An Idea I'm Putting Out There: is this how The Secret works?

I was talking to someone at my day job yesterday about an upcoming book we're publishing called something like "How to Attract Wealth with the Power of Your Mind" or some other ridiculous BS, and we got to talking about The Secret, and its attendant BS. But then, later that afternoon, I was perusing some links posted on Facebook by the indomitable Cindy Gallop about entrepreneurialism (btw, hardest word ever to spell) and spreading ideas to get what you want. And then later that evening I was watching the interview I did with Cindy for my art show (which, by the way, is moving right along--there are postcards bieng mailed out next week, the press release is up, and the brochure will be ready to go in two weeks). After that, I watched the interview I did with Sinnamon Love for the art show. Both of them are fascinating. And, looking back on all the others... so are they all. Really.

I'm not a big go-back-and-look-at-your-work type. Especially if my work includes my own voice or image being played back. (It gives me the creeps, and I can't possibly really sound like that!) But over the past few weeks, as I've been digging into the 20+ hours of video interviews I've done with people of all kinds about their relationships to and thoughts about pornography, I've been able to forget that I was in the room when they happened. I forget that I've heard all of this before. Because, really, you guys, these interviews are riveting. Every single one of them is so interesting that I end up with pages upon pages of notes, and the overwhelming desire to go do more of them.

I went pretty far overboard as it is. I interviewed around twenty people, and had myself interviewed, as well. I'm looking for around an hour of finished-product video footage for this art show. One hour out of over 20. I have about three weeks in which to do all of this editing. I couldn't possibly interview anyone else for the show. But I still want to. Sitting down with people in their homes and having long chats, often upward of an hour, about how they feel about porn and how it relates to their own sex lives... It's just SO interesting. Everyone has something new to say, some interesting anecdote or novel point of view. Everyone is an expert on this subject. It's fantastic.

I've been forcing myself not to keep asking more people for interviews. The ones I've got now are enough and I can't possibly handle any more footage. But this stuff is so, so interesting. It's so, so worth sharing with the world. I kind of want to put the full videos of the interviews out there for everyone to see someday. And I really want to keep doing these interviews.

So I'm trying something "Secret"-like. I'm going to put a thought out there and see where it goes. Right now this is just a tiny seed of a thought and one that's very undeveloped, so I'll let it float for a bit before I make a decision about whether to pursue it; what I'm looking for now is feedback and ideas on how this could work:

What if I were to do more interviews? Spend maybe the next year collecting them from anyone who wants to do them (within certain limits of course)? Then maybe put them all together somewhere, on a website, in a documentary, something like that? I think the information in them would be interesting to everyone and maybe useful to sociologists and other scientists. I think the general public would find them so, so interesting. I'm putting together a website right now that will hold my blog, links to other articles, some creative pieces I've done, etc... and maybe I'll create a page for viewing the full interviews I've got so far. Maybe that would be interesting to people, and from that I could get more feedback to determine where to go next.

But the point is--this art show has begotten some of the most interesting and important conversations I have ever had. They are fascinating. They are important. I don't think these interviews should necessarily stop here. There are so many more people I want to talk to that I didn't have enough time or the right location to talk to yet (some of you already know who you are) whose stories and ideas are just as interesting as those I've already talked to. This could be one hell of a project.

What do you think? Help me out here, folks.

Reflections from Cinekink 2012: Part One

It's that glorious time of year here in NYC when the Cinekink film festival returns to the Anthology Film Archives to entertain, educate, and bring oft-hidden communities of kinksters and the curious together. I'm loving it so far! I've been chosen as a juror to help select winners from this year's short film offerings, which has been tough already given the quality of many of the shorts, and I'll be interviewing directors this Saturday after the Bring It! porn marathon, which is, of course, the most anticipated part of the festival for horny little me.

In the meantime, however, a few observations that will probably all get some more attention later on, when I have a bit more time for reflection.

1) Vajazzling. Cinekink has brought me my first-ever sighting of an in-porn vajazzlement! What's hilarious about this, besides the fact that vajazzling is even a thing, is that the film in which it glitters is one I had already seen. At home, on my teeny tiny little television. I even reviewed it--positively, because it's really a great film. But on my teeny tiny little television at home, I didn't notice the jewels where pubic hair should be because, weirdly, the woman's pubic region is hardly shown at all from the front throughout her sex scene. When I was watching Cabaret Desire on the big screen on Wednesday, however, I caught a glimpse of some raised bumps in the pubes region and thought, "Either that's a vajazzle, or he's eating stone-ground mustard off her private parts right now, and I REALLY don't think he's doing that." Now, reader, please understand that I was very hungry when that thought occurred to me, but also that the color scheme of the sparkly lumps on her pelvis did in fact fit with the idea of mustard seeds, ok? I am a little crazy, but I'm not that crazy, all things told.
But ok, back to vajazzling. This is a trend that I thought had a small upstart kind of flame that went out very quickly, but there it was, in a film that I happen to know was filmed last summer. Now, it was filmed in Europe last summer, and we all know that Europe and America operate on different time lines vis-a-vis trends, but still, I was intrigued. I have no issue, really, with vajazzling. I mean, I love vulvas. And I love sparkly things. So all in all, it seems like a win-win, except for this little nagging, ultra-feminist, "But vulvas are beautiful all by themselves" voice that keeps squeaking at me from the back row. But I mean, why not get some sparkles put in down there for giggles, right?
But then it occurred to me that this actress actually did it for a porno she was starring in. I wonder if that was a giggle. Like, was she so amused by the fact that she was doing something as out-there as performing in a porno? Or was she worried about the lack of inherent glitter on her pubic area, and she wanted to fix that before anyone saw it up close? Or is vajazzling like a thing in the Spanish porn community? I have no way of knowing. But... weird.

2) Anyway, the word "vajazzling" got me thinking about the word "vagina," because I was sitting there in a dark movie theater listening to wet, "slap-slap-slap" noises as the film was playing and thinking, "The 'g' in 'vagina' is pronounced like a 'j' because there's an 'i' after it. So when the 'i' is taken away, it would be pronounced like a hard 'g.' So that means you must have to turn the 'g' into a 'j' in 'vajazzling' or else it'd sound all wrong, but then you're changing the whole root word. This is WAY too confusing!" And it is. The word "vagina" is a huge pain in just about every way. It's super unsexy, as Eve Ensler pointed out. It sounds very medical. It's not a pretty word to look at, and obviously, trying to play with it to make it more fun, a la vajazzling, makes it even weirder. Like, now there's jazz somehow incorporated into lady bits. Because otherwise it'd be "gazz" and then you're just talking about the angry purple-haired girl from Invader Zim. It's ridiculous.
But then, do we want to settle for "pussy"? That's so inappropriate for many contexts. Or there's always "vulva," which is more correct, actually, in many contexts. The inside is the vagina. The outside is the vulva. But "vulva" is even less attractive. It sounds like a lace doily on your great aunt's dining room table. Just. Ick. There's got to be a way around this. There's got to be a better term. Anyone?

3) Asexuality and shame. This is a huge topic and one that I will revisit shortly, hopefully with an interview with the director of the documentary (A)sexual, which screened at Cinekink last night. So I won't get into too much detail here. But here's the gist of it: in clips from television interviews with the founder of the asexual movement, sexual people lightly mocked and also shamed asexual people for identifying as asexual. Asexuality--the state of being uninterested in sex, and a budding identification for about 1% of the population who don't experience sexual attraction--was discussed in the same voice that homosexuality used to be. There were stories of unaccepting families, worried friends, intolerance, and shame. This was mystifying. In the Q&A session afterward, Angela Tucker, the director, said that she was surprised by the vitriolic response a lot of people had to "something that doesn't affect them at all." The same could be said for defenders of "traditional marriage" and other bigots who routinely shame people living sexual lifestyles they don't understand, but that's the thing. Being shamed for one's sexuality is terrible, but commonplace. One could assume, then, that people who renounce sexuality for a life without it would be free from the cycle of fear and shame that centers around sex in our culture, but (A)sexual proved that assumption to be false. It seems that nothing involving sex, or the lack thereof--no lifestyle, no identification, no practice, no lack of practice--can be right. There is shame in every corner. What the hell are we supposed  to do?
The answer, I think, was in the short film by Courtney Trouble and Tina Horn, What Makes Us Queer, which screened directly before (A)sexual: just fucking do what the hell you want and be open, loving, honest, and fearless. And just do it. If you're going to be shamed and castigated for your choices no matter what--just do what works for you.

And that's it for now, folks. Stay tuned! I'll be returning to Cinekink on Saturday for the smutty stuff!

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!

The Phallic Fallacy

At a panel on sex education and porn hosted by Smitten Kitten in Vegas last weekend, discussions about a crap-ton of topics dear to my heart were brought up by panelists Nina Hartley, Sophia St. James, Tina Horn, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Courtney Trouble, Dylan Ryan, and Danny Wylde. I can't even begin to list them all, but I felt that a lot of what was being said needs to be said over and over and over until people start listening. The whole thing was filmed by Smitten Kitten and Reid Mihalko, but I'm not sure if it's available online yet. When it is, I hope that everyone gets a chance to watch the footage. Discussions of barrier use in porn (pros and cons), trans bodies and trans sex, triggers, abuse survivor empowerment... it all went down.

But there was one issue raised by Danny Wylde that's been playing itself over and over in my head, along with a discussion that he and I had the next day about the same issue. That issue was the way in which young men who are growing up with a lot of mainstream porn available to them might learn to see their roles in sex through that imagery. While I'm all about the groundbreaking discussions and leaps forward that have been made for depictions of women in pornography in the past decade, I think that it's getting to a point where a price may be being paid. There is a gaping void surrounding the understanding of (particularly straight) male sexuality, especially when it comes to porn. I feel like women have been eager, and with good reason, to take up this dialogue in recent years. We've become more empowered than ever before in taking back our voices and our desire, doing things for ourselves in sex and porn, and turning the lens of sexual empowerment upon ourselves. It's fantastic. It's necessary. It's awesome.

But what about guys? There is so comparatively little room for men to have these same kinds of discussions, and for many reasons I don't want to try to get into, but the net result seems to be that while the discussion and appreciation of the complex and astounding world of female, trans, and queer sexuality seems to be blossoming, the reverse is happening for male sexuality. Whereas women are more vocal than ever, men/males seem to be taking a back seat, a quiet, passive role, and while this gives the female contingent more talking and breathing space, which is good, a lot goes unsaid. And the result may be that all kinds of men are taking their cues about what their sex should be from places that aren't being very responsible about it, like mainstream porn that shows men as little more than hard-ons and tattoos. Guys in most porn almost never speak or moan, they don't show off their bodies aside from their sex organs, they don't show their faces. They don't moan, they don't writhe, they don't show any complexity or depth to their desire. They are, in very upsetting ways, like machines made only to fuck. They are disembodied organs of lust with no backstory, no layers to their sexualities aside from animal rutting. This is the easy way to film men having sex.

But it is not the whole story, and for people who are consuming this kind of material who may be unsure of the validity of their nuanced, emotionally-driven, difficult sexual desires and bodies and minds, it may be very very limiting. It may be stifling. It may be conveying the message that men do not have complex sexualities, that men just need to want to have sex and to be constantly, continually, perpetually, rock hard.

I am not a man. I am not very male. I don't know what it's like to have a penis. My adventures with strap-ons aside, I can't fathom what it's like for your sexual satisfaction to rely so completely on the engorgement of a phallus that's attached to me. I can't, and won't, say that erections aren't important, or that they're overrated, because I don't know how that really plays out in men's minds. But I will say that reducing sex to the hardness of a cock, and reducing one's abilities to please to that cock's longevity, is really, really wrong. And I will say that I've had experiences with men in which a few minutes of lackluster response from that ONE organ destroyed an entire evening, and sometimes laid waste to months and even years of fulfillment. I won't say that an erection isn't important, but if anyone has it in their mind that it's the only male organ that matters in sex, they're wrong: there's the skin, the balls, the perenium, the ass, the mouth, the fingers, the brain... They are all enjoyable. They are all important. And I think that porn's insistence that sex is an equation that goes: hard cock + pussy + humping = the totality of sex... that's hurting people.

Of course it's not just porn. The rest of our culture feeds into the obsession with erections, too: barrages of commercials, spam e-mails, music, movies... Everything comes back to the men-as-dicks thing. It's impossible to get away from. But porn isn't helping anything, and the further we get into the internet age of easy-to-access porn, the more difficult it gets to pick out the fantasy-vs-reality aspects of pornographic sex. The real bodies versus the professional bodies, with their editing and fluffing and discipline and one-in-a-thousand natural abilities.

I worry about this. I worry that the men I sleep with think all I want from them, or for them, is an ability to get hard. It's so  much, so much more than that. I want them to want more, too.

More on this later...

A Letter to Max Hardcore

So here I am, on my lunch break, composing an e-mail to Max Hardcore. The bogeyman of porno--the man anti-porn zealots can point to when they're making their accusations. The guy who just got out from a 30-month stint in a federal penitentiary for disseminating obscenity across state lines. The one who more or less invented the term "skull fuck." Who gets his actresses to call him "Mister" in knee socks and pigtails, and then, in some cases, syphons his bodily waste into various orifices. That guy.

He and his case have both fascinated and repelled me for years and now that he's out of jail and filming again, I'm hoping he'll agree to a live Skype interview in front of an audience during the run of my art show. I want to show a few minutes' worth of one his movies to the audience, then bring him up on a big screen and ask him some questions before letting the audience ask theirs. Because I think he and what he does and what's happened to him, for better or worse, is important. But honestly, he freaks me out.

I ran into him last weekend in Vegas at the Adult Entertainment Expo, and did an on-the-spot five-minute interview with him on video. I'd been wondering what it would be like to meet him: everyone I know who knows him assures me he's a nice guy. Some even call him sweet. He's certainly well-spoken. When I wrote him a letter in prison, hinting at doing an interview with him about his work, he wrote back a five-page letter on lined notebook paper that he'd turned into stationery. "Max Hardcore," it said at the top, "America's Most Infamous Prisoner (TM)"--or something like that. He'd gone into detail about how shocked he'd been when a jury of "his peers" had found him guilty of violating their community standards for obscenity, citing First Amendment issues and the rights of the artist. I discontinued our correspondence after that, less interested in the technicalities by which he was incarcerated and more in why he made the films he made in the first place, but his arguments were valid.

Max may have done some things on camera that I can't agree with, but so have Eli Roth, Stanley Kubrick, and Michael Bay. The difference is that Max deals with a part of our human nature that we don't see as fundamentally ok--sexuality--and brings in aspects of one that we love--violence--and mixes them together in a really disturbing way. Is he an artist? I don't really know about that. But did he deserve to go to jail for making those films? Surely not. Although I don't like his tropes of violence, feigned rape, dressed-up-to-look-underage girls, etc., I don't agree that he should have gone to La Tuna for allowing one of his distributors to mail his European (read: much hardcore-er) materials across state lines into a more conservative community (a problem which digital distribution may largely nullify in coming years). The charges for which he served two and a half years were rididuculous; what he really went to jail for was having sex some people didn't approve of, and filming it. And that's ridiculous. Nobody forced anybody to watch his movies--except, probably, in court. Nobody has ever filed charges against him for forcing any of his actresses to do anything they didn't want to. Nobody testified against him in court. He swears up and down that if anyone had a problem on the set of his movies, they stopped filming. The guy didn't need to do hard time, as far as I'm concerned.

But what I really think is fascinating and important about Max isn't his martyr status or the freedom of speech issues he represents. It's what goes on in his brain in the first place. Everyone I know who's worked with him or known him personally seems to genuinely like him. He's got a kind smile and an easy-going attitude. Every film he's made had all the necessary paperwork filled out, the i's dotted and t's crossed. He uses only consenting adults on shoots that it's hard to believe anyone could go into without understanding exactly what they're in for. But what they're in for is so far above and beyond the norm, so wildly over the top, so violent and--at least for me, but I realize that this doesn't apply to many others--upsetting to think about, much less to actually watch, that I can't help wondering. What goes on in his head? How is such a kind, gentle guy also Max Hardcore? How does the guy who everyone vouches for turn off his sweet demeanor and turn on the degrading language, the water-works that get siphoned into anal cavities, the willingness to skull-fuck someone until she vomits? How does this disconnect happen? Does he really hate women, or does he really love women who like this kind of sex? Is there really a disconnect here or just a love of extreme sex? How does this work?

This is what I want to find out. It's deeply interesting. But it's also scary. In Max Hardcore I see some of the things that porn gets blamed for and shunned over, the things that your mother fears when she tells you not to look at dirty movies. But I also see our neverending worship of the morbidly fascinating--the rubbernecking at the train crash. Whatever's going on behind his blue eyes is, maybe reassuringly and maybe terrifyingly, universal. I don't want to judge Max in front of an audience, because I don't think I'm qualified to judge something that interests us all. I don't want to hold him up as an example of "what's wrong with the world" or any such silliness. I don't want to say that what he does and did is right or wrong. I just want, like everyone else, to understand it.

So. How do I start this e-mail?

Consent in Porn: Sobriety on Set

Let's talk about something really important, everybody. Let's talk about performer consent in porn. This is a topic that I've brought up here and there, but that I've largely avoided a frank blog post or column about because, to be honest, it scares me. The lines around what works as consent in my mind (the word "yes" explicitly said and restated as often as possible, eager participation by both parties, continual confirmation of eagerness to participate, and so on, not to mention all the correct forms signed by all parties of legal age and of sound mind and body) are not exactly the same as the lines around what constitutes consent on the set of every porno ever filmed. I know this. And it makes me uncomfortable.

I'm lucky to have a status in the world of professional pornography that brings me a lot of porn DVDs for review material. Which is to say that the majority of what I watch for review is made by large-ish companies that have a big enough budget to: A) make DVDs of their content, B) ship those DVDs to me for free, and most importantly C) employ professionals working in the adult industry, pay them on time and well (though that's open to much discussion, of course), run all their paperwork, etc. One of the best things about content from these companies is that, because most of their content is protected enough to require people to buy it a lot of the time, they tend to film people who are, if not at the very top of their game, at least know what's going on. They are professionals, who come to the set with a full understanding of what is expected of them and what they're getting into. There are no "Surprise, buttsex!" moments, or forced situations--or at least very few of them and very unsurprising ones when they do happen--that would blur the lines of consent for me, the viewer. And just as important, there are few instances in which a performer appears to be less than sober in these movies, thus making consent a very sticky topic indeed.

This might be one of the main reasons I've avoided this topic. I do believe that there are certain jobs that can be performed absolutely brilliantly when certain substances are in use. I am not a hard-liner about intoxicants--I feel like, if I were cornered on the subject, I might argue that coming to work with a head full of cold medicine could affect my work performance just as much as smoking a joint beforehand, or somesuch nonsense argument. But the point is that while I absolutely see the need for total sobriety on set for legal reasons, I have never been one to think that if someone were to show up to a porn set with a little THC in their system, or a glass of wine with lunch beforehand, that should negate the scene. But there are limits. One reason I tend to steer clear of online pornography is that one is apt to see people who are not in control of their faculties--"party girl" scenes shot in clubs (whether these are really amateurs or not is open to debate, of course) where alcohol has obviously been consumed make me feel nervous. Girls Gone Wild makes me uncomfortable. Scenes in which any of the performers look "out of it" or "wired" or generally not in a sound enough frame of mind to decide whether they really want to be filmed doing what they're doing... these all make me blatanly unhappy because I believe that pornography is a generally good thing that, although it's often done wrong, deserves our money and a bit of respect. I want very much to believe that the porn industry can thrive on informed consent, depictions of real pleasure, and professionalism. I want very much to spread that message.

But it's to my detriment if I pretend that a large part of the industry, the part that I rarely see, thrives on exploitation and loopholes in the law. I someone is sober enough to scripple a signature on a piece of paper and show an ID, that does not mean that the same person is sober enough to make the decision to be blowbanged on camera for all the world to see. But it happens to people who are not sober. And I wish it didn't. My usual answer to this is to encourage people to pay for their porn--to spend some dollars on the offerings of companies who operate above the board and who would never film, much less release, footage of someone who was obviously intoxicated. Reward those who do good with your consumer dollars and more of the products they make--legally, consensually, and pleasurably--will be filmed. Avoid contributing in any way to the very real exploitation that some other companies participate in. The laws of economics will, if everyone follows my advice (hah!), tip in the favor of the Good Guys.

All of this is the elaborate build-up to me telling you that a few days ago I popped in a DVD from a VERY large and VERY well-known company with the intention of reviewing it. I decided to watch that one because I've gotten into a habit of reviewing only feature films with plots and scripts lately, and wanted to get back in touch with what was going on with gonzo porn. This one was a few months old, but it looked fun, and I was familiar with a few of the performers in it, so it would make a good study. I got most of the way through the film and had some really interesting notes, including some on one scene that was so intensely hot and so screamingly consensual that I couldn't wait to tell the world how fabulous it was... when a performer I haven't seen much of lately, but who I met a few years ago, showed up on the screen. Though the rest of the scenes thus far had followed a "tease" dance followed by sex, this went directly into the sex without any dancing or teasing from the actress. "Well, ok," I thought. Gonzo movies often are just compilations of similar scenes and you can't always get what you want.

But as the scene progressed I realized something was really wrong. The actress was visibly drunk. She seemed to be having a good enough time, but the vacant look in her eyes and the fumbling way she went about what she was doing made me realize that, if I were a director and this woman stumbled into my scene, I would get someone to drive her home because she was too far gone to get herself there. And in my book, if a person is too drunk to operate a motor vehicle, that person is certainly too drunk to be filmed having sex.

But then, of course, it's not that simple, is it? This being a big company with "contract girls" who are actually employed and paid to make a certain number of movies or scenes, this actress may have already had all her paperwork squared away. She may have shown up to other sets drunk and was perhaps in danger of not fulfilling her contract; the director may have been trying to help by letting her shoot. There are all sorts of reasons that her inability to soberly consent may have been only one of many considerations going into this scene. But the fact remains: she was too intoxicated to be legally filmed. And if she was filmed, the footage should never have been released.

I tried to deny it to myself; this was a very above-the-board company. The director is well known. The performers were both professionals. But that look on her face told me another story. And was it just me, or were her nostrils a bit pinker than they needed to be?

I don't like to stir up controversy, and I really don't want anyone to ever see that scene, so I won't use any names. But I remembered the first time I'd met this woman a few years before. She had been at a party after a convention and making an absolute spectacle of herself at the hotel bar. There's social-drunk, which I absolutely was at that point, and then there's self-destructive blackout drunk. She was the latter. It was uncomfortable to be around her in that state. Not that what I saw at a party years ago has much bearing on someone's current state, but it did at least give me a clear memory of what this particular looks like when she's far-too-many-sheets to the wind, and I was seeing it on my TV. I had turn off the movie and nix the review. I hope to my very bones that she is ok and that the scene I saw was just a one-off affair. I hope that things like that never happen to her again, or to anyone else. And I really hope that companies with reputations to uphold, who could act as good examples for the rest of the industry along with anyone who wants to cast aspersions upon it, don't let things like this happen on their sets. Ever. Because I want so much for porn to be ok, and for people to be able to make movies and have fun and make money. But sometimes... it gets hard to keep up my hopes.

Porno Product Placement: WTF?!

So I was watching a porno from a majorly huge company for review the other day when I saw, for the first time in my sexy movie experience, flagrant product placement. For another movie by the same company. I was stunned. And I'm not sure why. It's not as if I expect porn to live up to some kind of moral code that precludes advertisements or something; product placement is a good way to sell products. I get that, and it's cool. Especially in porn, which is one of the least apologetically money-grubbing of the industries, and one which has been steadily losing revenue for years. And it's not as if there isn't room in porn for product placement--really, every time you see a toy in use, it's an advertisement for the company that made that toy. But then again, you don't usually hear the performers discussing the merits of this toy made by this company, which can be purchased at this website or anything nearly so explicit. You just see people using these toys and enjoying them, and then if you really want to try that toy you can go find it on your own. It's not usually product placement so much as product use.

But in this movie, one of the characters was interested in trying anal sex, and her friend told her very specifically to get the DVD of jessica drake's Wicked Guide to Anal to learn how to do it. Which is absolutely acceptable, really. It's a good idea to get some advice on the subject of buttsex before trying it, because anal brings with it FAR more opportunities for disaster than most other sex acts. Learning about it first is excellent advice. And since Wicked made this movie, and also a movie about how to do anal, there's absolutely no good reason not mention it. I have a personal contempt for product placement in "art," but this movie isn't exactly art for art's sake, or any kind of sacrosanct advertising-free zone.

But still, it jarred me. Like, what was this, a Britney Spears video? (If her recent videos [check out the 0:40 mark] are any indication, that woman wears SO MUCH [0:40 again] of her own perfume I think I could smell her coming from miles away.) And I think that's the thing that made me do a double-take: porn is one of the biggest industries on the planet, so why not advertise more blatantly? The thing is that, because of its sexual nature, porn gets virtually nothing done in the way of advertising. Sure there are ads for porn and sex products on porn sites, and at the beginning DVDs, and in the pages of skin magazines, but the jizz biz doesn't really need to advertise for people to seek it out. It's a self-contained industry in terms of its own promotion. And within actual porno movies, there's no room for advertisements. It's not as if your average porn viewer is going to stand for 30 second ads in between sex scenes--that's when we'd turn to the fast-forward button or ad-free content online. Nobody wants to be bothered by encouragement to buy more porn when they're already watching porn.

So when this "casual" mention of another movie by the same company happened, I sat in stunned silence. I think even rewound it to play it again. Did that just happen? It all seemed so commercially meta, I couldn't figure out if it was smarter than I expected porn to be, or more self-referential, or just more boldly greedy. But the fact remained that it happened, and it worked pretty well, actually. Porn, at least from the big companies out in the Valley, is so hugely commercial now that it can do product placement. It's so much like mainstream media that advertisements seem like the next logical step. Or so seems to go the logic of Wicked.

And after all, why not? I think this is one of those instances in which I give in to my knee-jerk reaction about something in porn, but when I reflect upon it I find that whatever my knee jerked against was something I absolutely can't argue with. I've been writing for years, literally, about how porn should be treated more like other forms of entertainment: how we should talk about it more, think about it more, write about it more, and give it more respect. How porn should treat itself with a little more dignity so we can start to view it that way. And while I wouldn't necessarily call product placement a dignified thing to do, by definition it does make whatever product is being placed and the medium on which it's placed more of a serious deal. Product placement in porn is like that medium's way of saying, "We have something really good going here, and in fact it's so good that we're going to take this opportunity to shed light on something else good that we do." It's placing a porno squarely in the same kind of league as any other form of entertainment that assumes its audience is large enough to be advertised to, and that they respect its message enough to be open to suggestion while watching it. So really, this is a great sign.

Right?

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.

A Pervert's Gift-Giving Guide: from one degenerate to all of you

Thanks to ColumbiaChronicle.com for this awesome pic!

This might sound a little weird, but bear with me: this holiday season there are a lot of excellent reasons to spend some money on the sex industry. I have a feeling that a lot of you who read this are interested in promoting sex-positive points of view and like to do your best to promote ethical and excellent sex products. I applaud that, and I think it's incredibly important to put your money where your junk is when it comes to porn and sex. In a landscape where free porn of the worst kind is everywhere, where it's so easy to go online and purchase toys and other products from literally anywhere, the holiday season is a good time to make sure that your purchases count toward what you really WANT them to.

Many of us make donations to charities in the names of friends and family for holiday gifts, and even more buy products that support causes we agree with. But one cause that often gets overlooked in the family-friendly season is good sex. But why? Is it really so weird to give a friend an account at your favorite online sex toy purveyor, or a membership to your favorite pay-for-porn site? It's not as if you're asking them to use these in front of you, and spreading the word about excellent, ethical, incredibly hot sex industry goods is super-important for those of us who want to support the best of sex. These companies can't exist without income--help them out!

Here's a list of companies, causes, and carnal corruption to consider spending some bucks on for your loved ones this year:

• Genderqueer superstar Jiz Lee's Karma Pervs: "What is Karma Pervs? In a nutshell, I post unique photo sets of images taken by exciting photographers and visual artists. The proceeds are donated to non-profit organizations in my community." Or of course you can support Jiz directly by purchasing one of their excellent, mind-and-groin-expanding films. If you do either by tomorrow, Dec. 1, you'll get a gift card from Jiz!
• Help support Madison Young's vision for Building Our Own White Picket Fences: an art exhibit-turned-movement that celebrates and explores queer families. Forthcoming books and DVDs commemorating the show still need funding! 
• Donate to The Red Umbrella Project a sex-worker advocacy group based in New York that uses storytelling in public venues as a platform for building understanding of sex work and sex workers. I've attended; it's fabulous.
• Get your honey a membership to The Crash Pad, Shine Louise Houston's groundbreaking queer porn series that will leave misconceptions about queerness in the dust, and everybody's underpants on the floor.
• Or, for those with a penchant for penis, The Heavenly Spire offers a queer look at the glories of masculinity. 
• Good Vibrations is a San Francisco-based feminist and LGBTQ-friendly sex mall! Get what you need from them, or donate to their GiVe program: "By donating products, advertising and sponsorship for fundraisers, along with a percentage of retail sales, we've provided much needed support for women's shelters, HIV/AIDS research, art programs, LGBT benefits, breast cancer awareness and much more."
• Smitten Kitten is your one-stop shop for sex toys, porn, books, and how-tos, with equal variety for men, women, and all other genders. The website features excellent articles from many of my favorite porn peeps including Danny Wylde! 
• Subscribe your friends and fuck-buddies to Whore! Magazine, "a quarterly print publication dedicated to celebrating the current and historical qualities of women who have defined a role for themselves outside the status quo." 
• Want something a little hardcore-er? Try Salacious Magazine, a queer feminist sex magazine that just MIGHT be featuring an interview with moi in the next few issues...
• Donate or subscribe to Bitch Magazine, the feminist response to pop culture! No weird sex-issues required for this one, so you can give it to family with no awkwardness... except the inevitable, "Yes I'm a feminist get over it" talk.
• Send a donation in your gift-receivers' names to Planned Parenthood. Because why would you NOT want to do that?
• Support the Free Speech Coalition, "the trade association of the adult entertainment industry. Our mission is to lead, protect and support the growth of the adult entertainment industry."
• Purchase from Papaya Toys, the new, no-nonsense, socially-conscious sex toy company winning awards like it's going out of style... and all of it is pthalate-free!
• Donate to one of love artist and sexecologist Annie Sprinkle's ongoing, always entertaining, mind-opening, and totally sparkly projects.

Go forth, good sirs, madams, and others... spend thy money in a way that matters!

Stuffing My Face to Keep My Mouth Shut

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope it's a fun time for you all, even if the presence of family can be tense. Trust me, I understand.

We've dicsusssed this subject before. Every time I go to visit my family for a holiday, I must perform a careful balancing act. Everyone around me, with the exception (maybe) of my grandmother, knows that I spend much of my time watching, reviewing, thinking about, and talking about pornography. My parents and siblings know. My cousins know, and they've all told their parents and friends. My friends certainly know. But I have been very specifically forbidden from discussing any of this at family gatherings. My parents do not want the topic to come up at the dinner table over turkey and cranberries, and they definitely don't want it whispered about during hors d'ouevres. They want to preserve the never-actually-extant illusion that their family is "normal." That's their right, of course: it's their house. But if any of my friends and relatives who watched me growing up and didn't expect me to end up doing something like what I'm doing now, or if any of them think it's actually normal for a house full of people to  never once bring up sex... something is very wrong.

But the end result is that, rather than discussing the fascinating ins and outs of the adult inddustry, which I am absolutely certain all of my extended family members have plenty of questions about, we discuss our even-more-extended family's health problems, in grotesque detail, while stuffing our faces. This seems strange to me. Obviously there are some things in porn that might turn stomachs easily, but I find colostomy bags and surgical details much more repellant than insider knowledge about pay models in adult entertainment.

Well, whatever. As  long as there is food, friends, and family, who cares what we talk about? I get kind of sick of all the sex talk, anyway, so it's a nice break. And it's slightly less alienating to know I'm in the presence of like-minded individuals, even if we're not allowed to mention it: last year my aunt sidled up to me in the living room and asked, in a whisper, if I thought Hilary Clinton was into BDSM in her private life. I said yes, definitely.

The Post-Convention Wrap-Up: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Well, Exxxotica NJ has come and gone, and I am once again exhausted, energized, and voiceless. This weekend went by in such a whirl of interviews, parties, connections, and craziness that looking back on it I hardly know what to say.

The first thing to be said, of course, is thank you to Exxxotica for making it all happen. This year's convention (the only adult industry convention that comes near NYC, and would be in the city if not for our weirdly prudish government, but that's another story) was bigger than ever and impressively well attended by industry and fans alike. I rubbed elbows with so many of my favorite performers and behind-the-scenes folks that I actually missed seeing and talking to a lot of my other favorites, and that's the suck. But I feel slightly less bad about it knowing that I was simultaneously carting around a gang of WHACK! staffers with me while trying to promote a media event/party we were throwing Saturday night.

Which really is the most... hm... the most interesting, shall we say, aspect of this weekend for me. The party craziness. I've heard it repeated again and again that porn is an insider's industry, and I've seen and heard of many examples of pettiness in the ranks. But I wasn't prepared for the shit that went down surrounding the event WHACK! magazine threw on Saturday night along with HedoOnline. It really brought some of the rumors I'd heard into reality for me.

I have my suspicions about what it was that actually sparked all this nastiness, but the short story is this: WHACK! began to plan a party with HedoOnline that would provide some mainstream press coverage for adult industry people who were in town for the convention this past weekend. The planning began over a month ago, when we sent out feelers to clubs for hosting, stars for attending, and Exxxotica to see if they would like to sponsor the event as one of their official after-parties. We love the guys who run Exxxotica and were eager to work with them to make everything go smoothly. They told us that they'd already worked something out with another venue for their after-parties, so they'd have to decline, but they hoped our event would go well. So we proceeded to plan for the event without using their name on it. We called it a "media event" to avoid the "after-party" moniker, and we made no mention of Exxxotica in our official press for the event, just to keep everything on the level. Especially after I got screamed at by a performer who apparently was misinformed about what was going and threatened with lawsuits if any copyright infringement occurred, we were very, very careful to make the event as positive and well-publicized as possible, but to keep the "Exxxotica" name out of it. We didn't want anyone to get the wrong impression about who was throwing the event.

So in late October we sent out a press release to every major media outlet in the adult biz and in the mainstream. Nowhere in the release did we mention the word "Exxxotica" or "party." We were treating the event as a red carpet media extravaganza that we wanted to invite adult industry professionals to so that they could get some media exposure while they were in town. We invited them to stop by on their ways to other appearances, or stay and have a few cocktails with us. Whatever worked. Let's all be friends, right?

Not so much, apparently. By the beginning of last week, we'd had several media outlets rewrite our headline to read "Exxxotica After-Party" or some variation thereof, which immediately pissed off about... well... everyone. We immediately contacted every place we could that had run this headline, and many of them retracted their rewritten headlines, switching instead to something less inflammatory. But it seems the damage was already done. Rumors flew around, people freaked out, managers pulled their talent, and by the time Saturday morning rolled around, we literally had no idea who would be on our red carpet, even though we'd confirmed attendance weeks in advance from many stars. We spoke via phone and in person to talent managers and stars, and we got a lot of lip service, but it was too late. The rumor mill was hard at work, turning our good intentions into a nefarious scheme to steal Exxxotica's name and reputation for our own self-serving wishes. Exactly the opposite of what we'd tried to do.

Damage control can only get you so far. In the end, we had a fabulous night, and the convention itself was great. We had a great turnout at our event despite everything, there was a big media turnout for the red carpet, and we all had a great time. But it could have been a lot better if some people hadn't decided to get their knickers in a twist over an entirely mistaken impression that they chose to stand by even when there was no need to. I think this has been a learning experience: the industry on the inside is a lot like high school. Lots of fun to be had, but you always have to be watching your back because people actually want to sabotage you. Egos are massive. People take themselves very, very seriously, and a smile and good intentions will not change their minds.

I hesitate to say this because it might come out all wrong, but here goes: It's just porn, people. Relax. I don't mean to say that porn isn't serious business or doesn't deserve real consideration and respect, because it does. It VERY MUCH does. But it's also not the U.N. You know what I mean? We're not holding the fate of nations in our hands here. We're trying to throw a party and do some interviews for everyone's benefit. Can we all just calm down a little bit and get along?

The Pre-Convention Jitterbug

I’m heading out to Exxxotica, NJ in a few days’ time to hang out with the crew of WHACK! magazine and all the adult industry people who flock to the unlikely hole-in-the-wall of Edison, NJ each year for the event. This will be my third time at the Edison convention center and hopefully this year I’ll have as much fun as the past two. I just have to get over my pre-convention jitters.

See here’s the thing. I am apparently pretty good at interviewing people. I’ve been doing interviews with adult industry people for over three years now, and I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with the process once it starts. Especially when face-to-face with someone, a conversation usually flows pretty easily. One thing I’ve realized is that generally speaking, porn stars love to talk. I just direct the flow. But the days and hours and minutes leading up to the talking? I panic. I get sweaty palms. I convince myself that this person will never want to talk to me and I’ll be an outcast from porn society for sticking a microphone in their face. It’s ugly. I convince myself that I’m ugly and can’t be on this video, immortalized forever on the internet with my weird voice and stupid hair and OHMYGOD!

And then the camera starts rolling, I say a contrived introductory phrase or two, and we’re off! And the interview goes on for a few minutes, and then we’re done. And usually I give whoever it is my card and we agree to do other interviews later on, and all is well. And then later when we post the video on WHACK! people compliment me for my interviewing skills and I feel like my hair was totally not stupid. It’s one of those strange things in life that turns out well almost every time and yet I still suffer the throes of anxiety for days beforehand. I used to get that way before my horseback riding lessons as a kid—I never wanted to go and would try to make myself get sick all day leading up to it just to get out of a lesson, and then as soon as I got near the horse I was riding I’d be so glad I was there I couldn’t stop grinning. Life is strange.

Anyway, everyone, wish me luck! I’ll be doing some live tweeting and maybe a blog post while I’m in the midst of the mania this weekend in NJ (and NYC on Saturday night for the Provocative Press media event we’re throwing with Lola from HedoOnline—it’s going to be ha-yuge!), but right now, what I need is positive vibes, people. I’m kinda stressing out.

Madison Young: My Porn/Art Hero

I’ve been trying to figure out how to blog about my afternoon with Madison Young last weekend. It was a week ago today that I went to the art space where she was setting up for her current show, “Building Our Own White Picket Fences,” sat down on the floor with her, and talked for an hour and a half about motherhood, sexual hypocrisy, pornography, art, and consent. And in that week I’ve been replaying our conversation over and over in my head, enjoying it every time. Because Madison and I seem to have each taken half of the same brain—her, the more action-oriented extroverted half, and myself, the more introverted, thinky, writerly half (thought both of us seem to exhibit traits of both halves)—and taken some genetic material and life experience from elsewhere to fill up the rest of our skulls. In the interview, which I filmed, she said everything I’ve always wanted to hear a porn director and performer, artist, and human being say about human sexuality. We were vibing like woah.

But the thing is, since this interview was for use in the art show I’m curating for a spring show at apexart here in New York, I kind of have to keep the details under wraps for now. Not that any of it was groundbreaking or entirely new or would hurt anybody if it were let out of the bag, but I think I need to spend some time thinking about it in my own quiet, private way to see how it fits into the larger ideas I’m working with in my show, before I share with the world.

So let’s get past the details. Let’s say that in San Francisco there is a woman who inspires me. A saucy redhead with pale skin and beautifully clear, blue, penetrating eyes who says what she thinks, does what she says, and lives a life so open and honest that it makes me want to reexamine my tendencies toward secrecy and the way I jealously guard my privacy. Maybe, she makes me think, privacy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As an artist she takes her guts and raw emotions, tangles them up and unties them again, and fits them into and around art installations she designs. As a pornographer she unwraps the veils of propriety that society tries to shove onto her body and steps forward boldly, as naked and exposed as a person can be, and revels un-self-consciously in her body and her pleasure. She’s a living tribute to the bravery of the queer movement, the danger and joy in the sex-positive movement, and a personification of the kind of courageous radical living that I wish I knew how to engage in, myself.

I’d always thought that Madison would be this way, but it’s difficult to judge people from afar in some ways. A woman of her intelligence, discerning, business acumen, beauty, and balls could easily have proven aloof, pretentious, unfeeling. She could have been uninterested in our conversation. She might have found my questions simplistic and treated me accordingly. Who knows? Our heroes are often much more intimidating before we’ve met them. But I found Madison to be open, kind, interested in what I had to say, and welcoming in every way. When we hugged to say goodbye I knew it wasn’t a cursory way of saying goodbye, but an acknowledgment of her appreciation for me and I of her. It was just….

Hehehehe, ok I’m geeking out. I’ll give it a rest. But the point is: Madison Young is amazing. As a pornographer, an artist, and a human being, she makes me want to be a better person. Please check out her newest art show for Femina Potens as part of a queer community-building project (which you can donate to on Kickstarter) if you're in the Bay Area, or check out her writings and films online.

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

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The Unrwitten Rants of a Porn Reviewer, Volume 1

Things I haven’t said in reviews but which I got to thinking about while watching them:

1)      What is up with the constantly terrible sound editing, people? Most high-end porno movies have excellent, or at least well-planned, lighting. Some have elaborate sets, fancy costumes, character names, scripts… the whole nine. But the microphone work, sound mixing, editing, and production are more often than not bottom-of-the-barrel. I know most porn films aren’t working with gigantic budgets, but if you can afford the rest, how much extra will it cost to pay a sound technician? Common complaints? Vastly different volumes between “dialogue” and sex scenes—I don’t want to turn the volume way up to hear what they’re saying because it’s so quiet, only to have all my neighbors suddenly alerted to the fact that I’m watching porn when the action begins due to uneven sound levels! And in group sex scenes, it often appears that though there are at least two or three camera crews making the rounds of all the action, there is but one lonely stationary mic set up in the middle of the room, resulting in close-ups of one couple in which it sounds as if the noises they’re making are coming from a far-flung corner. It’s confusing and incredibly unprofessional.

2)      Another thing about group/orgy scenes. I personally enjoy them. They up the ante of sexiness without getting crazy in the shock value department, or so I like to think. But as far as I can tell, the point of a group scene is that there are more than two people in the room—it’s the whole vista of skin and sex, taken in at once, that gives it its zing, right? So why, then, are so many of these scenes simple back-and-forth shots from couple/threesome-to-couple/threesome? The whole room panorama is a rarity, often overshadowed by extreme closeups of one coital corner. Seems to me you could cut out one of the many camera crews and let one do more sweeping shots, install another microphone or two, and improve everything.

3)      Ladies, can we cool it a little with the over-acting? There’s a difference between making your pleasure in the little things known and screaming when someone touches your earlobe. If people think that all you need to elicit a wail of pleasure from a woman is a kiss on the wrist, they’ll be very disappointed someday.

4)      Also, why the tooth-sucking sound when people breathe in? You know what I mean? The “impassioned” hissing noise a lot of porn stars make during foreplay? Like, “Oh, yeah—hssssss­—right there—hsss—mm-hmm…”? I get that breathing heavily is a sign of arousal, so I understand how loud breath intakes like that make sense… to a point. But I’m not into serpentine porn, and when the performers I’m watching sound like a nest of vipers, I get too annoyed to be turned on.

That’s all for now… more to come…

Gimme Your Questions

I've been writing answers to people's sex and relationship questions here and on WHACK! Magazine for a while now. And I've been pondering the questions people ask me in person when they find out that I write about porn--the role I play as the middle ground between the "inside" of the porn industry and the "outside" consumer culture. I think there's something really important going on here.

I realized last night when I was thinking about how to turn this rare perspective of mine into an art exhibit in the spring that I don't find porn itself particularly interesting. I don't think I ever have. Nor do I find the majority of pornographers or consumers all that interesting, generally speaking. I think what I find interesting is the interaction between them--the way in which pornography is made and sold, and the way in which the larger society accesses it, freaks out over it, embraces it... all of that. There's an interplay between the two worlds--which are, really, just one world that doesn't like looking at itself in much detail--that is fascinating. It tells me much about the people around me, and even more about myself if I'm willing to be honest about it. I'm usually not. And neither are most of the rest of us. Which is what makes being lodged here as an insider/outsider hybrid so fucking rad.

I have never understood people who perform in porn. Not really. I can get the idea of why it would be fun--physical pleasure for pay, attention, easy-ish money, glamorous lifestyle... All of these things make sense. But I would never be able to do it. I'm uncomfortable being videotaped. I have a very small, very sickly exhibitionist streak. I like sex but I don't think my body would take hours of intense sex very well on a regular basis. I could never do it, and though I can recognize why others would, I don't understand them. The camera doesn't make me come alive.

But that's why it's interesting. If I understood it, that part of the puzzle would be solved and I'd be bored. And while I will never be able to understand people who become investment bankers, either, or ever want to do that myself, I think examining those who have sex on camera is a lot more interesting than cracking open the psyche of Wall Street. I'm in an exciting and exotic place here, perched like a gargoyle looking into the building I'm outside of, and lucky me, they're having sex in there!

What I want to do with this art show is make myself a direct conduit for those inside to look out, and for those outside to look in. I want to spend time interviewing consumers of porn and pornographers. I want to find the threads that tie the inside and outside together, tie them to my fingers, and connect them myself. I want to spin a gorgeous web out of it all and show it off.

So tell me: what are your questions? What do you want to know about the other side? About porn? About watching porn? About me? Send me your questions (misslagsalot@gmail.com) or Tweet me (@misslagsalot) or FB me (Miss Lagsalot) or just leave a comment. I want your ideas, your questions, your fears, your fantasies. Gimme gimme...

Porn Star Pros or Pro Athletes

Go ahead. Tell me she doesn't work really hard for that body.

I did an interview with international modeling and adult video star Nina Mercedez for WHACK! Magazine this week, and I've been pondering a lot of the things we discussed. Nina, from the beginning to the end of the interview, was unfailingly professional. She is one of those business powerhouse people you meet every so often who succeeds at every thing she puts her mind to because she goes hard and never goes home. She has modeled for huge retail clothing chains, been featured in and on the covers of major fitness magazines, won the top awards for exotic dancing in America, won every major national and international nude body pageant (taking home Miss Nude Universe in 2003), nabbed several AVN nominations and one award, and recently started two of her own businesses. As she put it, "I’m either going to do it all the way or I’m not even going to bother"--words of wisdom, indeed, for someone in the world of pornography and nudity. This is a woman who does not fuck around.

I got to thinking about how so many women in the adult industry these days are like Nina, at least to a degree. Making a name and a career for oneself in the business today isn't just about being pretty and horny, it's about building a brand and WORKING it. And a lot of what goes into maintaining the business one makes for oneself is constant work. I think it's all too easy for most of us to dismiss the efforts of porn stars, sex workers, and models of all kinds, like Nina. For whatever reason, our culture often sees using sexuality and beauty as a "cop out," as an "easy" way of making money. And I suppose it certainly CAN be for some people. After all, when many of us not in the know hear something like "Miss Nude Universe," we think, "Ok, so she gets naked and struts around. What's so hard about that?" But when I asked her about it, Nina said:

When I say I won Miss Nude Universe, a lot of people say, “Well, what does that even mean?” But I worked all year long to win that award. You don’t understand how much work I had to put in to win that. It’s not like I just showed up and I had a stupid song and I won.

This made me start thinking: just because one's work involves working out and looking pretty, or working out, looking pretty, and having sex on camera... does that make one's work any less significant? It shouldn't. It might sound like a life of luxury for some of us to think of porn stars who spend their days eating healthy food, going to the gym, getting mani/pedis, tanning, and having lots of sex, but think about how that changes when one's livelihood depends upon it. Working out is no longer just a vanity project--it's part of your job. Getting your butthole bleached isn't just something wacky you do on a dare--it's an important part of maintaining your image. And while I hestitate to throw around the term "sexual athletes" because it's pretty hokey, the women at the top of the adult industry really are like a rare breed of thoroughbred racehorses. They can perform superhuman contortion acts in six-inch heels (as can strippers), perform sex acts most of us could never dream of while "opening up" for the camera and smiling, stand at signing booths at conventions for eight hours a day after partying all night, and never even smudge their makeup.

>When you really think about it, what's the big difference between a football player and a porn star? They both--at least the top-tier ones--spend most of their time working out and performing athletic feats. They're held to standards most of the population could never aspire to, they're constantly being tested for all kinds of stuff, they're in it to win it and take home the big bucks, the best ones get contracts with one company... I mean, you can't tell me that the arduous rituals most women in porn perform before their anal scenes are much less trying than the ridiculous lengths NFL players go through before a big game.

The only real difference here is how the rest of the world treats them. Professional athletes are emulated, given huge product endorsement deals, written about in every major publication, put onto posters for middle school kids, and have biographies written about them. But porn stars, who are doing the same thing as athletes--using their bodies to the utmost to make careers for themselves--get joked about, ridiculed, looked down upon, and preached at. Some of them get cameos in mainstream movies or TV shows, and that's about the extent of their "real life" credentials. But hell, I'd wager that the drug use and hard-partying habits of most professional athletes rival--if not surpass--those of most porn stars, and while more adult industry professionals go through cosmetic surgery and a few rounds of antibiotics for STIs in their time, the danger to one's physical well-being is much higher in most pro sports. Who ever heard of a torn ACL in porn? (Well, actually, I did. Sean Micheals. But that guy is a PRO among pros!)

Sex Isn't All Porn, and We're Not All Porn Stars

A totally unimaginative cherry...

This from a guy on Jezebel's "How Guys Lost Their Virginity" article: "Losing my virginity was like watching the hottest porn ever, but instead of having roughly 40% success at imagining that the porn guy is me, I had 100% success at imagining that the porn guy is me."

I'm really happy to see a major feminist website like Jezebel taking guys' sexual experiences seriously, and I think it's fabulous that we're getting firsthand accounts of something that should be just as momentous for young men as for young women, but which is rarely presented from the male side of the coin. That's not done often enough. But the quote above makes me sigh really loud because it implies that guys aren't taking their OWN sexual experiences very seriously. I mean, yes, ok, so most people in America coming of age now probably see porn and experience sex that way before actually engaging in it themselves, but... Aaaah, porn is not normal sex! It's not! It's soooo different! Losing your virginity, unless it's actually FOR a porn film, is not like being in a porno! If it is, then you're basically handing over your own reality to some (probably) sleazy guy in LA who's following a script of rote repetition made to sell to the unwashed masses instead of even trying to have a real, honest, firsthand experience of a huge moment in your life.

On the one hand, I kind of love how entertainingly meta this idea is. This guy is owning his status as a child of the pseudo-reality generation for whom video games, pornography, and online interaction actually form a large part of lived experience, and that's actually fascinating. But living one's own life experience through the filter of what one has experienced in virtual reality seems to cross a certain line when it comes to sex, and certainly more so when it's one's first time having it. Sure, it's great to put yourself into someone else's shoes sometimes, but since when did "the porn guy" have a more authentic sexual experience than you? How do you think the woman he was with would have felt if she knew she was being looked at through the eyes of someone who can only contextualize sex in relation to porn?

I wonder if that guy's first time was well lit. If he and the girl both "opened up" for a nonexistent camera. If they did ten different positions. If he came on her face. If they followed the standard make-out/oral/oral/missionary/cowgirl/doggy/reverse cowgirl/popshot formula. If they used their imaginations at all. It's times like these that make me appreciate Cindy Gallop's MakeLoveNotPorn.com even more. All porn is sex, yes, but that doesn't mean all sex is porn.

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?