Monday, May 12, 2008
Out of her storefront church, ordained minister Kellie Everts mixes religion and hardcore fetish videos.
Dec 11, 1999 | Kellie Everts' obsession with sex was coming between her and God. Raised a strict Catholic, she considered herself a spiritual person. She'd tried celibacy several times, but her libido was too strong and she'd broken down, usually at midnight on New Year's Eve, when she'd have a man waiting in bed. By her own account, she'd slept with more than 1,000 guys by 1978. A stripper and exhibitionist, she'd never had a problem finding partners.
In May of that year, she had a vision in her Brooklyn apartment. Kneeling at her altar to the Virgin Mary, the 33-year-old prayed for guidance in her dealings with men. Everts asked the Virgin to be mother not only of her soul, but of her body.
The room, as Everts tells it, filled with a bright, white light and the Virgin appeared. "I want you to stop having sex with men," she commanded. Then she vanished. It was the epiphany Everts had prayed for. For five days she thought about the Virgin's words. "I saw good-looking men everywhere," she says. "But I thought, if I don't do this I'll be a coward." So Everts pledged herself to Mary, promising never to have sexual intercourse again.
More than two decades later, Everts has kept her vow. And though she didn't exactly get herself to a nunnery, she leads a cloistered life. Everts lives alone in her 19th century house on the outskirts of the Catskills in upstate New York. Animals form her only company: Ducks, dogs, cats, possums, chickens and roosters roam her 50-acre spread. Stained-glass windows and paintings of cherubs adorn her home; she keeps a statue of the Virgin in her second-floor window, which she lights up at night for passers-by. According to Everts' business card, which features a cross superimposed over a flower, she is a faith healer, reverend and hypnotherapist. "Your healing is waiting for you," the card says.
The Gospel according to Everts, however, would make most preachers blush -- if not want to banish her straight to hell. Spiritual to the core, she also happens to be a stripper, a Goddess-worshiping feminist, a preacher of sexual liberation and a star and producer of fetish and domination videos.
When Everts isn't preaching her New Age philosophy -- she rails against male-dominated religion, asks men to cast away their guilt over sex and to get closer to God through respectful treatment of women and animals -- she makes some of the nastiest, most bizarre videos in America. Everts will pee for the camera to a soundtrack of classical music; she will squat down in a field, as if defecating, then show a guy licking what looks like chocolate pudding from her ass. She and her girls -- mainly amateurs whom she recruits locally or hires from New York City -- sit on guys' faces; she frolics in pond mud, squats for an extreme close-up, sticks things in various orifices. "We Cover a Multitude of Sins," the tag on her video line says. Hustler magazine recently published an Everts video review headlined "Her Shit Don't Stink."
Everts isn't the only sex worker trying to reconcile religion with raunch. San Francisco's spiritual-sex movement has long drawn followers, and pro-sex feminists like Camille Paglia write extensively about Christianity's long history of oppressing women's sexuality. In matriarchal times, women were worshipped and temple priestesses performed divine sex acts; the only conflict between religion and sex came when men took over.
Like her counterparts, Everts talks a lot about society's double standard, about reestablishing ancient female-centered body worship; of hypocritical men who capitalize on fantasies of women, while condemning them for taking money for sex work. But as an ordained minister who earns her living producing homemade porn, she takes the apparent paradox to an extreme.
Not long ago, I visited Everts at her home. We spent an afternoon chatting about God, sex and sin. She'd prepared a stack of clips: spreads in men's magazines, newspaper articles and reviews of her shows. At 54, she didn't look much like the fantasy doll she once was. She was pale and covered in makeup. Her hair was cropped short and bleached platinum blond. Dressed in a conservative, black pleated blouse, she looked more like a prim suburbanite than a sexual deviant.
But she still has her fans: men who appreciate her deep, forceful voice, her 44-inch chest, her ability to humiliate convincingly. Men will drive hours and spend $1,500 for a session of her charms.
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