Robert Manners

Porn Thoughts

I was reading Jhames today, as I do pretty much every day (and thanks for the shout-out, sweetie!) and finding myself only-ever-so-slightly jealous of his current job task of viewing porn. It's one of the cosmos' better jokes that a man who doesn't really enjoy porn should be surrounded by it on his job where I, who love porn and have been fascinated by it since I was five, have to actually pay for the stuff.



Of course, Jhames (poor soul) doesn't get to choose which porn he has to watch, and I cannot envy him having to search through what sounds like mountains of tedious WeHo gym-bunny porn, directed by frustrated Hollywood directors and written by frustrated Hollywood screenwriters and starring frustrated Hollywood actors. Those films always have the flavor of disappointed dreams about them... a sort of "well, I couldn't make it as a legitimate actor/writer/director, so I guess I'll just do porn to pay for my apartment and my crystal meth." Though that particular brand of porn has its charms (drop-dead beautiful men are always worth looking at, even if they palpably wish to be somewhere else), I always watch it with the sound off and one finger of the fast-forward button... that's a tip, honey, straight from the drag-queen's mouth: the mute button was invented for watching porn videos. Pop a little Mahler in your CD player, turn off the idiotic noises made by the actors, and enjoy the flesh ballet.



Another job-vs-porn moment came a couple of months ago... I was angry at my job for some reason (who can remember... I get mad at my boss, my job, and/or my whole life at least once a month), so I logged into Craigslist to see what other jobs were out there. I mean, with the Dot-Com Bust, admin jobs aren't as easy to come by as they once were (when corporate admin assistants everywhere were abandoning their cushy high-rise jobs for maybe-millionaire startups in the SOMA), and it doesn't do to storm out of the job you have, hateful and tedious as it might be, only to end up with something worse and poorer-paying. Anyway, one of the jobs I saw listed was for an office-manager/travel-secretary for Falcon Studios.



I instantly slipped into fantasy mode... there I am in the middle of this room full of porn stars and porn-star-wannabes, watching porn all day and reading porn all day and maybe even getting trade discounts on escort services. My head swam... Oh! The perfect job for me! Unfortunately for my fantasy, though fortunately for my self, my good old Capricorn practicality kicked in and a more realistic picture of the job presented itself to me: there I'd be stuck all by myself in some cramped little office in one of the smellier neighborhoods of San Francisco, trying to get fifty achingly-beautiful-but-not-too-terribly-bright porn stars from here to Florida, and instead sending them all to Florence or Flanders by mistake. I mean, I've never in my life made my own travel arrangements, much less anybody else's. And if I thought teachers, counselors and librarians were difficult to work with, I can just imagine typing and filing for a bunch of porn producers who probably didn't even go to college and who think that "Oh, yeah, suck that big dick, faggot" is stimulating prose. Shudder!



So anyway, I've often wondered where my fascination for porn comes from. I mean, I really have been into porn since I first found a Playboy behind the couch when I was five or six. Even though the female form didn't excite me much, there was something about the prurient nature, the sly drollery, and the air of excitement that came out of that magazine that really turned me on, and continued to fascinate me all the way up to puberty (when I discovered the delights of the male form, my own and others'... yowza!) It was sex, but it wasn't messy or threatening or intimate or painful or smelly. I guess maybe that's it... porn is very removed from reality. There's this degree of distance between one's self and the porn object, and that degree of distance guarantees safety. And to someone for whom the road of relationships and intimacy never ran smooth (even before sex, the intimate relationships of family and friends were a trial and a bane to me), that distance is very comforting.



Today, porn makes up the entirety of my sex life. As I've shared before in this space, I haven't had sex with another person in years and years, and I've found I'm mostly happier that way. Even when I was sexually active, I really preferred porn for getting off. In fact, I more or less needed it... my imagination was not enough for me, and the memories of sex I'd had were certainly not very stimulating, so the pictures in the magazine (and more recently on the VCR) became necessary to me.



I wonder sometimes if all the porn warped me against "regular" sex. I mean, the things I don't like about sex with people — the smells, the vulnerability, the physical effort — don't exist in a "voyeuristic autoerotic lifestyle." The people in the magazines and videos are more beautiful than the men to whom I have access with my medium looks and mediocre physique, medium personality and minimalist income. You can't catch a disease from a movie, you can't be betrayed by a magazine, and you never have a fight with your own left hand.



And yet, you can't fall in love with them, either. They can't love you back.



Deep waters.. let's pull back just a trifle. One of the things I find interesting about porn is how different people's tastes are, and how many different styles of porn have been launched to meet those tastes. My own preference is for a certain kind of twink porn... those George Duroy Bel Ami films really get to me, as do the works of JD Cadinot. And then the beefcake porn of the early Eighties (the Matt Sterling oeuvre in particular) is a lot of fun, and then there's the great 70s stuff that comes up now and again. I love pretty slender boys more than anything, and yet I also have a fetish for really large penises... the kind that take up so much room on the person that all you can do is gasp and gape at them. Every once in a while, though terribly rarely, the two fetishes meet. But I have never found a film that pairs a really big man and a slender boy. For some reason, most porn is very much about twos-of-a-kind. Two twinks, two gym-bunnies, two horse-hung daddies, always two (or more) of whatever type the director likes best. I think contrasts are a better pastime... pairing unlikely people into unnatural acts. Yum.



Well, anyway, I wonder whether or not I would enjoy doing something about producing porn... consultation or office-work or what-have-you. But I doubt it. It would probably ruin porn for me to have to do anything about it professionally. And then what would I do? Have sex with real people? Dommage!



I have to run, darlings... I have a drag show to get ready for, and time's a-wastin'! Kisses!