“I like mouths and lips,” says Julie Simone, about to publish “Gagged,” her first book of fetish photography. “And I like keeping them quiet.”
Simone is an AVN Hall of Fame performer/director who for 15 years has been creatively getting in the faces of fetish models, whether with her acclaimed smoking videos, oral restraints, or simply a mouth full of clothespins.
“Faces are erotic,” she says. “Especially mouths.”
At 100 pages, “Gagged” is an erotic exercise in plugging that hole in our faces where the sound comes out. Featuring 100 pages and 3 dozen models (including Madison Young, Rubber Necro, and Jewell Marceau), the tome is a conversation piece about people whose lips are sealed professionally. The indiegogo campaign features several tiers of support, with rewards ranging from DVDs to a 4-hour bondage class with Simone.
Simone just turned 40, and “Gagged,” in the final week of an indiegogo campaign, features friends and colleagues from the past 15 years of her career. It is hard to imagine Simone at 25 as some dewy submissive — especially as she makes her way through Bar Sinister night in Hollywood, daring people to mess with her — but yes, she says, the picture has changed over the last decade and a half.
“As an artist I’ve come full circle,” she says. “At first I was taking very arty ‘light and shadow’ fetish pictures, then I felt the need to make them more commercial. Now I’m getting arty again.”
Simone travels to fetish events across the United States and Europe, and explains gagging in terms of process, statement, and hardware.
“I choose the gag,” she says, “because one gag might not be right for another person.”
In her foreword, model Bella Vendetta describes what’s in it for both gagger and gaggee:
Pain, humiliation, having the truth stuffed into our mouths, our lips sewn shut, our mouth made into tools for another’s amusement
“Is that really the way you feel?” I ask Simone at the bar, oldschool Sisters of Mercy rattling my fillings.
“I like it when they’re quiet,” she says.
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