A Cinekink 2012 Wrap-Up Part I

Well, dearest degenerates, Cinekink NYC 2012 has come and gone. Many have cum thinking about what they saw, and much debauchery has gone on at after-parties. The festival was, as before, a place for weirdos and pervs and sophisticates to come together, learn, and celebrate each other’s kinks and craziness. I was once again delighted to count myself among their number, and honored to be asked to do on-site interviews for the event this year. Video interviews are posted at Cinekink.com, featuring myself and many of the filmmakers who repped their films. Check it out, please! I think I did a rather excellent job.

Sadly, I didn’t see all the films at the festival this year, as I wasn’t able to make it to the opening gala or to some of the other screenings over the course of the week. However, I did see a boat load of them, and I, as always, have got some commentary to offer.

The winner of the Best Documentary Feature, Stage Brother, by Richard Buonagurio, was… well… it was weird but riveting. (Interviews will be up soon and I’ll link to it.) The real-life story of a young man who decides to become his sister’s manager on her journey to try to get into Playboy magazine, the film documented not only the baldly pseudo-incestuous relationship between a budding maybe-porn star and her doting brother, but also the havoc her career trajectory and narcissism wreaked upon the rest of the family. Tinged with sexual danger, rooted firmly in familial love, featuring WHACK! favorite Brittany Andrews (who served as a mentor to Jennifer), and spiked with fake-tan and melodrama, Stage Brother was Jersey Shore with an actual emotional connection. It was creepy and sometimes too-honest, but I couldn’t look away.

After Fall, Winter, the second in an ongoing series by Eric Schaeffer, was described as an S&M love story, but unfolded in on-location-in-Paris cinematic splendor as more of a troubled-kink primer on What Not to Do as a Kinkster. The acting was superb, the pacing mostly on par, the visuals lush… but the take-away message? While director/star Eric Schaeffer insisted in the Q&A that the film was kink-positive, I saw some problems in its Romeo & Juliet gone awry ending and its treatment of BDSM as merely an outlet for the negativity built up in both characters rather than a part of a healthy sexual experience. The film was absolutely beautiful, but I felt that it may have oversimplified its characters motivations for involvement in their kinks. But don’t let that minor indictment keep you away from this movie—it’s truly beautiful and well worth your own assessment.

Sirwiñakuy, by Amy Hesketh, an oddball modern take on an Aymara practice of “trail marriage” in which a bride is essentially kidnapped and “tested” by a prospective husband, was beautiful in a classic French film way—long silences, awkward moments, wan heroine and all. A truer S&M love story, along the same lines as Secretary, but with a much more artistic flair.

Sisterhood of the Sash was a shorter and obviously more female version of last year’s feature-length documentary on International Mr. Leather, Kink Crusaders. Sisterhood of the Sash, a reflection on the 25^th annual Internation Miss Leather competition, was a beautiful, thoughtful, and lovely ode to the women of the leather community, who turned out in force to support it. The leather community never ceases to impress me—as far as kink communities go, this one has come together in a very real, very powerful, and very political way. Both IMsL 2011 herself, the indomitable and beautiful Sarah Vibes, and IMsBB (and Salacious Magazine editor in chief), kd, were there for the screening and to represent the leather family.

Cabaret Desire, Erika Lust’s most recent major release based on the idea of the Poetry Brothel (of which yours truly is a practicing whoreish member) was… Well, you all know or can very easily discover how much I love Cabaret Desire. The film is fun, sexy, and utterly appropriate for Cinekink, though seeing it on the big screen as opposed to my teeny tiny television at home was a bit of a revelation. For one thing, I hadn’t caught, on my tiny TV, that there is a vajazzled vagina in this movie. I don’t think the filmmaker was particularly thrilled about it, as it’s only indirectly shown in two small flashes, but, still. Vajazzling. You heard it here first. And, though I am a massive fan of Ms. Lust’s work as an erotic filmmaker and had advocated for the film’s legitimacy among members of the Poetry Brothel beforehand, I did realize during a few of the more wet-slapping-sound intense sex scenes that watching sex in a dark theater can be a bit weird.

The documentary (A)sexual, about the small but increasingly vocal group of people worldwide who identify as absolutely not interested in sex, was enthralling. It didn’t pretend to be a purely objective docu, as it followed closely the exploits of ­­­­­­­David Jay, the leader of the asexual movement, with all his eccentricities on unapologetic display. It didn’t take asexuality as a reality an more than it denied its existence as a sexual identity, and it showcased the problems inherent in such an identification. But it also, very adeptly and almost lovingly, addressed the importance of the right to self-identification in matters of sex. The haters who declared that asexuality was not real, the television commentators who demanded an explanation, the shaming attitude that sexual people tended to take and the apologetic stances that asexuals were forced to adopt in response… it all made me sit up and take note. What was going on here? If sex positive people like myself are forever complaining about the existence and prevalence of sexual shame—if we are concerned that sex is considered shameful by our culture, rather than beautiful—and if we thought that one way to escape this shame might be to renounce sex… well, then we were wrong. Apparently to have sex is shameful, but so is not to have sex. There is no way to win. This is perhaps even more problematic than I thought it was. There is no way to win, aside, of course, from having marital sex in the dark with the lights off in missionary position for the purposes of procreation. How depressing. And how important! Asexuals may be a largely unstudied minority, and who knows? Maybe they’re not even a real phenomenon as far as psychologists are concerned. But the issues they bring to light, and the community they provide for one another, is of the deepest cultural importance imaginable.

—Miss Lagsalot

FUCKSTYLES of the Queer and Famous

Up this week on WHACK! Magazine, my review of FUCKSTYLES, the newest amazing thing from Courtney Trouble and Tina Horn:

FUCKSTYLES of the Queer and Famous — “By the time [your brain’s] gotten comfortable, you’ve already taken your pants off!”
Directed by Courtney Trouble and Tina Horn
STYLISH FUCKERS Arabelle Raphael, Jiz Lee, Wolf Hudson, James Darling, Papi Coxxx, Jolene Parton, April Flroes, Sophia St. James, Maya Mayhem, Max Wellander, Varina Adams, Tobi Hill-Meyer
Queer porn is awesome. I know you all know how I feel about it, but I think I realized one of the main reasons why I feel that way as I watched Trouble Films’ newest release, Fuckstyles, which drops today (and yes, that is romantic). Not only is this movie filmed beautifully with lots of natural light and attention to detail and incredibly hot, juicy sex between partners so fucking into each other that sometimes they don’t want to open up for the camera at all, but also because this movie gets your brain and your boner going. I love it, and other porn like it, because you have to pay attention for at least a little while. There is no niche, no neat little category, that can tell you what’s going in any of the scenes here. This is not “tranny” porn or “lesbian” porn or “gay” porn or “straight” porn or any combo, really, of those easy compartments. Oh, no. In queer porn, there are no givens, and there are no niches. You can’t make assumptions about any person you see, because each person has their own distinct way of identifying, behaving, sucking, fucking, licking, and cumming, and many of them don’t match up directly with what you’d think when you see that person on the screen for the first time.
For instance, watching Maya Mayhem and Tobi Hill-Meyer go at it, it might take a few minutes of adjustment for many of us. They are both trans women who have not opted for bottom surgery, yet they use a strap-on when they go at it. Tobi wears it over her panties for about half the scene. This takes a few moment to process in your mind, before — whether you’re into what they’re doing or not — you have to admit that they are loving it and it’s pretty hot. And when April Flores goes solo with a large black dildo, there’s nothing typical about her masturbation — this one takes some time and some thought. Likewise, James Darling, a trans man, and Wolf Hudson, a biological man, go at it, by the time you’ve caught up with the bodies you’re dealing with, you’re far too deep into a searingly, sizzlingly, my-eyeballs-might-pop-out-of-my-head-if-I-don’t-touch-myself scene. It’s almost a trap: your brain has to get into the action and by the time it’s gotten comfortable, you’ve already taken your pants off without realizing it.
The point here is that you have to watch carefully for at least a little while to “figure out” what’s going on in many of these cases. Who is topping, who is bottoming, and whether this is working or not for you. (Certainly not everyone will enjoy a trans-man and cis-man scene any more than everyone will enjoy a scene with two femme lesbians, for instance.) But in queer porn, it’s harder to get an instant read than it is for a standard boy/girl scene from, say, Vivid. And that’s awesome because it makes you pay attention.
And that’s the beauty of it. Realizing that I had to focus on the people in queer porn made me realize one of the things that’s most disturbing about porn and often with the way we approach sex: we sometimes do treat people’s bodies like they’re a given. Like we know everything there is to know about the people we’re watching or fucking because they’re doing what we expect with bodies that are predictable. But in reality, it’s never a given. You can look at someone who identifies with their birth gender and every single societal norm dictating the expression of that gender and its attendant sexuality, but you cannot know anything about that person just from glancing at a box cover. We all have our secrets, our backgrounds, our fetishes, our own little tics that make us the interesting and sexy creatures we are, but in most porn those differences can get ironed out. We assume we already know everything we need to know about a person when we see whether they have a cock or not, and so on. But that’s ridiculous. We need to pay attention to everyone, not just queer people whose bodies and sex look different enough that we have to spend a little time thinking to come to a small understanding of who they are. But in queer porn, those differences and nuances are simply on display. They are not feared or squashed or shoved under any rug — they are flown high, like sails on the queer pirate ship, and they are fascinating and sexy because they are not just bodies. The bodies they have bring some of their stories with them, and they become interesting and much, much sexier because of that interest. I can’t get enough.
—Miss Lagsalot

Cabaret Desire

CABARET DESIRE
Lust Cinema
A film by Erika Lust
CABARETS AND CABARETTES Toni Fontana, Sofia Prada, Saskia Condal, Mario Mentrup, Lady Diamond, Matisse, Liandra Dahl, Didac Duran, Samia Duarte

Here’s why Erika Lust’s films are so awesome: they’re really films. I don’t mean that they’re super-arty or intellectual, even though sometimes they are. And I don’t mean that they have totally engrossing plots and developed characters, although that’s sometimes the case. I mean that Erika Lust makes films that are about sex and that are totally unafraid of showing the sex graphically, but that’s not all that’s going on. There’s music—really good and very sensual music—and background and imagination and realism and eroticism all rolled into sleek, utterly sexy packages. They are entertaining to watch and definitely breathless enough to spur couples to shag or singles to whack it. And they are made with loving care — Cabaret Desire, for instance, was filmed this summer and has just been widely released. For comparison’s sake, most porn movies are released within a month of shooting. Lust Cinema gives more than a shit about its films — it gives a heart. Cabaret Desire has all of the above going for it, and perhaps more. It’s taken the best of Lust’s films and boiled them down into a slick, delectable mix that’s driven more by desire than by sex, a difficult balance to strike and an even more difficult one to keep.

Cabaret Desire is a heady series of vignettes tied together by storytellers at the eponymous cabaret where poets and storytellers mingle with burlesque dancers and jazz singers in a sensual environment, titillating clients with tales of lust for a fee. Members of The Poetry Brothel from New York City and Barcelona serve as narrators for the four carnal encounters that unfold as actors pound out the action to great effect. I’m not sure how she does it, but Erika Lust always pairs actors who seem to have been wanting desperately to get into each other’s pants for years. The chemistry on screen between Sofia, for instance, and her two lovers of different sexes both named Alex, is face-melting hot. Sofia fucks both of them for the viewers’ pleasure, but in two different scenes spliced together into one fluidly delicious scene that manages to be explicit, immoral (in that she’s sleeping with both of them behind their backs), and tasteful all at once.

With a deftness that would be dazzling on its own if it weren’t overshadowed by the panties-moistening sexiness on screen, Lust juggles casting both male and female actors in an equally desirable light, a feat that American pornographers and even mainstream filmmakers are generally incapable of accomplishing. Not only are the men in her films usually as well-rounded in character as they are in their jeans, they’re shown to be objects of not just lust, but full-fledged desire: in a cat-burglary scene that could easily have become a woman-in-latex ogle-fest, Lust instead decides to undress and expose a skinny older man who is physically unimpressive while leaving the curvaceous actress entirely sheathed in a catsuit — except for her crotch. And even with her face in a mask and her body concealed, the degree to which she wants to bone the scrawny old naked dude is undeniable and carries the scene from creepy territory into absolutely fappable land. It’s like magic: desire can transform people.

Ok, let’s be honest. I could go on and on about Cabaret Desire. It’s a film by one of my favorite filmmakers. It’s European and therefore exotic, but it stars several people I happen to know personally from The Poetry Brothel, which makes the super-sexy mood even more surreal. It’s filmed in such a way that fans of softcore (are there fans of softcore? I don’t know any) can enjoy it, but hardcore hand-lovers still have plenty to appreciate. The scenes are cut together so that the sex is part of the story: flashbacks layer over the present and sex mingles with background in beautifully filmed patchwork that gives the brain something to do while the body responds. The music is fantastic. The cabaret environment is stunningly sexy. The whole film drips sensuality and sweats eroticism. You should watch it. Right now.

San Francisco Wrap-Up: Ultimate Surrender at Kink.com

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We Are Experiencing Scheduling Difficulties

I want to apologize for the paucity in blogs the past week, folks... I'm having a sort of headless chicken few weeks here and not much time for blogging. Cross my heart and hope to die: next week will be better! I'm working on a few posts and will be all over this bitch soon!

In the meantime, well, it's the weekend! Go have fun, for goodness sake! Get away from your computer and enjoy the weather before it gets cold! Silly bastards.

...still here? Ok, fine, go read my review of Salacious Magazine over at WHACK! It's fabulous, as is Salacious itself. Want proof? Here:

"It’s like Penthouse Forum back in the day, except if Penthouse was a particularly horny sub boi with a thing for comic books and sleaze, and had a bunch of super-queeny theater kid friends who all wrote dirty love letters to each other. Kind of drunk. And covered in glitter, leather, and Vaseline."

Go read it! Love you all!

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.

Girlvert: A Review, with Apologies

My darlings, I am so sorry for being an absentee blogger! My life has been unendingly crazy for the past few weeks, and I have not had any time whatsoever for blogging! But I have had some time on subway and etc to think, so when I do get the time to sit down and write, watch out!

In the meantime, check out the review I did for WHACK! Magazine of Oriana Small/Ashley Blue's book, Girlvert: A Porno Memoir, now out from A Barnacle Book. If you're interested, like me, in issues in adult entertainment like obscenity, empowerment, consent, drug abuse, and health, this is a must-read from one of the most controversial porn stars of the 2000's.

A smidgen for you:

"But it wasn’t the shocking language, the joy of upsetting the strangers waiting for the 2 train with me, or even the lurid descriptions of fringe sexual acts that impressed me about Girlvert as much as it was its simple, unaffected, unforced honesty. Oriana/Ashley is obviously intelligent enough and has enough perspective on her own twisted story to write a deeply convincing book if she wants to. She could write a treatise on why porn is or isn’t degrading, what people should understand about the porn biz, why she regrets or doesn’t regret about her actions… Really, any weepy, whiny, convert-now fable with a moral at the end, using her massive life experiences as the media to paint almost any kind of picture she wants — but she doesn’t. She doesn’t argue one way or another, for or against any of the things she has done, the people she has encountered, the porn industry, its supporters, or its detractors. She simply tells the tale, never claiming to be an expert on anything except herself. She spends no time moralizing or telling her audience what to think, and that’s admirable. In a world where porn is constantly at the center of debates full of windbags on both sides trying to tell people what to think, and where most of us decline to use our brains at all when it comes to the sex industry, Ashley/Oriana refuses to do the thinking for her readers. She instead pulled off something I myself could never do — she just wrote a memoir, one so full of violence and paranoia and deep empathy toward her own younger, stupider, deeply troubled self in a wise, conflicted voice — and a totally honest one."

Check out the full review, leave comments (please? Oriana/Ashley will be reading them with interest, so now's your chance to ask her your questions!) and go buy the book! And stay tuned--an interview with Oriana/Ashley will follow shortly!

Watching Porn Makes Me Peckish

Earlier this week I reviewed Wicked’s new film Mesmerized, a feature length film about a guy (Danny Wylde, who is great) so blinded by love for his best friend (Alektra Blue) that he can’t realize she’s kind of a heartless bitch. There are problems aplenty with the plot, but you can read about those over at WHACK! What I want to talk about here is the fact that, while writing the review, I had to stop myself from making food references because I realized that I use them way too often in my reviews.

My recent writing for WHACK! and other publications includes references to beef fillets, steak sauce, smorgasbords, feasts, buffets, brandy, pancakes, pancake batter, chocolate cake… The list goes on and on. Over the course of my three-ish years writing for and about porn, I’d wager I’ve covered every major food group and regional cuisine in my reviews, set copy, columns, and musings.

I guess this isn’t so very surprising: sex and food go well together, as anyone who’s ever wanted a sandwich immediately after finishing up can tell you. They’re both things we all crave and need to be happy. And they’re so much fun! But I’ve started wondering why I particularly talk about food in a sexual context so much.

Is it because it’s just an easy reference to grab onto when thinking about something else that’s satisfying and visceral? Or is it because I have the munchies when I watch porn? Or is it because porn is so much a part of my life that it’s almost like sustenance to me? Hm. Not sure if any of these are good answers. Certainly worth asking, though.

Then again... maybe I should just look into splooshing.

Artcore

ARTCORE

Written and Directed by: C. Batts Fly

Run time 78 minutes

Starring: April Flores, Courtney Trouble, Damali Dares, Drew Deveaux, Kelly Shibari, Hoodman

Music by: Hustle PUNCH, Jung Hollywood, Trouble Mind, Ryan Kinetic

Artcore is an homage to Carlos Batts’ muse, April Flores, the powerhouse BBW performer so stunning she's landed her own art-rotica movie. She's one big, bad, mind-blowingly sexual woman, and she doesn’t get much hotter than this. Exploring many areas of her impressive sexual repertoire, from queer sex to lesbian sex to group sex to subbing to dominating, April is at her hot and heavy best here. The music is fanastic, the visuals are beautiful, and the exploration of so many themes in one relatively short movie makes me ask myself a lot of questions. As such, I think Artcore's label as an ‘art film’ isn’t far off the mark. I've never been a big fan of art films myself, so I'm a bit out of my element when trying to wrap my brain around the combination of visual, musical, and sexual elements that this one presents, but then, I think trying to wrap one's brain around a film in the first place can designate it, subjectively, as art. Right?

Of course, the visuals are mostly stunning. From an aesthetic point of view, this is definitely artsy. April is indeed a muse--she slides in and out of personas and outfits and situations with a chameleon-like effortlessness, yet maintains an intense, malleable, undeniable beauty throughout. Her eyes convey everything from the vacuous expression of a true fuck-doll in some scenes to the predatory glare of a huntress in others, while her curvy body lets the viewer experience and really appreciate the voluptuousness sensuality of a larger woman. Her co-stars are all eye-candy of the highest order, too. In the first scene, with Courtney Trouble and Kelly Shibari, glamour is everywhere, from the beautiful jewelry layered across generous and ginormous breasts to the sparkles on their eyelashes to the giggling the three share as they fuck each other. A luscious hotel suite later provides a grandiose setting for a queer fuck-fest with Drew Deveaux, whose androgynous frame and in-your-face tease confuse traditional gender roles just enough to bring on a raging hard-on.

And yet not all the scenes are so easy on the eyes. The movie's last scene, featuring ebony beauty Damali Dares and April in a mutual masturbation after-hours romp, is partially filmed in red light, a surefire way to sexify any scene, but then switches to early-morning glare, destroying the mood of fantasy a red light can cast over almost anything. Earlier, in her dom scene with the super-subordinate Hoodman, April's surroundings are devoid of decoration or really any eye-candy at all. In the harsh light of mid-day, the kinky scene plays out in a bare-bones white-walled room, a garage of some sort (maybe?), and a fluorescent-lit bathtub, giving a hard-to-handle realism to the events as they unfold. Men being anally probed on hands and knees in ski masks, and the like, are usually filmed in dark, dimly lit basements. Bringing this kind of activity into daylight seems all wrong by contrast. And thus, I suppose, an art film makes us think: I don’t know if it was the hood (one of which was a blow-up doll mask--very thinky!) or the taboo play that was going on in front of me that brought up my deeply-buried conservative reactions. I kept finding myself with my hand raised to my mouth in fear that her stiletto would puncture his cock, or gasping as April delivered a spit-spewing blowjob for the ages, then reminding myself that these acts were representative of what people do in their bedrooms. They are part of our sexual culture and there is absolutely no room for judging them; but the starkness with which they are presented here, in the harsh light of midday in unadorned rooms, seems to go against expectations. I kept thinking, although it was only about 8:30 when I was watching this scene, that it must be around 3:00 am. These are things, I was appalled to find myself thinking, that should only happen late at night. But why? Because they’re taboo? Fuck taboo, I thought, while allowing the shock I felt at watching April transform into a muse-cum-dominatrix. And when April smeared her lipstick with Hoodman’s cock, making herself look just like a blow-up doll, I found myself saying, “Woah. Yes. That had to be done.”

But why? Because it made me think about subordination and domination in sex? Because it made me rethink my view of April Flores as almost untouchably beautiful? Or because... well... Wait. This is art. But it's not always beautiful. Or is this art? Or is this shock? Or is shock necessary now, to make us think and appreciate art? My god. What a mindfuck. And as such, I'm giving Carlos Batts an A+ for making a porn reviewer get, stay, and think, hard. (Metaphorically speaking, of course. I'm a girl.)

Read more about and see more of C. Batts Fly's work here.

Get your daily eyeful of April Flores here.

Enjoy more "Padded Kink" via Kelly Shibari's excellent site here.

Let Courtney Trouble rock your world here.

Tristan Taormino's Expert Guide to Female Orgasms

1) I considered reviewing this excellent piece of fornication filmage once for WHACK! Magazine and once for my blog, placing more emphasis on how the feministy parts of my being were gratified by its lady-friendliness, but this morning is a bit hectic and I'm running out the door shortly, so rather than recap something I've already written, let me link to my WHACK! review. But I'll also say a few words here:
If you're a woman, or actually if you're a man or a trans-gendered person or an anybody who has any interest in the female anatomy and giving it pleasure, please get a copy of this movie! Tristan Taormino is a sex advice luminary, and everything I've ever seen that she's put her hand to has been magical, but this movie takes it up a few notches to make my squishy bits squee with glee. Not only does Tristan speak to her audience in understandable, clear, bell-like tones about how to get familiar with each womanly set of genitals and to make it feel good, but she spends a lot of time and effort highlighting just how different each set of genitals can be and how important it is to communicate that set of genitals' preferences and desires. She addresses women's fears and frustrations with trying to find the ever-elusive orgasm directly: "If you can't orgasm without a vibrator, that's ok. There. Is nothing. Wrong with you," and "If you can't bring yourself to orgasm, it's too tall an order to ask someone else to do it for you" (may be misquoted) are particular gems. So many women, and men, and others, live in constant fear that there is something wrong with their lady-bits because the entire subject of female pleasure, womanly parts, and especially she-gasms, is so shrouded in mystery that we many women don't even understand how their bodies are supposed to work. The nebulous bits of knowledge we pick up along life's path about how our anatomies are supposed to work, mostly seen in movies and TV shows where female sexuality is idealized and completely non-problematic, lead us to think that our incongruous and sometimes difficult parts are somehow WRONG if they're not following the pattern Sex and the City told us they should. Pain and problems and uncertainty can plague the experience of trying to reach orgasm, resulting in an absolutely terrifying number of women NEVER having had one. This needs to change, and Tristan Taormino, thank goodness, is on a mission to change it by educating, and filming some fabulous sex scenes that focus entirely on female pleasure to help the process.
In the movie, women of many types are presented in the throes of pleasure to show the huge variations in what women like and experience during sex: white women, black women, romantic women, kinky women, straight women, queer women, squirters, anal enthusiasts, and everything in between. The lineup of performers includes some of my all-time favorites (Jiz Lee, Madison Young, Mr. Marcus, Dylan Ryan, Sean Michaels, James Deen, Evan Stone), and they all perform beautifully.
And, perhaps most jaw-droppingly: there's only ONE male orgasm in the movie.
Anyway, go read the full review at WHACK! for more info.

2) That's all for today! I'm busy working on pitches to some big-time magazines and pinning down some interviews on gangbang etiquette, so stay tuned!

MATINEE

Matinee

Blue Artichoke Films

Written, Cast, and Directed by Jennifer Lyon Bell

Starring: Alicia Whitsover, Steven McAlistair

Run time: 34 minutes

I'm just starting my acquaintance with Jennifer Lyon Bell of Blue Artichoke Films. I'm lucky enough to be writing a series of articles that enters her purvey for Madison Young's TheWomansPOV.com, and got even luckier when I was able to get a copy of "Matinee" for consideration from her last week. "Matinee" is only a half hour long, and though I wouldn't call it a porn film because it's NOT one, it's still worth mentioning that it packs the emotional range of perhaps fifteen regular porn films into that short amount of time, in a totally unexpected and breathtakingly fresh way. I'm absolutely hooked. Whereas I often send my best sexy movies to friends as gifts, I'm pretty sure this one is going on the shelf in the living room for repeated viewings. Let me try to explain why. I may fall short of the mark: good film-making puts words to shame with the whole "pictures are worth a thousand" thing, and "Matinee" is so powerful that I don't know if even my long-winded ramblings will be able to encapsulate what I mean to convey. But let me try.

"Matinee" shows us an afternoon in the life of a struggling play in a small theater. The lead actress, who's just taken over for another, more famous woman, and the lead actor, a popular Scottish soap opera star making his stage debut, are worried about their onstage chemistry. They just can't seem to get the sexy bits right. He suggests they break routine and try some new blocking since the director's gone that afternoon anyway. She resists, apparently terrified of going too far in front of press and a big talent agent who will be in attendance that afternoon. The tension, as she waits to start the big scene, is powerfully present. And...

Ok, you know from the moment their eyes meet on the stage that she's planning to have sex with him. If you haven't figured that out by the time it happens, sorry for the spoiler, but c'mon, it's right there. She took a condom out of her bag and put it in her pocket before she went onstage, so you're likely to have figured this out. But what you can't have figured out, until you watch this scene, is how different it will be from the sex you expect these two people to have.

Maybe I'm different from the typical viewer; I live in the world of adult entertainment, where every sex scene is pre-planned and performed by mostly-seasoned professionals who go in knowing exactly what to do and how to do it, how to turn their heads to the right side and move their legs so the camera can get in there, and so on. So when I know a sex scene is coming, I expect it to look that way. I expect the performers to be gung-ho, moaning and writhing and hitting all the right spots, no matter what sector of the porn community they usually perform in. Professional adult entertainers are just that: professional. But Jennifer Lyon Bell did not cast porn performers, she cast actors. Actors who had never done explicit sex on camera before. Actors who are skilled at their craft of taking the audience on a journey with them to wherever their characters' minds and hearts are at. And their characters are at an extremely awkward moment in their lives.

The scene between them is fraught, difficult, strained, and absolutely heart-breakingly tense, while managing to be beautiful and revelatory, all at once. While the audience looks on, uncertain about what to make of the events unfolding, the two actors on stage approach each other with no idea what is about to happen: she knows she's going to try to have sex with him in front of a live audience, but he only knows that something has changed in her demeanor, and he's trying to go along with it. As clothing is dropped and pleasure is approached, they go through the hesitant, jerky motions of first-time lovers. They are confused and awkward and utterly self-conscious in front of the audience that they can't forget is there. But their fumbling is raw, unplanned, and real. Sitting at home I was caught between an inability to look away, getting horny, and cringing "Ooooh god it's so awkward" discomfort. And I was hooked.

It's been a while since I've watched a sex scene and gotten SO into it. Whereas usually the sex is the whole point, in this film it's the catalyst for a connection between the actors themselves and the audience they're playing to. There is so much more going on than two people being intimate that the viewer doesn't know what to make of it, but can't help but sympathize and, well, get a little moist, too. The interplay between their desire to transform their on-stage chemistry, their awareness of the huge risk they are taking, their inability to escape the audience's gaze and their simultaneous need for it, their unfamiliarity with each other's bodies, the slowly developing connection between them, and the incredibly meta structure of the whole film as a performance is simply...

Well, back in my McSweeney's days I remember writing a column that called for real films with real sex and real art in them. I knew that these films probably existed out there somewhere, but I didn't know where to look and I was afraid they'd be pretentious French arthouse films I'd have no interest in. Instead, I found "Matinee," an experience that anyone who finds most erotic film missing a real human element absolutely must have.

Well, there. I wish I had more elegant words to describe how I feel about "Matinee," but I really can't do it justice. Just get a copy. I promise you won't be sorry.

DRENCHED IN LOVE: MEH SEX, LAME WRITING, NOT ALL THAT BAD

Drenched in Love

Wicked Passions

Written and directed by Sky Blue

Run Time 92 minutes

Starring: Marcus London, Poppy Morgan. Britney Amber, Anthony Rosano. Barrett Blade, Briana Blair. TJ Cummings, Halie James. Carlo Carrera, Diana Doll.

Just for shits and giggles, I decided it would be fun to review one of those "romantic" porno flicks the big studios come out with, and obligingly enough, Drenched in Love from Wicked Pictures arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. Amusingly enough, when I first saw it, I got extremely excited; visions of squirters gushing all over their costars and drenching the camera with their liquid passion danced in my head. But then I realized that, 1) the DVD was from Wicked, and they're not so much into the squirting, 2) it was labeled "romance" on the front and "display in couples section on the back." Ugh. It was one of THOSE movies. The ones that women are supposed to be able to enjoy with their man-friends to expand their sexual repertoire, which usually, in my experience, equal the same kind of cinematic yawn-fest that Oscar-winning movies often prove to be. Case in point: my mother made me watch The Blind Side with her a few weeks back. I have no problem with Sandra Bullock, but are you SHITTING me? That movie was complete sentimental bullshit starring a woman who seemed to have many more things on her mind than acting. Kind of like Drenched in Love turned out to be. There was no squirting, no realism, and actually, now that I think about it, I don't think there was even a single real female orgasm. Porn for women? I hope not.

Ok, ok, I shouldn't be so mean. There are plenty of women out there who have dreams of meeting their dream man and having sex with him under a waterfall or in a hunting lodge or in a majestic hotel suite with a blazing fire, just after he's proposed or they made an intense connection at a bar, or whatever. It's not that the scenarios director Skye Blue put together are necessarily wrong about what some women want to see, and far be it from me to say that I have the last word on what women want out of porn. We're just as varied as... well... we are varied. And porn like this, where the goal is to get the man and the ring and then reward him with sex that's so cleaned up and perfect it hardly resembles the real thing for most of us, can be kind of like watching a Disney movie. Pure fantasy. And again, that can be great for some people.

As a matter of fact, this is the kind of porn that would be a great learning aid for young people, if their parents or guardians were willing to share it with them before they got their dirty little fingers into the filthy gaping hole that is online porn. For as much as I want to mock the over-emphasis this movie places on love and romance, and for as forced as the connections between the performers seem to be, given the looks on their faces, this is an example of porn that does in fact show an emotional connection, even if only in spirit. I don't think any of the stars in Drenched in Love were really transported by passion to an entirely new place, as really excellent sex and porn can sometimes do, but they did at least act with the utmost respect toward one another. And if there's one thing that most of the smut on the interwebz does not show to teenagers sneaking a surf late at night after their parents are in bed, its mutual respect between performers. The women in Drenched in Love may not be having the best sex of their lives here, but they all, at least according to their voiceovers, desire the men they're paired with and openly consent to having sex with them. The men and women show a great deal of care for one another, share long looks during the act, and even hold hands afterward. As far as "sex is best when it's between two consenting adults who respect and desire one another" ideology goes, this is the kind of porn that kids should see early on, before all the gonzo fish-hooking, skull-fucking, and BDSM gets to them, as it does at earlier and earlier ages every day.

Of course, this kind of weepy sentimentality may result in a somewhat Disney-fied view of sex for young ladies, but then again, so does pretty much every other piece of romantic codswallop out there, from magazines to romance novels to Lifetime TV. At least this one is anatomically correct, if you don't count those implants. Or the fact that the "rugged huntsman" in the third scene has bleached blond hair, earrings, and perfectly groomed pubes--as far as I'm aware, most rugged outdoorsmen aren't so much into the grooming process. And of course, even those of us who would love to have sex under a waterfall someday would probably never want to do so in five inch stilletos, nor would those of us who decide to hook up with a hot guy we just met at a bar really want to do it on a park bench behind the bar. But these are trifling matters: what really bothers me is that in the "huntsman" scene, there's a rifle on the coffee table. Guns and sex DO NOT MIX, kids.

So all things told, Drenched in Love has its pros and cons. I personally find the romance angle tired, the sex completely uninspiring, and the whole thing ridiculous, but I can see a place for movies like this in sex ed classes (with extremely liberal teachers) or parents' living rooms for their kids to find and "sneak" late at night... except for one last thing. The poetry.

I'm not kidding. There's poetry of a sort up in this bitch, and it's BAD. It's one thing to show people bad sex and say it's good, because good and bad are relative terms, after all, and anyway there are lots of people who might never have good sex in their whole lives, so setting expectations relatively low might be a good idea. But bad poetry? That's just a damn crime. I mean, seriously, how many poets are out there right now starving and just WISHING they could land a gig where their poetry would get read during a movie? How much good poetry is never seen or heard by the masses? How much would it cost to hire a real poet/writer to pen a few lines about the theme "drenched in love, but no squirting"? Not much. But instead of well-crafted lines that would make this whole movie the perfect educational tool, we get this:

“Pure liquid ecstasy. Serene, capturing an outpour of passion. The delirium of cascading affections.” Oh come ON. “Tranquilized by their thirst for lust they surrender into a trance of satisfaction, letting nothing deny their absolute pleasure. Laced together, they fully entwine, sinking below the surface of knowing. Make way for the pulses of a perfect rhythm. Bathing themselves in serenity.” Um, good sex is NOT serene. Nor does a "thirst for lust" make any sense, much less tranquilize anybody. Who WROTE this drivel?

In scene two, we're treated to the following poor excuse for writing:

“I am a dreamer envisioning all light, a warm night, the champagne flowing, the way the fabric feels against my soft, sexy skin. The walk of enchantment toward the man of my desires. Creating memories to last a lifetime, centered around the illusions in my mind. Yes, we are all dreamers. Looking for love along the pathways of life. Dancing with devotion.” BARF.

Seriously, Wicked? You've got a not-so-bad thing going here and then you go and fuck it up with execrable writing like this? I'm appalled.

Justine Joli: Lost

JUSTINE JOLI: LOST

Triangle Films

Directed by Kathryn Annelle

Starring: Justine Joli, Ariel X, Claire Adams, Kimberly Kane, Nina Hartley, Sasha Grey, Syd Blakovich

We all know one of those girls. You know, that one who's so goddamn beautiful, so smart, so sexy, so capable of so much... and yet she just can't seem to get her shit together? Just can't manage to get her head on straight? Justine Joli, in Triangle Films' Lost, has an especially hard time with the head straightening thing because she's only interested in pussy, anyway. And pussy follows her wherever she goes, falling all over itself to get her into bed and falling in love with her once her legs are spread.

On the heels of a bad breakup (with Claire Adams, who caught her literally fucking the plumber, Syd Blakovich in the hottest predictable porn scene I've watched in ages), Justine embarks on a depressed journey into the arms of woman after woman, trying to get back to some kind of normalcy.

But, here's the thing. You know what the real issue with those girls is? Those girls you fall so desperately in love with because you think they're so under-appreciated, just never given a chance to shine? Who you eventually realize you're only in love with because of their perfect tits and sky-high libido and sweet smile? Here's the thing: they get plenty of chances to make their lives better, most of them. But they're just too busy fucking everything that moves to worry about it; when you're gorgeous enough to get by on someone else's charity because that person also mistook lust for love, just like everyone else you're fucking, you don't really need to work hard, do you? Or live up to your potential? No, you don't. You can just keep on being pretty and sweet and sexy in turns, and it all works out. But, fair warning: you might get beat up with a dildo (by Kimberly Kane), scorned for boning the wrong person (Sasha Grey), and maybe even whipped with a belt by Nina Hartley for your slutty behavior. Which, all things considered, could be a hell of a lot worse. And, for those of us just watching, it doesn't get much better.

I'll come right out and admit it: I have a huge crush on Justine Joli, and I'm pretty sure everyone else in the world with a penchant for pussy does, too. If they don't, they just haven't seen her movies yet. I have, as you may have noticed, a soft spot for pale redheads, so Justine is right up my alley, and after watching her blaze her way through scene after sizzling scene in Lost, I would really like to be up in her alley, if you know what I mean. The woman is not only possessed of one of the most beautiful bodies this side of Eden (although it occurred to me as I watched Lost that she's so skinny right in the middle that I wonder where she keeps all her organs), but she's also skilled at using it for everything from taking a delicious-looking hate fuck to finger-fucking Sasha Grey within an inch of her life to riding a strap-on like a rodeo cowboy to bringing Syd Blakovich to a screaming orgasm. She's like a cooch chameleon, this girl.

But Justine wasn't the only one ripping up the screen in Lost: her encounters with some of the lesbian porn community's hottest performers brought me face to face, at last, with my borderline-obsessive lust for Syd Blakovich, my slightly uncomfortable appreciation of Sasha Grey's beauty and intensity, and my utterly obsequious worship of Nina Hartley. I discovered Ariel X's beautiful cheekbones and a whole new appreciation for visually stimulating scissoring, and was wowed by Claire Adams' quadruple pussy piercings. I swooned over Kimberly Kane's ability to own a scene, and a girlfriend who's gone astray, with raw girl power. And while I won't say that Lost is exactly a modern masterpiece of cinema--the movie follows a mostly-understandable plot but falls into its own inability to explain what's going on from time to time, and it has really no ending whatsoever other than a satisfied Nina and Justine grinning at each other after an intense strap-on sesh--it was, I'm willing to say, more engaging than your average blue film. Justine can act, and she's joined by a cast of other proficient performers (and of course writer/director Kathryn Anelle) who put together a series of sex scenes that made me slobber with a storyline that made me go, "Yeah, I know that girl! I don't pity her misfortune, but I have always wanted to watch her get fucked." I'm going to go ahead and mention that it's a rare thing, even for a connoisseur of porn like myself, to identify with a fuck flick, but Lost got me there. Oh, and it got me there, too--and by there I mean to orgasm--several times over.

Jenna Haze; Legs Up, Hose Down

Jenna Haze: Legs Up, Hose Down

Jennaration X Studios/Jules Jordan Video

Directed by: Jenna Haze

Run time: 5 hours 18 minutes

Starring: Jenna Haze, April O’Neil, Tori Black, Lily LaBeau, Lexi Belle, Faye Reagan, Zoe Voss, Marie Luv, Scott Nails, Voodoo, Mick Blue, Toni Ribas, Mark Ashley, Prince Yahshua, James Deen

Thank you, Jenna Haze. No, really, thank you. I mean it. You are setting an example for other performers to follow and you are doing it in stunning style. Not only are you one of the most exquisitely beautiful women to have ever made her way into the world of pornography, but you've done it completely on your own terms, worked your perfect little ass off, won every award there was to win, and used your power in the industry to start your own production studio where you make the porn that you damn well want to make. I hope that more talented and beautiful young women like you, with good heads on their shoulders and clear visions of what they want out of their careers, will become the driving forces behind movies like Legs Up, Hose Down.

I'm serious. It's not that Jenna Haze is the first female performer to ever become a powerhouse on the sweat of her own brow and using her own business acumen, but she's done it in a way that I really fucking respect. She makes movies, and performs in them, because she loves doing what she does. And she makes them the way she wants to: dirty, deviant, and delicious, with a heaping portion of beautiful thrown in for good measure. I wouldn't call most of Jennaration X's movies necessarily artsy, but that's part of their beauty: Jenna's not trying to make artsy sex cinema, she's just doing what she wants with makeup and costuming and cinematography, and in the process coming up with a lot of new aesthetics that are, without even trying to be, absolutely gorgeous.

All that being said, I hope that you readers appreciate the hard work I do for you as much I appreciate the hard work Jenna does for all of us. I sat down for an evening with Legs Up, Hose Down without realizing it was a double-disc set spanning over five hours of fucking. I wasn't prepared for the marathon I'd gotten myself into. I came too soon and then spent a few hours lolling around on the couch wondering if I went to the kitchen to get a snack if I'd miss something, then came again. And again.

Jenna told me at Exxxotica NJ this year that she thought Legs Up, Hose Down, was the best movie she'd ever directed, and while I can't say if that's true because I haven't seen all of her work, I can say that it's got to be up there. Legs Up, Hose Down is a stockings movie, but not purely and simply. Jenna experimented with dramatic makeup, wild colors, and fetishes ranging from stocking ripping (predictably enough) to foot worship (works with the stockings) to leg shaving (huh...) to things I don't even know how to name properly. She uses opening tease scenes heavily to showcase every one of the beautiful women she cast in varying lights, from soft and subtly sexy (in the cases of Zoe Voss, April O'Neil, Lexi Belle, and Faye Raegan) to 80's-tastic athleticy (i.e. Tori Black and Marie Luv) to I-want-to-bang-your-brains-out hot (a la Lily LaBeau and Ms. Haze herself).

Jenna and Zoe Voss start things up along with a delighted-to-be-there Scott Nails. Both the ladies are in patterned fishnets and ready to eat each other up before Mr. Nails steps in and helps them out with a few more digits and a dick to aid in their penetration needs. Jenna Haze has always stunned me in threesome scenes, because a more helpful third party you'll never see: she goes the extra mile to make sure everyone is having a good time by providing dirty talk, extra lubrication, and even hand-jobs when the dick is a little too big to fit the whole way in. She's intense, she's filthy, and she's fine.

Tori Black and Prince Yahshua take over the screen next, Tori in a teal stocking, head-band, and bra getup that is so eighties it's almost off-putting at first. Personally, I've never been a fan of teal, but Tori's stunning beauty and charisma on camera put my color preferences to rest, as did the scorching randiness that Prince brought to the scene. There was, it was obvious from his licking, biting, and kissing, absolutely no part of Tori he did not want to lick. For that matter, there's no part of her that I don't want to lick, either. The only issue with this scene was that Tori and Prince didn't seem very anatomically compatible: during their anal romp, his cock kept popping out, so often that it became quite distracting after a while.

And then God said, let there be sexy, and there was April O'Neil. I don't know how this successful performer has stayed largely off my radar for so long, but... WOW. This little lady is a leggy masterpiece of feminine perfection with a mind-blowing rack the likes of which are rarely seen, even in porn. Jennaration X only hires all-natural women, and had I not known this I might have assumed April's tatas were fake, they are so perfect. Full, round, and heavy on the bottom, with perky nipples sticking up at the ultimate angle, her thin waist and long, lean legs, along with her round bottom, add up to the perfect figure. I'm talking Jessica Rabbit stacked. I'm talking mud-flap stacked. I'm talking jaw-dropping amazingness. And that's all before James Deen came in to join her in the bathroom. If anyone out there doesn't love James Deen, and/or envy him, they haven't watched him perform; he seems to bring out the best in his co-stars, and for lovely April, the best is the cutest series of gasps and giggles and squeals you can imagine. Had I a load to blow, as does a male, it would have been gone halfway through this scene, and again at the end, when those lovely all-natural nubbins wrap lovingly around Deen's dick.

Faye Reagan, Lexi Belle, and Jenna rip up an old-timey antique couch in a randy three-way so full of tulle it's sometimes hard to see the action in the next scene, but from their screams, gyrations, O-faces, and the flapping and bouncing of their breasts (and their tutus), they turn from pixie-colored ballerinas into intensely dirty bitches. I have a feeling most real-life ballet dancers might take issue with their form, but these ladies aren't going for delicate dance; they're here for the orgasms, and they each get their fill.

On Disc 2 (oh yes, dearest reader, I watched both discs because that's how much I love you), things get started with Marie Luv and Mark Ashley, who go through a series of slightly less-than-athletic positions which could be somewhat disappointing after the posturing of Jenna's last scene, if it weren't for the fact that Marie is getting off so intensely and so often that she appears to be literally unable to move her limbs on her own. There is screaming, there is groaning, there is militant groaning, and there is so much lady-juice flowing that what could be a boring scene is transformed into a riveting romp.

The penultimate scene is a doozy: the lovely Lily LaBeau takes on Mick Blue and Toni Ribas with a perverted gusto that drove me to the brink of insanity. Lily is swelteringly hot as always and she knows how to kink up a pair of black stockings like nobody's business. I'm talking using them for all kinds of purposes that only the most seasoned of nylon nuts would even think of, and even though it's kinky as hell, it's still sexy even to the non-nylon-maniac like myself.

Last but certainly not least, Jenna dolls herself up in a beautiful, old-fashioned looking brown leather-and-silk-stockings getup that could probably get the job done for most at-home cock-jockeys, but then she spends a good half hour doing all manner of dirty things to Voodoo that will leave most viewers drained and happily exhausted.

Even after almost five and a half hours of hardcore porn, I can honestly say I'm still excited by what I've just seen. Jenna Haze is a masterful director and a hell of a lady, and my pants and hat are both off to her!

The Crash Pad Series: Episode 21

The Crash Pad Series: Episode 21
Starring: Princess Donna, Lorelei Lee, Jake

Because I am a total badass and because I happen to absolutely love good lesbian porn (which, in this sad Y-chromosomally-centric world, is a rare and precious commodity), I have managed to nab myself a press pass to CrashPadSeries.com, and I am going to make damn good use of it. But not just for my own pleasure! Oh no, I am far too dedicated a journalist to selfishly horde my horny prize! Also, I really like gloating over my free fap fare. For those of you not in the know, The Crash Pad Series is a runaway hit of a website and DVD series started a few years back by Pink and White Productions, a San Francisco queer studio obsessed with showing off how endlessly variable and scaldingly hot the experience of queer sex can be. The Crash Pad Series, as I've noted in other publications, is neither for the faint of heart, nor the vanilla of taste, nor the narrow of mind; the performers in these scenes run the gamut from male-identifying trans people who sport permanent, synthetic hard-ons beneath their jeans to super-femme lipstick lesbians to bisexual babes with a passing craving for cooch, and with a rich representation of just about every variation in between. These scenes feature a lot of sex acts that most mainstream, hetero porn simply doesn't dare to film for fear of the ever-nebulous obscenity laws that hover over the heads of most of the LA adult industry (think fisting, double-fisting, lesbian DPs, squirting, and so on). What's portrayed--an honest depiction of sex that rarely gets talked about or even acknowledged--can be far and away more hardcore than what your average Adult DVD Emporium's "extreme" rack has to offer, and it's not dumbed down with airbrushing, tons of makeup, Hollywood lighting, or the expectations of a heterocentric director. The sex in this series is raw, real (many of the performers are actually lovers off camera), and--as far as I'm concerned--blazingly hot in a way that the carefully arranged, formulaic fornication of mainstream porn rarely achieves. While the visuals can be shocking at first, the passion behind them is stunning throughout, and it's the level of intensity these performers bring out that gets me almost every time.

Anyway. The review. Right...

I decided to dive into this dyke fest with Episode 21, a "hot and sweaty" threesome between the raven haired ravishing beauty Princess Donna, the beautifully breasted blonde Lorelei Lee, and the super-butch and super-sexy Jake (who identifies as male, so he'll be referred to as such throughout this review). After getting off to a somewhat slow, nervous start, the three loosen up and go at it in almost every imaginable combination and using just about every technique in the book: strap-on, vibrator, fingering, cunnilingus, smothering, fisting, double-fisting, dirty talk, asphyxiation, and even mild slap play. It's hardcore. But don't let the scary f- and s- words intimidate you! All three of them have smiles on their faces almost the whole way through, especially when, as Lorelei rides Jake's face and Donna rides his cock, their eyes lock and their ecstasy mingles with shocked laughter at what a fucking great time their having. There are several moments like that throughout this scene: while Jake takes it mostly upon himself to see the other two ladies satisfied, all three of them share looks of intense connection, wide smiles of uninhibited pleasure, and the best of all, screaming orgasms.

I don't think I've seen orgasms this intense since... Hm... I don't know. Maybe the last time I watched some Crash Pad Series scenes. I'm not being obsequious. The great thing about good girl-on-girl action is that it's virtually unimpeded by the breaks that men need to take. No offense, guys, it's just how you're built; after orgasm number one, you have to take some time off. It's cool. We understand. But for pure viewing pleasure and constant sexual intensity, hardcore lesbian sex is almost always the way to go because these women don't need to stop after orgasm number one, or number two, or really after any, unless they want to or unless they pass out from exhaustion. And when Jake spent a good five minutes with one fist in each co-star's pussy simultaneously, while those two costars stared into each other's wide-open faces, despite the fact that she'd already come at least twice, Princess Donna came so hard she uttered a scream so melodic it was almost a song. And I mean a scream. The neighbors definitely heard. The people outside probably did, too. This is the kind of pleasure that women reach when they've been worked on for a while, mercilessly prevented from calming their genitals until their faces contort, their eyes squeeze shut, their chests go bright red, and their throats open to let out a ululation of unadulterated, almost violent, ecstasy.

This is when I creamed my pants for the first time. I mean, how often does a porn viewer get to see this kind of pleasure? Sure, we get to see lots of pounding and fingering and fucking, and hear lots of "Oohs" and "Aahs" and "Oh yeah that's it right there"s, but how many times, in your porn-viewing life, have you seen a woman throw her head back and just let herself go completely? I bet you can count it on one hand.

I recommend this scene for many reasons (for instance, Lorelei Lee's whimpers and moans sound very much like she's crying, but she's smiling the whole time; I find Jake's clothed, quiet determination to bring the other two to orgasm intriguing; I realized that the only orgasmic sound that comes close to the primal scream in awesomeness is that moan muffled by the ass and cooch of the woman who's sitting on the orgasmer's face; Lorelei and Donna both have absolutely beautiful breasts; double fisting is kind of scary but really amazing to watch ["I didn't know I could fit that much inside of me," says Lorelei in the BTS footage]; Jake actually gets his fist stuck inside Lorelei and much laughter ensues...), but that one orgasm alone is worth two thumbs way up.

The scene, and several others I've seen on CrashPadSeries.com, and JuicyPinkBox.com, and in other queer lesbian porn, raise some questions that may be naive of me if I want to call myself a dyke porn lover, but I am curious... I'm going to try to track me down some masculine female/male-identifying performers and interview them... I'll report back, ladies and gents! In the meantime