A Successful Bag Lady: How I Dealt With Financial Depressions

In the mid eighties, I had one of the worst money crises of my life, and there have been many. I was living hand to mouth barely earning enough as I struggled to survive on running one workshop a month. At night, I was feverously writing a sexual memoir that was going to solve all my financial problems once it became a best seller. Occasionally I'd sell a piece of my art. Many groups didn't fill, so I'd make phone calls and offer scholarships to create a workshop for the few who paid full tuition. One month I was unable to pay my rent and I offered to decorate a friend's apartment. That brought in enough money to cover my expenses for two months, but my constant fear remained: I'd end up a bag lady on the streets of New York. 

One way to describe my relationship with money is to compare it with sex. I've been financially repressed which is similar to being sexually repressed. All discussions about money (sex) made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. The fear of financial success is very much like sexual pleasure anxiety, the fear of having too much of a good thing. Unless you are born into a family with money, the entire subject seems unsightly, especially for many women of my generation. Add to that the conditioning an artist gets knowing the great ones never made money in their lifetime; a financial success meant selling out. I'd end up painting "pot boilers," meaningless still-life pretty things that looked good with living room décor.

My parents and three brothers were white-collar wage earners primarily selling retail in clothing stores. Daddy was the display manager for a men's store. Mother always worked part-time when we were young, then fulltime once we were in school. She sold hats and women's coats. Middle brother actually owned his own men's clothing store for a while but he married money. After he got divorced, he was selling men's wear again. My youngest brother broke the mold as a foreman for Cessna Aircraft his entire life. My oldest brother died in an accident right after he returned from the Second World War so I don't know what his career would have been, but like the rest of the Dodson's he was a sharp dresser.

As soon as I graduated from high school, I got a job as an illustrator for a local department store and continued to work after school during my first and only year of college. I then worked fulltime in the art department at Wichita's local newspaper. I drew fashion, shoes, accessories, house wares and furniture for local businesses. Once I was able to save the huge sum of $400, I began making plans to move to New York and become a famous fashion illustrator.

After I arrived in New York City at the age of twenty, I survived as a freelance commercial artist for the next ten years. Although I was my own boss, it was a hand-to-mouth existence. Working part time and taking night classes, I was able to put myself through four years of art school with one year in Paris, thanks to several scholarships. Money problems abated during seven years of marriage when I felt like a rich Park Avenue matron. After I got divorced at thirty-five, I received a $500 monthly settlement that was to be reduced by $100 each year over a five years period. It ended after the first year when my former husband lost his job. At that point, I became an instant designer of Easter Bunnies, Christmas Angles and Piggy Banks for a wholesaler who sold novelty items made in Japan.

Over the next three years I worked toward my first one-woman exhibition which was financially successful. The next show was a total flop that ended up costing me money. I drew four large six foot classical nudes joyfully masturbating to orgasm. After that debacle, I realized the chances of supporting my self selling the kind of art I wanted to create looked grim. Instead of abandoning my idealistic notions, I began to diversify by learning to write. I lectured with slides of my art and wrote articles about women's sexuality from groupsex experiences. By the early seventies I began facilitating orgasm workshops for women based on consciousness raising (CR) groups, the grass roots of feminism.

In the seventies, I asked a successful friend, "How do I make money?" He answered, "Own your own product." Not long after that, I self-published Liberating Masturbation in 1974. This little book became a feminist classic. My standard of living improved along with my business skills as an independent publisher. Over the next ten years my income was generated by workshops, lectures, articles, selling the book and an occasional piece of art. During that time I got three offers from mass market publishers who wanted to buy my book. It was similar to being a virgin who was offered a decent sexual experience by a knowledgeable person. Each time my financial (sexual) repression stopped me: I couldn't sign a contract. Somehow it meant relinquishing my power or getting married again.

In the middle of the fear ridden eighties, trying to survive on running workshops while I wrote at night brought me to an all time low financially. One day out of shear desperation, a positive image of becoming a new kind of bag lady emerged. Instead of visualizing myself homeless rummaging through garbage, I thought about all the women I'd helped to discover orgasm and sexual pleasures in the numerous workshops I'd facilitated since the early seventies. Many of my former students who lived all over the country had invited me to come visit them anytime. I could become a traveling sex guru visiting women who'd taken a workshop, bringing pleasure to nuclear families all over the country. All I'd need was a back pack filled with several vibrators, a few favorite dildos and massage oil.

I had been told I was the ideal house guest. The few friends that I'd already spent time with said I could come back and stay as long as I liked. After all, I was fun, playful and shared sex information freely. As a Virgo who loves to make things orderly, I'd organize closets, clean out refrigerators, and help arrange book shelves and rooms. All I would have to do was send out a mailing that said I was available for a visit and then make a schedule. I calculated that there were enough Bodysex women to last my lifetime. That image helped to raise me out of my worst financial depression.

In 1986 I was finally able to sign with Crown Publishing Group and lost my contract virginity. The book was renamed Sex for One and immediately it was generating income. That first contract was similar to having first-time sex where ignorance and fear prevents feelings of pleasure. Book publishing at best is all about delaying the end pleasure of orgasm. Looking back, I can say that my entrepreneurial skill of introducing masturbation as a primary form of sexual expression has been successful- to a degree. However, until self-sexuality is entered into the lexicon of human sexuality, there's still work to be done.

At the beginning of the nineties, I embarked upon producing video tapes to document how I was teaching sex. The Bodysex Workshops were part group sharing and part group processes like viewing our vulvas. Once we saw the vast variation in female genitals and learned we were all beautiful but different, women's self-esteem soared. On the second day, we demystified female orgasm when we masturbated in a group ritual using electric vibrators. We ended our two days together with group massage. Although I didn't get it at the time, surviving financially by enjoying my favorite kind of sex with a new group of women every month was the epitome of entrepreneurial brilliance. So what if it barely paid the bills.

This was written in my journal in 1996: "Ideas have always excited me, not money. The concept of having a lot of money never held much interest for me. I've counted my riches other ways: Being an artist for twenty years was a real luxury. Working for myself while doing what I liked and what I believed in has always been special. I know because I've listened to many friends complain about having to go to a job they hate. I've had the honor of helping women discover their orgasmic potential, sharing sex information to benefit both women and men, getting hundreds of letters from women thanking me for their first orgasm after reading my book, viewing a video, or taking a workshop with me- that's been my true wealth."

In 1998 when my friend Grant Taylor asked to create a website for me, I said go ahead. At the time, I knew nothing about the internet. He made up for the bad advice he'd given me about the sexual memoir solving all my financial problems. Over the next ten years my website increased my visibility greatly as I reached more people. Actually the Internet was the first place I wasn't censored. Just before Grant left the planet February of 2008, I began negotiating a business deal with Carlin Ross, who is my new webmaster and cyber partner. I think Grant was able to leave his disintegrating body once he saw I'd succeed with her.

Our new website is soaring and I can see extraordinary possibilities coming up. It might seem cruel for it to have taken me this long to see my way clear to enjoy a major financial success, but I would disagree. Like I said, it's never been about money for me. It's about enriching my life when I'm able to enhance the quality of other people's lives through sharing information about sexual pleasures. Now that I'm expanding the website to reach an even larger audience, I will welcome the financial reward that naturally follows this time. I smile remembering back to when I was a struggling artist when a psychic told me I'd be a very rich woman. How true, I'm just not rich in the ordinary sense of having money.

Over the years some well meaning friends warned: "You'll end up an old maid living alone if you don't get married." I now see Eric and Carlin as my adopted grand children. Many women my age that actually had children rarely see them. My own mother who had four kids was alone at the end more than I am. I see my adopted kids every day because we work together. After going through an initial adjustment phase that was a challenge, we are quite harmonious now. Besides my positive bag lady image and my adopted immediate family, I also have millions of satisfied customers. The idea of security only exists in the mind because in truth, there is no such thing.

Today with the financial crises, I understand many people are worried sick about how they will survive. Since I have lived through bad times on the edge of survival, I know it's not pleasant to struggle over money as it drains our positive energy. My measly amount of money invested in the stock market was supposed to be safe with my conservative investments in Fanny and Freddie. That plus my Sep Ira's that had something to do with retirement. I remember when my broker told me that if Fanny and Freddie ever went bust, it would mean the entire country was bankrupt. I called him recently to tell him he was right. The country did go broke but individual families are the one's who are losing their homes.

Now I can be grateful I never bought a house and opted to live in a rent controlled apartment. The two rooms function as an office, film studio, private practice, conference room, bedroom and whatever else I can think up. We run our new company BAD Media, LLC with two computers, two filing cabinets and one closet for storage. My life has been lived on the principle that less is more. Just this past week, I told my broker I wanted to cash out. He was concerned about my retirement. I had to laugh when I said, "What retirement? I'm nearly eighty and I just started a new cyber business. Whatever is left I'll invest it in me."

Artists, architects, teachers, scientists, writers, philosophers, etc., never retire. We get better as we get older. I remember Mother saying that during the depression in the thirties, our family was okay. Daddy kept his salaried job as the display manager (art again) while the cost of living went down. Some of us might have to take in a border and tighten our belts, but we will get through this mess made by those greedy war mongers that have shown no regard for human life. I'd say the Bush Whitehouse was full of psychopaths.

I know it's not pleasant to live on the edge, but feelings of desperation can be alleviated with a cost affective form of entertainment. We can spend more time having orgasms alone and with our partners as well as sharing masturbation and massage. We can cruise cyberspace to access all the wonderful free information available and learn not to buy things we don't need and share more of what we have with friends. Sexual pleasure is healing and I believe it can help us get on the other side of wasteful spending, sharing instead of owning, appreciation instead of greed, and finally realizing good health is what makes a person rich. Some days it feels like we are heading into another sexual revolution similar to the end of the sixties. Instead of the slogan "Power to the people" this time around we'll demand "Pleasure to the people."

The capper to all of this is that I just figured out that I'm not in the top 2% of wage earners. I was counting my gross income and not net profit which is what you end up with after paying salaries, expenses and taxes. I'm still very middle class which I'm told is a dying breed. And loving what I do? That's priceless.