"I'd actually never had sex on camera. Not even in a homemade video. I showed up for the set that day and it was like 'I'm going to be gang banged by ten porn stars. Men and women. They are all going to fuck my ass and this is the first time I've done it.'"

Armed with a suitcase full of lube, butt plugs and assorted probing devices, Tristan Taormino straddles the worlds of sex activism and porn like a wicked, bespectacled black-stockinged professor of anal sex. To say that Taormino is excited about anal sex would be a colossal understatement.

After publishing Tristan Taormino's Guide to Anal Sex for Women, she approached a wide range of adult film industry players with the prospect of turning out a video version of the book but could interest no one. "They looked at me like I had two heads. It was like 'We don't understand this.' I would go in there and say I want to do this video. I want it to be educational. I want it to be focused on women and women's pleasure. It was like 'What are you crazy?'"

The pitfalls of attempting to fuse an anal sex instructional video with a gonzo porn film seemed plentiful to all, including John "Buttman" Stagliano, who eventually agreed to take a chance on Taormino's far flung concept. The chance paid off. The highly successful video won three awards and made Stagliano a buttload of cash. It culminates with Taormino's first on-screen sex scene in which she is violated by the entire cast, a memorable debut that won both the AVN and XRCO awards in the best group sex scene categories.

A writer, speaker, sex advocate and porn performer, the newly christened "Buttgirl" materializes as a giggly, speculum wielding alpha woman dedicated to promoting the art of back door love to all who will listen. Her website, www.puckerup.com, is filled with sex tips, favorite toys and archives of her large publishing catalog. Taormino currently holds court as the resident "Anal Advisor" at Taboo Magazine, writes a sex advisory column for the Village Voice and has just released the long awaited Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women Part Two. She's perpetually on tour, giving seminars and spreading the word (she was in Portland last month). Somehow she still found time to sit down with Exotic:

Exotic: When did you first have anal sex?

TT: My first anal sex experience was actually with a woman. When I started sleeping with women I felt that straight sex should be thrown out the window and all body parts and all sexual acts were fair game. The first time I tried it I loved it and I got hooked pretty quickly.

Exotic: Can you orgasm from having anal sex alone?

TT: That's always a big question. Yes and no. Most times I like to really have my clit worked while I'm being fucked in the ass so I'll have an orgasm which you could attribute to clitoral stimulation although it's definitely a different orgasm than if you were just touching my clit and nothing was in my ass. It's a deeper, more intense orgasm that is sort of like a whole body orgasm. I've also had more of a G-spot orgasm from anal penetration when the G-spot is indirectly stimulated. There are women like Alisha Klass who can actually squirt just from anal penetration so we know that we're hitting the G-spot.

Exotic: In one scene you were sticking things up Nina Hartley's ass and she was getting her clit worked at the same time and Nina remarked that she felt that if she wasn't getting her clit worked that it might hurt.

TT: For some women that's true. Anal alone just isn't comfortable without clitoral stimulation. For some women it's the total opposite. Chloe for example just wants you to do her ass.

Exotic: Chloe is the anal queen.

TT: She is, she's fabulous.

Exotic: So her attitude is that she would rather have just anal without other distractions?

TT: Yeah, my girlfriend is the same way. When you are in her ass she doesn't want you near her clit. She wants you to just concentrate on her ass and her G-spot.

Exotic: Tell me about the anal sex seminars that you do.

TT: My book came out in late 1997 and I needed a clever way to promote my book. This is not the kind of book that lends itself to the traditional book reading. Certainly Barnes and Noble is not ready to blow up the cover and put it in the window and do a thing like "Please meet our author today." That just wasn't going to happen. So I started traveling around the country teaching these anal sex workshops basically to introduce people to the book and also find out how much information people had and what kind of questions they were asking. It continues to be a totally phenomenal experience. The people that come to my workshops are women, they're men, they're couples, they're single, they're straight, they're gay. They have had experience with anal sex or they are complete anal virgins. I've had people as young as 19 and I had a 71 year old woman who had just started a new relationship and her partner wanted to get into anal and she was like "OK, I'd like to learn something new."

Exotic: What kind of territory do you cover in the seminars?

TT: I usually start out with an anatomy lesson because believe it or not people don't always have a clue about what is going on with their asses even though we all have one. Then I talk about the whole cleanliness factor. That is by far the biggest question I get in workshops. Is it going to be a mess or do I have to have an enema. Blah Blah Blah. I sort of go over the basics of enemas but also talk about how it's really not going to be that messy and you don't necessarily have to have an enema to have relatively clean anal sex. Then I talk about lube and sex toys, positions and techniques, emphasizing that you really need to go slow, you really need to warm up, you really need to do a lot of foreplay and the more effort that you put into it in the beginning the more your ass will thank you in the end.

Exotic: How did the video come about?

TT: As I traveled around the country a lot of people asked me if I was going to do a video. I'm definitely a big porn fan and I definitely wanted to do a video and figured that I basically had two options. I could beg, borrow and steal and exploit all of my friends and have them do shit for free and put it together on a shoestring budget and try to distribute it myself and have it be kind of homemade and low budget. Or I could go directly to the man, i.e. the porn industry, which of course as a lesbian and a feminist is not the thing to do because you just don't go and sell out to the man. But I did it anyway. I started investigating the porn industry and tried to find out who the players were. I had been a fan of Buttman's (John Stagliano) and he was one of the people I pitched to who had rejected it. About a month after this wave of rejections he called me and said "You know I've been re-reading this and I thought about it and maybe this could work so let's have another meeting." I wanted to cast all of these people that I really liked, but I wanted actors who were really into anal and not just like "OK whatever I'll do the scene." It's like no I want you to be really into anal and really into this project and be honest on camera and I think that definitely came across. There are so many authentic female orgasms in the video. That was really important to me and that is definitely what John thinks is one of the best parts of it. There are all these women coming like crazy which is great.

Exotic: The sex in the video was killer but I actually found myself looking forward to the other parts, especially the classroom situations which were hilarious. The scene when Chloe gets an enema is great.

TT: I really love that scene because the repartee between the three of them is so funny and so light and so genuine that it makes such a taboo topic (an enema) seem so fun. I feel that people who watch that are going to want to run out and have an enema. How could you not? They are just having such a great time.

Exotic: When he pulled the tube out of her I expected them to keep the expulsion in the shot.

TT: We actually can't keep that in the shot. We did shoot that for the European version, but you can't shoot an expulsion in America. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful--this amazing stream of clear water arching out of her ass into the tub. It was phenomenal, it was beautiful, it was breathtaking. I wish you could see it. We left the sound in though as we faded to dark and you can hear the expulsion. She squirted a little in the camera too which was hysterical. John was like "Whoa!!!" But it was totally crystal clear water. You know, people still have their hang-ups.

Exotic: The movie climaxes with you getting fucked and ravished by everyone in the cast. Was that your first time having sex on camera?

TT: Yes. I'd actually never had sex on camera. Not even in a homemade video. I showed up for the set that day and it was like "I'm going to be gang banged by ten porn stars. Men and women. They are all going to fuck my ass and this is the first time I've done it." I've never had sex with ten people at once. It was totally amazing. For me it was the ultimate feminist gangbang because I got to control the whole situation. That's why we put that clip at the end where I'm going through like a firing squad, telling them "OK you're going to get this toy and you're going to put it in this and then you're going to fuck me here" and they were all laughing at me. But if you notice you'll see that they pretty much followed the script. They all looked at me like "Who is this woman? We've never experienced anything like this." For me knowing that I could set the rules was totally liberating and once it started I could completely let go and I did. I really, really got into it.