Not quite—I didn’t actually fall asleep, but I was in that in-between dreaming state. That’s how anti-climactic everything was. And I was starting to get really hungry after all that waiting. Consequently, when everyone finally seemed ready to start the scene, I had a big decision to make: Because you can’t go walking on and off set all willy-nilly while people are shooting (due to noise and whatnot), I had to decide if I wanted to leave for lunch now or in about an hour.
My pal, who had just arrived, opted for the former. We ducked out and proceeded to check out this nifty South African spot around the corner. I had some delicious black bean soup and three samosas.
But things on a porn set aren’t always that ordinary. Sometimes, a set can reveal all sorts of gaps in the space-time continuum—breaches in reality that trouble the “normal” order of things. People move through various stages of intimacy in ways that may seem counterintuitive to individuals in the outside world, people embrace environmental factors that would never be acceptable during ordinary exchanges, and jokes that would usually get a guy slapped become acceptable, even hilarious.
For example, I once met with a big-deal Internet content producer about a survey-based research project I was trying to get going. Ever the innovator, Walter Wright was in the midst of populating his newest venture, HorizontalGloryHoles.com. Walter was somewhat atypical in the level of involvement he had during the pre-launch phases of his projects, which was probably a key to his success. Because of his schedule and mine, we ended up having to meet on set. Ordinarily it would be strange to have a research/business meeting on a film set, but in porn this is no big deal.
I pulled up to a gorgeous residential home in the west San Fernando Valley a perfect ten minutes early. I adjusted my too-short-for-everyday businessy dress, slipped on my shoes (I’m not good at driving in heels), and texted Walter. They weren’t supposed to be shooting yet, but I didn’t want to risk charging in mid-scene.
Before I even made it to the door though, it was flung open by my friend Scott. Scott was a one-time performer-turned-production-manager who happened to be on set that day. What a surprise! As we were kissing our hellos and hustling inside, Scott let me know that our buddy Ted was the day’s director. Two friends—a double surprise! I edged my way around the alcove, trying not to crush the miniature Pomeranian dancing at my feet, while also getting the lay of the land. The set appeared to be in the living room: a massage table surrounded by lights and a static camera. I said a quick hello to Ted, who was a little frantic, and greeted a man and a woman—the performers—whom I didn’t know. Then Walter appeared and shuttled me past the set, down a long hallway, and into the home office.
After an hour’s worth of very productive conversation behind closed doors, the small room was starting to get a little warm. The air conditioner had to be off, as even the tiniest bit of ambient noise would interrupt the scene. But what was going on out there anyway? We’d been gone for a long time. Perhaps it was supposed to be a lengthy massage? Walter got up to listen near the door.
“Don’t make any noise!” I whispered with mock shushing. “You’ll mess up the scene, and Ted will kill you!”
“Yeah, plus the money guy will get pissed,” he said with a wink.
After a long, quiet thirty seconds, Walter inched the door open. Scott, who was standing behind the static camera, spied him from down the hall and called out, “You guys can come out. We’re just waiting for him to pop.”
I tailed Walter down the hall and crept into the main room where Scott was. The woman and man I’d seen earlier were going at it through a—wait for it—horizontal glory hole! The man was face down on top of the massage table with his penis pushed through an opening, while the woman was beneath, sucking and popping and jerking. Ted was down there too, on his back and right in the mix, getting it all from another angle with a second camera.
As I tiptoed by, just a few feet away, I got an eyeful of the guy’s ass. He was shiny with sweat and had huge tense indentations on either butt check. Apparently the horizontal glory hole was working. And since Scott said I didn’t have to be quiet, I whispered loudly “Bye, Ted!”
Without moving the camera even one millimeter, Ted rolled his eyes sideways to look over at me. “Nice to see you for ten seconds. Glad I got to look up your dress,” he said.
Ted was nowhere near to looking up my dress, but he probably needed to imagine himself away from the underside of another man’s testicles for a moment. Or he needed to imagine his lower back out of the extremely uncomfortable-looking position it was in. Either way, I laughed as I made my way outside. The performers never missed a beat.
It was just another meeting in Porn Valley.
8
Academic Snubbery
A SOCIOLOGIST’S RESEARCH IS NEVER DONE.
Sociologists explore, observe, and try to make sense out of human behavior. Sounds simple enough, except that it’s anything but.
Humans are dynamic creatures who are always doing something, and sometimes that something is something new and exciting. But trying to formulate conclusions about social phenomena that are always changing can get complicated, and weighty issues often arise. Issues such as:
1. If you’re observing a group or interviewing people about their lived experiences, when is it time to stop? When do you have enough information? Grounded Theory, a methodological approach frequently used in the social sciences, says it’s when you start to see repetition, but feminist scholarship and social justice tell us that every experience is significant. How, then, do you split the difference? How do you balance and prioritize observable patterns, avoiding repetition, and an infinite number of data points—points that each essentially amount to an individual’s perspective?
2. And what about things that are changing overall, both on an individual and a societal level? Because humans are constantly changing, society is constantly changing. Inversely, since society is constantly changing, humans are also constantly changing. How, then, do you account for overall evolutions, both as a society and on the level of the individual, while observing subcultural patterns and processes?
3. Further, because new things are always coming up, how do you keep the happenings you’re describing and addressing from being incomplete and possibly dated? This is made worse by the fact that academic publishing takes so, so (so) long! For example, one article of mine (in the journal Gender, Work & Organization) took twenty-six months to peer-review and revise. Trust me, this wasn’t because I was slacking. Those twenty-six months (a) Were in addition to the years it took me to research and write the piece in the first place, and (b) Do not include the additional time it took for the journal to get the article in an actual volume. My work “early-released” online in 2011, but it wasn’t officially published until 2013. Let me state this in another way: Research I conducted in 2007 was finally published in 2013. When you think about these sorts of timelines, it’s no wonder people talk about the irrelevance and disconnected inefficacy plaguing academia. But that’s the way the system is. When dealing with the slow-moving scholarship leviathan on one hand and the instant gratification that rules contemporary culture on the other, how does an up-and-coming scholar trying to get by avoid losing any understanding of or connection with the people they’ve observed?
4. And finally, isn’t this whole process kind of exploitative and elitist? Entering a community; getting into its business and space; expecting honesty, authenticity, and disclosure; and then running back to the safety of the ivory tower? That get-in/get-out scenario, which is fairly typical of all types of social research, never seemed very social-justicey or feminist-centered to me.
So I’ve never done that.
I’ve stayed connected to the adult industry over the years. I give back to the community by volunteering my time and developing expertise. I stay abreast of industry happenings and their wider social relevance, which has allowed me to comment in mainstream media and cultural outlets when occasions arise. And I try to direct cri
tical and multi-faceted academic attention toward the adult community through my developing work.
This doesn’t always go over well, though.
One especially brutal moment happened at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting a few years ago.
Just about every line of work or occupation has a professional organization associated with it—physicians have the American Medical Association (AMA), teachers and educators have the Association of American Educators (AAE), and sociologists have the American Sociological Association (ASA). Generally speaking, these national nonprofits are dedicated to advancing the mission, goals, and community associated with their respective discipline or vocation. Not too wild a concept at all.
The ASA has been around for more than one hundred years and has thousands of members—according to its website, more than fourteen thousand in 2012. Members consist of college and university faculty, researchers, students, and people working in government, as well as in the private sector. The organization publishes numerous well-respected scholarly journals (a couple of which are considered career-slam-dunk-caliber folios) intended to further the notion that sociology is a scientific discipline and a profession committed to serving the public good. The ASA also hosts an annual late-summer meeting, and “going to ASA” is one of those things that everyone just seems to do. The whole scene is as much about being seen as it is about sharing ideas, and I have attended multiple times.
The event itself is always huge, spanning about four days, with a few keynote and plenary presentations occurring throughout. These events, which are always delivered by members of the sociological elite, highlight big-deal research, presidential musings, and the overall state of society. Most folks, however, are not elite, and the overwhelming majority of sociologists present their work on three-to-five-person panels or during round-table discussions. There are literally hundreds of panels and round-tables taking place over the course of the event, and they’re often just as anticlimactic as they sound. Which then means that attending the bigger and presumably more exciting events, hobnobbing at evening mixers, and sighting celebrity sociologists in the elevators are all must-dos.
Going to ASA isn’t cheap. You pay for travel (meetings are held in a different major city every year), a hefty registration fee, and room and board—all this on top of the organization’s yearly membership fee. This is a big sum for graduate students especially, who are often living below the poverty line. You could stay off-site at a hostel or with a friend (or friend of a friend of a friend . . .) to save money, but rubbing elbows at the conference hotel is too essential an opportunity to pass up. Consequently, students often bunk four-or-more-to-a-room at whatever Hyatt or Marriott is hosting ASA that year. It’s through these sorts of arrangements that I’ve ended up sleeping with (read: sharing a bed surface with) more than one total stranger and showering while various folks use the vanity. Nothing even remotely like either of these scenarios has ever happened to me via porn, but such is the sexy and scintillating life of a budding academic.
Anyway, my department at UT was offering graduate students with accepted papers a generous $500 to help defray the cost of ASA that year.1 So I did what was informally required of me and traveled to the city of the year for about thirty-six hours. My talk was scheduled for the second-to-last time slot on the final day of the conference, at the tail-end of everything. And because I couldn’t afford to arrive earlier, I missed all the key hobnobbing.
I arrived the day before my presentation and tooled around the city. That night, I slept on a hotel-room floor while a mix of friends and strangers slept in the beds. (I was a late addition.) I did everything I could to keep my one pair of nice pants wrinkle free, tried not to spend too much money, and almost broke even. And I was actually excited to present my work. I had put together a preliminary write-up of the key adult film data I had gathered as part of my dissertation, and this ASA was to be its debut.
I was also excited about the other three people I would be presenting with. Though nobody’s work was similar to mine, their papers were about various aspects of media representation, and I have always loved media representation. If that weren’t enough, two of the other authors were fresh out of graduate school, so not too far removed from me in terms of career development, and the other was a gender sociology legend! I had studied some of Dr. Gender Sociology Legend’s work during my master’s research, and my CSUN mentor had even given me a copy of one of her key works as a gift years earlier. With all that history, I was excited.
Silly me.
I showed up at the presentation area well in advance; but, after a few minutes, something seemed to be amiss. Besides me, there were a couple of people waiting to hear the talks, and the person who organized the group was there too, but no one else. No other speakers. At all.
At exactly one minute before we were scheduled to begin, Dr. Gender Sociology Legend breezed into the room and took a seat in the presenters’ area. She had no notes with her, just a bottle of water and her ASA badge. I thought she was a superhero—so experienced and poised, she didn’t even need the obsessive stack of papers and a power-point presentation like I did. Starstruck, I was about to introduce myself when the organizer sidled up.
“Ummm . . . hello, Dr. Legend. I’m The Organizer. We’re just going to wait a couple more minutes. We seem to be missing some panelists.”
Dr. Gender Sociology Legend looked understandably annoyed. I tried to look annoyed, too. But what could I say? Did I go for the patient and understanding, “Gee, I hope the others are okay.” Or should I opt for the more exasperated, “How unprofessional, sheesh!”
Three to four painfully slow minutes ticked by. I had decided on a hybrid approach: “Certainly the other panelists wouldn’t dream of being this inconsiderate without good cause. . . ,” when Dr. Legend rustled her way to standing. The Organizer jumped in:
“Why don’t we go ahead and get started?” she suggested brightly.
“With just me?”
“No, no, of course not. Chauntelle is here, too.”
Dr. Gender Sociology Legend finally noticed me. “Which paper are you presenting?” she asked.
I finally managed to find my voice: “The one about the gendered content of adult films. We could just present our papers. Maybe they’ll still show up, but if not we’ll have plenty of time for a nice discus—”
“Are you talking about pornography?” she cut me off. And then, without waiting for me to stammer a reply, added, “No. I don’t think so.”
She picked up her water and walked out of the room without another word. I was dumbfounded and embarrassed. The Organizer had to scrape her jaw off the floor and pop her eyes back into her head. The handful of other people present looked uncomfortable and a bit bewildered.
Long moments passed. The Organizer was still at a loss for words. And even though I was blushing hard and felt like a total fool, I smiled and said something along the lines of: “Well, I guess I’ll go first then.”
This memory still pisses me off. And it still feels just as humiliating. Obviously, I had no problem speaking in front of people, and I wasn’t at all nervous about the quality of my scholarship, but I was upset about what I perceived to be a slight that had everything to do with the nature of my work. Are you talking about pornography? Sure, it could’ve been that Dr. Gender Sociology Legend was just over ASA. This encounter occurred during the final few hours of the conference. But she had agreed to speak, and something about her brusque walkout didn’t suggest she was tired.
After a talk that I really don’t remember and some questions that didn’t really matter, I stalked out of the stupid conference hotel, dragging my stupid backpack and stupid laptop over to the stupid metro station. I was no longer concerned with maintaining a professional appearance or avoiding wrinkles. To add insult to injury, I had booked a fairly late flight—you know, thinking I might have the opportunity to caucus with people about big sociological ideas or fantastic new projects after my bri
lliant presentation. Instead, I got to the airport with hours to spare. And as I sat in a remote corner, licking my wounds with only some pricey airport Internet to keep me company, I stared out the window and wondered, not for the first time (and definitely not for the last), what the hell was I doing playing this academia game.
When I finally made it home, it was well past midnight, but I immediately pulled Dr. Gender Sociology Legend’s book off my shelf. After so many years and a move halfway across the country, I still had it. I carefully tore out the page where my CSUN mentor had written me a little note, which I stowed lovingly in a folder. Then I walked that legendary book out to my apartment complex’s community dumpster. It was a hot, nasty August night in Central Texas, and the smell was horrifically ripe. I thought Dr. Gender Sociology Legend’s book would be happy at home with the rest of the garbage.
I watched it sail into the bin and reveled in the wet slap-squish noise that marked its touchdown. Maybe it was petty of me, but oh well.
9
The Slippery Slope of Subjectivity
I WATCH A LOT OF PORN.
It’s important for the work I do. You can’t really understand an industry if you’re not fully versed in its products. Plus there’s an interactive relationship between the adult community and wider society such that each impacts and influences the other. Within this context, bits of adult content act like snapshots, and these captured moments reflect various dimensions of porn and society’s ever-evolving relationship with it. It’s interesting to think about: Things like porn parodies and star showcases act as evidence that the two worlds do, in fact, interrelate.
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