I learned an important lesson last night: I do not like amateur porn.
I came upstairs from watching The Simpsons to find my man attempting to order pay-per-view porn from the cable company. For whatever reason, he couldn't get the movie he wanted. So we settled for a 90-minute block of home-made porn. We came in during the last hour or so.
Now, I am not Ebert & Roeper here. When I watch porn, I often find myself too distracted to catch titles and make lists of actors and directors. (And Internet Movie Database is not helpful when it comes to porn.) It might help to keep a pen and paper next to the hot tub, except that the paper might get soaked. So bear with me if I'm a little scanty on specifics.
Whatever it was I watched last night, it started out with three chicks. One of them, wearing a sort of Goth-looking dress with her tits hanging out of it, was on her back. The second woman played with her tits, which were big, but not very firm. The third woman ate her pussy. I was into the action, but I wasn't impressed with the women. Words like "beer gut" and "skanky" leapt to mind, as a matter of fact.
I have no problem with girl-on-girl-on-girl as a concept. In fact, one of the very few porn DVDs that I actually own, Sappho, has nothing but women, with nary a dick in sight. It works for me, although my man says that he needs someone to root for. The difference is that all the women in Sappho are- well, hot. (If you ignore the feathered '80s hair and Dynasty outfits, anyway.)
I've always considered myself a feminist, and as someone who appreciates the ladies as well as the dudes, I like to think that I like a whole range of women's bodies, not just one idealized type. Let's just say that none of the three women I saw last night was my type.
I don't need a girl to be a size 8 or smaller. I don't need her to be perfect, either. I can deal with a reasonable amount of cellulite, a less-than-flattering tattoo here or there, or abs that don't quite deserve an "of steel" rating. But someone has to draw the line somewhere.
Every human being on the planet has sexual needs, and girls who aren't "traditionally pretty" need love, too. I'm not saying that, under the right circumstances, I wouldn't be right in there with them, playing with those tits myself. Everyone's taste in porn is different. But let's face it: I don't want to watch every human being on the planet having sex. I only want to watch the reasonably pretty ones.
In the next segment of the same film, there was a blonde. Maybe she was the same blonde who was licking Big Goth Girl's nipple in the previous segment. If so, she looked much better on her back. Whoever she was, her partner was a guy who, with a little bit of squinting, could look like the San Antonio Spurs' Tony Parker. I could totally be turned on by this pair. He was in good shape and had a nice face. She was pretty enough, too- at least from that angle.
All the good mojo built up by watching "Tony" and the blonde was erased by the next segment, though. It began with two ladies- again, not "traditionally pretty"- giving a guy a blow job. His face was obscured by their bodies. All I could see was a cock, with a bit of gray pubic hair sticking out on the sides.
I'm not against gray pubes per se. We all get older, and they probably look great on older men who keep themselves in good shape. Like those guys who pose for fundraiser calendars that they always show in Playgirl. I have the feeling that I'd actually like gray (or white, or silver) pubes on an attractive older woman. But on this guy, all I could think was, "Somebody get this old dude some Just For Men!"
As a "bonus feature," this movie also had some guy- apparently not involved in the sex- sitting at a computer keyboard a few feet away from where the action was happening. What was that about? Even the most amateur of amateur porn directors has to know that we don't care about his friends, his cousin Larry, or whoever that was. Focus on the action!
Amateur porn is a mixed bag. You get the good along with the bad and the ugly. The thing is, I don't want the bad and the ugly. Is it too much to ask that a movie that's supposed to get us off also be a little bit entertaining? The lack of entertainment value is why I've been disappointed with pay-per-view porn for years now.
One night, my man and I ordered a block of porn films that included movies called School of Porn, Wicked Sex Party, and The Dinner Party. School of Porn started from a good concept. It was about a woman getting older, realizing that she wasn't going to make a living as a porn star anymore, and deciding to mentor younger porn stars. She took on a blonde starlet with an Australian accent. Mentor and mentee arrive on a porn set, where a European stud and an American brunette had just finished their dialogue and were about to start filming the sex scene. If porn films followed any kind of storytelling conventions whatsoever, the aging porn star mentor would have convinced the director of the film-within-a-film to replace the random brunette with her blonde. Instead, the European dude and the brunette got it on anyway, while our heroine just walked away. The sex was hot, but what happened to the plot? If you're going to go to the trouble of setting up a plot, you have to follow through with it. Rule of Porn #1: There must be a plot, and it must be followed.
The second movie, Wicked Sex Party, was about an orgy presided over by a dominatrix. She could have been an interesting character. Instead, she didn't really do much of anything except walk around a warehouse full of copulating hetero couples. Within the plot rule, there should be a sub-rule that says that, when developing characters for porn flicks, the full erotic potential of said character must be exploited. No one should be allowed to simply walk around the set in a costume.
Worse, all the guys at this wicked sex party were identical. They seemed to function in only one mode: jackhammer. The ladies didn't seem like they were having too good a time with it, either. Rule of Porn #2: The women must be enjoying themselves.
The third movie, The Dinner Party, was not exploiting the erotic potential of the pussy plates of Judy Chicago's famous installation piece, as I'd hoped. It was simply about a guy who invited various people over to his house to eat and screw. At one time, one naked woman lay on the dinner table while everybody else licked and sucked on her. Remember that Tom Petty video from the '80s in which Alice in Wonderland looked down and found herself to be made out of cake, about to be eaten? Well, this movie was the logical erotic extension of that scene, after the Mad Hatter and friends have eaten off Alice's cake dress. That one wasn't so bad, as far as plotless smut goes.
One of the worst I've seen was something called Filthy Girl 2. The pretty brunette who starred in it wasn't all that filthy. She did end up with a lot of different guys, none of them as pretty as her. That would have to be Rule of Porn #3: Porn stars should be attractive. Male co-stars must be at least as attractive as the females.
The first guy that Filthy Girl was screwing was just average-looking. In the next scene, she was going down on a guy who was ugly in both face and attitude. He kept manipulating her head with his hand. Later, when they were fucking, he kept slapping her and saying, in a manner most unsexy, "Do you like that?" I don't think she did. (See Rule #2 above.)
There is a right way to slap a chick while she's doing you, but this was not it. Disrespect is never sexy. Filthy Girl had better luck with a guy in a limo, but by the time he came along, I was too busy to pay close attention.
Some of you will be reading this and saying, "But O'Riordan, there is good porn out there. You just have to find it." To that end, my man and I had some professional help. We visited Chicago's feminist sex toy shop, Early 2 Bed, and had the knowledgeable sales clerk help us pick out a DVD. We wanted something with girls and guys (so he had someone to root for), something with decent production values, something with an actual plot. She came up with The Opening of Misty Beethoven, a classic from the '70s. It's a sort of Pygmalion story in which a man vows to transform a prostitute who refuses to give head into the world's top mouth-love-makin' machine. It has a plot. Misty enjoys herself most of the time. The porn stars in it are attractive, even the guys (if you can ignore the '70s hair and clothes). And if it weren't for all the sex, you'd be hard-pressed to tell Misty from a regular Hollywood movie. It's almost everything a girl could ask for.
But let's face it: sometimes what I really, really want is for bad Hollywood movies themselves to be made into good porn. Take just one example: Van Helsing, a cheesy-campy comic horror movie with Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale. Jackman and Beckinsale? Totally cute porn couple, especially as she's dressed up as a Romanian Gypsy vampire-hunter dominatrix in this. The film itself is very vague on the issue of Van Helsing's (Jackman's) attraction to Anna (Beckinsale). The one implied-sex scene in the film is between Van Helsing's sidekick, none-too-pious friar Carl (David Wenham), and a grateful woman from the Dracula-affected village. But why hold back? Let's see Anna and Van Helsing going at it in one scene, Anna and Carl in the next- with or without the grateful villager, either way- and then some girl-on-girl-on-girl-on-girl with Anna and Dracula's three brides. That could be pretty sexy, in the right hands.
This is just one example of a movie I saw, and thought, "That sucked, but maybe if they were naked . . ." I'm sure you can think of others. It works for good movies, too, by the way. Wouldn't Titanic make great porn?
Folks, porn is not something you should try at home. Unless you're really hot (much hotter than me), let's leave this stuff up to the professionals. And if you are one of those professionals, keep my rules in mind:
- Come up with a plot. Stick to it. And use all the characters.
- All women must clearly be enjoying themselves.
- All actors must be reasonably attractive. The men must be at least as attractive as the ladies, if not more.
- Shoot for big-budget, Hollywood production values. With Hollywood actors, if at allpossible.
And please, feel free to use my Judy Chicago idea, because I'd really like to see that one. On pay-per-view cable. Just call my cable company and make sure I can order it.
Originally published June 2007 - "Body Art"