red ’66 El Camino. I got her hyped on Chai and sweets (as she has 10 years sober) and asked questions.
For some reason, the voice recorder ate the part of the interview where she lets us know that she moved from Portland to LA in August 2010 in hopes of possibly working at the legendary Jumbo’s Clown Room. Jumbo’s wasn’t all that receptive so she ended up at Crazy Girls, where she is currently the emcee of the increasingly popular live band nights.
I met the fella from Denver at the Desiree Alliance Conference while sitting by the pool. I was reading a comic I’d gotten from someone and he wanted to know what it was about. Instead of talking to him about it like any other person, I just held it out and showed it to him because I am painfully awkward. I’m working on it. Thankfully I got another chance to talk to him when we were sitting by the pool a few days later and I told him I was going to take him upstairs and marry him in the hotel chapel. Also, this conference was in Vegas.
He’s a good guy, but most importantly he’s one of the few male sex workers I know so I figured he’d be a good interview. I was right.
So, here’s the tea: I went from Dallas, TX, to the Desiree Alliance conference in Las Vegas on a bus last summer. By myself. Twenty-four hours or so of quiet and calm before the storm that Las Vegas always is. I remember sitting somewhere in New Mexico thinking, “I hope I meet some interesting people here,” because I don’t know any sex workers in my city.
Scratch that—I know a couple, but they don’t use this as their primary source of income, and I rarely see them. I suppose putting things like that into the universe was smart, because I met some amazing folks and have even kept in touch with some of them. If you knew what kind of hermit I am, you’d know how huge that is. One of those folks was Lusty Day.
I had seen her flitting about with her fun colored hair and chest piece, but hadn’t made an effort to interact until I saw the flier calling for people to participate in a film she was working on for partners of sex workers. As someone who’s had a relationship end because I give spankings for a living, I felt obligated to participate—Mama had some shit to get off her chest! The filming itself was pretty quick, and when I got in touch after the conference it was mostly because I’m vain and I wanted to see myself in the film. I’m glad I did though, because this woman is interesting and she’s doing some really great work in her community. Plus, “Every Ho I Know Says So” turned out to be pretty amazing. Interviewing her was an honor for sure.
So, what prompted you to create a video on things sex workers would say to their partners?
I was in a long-term relationship when I started doing sex work and at the time my partner was really floundering on how to accept and understand my work. We had such a difficult time finding resources, not only resources on how to be a good ally and support to sex workers more generally, but that also addressed some of the specific issues that come up in intimate relationships with sex workers. I wanted to support him, too, and acknowledge that it wasn’t easy, but to do that in a way that didn’t mean I had to give up my work, or change it to suit him.
Eventually we broke up after four years and I think that whore-phobia played a major part in that — not just his whore-phobia (which of course was apparent), but also the ways that structural whore-phobia meant he had so little access to support from friends or family on what he was going through. Basically everyone told him that of course it was almost impossible to deal with dating a sex worker, and of course it was going to go bad, and that he was oh-so-brave for putting up with it all. Yech.
