sfbguardian :. Interview by Juliette Tang
Midori, photographed by Constance Smith. See more hot local women of BDSM in our "Submission Possible!" cover story this week.
Midori, photographed by Constance Smith. See more hot local women of BDSM in our "Submission Possible!" cover story this week.
Sex educator, artist, writer, and diva, Midori, is currently showing her latest installation, Plastics, at Femina Potens (2199 Market St). I stopped by Femina Potens to chat with Midori as she was setting up and was faced with a turbulent sea of blow-up dolls, plastic breasts, knives, razor blades, and syringes. We quickly relocated to the more conventional setting of a cafe down the street, where we had a nice chat about avocados and what it means to be kinky, over coffee cake and Earl Gray.
SFBG: So, what kind of classes do you teach?
Midori: With 60 to 70 different topics, I have a wide range to go from general sexuality to the sexual subcultures of Japan to kinkier topics.
SFBG: What are you working on right now?
M: I have a couple of books I'm way behind on that I need to get done. One's about how to eat a peach, and it's really funny and a lot of fun.
SFBG: How to eat a peach? Can you elaborate?
M: So we have this idea that if you can tie a cherry stem into a knot, that means you're good at oral sex. Tying the cherry is not that practical when it comes to our clits. You're not going to take the clit and tie it into a knot. But if a tongue can do a nice, deep thrust and a curl-in, and do that for like, 5 sets of 10: that's practical. You know, I've got a shortish, average tongue. It's not necessarily the equivalent of size. It's how you move it.
From "Silken Sleeves," a short film by Maria Beatty featuring Midori
SFBG: There's a lot of food imagery in that description.
M: One's attitude to sex and life is like one's attitude to food. Food is something you need. However, you can overindulge. You can have a very strange relationship with it. You can have an abusive relationship with it. You can have a market manipulated, media manipulated relationship with food. You can cook it and consume it carelessly, or you can consume it mindfully. You can end up sharing food with a stranger or with someone you absolutely love head-over-heels. Food and sex... the attitude is very similar.
SFBG: Can you give us a food recipe you find particularly sexy?
M: So imagine you've been out all day, on your feet. It's hot and all that, and you come home and your sweetie has one of those beautiful shallow Chinese goldfish ceramics, with pebbles in it. So, hot day you're tired, your feet are swollen. And you have cool water, pebbles, mint leaves, and citrus slices, and your sweetie takes brown sugar and scrubs your feet.
SFBG: So, what kind of classes do you teach?
Midori: With 60 to 70 different topics, I have a wide range to go from general sexuality to the sexual subcultures of Japan to kinkier topics.
SFBG: What are you working on right now?
M: I have a couple of books I'm way behind on that I need to get done. One's about how to eat a peach, and it's really funny and a lot of fun.
SFBG: How to eat a peach? Can you elaborate?
M: So we have this idea that if you can tie a cherry stem into a knot, that means you're good at oral sex. Tying the cherry is not that practical when it comes to our clits. You're not going to take the clit and tie it into a knot. But if a tongue can do a nice, deep thrust and a curl-in, and do that for like, 5 sets of 10: that's practical. You know, I've got a shortish, average tongue. It's not necessarily the equivalent of size. It's how you move it.
From "Silken Sleeves," a short film by Maria Beatty featuring Midori
SFBG: There's a lot of food imagery in that description.
M: One's attitude to sex and life is like one's attitude to food. Food is something you need. However, you can overindulge. You can have a very strange relationship with it. You can have an abusive relationship with it. You can have a market manipulated, media manipulated relationship with food. You can cook it and consume it carelessly, or you can consume it mindfully. You can end up sharing food with a stranger or with someone you absolutely love head-over-heels. Food and sex... the attitude is very similar.
SFBG: Can you give us a food recipe you find particularly sexy?
M: So imagine you've been out all day, on your feet. It's hot and all that, and you come home and your sweetie has one of those beautiful shallow Chinese goldfish ceramics, with pebbles in it. So, hot day you're tired, your feet are swollen. And you have cool water, pebbles, mint leaves, and citrus slices, and your sweetie takes brown sugar and scrubs your feet.
SFBG: Mmm, that sounds nice. Give us another recipe!
M: Imagine an avocado. Pop the stone out, save it. Take a little bit of sea salt, a little bit of cayenne, and your sweetie takes your foot in your hands and takes the overripe, slightly banged up avocado, really mushy, and -- massages your feet with the avocado. Then, your sweetie takes the stone and massages your feet with the stone, because an avocado stone has no pointy end. The cayenne brings the blood flow to the surface of the skin, and the salt is exfoliating. And, it's nibble friendly!
SFBG: That's so nice and simple.
M: I have this class called the sensual body spa for couples and its all farmer's market, kitchen ingredients. And I have different recipes for different skin conditions: dry skin, hot summer skin, cold winter skin. You can actually go from appetizer to main course to desert and it's all nibble-able. The time is spent on people lavishing each other.
"Silken Sleeves"
SFBG: How do you come up with this stuff?
M: Lots of different places. Paying attention. If I go to a fancy spa, I'll look at the ingredients, or maybe I'll be reading a skin care thing and I read about something like oats, and I'm like "oooh, I wanna read more about that."
SFBG: What about the sexual stuff? How did you become such an expert on that?
M: I've been blessed with... well, I started exploring the sexual subcultures of San Francisco, and there are many. Some I liked, some I didn't, some I was in the mood for, some later I was in the mood for but not that moment. I met some fantastic people. all in the sex positive movement, the likes of Carol Queen, Robert lLawrence, Patrick Califia, Betty Dodson, Annie Sprinkle. They've all been my predecessors.
SFBG: That sounds like good company.
M: All these fabulous people are also nerds. And I am also a nerd. Because I am not a natural, because a lot of things I have to learn the hard way, I had to find things out for myself too.
SFBG: Like in what sense?
M: Like I wasn't a naturally good lover. In the various mistakes and oopsies and bloopers, I learned things. I'm also an egghead, and I tend to deconstruct things, like, "Why didn't that work?" And I'm very curious to hear about why people do what we do. Why do we kiss? Why do we spank? Why is it sexy to feed one another strawberries? For this person, why is it sexy to eat a jalapeno?
SFBG: It's obvious you're a sexual relativist. How much does being Japanese affect your concept of sexuality -- and your own identity?
M: Oh, tons. My upbringing is certainly unique. Going to school in Japan, being born there, I got a multicultural exposure and critical, analytical view in looking at the world and the culture around me. Knowing about cultural relativity, there is absolutely cultural relativity to sexuality. In many ways, sex as we know it isn't a natural act. It's contextualized, flavored defined toned in many ways by the world we live in. Sexual relativity in all things. That became more obvious to me as I grew up.
"Silken Sleeves"
SFBG: In what ways?
M: Japan is very interesting in terms of sexuality. I grew up in a working class neighborhood where there would be houses of small manufacturing, a pool hall, a kindergarten, and brothel right there, and I saw these things. I also come from a very feminist household. My grandmother was a suffragette, and I don't take that for granted one moment. And coming from that, and seeing in the world how much shame and baggage there is around sexuality and how people waste so much time on shame and how they waste so much time in telling other people how to have sex... I think it's interesting how people have sex, but no business in me telling people or anyone telling someone our views.
SFBG: Is there such thing as 'bad' sex?
M: The only bad sex is when you're disempowered and you're not having fun. A person can be having a stereotypical, Hollywood conventional, mainstream sex, but if the person having that sex is feeling disempowered and not having fun, it's bad sex. And say there's a person over here engaging in bondage and being spanked, but then she says, "but I asked for it, and it's fun, and my sweetie will spank me harder or lighter or stop when i want to," then here's a person feeling empowered and is having fun.
SFBG: A lot of people in the sex community differentiate between being kinky and non-kinky. Or how kinky people call people who don't engage in sexual subcultures "vanilla". What does that even mean?
M: God, how tiresome, right? Some people are naughtier than thou. "I'm kinkier, and I can eat spicier food than you." Everyone wants to belong, and everybody wants to be special. Sometimes that's a conflicting thing. Sometimes if we're special, we don't feel like we belong. But when we find sexual subcultures, we can claim being different and special, and yet we get to belong. So whether you're a swinger or a D/s person or bondage enthusiast or a part of the new chastity movement, you get to simultaneously be special and unique, and belong, and some people are really invested in being incredibly special. "I am so special." [rolls eyes] Bah.
SFBG: But do kinky people have better sex?
M: Here's the big difference. Some people who are engaging in kinky sex are having better sex, but it's not because of the kink. Kinky folk have had to learn the language about openly expressing their desire and having that desire be met. So out of necessity of having unusual taste, people have forged a way and methods by which to communicate their desire. How often are we taught as young adults how to clearly communicate our desires? We are not taught that if you want your sweetie to do a muff dive for half an hour, to ask for that. The reason that there might be potentially a likelihood for slightly more increased chances of fulfillment, or satisfaction level among kinky folk, is because of communication. We have had to say this is what we desire: "here are my boundaries." And that is a remarkable skill, and folks who have wonderful fabulous vanilla sex will be having even more fabulous vanilla sex if they learn to talk about it.
M: Imagine an avocado. Pop the stone out, save it. Take a little bit of sea salt, a little bit of cayenne, and your sweetie takes your foot in your hands and takes the overripe, slightly banged up avocado, really mushy, and -- massages your feet with the avocado. Then, your sweetie takes the stone and massages your feet with the stone, because an avocado stone has no pointy end. The cayenne brings the blood flow to the surface of the skin, and the salt is exfoliating. And, it's nibble friendly!
SFBG: That's so nice and simple.
M: I have this class called the sensual body spa for couples and its all farmer's market, kitchen ingredients. And I have different recipes for different skin conditions: dry skin, hot summer skin, cold winter skin. You can actually go from appetizer to main course to desert and it's all nibble-able. The time is spent on people lavishing each other.
"Silken Sleeves"
SFBG: How do you come up with this stuff?
M: Lots of different places. Paying attention. If I go to a fancy spa, I'll look at the ingredients, or maybe I'll be reading a skin care thing and I read about something like oats, and I'm like "oooh, I wanna read more about that."
SFBG: What about the sexual stuff? How did you become such an expert on that?
M: I've been blessed with... well, I started exploring the sexual subcultures of San Francisco, and there are many. Some I liked, some I didn't, some I was in the mood for, some later I was in the mood for but not that moment. I met some fantastic people. all in the sex positive movement, the likes of Carol Queen, Robert lLawrence, Patrick Califia, Betty Dodson, Annie Sprinkle. They've all been my predecessors.
SFBG: That sounds like good company.
M: All these fabulous people are also nerds. And I am also a nerd. Because I am not a natural, because a lot of things I have to learn the hard way, I had to find things out for myself too.
SFBG: Like in what sense?
M: Like I wasn't a naturally good lover. In the various mistakes and oopsies and bloopers, I learned things. I'm also an egghead, and I tend to deconstruct things, like, "Why didn't that work?" And I'm very curious to hear about why people do what we do. Why do we kiss? Why do we spank? Why is it sexy to feed one another strawberries? For this person, why is it sexy to eat a jalapeno?
SFBG: It's obvious you're a sexual relativist. How much does being Japanese affect your concept of sexuality -- and your own identity?
M: Oh, tons. My upbringing is certainly unique. Going to school in Japan, being born there, I got a multicultural exposure and critical, analytical view in looking at the world and the culture around me. Knowing about cultural relativity, there is absolutely cultural relativity to sexuality. In many ways, sex as we know it isn't a natural act. It's contextualized, flavored defined toned in many ways by the world we live in. Sexual relativity in all things. That became more obvious to me as I grew up.
"Silken Sleeves"
SFBG: In what ways?
M: Japan is very interesting in terms of sexuality. I grew up in a working class neighborhood where there would be houses of small manufacturing, a pool hall, a kindergarten, and brothel right there, and I saw these things. I also come from a very feminist household. My grandmother was a suffragette, and I don't take that for granted one moment. And coming from that, and seeing in the world how much shame and baggage there is around sexuality and how people waste so much time on shame and how they waste so much time in telling other people how to have sex... I think it's interesting how people have sex, but no business in me telling people or anyone telling someone our views.
SFBG: Is there such thing as 'bad' sex?
M: The only bad sex is when you're disempowered and you're not having fun. A person can be having a stereotypical, Hollywood conventional, mainstream sex, but if the person having that sex is feeling disempowered and not having fun, it's bad sex. And say there's a person over here engaging in bondage and being spanked, but then she says, "but I asked for it, and it's fun, and my sweetie will spank me harder or lighter or stop when i want to," then here's a person feeling empowered and is having fun.
SFBG: A lot of people in the sex community differentiate between being kinky and non-kinky. Or how kinky people call people who don't engage in sexual subcultures "vanilla". What does that even mean?
M: God, how tiresome, right? Some people are naughtier than thou. "I'm kinkier, and I can eat spicier food than you." Everyone wants to belong, and everybody wants to be special. Sometimes that's a conflicting thing. Sometimes if we're special, we don't feel like we belong. But when we find sexual subcultures, we can claim being different and special, and yet we get to belong. So whether you're a swinger or a D/s person or bondage enthusiast or a part of the new chastity movement, you get to simultaneously be special and unique, and belong, and some people are really invested in being incredibly special. "I am so special." [rolls eyes] Bah.
SFBG: But do kinky people have better sex?
M: Here's the big difference. Some people who are engaging in kinky sex are having better sex, but it's not because of the kink. Kinky folk have had to learn the language about openly expressing their desire and having that desire be met. So out of necessity of having unusual taste, people have forged a way and methods by which to communicate their desire. How often are we taught as young adults how to clearly communicate our desires? We are not taught that if you want your sweetie to do a muff dive for half an hour, to ask for that. The reason that there might be potentially a likelihood for slightly more increased chances of fulfillment, or satisfaction level among kinky folk, is because of communication. We have had to say this is what we desire: "here are my boundaries." And that is a remarkable skill, and folks who have wonderful fabulous vanilla sex will be having even more fabulous vanilla sex if they learn to talk about it.
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