Meet New York's Sex Bloggers

At 50 years old, Tess Danesi is being featured in her first pin-up calendar. Once an “average neurotic wife, mother, and accountant,” she writes on her sassy site Urban Gypsy, these days Danesi—her nom de plume—is one of New York's many sex bloggers. After some recent tension in the sex blogging community, Tess decided to bring together the city’s women who post about their sex lives online, offline, face-to-face instead of blog-to-blog. “I knew all these great people from blogging,” she told us over the phone, “so I thought, ‘Why not bring them together to benefit somebody?’”

Shot all in “one giant day” at the Slipper Room, says Tess, the calendar went from concept to creation in under three weeks. Proceeds from the calendar, which is still selling for $20 online, will go directly to Sex Worker Awareness, a support and advocacy group for people who make their bodies their business. Noble causes aside, was it tough to get writers, who are used to spilling their secrets to the Internet, to take off their clothes in real life? No one is fully naked in the shoot, Danesi explained, saying, “Everybody I got in touch with wanted to do it.” Meet the 12 brave souls who were willing to pose.

Month: January
Blogger: Mariella Ella
Site:In Medias Res
Readers of Mariella’s blog may never have seen her face until the release of Tess’ calendar, but they sure know a lot of intimate details about her. Her “Bowl Full of Cherries” section is full of posts describing her first sexual encounters: “First cock,” “First cum bath,” “first FFM threesome.” Having only recently become sexually active—she hadn’t even given head until May of this year—she’s had a lot to learn, often from other bloggers who’ve become her real-life sex partners.

Month: February
Blogger: Tess Danesi
Site: Urban Gypsy
The organizer of the NYC Sex Bloggers Calendar, Tess runs a blog called Urban Gypsy, where—in the words of her pin-up calendar bio—“she writes dark and moody D/s themed erotica, reviews sex toys, shows off her generous cleavage and generally reveals too much information.” The site, which recently went on hiatus but is now back in full, shameless force, spares no detail. Tess gets called dirty names and likes it. Tess has a retail-gasm at Babeland. We hear about it all.

Month: March
Blogger: Twanna A. Hines
Site: Funky Brown Chick
Originally from Illinois, Twanna began her sex blog around the same time she picked up and moved to New York. She’s a writer by day as well as an editor and an occasional sex commentator on NPR. By night, she’s posting on Funky Brown Chick, a mix of thoughts on love, pop culture, and sex. Recent posts: “How to get naked together for the first time” and “Don’t get caught in your birthday suit on YouTube.” Now that’s sound advice.

Month: April
Blogger: Audacia Ray
Site:Waking Vixen
One of many sex professionals featured in the calendar, Audacia Ray has a long history of working in the world of the erotic—both as an author and an activist. Having recently started teaching as a professor at Rutgers, she has also been a curator at the Museum of Sex and the editor of $pread magazine. Her blog is mostly all business (example post: “Liabilities and Assets”) but if you follow her on Twitter (@audaciaray) you can listen in on the dirty secrets of her every day life—like preparing to talk her class about porn.

Month: May
Blogger: Rachel Kramer Bussel
Site: Lusty Lady
Rachel Kramer Bussel is best known for her work writing and editing erotica collections. At her site Lusty Lady, she writes about the status of sex in her relationships (Thanksgiving thoughts: “There has to be somebody that will screw me after the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce settles”), as well as sex-related events and… cupcakes. Yeah, she’s really into those. Hey, cupcakes are sexy too, right?

Month: June
Blogger: Mary “Riese” Lyn Bernard
Site: This Girl Called Automatic Win
An erotica writer and freelancer working in almost every form of new media—video, online journalism, blogging—Reise runs a site that combines her light-hearted, Valley Girl tone with talk of gay rights and sex savvy events around town. Often found goofing around with her live-in partner Natalie, Reise’s blog is more about life than sex—but you can’t have one without the other, right?

Month: July
Blogger: Jayme Waxman
Site: JaymeWaxman.com
The author of Getting Off: a Woman’s Guide to Masturbation, Jayme is a professional sex educator—she even has a Master’s degree from Widener University to prove it. With a more indivualized, cuter site than others—photos of naked women are surrounded by pink stars—Jayme’s personality comes out in her reviews of colorful vibrators and her half-naked photos that show off her ornate tattoos. She also writes a sex column for Playgirl and is the creator and host of the series Personal Touch, which falls somewhere between traditional porn and middle-school sex ed.