Annie’s Ecosex Herstory

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MY NAME IS ANNIE SPRINKLE AND I AM A SYBARITIC COUGAR WITH ECOSEXUAL TENDENCIES. I am new bride, recently married to the Earth, the Sky and the Sea, and engaged to marry the Moon. Never had I imagined that I’d be so lucky in love, or become so consumed with seemingly crazy, taboo, sexual desires. Nothing prepared me for this kind of relationship, and for this strange, new sexual identity. There is so much to learn that I feel like a total eco-virgin, sun kissed for the very first time.

Last night I arrived here in Akumal, Mexico by plane, from my home base in San Francisco, California. It is the perfect setting for a honeymoon adventure; a comfy condo apartment with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, which open right onto a white sand beach, a baby blue sky and a florescent turquoise-green Sea. Tropical birds sing me joyous songs as my Sky lover blows ocean-scented breaths all over my face, arms, and under my soft, slinky, leopard-print floor length nighty, which I bought special to wear on this honeymoon. It drapes nicely over my curves, and frames my abundant cleavage to perfection. You’d never know I got it at Target, unless you had one just like it.

My gut is filled with anticipation, as though I’m about to eat the ripe, juicy apple from the Garden of Eden’s tree of knowledge. I wonder will the apple send me into rapture, or be poisoned? Or both at the same time? I can almost taste it, because in truth I’m no eco-virgin at all. I’ve been ‘round the planet more than once, and its no secret that I’ve had far more ecosexual experience than most other gals my age.

It wasn’t just the great ecosex that brought me to this pregnant honeymoon moment. For years, the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon and I were, you could say, just friends. We liked each other a lot, and had what I’d describe as an ‘erotic platonic’ relationship. We didn’t see much of each other, as I was a city girl; born in Philadelphia, raised in L.A., and spent most of my adult life Manhattan. There weren’t a whole lot of opportunities in my life for meaningful connections with the Earth, Sky, and Sea, with the exception of four wonder-years I spent in Central America, in Panama, from the age of thirteen to seventeen when Dad worked for the US Agency for International Development. Panama was a lush, jungle paradise filled with ecosensual delights. My teenage experiments with psychedelics on “Tits Beach” made for some transcendental connections with nature and its elements. It’s possible that’s where my relationship with the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon really took hold. Or perhaps this relationship actually goes back to the womb, or further.

Since I took my wedding vows, ‘to love, honor and cherish the Earth, Sky and Sea until death brings us closer together forever,’ my love grows bigger, deeper and more Universal every day, and penetrates every aspect of my life. I’m quite certain that we will be together for the rest of my life. I would be nothing without them. On this honeymoon I expect to get to know more about my lovers and what makes them happy and satisfied. But all is not sunshine and daffodils.

Last night when I first arrived here at the condo with my luggage in tow, what was the first thing I saw in front of me? Nothing less than a huge, dreaded, killer Palmetto bug—aka the water bug—that indestructible, dinosaur cockroach. Was this a warning sign from the Universe that danger lies ahead? I’m scared. Will my new relationships work? Will I be worthy? There are issues; my fears of intimacy, old coping mechanisms, negative thought patterns, baggage from past relationships, societal taboos, not to mention the earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. There were also things that happened in my childhood. Between the ages of about seven and ten my younger sister chased me with giant water bugs whenever she found them. I’d run screaming into the safety of the bathroom and slam the door. She would then put them under the door and they would crawl towards me while she laughed, taunted and terrorized me. This created some deep wounds–for which she has since sincerely apologized. A shaman-therapist suggested that in a past life I had lived in the jungle, been tortured, and when left to die my body became covered with crawling water bugs. There were maggots involved too. Will I ever be able to overcome my childhood (and past life) nature abuse?

In any case, I can no longer deny my romantic, and erotic, attraction to nature. Society does not support this kind of relationship. Look at the eco-sex negative names like “tree hugger,” “hedonist,” “beach bum.” “Pagan,” “dirty girl,” “tom boy,” “flower child”… The list goes on. We must reclaim these! Say it loud, say it proud, “I am a nature lover!” Those of us that can, must come out of the closet. Perhaps when people get to know us and realize we are part of their communities and in their families things will get better. Of course lots and lots of people don’t even realize they are ecosexual. They need to be educated. We need an Ecosex Community Center, an Ecosex Film Festival, a march on Washington to demand more environmental protections. Oh dear, here I am, working again–and on my honeymoon.

OK, so I realize that I am anthropomorphizing the Earth, Sky, Sea, and Moon—attributing them human-like qualities, the way people anthropomorphize “God.” The Earth, Sky and Sea are not human beings, and human beings are not the Earth, Sky and Sea. –Or are we? This experience is so new that anthropomorphizing is the only way I can manage to even begin to explain it. Hopefully I will find better ways to speak of these things in the future.

Here in Akumal, I’m grateful that I can share this honeymoon with my beloved, human life-partner, Elizabeth Stephens, aka Beth. She and I are walking hand-in-hand on this amazing bio-sexual adventure. We came to these life-changing self-discoveries at the same time. We fell madly in love nine years ago. For the first couple years of our relationship we desired to be totally monogamous. A couple years later we decided to practice what we call “adventurous monogamy.” We’d have erotic adventures together; like going to a neo-burlesque show and getting a lap dance, or doing a sensual massage evening with our sacred intimate, Joseph Kramer, or we’d find ourselves being voyeurs at a friend’s sex party. Things really changed five years into the relationship when we bought a little cabin in the woods of Boulder Creek, California. It was there that we found ourselves turning green– what with all the talk of solar power, global warming, recycling, … green was in the zeitgeist. We discussed it and decided to open up our relationship to become what we call ‘pollen-amorous.’– to take the Earth as our lover.

Looking back, Beth and I can see how the experiences in our lives shaped us and brought us to this–our destiny. Perhaps she and I were drawn to each other by greendar, sensing each other’s latent ecosexuality. In any case, we are glad we found each other. There aren’t too many other partners that would let their wives marry, and make love with, the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon.
Now Beth and I want to share our enthusiasm for this kind of love, and the things we’ve learned and are thinking. We hope our story will help and inspire others like us, or help others who aren’t like us understand us, and ultimately we hope to help to protect our beloveds the Earth Sky, Sea and Moon.

WHEN I KNEW — CHILDHOOD

When I first knew that I was an ecosexual I was five. My family moved from to sunny California from dark Pennsylvania. My parents bought us a house with a sparkling blue swimming pool. I remember, the first time I jumped into our. The rush of the cold water; my heart pumping, lips tingling, toes curling, the pure body pleasure. I floated, buoyant, the light twinkling on the top of the water like fairy glitter. The sound of the splasssshhhh, then the silence of the deep end. I became one with the water. I was a water ballerina, beautiful, graceful, at peace. I loved the taste and scent of the chlorinated water. I became renewed, refreshed. Even though I knew it was naughty, I peed in the pool. They don’t call me Sprinkle for nothing.

When I knew that I was an ecosexual I was nine. My dad discovered Yosemite and he fell in love. In retrospect, my dad must have been an ecosexual too. Our family visited Yosemite several times a year. That’s when it started, between me, and the redwood trees. I liked them BIG. And they were HUGE! Big, round, hard, but soft, redwood trees. Gentle giants. I loved the scent of the trunk, like vanilla mixed with soil. I have a strong memory of coming across a redwood that had fallen over from a storm. I walked around and peeked at its freshly exposed roots. So soft, so sensuous, so sexy! I had to touch them. When I knew that I was an ecosexual I was ten. It was at night, when we were camping. My family would gather wood and make a fire. I was a Camp Fire Girl! We crumpled newspaper, topped it with kindling and lit it with a match. When the flames got going we added logs. It would start slowly, then build. Eventually the fire became raging, hot, I could feel the heat on my skin. I loved the smell of the burning wood and smoke. I could stare into the dancing flames for hours, and find so many colors; reds, oranges, yellows, even blues, greens and purples. Flames licking wood with intensity. The logs florescent with burning embers, like a painting on black velvet. I would watch until the fire went completely out. That’s when I knew.

MY GREEN TEEN YEARS

My first oral sex experience was in communion with nature, on a secluded beach two hours north of Panama City. Mathew Van Guilder Howell was a sweet older man at twenty-four years old. He owned The Golden Frog, a hippie coffee shop. I was a shy, sweet sixteen, high school student and budding hippie. We did what young people did in 1969 on their first date; a hit of mescaline. That night there was but a sliver of a moon, and the stars were only how stars can be on a jungle beach on the equator—more bright and abundant than anywhere else on the planet. There were so many shooting stars it was like a fireworks display, but way, way better. The gentle, rhythmic waves massaging the sand were filled with plankton, which made them glow in the dark with magical phosphorescent sparkle. Nature was at her most glamorous and seductive, dripping in diamonds. Van and I got naked. My heart was open and pumping, my senses aroused, and I was in love for the first time. I laid on my back, dug my feet into the sand, and let my knees open like butterfly wings to welcome the Universe in between my thighs. The splash of a wave spit on my belly and vulva. For a few timeless moments the Universe and I made an exquisite, erotic, cosmic connection. Then Van kissed his way down my body and gave me, what we called at the time, “head.” To this day Van and I remain friends, but it is the Earth, Sky, and Sea that I ultimately married.

As I think about it, my most memorable teen ecosex experiences were when I was in an entheogen induced altered state. Like when I took a hit of orange sunshine (LSD) and sat by the stove and watched, transfixed, the miracle that is water boiling in a metal pot for a long, long, long time. The sounds the bubbles made against the steel pot were hypnotic and beautiful. Like when I ate psilocybin mushrooms, buried myself up to my neck in cool sand and lay cuddling with the Earth for an eternity. Like the time I smoked opium and watched a giant sea turtle lay her eggs on the beach. Like when I ate some peyote buttons in the Arizona desert and made love with a big, erect, suaro cactus. There was no touching of the cactus for obvious reasons, but I swear, that cactus and I exchanged our sexual energies. These experiences, and a few others like them, I treasure highly and wouldn’t have missed them for the world.

MY ECOSLUTTY NEW YORK CITY YEARS

At eighteen I moved to Manhattan. Like leaving a high school sweetheart behind when one goes away to college, I just didn’t have much use for nature anymore and was just fine without it. For years and years the city satisfied all my needs. I had an exciting and happy life in the sex industry, working in massage parlors, making porn movies, doing burlesque, and posing for sex magazines. Eventually I successfully transitioned into the art world, touring internationally with my one-woman performance-art-theater shows about my life. I also became a sex educator, and the first porn star to get a Ph.D..

On the rare occasions when I did venture out of the city into the country, it was mostly to the Wise Woman Center near Woodstock. In summers women would gather there to learn “wise woman traditions” at the famous, eccentric herbalist, Susun Weed’s rustic old house and barn-like studio located in an old, abandoned rock quarry. The WWC was surrounded by numerous acres of woods, rivers, and waterfalls. There was a lake, which had a thick blanket of green algae across the top but you could still swim in it, sky clad. Gardens, goats, geese, pet spiders, insects and fairies were all part of the curriculum. It was at the WWC that for the first time I heard someone mention, in passing, the concept of the “Earth as a lover” as an alternative to “Earth as a Mother.” This grabbed my attention! My motto had always been “eroticize everything.” Sex was my thing, my path, my language. Maybe I, a big city slut, could reconnect with nature by thinking of the Earth as my lover.
The first time I went to the WWC was for Blood of the Ancients, a week-long gathering with rituals and workshops honoring menstruation. My curiosity about what such a gathering would entail led me to sign up. Women spun stories of walking into the woods, sitting on moist moss and letting their menstrual blood drip down on it as a way to nourish and connect with the Earth. Women spoke of bleeding into cotton cloth pads, then soaking the pads in water and using the bloody water to nourish their plants, and to feel earthy. While I definitely thought these practices were pretty out there, I also liked the idea of these intimate, symbolic gestures and later tried the bloody-rag-water idea out for myself for a few months on my two motley houseplants. The women all sang songs together about blood and the Earth around the campfire and in sweat lodge ceremonies. “Blood of the Ancients, flows through my veins. Forms die, but the river of life remains.” “The Earth is our Mother. We will take care of her. Hey yunga, ho yunga hey yung yung.” “Earth my body, water my blood, air my food and fire my spirit!” “The river is flowing, flowing and flowing. The river is flowing, back to the Sea. Mother carry me, a child I will always be. Mother carry me, back to the sea.” Even though it felt a bit silly, it was nice to sing about, and to, the Earth. In any case, there was no denying that shit grew like crazy all around the place.

The next summer I returned to the Wise Woman Center for Green Witch Week. Just after my green witch initiation, Susun Weed invited me to teach there. So for ten years, every summer I went and taught a four-day Sacred Sex workshop with my friends Jwala, Barbara Carrellas, and Linda Montano. I had come to fancy myself a red witch and a sacred prostitute. We taught the usual stuff about g-spots, erotic massage, sex magic, tantra, and had Sluts and Goddesses dress up and performance nights.

But on the fourth afternoon of our workshop, when the workshopees were ripe and ready, I’d give them a most unusual assignment; “go out into the woods alone and have sex with something in nature, like a tree, a rock, a cloud, or a waterfall.” I’d coach them. “Use all of your senses, smell, touch, taste, lick, kiss, rub, hump…” Sometimes I would do a little demo—like I’d lay across a hot granite boulder, kiss it, lick and taste it, sniff it, hug it, hump it, breathe it in… We’d all have a good laugh then off to the woods they’d go. Two hours later, we’d gather again in a circle for kiss and tell. “I made love with a waterfall, and it was the best sex I ever had.” “It was amazing. I got totally into this lavender bush.” “I never thought of doing this before but I had a great experience with some lichen and can’t wait do it again.” “I fell asleep by the river and when I woke up there were butterflies all over my body. It was so beautiful.” The women were overwhelmingly excited, amazed and satisfied. Of course there were always the Goddesses of Distention who held back. They just couldn’t, and wouldn’t go there. “Way too kinky.” But those that gave themselves over to the assignment agreed; nature was one hell of a hot lover. We teach what we want to learn.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s I wrote a series articles for Penthouse magazine. One was about a Native American shaman, sex magician and teacher named Harley Swiftdeer and his five-day Quodoshka workshop. He was the real deal. Harley taught me the best sex technique in the world–the Fire Breath orgasm– also known as the FBO. It’s a circular breathing technique to breathe ecstasy energy into and up one’s body and then out into an electric energy orgasm release. With the FBO one can learn to harness, build, and move sexual energy, which can then be utilized for all kinds of things; hotter partner sex, physical healing, emotional cleansing, spiritual nourishment, shamanic journeying, and more. When I saw his more advanced students all demonstrate it, I knew I just had to learn it. It took me a couple years of practicing to get the total hang of the FBO. I’d practice it at home alone or with other people who knew how to do it. But it was the day that I practiced the FBO in Central Park by the lake near the Alice in Wonderland statue, that I really GOT it and had my first big, electric, full body, blissful energy orgasm. The technique can be done with clothes on, standing or laying, and could be interpreted as someone doing yogic breathing or some sort of tai chi moves, so I don’t think anyone in the park knew what I was up to. Watching the light dancing on the water, breathing in the scent of the dirt, and the sounds of the pigeons around me were just the inspiration I needed to get me over the energy orgasm hump.

Learning the FBO was pivotal for me in my ecosexual evolution. Through my breath, some kegals, undulation, and intention, I could make love with the Earth, Sky and Sea energetically. Over the years that followed I taught hundreds of others; men, women and trans people, to do it too in workshops I called “Ecstasy Breathing” or “Fun With Breath and Energy Orgasm,” and often gave the technique a bit of an ecosexual twist.

Certainly a person does not have to be outside of a city to have good ecosex. For example, there was the time I was laying on my living room couch masturbating with my Hitachi magic wand when I looked out my eleventh story window, over the skyscrapers and into the sky when a big, white puffy cloud cruised me. Earlier I’d been reading the book Sexual Secrets and there was a quote I resonated with. “I am the sun, the moon and all the stars. There is no temple as sacred, no temple as blissful, as my own body.” I medibated on that thought and found myself fantasizing that the cloud was watching me, coming closer to me, then enveloping me in its pillowy puffs. This was very pleasurable, and triggered a series of deep clitoral orgasms, accompanied by a burst of emotion, which I call a crygasm. My favorites. As I came out of a divine afterglow, a wave of shame washed over me. Was I some sort of cloud pervert? Was there a difference between what Shere Hite told me was a totally normal recurring rape fantasy doing a live sex show with a horse, vs. a fantasy of making love with a cloud? I decided to ask the cloud, is this for real? Is this consensual? Am I totally nuts? In that moment a red helium balloon floated up into the sky and pierced the cloud, like with Cupid’s arrow. I took this to be a sign that indeed our love was real. Then before my eyes the sky darkened and it started to sprinkle. A cloud ejaculation! That was one of the best sexual experiences I had ever had, and I’d had many. For a long time I never spoke to anyone about this experience. It was a love that dared not speak its name.

Occasionally I would find people with whom I could talk about ecosex. My friend Michael L. confided that once when he was camping he had an affair with a bright yellow flower that grew outside his tent. He masturbated with, and ejaculated on the flower a couple times. When it the flower started to die from old age, it made him so sad that he ate the flower and they became forever one. My friend Andrew R. shared with me about his tree in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which had a big hole in its trunk. He would sneak inside that tree, masturbate, and come inside the tree. He developed a very strong bond with the tree, a deep love. Jasmine D. a yoga teacher friend, told me about the day her boyfriend broke up with her. She was crying face down on the grass. Suddenly she felt the life force of the Earth shoot into her, which triggered a full body Kundalini orgasm, the biggest she had ever had, which was for her a profound, beautiful and healing experience. She never cried over that boyfriend again.

Although I didn’t have a name for them yet, my ecosexual proclivities continued. Vegetables were a favorite dildo; namely the classic cucumber and the occasional carrot—I admit this was before we knew about washing off the pesticides. Water has always my favorite of the elements. On some special horny occasions, I’d lay on my back in the bathtub, straddle the faucet, turn on the water, and have beautiful watergasms. Or straddle a hot tub jet when I could find one. I loved doing clay masks, and to exfoliate in the shower with scrubs made of oatmeal, honey, lavender and rose. Steam baths, spa treatments with natural products, and aromatherapy scents made life extra pleasurable. As a sex worker I relished the occasional mud-wrestling photo shoot, the outdoor sex scenes, and the nice John with the yacht in the 79th street boat basin. In my personal life, having sex in the great outdoors was always a very special, all too rare, treat. Such was ecosex in the city.

MY MERMAID YEARS

Around my fortieth birthday the Sea began to beckon. “Come to me. You can’t resist me. Come to me. I want you.” Like the time I was in Scotland with my lover Mary. We were standing at the edge of Loch Ness looking for the monster when I heard, “Come to me, come to me…” My tears could not be withheld and Mary hugged me tight. “I feel so disconnected from nature,” I cried. “No wonder,” she said, “it’s the middle of winter for Christ’s sake.” But I knew it was more than that– I was out of touch, and I knew in my heart that I had to get back to the Garden.

So I inched myself away from Manhattan to live by the Sea. First I moved to East Hampton for a year. Then made my way to live in Provincetown where I fell in love with the humpback whales. After a couple years I was called to the Pacific Ocean, got a houseboat in Sausalito and lived right on top of the water, happily in rhythm with the tides. When my houseboat burnt down while I was out of town I learned about the power of fire. Free of material belongings, I took off with a male-to-female transsexual, named Captain Barb. We floated north on her fifty-five foot boat three years in a marina on Orcas in the San Juan Islands. I recreated myself as a mermaid.

A WORK IN PROGRESS TO BE CONTINUED.