Hot under the cover

by SACHA JACKSON

Since appearing in 2004, Lickety Split has been dedicated to tenting your pants, wetting your undies and pressing a nerve.

With the launch of the Multiples issue, featuring the reader-elected “Highly Fuckable list,” an essay on sexual piracy, a full-colour centrefold and a down and dirty interview with the Mirror’s resident sexpert Sasha von BonBon, LS continues to question popular notions. This edition, however, boasts slicker design and content, christening the dawn of a new LS era.

The Mirror spoke with founder Amber Goodwyn and artistic director Kathleen KR about the dirty business of smut pushing.

Mirror: What made you want to create a smutty publication?

Amber Goodwyn: Originally, it was the continuation of my own personal interests in radical feminism and women’s sexuality and health. I’d been involved in zines for a long time and there were no smut zines in Montreal at that point. And sex is fucking fun.

M: LS is a “pansexual zine”—why is that so important?

AG: When I first thought of the idea, I wasn’t interested in making a zine for one type of person. I was interested in people picking up an issue and seeing some porn that wasn’t necessarily geared towards them and having new desires awakened.

M: What is LS’s place next to regular porn?

AG: People have asked for years how this fits into pornography in a larger sense and I’m realizing it has little to do with the porn industry. Fans of the zine might be fans of regular porn but the two don’t really interact. I enjoy this idea of building communities away from popular culture and I feel like that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re not in a vacuum, I consume regular pornography myself, and we collaborate with people in the porn industry, like Seska Lee. But porn is about money and appealing to a wide audience and we’re about people making something that’s true to them and that turns them on.

Kathleen KR: I find creating porn more enjoyable than consuming it—that’s what gets me off. You get to explore stuff that is really weird or silly, as well as really sexual.

M: So, what are some of the weirder, hotter moments?

KKR: There’s nothing like getting photography submissions from people I know or sort of know. You’re looking through the photos and BLAMO! there they are in an explicit sexual act.

M: What’s the pervy-ist thing you’ve ever done for your zine?

KKR: I directed a photo shoot for this issue with this guy I didn’t know to be a model. He came to the shoot and I was all like “Get naked! Oil yourself up!” I was spritzing him with water throughout and yelling directions like, “Stick your finger in his mouth!” Afterwards, I felt like I’d crossed a line.

AG: A lot of people want direction—they need permission to be kinky or naughty or naked. I think that a photoshoot can be a sexual experience. You can totally get off on that stuff.

Lickety Splir #5 launches this Saturday,
Nov. 3, 9 p.m. at Zoobizarre (6388
St-Hubert) $6 with free issue