<nettime> the biters

[david@2dk.net]

Biters blurb

Since 1993, the artists Bubu, Mikado and Akira began performing together
in nightclubs. They are all practicing sex workers; Bubu a prostitute,
Mikado an S&M dominatrix and Akira a gay "delivery host." In addition to
their performance work, the Biters also produce videos, posters and
postcards, work rich in the techniques of both pleasuring their clientele,
and protecting and provoking their fellow sex worker. They are activists,
busy with an international schedule of AIDS and sex worker conferences
worldwide, promoting sex worker rights, and developing an international
sex worker network. 

Sex workers have traditionally been "represented" by researchers and the
mass media, but as the Biters amply demonstrate, they require no
mediation.  They can speak (and dance!) for themselves.  The Biters are
teachers of safe sex in the workplace, the Biters are imposter doctors and
nurses, the Biters are philosophers, the Biters are friends, the Biters
are artists!! 


**********

Bubu's text

"Ms. Harlot's Holiday/Melle Harlot en Vacances"

A day off is a chance to catch up on one's beauty sleep
A day off is an opportunity for a late breakfast with your lover
A day off is a chance to do the wash
A day off is a time to talk with friends
A day off is a time to reminisce about friends who've passed away
A day off is a time to read Margaritte Duras' "L'Amant"
A day off is a time to write a letter to the folks back home
A day off is a time to think about the people at work, and maybe even give
them a call

Presents I've received from my customers:
My customers often give me tokens of their affection
Chou a la creme
stockings
prepaid telephone cards
lottery tickets
a handmade book of pressed flowers
a bear keyholder
poetic works
a warning alarm to protect me from rapists
bamboo-shoots
flower bouquets
potatoes
onions
a vibrator
sushi
panties...

My customers:

He's an instructor for how to use office equipment
He was always trying to remove his condom without my noticing.
I always quietly put it back on him.
The other day, he told me that his foreskin was too sensitive, and that
condoms hurt him.
"Maybe the condoms we've been using are too small. We could use a larger
condom, and then if we put some lubricant inside, it wouldn't hurt anymore.
See, it doesn't hurt anymore, does it?" "Nope."

He's worked at a cooking oil factory for 30 years.
He is so short that when we fuck, he can only reach far enough up to kiss
my neck.
But after he's come he reaches up and gives me the sweetest kisses on my
chin.

I've never known what he does for a living.
He has the hands of a craftsman.
Sometimes I get packages of beautiful potatoes from the country. 20 to a
box.
I eat them in the morning in my miso soup.
They're steamy in my mouth, delicious.

He works at a travel agency.
He's been a regular for over 3 years now.
He's got a wife.
At first I thought nothing of it.
Neither am I in any position to think anything of it.
But the longer we know each other, the more I feel that his wife is someone
that I'm implicated with, and her feelings cross my mind. It becomes
increasingly difficult to greet him as I used to.

He runs a pub.
He always brings me panties.
The other day they had purple butterflies on them.
On the same day his underpants were black bikinis with gold scorpions.
They looked beautiful on him.


"Gramps"
He's got to be at least 80 years old.
His gestures are slow. He likes to do one thing at a time.
First he concentrates on getting undressed.
He slowly removes his glasses. He looks at my face.
Next, he'll caress my breasts.
He looks at my sex.
He slowly puts a condom over his index and middle fingers, and gently
fondles me.
He slowly reclines.
I stimulate the base of his penis with a vibrator.
His eyes are fixed on the ceiling. He's concentrating.
He ejaculates.
I clean him with a warm towel.
He gets dressed.
A full hour has passed at this point.
Sometimes, he likes to come while caressing my breasts. "Breasts?" I remind
him, and he replies "Oh!!" as though he'd forgotten something monumental,
and hurries to touch them.
If I don't vocalise properly when he's fondling me it affects everything
thereafter, so I really have to concentrate.
I can't murmur gently, because he won't be able to hear it. I need to
respirate slowly, firmly and loudly.
After he gets dressed, he sometimes tells me about the war.
He was sent into the Pacific as a communications officer.
He went with a garrison of 2000 men. He was one of 4 that returned.
He lost so many friends.
When he tells me about it, tears always swell up in his wrinkled eyes.
I ask him about sex with his wife.
He says that she's not interested any more.
But his underwear is always spotless.

"Under the lights of the Love Hotel refrigerator"

In the dark love hotel room, rich with the mildew of the air conditioner
and dank carpet, the surface of my body is as covered in a gentle mist,
having just had pleasant sex. I lie between the one sanitary thing in this
room, the sheets. I feel good.  On the edge of the bed is a snoring
client, his back turned to me.  I can hear a motorcycle in the distance. 
The only light in the room comes through the glass door of the
refrigerator.  It reflects vaguely on the dusty chandelier above me.  It
reflects somehow nostalgic.  I don't know how many tens, how many hundreds
of times I've watched this scene.  Each time, I've lived through this
darkness.  And each time, I'm amazed at how I'm really not saddened by it
all. I recognise how objective I am about it all.  This light reminds me
of all darkness.  Today I lost someone truly special.  I really thought
that I couldn't take it anymore.  But this light reminds me of all
darkness, and gives me strength again.  I've made it this far, somehow. 
And I can go on. 


"The First Sex in Three Years."

His shirt and metal-framed glasses make him look like a factory
supervisor.  His eyes seem slightly crossed. He has a nervous air.  As he
gets undressed and lies down he says "My heart is racing. You want to
hear?" Noticing that he has a hairy chest I place my ear gently on his
chest and listen. It's pounding.  "How come?" I ask. "Because I haven't
had sex in three years" he answers.  I thought he was joking.  But just in
case, I didn't want to overstimulate his body, so I began, ever so gently,
to caress and lick him.  When my tongue reached his sex, he groaned. 
Carefully proceeding, he continued to call out, "That feels so good! Oh my
god, that feels good!!"  Still holding his sex in my mouth, I raised my
eyes to look at him.  "Really?" I smiled and asked.  I put a condom on
him, "Would you like me on top, or underneath?" "On top"  he replied. I
slowly lowered myself onto him, looking down at him, showing him my
relish.  Without his glasses he had a kinder face that I had thought. He
flushed, and closed his eyes.  I gently began moving my body.  As I
watched, his expression became positively exhaulted. It was so sincere. I,
filled with happiness, carefully watched over him.  He opens his eyes with
a look of astonishment. "Does sex really feel this good?" he kept
uttering, like one delerious.  "Yes. It feels so good, doesn't it?" I
said, filled with fellings of affection, laying on top of him, and
embracing his head.  He didn't even try to touch me anywhere.  In the end,
with an almost tragic cry, he came, and finally embraced my shoulders. 
"Has it really been three years?" I asked. "Yeah. My divorce was three
years ago. It's the first time since then" He replied.  "Is that so?" I
calmly replied. 

"Nightmare"

I saw a terrifying dream.
It is midnight, in an area filled with office buildings. The emergency exit
is a spiral staircase on the outside of the building.
I'm on top of the building. I want to get down. The spiral staircase is
packed with men of all styles, shapes and sizes.
I notice that I'm scared, and think it deplorable of me.
I'm a prostitute.
I've come all this way, to become a prostitute, but I still haven't shaken
my fear of men.
I'm trying to negotiate with a men who's clenching my arms from behind.
What do you want?
I resolve myself, calculating how many fucks and sucks I'll need to perform
to make it down to the bottom and spare myself.
I wake up, and realise that this was a pretty cheap way to negotiate my
passage. I feel remorseful.
The best answer might have been to be firm with the man holding me, telling
him that I'd "fuck him and him only if he got me down to safety."
Even then, I wouldn't know if I'd actually make it.
Maybe I became a prostitute as a kind of training, to strengthen myself for
such an eventuality.
Do unto others before they do unto you.
It's the only way to turn something unpleasant into something that feels
good.
The only way to convert a source of despair into a source of pleasure...
...or is it?

"The Nine Steps to Contact"

I love my customers. I love loving my customers.
My customers love me. I love my customers loving me.

I look at my customers. I look at myself looking at my customers.
My customers look at me. I look at my customers looking at me.

I look over my customers. I look over myself looking over my customers.
My customers look me over. I look over my customers looking me over.

I refuse customers. I refuse the fact of refusing customers.
The customers refuse me. I refuse the customers' refusal of me.

I betray customers. I betray my berayal of customers.
Customers betray me. I betray the customers' betrayal of me.

I violate customers. I violate my violations of customers.
Customers violate me. I violate customers' violations of me.

I support customers. I support my support of customers.
Customers support me. I support the customers' support of me.

I despise customers. I despise the fact that I despise customers.
The customers despise me. I despise the fact that they despise me.

I touch customers. I touch the me that touches customers.
The customers touch me. I touch the fact of their touching me.

***********

Hustler Akira's text:

I was lazily drinking tea with a customer after having sex.  He was
talking about how impossibly tired of doing desk work he was.  I said
"When I feel like that I get on my bike and pedal aimlessly around town.
It works for me."  "What do you do?" I asked him.  "I come to you" he
replied sheepishly, and laughed. 

I was feeling a bit down as I got in the bath one day, thinking that I
only got into this profession because I want to be loved by a lot of
people. I am more lonely than I realise sometimes. But in fact, before
it's a question of love or lust, what motivates me is being really needed
by someone.  When I was a child, my father was always busy, unable to be
at home much.  My poor lonely mother would give me the advertisements from
the newspaper, and have me draw pictures on their blank reverse sides.
When I'd produce them for her she always seemed so genuinely happy.  Now I
make my customers come. The pleasure I derive from the joy on their faces
is not much different from the joy I used to get drawing for my mother. My
mother also taught me to respect the value of human touch. I could thank
her endlessly for how much she's enriched my life, but the fact is that I
can't tell her that thanks to her, I'm a hooker with a heart of gold.  And
this makes me very sad. 

Being needed, making my customers happy, our sex has value.  But so does
every sexual act. 

A 70 year old man came to see me.  He asked me to lingeringly kiss the
nape of his neck. He said that's all he wanted.  When I asked why, he said
that when he was still a teenager, when Japan was still embroiled in the
Pacific War, all of his friends kept being recruited.  He too was up for
enlistment. And the one thing that kept him going during the gruelling
training that they went through to prepare for battle was the kindness of
one of his superiors, a boy seven years older than he, who had looked
after him.  Then, one day, this older boy asked him if he could come to
his room.  When he arrived, the older boy said "Tomorrow I'm being sent to
the front.  I may never return. I have one last thing to ask of you."  He
said that he wanted to spend the night together.  He hadn't wanted sex (in
a narrow sense) as one might imagine.  The older boy had simply held him
in his arms all night long, caressing his neck with his lips.  The older
boy never did return.  And ever since, this old man had kept the memory of
this night, and the warmpth and touch of this boy's lips on his neck. 
Even as he grew older, even through his marriage, he had kept coming to
us, to relive this memory.  Old man, were my lips warm like his? 

semen
blood
sweat
tears
urine
here in a place steeped in all of the bodily fluids,
I thought about the relationship between flowers and honey.

The fact that people live among people.
The fact that we live and breathe.
The fact that we suddenly realise that someone is next to us, and open our
hearts and our bodies to them.

Things that I have received from my customers:
A Helmut Lang jeans jacket
two dozen rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste
An MD player
Fortune cookies from Chinatown
A Caetano Veloso CD
YMC T-Shirts
Love letters
A down jacket
A garbage bag full of oranges
Some funky leopard-skin patterned bikini underpants
A discount ticket for a deluxe hotel
A Katharine Hamnet shirt
Economy sized supplies of lubricant and condoms
Fruit Cake
A yukata dressing gown and yellow Hachijou-shima sash
T-Shirts from a famous NYC leather bar
Money
Peach-flavored candies

He was pudgy, this one, with the cutest sleepy-eyed smile.
Getting in the shower together I was impatient to kiss him.
He tasted like peaches.
Then we had a delicious fuck.
You may find this hard to believe, but sometimes I get so emotional saying
goodbye to a customer.
This day I got so sad, I couldn't speak for the lump in my throat.
He noticed.
And as he was saying goodbye, he pressed a small object into my palm.
It was peach flavored candy.

He was dressed in a Comme du Garcon suit, and he was drunk.
He was drunk and he was getting out of hand.
Violent.
I put up with it for a little while, but he had it coming to him.
Before I'd really thought about the consequences, I decided to fuck him in
the ass hard, with no warning.
It really looked like it hurt.
He even cried.
"It's never hurt like this before" he bawled.
After that, he caressed me, and gave me head in the most unbelievably
gentle way.

Why is it that the men who don't want to use condoms are the first ones to
use the word "Love"?
"What's the matter baby? Don't you trust me? Don't you *Love* me?"
"Don't worry," they'll say "we're in *Love*!"
People who try such stupid lines on you are such jerks.
After three years at this job, one thing I've noticed is that people often
use words like "adore" or "love" (with a lower case "l") to make sex more
enjoyable. And that's one thing, because they're not talking about capital
L Love.
"Love" isn't a word bantered around just to get people into the mood.
You don't need to be a philologist to know that the word Love ought to be
used with people whose life you want to protect, and care for, and think
about.
It's not a word to describe an "act."
Issues of Love. Issues of Life.
I Love my customers.
But I can't say that I really like all of them.

We finished our work, and stepped outside for a smoke.
I talked to Ken.
He says he's seeing a girl who's crazy about sex. They're doing it 20 times
a week. She doesn't seem to mind what he does for a living.
He told me, "I'm so tired at work these days. Sometimes I wonder if I'm
wasting my sperm here."
Boy, do I ever know what he means.
But really, Ken.
This sperm that you're worried about wasting?
Well there's the sperm that you're filling her sex with in the pact of your
relationship,
and maybe the sperm that you pump into her ass in the games that you play.
And then there's the rest of your sperm that I don't really know what is
good for.
Maybe it's just there as some sort of marker showing that we are, in fact,
alive.
Sperm launched up like a signal fire into the sky, or a fountain of our
youth. And that's no waste.
Making the most of that is exactly what we're here for.

My first customer of the day was rough, and made my cock swollen and
purple with his whip.  My second customer was a regular.  Most of them
don't like uncircumcised cocks, so I went into the shower and pulled my
foreskin back before having sex with my second. It didn't hurt that much,
so without giving it much thought, I started playing with him.  As we
began to make love, he reached around and pulled my foreskin back over my
purple sex. I thought it strange, but supposed that it must have been
something accidental, and non-chalantly pulled it back for him. After a
little while, he reached over and covered it again. After the third time,
I asked him why he was doing this. "It hurts me to see how painful that
must be for you" he said. 

I went to the gay part of town, where they don't like hustlers, with a
paying customer who loves hustlers. We went to a bar. There were two young
boys in it. They gave us a quick glance and then went back to their
conversation, talking trash about somebody that was hustling. We sat and
listened for about three drinks, then my customer got up and said, "Well
that will be all for today then. Thanks. I had a really great time. See
you." And as he said this he put the money down, right in front of me, in a
very unmistakable way. It made me proud. I thanked him, walked him to the
door. After seeing him off, I smiled, closed the door behind me, and headed
home.

A dear friend of mine died of AIDS.
We spent the night before his body was buried together.
I kissed him.
His lips were cold.
I still can recall their temperature.
On my first job, when I brushed against my customer's lips, I was surprised
at how warm they were.
I have a boyfriend now. He watches over me, and my job. He's the sweetest
lover.
His lips are warm.
My customers, my lover. Lovers and friends.
Chilling winters and sweltering summers.
The only thing that doesn't change is the the temperature of their lips.
We're alive.
Whenever it is that you may die, as long as I'm alive
the memory of your warm lips will be with me.

Sometimes I feel as though I were working on a plantation, raising cattle
or sheep. It is a sex plantation. I raise it, I water it, I harvest it, I
bundle it, I ship it, I research it, I feel it wear me out, I discover it's
joys. It is a vast plantation, too large to ever really know completely.
But this is as it should be. We work this land because there is room for
improvement. I feel privileged that there is so much to do in my field.
In this world, there are many of us working these fields.
It makes me happy to imagine it.
And there should be many more.
And I, and they, would be connected.
hacienda must be built.

My clients sometimes get pretty loud.
I'm so relieved that the room is well soundproofed.
I mean, the police box is right next door!

When he came he called out "Naonozuke!!"
I asked him about it later, and he said that it was the name of a boy that
he has a crush on.
"I'm so sorry, calling out another man's name when I come with you. I'm
such a bad boy" he apologised.
"You certainly are" I snapped.

"I'm becoming your love, no, your sex slave!!!!" He cried.
He is, in fact, presently my sex slave.
Not my love slave.
He is right.

"My cock and my ass are so full of desire I don't know what will become of
me!!" screamed the 50s-ish physician. (And isn't it just like me to ask)
"What color are you filled with?"
"Lavender!" He responded, without a moment's delay.
To me, lavender has always been a funny color, quite beautiful, but not
unlike his too warm, wetish body.
His arms were outstretched, his hands on the wall. His large, 100kilo frame
was angled against me, and I was fucking his ass with a fury.
He turned his head to look at me.
"GOD, do I feel alive!"

**********

ConoSnatch Zubobinskaya's text

I work in the "sex industry."
My cups runneth over with ambition to devote all of my body, all of my mind
to the service of the erotic games!
My motivation is equal parts income and pleasure.
I devote all of my energies towards providing the maximum satisfaction for
the $2~300 that customers offer for 45 or 70 minute sessions.
It's like a sport, riding into an exotic form of battle.

I also work in the "art industry."
I use mostly my physique, generally in front of an audience. My media are
the theater, the art museum, the club, films, photographs, video, et al.,
everything that I can.
My motivation is to feel the elation of the spirit.
What these two jobs have in common is the spirit of "giving something
special."

I consider my customers and my audience both as my friends.


Think! Think! Think!


DANSE / X = LIFE


I was working on a project with Yamamoto. I had finished a soundtrack for
the show. When I got home there was a phone call for me.
"....Yamamoto was killed today.... car accident..."
"You gotta be kidding!!"
I remembered how I had been too busy, and putting off promises to go out
and run around with him.
I was at a loss.
I want to live to the full extent that I can. I do believe in life's
unlimited potential.


What an amazing individual!!
The first time he stood in front of me, my body and soul melted into mood
of unbridled horniness.
I moaned.
"And he believes in me!" I thought.
I was so moved.


When I was a child, I was so shy.
Terrified of any and every thing.
Now I work in an S&M club, delighted to exacerbate the shame and fears of
my customers, to break their pride.
This is where they find their pleasure, their catharsis.


I can show you pleasures that you didn't know existed.


I was doing nude modelling.
An amateur photographer asked me if he could "shoot my cunt."
I flinched.
"How much should I charge?" I quickly calculated.
Yet before I figured it out, I thought "Why make such a big deal out of it?
My face, my breasts, my hips, my sex, it's all me!" and stopped worrying
about it, and let him photograph my sex at no extra charge.
I detest hiding.
Which is not to say that this decision was an easy one.
But I thought that it was stupid to apply some precious value to my sex,
Yet it also seemed somehow unforgivable to just let it go at discount
rates.
I thought about how to be at ease about all of this, finding a cool way to
express myself in such situations.
How about something like:
Yeah, my pussy is expensive!... how about something like $2,000?


Hey baby, don't just touch my tits and cunt.
You're not gonna get me hot that way.
Not at all.
I've gotten to the point where I just can't pretend to be feeling it.
There are so many ways and places to feel good!!


I  LOVE  MY  BODY ! !

I love myself absolutely.
I think that my shape, my color, the way my skin feels, they're all
beautiful.
I'm grateful to my parents.
It seems a shame to keep such a thing of beauty all to myself. Maybe that's
why I strip.


Things I've gotten from my clients:
2,000, 5,000, 20,000, and 30,000 yen denominations.
White wine
Canned crab (a souvenier from the Tottori region of Japan)
Chiyoshi Kishimen (a souvenier from Nagoya City)
An elephant pendant top make of ivory (a souvenier from Thailand)
A candy trophy from a pachinko win
Maneken waffles
A Ninna Ricci wallet
High heels from Diana's of Ginza


The origin of my name MIKADO

I use the name MIKADO mainly in "membrane" jobs, when dealing with
customers who will actually touch my body.
I was in Paris, and went to St. Denis to see my first ever peep show. The
manager of the establishment asked me if I was "interested in a little part
time work?" a proposition to which I agreed without really thinking about
it.
For that evening's work, this manager gave me the stage name MIKADO.
I'm sure that to him, any one Japanese was just as much MIKADO as any
other.
When I told the late Teiji Furuhashi about this stage name, he was
thrilled. "A sex industry worker named Mikado!? How nice! And
anti-nationalistic!" I've kept the name ever since.
Anyway, so there I was, having just seen my first strip show, freshly
christened MIKADO, and being taken into a secluded room.
The room was only a couple of square meters wide, and extremely dark.
In the center of it was a partition with a 90cm transparent panel. On one
side of this partition was a sofa, and on the other was carpeted area
raised in front of the couch.
There was some kind of surveillance camera on the ceiling, and a box of
disposable tissues next to the couch.
After being shown the room, I saw what was going on in a similar room via
its surveillance camera.
The customer sat on the couch, while a working girl was behind the glass,
showing off her sex, pressing up against the clear partition, and generally
shaking her ass around a lot.

Before I could get very involved in my trepedations about what I'd gotten
myself into, it was already my time to go on.
My first customer was a black gentleman.
He melted into the dark of the room. All I could see were his bright eyes
and teeth. It was slightly unnerving.
I was nervous, but I was able to masturbate for him. I couldn't tell what
his reactions were, and thought that I was probably rushing things a bit.
After a while, though, I actually started to enjoy myself.
And then, just as I was about to orgasm...
A milky white liquid came flying towards me!
"Wha!?!"
I thought as it hung on the glass, followed by the sound of tissue being
pulled from its box.
I was so proud of myself. I'd made him come!!
After a short silence, he tucked his penis back in his trousers, flashed me
a smile with his ever-so-white teeth, and said "Tres Bien!" as he left the
room.


ConoSnatch Zubobinskaya = C.Snatch Z.

I use this name when doing work that expresses issues of my femininity.
Cono comes from the Spanish,
Snatch from the American,
and Zubobinskaya from a collaboration with Mr. Mommy Mu Shangrila,
as a sound appropriate for mid-sexual intercourse.
They all mean "cunt" in one form or another.

The BITERS
A group of formed of three self-proclaimed prostitutes.
The name is aplay on the words, Arbeit, from the german, for "work," and
the english word meaning to clench down with one's teeth.

Hello darlings, it is I, MIKADO.
And I offer the following to make your AND MY fantasies more and more
thrilllling!!
MIKADO's 9 Miracles: The Surface is All!! (photo from a sex industry
publication)

MIKADO's 9 Miracles (titles of photographic works)

Let us live in the frame!!
Pussycat Kill Kill!!
Wearing condoms is the norm!!
Time for your shots!!
The eyes speak as loudly as the mouth!!
You can wear your diapers you know!!
I am your slave in an apron!!
Lick it!! Now!!
After Romain Slocombe

(titles of works in three part set)

Y200,000 because the clitoris is visible

All you can see is the vulva, but it's still Y200,000

Here you've got 30 cunts in a row. It's still Y200,000

**********

translated by david d'heilly

******

"It's not the men in my life that matters -- it's the life in my men." -
Mae West


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