SickChixxx.com is the brilliantly macabre brainchild of Mistress Persephone, a performer and pin-up queen of pulchritudinous proportions. It's a pay site that's also personal, with a journal, private photos and chatty notes in addition to constantly updated photo galleries, chat rooms, live web cams and streaming video. There are about a zillion photos, some of which are nudes, but nudity is almost beside the point; the focus is really on Persephone's psychotic sense of humor!
Once bi-coastal, Persephone is now bi-continental. She has a home in London and travels to the UK on average every two months. "I do sessions there often," she told me, "and photo shoots as well. I've been offered my own line of full-length erotic horror features with London's Salvation Films." She begins production this summer. "I really feel at home in London and tend to go there when LA starts to get to me. Los Angeles is a golden land of financial opportunity, but it's a tad too plastic at times. I crave the culture of London and its proximity to rest of Europe."
She and I recently chatted about the eroticism of horror, her early influences, the genesis of SickChixxx and how she became the creation she is today.
ErosZine: Tell us about your life growing up, a little bit of history.
Mistress Persephone: I was born in Santa Ana, California and grew up in Irvine. It was a tough childhood because I was a redheaded Mexican girl with no money and naturally paler skin than my artificially tanned upper-middle-class schoolmates. I didn't really fit in.
I was obsessed with Duran Duran, their glamour and cosmopolitan lifestyle coupled with some of the most fantastic music I had ever heard. The popular girls all liked Culture Club, which I found to be unique and interesting, but not my cup of tea, especially since they all dressed up like them and I was appalled by their herd. They wore Sergio Valente jeans and legwarmers, I was the K-Mart kid with homemade clothes and Traxx Velcro shoes. I always got chosen last for everything, yet I was the smartest person in my class. It didn't take long for me to become introverted and resentful and by the time junior high school rolled around, I had even less friends and discovered new wave and punk rock music and fashion.
I was always teased and called "Flock of Seagulls" because of my hair or "trash bag" because I loved wearing this black vinyl trench coat to school. I had to grow a very thick skin to be able to be myself and get through each day.
Through all that, I started to develop fetishes for leather, high heels, stockings and whatnot. I believe they were always there, though, and they began to manifest once my own sexuality started to awaken. I made a habit of wearing high heeled boots with stockings and garters on a daily basis. Needless to say, I was considered the school whore, even though no one fancied me enough to give me any! I had to date outside my city because the boys where I lived were so damn square and judgmental. They only liked girls in B.U.M. Equipment sweatshirts and denim skirts.
In 1991, I dated a guy who showed me an issue of Skin Two magazine. I realized fetishism was a whole new world and lifestyle that suited me and my desires. I'd always been bored by Orange County, where I grew up and was still living, and after a series of events, including professional and personal heartbreaks, I decided to pick up literally overnight and move as far away as I could to New York City. It was a rather impulsive decision but, in a way, an inevitable one. I had always yearned to taste life and real culture. There was none in Orange County, so I opted to seek it out in the ultimate city. I went to New York to find myself in 1998.
EZ: You seem to blend Bettie Page, Vampirella, a rockabilly babe, a comix queen, a fetish goddess and a teenager's wet dream. What's the story behind your evolution?
MP: I think a lot of it had to do with the things that influenced me. As I stated before, Duran Duran had a major impact on me and how I wanted my life to be. I wanted to be glamorous, the kind of woman they would admire and pour champagne for rather than just a groupie. A woman like Grace Jones...both elegant and powerful...full of zest and originality. A real diva. I can't sing a note, though, so I had to set out and find a way to be all that in my own unique way!
I had always loved horror films as a child and the women were always over the top. I loved Hammer Horror, A. I. P., Amicus and the lot, which featured sexy ladies in long lashes, black lid liner, fabulous hair and delectable lips. I'd been a fan of Elvira Mistress of the Dark since I was 8 years old and I wanted to grow up and be like her! She was enchanting! Funny sexy, spooky...just perfect. Christopher Lee was my first crush and at 5 years old I would fantasize about him biting me and lie there with my nightgown pulled across my collar waiting for his arrival. That is when I first began to associate horror with erotica. Those films excited me in so many ways.
Also, I think a lot of it had to do with how the music influenced me. Again, Duran Duran had a major impact. Watching "The Chauffeur" video was the first time I had seen stockings with Cuban heels and I was fixated on them. I evolved musically (though they are still my favorite band) as I got older and discovered bands like the Misfits, who were a hybrid of horror and 50's rebellion. I could relate to that. I can't really pinpoint anything that made me who I am; I just always knew I was meant for more than a mundane suburban life and went out to find it.
EZ: What inspired Sick Chixxx?
MP: Everything mentioned above, really. I'd had a free site since 1996 and I needed to grow; it was time for me to do a pay site. I could only grow if I didn't have to spend time and money to host everything I had to show, so I decided to create my own little world of everything I loved and use it to attract others like me.
EZ: Is scary sexy?
MP: To me, yes. It always has been. Fear is a great elixir and is comparable to the feeling one gets when sexually aroused. Many of my own fetishes incorporate fear: steel blades, leather gloves, gloved killers... They're all erotic to me. Both sex and fear use adrenaline as a booster. You feel a rush, your heart races, you scream! Now, if you combine both then you have a combination that is unbeatable.
EZ: What's your favorite horror movie?
MP: I love so many films that this could be an essay of its own. My favorite genre of film is probably Italian gialli: Blood and Black Lace, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Tenebrae, Suspiria. Italian horror is to me both aesthetically beautiful and cinematically perfect. They have the best lighting, sets, fashion, architecture, music and style. Murder looks sexy, so much so that you begin to relate to and understand the sexual urges of the mysterious gloved killer. They get you into the minds of the deviants and you almost sympathize with them. They're very wonderful stories with intricate plots and red herrings. The knife and sexual organ become one.
I am also fond of other films like Danger: Diabolik, Barbarella, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Legend and fun movies like Foxes, Pretty In Pink, 16 Candles, Kevin and Perry Go Large.
EZ: How about your favorite porn movie?
MP: I like 60's sleaze like Babette or The Curious Dr. Humpp. I'm not much into modern porn.
EZ: You pose as both a domme and a sub...or at least appear in bondage. Which do you prefer?
MP: I don't see posing as a bondage model as being sub. I enjoy the restraint of bondage, but am not at all submissive. I appreciate a good rigger and fancy bondage skills and seek to work with professionals who won't confuse the act of placing me in a bondage scenario with some kind of role play or power game. I do not respond in a positive manner to any games which depict me as a sub. I bite. I am a dominant person through and through. I do whatever I enjoy, as a hedonist and in life; what more is there than ultimate pleasure?
SickChixxx.com is only $6.66 for a two-day trial. If you're interested in becoming a monthly subscriber, the price $21.95 per month if you pay online via CCBill, credit card or online check.
By mail, the monthly fee is $29.95. You'll get over 15,000 images, 200 streaming videos and oodles of insider information.
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