SEXIS WRONG

counting reverse cowgirls and doggie/mish/oral sequences,
in between rocking himself in the corner and telling the directors,
“Uh-oh, fifteen minutes to Wopner….”
It was no wonder to me why porn performers always seemed
to be thinking about anything except what they were doing.
Granted, when I press “play,” I know I’m not going to jack off
to lovemaking, but sometimes I’d like to see at least like-making.
Puffy lips polish knobs with the precision of bottle-topping
machines in a factory. Close-ups on genitals go beyond
the actual human capacity of seeing, creating panoplies of
indistinguishable meat rubbing together in ways that would
make Karen Finley cry, “Plagiarism!” Abattoir sounds of fake
orgasm compete with screeching saxophones and synth
beats to conspire against my sanity and irritate my neighbors’
dogs. Ropes of semen shoot onto flinching or bizarrely grinning
faces like a child’s prank, the bottle rocket aimed at the
teacher. And the positions seem like a cruel Cirque du Soleil
masterpiece, though they often do serve as a reminder to attend
my weekly yoga class.
not porn sex, so they wanted me to supervise and coach the
performers. At the same time, the biggest HIV scare to hit
the porn industry in many years was all over mainstream and
adult news outlets, proclaiming an industry-wide shutdown
until all tests were in. Unlike the gay porn industry that condemns
and forbids unsafe sex practices, the straight porn
industry insists that safer sex and condom use would doom
their businesses to failure, claiming that condoms take away
from the “realism” of their work.
After the first public HIV scare in 1997, a few renegade performers
got together and founded a testing clinic and nonprofit,
attempting to make HIV testing (at minimum) socially
mandatory for performers. Even with such positive strides,
an HIV breakout occurred. The leading adult industry magazine
put out an issue with a sexy nurse on the cover, proclaiming
“Killer Sex,” and ran opinion pieces on both sides
of the testing debate. As if it were debatable, like, “Drinking
lye can kill you,” versus, “Drinking lye is only something you
need to worry about if you’re gay.”
So when my years of sex-ed training, porn reviewing, several
books on sex and sexuality, and a willingness to talk about
it on camera landed me in “porn valley,” I was excited to
have my first real, live on-set experience. I brought my digital
camera and extra batteries, and had a list of
questions for the performers and director. But
it wasn’t just any porn set: The highest profile
“men’s magazine” had flown me to Los Angeles
to make a how-to sex-ed segment based
on my two most popular books.
When I got off the plane, I discovered that the wealthy gentlemen’s
glossy outsourced all their film ventures, and were as
cheap as the day is long. The first day of filming in their tiny,
stuffy offices went fine, and I did a series of basic anatomy
descriptions in a “talking head” introduction to the segment.
They told me that the next day we’d be on location to film
the sex scenes and that they had porn performers coming
in for the shoot. In the scenario I was a sex counselor for a
couple who wanted to learn more about oral sex. It was to
be the most explicit segment the magazine’s cable TV franchise
had done yet; they’d had to get personal approval from
the famous billionaire owner, and they were cleverly cloaking
the pornographic demonstrations in an educational wrapper.
I was nervous.
Perhaps the problems started before I’d even arrived, when
the producer was too shy to interview performers for the
shoot. The outsourcing company had never “done porn,”
but due to the sexually explicit nature of the segment, had to
hire porn performers. We needed to show sex techniques,
The next morning started out sunny and warm, and as the
production assistant and I entered the mansion, I realized that
I’d seen the rooms of this house in some of the “high-class”
porn films I’d screened. I noted the credit card on the glass
coffee table in the otherwise spotless house (which was for
I had a sneaking suspicion that Rain
Man was running the porn industry,
counting reverse cowgirls and
doggie/mish/oral sequences.
sale), and a ratty-haired blonde asleep on the couch in the
game room. I quickly snapped a photo of her, and the flash
made her bolt upright in an instant—not asleep, after all.
The performers arrived half an hour later looking like they’d
just come from an all-night porn party. The female was a tattooed
brunette who was a recognizable name in the porn
world; he was a tall, blonde surfer-boy type, and they both
told us they were a real-life couple who did porn together. I
was elated, and though they seemed standoffish, I knew that
once we had a chance to talk, they’d see that I was a knowledgeable,
supportive porn fan. We’d chat and gossip about
the porn business, laughing and making fun of long fingernails
in “lesbian” porn. I looked forward to working with the
sensitive, artistic temperament of performers who’d see the
educational vision of the segment and would conspire with
me to explicitly convey a slightly subversive yet sex-positive
message. But until then, I couldn’t help but notice that no
matter what the male performer was doing, his hand always
strayed to his crotch, grabbing his cock, his balls, or something.
I wondered if porn people developed their own kind of
AMERICAN SEX ED 149