My Porn Collection and What It Means to Me: or, porn titles are so lame

So I've been going through my stacks and stacks and stacks of porn DVDs. I haven't counted the pile-o-porn just yet, but I'm guessing it's holding at just over 200 all together, and I'm still waiting for the friends and colleagues to whom I've loaned out some of the better ones to return them to me, so that when my show at apexart opens on March 21, I will be in possession of nearly every porno DVD that's ever been mailed to me for review. I'm hoping the number will be somewhere in the vicinity of 300. As of a few weeks ago, before a few new additions came in, this is what the stack looked like (photo snapped on my phone):

C'est magnifique, no? Ah, how proud I am to own such classics as Sperm Sponges, Fuck Truck, Throat Yogurt, Fucked Up Handjobs #3, Chestnuts, and the classic Elastic Assholes #4! Such testaments to the human creative capacity! Such shining examples of the dignity of our 1st Amendment! It brings a tear to my eye.

...Ok, yes, I'm being facetious. As these DVDs have amassed themselves in my giant Rubbermaid trunk of smut over the years, it's been easy for me to forget about the bottom-of-the-barrel titles like Sperm Receptacles and the at least half-dozen iterations of Fresh Faces and other barely-legal bilge that I've been mailed. I tend to remember, and to actually review, the titles that stand out in some way. That seem to tell a story that might be interesting, or that have truly creative titles, or that simply don't seem to cater to the lowest common denominator of perversion.

But I'm not being all facetious about my pride at owning even these bargain-basement homages to our filthier nature, either. It really is a beautiful thing that our freedom of speech extends to such things as naming movies that highlight gaping assholes with absolutely no irony, much less a real need to mask what those movies are all about. Porn, though I often try to cloak it in higher-minded language, is filthy, and that's why it's so fucking important. I'm absolutely not a fan of being able to see the inside of an anal cavity lit up and focused upon by an HD camera--surprise! it's pink inside, just like everything else!--but it does give me this odd stomach-flip of grossed-out-ness and simultaneous joy that it's ok for people to distribute that material.

And furthermore, these movies--Buttworx, No Cum Dodging Allowed, Ass Stretchers POV, and the like--may not be on my top-ten lists for most important films ever made, and they may not be what I'll point to if I'm ever recommending my favorite stars' ouevre to a porn novice. But they are what make the world of porn go around. As much as I love to point people in the direction of some exceptional movies that my faves have made, or to fun/funny parodies, or to excellent scenes sizzling with chemistry, the reality for people who are making their livings on pornography is that you can't be so picky. Most days, you pack up your bags, head out to some house somewhere, do a scene with some specific act in it, and go home. That scene gets smooshed into a movie with a bunch of other scenes that are similar, packaged with a stupid title, and sent out to DVD warehouses... and sold separately online on VOD sites. You never see it, you never hear about it, you never get paid for it after that one day's paycheck. And if you don't just keep doing this, well... You don't last in the industry very long. So, much as I might not be a huge fan of Big Ol' Black Booties because it's not the most politically interesting, or the most progressive, or the most thoughtful porn film out there, I can't denigrate anyone involved in making it or pretend that it's not important in its own building-block kind of way.

Just a few thoughts to chew on before the Superbowl. I won't be watching--got an interview scheduled for my art show and plenty of other work-y things to do. Hope y'all have fun, and have a brew for me!

First Revelation of the New Year: I'm a Pervert

My beautiful friends, it is the 2nd of January, and I have returned to the interwebz refreshed, healthy, and several pounds heavier after the excesses of the holiday season. With a half dozen bottles of booze, some sundry beers, leftover cookies and truffles, and assorted other calorie-laden gifts still cluttering apartment, my waist expansion sees no clear end, and that makes me very happy.

But you know what else does? I took a month off from this blog, writing for WHACK! Magazine, and even... yes... even watching porn. I was doing interviews for my art show the whole while, and thus doing a lot of thinking and talking on the subject, but my actual exposure to naughty films was severely curtailed. I thought this would make for a nice thought experiment, to whit: what happens to a girl's brain when her nearly constant exposure to x-rated material is cut off? It's been so long since I've gone more than a week without interviewing a porn star for promotional purposes, watching at least one full-length blue film, writing a blog post about the adult industry, etc, that I had begun to wonder how much of what goes on in my filthy little cranium was actually a result of my own impulses and ponderings, and how much was the result of an unending intake of sexual imagery. I thought that this month off, taken for health and sanity reasons mostly, would serve as a way to see backward in time--a short journey back up the rabbit hole. Certainly not enough time to reach the surface of "not being in the porn industry," but a peek back into the pre-porn times of my youth.

Well ladies and gents and gender-benders, I have news for you all. As I write this, I am settling down to review Courtney Trouble's newest flick, Live Sex Show, starring some of my all-time adult favorites (Courtney herself, Nina Hartley, Jiz Lee, April Flores, Tina Horn...), and I cannot tell you how fucking excited I am! I've been wanting to pop this puppy into the DVD player ever since it arrived weeks ago, but I was trying to maintain my porn fast to preserve whatever effects the absence of smut might have on my psyche, so I persevered and didn't even open the package until today. And seeing that manila envelope sitting there for weeks, with my name on it, knowing it was from San Francisco and contained all the joys of a surprise live-action gangbang full of queers... Well, it hasn't been easy.

And that's the thing, people. I've been watching porn professionally for years, and I've gotten very very very very very burned out on it more than once. I thought that maybe, by the end of this month--during which, might I add, I had plenty of real sex, so my little libido wasn't suffering from lack of stimulation without sexy viewing material--I would be ready to turn a new leaf and be done with porn forever. Or at least be less than excited about watching the stack of DVDs that's piled up during my absence. Or just generally be thinking in the same "meh" way that I did a month ago about the whole world of adult entertainment.

But not so. I am STOKED. I get to watch porn for work again, and, seriously, WHAT MORE FUN WORK COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE?! The truth, my dearest deranged mutant friends, is that I am a pervert. This month proved to me over and over again, in every conversation and every daydream, in the bored silences during car rides and lying awake at night in bed, even once when I was too hungover to move but found myself desperate to masturbate, that I am an incurable sex fiend. Even when the first week's porn detox had been long gone and I had entered the mid-month doldrums, I found myself sneaking double-entendres into conversations and pointing out the ones nobody had giggled at. I went after sex with a new enthusiasm, since I didn't have any to watch to keep me placated. I fantasized, I dreamed, and I thought--constantly--about sex.

And so, if any of you have been on a long pattern of withdrawal from my lunatic antics and fuck-frenzied fancies, never fear. I'm back, and I'm happier than ever to be here!

Review of Live Sex Show to come.... I think we all know it will be glowing, as will I.

Two Totally Terrific Questions, Part II

Dale asked: New follower. Discovered you on twitter and have started to follow your blog. I absolutely loved your piece on you former military friend! Questions. Do you have a book out? You mentioned somewhere that you had both a girlfriend and boyfriend. Do you still (or at all) think of yourself as bisexual? Looking forward to reading from your archive. Thanks.

Hello, Dale. Thank you for following my blog! Due to the nature of what I write about, I don’t get many comments (I think people are hesitant to take part in some of these questions in case their wife/mom/whoever finds out… or maybe just nobody’s reading… but I’ll take the former option), so it’s always good to get feedback!

As to your questions:

1)      No, I don’t have a book out, but I am currently (and slowly) working on two! One will be fiction (probably a graphic novel) and the other will be more essay-based. I’m so glad to hear you’re interested, because I’ve been needing a kick in the pants to jump-start my work after the summer craziness subsides. This might be it!

2)      As for my orientation, that’s a great question. I’ve been pondering it lately. I’d like to consider myself queer, in that I don’t go for men and/or women but am turned on by certain people regardless of their gender. However, as I have yet to place myself squarely inside the queer community or indeed have any lovers who identify on the queer scale, I can’t say I’m certain of this. But I will say that I love women, and men, and androgyny turns me on like woah. I have quite a thing for 70’s era David Bowie, genderqueers, many types of bois, and femme men. So yes, bisexual is a start. J

You Know What I Love? Ladysex

A friend told me a few days ago that when she told her husband she was excited for my impending visit, during which we would spend some time with our lesbian friend together, he said, "So what, are they going to spend all their time talking about having sex with women?"

She was offended by this question, and I'm glad she was, because that's a willfully stupid thing to say. Obviously women who have sex with women, like our mutual friend and I, don't restrict our conversation to "ladysex," as my friends and I laughingly called it all weekend. We made a joke out of it and referred to "ladysex" at every possible opportunity to poke some fun at the sadly narrow-minded husband. Normally we wouldn't talk that much about it: those of us who enjoy the sexual company of women don't freak out and only talk about that subject when in the presence of others like ourselves, any more than people who have sex with any other type of person talk about the kind of sex they have. That's just small-minded and silly.

But then again, I've started thinking about it on my own, and you know what? While we might not restrict our conversation to ladysex normally, I think that when I'm with my lady-loving female friends, we actually do spend a fair proportion of our time talking about that topic. Here's why:

1) I'm a horny person and I write about sex and porn professionally for several publications. I'm particularly interested in the social, cultural, political, and personal impacts of non-normative sexual practices, gender roles, and queerness of all kinds. So when anything tangentially related to ladysex comes up, my mind veers in that direction.

2) My friends--particularly those with interests in ladysex or any of the things I write about--know that I'm knowledgeable and curious about these topics. They also know I love to talk. So they discuss their ideas, experiences, and frustrations with me, and sometimes ask questions.

3) It's not all that often that those of us women who like ladysex actually get together and have an opportunity to talk about it. So when we do, we really enjoy talking about it. Sharing experiences, ideas, techniques...  you know, war stories and the like. It's fun, and in a world where "ladysex" is referred to by numerous even sillier names ("girl-on-girl" when obviously everyone involved is at least 18 and therefore a woman, etc), represented so flat-out badly so much of the time (we've all watched "lesbian" porno scenes in which it could not possibly be more obvious that none of the women are at all interested in other women), and rarely discussed openly and honestly (safer sex practices between women, for example, are mysterious at best and completely unknown at worst), it's actually important to talk about it. To remember that even though our tendency toward "ladysex" might not be the defining trait of our characters, it is a part of what makes us who we are. To be happy that we've had the experiences we've been lucky enough to have and to feel validated amongst a group of people who understand those experiences--isn't that what people do with everything else? Isn't that what's so often missing in the discussion of sex? I say, talk about ALL the sex you have, whether it's with a man or a woman or a toy or a genderqueer or whatever! Talk about it, validate it, think about it, write about it. Do it and love it and be proud!

So, that being said... you know what I love? Ladysex! Loud and proud, baby!

Hurricane Irene: A Great Excuse to Stay Home and Masturbate

Oh yeah. She's coming.

Well, that was insanely anticlimactic. Come on, Irene! You call that a storm?

But I know myself, and the moment I heard that Hurricane Irene was heading straight for my fair city, I prepared. I'm from the country originally, where rain and snow and power outages happen all the time and the idea of evacuation would be scoffed at. Just get some canned soup and candles and chill out, we'd say at home. So, yeah, I got my candles lined up, my flashlights ready to go, some Spaghetti-Os and bread, just in case. But I wasn't too impressed by the predictions of widespread devastation: we've heard it all before here in NYC and it never happens. But if they were gonna be pansies and shut down the power, I knew how to be sure the storm would be the climax they were talking about:

I put new batteries in all my sex toys, charged the rechargable ones, and had a fantastic night watching the rain and providing the storm with some very devastating climaxes. Irene likes it that way.

The morning after, I feel great, and the city is fine. Win-win!

This Is Love by Danny Wylde

Dudes. I just had my brain blown out the back of my head. I finally got my grubby paws on a copy of This is Love, a short art/porn/snuff/? film by Danny Wylde, one of my personal porn faves and a guy who's gotta be one of the coolest, smartest young men on the major porn scene in LA these days. It's a short art/porn film that's about... well... hard to say what it's about, really. But you've gotta see it.

I say all this in a tone of surprise, honestly. I think Danny Wylde is one of those types of people who's kind of a visionary and an artist without even really wanting to be, which makes me inherently trust his creative output. But I have to admit that when I saw the trailer for it:

...I kind of went, "Ummmm.... crap." Because, hey, look, I live in New York. I know hipster art films. And this gave me a strong East Williamsburg PBR kind of vibe. Then again, I'm a bit paranoid about hipsters cause I despise them so much and find their art so generally stupid, so maybe it doesn't breathe "I wear neon pink framed sunglasses and jeggings" quite as much as I thought it did, but suffice it to say I was apprehensive about the film.

But no more, friends. No more. This is Love is, I really hope, the first in a series of films from Danny that are absolutely and completely worth watching. Now.

It's a graphic and gritty depiction of the lengths sexual obsession makes us go, but it's also a heartbreaking portrait of what love, or a twisted idea of what love can and should be, can do. And it's... I really don't want to sound like a starstruck fangirl here, but it's really kind of incredible to watch Danny Wylde perform in it. In a tense, pared down scene he films for his lost lover, he masturbates and then shoots himself, his eyes glued to the camera--the stand-in for his love--the entire time. And it's intense. Because I know that Danny is acting--he's a better actor than ninety-nine percent of the field of porn performers but rarely gets to show it off--but it feels so deeply, deeply real. His eyes, his open-posed body, his desperate jerk-off motions... I guess the thing that's blowing me away is how vulnerable he is showing himself to be in this scene, which is obviously filmed and acted for a movie he's making but is using very real emotions. He's really felt these emotions and he's really showing them to us through a thin lens of fiction. Anyone who's ever been obsessed and depressed recognizes that face-slap, that look of unhealthy glee when he stares into his lover's face, that panting, breathless need. It's powerful subject matter, and it's a powerful depiction of it. It's brave to show that face to a camera and to the public.

And how crazy is that? No, really, think about it: when's the lat time you watched a film that could classify as porn (though I think This is Love is more art than porn, at leas as far as established film genres go) and really felt a connection with the male lead, whether it was gay, straight, queer, or anything in between? How many times in professionally made film in which a male character is shown in a sexual context do you get a feeling of authentic vulnerability and not a phoned-in version of it? Sure we have the occasional "uh-oh, he lost his hard-on" scene in a mainstream film where we get to see "male vulnerability" in effigy, but how often do the realities of the complexity of sex and sexual obsession get to be shown from a powerful emotional male perspective? Not many a' tall, friends.

Of course, Danny Wylde is not in any way a typical male performer, and that's worth bearing in mind when you're thinking about his performance in This is Love. He works for companies all over the spectrum from vanilla to kink, he openly admits to his bisexuality and films a lot of it; he caters to fans of all orientations and genders who follow him around in very lost-puppy fashion; he dominates and subs with ease; and he even records his experiences and thoughts in a very honest, very insightful, very well-written blog. He interviews other porn performers about their experiences with empowerment and degradation; he's an outspoken advocate of the porn industry while being openly critical of its shortcomings. He does these things with a quiet honesty that one doesn't often see in Hollywood, much less in porn. He more or less breaks every stereotype that the mainstream media and the porn establishment has set up for men in America, and yet he continues to work with some of Porn Valley's biggest names and hottest companies. And now he's making art-house/porn/snuff films that speak very clearly about the male experience of obsessive lust? Yes, PLEASE!

I very much want all of you to watch This is Love, but Danny is only releasing it through private sale via his website to avoid piracy--kind of a good idea, no? If you'd like to see it (and you probably do if you're an open-minded fan of artistic film), you have to contact him directly. I think you should, because it's a short film that will really make you think and feel slightly uncomfortable that you're turned on, and because you might get some personal attention from Danny, who, as you can see from my trying-really-hard-not-to-fawn fawning above, is so totally cool you definitely want to get to know him. It's only $10, and it's so worth it.

Jealousy for Grown-Ups

I was discussing the ins and outs of sexual jealousy with a friend last week and have been pondering it since. An interesting article interviewing one of the authors of Sex at Dawn in Salon made me think about it even more, and I've realized that there's a strange paradox that seems to circle around the subject of sexual jealousy in American culture. Jealousy over our lovers' sex is possibly the only purely negative emotion we experience that we are virtually never told to "suck up," "get over," or "deal with." Whereas with other forms of jealousy (over material things or family love), most types of anger (aside, perhaps, from Denzel Washington style righteous anger), depression, anxiety, and so on, there are multitudes of ways in which we are encouraged to move forward, battle through, and learn to make the best of the situations that cause these feelings, we are never told to "get over" our jealousy. We tut-tut and headshake over rage-filled testosterone junkies, bend over backwards trying to rally the spirits of depressed people, and teach our children from a very young age that to be a grown-up they have to share their toys and time and space. But significant others? Share them? Absolutely not. Far from it--our entertainment and upbringing teach the exact opposite. We're not just allowing sexual jealousy to control us, we actually promote paranoia and misery by endorsing the idea that sexual exclusivity is tantamount to happiness, while any transgression equals a perfectly acceptable excuse to go completely apeshit.

Think about it. How many romantic comedies are there in this world that pivot around the central idea of jealousy? How many girlfriends and boyfriends in film and TV are so insanely jealous of their significant others that they spy on them, invade their privacy, and drive themselves literally insane with fear over what might be happening, meanwhile turning themselves into anxiety-ridden lunatics and sometimes criminals? There are lots. And how many characters in film and TV really go whole hog and turn into criminals with violent pasts over sexual jealousy? Plenty. And how many people in REAL LIFE do these same things? Way too many.

Why is it that this one emotion, based on centuries of repressive thinking, which is based largely on misogynistic ideas about sexual and reproductive ownership, still rules us so firmly? Is it because, given that as adults we're expected to rein in our other explosive negative emotions to a certain degree, we covet and protect this one outlet we still have for our irrational, childish selfishness? I kind of think it is. I mean, hell, I'm not one to argue on behalf of emotional temperance. I've got one gob-smacking doozie of a bad temper on me. I'm incredibly impatient and throw tantrums in my head every time the subway is late or I sit in traffic for more than ten minutes. I'm prone to crying when I'm frustrated. I'm no model citizen when it comes to acting like a grown-up. But you know what? I try my damndest to keep control of my negative, destructive feelings, because I'm an adult and I recognize that these feelings are destructive. And make no mistake about it: sexual jealousy might be one of the most destructive forces on the planet. But because it comes riding in under the banners of much-prized ideals like love, fidelity, propriety, and monogamy, it gets to tromp around all over our hearts and gives us an excuse to behave like big, sexually-active children instead of the emotionally mature people we're supposed to be in every other area of our lives. Because the transgressor in most sexual jealousy situations is always seen to be in the wrong by the greater society, the one making a huge deal out of an outside dalliance gets a free pass to throw a hissy fit and wallow in his or her own misery in a completely childish way. It's kind of gross.

I'm not saying everyone acts like a baby about sexual jealousy, but I am saying that the overwhelming majority of our cultural indicators point toward sexual jealousy being the last holdout of violent, all-consuming negative emotion in adults, and that's silly. But I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that we should all "move past" our jealousy, either. I think it's pretty natural for most of us to feel it--we might be grown-ups and know that it's polite to share our cake at our birthday parties now, but that doesn't mean we don't WANT to keep all the cake for ourselves. Just like our evolution made us likely to hoard food and money and other resources, there's a certain, probably inborn, tendency in us to hoard our sex partners, too. We want to keep them all to ourselves sometimes, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just that, like every other negative emotion, jealousy can be dealt with instead of wallowed in. When I find out that one of my partners dallied with someone else, I get jealous every single time. And it hurts, man. It really does. It's tough. I get all morose and thinky and grumpy and internally criticize everything the partner does for a day or two. But you know what? It goes away after a while. It doesn't magically disappear, but when I work on remembering that my partner being with another person in a responsible way is far from the worst thing that could ever happen, and is in fact way better than MOST things that could happen, it hurts less. And after a while, it becomes almost a matter of pride for me to be able to work through my dark days and be happy for my partners because they did something they enjoyed. Isn't that what being a grown-up is supposed to be about?

The Miami Report: Kanye is Onto Something

I dunno how many of you out there listen to Kanye West, but given his popularity it’s probably quite a few of you. But just in case, his most recent album featured a song called “Hell of a Life” that starts with the line, “I think I fell in love with a porn star.” The song is all about the exhilaration of porn fame, the weird contradictions within the industry (how anal, gangbangs, and interracial sex are all lumped together as things that drive down a porn star’s performance price), and the just-as-weird contradictions without it (the glamour of porn and the openness of porn star lives and sexuality versus the shaming society heaps on them). And damned if it isn’t a great song. And damned-er if it isn’t onto something. Sometimes I hate giving Kanye credit cause he’s kind of a d-bag, but he writes some seriously good lyrics.

And I finally kind of know what he’s talking about. I mean, I knew some of what he was talking about before, since I’m kind of deeply immersed in the porn world. But as much as I think porn performers are great and have the same issues with society’s double standard of idolizing and glamorizing porn stars while denigrating the work they do… I’d never quite gotten close to falling in love with a porn star. Somehow, even when partying with hot stars and hanging out in hotel rooms with the top performers, some of whom came onto me and some of whom did not, I’d never walked away from one of them breathless. Maybe it’s because I see them in a mostly-professional way. Maybe it’s because I like a bit of mystery in my sexual pursuits and I already know a lot of what there is to know about most porn stars’ bedroom habits when I encounter them. Or maybe I just hadn’t met anyone who really got me going.

But this weekend I did. I’d been interested in Keni Styles beforehand for several reasons: #1: HOT BRITISH ACCENT. I know it’s a silly bias. And I know a lot of guys who will roll their eyes about this when they hear women say it. But those same guys will go ga-ga over a woman with an accent, too. There’s just something undeniably sexy about the exoticism of someone who’s from a different culture than your own. Add to that #2, which is that Keni has a fascinating background. He’s of mostly Chinese descent and has lived all over the world. He’s probably the most multicultural male porn performer on the scene today. #3: Though I hate to pigeonhole anybody based on race, the fact that Keni is of Asian descent is a big deal for the porn biz. Though it’s not as often talked bout as with other groups, anti-Asian sentiment runs high in the adult industry, where women are fetishized and men are basically nonexistent because there’s a prevalent stigma that Asian guys are feminine and have small dicks. Well, Keni has come (hehehe) to blast all those stereotypes to smithereens. The man is a powerhouse in his performances, masculine as all get-out, and has a dong that could make any woman tear up from either appreciation or pain. Not only is he accented, worldly, and boundary-breaking, all of which would make me interested… but, #3: he’s also HOT. Like. HOT. Just Google him. You’ll see what I mean.

So when I realized I was about to meet him in Miami I got excited. He had all the makings of an interesting person for an interview, and I was curious to see what he’d be like in person. I got my answer Thursday night before the Exxxotica convention started: he’s awesome. He came up to say hi, shook my hand, and blew me away immediately with that accent of his. And then his friendliness, openness, and, oh lord, his smile. I was hooked.

We didn’t spend much time together over the course of the weekend, besides some very boozey dancing and shenanigans at Fontainbleu on Friday night, but by the time he walked out of the convention center on Sunday, I was sighing after him like a lost puppy. I haven’t had a crush this serious on a porn star. Ever.

I doubt we’ll get married in a bathroom and divorced by morning, as Kanye’s song describes, but hey, a girl can hope, right? Just some making out would be fine.

The Vibrator Diaries: Entry the First

I reviewed the Evolved Spice Short and Sweet vibrator a while ago for WHACK! Magazine, and waxed rhapsodic about its double-motored, stubby, wobbly goodness. To date, I think it has been my most successful vibrating friend, and so I decided to go back to examine our relationship a few nights ago, and again last night, and then again this morning. What can I say, I really like it!

The Spice is a smaller, less complicated version of what everyone knows as a "rabbit" style sex toy. It's got two vibrating parts, one for penetration and one that tickles the clitoral area simultaneously. It's made of gel-like silicone, devoid of over-the-top bells and whistles, and thank goodness it doesn't have any weird animal-shaped parts on it. Those dolphins and bunnies and such really freak me out--I mean, I like animals, but they don't need to go anywhere near my junk, nawmsayin?

Anyhoo, I wanted to see if the initial magic that my Short and Sweet Spice worked on me long ago was still there, and I'm happy to report that it is. I am, however, sad to report that, because of how the Spice is designed to be used, I've already broken my "no penetration" rule, which I set for myself... um... two days ago. But hey, vibrators aren't made to be used just externally, now are they? So let's just nix that silly rule (was I drunk when I wrote that? I may have been) and move ahead, shall we?

To the business at hand!

The Spice and I started our first evening together all alone in bed, with no external stimuli like partners, porn, or even sexy photos. It was just the two of us and my very active imagination. We got down to business on the first of the Spice's three vibrational settings, which range from "Is this thing on?" to "Holy mother of something-I-can't-say-cause-it'd-offend-religious-people!" and settled in for a long evening of experimentation.

Now I have to be perfectly honest with my assessment of what went on here. Every masturbation session is not equal to every other one, and so the results I might get from any particular bout with my Spice can be vastly different from any other. For instance, the first night we got together, I was pretty exhausted and stressed, and though the Spice's first setting almost brought me to orgasm because I desperately needed a release of stress, my body was too tired to go through the motions. We started on the low setting, and seeing that it was getting close to, but not doing, the trick, we amped up to the second, with similar results. The third setting, I think, numbed me genitals a bit, and after a half hour or so of deliciously fruitless fun, I gave up and fell asleep.
The second night was similar, but I wasn't tired nor nearly as stressed as the night before. No matter which setting I used or what pattern of switching between settings, I just couldn't seem to get to the climax with my brain and my Spice alone. I tried a variety of fantasies, used the Spice externally and with penetration, and even turned it around so the clit tickler was tickling a slightly lower spot... ahem. And though I approached orgasm many times, I never quite got pushed over it. This could very easily be a mental hurdle--since I hadn't gotten there the night before, my brain may have just been convinced it couldn't get there at all, and stopped my body from having all the fun I wanted to have (stupid brain). Or, maybe the Spice and I just aren't the match made in heaven that I thought we might be.
So, this morning, I tried again, this time using one of the foothills around my mountain of porn DVDs to help, and damned if the Spice didn't get me there in no time, on the third setting.

I'm not sure if this just means that I'm so used to watching porn it's easier to get off when there's some playing, or if I'm better at having orgasms in the morning, or if the Spice isn't really what I need. Sigh... I guess the only thing I can do is spend a few more days with it. Shit, life is tough, huh?

PS - Having had a mind-blowing orgasm before noon on a Thursday is TOTALLY worth it.

The Vibrator Diaries: An Introduction

Busy busy as a bumblebee this spring, and in delightful ways! I'm preparing to head to Miami for the gigantic Exxxotica Miami Beach adult industry convention at the end of this month, where WHACK! Magazine will be sharing a booth with the lovely, lascivious Lexi Love, the bodacious Trina Michaels, and the legendary Eve Laurence, and partying down! But before that happens, I'm making some forward motion with my TV pilot script, my book projects (there are two), a short article for Whore! magazine, a poetry translation project, interviews with some of the industry's most lickable stars (look for Sophia St. James, Erika Lust, Drew Deveaux, Jiz Lee, Justine Joli, and more in the next month or so, here, on TheWomansPOV, and at WHACK!), a long-form feature on Holland's Dusk TV channel, and my last article on the female POV and a review, both for Madison Young's TheWomansPOV. Busy much?

But before all that craziness goes down, I want to announce yet another project! Speaking of busy bumblebees, I've been thinking of buzzing, as my I got so much great feedback from commenters and private e-mailers about my vibrator pondering post last week that I've decided to set myself a new goal: find the perfect vibrator for my apparently-picky junk in the next few months! I realized from all your input that it's very likely I just haven't found the right vibe yet, and though I've got tons of them in my toybox (actually it's a set of drawers; that's how I roll), none have quite done the trick for me... And I bet I'm not the only one. Doing reviews of one product at a time, I've realized, is all well and good, but because I move from toy to toy quickly to do said reviews, I rarely get to spend any real quality time with any one in particular, going back for visits only now and then. But if it's difficult for me, the owner of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars worth of sex toys, to find one that works for me, I can't imagine how tough it must be for other ladies to do the same!

And so I'll be sharing my good vibrations, documenting my journey in blog form--nothing too explicit, but I'm going to take some time with different settings on different toys and report back in the hopes that what works AND what doesn't work for me might help readers discover what works for THEM. I'll revisit old friends, campaign to have more toys ent my way, and poll sexy scenesters in interviews about their favorite vibrating toys, and I will not stop until I've found the right clit tickler! I'm DEDICATED! After all, as Jiz Lee pointed out, May is National Masturbation Month, so there's no time like the present to start! I'll be reporting my findings as often as I can, in amongst all the other stuff I'm doing, so stay tuned for the results of my epic journey into the deep, dark wilds of my own perversion! I hope you'll enjoy it as much... well... almost as much... as I will!

Here's da rules:
1) I'll only be using vibrators as stimulation, so I can determine which vibe is best. No penetration
 or other stimulation except for my very active imagination.
2) I'll spend at least two or three sessions with each toy before moving on to the next, to get a real understanding of its functions.
3) I'll report back as often as possible, but don't expect erotica. I'm not good at going into salacious detail about sex in my writing, and I can't imagine I'll be any better at recounting masturbation. Expect silliness, not sexiness.
4) I'll actively pursue any leads anyone wants to give me on toys to try out! Give me suggestions, peeps!

That's it for now! Tonight I think I may snuggle up with my Evolved Spice vibe. We haven't talked for a while.

In the meantime, do check out Rae Threat's STUNNING photography featuring some of my favoritest porn people.

I'm A Rocki Whore

I arrived home last night to find several packages containing porn on my doorstep, but I was most excited about the one from Wicked Pictures. I've been eagerly awaiting (and dreading) the release of their epic Rocki Whore Picture Show since sometime last year, perusing backstage photos, watching YouTube BTS footage, interviewing director Brad Armstrong, and generally making a fuss. I'm one of those horribly geeky, die-hard, midnight-show-attending, dressing-up-in-leather Rocky Horror Picture Show fans, and I'm trapped between terror that the Wicked version will be a let down and total cringe-fest of badly botched rip-off, and slobbering excitement and hope that it might be a well-executed musical tribute to the original, with hardcore sex inserted where it's always been skipped over before. I'm leaning toward the latter of the two options; Brad Armstrong informed me that he wrote and directed the film to be as respectful as possible to the original and to its rabid fans, and though they couldn't get the rights to the original music, he said they wanted it to be more of an homage than a play-by-play ripoff, so I'm optimistic this will be good. I'll watch the movie for next week's review in WHACK! magazine, and I've got fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I'm even more optimistic because Wicked obviously is giving this film a lot of love and a LOT of promo! Some photos of my elaborate "unboxing" process...

Fingers crossed and pelvic thrusts, my little whores!

Poly Fi!

I've been thinking about all the things the Momentum conference brought up in my mind, and as it's officially an entire week since the conference was over, I'll try to put an end to my musings specifically related to it here and move on a bit with the blog. So let me try to state this simply and not-too-long-windedly:

I'm polyamorous.

Whew. There, that was pretty easy. Funny I was hung up on it for so long. But I was. I feel like I just "came out" to my readers, but that's silly, since I've been pretty open about the fact that I have at least one female and male lover for a while now, both here on the blog and on WHACK! Magazine, and though I doubt many of you have been following along all that closely or thinking a whole lot about it, it's not exactly particle physics. It's kind of out there.

But I've long held onto this "I don't want to put labels on it" mentality, partly out of, I think, fear. Fear that, as someone who's already labeled a porn and sex writer with a past in go-go dancing and researching swinging here in New York, I'd be easy to kick into the "weirdo" corner. Fear that if my relationship status were public along with my thoughts on performative sex, sex work, feminism, and etc, I'd lose some of my "everyman" appeal and become just another sex-crazed bohemian whack job. And, well, maybe I am. I guess I can't very well judge that for myself. But the sad truth is that people who live alternative lfiestyles and who openly label themselves to fit into a category are easier to write off as lunatics, nut-jobs, and so on.

I didn't want that. I've been told that a lot of my appeal as a writer is that I'm normal, but I talk about things that a lot of normal people don't like to talk about. My voice is understandable, approachable. I'm just a regular person who got caught up in this world of sex and porn and found it rather interesting. And I was afraid that if I announced it to the world, I'd no longer be a "regular person" people wanted to listen to.

Also, I think I wanted to be able to tell myself I wasn't living this way because I wanted to be part of a group or follow some ideology that someone somewhere set up. I didn't want to be a follower of Heinlein or subscribe to some set of rules that I didn't know existed just because a lot of poly people do that. I wanted to be doing this on my own terms, because there are two people I love and respect and want to be intimate with, and I didn't want to end up beholden to a meet-up group or a set of principles that had nothing to do with me. I want to be my own person, dammit!

But at Momentum, I attended a panel on non-monogamy where we discussed the in-fighting that goes on the sex-positive community. Swingers often dislike poly people and vice versa, master/slave couples are often contemptuous of more causal sub/dom people, and so forth. And I realized that in order to be proudly poly, I don't have to follow a group or a leader or a set of rules, but I do have to respect people who do and be happy that they are living their lives in the open as much as they can. The more of us in non-traditional relationship models who stick together and help each other out in public, the stronger we are! The important part is that we are doing it and being unashamed of ourselves and our lives, providing public models of non-standard relationships that people can see, and maybe gawk at, but at least be exposed to. Even if they're laughing at us or terrified by us, our presence in the world, out and open and happy and living ethically and responsibly even in our fringe lifestyles, can make people think about relationships and the many ways they can form and grow and thrive. I never expected to be a poly person, really. I just give all of myself in every relationship. I form deep, attached friendships and even more attached romances, and I find that I feel more fulfilled and able to fulfill others when I give that love more liberally. Love is, as they say, a never-ending resource. The more you give, the more you have to give. And I find that to be true. And so maybe I'm not as "normal" as I wish I was, but as a writer and thinker who's here to help other people open their minds, hearts, and lives up to an acceptance of sex and pornography and alternative lifestyles, it would be hypocritical and damaging for me to continue to hold back my whole truth. I'm poly. And I'm happy to be so.

At Momentum, I also realized that it's important for "normal people" like me, and most other poly people, most likely, to be voices for our little corner of the population. I won't make any radical declarations about being "the voice of the community," since I'm still not sure I want to get deeply involved in a group mentality about a very private part of my life. I may very well not be poly forever, and I don't want to go around now saying things I'll regret later. But that's the beautiful thing about being open to these ideas and recognizing that applying a label to myself doesn't meant the end of individuality: I am myself and I am this way now, but that doesn't mean that I can't be something else later on. And what I know myself to be, after having heard it many times, is a "normal" person who happens to believe in non-monogamy. The idea of polyamory, polyfidelity, and hundreds of other non-typical lifestyle models can be daunting to most mainstream people, but in the end these models aren't difficult to figure out or to then respect. One just has to be open to hearing about them. And as someone who believes that everyone should be able to decide what relationship model fits them best, and that some people may never try anything new if they don't know it exists, I want to share my life and my experiences in a "normal" way. I want to be able to field questions if people have them. I want to make this part of my life accessible to anyone who's curious, interested, or even appalled. Because it's not what I am or what defines me, but it's part of me, and you know what? Since I've thought about this, I've introduced myself to several people as poly. I've casually mentioned my girlfriend and my boyfriend in the same breath. And hardly anyone has batted an eye.

So here I am, in the sunlight! It feels pretty good.

Lady Porn Week: Porn I Recommend to Everybody, Day 4

And, last but certainly not least in today's "Porn I Recommend to Everyone" as part of Lady Porn Day Week (Lady Porn Week?):

4) For those of you who are into the story and the sex, who want to see sex as part of a story, who want to see sex from new and different angles, but want to see it in ways that most porn never explores... For those who are into real looking sex where things don't always go perfectly, where awkwardness and nervousness are a part of the experience like they are in real life, and yet is filmed by someone who knows how to use a camera (amateur stuff is great, but the lighting's always terrible, the TV's always on in the background, and then the cat jumps up on the bed... ick)... May I recommend Jennifer Lyon Bell's Blue Artichoke Films. Lyon Bell, a Harvard grad and sexual pioneer, makes her own brand of "explicit erotic" film that doesn't follow any formula you've ever seen. These are films first, erotic second, and explicit third (some aren't even explicit, but are so erotic that the explicitness isn't necessary for the hotness to be scorching). They'll make you think, but only after they've made you wet. Personally, I love them. They're still new to the US, originating as they do in the Netherlands, where Lyon Bell is living and working (and teaching)--jump on a totally worthwhile bandwagon now and get your own copy of Matinee and Headshot (a remake of the original Andy Warhol short film, but this time with a more hetero bent). No matter what you think you're expecting, you won't be disappointed and you will probably be pleasantly surprised.

Lady Porn Day(Week): Porn I Recommend to Everybody, Day 3

Today's recommendation, for those of you who aren't so much into the mainstream straight stuff, or the traditional lesbian setups, or the annoying "plots" getting in the way of hardcore action...

3) The Crash Pad Series. This delectable, dirty, devious collection of scenes from Pink and White, started and still run by the indomitable Shine Louise Houston, is neither for the faint of heart nor the easily intimidated by genderqueerness, but it is, hands down, some of the hottest action you will see this side of heaven (I dunno about you guys, but my version of heaven is a LOT hotter than the traditional "harps and halos" scene). The Crash Pad Series, touted on its website as "Authentic Lesbian, Dyke, Trans, Queer Porn," features almost 100 scenes over 14 seasons so far, and stars some of the most beautiful people of every gender and sexual preference, color and shape, size and kinkiness level. From super-sexy standbys like Jiz Lee to Dylan Ryan to Lorelei Lee to real-life partners and non-professionals in the world of porn, the episodes encompass sexual expression, perversion, and sensuality in an honest, skillful, and often strikingly artistic way. There is very little in the way of background story or dialogue in most scenes, and once you've signed up at the website, there is so much variation from scene to scene, that whether you're a trans man who likes watching lipstick lesbians giggle through a scene or a novice bisexual woman who wants to see what a trans man does with his strap-on, you'll find material enough to get off to several times over. I can't say it enough: The Crash Pad will blow your load, and your mind, all in one place.

Lady Porn Day: Porn I Recommend to Everybody, Day 2

On Day 2 I might be going down a slightly unexpected path, but stick with me, people. Another porn company I'm going to recommend to ladies is...

2) Jennaration X Studios, owned and operated by the multi-AVN winning reigning princess of porn, Jenna Haze. It's way mainstream for my style, I know. But it's easy for weird, out-there, queer-porn-loving, sex-blogging me to forget sometimes that mainstream is mainstream for a reason: lots of people like it. And though I don't necessarily love all of the titles that Jenna directs, because some fit into niche categories that I personally find distasteful (like the standard industry model of "interracial" movies, which involve almost exclusively black men and white women and reinforce all KINDS of racial stereotypes), the titles of hers that I have chosen to watch have been scorching hot.

Jenna Haze is one of the first porn stars I ever met in person, and she impressed me immediately. She is all business, all the time, which is saying a lot given that her name is taken from a certain type of intoxicating, flowering plant that is somewhat more legal in Cali than in most places, if you get my drift, and she enjoys imbibing the smoke from this plant often and in quantity. But despite what might be a handicap for other aspiring businesswomen, Jenna is "on" at every moment, networking, promoting, and working her ass off to make it as a female director in an incredibly male-dominated world. Mainstream straight porn is a shark tank, no doubt about it, and Jenna is a very small lady shark, but she is very fierce.

And she makes fantastic movies. "Legs Up, Hose Down" nearly flattened me, and "Meow," an all-girl romp through mainstream lesbian heaven, was divine. Jenna stars in most of her movies, and she's searingly sexy, delightfully dirty, and powerfully in control at all times. She loves making her movies, and it shows in her spirited and vocal and raunchy performances. And, well, she's mind-blowingly hot, too. Her scenes are just that--scenes. No acting, no overly ponderous storyline. Just straight-up sex, served on a silver platter, usually with a side of anal. And not only are her movies excellent, they're directed by Haze herself and maintain a slightly off perspective for mainstream porn: you can tell there's a woman in control here, even if it's just a tad skewed from scenes directed by men. And an added bonus: Haze only films natural-breasted women. Not that I have any issue, per se, with fake breasts, but I prefer natural ones. They looks so much softer and more squeezable!

All her distribution is through Jules Jordan Video: you can find her DVDs here. For those of you who like porn to be a little easy, a little niche-y, and a little less interested in exploring politicized gender than some of the other companies I may recommend, Jennaration X is for you.

Lady Porn Day: Porn I Recommend to Ladies/Queers/Everybody, Day 1

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Bondage

Today I had my first experience with real bondage. It was amazing. And I am exhausted. I will write more later. Snoooooze!

Critics Make Me Meditate on BJs

This morning I got up, turned on my computer, and saw a tweet referring to this article on PopPorn by Bobbi Starr, referencing my blog entries on blowjobs in queer porn a while back (Part I and Part II) and referencing me as an ivory-tower gazing academic who thinks all blowjobs are rooted in misogyny.

I was like. Woah.

I was like, "I don't think that at all! What the hell! I was trying to say in those posts that I was surprised to see rough blowjobs in queer porn because it's easy to see them in straight porn as misogynist, but maybe they're not misogynist. Here's why it's easy to think that they might be, but here are people who aren't coming from the same background doing it... maybe people just like it." I was all sad, because I thought people were attacking me without reading what I was really writing. But then I re-read the posts and, though I do think I made the points I was going for, actually, I realized I didn't make them very clearly. I spent way more time talking about why it's easy to see a lot of blowjobs in porn as gross and upsettingly anti-female than I did talking about why maybe they're not that way. I think, in my mind, I was trying to explain how I got to the point of turning these assumptions on their heads by explaining why those assumptions might be made, but kind of forgot to make my own point.

And so, Bobbi, touche. I deserve the criticism for not saying what I wanted to say. So now I'm going to say it, and explain a little bit more about my perspective.

My entrance into the porn industry as a professional (rather than a casual masturbator, which I'd been before and which had given me my only exposure to pornography hitherto) was as a DVD reviewer for a print magazine. As a sometimes-online-porn user, I'd been hoping that "real" porn wasn't quite as violent and wild as online porn; I had it in my head somehow that they came from different places, or that some of the upsetting images I saw on my computer screen were the most extreme stuff out there. That "real" porn would be a little more relaxed and less intense. Cause honestly, we've all been there. We're clicking around finding video clips and jerking off and then when we've got our rocks off and start thinking about the things we just masturbated to, we're like, "Woah, that was... I might be a bad person for liking that."

Of course, I come from an incredibly rigid background when it comes to what makes a good person vs. a bad person. I'd been raised in an environment where not just irresponsible or violent sex was bad, but all sex outside of marriage was bad, and where anybody who enjoyed thinking about it or doing it was bad, too. So I'd found myself particularly vulnerable to recalling the gaping buttholes I'd just seen on my computer screen and thinking, "I am terrible. How could I have found that sexy?" I think I still do have serious issues with enjoying some of the things I see while watching and thinking about and writing about porn, and that's where a lot of my perspective comes from. I'm trying to deal with my own puritan past, and it's tough.

But anyway, back to the career in writing about porn. The thing is, when I got my first DVD review assignment, I was all chipper to see some "real porn" and feel better about things. And when I popped that DVD into the player, one of the first things I saw was a really intense, gagging, choking, mucousy, almost violent, gonzo-style blowjob. Even with all my online porn clicking, I'd never seen anything so extreme involving a mouth and a penis, and, well, it kind of terrified me. I realized all at once that: 1) "real" porn was the same as online porn and I was going to have to overcome some of my conservative upbringing to deal with it, 2) I was going to be watching a lot of this, and 3) there was a lot I had to learn.

I'm still learning. But put yourself in my place at that point: young, naive, starry-eyed, and with absolutely no knowledge of went into actually filming a porno. When I saw a girl choking on a penis and gagging, coughing up mucous, etc, my instinctual response was, "This doesn't look like fun. It looks like she's about to vomit. And that guy is saying things like, 'Suck it, bitch' to her. It seems like she's being abused. Holy crap. Should I be watching this?"

I think this is an instinctual response that many people might have. It's like when you accidentally walk in on your parents having sex when you're a kid; it looks, sounds, and seems very violent and upsetting at the time. And if they don't bother telling you later that they were actually enjoying themselves and that everything's ok, you might walk away from that experience thinking that Mom and Dad have some serious issues they need to work out, and that sex is primarily a bad thing. It takes a while to get past this idea, based solely on how little you know and what you saw: sex itself is an almost-violent act. It's intensely physical, often aggressive, and accompanied by sounds and facial expressions that are very much akin to those we make when we're in pain.

I had the same kind of gut reaction when I saw that first "real" porn blowjob: looking back I realize a lot of things I thought weren't true. That woman wasn't being abused--she was on that set being filmed because she wanted to be. She'd signed the paperwork, voluntarily performed the BJ, and gotten paid for it. That guy saying rather impertinent things to her didn't hate or think she was just a hole to fuck: he was playing along and enjoying himself and doing what he was getting paid to do. And the act itself, with all the mucous and gagging, was most likely being very much enjoyed by both parties. In later years, I've talked to and heard many performers talk about how much they love sloppy, extreme blowjobs. They love to give them and receive them. It's a way to make the experience of sex more extreme, it pushes their bodies further, it's hot that they're so into it that choking is just part of the performance. And I realize all this is true; gagging on a cock can be just another way of showing one's devotion to getting your partner off, and it can be really erotic in its own way, just like being spanked or tied up or called names or any number of other things that, to an outsider, can seem really negative.

And here's where I think I got mixed up in that last blog post that Bobbi took offense to. I'm no longer as much of an outsider as I was when I reviewed my first DVD. I realize that extreme blowjobs are not necessarily acts of misogynist rage, and as a matter of fact, particularly when they're on film, they are almost always the exact opposite of that. Both performers want to be doing what they're doing, or they wouldn't, duh, be doing it. But when I was an outsider, they appeared different to me. It looked, from the outside, like this woman was being degraded by this man. Like she was being humiliated and made to choke against her will. And that illusion alone can be really hot. But when I first saw it, well, I was traumatized.

And I think a lot of other people might easily feel the same way when they see their first gagging blowjob scene. From the outside, they very often look like unpleasant experiences. Depending on how they're filmed and presented, they can look like anything from the abject debasement of the woman being "forced" to take them, or like a woman with rabies is devouring a poor, unsuspecting man with an erection. The physical acts being performed don't always scream "super erotic and really fun." And that's where my hesitation around blowjobs like this comes from: my own first, traumatic experience and the realization that other people with my same type of mindset and upbringing, who know nothing about the process of filming pornography professionally, might have the same kind of reaction to it. It's hard to show someone with no background in these things a video of a girl gasping for breath, drooling, coughing, and gagging and say, "No, really, she's having a blast!" She probably is having a blast, but all outward appearances don't tend to show it.

So I think about the outsider, the person who doesn't know about these things, watching a scene where someone is doing this, and I think that this person might assume a lot of things. Firstly, that this is misogynist. At the practical level, it's kind of anything but. But from a viewer's perspective, it can very easily be interpreted that way. It looks like, in many cases, a man is force-feeding his penis to a woman who is gagging on it. And that looks kind of un-PC. And un-PC kind of makes people uncomfortable. Of course, the point that can be made here is that what's PC and what people want to do in the bedroom are only very tangentially related, and that lots of women WANT to be force-fed cocks. (Big reveal: I like giving sloppy, gaggy blowjobs, too. I really do. Ask my boyfriend.) But what something looks like and what it actually is are very often miles apart. So when the uninitiated viewer sees this stuff, especially if that person is a woman who was raised like I was, wrong assumptions are easily made and porn can easily be labeled as "bad" and written off.

And that would really be a shame. Andrea Dworkin and her posse of anti-porn early feminists sure thought that porn was "bad" because it objectified women, probably based on similar experiences of seeing something and misinterpreting what they saw, then developing a philosophy around it. I'd dare say we've come a long way since all that crap in the 70's. But the visuals of a woman on her knees choking on a dick can easily misled women now to think those same kinds of thoughts.

My first experience of giving a blowjob was a little traumatic, too. I didn't know what I was doing or even want to be doing it, but I sure wanted to make my boyfriend happy, and he sure as shit shoved that thing as far back into my throat as it would go. And that made me incredibly unhappy. It made me choke. And I didn't like that. Of course, that was long ago and at the time I was in no way ready to deal with that, but the experience traumatized me and made me have my first startling thought, as a rebellious teen, that maybe my mom was right and sex was shameful and bad, because I felt pretty ashamed that I'd let him do that to me. Looking back I realize that the shame I felt was primarily a result of being forced to do something I didn't want to do, whether it was sexual or not. It was the loss of dignity in not being given a choice that upset me, but because of its nature I wrote it off as sexual shame. And I know that I'm not the only person out there with an experience like this in her past. We are so conditioned to find sexual things shameful that we often overlook the realities of the situations we're examining. Like blowjob scenes in porn. We've heard for years, most of us for our whole lives, that porn is demeaning to women and full of mancentric images, and then when we see these blowjobs that are so easily misinterpreted, we can project our own shame issues onto it and think that the woman must be feeling ashamed and debased. Not empowered and super sexy, like she probably is.

And so, though I obviously have some biases based on experience and some deep-rooted issues with my own sexuality in general, the main issue I have with blowjobs that include gagging isn't that I think it's impossible for people to enjoy them. (Again, I do enjoy them, myself.) The issue is that people already have a tendency to think badly of porn, and it's very easy to project seriously wrong-minded ideas onto the things we see porn performers doing, based on our biases and cultural conditioning. I've done it, and I'd like to think I'm working on overcoming it. But it's worth thinking about that people might come into an experience trying to be open-minded and come away thinking that Dworkin and her minions were right, that porn DOES degrade women and that it IS bad.

It's not. I LOVE porn. I think porn is necessary, important, vital. I think that porn is a reflection of who and what we are. And many of us are lovers of extreme blowjobs. But it's all about context, and sometimes it's jarring. It can particularly jarring, or it was for me, when it's in queer porn, where the gender binary I was expecting not to find seemed to be mimicked in women given women blowjobs with fake cocks. I thought there could be no point, and why would a woman do something to another woman that can so easily be misinterpreted as misogynist?

But when I saw that, I started questioning my own assumptions about why people do these things. I didn't see any evidence of misogyny in these scenes; maybe the performers were just so used to seeing more mainstream performers do this that they thought they had to... Or maybe gagging blowjobs are just ubiquitous now. Maybe there once was misogyny in the act, but now it's just what we do because we've all seen it done, tried it, and liked it. I realized that I, little miss conservative-upbringing, give head with mucous, gagging, and intensity. That I like doing it. And, holy crap, by extension, I finally realized that most of the time, when it comes to sex, people do what they do not because porn tells them to or because they hate other genders, but because they want to. And even though watching someone drooling and gagging might make it seem as though blowjobs and porn itself are both evil, they're not. They're just complicated.

"Shameless"ly Promoting TV and My Own Genius

1) First off, my new favorite show ever got a shout-out from Fleshbot: "'Shameless' Explores the Every Day Life of the Cam Girl." I'm not the only porn-minded individual in love with this series! Go, go, gadget good-taste! And they bring up an excellent point: the lives of ladies like this are shrouded in mystery to most of us. What do they actually DO to make money, is it illegal, and how can I get some? What's it like to be one and be married? How much money do they make? Etc, etc. Maybe we'll learn some more from this show, or maybe we'll just get to see lots more boobies. Either way, I'm entertained.

2) I swear I'm going to review something soon. It's been quite a weekend so far and I have a long day ahead of me, but I promise, in the next few days, you'll get a review of either "Matinee" from Blue Artichoke Films (beauuutiful) or "Imperfect Angels: Episode 10" from Girlfriends. Or, maybe if you're all really good and comment lots, you'll get BOTH!

3) I realized something last night. It was only a matter of time till it happened, or at least until I noticed it, I suppose, but it brought up some interesting questions. The issue at hand? I tend to think every TV show, movie, music video, etc. that I watch these days is a porno. Or at least I find myself narrating over top of the real dialogue and action to fit things into more porny scenarios, which are playing out in my head all the time. I've been watching lots of porn professionally for over three years now and writing about it from a critical standpoint for two, and by this point I'm often disappointed by how unsexy I can find porn, nudity, sexual tension... the whole mess of it. When you spend all day thinking about this stuff, it just loses some of its pizazz, you know? But the set-up? I apparently find the idea of turning any mundane situation into a porno FASCINATING, or at least funny. The action might bore the crap out of me unless it's incredibly inspired by now, but the unending ways in which one can combine the characters on an old Japanese sit-com/action series? Hilarious! Exhibit A: Watching Great Teacher Onizuka last night with my girlfriend. "Oh, man, look at the Head Teacher! She's such a cougar! Onizuka is totally going to bone her! Look, she's checking him out from behind those old-school plastic frames. Get her out of those high-wasted pants, Onizuka!" Or, "Wow, I can't believe that delivery guy didn't just bend her over that table, I mean, it's RIGHT THERE! Why would they NOT?"
And yet, when confronted with most real people, bodies, and situations, I find the idea of spontaneous porn-bustion unsettling. Exhibit B: earlier in the evening at my girlfriend's last night, hanging out with a bunch of friends in a very warm room where some of the dudes had removed their shirts for comfort. I looked at the panorama of people who were semi-clothed and immediately saw the possibility for a pornographic situation arising, but hoped against hope it wouldn't happen. That would be awkward, and I'd have to figure out how to respond and, I mean, I don't want to get involved, cause I KNOW these people and it could get weird. Plus it'd just be so trite and predictable and, well, yawwwwn.
Hm. Interesting dichotomy, no? Remember my bemoaning the idea of porn as fantasy and how it affects our perception of real sex and our own personal emotional involvement? I was SO right.

Filament and Thigh Strength

First things first: Filament magazine is having an open erotic fiction contest! Filament magazine is THE BOMB--they're a British "lady mag" that focuses on the female gaze in eroticizing and sexualizing the male form, with beautiful art and photography layered with intelligent and interesting articles. It's magical, and now they're offering all their readers a chance to participate! Huzzah!
Personally, I'd love to submit something, but despite my love of writing about all things sexy, I've found that I'm absolutely hopeless at writing erotica. I focus too much on thinky stuff, the background, the setup, and not nearly enough on the hot details. I still harbor dreams of someday being a contributing writer for "the thinking woman's crumpet," but haven't found the right angle yet, and erotic fiction certainly ain't it. So, readers, HAVE AT! Enjoy! And thanks to Violet Blue, the judge and one of my favorite ladies, for pointing this out to me on my blog roll before I got around to Filament's website.

Second, I just learned how to do reverse cowgirl! I've never successfully accomplished this before, so I'm very proud. It's not exactly easy, but it's not as difficult as I thought it would be, either. I do, however, need to work on my thighs if I want to be able to keep it up for more than a few minutes at a time. New Years Resolution #4. It's interesting, because I've never been much of a fan of reverse cowgirl, at least as far as watching porn goes. It's an awkward position to get into, for one thing, and there's always some fumbling that's not so sexy to watch. But more than that, although I know it's used to showcase the woman's body while hiding the man's (and that in itself annoys me: show me some man-mean!), I think it makes the woman look a little stretched out and angular. With all her limbs splayed and her stomach thrust out, she looks more like a stick bug than a sensual, curvy lady. But despite my reservations, it feels pretty damn good. I will be trying it again.

Thirdly, in another first-ever accomplishment, today I sent in my second of four articles on the female POV in pornography to Madison Young's TheWomansPOV.com, along with a photo that I took OF MY OWN POV! (No, that's not it above: I'm WAY pastier than that, and I don't live somewhere that promotes beach-going in January.) I don't know if they'll run it or not, but I felt extremely awesome about pointing a camera down at my own body and clicking the button. For all I've written over the years about how making sexy images isn't shameful or wrong, and how it's actually empowering and important, this is the first time I've taken my own advice and done the deed. I hope it makes the website! I'll keep y'all posted.