Live Nude Elf chronicles The Reverend Jen Miller's two-year career as a thirtysomething sex columnist for nerve.com; a sort of elvish-speaking, Lower East Side version of Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw. The columns each detail a different "sexperiment" that ranges from harrowing (working as a live nude girl at "Wiggles") to embarrassing (attending fellatio school) to transcendent (reaching a mystical state through tantric sex). Along the way there is transvestitism, female ejaculation, opium smoking, and heartbreak.

It becomes apparent that in The Rev's "art star" world, where a twenty-one-year-old bisexual boy named Orion has sex with a jar of Mayonnaise, the more "mundane" acts of courtship, romance, and sex—kissing only, buying dinner for a lover, or just making eye contact in the sack—become themselves rare and subversive.

After a year, Jen confesses to having "grown a little tired of having sex." The experimentation, the many "lab partners," the late nights and cans of Budweiser, "meant romance was hard to come by." The tasks begin to change their tone: Jen takes care of a friend's baby, navigates the cobblestones of Little West 12th street and expansive midtown yuppie bars trying to snag a millionaire hubby, and dates a silver fox, "someone older, distinguished, wealthy and simply grooving with the eternal now."

Though even as The Rev begins to crave normalcy, she is never too far from insights on orgies—"stick to the wine like the Romans did (or even Budweiser)"—balloon fetish parties, and a stint as the "lube girl" on a porn set.

After a decade of New York City flings, affairs, and a few failed relationships, Jen unexpectedly falls in love, and finally must decide between him and her art: can she continue a sex column and have a functional monogamous relationship? Or does the life implicit of a sex columnist preclude her from monogamous romantic love?

I Did It for Science is a funny, witty, irreverent, brave, and sometimes tragic portrait of The Reverend Jen Miller, The Patron Saint of the Uncool, and the challenges embedded in devoting one's life to art.

Reverend Jen was born in 1972 after her mother induced labor by riding the teacups at the Enchanted Forest Amusement Park in Maryland. She got her B.F.A. in painting from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 1990 and has since experienced no financial success whatsoever. She is a performer, painter, playwright, columnist, underground movie star, ASS Magazine founder, Troll Museum curator and Patron Saint of the Uncool. For 12 years she hosted the Anti-Slam, a weekly open mike on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and was voted Village Voice’s Best Do-It-Yourself "Go Girl” in 2002. She has performed all over the world at venues that include PS122, the Soho Theater in London, and the Kunstverein in Munich.

The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Warhol Museum and the Museum of Modern Art Library have collected Reverend Jen's handmade books, which include the cult classic, Sex Symbol for the Insane as well as her limited edition illustrated books. Printed Matter published her 2003 travel guide, Reverend Jen’s Really Cool Neighborhood, and she released a children’s book, Trollz: Best Friends for Life, through Scholastic in 2004.

Reverend Jen's writing and acting film credits include Lord of The Cockrings and The Adventures of Electra Elf. She also directed a music video for pop star, Moby.

The Rev. lives in New York City’s Lower East Side with her Chihuahua, Reverend Jen Junior, a dog-clothes model.

After a moment's deliberation, I typed: Adorable nude housecleaner will clean your pad spic-and-span for a reasonable fee. Available immediately.
I thought that "adorable" sounded less conceited than "hot" or "sexy." Plus, I figured men who were seeking nude housekeepers were probably looking more for June Cleaver than Jenna Jameson. Moments later, a deluge of e-mails appeared in my inbox. Posting my ad on the coldest weekend of the year had been a stroke of genius. No one was planning to leave his or her apartment. The very idea that someone, anyone, was willing to go outside, let alone take off their clothes, was a phenomenon — a marketing blitz.
"Do you do bathtubs?" "What is your rate?" and "Can you send me a picture?" were the most common requests. Not knowing how much to charge, I looked to the other ads on Craigslist, but all of the nude housecleaners simply wrote, "e-mail me for rates," with the exception of one nude housecleaner who was offering his services for free.
"Ew!" exclaimed my coworker, Angie, who'd been hovering over my shoulder, reading the various ads. The going rate for clothed housekeepers was between ten and twenty dollars per hour. "If they just took their clothes off, they could make a lot more money," I surmised. "Maybe they need a manager." Fifty dollars an hour seemed to be a fair price, if not a bit on the cheap side. But because my endeavor was really a science project, I didn't believe it was ethical to charge premium rates.
"What's the best way to clean a bathtub?" I asked Angie. (Not that I don't clean my bathtub; it's just that I clean my bathtub with no regard for whether or not I leave scratches.)
"Scrubbing Bubbles," she responded. "Definitely Scrubbing Bubbles."
"Really?" My mother had used Scrubbing Bubbles in the '70s, and I was sure bathtub-cleaning technology must have advanced since then. "What if I faint from the fumes? I don't want to end up naked and unconscious on the bathroom floor."
"Maybe you should wear one of those paper masks," she suggested.
"That's not really erotic, is it?" I was going to look silly enough bent over in unflattering positions, my loose flesh flapping about. I didn't need to compound the ridiculousness with a mask.
After work, I went by the drugstore to peruse the cleaning-supply section. Much to my surprise, I noticed that Scrubbing Bubbles had multiplied into an entire line of products, including toilet brushes, Fizz-it toilet tablets and mildew-stain removers. The new products featured angry-looking bubble mascots with arched eyebrows and aggressive expressions. I wondered if the new, evil-looking bubbles were a reflection of American politicians in the new millennium — at war with an unseen enemy, going about their business blindly, only to be washed down the drain eventually. I was overcome with sadness. Then I realized that the old-school Scrubbing Bubbles canister still featured the happy-looking, bristle-mustachioed bubbles of yore. This cheered me.
On my way home from the drugstore, I stopped in at the local video store, hoping to pick up a copy of Maid in Manhattan for inspiration. Maybe my first client would be a Ray Fiennes look-alike who would whisk me out of destitution and into a life of leisure and couture. Predictably, I could not locate said J. Lo vehicle — this being a downtown hipster video store — and I was too embarrassed to ask the surly cashier if they carried it. Instead I rented Murderous Maids, a French film about two incestuous sisters who are also maids and kill their employers. Probably a little more realistic.
At home I slipped into my footie pajamas and popped open my laptop, whereupon I began e-mailing current photos of myself to potential employers. I made an appointment with Tony, who wanted to see me the next day at the unreasonable hour of nine-thirty a.m. We agreed on a minimum of two hours of cleaning.
Another potential client named Ryan — who had yet to see my photo — sent me his cellphone number and requested I call immediately. I dialed the number.
Ryan insisted he needed his apartment cleaned that night, no later than ten p.m. It was now eight-thirty. I hesitated. For starters, I hadn't washed my hair in two days and had begun to resemble a lost member of the Manson family. Not to mention the five o'clock shadow that had begun to form around my pudenda. I imagined that greeting a client with a stubbly vag was a nude-housecleaning faux pas. How I would get cleaned up and get uptown in under two hours was beyond me, but I agreed to it.
"I just have two main concerns," Ryan said before giving me his address. "The first is that while you claim you're 'adorable,' I worry that you'll show up and look like Jabba the Hut."
I assured him that I was not a legless, tapered slug covered in slime, but rather more like Princess Leia, and could even wear my long, raven hair in dual buns if he so desired. This cinched the deal. Within every man who was breathing during the early '80s, there lies dormant a terrible fear of Jabba the Hut and an overwhelming fixation with Princess Leia. (Specifically when she is bound in chains by the gruesome Jabba; it's the greatest BDSM scene in cinematic history.)
"I do have small breasts, so if you want a nude housecleaner with huge breasts, that's not me. Plus, I have a crazy scar on my stomach." I figured it was best to get these two things out of the way immediately.
"That's okay, but my other concern," he added. "Is that because you are going to be naked, you won't do a good job cleaning my apartment."
"You have nothing to worry about," I assured him. Secretly, I thought, Oh shit, he really wants me to clean. Cleaning, unlike getting naked, is an actual skill I wasn't sure I'd mastered. I jotted down Ryan's address, leapt off the phone and quickly Googled "how to clean wooden floors." What if I ruined his fancy Upper East Side apartment?
I gussied up in record time and ran to the train. My bladder began to swell with urgency; I had traveled outside my "pee radius." My mind raced with concerns. Would his apartment be well heated? Would he be a sociopath? Would he get a boner? Would he not get a boner? Would he want me to polish his family jewels? Would I get turned on?
Exiting the train, I turned the corner onto Madison Avenue and strolled past a group of mink-clad women. My tattered faux-fur coat and pink streaked hair made me feel conspicuous. I hope the doorman realizes I'm not a prostitute, I thought.
But what if I were a prostitute? It's nothing to be ashamed of. At least prostitutes get to lie down on the job. Here, I'd be naked and scrubbing toilets. Prostitutes would laugh at me. As sex work goes, naked housecleaning is as low as it gets on the food chain. Except for the guy who used to pay to lick come off peepshow stalls in the Times Square of yesteryear. That guy is just below me on the sex-work ladder.