Sunday Reads: A Year in the Life of a Hand Job Queen, Spit Hoods, and the Redemption of Metta World Peace

Miami’s South Beach has a reputation mostly for shitty drivers and shittier clubs, none of which I’d pay my hard-earned cash to get into. But even if the mood to oontz-oontz the night away did strike me, slipping the bouncer a Benjamin is apparently no longer necessary. In fact, these days, all a girl’s gotta do is post a cute picture on Instagram, tag the location and wait for club promoters to slide into their DMs to get beyond the velvet rope. Normally, clubbing isn’t my scene. But I have to say, if I was in Miami or Vegas with a group of my hottie gal pals, I might be tempted to hit up one of those massive parties if a promoter wants to tempt me with free bottle service.

Must Read

“My Year as Athena Bliss, Handjob Whore of Echo Park”
This week, sex-worker advocate Antonia Crane wrote about her experience working in an erotic massage parlor in L.A. a decade ago, offering the kinds of services Robert Kraft received at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa. As “Athena Bliss,” Crane jerked off celebrities, lawyers and other, shall we say, more powerful men. As a “masseuse,” Crane dealt in crystals, green juice, pubes and lots of oil, but ultimately the experience was like many service jobs: A labor-intensive source of quick cash with a side of wage exploitation. READ MORE

More From The Week That Was

Erectile Dysfunction: En Garde!
Thirty-six-year-old fencer and Olympic silver medalist Jason Rogers recently went public with his lifelong struggle with erectile dysfunction. Despite multiple attempts with women, men and lots and lots of Viagra, Rogers experienced years of failed sexual encounters. C. Brian Smith interviewed Rogers at his fencing gym in L.A., where they discussed how common ED is in young men, and the challenge it can pose for one’s sense of masculinity — particularly as an Olympic athlete.

The Sixth Stage of Grief
Shacking up with your dead brother’s widow is so old, it’s biblical. In fact, one passage in Deuteronomy says that a widow must marry her husband’s brothers if they’re still alive. Biblical laws aside, though, grief alone can sometimes bring people together romantically in the search for connection and companionship after tragedy.

Spit Safety
“Spit hoods” are designed to protect first responders from bodily fluids, but in the hands of police, they’re frequently used to dehumanize people who pose little or no threat. And so, while police advocates argue that spit hoods are simply a mesh bag secured with an elastic band, detractors say they can feel extremely degrading. Not that the criticism has proven convincing to the powers that be — there’s been a dramatic increase in sales of the product in recent years, suggesting that spit-hood use will only continue to rise.

Where Are All the Female Coaches?
Jen Welter broke the glass ceiling for female football coaches in 2015 when she joined the Arizona Cardinals to work with the team’s inside linebackers. Yet despite a career playing on both women’s and men’s teams, Welter’s gender makes her return to the NFL unlikely. After all, there are only six female coaches across all of NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, MLS and their minor league affiliates. To hear male players tell it, though, they’d have no problem playing for a female coach — especially if she can get the best out of them.

Mental Health and Metta World Peace

Former Lakers forward Metta World Peace, née Ron Artest, had a bit of a reputation in the NBA as a combustible hothead. But he was also strikingly honest about his mental health –– after winning the NBA Finals, he even gave an on-camera shoutout to his therapist. Now that he’s retired from basketball, Peace spends his time advocating for mental health awareness and helping underprivileged kids. Tim Grierson spoke with Johnny Sweet, the director of a new Showtime documentary about Artest/Peace, about an older-and-wiser Artest, whether the stigma against players speaking out about anxiety is lifting and why athletes are still leery of taking mental health meds.

The Week In Parenting

• Tracy Moore analyzed how an uptick in boys being raised by single moms has changed men.
• Chris Bourn explained how the yuck factor of our parents boning was hard-wired into our biology thousands of years ago.
• Isabelle Kohn dissected why so-called Male Post-Abortion Syndrome remains mostly a myth.

But Don’t Just Take Our Word For It…

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Magdalene Taylor

Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.