By Mickey Hula
I usually cycle through porn for about ten minutes to a half an hour before making my selection. I spend more time screening pornography than I do actually watching it, this is because most of the porn out there is disgusting, or so obviously fake it simply fails to signify sex – at least in my mind. The videos I do end up choosing are still at least mildly grotesque; this is almost impossible to avoid, at least on the free porn websites that I frequent.
I just don’t understand how anyone can find the gagging noises of a woman literally choking on dick arousing, let alone the dangling stream of saliva dribbling down her cheeks and onto her breasts. Anal sex is also very popular. Whenever I see or hear about anal penetration I cringe and shudder as the image of a male prison shower scene enters my mind. I don’t think I could take satisfaction from an experience that I’m sure would cause great discomfort or especially pain to my partner, and I don’t like watching it happen on my computer screen. I have a theory that the slutty look you see in most women’s eyes is actually just a side effect of inebriation, which is surely the case in these videos, in which many porn stars turn to pharmaceutical opiates to cope with the pain of their labors.
Sometimes the cinematography can make the act of sex look like a swamp monster from a 1950’s science fiction thriller. One very popular camera angle seems to focus in on the pounding from directly behind or underneath, so you are presented with a floppy pair of balls doing the Dance of Life against some fleshy, ambiguous wall. Or when the guy spreads the woman’s vagina wide open with his fingers and the camera zooms right in. Who is this for? The men who have never seen a vagina in real life? I’ve always maintained that there is a good reason why we as men don’t have eyeballs on our other heads.
Studio porn is off putting and instantly recognizable: the perfectly spherical silicon breasts flopping in place like jell-o; the cavalier, uncomfortable sex positions that are all for show; the Botox-injected prima donnas, caterwauling into the boom mic as if they’d been casted into a torture scene of some Scy-Fy Channel original series; and those atrocious, unconvincing polyester police woman or nurse costumes that they sell at Halloween party stores. It reminds me of Miss Piggy from the Muppets, tramping about on stage, covered in makeup and looking like a common whore. It’s comical.
I try to find at least one tantalizing quality about the video that I can relate to. Scenes featuring submissive girls being handled like ragdolls, heads slung back and legs dangling helplessly in the air. Amateur submissions are best for this sort of thing. It has a wonderfully natural feel to it that reminds me of real sex. The girls making videos with boyfriends they think they can trust, or even better are the ones who are just experimenting with their sexuality and intrigued by the voyeuristic twist offered by the camera, especially if they’re cheating on some other guy.
I like to watch the expression on their faces change as they mount their partner, the top half of their faces scrunch up as their eyebrows sink, their eyes close and their jaws drop. Their genuine moans and groans of ecstasy, summoned from deep within their fragile ribcages is a heavenly choir to my ears. Being exposed in front of the camera highlights their vulnerability as they cling desperately to their mate for some kind of blissful, fleeting refuge in an otherwise strange and unforgiving universe.
The one thing I can appreciate about studio porn is the inclusion of a storyline- I just wish more of an effort were made to make them believable. I think the creative minds at work in the San Fernando Valley severely underestimate the value of a well-executed story in creating an arousing sexual fantasy. A juicy context makes the scene exponentially hotter: it gives the porno meaning! I want to really believe the plumber has been summoned to fix the blue-blooded housewife’s clogged pipe. I want to really believe that she’s succumbing to her carnal desires, foregoing all practicality and morals for a few precious moments of raw and honest pleasure that is more important than the Dream Life she has built with her husband for reasons she will never understand or care to know. Instead, I see actors who hardly look human merely serving as props, reciting the same tired lines of the same generic screenplay, similar to the way episodes of Scooby Doo were formulaically structured for systematic regurgitation. It’s assembly line porn.
I think back to the days of middle school when my male peers and I all seemed to agree that getting paid to fuck Pamela Anderson would be the quintessential (wet) dream job. And I’ll never forget an episode of the HBO original series, Pornucopia, I saw in which a young female porn star recounted several stories of when her male counterparts failed to attain an erection while shooting a sex scene. She went onto explain how absolutely nerve racking it is being expected to perform in front of a camera, a pretty girl and a room full of strangers, all of which are counting on you to quickly get your hard-on so they can shoot the scene and go to lunch. She also mentioned how on average, men are compensated about three times less than women for shooting adult scenes. With this burst of enlightenment came a new found respect for male porn stars, and from that point on I kept my mouth shut during the adolescent boasting sessions that took place in the locker room after gym class.
I’ve always found it simultaneously amusing and depressing the way pornography instantly becomes disgusting the minute I am done looking at it, so to speak. The wave of hormones flooding through my body subsides with that final alleviating expulsion of fluids and I am released from my sexual hysteria, left to face the reality of my fancies with abrupt sobriety. I don’t have any moral qualms with pornography in and of itself, but the porn industry’s reputation is marked by stories of lecherousness, exploitation, drug abuse and venereal diseases. I try not to think about what these actors and actresses were like as children; the series of circumstances that led them to their profession, the lifestyles they’re currently leading or the role I play in perpetuating them. I tell myself it’s no different than wearing Nike sneakers or eating McDonalds, and it really isn’t, but it still troubles me deeply to think that all of the leisurely pursuits and pastimes I can think of seems to inevitably base themselves upon the misery of others.