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Abby Ehmann is the queen of New York nightlife; she runs two weekly parties and is set to launch a third, and always has her pulse on the latest fetish fetes. MERCY spoke with Abby about her favorite porn, her new events, and her wildest and wackiest...
Mercy: I want to know how you wound up in New York and what your first jobs here were.
Abby Ehmann: I wound up in New York mostly because my sister moved here, because I probably wouldn’t have come alone. But I moved to New York to get into advertising and be like Darren Stevens.
M: So did you work in advertising?
AE: I did all kinds of wacky stuff, and then I finally wound up as a proofreader in a little room at Y&R. I went to classes at SVA for copywriting and art directing, and I finally actually got a job at a little ad agency. So for a little while I was in advertising. And from there I got a job at Grey and that lasted a couple months until the ad business went into the crapper and I got laid off.
M: Was that in your twenties?
AE: I moved here in ‘85 when I was 26, and I didn’t get the job in advertising for a couple years. I was a photographer’s rep, I worked coloring designs in a kid’s clothing textile thing; I’ve done every wacky, imaginable job.
M: So how did you get into the porn scene?
AE: I answered an ad in the New York Times. After being out of work, I finally talked the people at New York Press into giving me a job. So I wound up making $16,000 a year and answering phones and laying out the magazine and also was typesetting. I was typesetting all their First Person pieces, and I was like “I could do this.” The best one was when I typeset Santaland Diaries, which was David Sedaris, which was practically the first thing he’d ever had published. While I was at New York Press, I wrote something that they published, and I got fan mail and phone calls, and I thought, “well, I’ll get into publishing.” I met Eric when I went on a job interview at Screw and then I got my first job through the New York Times at Penthouse Forum.
M: Before that, were you into porn?
AE: No, it had never occurred to me to be honest. When I went to the interview at Penthouse Forum, V.K.McCarty said to me, “Go home and write a sample piece.” And I’d never done it before, but I gave it a shot. I’d written for my friend’s fanzine Happyland, I’d written about going to an S&M party, but that wasn’t really writing porn, it was more reportage.
M: What’s the first pornography you ever saw or read, and what did you think of it?
AE: Deep Throat, in college, midnight movie. There were three all night theaters in San Diego, and one showed porn movies. A bunch of us piled into a van and went to see Deep Throat and it was hilarious! The audience was very much like when you go see Rocky Horror;
You know that scene when she pours the Coke into herself? Everyone was singing all the Coke jingles. And then I saw Debbie Does Dallas; they did that on campus at Princeton when my sister was in school there.
M: Oh my goodness!
AE: I know, there were protests, it was very un-PC. She was in school there from ‘81-’85. I was passing dirty pictures under cafeteria tables in the third grade, so I’ve been a bad seed since the get-go!
M: But were you interested in porn then or was it just there?
AE: Well in the third grade, sex is like “ooh, naked pictures.” But I certainly wasn’t interested in it as a vocation, ever. It never really occurred to me. To be honest, everything I do just sort of happens. Although I was a journalism major, I was more of an art major; it was journalism and commercial art, like graphic design. When I went to class at SVA, I was going to the class to be an art director. When I realized copywriters have more power over what the ad’s going to be, I segued into being a writer.
M: You just starred in a video called Real Lesbians, Real Bondage. Was this the first video you’ve been in?
AE: Yes, it was my first video. I emailed a friend in San Francisco saying I’m coming out and she needed extras for a video. She told me, “you’re going to be paired with someone who wants to be marked.” And I was thinking I’m going to have to go to the airport with implements, and they’re not even letting people on with nail files.I’d never met any of the people except the woman doing the bookings. So when I got out there she said, “you’re not being paired with the woman who wants to be marked anymore. You’re being paired with a woman who can’t be marked because she’s doing a photo shoot the next day.” It’s no secret that I’m a very experienced watcher but not participant, so I was thinking, “shit, I don’t know what marks people and what doesn’t,” so I was completely winging it. The girl I was paired with was so fluffy in a way so I thought the two of us would make believe we’re lovers and we’re just having a scene as part of a relationship. And I went to put on my red tights and my red satin hot pants and my red heart corset and they said “no, you can’t wear red, red doesn’t translate well to video.” But it worked out okay, I guess, what little bondage I did was with long, tangled clothing line because that’s all that we had there. It was fairly mortifying. I haven’t even seen the video yet so hopefully it won’t be completely embarrassing.
M: Was it fun?
AE: It was fun, I was a little nervous. I think if I did it again it would be more fun because I wouldn’t be quite so nervous. I’m used to doing stuff that’s more visual and less extreme, which is about how pretty it looks and the presentation of it. It was nerve-wracking because I’d never done a video, I was working with people I didn’t know, I was doing a scene with a girl I didn’t know, and we had 20 minutes to talk about it beforehand. We’ll see just how real the lesbians and the bondage are!
M: You’re always planning a new event or have a new project you’re working on. What motivates you to always be trying new things?
AE: I don’t know. Part of it’s almost like it comes to me and I keep acting on all of it. Like you’re going to be in town, let’s do a book party for you, like with Charles Gatewood and Charles Anders coming up. I do like to always be busy because it takes my mind off how broke I am! Because all this busyness is not very profitable.
M: What do you do to relax?
AE: I just got back from a week in Mexico with my husband and my parents and we went to bed at 9:30 every night and all we did was eat, drink, sleep and play dominos and lay on the beach. I do everything full-bore, if I’m gonna relax, it’s extreme relaxation. I’m not one of those people who goes on vacation and mountain climbs or hikes. I’m seriously into just being a lump. So I do relax. And I sit here and watch Wheel of Fortune. When you don’t see me out running around, I’m either at the computer in my pajamas or watching TV in my pajamas.
M: You review a lot of porn videos, which I’m sure must get boring after a while. Are there any videos that you watch to get in the mood or that turyou on?
AE: I’m a little jaded. They all get me in the mood to a certain degree because there are naked people in them. It’s easier to get turned on while listening to it than watching it. Now I’m just so clinical about all of it, there’ll be one scene in one video where one girl was sexy. I watched this one, it was a reverse gangbang, 2 different scenes, each with one guy, and there were 20 women apiece. In the opening credits there was one woman and I said, “wow, she’s really pretty”she had a really nice figure and real boobs, and most of the women didn’t have real boobs. It was this girl and this guy was paired with her, and when he was doing the vaginal sex you could tell he was getting really turned on, and when they were in the anal sex part, he was getting way more excited than she was. At one point he pushes her off of him because he’s so turned on and then he had to fuck all 20 of these girls before he came and it was all too good with her. Can I call ‘em or what? So that was a sexy scene, but it wasn’t because the movie was so sexy.
There was one where an uncredited TT Boy was fucking this Hispanic girl on the bed, and she was talking dirty in Spanish, and the two of them obviously must’ve had some sort of relationship because they were a little too into it. And he fucked her right off the bed onto the floor, and he kept on fucking her. Those are two of my favorite scenes.
M: A while ago you mentioned that you’d watched a Britney Spears concert on TV. What do you think of America’s favorite “virgin” and what are your pop culture guilty pleasures?
AE: She’s one of my pop culture guilty pleasures. I think she is just the most adorable thing in the world. Right now, she couldn’t be any hotter, like in all those different outfits they put her in for the Pepsi ads. And that whole live in Vegas thing with her rhinestone bra. I wanted all the clothes she was wearing; she kept sinking into the ground and coming up in a different outfit. I think she’s adorable; I’m not particularly a fan of her music, but she looks good.Other pop culture guilty pleasures…I’m a bad TV addict. I’m totally guilty of watching 40 hours of television a week. So while I’m on the computer, it’s on. I watch CNN and NY1 way too much. Probably every night I watch Nightline and Bill Maher - he should be president! I love Six Feet Under and all these silly shows like Frasier, Friends, Just Shoot Me. Recently we’ve been watching the Osbournes, which is hilarious. I don’t watch any MTV any more; I don’t know who any of them are any more. I’m still stuck in the past with the music.
M: How did you and your husband meet?
AE: They put an ad in the paper at Screw, and I interviewed with him but didn’t get the job. A couple months later I went to a party and he was there and he thought I would hate him because I didn’t get the job. I had to go bartend that night, and the party was in the daytime, and I told him when the party was done to come to the bar. At the bar, he kept asking me for bottles of Rolling Rock and I kept telling him we didn’t have Rolling Rock in bottles, and I don’t know…we were engaged three months later and married a year later after that. It was pretty immediate.
M: You always have great stories, Abby. So I want to hear about one of the craziest or weirdest things that’s happened at one of your parties.
AE: Can we change the names to protect the guilty? W hen I did the week in Jamaica, the whole Fantasy, Fetish and Fashion event, and we were with Sang and R from La Domain Esemar and they brought another couple and 2 slaves, and things just got so sexy. It’s a swing and nudist place for the most part, it was at Hedonism, but we were doing this fetish event.Things aren’t outside there but it was open to the outdoors. The dining area had a big stage, and after dinner they had a live band onstage. One girl was tied between these 2 posts in a g-string and topless, and they were doing elaborate bondage on another girl and then whipping her. And we cleared the whole dining room - the poor band was playing to an empty room! All these people were watching, and obviously some of them had never seen anything like this. One guy in khaki pants had a wet spot on the front of his pants the size of a 45 record! It escalated from there. Sang and R tied one of the slaves to a beach chair, blindfolded, and they would flip her over into the water, and then flip her over again, and people were freaking out, because that’s a pretty extreme scene for someone who thinks getting spanked is sick.
M: You’re married to a pornographer and you spend a lot of your time in the fetish and nightlife worlds but you’ve said that you’re…
AE: pretty square!
M: Does that ever feel weird to you or do you feel part of that world even though that’s not part of your personal sexuality?
AE:It gets hard for me sometimes because I’m sitting at Gomorrah and I’m not a pro domme, and the girls who are have slaves and submissives and people to wait on them and buy them drinks, so I feel sometimes at a disadvantage. Some people still assume that we’re swingers because we’re in this world, but no, no wifeswapping for Eric. I feel like I have an edgy enough life that it’s okay that I’m not going all the way over the edge and ordering people to sit down on toilets so I can jump on their dicks in bathrooms. I feel okay functioning in what to some is a gray area. When I talk to my sister’s friends, they look at me like I just landed from Mars, because they think my lifestyle is so beyond the pale.To other people I have a wild life even though it’s not as wild as some. I don’t have a slave, I don’t have a submissive, I don’t have a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and I don’t have a whole stable of people to play with.
M: But I take it that’s not what you want?
AE: Well, I sure would love a slave, but the upkeep, you know? I don’t enjoy inflicting pain, even though I’ve certainly had offers. What they want from me I’m not able to provide so the relationship would never work. This one guy came over to fix my toilet, and he’d been Maria Beatty’s slave, and he offered, “I”ll be your slave.” And I asked, “what is it you’d like?” and he said “cock and ball torture.” My immediate inclination when I see a penis is not to tie it up and hurt it, so I’m sorry I can’t help you.
M: Have you ever tried that stuff?
AE: A little. I was in a session once with Madame and one of her slaves. To be honest, when I’m around her, it’s easier for me, because she makes it really fun. Even though she does tend to scare people, she’s not a scary dominatrix in my opinion, the relationships she has with her slaves are all very warm, and they get what they want. And what they want is pain. She makes a little bit of a game out of it so it’s not as intimidating to me. We had this session that was a surprise, and the slave let himself in and lit candles and blindfolded himself and was waiting and didn’t know what to expect. It didn’t take him long to figure out that there were two of us because we were coming from both angles and I was using that electric bug zapper thing, and that was kind of fun, but actually making someone bleed or whatever doesn’t really work for me. And dammit, I wish it did, because maybe I wouldn’t be so broke!
M: What big plans do you have for us New Yorkers?
AE: I'll be co-hosting a Back to School fetish night with TESTNG on Friday, September 19th and throwing the third Mondo Porno Friday, September 26th. I'm hoping to throw a few more Gomorrah special events and there are some San Francisco-based parties that I'd love to bring to New York.
M: If you had to have a slogan or a phrase to sum you up, what would it be?
AE: That’s a tough one, it doesn’t trip off the tongue quite so easily. “People Love Me, I’m Fun!” I’m all about entertainment. Get your asses out, support New York City nightlife; it’s going down the tubes!
M: Speaking of going down the tubes, have you seen any changes since the new administration came up?
AE: People in general are acting differently than they were a year or two ago. I don’t know if it’s still an after-effect of September 11, but certainly the crowds are different, and people are behaving in nightlife in a different way. I don’t think things are as hardcore as they once were. Or as underground. I keep hoping that the laws will change so there’s not such a pall being cast over nightlife but that’s gonna take some doing. Bloomberg looked like he was going to be more hands-off than Giuliani and he's turned out to be almost the opposite. The recent change in the cabaret laws is a good sign that things might be turning around. But then there's the smoking ban, which has had a definite negative impact on bars and clubs. It just seems to be generally difficult to do business in the city right now, especially nightlife business. The political climate seems almost anti-everything, and the economic climate isn't very healthy, so people are less likely to go out and spend. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed for improvements on both fronts!
Visit Abby on the web at http://www.editrixabby.com
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Abby reigning at
Click and Drag at Mother |
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| STORY by: Rachel Kramer Bussel |
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Rachel Kramer Bussel writes about sex, smut and and other naughty topics. Her nonfiction work has been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, BUST, Curve, Lesbianation.com, Oxygen.com, Msn.com, On Our Backs, Rockrgrl, and other publications. Her erotic fiction has appeared been published in Playgirl, Libida.com, Good Vibrations magazine and the anthologies Starf*cker, Best Lesbian Erotica 2001, Tough Girls, Faster Pussycats, Hot & Bothered 3 and Best Bisexual Erotica 2. She lives in Brooklyn.
Visit her website at:
www.rachelkramerbussel.com |
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