by David Rakoff
I have some sense of the hypertrophic attributes straight guys like in their porn stars: the hourglass far more than the test tube. Jessica Rabbit of the Parking Lot, for example. She has changed into a Lady Guinevere getup in red acetate and is giving out postcards advertising a line of topical unguents. (Arthurian romance is a fantasy mainstay but it requires formidable powers of imagination over and above the usual suspension of disbelief, given the current insistence in porn on an almost autoclave level of depilated sterility. Just think about the smell of two bodies, adhering to medieval standards of personal hygiene, coupling in sexual congress and try to keep your lunch down.)
Violet Blue is something of a departure from that model. A petite, twenty-nine-year-old with an almost ballet dancer’s body whom one would never pick out of a crowd, naughty schoolgirl outfit notwithstanding. Even her walk is a purposeful, career-girl-on-the-move march rather than a siren’s bump and grind. And still, she has more than three hundred and fifty titles in her filmography and is apparently a huge star. (“One of the top ten,” says the correspondent for PNN—the Porno News Network—a human lipid of a man in a fuchsia silk shirt and, of course, double-breasted black leather suit. This is the man who, when I ask him if there is fraternization between members of the adult-industry press and the stars, skeevily clarifies, “There’s fraternization between friends.”)
She’s here with her boyfriend, with whom she lives in Seattle. They left Los Angeles to have a somewhat more normal life for her six-year-old son. She is easing out of the business—her fiancé has made it one of the conditions of their eventual marriage—and she has made only a handful of movies this year (she gets paid by the scene, according to a sliding scale depending on the acts).
She is the youngest of nine children, “And I’m the good one!” she says. I tell her she’s funny, apologizing if I’m stating the obvious. I’ve never clapped eyes on her before and have no idea if this is something for which she is also widely known. “That’s okay,” she says. “I’ve never heard of you, either.”
I ask if her parents know what she does. “It would be kind of hard to keep this kind of thing from my parents.” They live next door, in fact. “My mom altered my skirt for me,” she says, standing up, showing the tartan kilt that has been abbreviated to little more than a pleated belt. “I LOVE MY PARENTS!” she cheers. I posit as how that might be a fairly unique narrative in this environment. She knows what I’m driving at: that people go into porn because they have lives of abuse and pain. It’s presumptuous of me, to be sure, and she lets me know this gently, by saying, “I don’t really know. I don’t usually ask people how they get along with their parents.”
Whaaaaaat?!?! It is this, more than the photographs of her introducing erect penises into her orifices, more than the images of models being double-penetrated or smiling for the camera with jism-glazed faces, it is this that I find most shocking. And no clearer proof that, although geographically still in Manhattan, I am visiting some alien principality that has nothing to do with New York City.
But everything is confusing about this event, right down to its very name: Exotic Erotic. It conjures up notions of a no-holds-barred display of our richly colored tapestry of human libido, where anything goes. Freedom of Expression, as advertised. There is an extravaganza of women exposed to the male gaze, for sure, but beyond that, anything most emphatically does not go. There is nary a nod to female desire, and as for deviations farther afield, say, a reasonable expectation of a homo presence—especially with June’s Gay Pride Parade looming just a few weeks away—it is limited to just one gay exhibitor: Lucas Entertainment, the porn studio owned and operated by Russian impresario Michael Lucas. Lucas is the Sergei Diaghilev of gay erotica, known for his high production values and array of impossibly perfect men. The table is spread with DVDs of Lucas’s titles and model cards of his stable of stars, printed on one side with close-ups of their intimidatingly handsome faces and on the reverse with full-body shots of their equally flawless anatomies. Richard, the studio’s national distribution manager, had been told there would be five other gay studios present. Instead, he has been a lone presence and a figure of derision since his arrival, when the guys working security called him a faggot. “This is New York City. It’s not Utah, for God’s sake. I almost jumped over the table to kick somebody’s ass,” he says. Still, he finds it amusing that when seated at the table he is largely kryptonite, but when he has walked the floor, he has been stopped by numerous men wanting information on how to break into the business.
There is even a panel discussion, moderated by Christopher, the guy in charge of public relations for the expo, about how to break into the business. This is, when all is said and done, a trade fair. Commerce is on many people’s minds here. Christopher’s co-presenters are the PNN correspondent and a meaty little fire hydrant of a girl named Cat, packed into a corset and black skirt. If this were Gilded Age New York, she would be the toast of Tammany.
The PNN guy gives the introduction. “Porn is a $6 billion industry. In porn, people work out of their homes. Their homes get bigger and bigger and their kids go to better and better schools.” During his speech, just as at any panel discussion one might attend, Cat is kneeling at the edge of the stage, pushing her breasts together for a photographer.
Because the industry is so vast, he continues, with so many people clamoring to get themselves or their products noticed, breaking in is in large part about being able to write an effective press release. “I have to rewrite 99 percent of everything that comes in, except for Chris’s stuff because it’s damn near perfect.”
“Thank you,” says Chris with Sammy Davis Jr. humility. New York City has some fairly parochial proscriptions against public nudity and sex, so it is refreshing, after hours of relentless soft-core timidity, to finally witness a blow job.
Cat gives a lot of commonsense advice on how to make any kind of business call. She concedes that cold-calling can be difficult. “It’s even hard for me on the phone when they can’t see my boobs.” I doubt that’s true, actually. Cat is completely charming and funny. “Get straight to the point. People are busy. The first thing you should ask is, Do you have time to speak to me? Don’t annoy people. If someone says they’ll call you, you have to hear that and let them call you. But at the same time, your job is to make yourself seem like the best thing that’s out there. Also,” she finally advises, “this is porn. It’s not brain surgery. Don’t be afraid to get a little dirty on the phone. Crack jokes. Make it fun.”
Make it fun. Advice worth heeding as I look over to the lounge area that has been set up with inflatable chairs. Two men are there reading car magazines. It is bus-station sad. A woman walks by, talking on a cell phone (“English,” pause. “Technical support,” pause). She idly taps a hand against her fake breast like she is drumming her fingers on a countertop. No, fun doesn’t really seem to be on order at the expo, and it’s not just joyless, gay me who seems to feel that way. I spot them from yards and yards away, mainly because of her flaxen, naturally curly hair, cornflower blue eyes, peasant shirt, and Birkenstocks. He has a fresh moon face. They are twenty-nine and twenty-six years old, respectively. She’s an accountant; he’s in the military, on leave from the Iraqi desert. They came down from Vermont for this, having seen a video of the San Francisco Ball via a friend who organizes passion parties, the suburban sex-toy equivalent of the old Tupperware get-togethers. They are disappointed, to say the least. They thought there would be more vendors, that it would be denser and more convivial than it is. They’re not going to stay for the ball. “It doesn’t seem worth it, and I don’t have a lot of time off,” he says. They’ll drive back to Burlington this evening.
If only they had the leisure to take it all in like the older couple sitting in the café area, who wear looks of mellow amusement on their faces. She looks like Bella Abzug, right down to the hat. He, a man of at least seventy, is dressed in a polo shirt and khaki shorts. With tan skin and a brush cut, he is shuffleboard-read
y. They are not a couple, actually. They just met here. “I was born and raised on the Lower East Side and I’ve lived in Brooklyn for the past thirty years,” she tells me. “I came here because I like sex and I wanted to get back in touch with it. My husband died a few years ago.” There is not a trace of self-pity in her voice.
He lives on Long Island. “On Monday, my son’s girlfriend is going into rehab. She has four Emmys. She doesn’t know what’s about to happen. If my son doesn’t clean up his act, he’s going to have to go to rehab, too. I had to get out of the house. In my spare time, I hunt for pythons down in the Everglades. Did you see that picture of the python that tried to eat an alligator? We caught a python and chopped it up and fed it to the gators so they’d develop a taste for them and start to eat some of them. I have an eighty-eight-year-old pal who, for his birthday, I got him a hooker for a week. I partied with her all week during the day and he got her at night. For his eighty-ninth, I took him to Scores down in Florida.”
Approaching the pier at 10 PM on Saturday, I meet a young woman with a wristband walking the other way. I ask if the ball is over already—it is scheduled to go until 3:00 AM. She’s just off to get something to eat. She’s volunteering in some capacity, which gives her free admission. I ask her how it is so far. She is very enthusiastic. “Oh, it’s awesome! There are these gymnasts on a trapeze. It’s really cool.” My hopes up, I cross the West Side Highway and make my way through a murder of smokers in the parking lot. There are markedly more folks attending the ball than were at the expo and a healthy representation of women, but they are using the entire space for the ball. The pier is now double the size, and where once there were mere yards between people, it is, at 180,000 square feet, an absolute salt flat. Christopher the PR guy informs me that this is nowhere near critical mass. By midnight, the place will be packed and the big-name musical acts will be driving people wild. I hope for his sake he’s right, because I can’t imagine that this has been anything less than a financial fiasco.
The dungeon master is leaning against his restraining device, a St. Andrew’s Cross: a simple wooden structure of two large X’s, attached at the top like a sawhorse. He is eating some deli sushi from a clear plastic clamshell, but when he’s done, look out! This is clearly the dinner break. A sexy angel and a sexy devil have to put down their takeout containers to have their sexy photo taken. Their mouths are still full, but at least they stop chewing for the picture.
The booths are all still open for business, but the space has been spruced up with an evening look, hung with large black-and-white-striped inflatable shapes: crescents, teardrops, and gourd-like biomorphic things. Three-dimensional and illuminated from the inside, they are beautiful and Venetian and playful and elegant, and they do indeed depend like brilliant jewels in the darkened air of the rafters. But at only seven in number, they might as well be a pair of cuff links decorating a stadium. There would need to be, at minimum, five times as many for them to even register. Similarly the acrobats, a woman flanked by two shirtless men in jeans, are as inconsequential as strips of flypaper. They move with the slowness of eucalyptus-drunk koalas, striking the occasional artful pose. One guy hangs by his ankles for about thirty seconds, while the other man seems to have given up before he has even begun and is just sitting twenty feet in the air. Perched above us for all to see, they act like a windsock, forecasting the conditions down on the floor. Tonight’s weather: boring.
On the main stage, Violet Blue is performing a slinky dance in a black dress and feather boa to an all-brass version of the old Peggy Lee hit “Why Don’t You Do Right?” She strips down to the boa and panties and garters, briefly flashing her small and natural-looking breasts. I understand why she has to limit her routine to these Olde-Timey, hoochy-koochy moves, disallowed as she is to be naked in public. But I don’t get why people who have seen Violet Blue perform the most unbridled sexual deeds are settling for this Vegas-style all-you-can-eat-salad-bar floor show. Perhaps the thrill lies in the very incongruity of Violet Blue herself. She doesn’t exude even the faintest whiff of sluttiness, especially as she gyrates the twin kidney beans of her tiny ass.
Tera Patrick, the undisputed star of the whole thing, also strips for the crowd. Occasionally she will stop and cock a hand to her ear in an “I can’t hear you” gesture. The crowd—about seventy people—cheers. Her fake breasts are mathematically perfect circles. They mesmerize the men in some preverbal way, like newborns who see the archetypal configuration of facial features in an electrical outlet.
The emcee appears onstage: “Now comes the time in the evening that we call Lesbian First Kiss. Is there a girl in the audience who’s never kissed another girl?”
Ah yes, the “lesbian kiss,” one of the building blocks of straight porn. Three women from the audience volunteer. One is a Yale scholar in bioethics, another is a botanist studying the rapidly disappearing Belizean rain forest, and amazingly enough, the third works for an NGO trying to bring potable water to sub-Saharan Africa. Just kidding. There is Goth Girl in torn black hose, Belly Dancer in a gold brocade bra and harem pants, and Platinum Blonde in revealing white satin. Their kisses are gestural and disingenuous, all open-mouthed fluttering of tongue against tongue.
Just behind the stage is the VIP area, replete with such extra-ritzy accoutrements as folding chairs and inflatable loungers. A mandala of cheese slices has been picked over and is curling up at the edges. On a little platform, a pasha ties up Belly Dancer. Her descent into turpitude has been quick; from first lesbian kiss to seraglio prisoner in just ten minutes. He is a tentative and unpracticed despot. The process is taking too long, the methodical steps and knots requiring such a docile and unmoving victim, that it renders the entire need for restraint moot. It is as gripping as watching someone make pierogies. Standing beside me is a Viking, his Nordic-marauder realness belied by Coke-bottle glasses. Outfitted in a helmet with plastic horns and a brown cape made from his plush fur bedspread, the years since his Star Wars–themed bar mitzvah melt away as he takes in the proceedings with a face of innocent delight. Today, he is truly a man.
People paid an extra forty dollars to get back here, where approximately nothing extra is going on. Walking back into the general area, I see a man looking as longingly as Moses must have gazed at the Promised Land he was forbidden from entering. I quickly disabuse him, telling him he’s missing nothing, that it would be like blowing all his frequent-flier miles on a first-class upgrade to Grand Rapids, but he is having none of it. Somewhere, somebody is having a sexy, fun time that he cannot see. I know just how he feels.
Midnight. What should be the height of the ball. A Moulin Rouge spoof up onstage is an amateurish, unsynchronized cancan. At the dungeon, a sleepy torturer desultorily flicks his horsetail whip on the back of his victim, shooing away imaginary flies. She is tied up like a piñata. A man at the side of the stage is talking to her and joking and then tickles her under the chin repeatedly. Tied up as she is, she is powerless to stop him—which is, I guess, kind of the point of a dungeon—but her official tormentor will not brook any unsolicited harassment.
“Dude, leave her alone, I’m serious,” he says.
One summer, while in college, I worked on a chart review of schizophrenics, amassing data on first onset of disease, nature of each episode, adherence to medication protocols, etc. What never failed to astonish me was how the patients, people who had supposedly been cut loose from the moorings of rational human behavior, were all getting messages transmitted from the radio or television directly into their brains, or their metal fillings were telling them to stand outside the Israeli embassy in their underpants. They all started to look like conventional strivers in some homogeneous psychotic suburb. Voices in the refrigerator? Get in line.
Things seem similarly canned and derivative here at the ball. I see the same white pleather nurse’s outfit over and over again. What is this fascination with nurses? I owe my very life to nurses, for sure, but has no one ever been woken up out of sleep in the hospi
tal only to then be given a sleeping pill? Or had their IV tubing back up with blood? Or had a catheter put in—and then, dear God in heaven above—taken out? A Joe Pesci type stands in motorcycle boots and leather codpiece. One of the few men here in costume, he looks mildly confused, as though he’d been chloroformed, stripped, and dropped off. Holding his bundled street clothes under one arm, his car keys glinting in his fist, kind of ruins the effect, but God love him for trying. It’s hard to ignite a sense of collective passion in a crowd where the nearest person is twelve feet away and where only a quarter of the people are dressed up. Even the sexiest of getups is powerless when outnumbered three-to-one by a boner-quashing sea of Dockers, or the bespectacled Bill Gates minus the billions in his molded white plastic George Lucas stormtrooper costume. People seem bored. They barely register the sword-swallower doing his bit to inject some neo-vaudevillian sideshow sordor into the proceedings, and they perk right down with the act that follows him: a troupe lip-synching the numbers from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a film released before most of the performers were born. Moreover, the material’s mid-’70s tolerance and polymorphous perversity are actually a little gay for this crowd. “Wasn’t that great? You can see it a thousand times, and even on the thousand and first, it’s still just great,” the emcee praises backhandedly.