Fugatives & Refugees

Getting Off: How to Knock Off a Piece in Portland

"The jig's up—people are having sex in Portland," says Teresa Dulce. An advocate for Portlands sex workers and the publisher of the internationally famous magazine Danzine, Teresa says, "Instead of fighting the inevitable, let's try to prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease."

Teresa sits in the Bread and Ink Cafe on SE Hawthorne Boulevard, eating a salad of asparagus. Her eyes are either brown or green, depending on her mood. Since her car broke down outside of town in 1994, she's been here, writing, editing, and performing as a way to improve working conditions in the sex industry.

With her pale, heart-shaped face, her thick, dark hair tied back, she could be a ballet dancer wearing a long-sleeved, tight black top. With her full Italian lips, Teresa says, "The sky has not fallen when there's been trade before. There are plenty of guys who just want to knock off a piece and are grateful for sex. If there were as many of us getting raped and killed as people say, there wouldn't be a woman left standing on the street."

Ordering a glass of white wine, she adds, "Sex work does exist. It's going to exist with or without our permission. I'd just like to make it as safe and informed as possible."

According to history, Teresa's right. Sex work has always existed here in Stumptown. In 1912, Portland s Vice Commission investigated the city's 547 hotels, apartment buildings, and rooming houses and found 431 of them to be "Wholly Immoral." Another eighteen of them were iffy. The investigation consisted of sending undercover female agents to each business to look around and interview the managers. The resulting vice report reads like a soft-porn romance novel: scenes of naked young women wandering the halls in fluttering silk kimonos. Described as "voluptuous blondes," they strut around in "lace nightgowns, embroidered Japanese slippers and diamonds." Their workplace—called a bawdy house or parlor house— always seems to be paneled in "Circassian walnut and mirrors" and crammed with Battenberg lace, Victrolas, and cut-glass vases and chandeliers. The famous 1912 report refers to these women by their first names: Mazie, Kather-ine, Ethel, Edith... and says they each served twenty-five to thirty different men every night.

These were famous houses like the Louvre at SW Fifth Avenue and Stark Street. Or the Paris House on the south side of NW Davis Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, a brothel that boasted "a girl from every nation on Earth." Or the Mansion of Sin run by Madam Lida Fanshaw at SW Broadway and Morrison Street, now the site of the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store.

Richard Engeman, Public Historian for the Oregon Historical Society, says few of those brothels were documented, but the proof is hidden in official records like the census. "When you find forty women living at the same address, and they're all seamstresses, it's a brothel." He adds, "Sure, they're popping off a lot of buttons, but that doesn't make them seamstresses."

In hot weather street bands used to march through the city, leading men back to the bars near the river, thus "drumming up business." Along their routes working women would lean from windows, advertising what was available.

In the vaudeville theaters the actresses and singers would roam the curtained boxes between their acts onstage. Called "box rustlers," they sold beer and sex.

Portland police officer Lola Greene Baldwin, the first policewoman in the nation, attacked Portlands venerable department stores, including Meier & Frank, Lippman-Wolfe's, and Olds & King's, on the accusation that easy credit forced many young girls into debt and trading sex for money. She fought to keep young women from being displayed in parades during the Rose Festival and had the touring comedienne Sophie Tucker arrested for public indecency.

In 1912 an estimated three thousand local women worked as prostitutes, so many that Portland mayor Allan

Rushlight campaigned to turn all of Ross Island into a penal colony solely for sex workers.

The moral crusade of 1912 was the city's biggest until the crusade of 1948, and the crusade of 1999, and the crusade of... well, you get the point.

It's a business cycle Teresa Duke's seen since she started dancing at age twenty-three. Pragmatic, frank, and funny, she describes the Portland sex industry in slightly more realistic terms than the vice report.

Free speech is so protected under the Oregon State Constitution that we have the largest number of adult businesses in the nation. And, thanks to our free-speech rights, pretty much any type of no-contact nude performance is legal. According to Teresa, Portland (aka "Porn-land") has at least fifty nude dance clubs and twenty lingerie studios and shops with fantasy booths. This means a workforce of as many as fifteen hundred women and men make money performing naked. This means you'll see a much wider range of body types, ages, and races than in any other city.

Nudity and alcohol don't go together in any other state, she says. In most states full nudity is limited to juice bars. But because we mix alcohol and nudity, we can't have legal lap dancing. In Oregon it's table dancing, where the performer can be naked and close up in your face, on a table or stage, but not touching you—and you not touching him or her.

In a local lingerie studio you pay to sit on a couch in a room while a performer models. The performer and you may talk out a fantasy during the session. And you may exercise the option of masturbating. You're paying for time, plus extra for anything above and beyond the performer's normal show. In a "fantasy booth" you pay to watch the performer through a window. You pay by the minute, extra for specific services you want to watch. Teresa's example, a double-anal penetration with dildos, would cost you extra.

According to Teresa, adult films are shot every day in Portland. Telephone sex services thrive. Local live web-cams transmit on the Internet. The city's fetish specialists run the gamut from the dungeon dominatrix to the Dairy Queens, lactating women who collect and sell their breast milk. Sex workers range from the "career" women, who stay blond and thin in spinning classes and augment their breasts, to the "survival" or "trade" workers, who work a "track" on the street, trading sex for money or shelter or food or drugs.

Teresa says—irony aside—the best place to find street action is in any of the city's "prostitution-free zones." These include Burnside Street, between the McDonald's at the west end of the track, and Sandy Boulevard at the east end. Also check out Killingsworth Street, Interstate Avenue, and Sandy Boulevard—especially through the Hollywood District.

For escort service, she says, check out the free magazines offered in most nude dance bars. The standard tip to a dancer is a dollar bill but don't be afraid to pay more.

In order to dance nude in a bar, the performers must pay the bar a "stage fee." The dancer also pays an "agency fee" to a booking agency that finds her venues and schedules her appearances. Between the two types of fees, a performer can go home with little or no profit. A situation that Teresa says drives many performers to arrange private dances in hotels or homes after work or between shows.

Started by Teresa in 1995, the magazine Danzine collects this professional wisdom that sex workers won't find anywhere else. It teaches workers before they have to learn—and maybe die—from their mistakes. Danzine is here to tell you—no, you can't tax deduct your tampons, even if you cut the string and wear them while performing. And yes, always wipe down the brass pole before riding it with your newly shaved coochie. One drop of even dried menstrual blood is enough to transmit hepatitis C or possibly HIV

Danzine and Teresa also run the "Bad Date Hotline," where sex workers post the details of their shitty "dates" and describe the customers for others to look out for. Bad dates range from the bald driver of the silver Porsche who's HIV positive and demands unprotected vaginal sex to the Honda driver who wears a tie and zaps women with his stun gun.

And the magazine's damn funny. In one feature called "You Know You've Been Stripping Too Long When..." Item Number Seven says you're banned from the playground after you teach the local kids how to work the pole. Item Number Ten says you go to the drugstore and automatically pick up your change with your teeth.

Danzine is published twice a year. To buy back issues, write to Danzine, P.O. Box 40207, Portland, OR 97240-0207. Or look for it in small-press bookstores and Tower Records and Magazines in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Also check out the website, www.danzine.org.

At 628 E Burnside Street, Teresa runs Miss Mona's Rack, a store that sells secondhand shoes, clothes, and jewelry, plus razors, condoms, and tampons. It also offers a staggering variety of lubricants, with all profits going to support community job training and risk-reduction programs that teach HIV and other STD prevention.

To date, Teresa says the city continues to increase the size of the prostitution-free zones, in order to arrest more sex workers for trespassing—a worse crime than prostitution. And the city recently tried to impose a raft of licensing regulations on everyone in the sex industry. According to Teresa, the city's effort is first to make money but ultimately to eliminate sex workers. Another irony, since the city also supports growing the local hotel industry and attracting large conventions while denying that conventioneers create and support much of the local sex industry.

It's not realistic to expect every tourist to attend the symphony or the opera at night. Teresa says, "And there are a lot of guys who do go to the symphony, but want a blow job afterward."

In reaction to the new regulations, local sex workers rallied by forming a political action group they called Scarlet Letter. They contacted some seventy escorts through the ads in adult monthly magazines such as SFX and lobbied door-to-door in City Hall to convince the government the new law would drive sex workers even further underground, where they'd seek less protection from violence and disease.

On March 8, 2000, after a court battle, Portlands sex workers won an injunction that stops the city from enforcing the law. Now, all the years of organizing fetish parties and magazines have paid off by creating an effective political machine. It's the envy of sex workers nationwide who now want Danzine's help to fight similar laws in their own cities.

With her classic Mona Lisa eyes half lidded, her smokers deep, sultry voice, Teresa Dulce is another example of writer Katherine Dunn's rule about every Portlander living at least three lives.

"Someday, I want to have a child," Teresa says. "I want to live by my own schedule. And I want to change some laws."

Here's a list of places to get lucky in Portland.

The ACE of Hearts

The ACE of Hearts at 3533 SE Thirty-ninth Avenue is Portland's premier club for swingers. Downstairs, you'll find two dance floors, a fifteen-person hot tub, showers, and a. snack bar. Upstairs, you'll have two pool tables, large and small "socializing" rooms, two more hot tubs, and a huge projection TV showing the kind of movies you'd expect. It's open only on Friday and Saturday nights, with single men allowed only on Fridays. Couples and single women are welcome anytime.

Call it an open marriage, a polyamorous lifestyle, or a play party, you'll still need to buy a membership and attend a short orientation meeting before you can fulfill your pool table, multiple-partner, romantic fantasy.

For more information, check out www.aceofhearts.org or call the following numbers: If you're a single male, call 503-321-5027; if you're a single woman or a couple, call 503-727-3580.

Bear Hunting

For you fans of big men with hairy backs, aka Bears, the Dirty Duck Pub is the stomping ground for men addicted to hairy men. Hunting season peaks on Saturday nights at 439 NW Third Avenue, at the west end of the Steel Bridge.

Close Encounters

Check out Close Encounters, a free social club for "Big Beautiful Women and Big Lovable Teddies"—and the folks who can't help but love them. Talking about weight loss is frowned on here. With about a hundred members in the club, you can expect to meet maybe half of them at the average weekly meeting.

Close Encounters meets every Saturday at 7:00 p.m., at the New Old Lompoc Restaurant and Tavern, 1616 NW Twenty-third Avenue. Phone: 503-225-1855.

Club Portland

Portland's last gay bathhouse is the Club Portland, officially called the Continental Hotel Club and Baths, four floors of sticky fun at SW Twelfth Avenue and W Burnside Street. Formerly called the Majestic Hotel, the club features a wide-screen theater for Hollywood feature films on the second floor. The third floor has a murky, dark sex maze full of crotch-high "glory holes." And the fourth floor has a porn theater showing continuous man-on-man smut, plus a stage and sex sling for live performances. Membership is about $20, with lockers and rooms available, starting from $12. Larger hotel-style rooms, with private bathrooms, are also available. So is Internet access and a dry sauna. Hours: always open. Phone: 503-227-9992.

Admission to the Club Portland also gets you into the basement jack-off club, Zippers Down.

Cock Rock

Local historians say the Lewis and Clark Expedition named this thin towering basalt monolith "Cock Rock" for obvious reasons. Located between Interstate 84 and the Columbia River, a few miles east of Portland, we now discreetly call it "Rooster Rock."

The trails lead out to the clothing-optional beach on Sand Island. Trails through the neighboring woods and secluded clearings in the willow thickets host sex scenes you'll occasionally glimpse—so be warned. Despite park rangers on horseback handing out $300 tickets for lewd behavior, Portlanders still spread their blankets—and so much more—at the base of Cock Rock.

Dance Halls

In books from the 1920s like From the Ballroom and Dance Hall to Hell and Tillie from Tillamook, generations of Port-landers have been warned—so must you be warned.

Too often, the first step to white slavery is the dance step. At dance halls, like the Crystal Ballroom or the Viscount Ballroom, single women are often approached by attractive young men. Called "gray wolves," the only goal of these men is to court and charm you, separate you from your loving family, and take you to Pendelton for a sham marriage. Once back in Portland, you'll find yourself soiled and alone. At this point your charming nonhusband will offer to find you work in one of the local brothels.

Well, you can't say I didn't warn you. Look for some of Portlands best ballroom dancing at "Lindy in the Park," held every Sunday from noon until 2:00 p.m., in good weather. Dancers spread cornmeal on the concrete plaza and practice the lindy hop in the South Park Blocks, behind the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

The first Sunday of each month, look for Johnny Martin's three-piece swing band and swing dancers at Saturday Market, under the west end of the Burnside Bridge.

For indoor dancing, check out:

The Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside Street, phone: 503-225-5555, ext. 8810.

The Viscount Ballroom, 724 E Burnside Street, phone: 503-226-3262.

The Melody Ballroom, 615 SE Alder Street, phone: 503-232-2759.

Call each venue for hours and types of music available.

Exotic Wednesday

The Jefferson Theater, one of the West Coasts last big-screen porn theaters, offers "Exotic Wednesday" on hump day at 9:00 p.m., admission $8. This isn't so much a movie ticket as it is a one-night, twelve-hour membership in a private club. You're free to cum and go, and come back throughout your twelve hours.

This being a private club, the signs around the lobby warn you that sexual activity may take place. And just in case the wrong Mr. Right wants to get up in your stuff, the signs declare that no means no. That, and you must be at least eighteen years old.

Also look for "Video Feed Mondays," when a couple performs for the camera in the upstairs porn-movie studio. A closed-circuit system shows them live on the auditorium's big screen, and the audience gets to direct the cameraman's shots and dictate the sex acts.

On Exotic Wednesday or Nasty Karaoke Night, whatever you call it, at nine o'clock the movie stops and a celebrated local dancer does a set to a half dozen songs on the stage below the screen. Instead of a dancer, sometimes it's a girl-on-girl whipped-cream show or an S & M demonstration. After that, the movie—and so much more—begins.

A crowd of party girls and a drag queen come down the center aisle wearing stretch-velvet dresses. One girl, a big girl with strawberry blond hair piled in a chignon and a fake daisy behind one ear, she jumps up onstage, shouting. Another girl climbs up onstage, and the two make shadows against the huge penis and vagina behind them. They make shadow animals and run a commentary about the gigantic sex action. The blond leans down to an older woman in the front row and says, "Mom? Can you give me the shoes out of my bag?"

To the audience of sixty or seventy people, she says, "Yes, that's my mom, and no, I'm not going to do a sex scene with her. That would be too Jerry Springer."

She puts on the high-heeled platform shoes and says, "Check out these shoes!"

The second girl kneels onstage and lifts her black skirt, and the drag queen slaps her exposed ass and labia with a riding crop. The strawberry blond jumps in place, trying to touch the spot where two big-screen erections are sodomizing a woman's stretched asshole. Surrounded by this huge pink genitalia, the blond shouts, "How many of you guys know what 'Russian' is?"

No guys respond.

"You guys don't deal with a lot of escorts, do you?" she says. She shrugs the dress straps off her shoulders, and the tight dress shrinks down to her waist, exposing huge pink breasts that look to be—at least—half covered with nipple.

She squeezes her breasts in both hands, saying how "Russian" means getting off between a woman's breasts. Still squeezing, she says, "I might even let you do it, if you promise not to cum in my eyes."

The drag queen is still spanking the second girl. The movie still towers above them all. Other women in black dresses come and go from the dark auditorium. Men follow them out into the lobby ... to talk. Couples paw each other in the couples-only section.

The theater owner gives the blond a long chrome flashlight and she works the audience, auctioneer-style, coaxing guy after guy to take the erection out of his pants. "I've got seven boners," she says. "Does anyone want to give me eight?" Like a topless game show host, she says, "You guys want to play a sexual/intellectual game?" Pointing the flashlight at each boner in the audience, she says, "I bet you call your dick something different every day of the week. How about everybody shout out the name you have for your dick?"

In the dark guys shout, "Boner... Peter... Willy..."

By now at least half the theater is openly jerking off. The exception is a group of men sitting together in the back, near the couples-only section. This group of men laugh and talk about their jobs, and the blond comes up the aisle saying, "What? You guys think that just because you're friends sitting together that you can't whip out your dicks and get off?"

More women go onstage, making a shadow play against the big porn. They flicker their shadow tongues against the huge shaved vaginas. They put their shadow arms around the thirty-foot erections. As the movie works toward orgasm—the happy ending of porn—the audience talks to the new women who seem to arrive a few at a time. The strawberry blond kneels on a theater seat and leans over the back toward the man sitting behind her. With one hand she's touching his dick. They talk. It's dark.

A little later, the big blond's in the theater lobby, looking at the covers of porno movies for sale. Other men and women meet, mingle, whatever. Some move on to the couples-only section. The blond adjusts the plastic daisy in her hair as she tells the guy behind the candy counter, "If I can get just thirty hard dicks in there, then I'll be happy."

The Jefferson Theater is at 1232 SW Twelfth Avenue. Phone: 503-223-1846.

The I-Tit-a-Rod Race

Organized by the Portland Cacophony Society, this annual race requires you to visit as many nude dance clubs as possible in a twelve-hour period. You need proof you were there, usually a photo snapped outside near the business sign, and you need to consume one drink in each club. Most players work as teams with a designated driver. With as many as fifty strip clubs to visit, no one's been able to hit more than thirty in a single race.

KlNKFEST

This is the annual weekend of workshops and play parties organized by the Portland Leather Alliance (PLA). A recent Kinkfest, hosted at the ACE of Hearts, included seminars such as "Erotic Humiliation and Degradation," "Anal Pleasure for Everyone," and "Saline Inflation." The event is held in the spring, so it won't conflict with the PLA's annual Leather Pride Week in August. For this year's schedule, check out www.pdxleatheralliance.org.

With more than four hundred members, the PLA meets the first Tuesday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at C. C. Slaughter's, 219 NW Davis Street. Many members meet there early, at 6:00 p.m., to have dinner together before the meeting.

Lulu's Pervy Playhouse

Sorry guys. It's women only for this sexy "play party" held on the second Saturday of each month. For time and location, check out the website www.spiretech.com/~auntie/ lulu. htm.

M & M Dances

Named for Marv and Marsha, these swingers' dances are held on the fourth Saturday of each month at 8:00 p.m. For details, call 503-285-9523.

Stripper Bingo

Also organized on an irregular basis by the Portland Cacophony Society, this game uses bingo cards designed for, well, strip clubs. Instead of numbers and letters, each space is marked with a typical stripper detail. Did she slap her own ass? Did she tweak her nipple? Clean your glasses with her manicured pubic hair? Did he pick up your tip money with his ass? You need to watch for all these little details and mark them off until you can yell "Bingo!" And please, tip the dancers who make all this fun possible.

XES

Located at 415 SW Thirteenth Avenue, XES is a private sex club for men. Inside is a maze of black-painted plywood with nonstop porno playing on monitors mounted overhead. Within the maze you'll find plenty of tiny rooms for privacy, plus a leather sex sling right in the center of things. The only room with a bed is also wired with a video camera so the entire club can watch you in action. The club runs from 7:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. and has more than fifteen hundred members who pay about $4.00 for an annual membership, plus $8.00 per visit.

Zippers Down

Located in the basement of the Club Portland bathhouse, the "paramilitary" sex club Zippers Down is at 303 SW Twelfth Avenue. Comprising most of the city block, the basement is decorated in army-surplus everything, with barrack bunks and acres of camo netting hung to create the full M.A.S.H. effect. The management has even hauled a real Willies Jeep down here and wired it so the headlights work. Porno plays on monitors overhead, and the fantasy is complete.

A membership fee is required for admission. Hours are noon to 6:00 a.m.