LESBIAN SADOMASOCHIST SEX WORKER in SAN FRANCISCO 1992-1994 - HANDWRITTEN JOURNALS and PHOTOS

Item #1007

**This item is being listed as new, as I recently acquired many more items related to the woman at the center of this intriguing lot.**

The heated, horny early-nineties journals of a gal named Kara, include six notebooks and loose scrap pages which amount to roughly 1000 pages. They are filled to the brim with sadomasochistic lesbian scenes and stories. One of the notebooks has to do with a college photography class. Throughout these journals Kara describes her dreams and her relationships. She also lists possible song lyrics and books to read. There are also 73 photographs (many of which are explicit/graphic). Photographs depict blood play, needles, cutting, flogging, leather daddies, and other “Dyke Portraits”.

The writer is expressly filled with rage, fear, resentment, lust, shame, and waxes extensively in these self-conscious journals. Written between 1992-1994, these documents provide a glimpse into the private lives of lesbian Dom/sub, BDSM sub-culture in San Francisco. She’s befriended folks along the Tenderloin in SF, namely queer women, “transsexuals”, and drag queens.

Mention of self-mutilation, cutting, emotional and sexual abuse, incest.

Kara’s a switch, a stripper, a self-proclaimed power slut, and a punk. She’s deep in the bar scene and a big cruiser (and bruiser). Fantasies of being overpowered, punched, cut, and otherwise degraded. She likes pain, whips, paddles, needles, and leather. She loves a good beating. An excerpt from one journal reads: “God I wanna taste her cunt — she’s probably too much of a top for that — but god I wanna suck on her toes, lick her toes, nibble on her hot nipples — I begin to wonder if I was breastfed at this point… I tell her to practice her punches for Wednesday — I dare her to punch me.”

In another excerpt, a note after her first play party, she writes: “When I was watching the piercing scene at Josie’s I sighed upon seeing blood. [Nicola] grabbed my hand and held it, placing it over her heart. Mmmmm I’ve got it for her.”

Her sex work includes dominating men, where she gets to hear them whine and see them writhe and wiggle. In these journals, she grapples with the idea of topping women in her personal life. She shies away and has feelings of insecurity, but she allows herself to be a beginner and to grow within negotiating different dynamics. But, mostly she wants to be somebody’s good little butch pet. In a journal entry dates July 19th, 1992, a day before her 24th birthday, she pleads: “Desiring pain — no sex just PAIN…”.

A few more examples of her writing include:

“I peed on “Jane”. I also peed into his mouth. He was erect the whole time. He begged me to let him drink my nectar — hmm — so I did — and then a train started coming when we were through — danger! Suspense! The perfect scene — I called him a cuddly play toy… I knew he liked that — cuddly play toy with jewels around his neck so pretty. I know I could do this professionally — and should be.”

“Trying to switch careers — sex work to graphic design, get music connections, come out into S/M, hmm[…] Time for me perhaps to slut around — what the fuck — make up for lost time hell started when I was 22 — how dysfunctional — well I own the repression — damn that’s ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous — nuts — who knows, suppose it’s slightly insane, but then everyone is slightly nuts.”

“Out of the corner of my eye I spot her freshly shaved head — I am fully bedecked in my freshest whore wear — lace pattern stockings, fringe shorts revealing half my ass, platform heals which turn me into a 5’8” goddess — rusty forties fox colored lipstick… I see her — deliberately I nonchalantly look the other way[…] Pink chain around my neck, around my waist — dangling. I have reclaimed femme - tomboy - chick femme… A hand cool, assured on my back startles me, send sparks electricity through my veins. My breathing becomes shortened, shallow, rapid even before I meet her eye. She runs her hand down my back. I got her message. She acknowledges me but still has to “save face” as the term goes. I play hard to get, cool, so nonchalant, like I don’t want to fuck her brains out.”

She fills the pages with anger and fears (“raging, raging, raging”), but also with self-affirmations, thanks, and praise to Goddess. An example of affirmations: “I am not a victim, I am courage, I am light, I am love. I release the need in me to create anger, fear and resentment. I love and approve of myself. And I AM STRONG”, another: “I/EYE WILL BE O.K., I/EYE AM ACCEPTING + GROWING BE POSITIVE!”

One of her journals is dedicated to the practice of 3 morning pages, popularized by Julia Cameron’s The Artists’ Way. Many of these pages are filled with dreams from the previous night. Others have to do with waking dreams, fantasies, and frustrations. She grapples with feelings about her abusive father (she wonders if the nightmares and flashbacks she has have to do with repressed sexual abuse.) She calls her father a “sick fucker” for violating her privacy. She sees a therapist. In her therapy sessions she focuses on healing her inner child, analyzing her dreams, practicing guided visualizations, and leading with intention. The diarist, Kara, attends Al-Anon meetings, CoDA (co-dependency support groups), and wonders if she is exhibiting addictive tendencies herself.

She enjoys PJ Harvey, Sinead O’Connor, Ani DiFranco, Mazzy Star, Thalia Zedek, ACDC. She is a fan of the artists Diane Arbus, Paul Strand, Annie Leibovitz, and Barbara Kruger. She’s read Girl, Interrupted and adds Pat Califia’s Macho Sluts and Desclos’/Réage’s Story of O to her reading lists. She considered auditing a class with Kathy Acker (likely when Acker was teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute).

This is a singular look at a lesbian sex worker in the 1990s; a young, burgeoning (asexual?) BDSM devotee; a freudian self-conscious diarist.

The diarist’s handwriting is legible. Photographs and notebooks are in good condition. Between written entries, doodles and drawings decorate.

Ephemera:
Bookmark from Old Wives Tales, feminist, lesbian run bookstore in San Francisco (1976-1995). Religious iconography. A frontis piece from Ovide, Héroïdes ou Epîtres surrounded by the author's handwriting, "The Looking Glass Cracked"

Price: $7,500.00