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Notes From The Porn Front
Nobody really knows what's happening around them, in the cracks below us, in the stucco mansions, in the unseen belly of this city, in the waking daylight, right in our back yards, in estates rented for the day. I walk outside into the warm night. A full June moon is rising into the stillness. A breeze occasionally swoons in from somewhere else. I think of Tangiers and belly dancers under clouds of silver opium trails. All is quiet on this Tuesday evening, everyone seems tucked away, unaware of the surreal debauchery that is taking place behind me in an obnoxious hillside mansion at the end of another long dark driveway. I toss an imaginary cigarette into the dry brush, igniting the streets and hills for miles in all directions. She's from Sacramento. Another nice girl transforms before my eyes. She comes in jeans, she leaves in come; it's the easy income that lures her here. She hates all the clothes I have and disappears into the bathroom to try things on, each time returning to say, "this makes me look fat," "this makes my tits look too small," "this makes my ass look too big," "too small," "uneven," "deformed." I'm looking at her and seeing this other side, shy and insecure and twisted all up from our ideas of beauty and what's attractive. I look at her and realize I'm staring at a mannequin, and she's pretty and has a beautiful mouth and huge eyes, and if she were working in an ice cream parlor I would order an extra scoop and suspend myself in that moment between scoops, between her, between wonder and lust.
She decides on a silver corset and a black mini skirt. I beg her to put stockings on to make her legs look longer and so there's more to remove during her "scene." Later, I'm having a cup of tea while I watch her finger fuck another girl who is engaged in giving a blowjob to our token dick. There is something deranged and comical to how she's going about it. It's almost as if she's lost something and is determined to find it. She's jabbing her fingers like she's trying to get a quarter out from behind the grate in the gutter. She's shouting "I'M FUCKING YOUR PUSSY. I'VE GOT ALL FOUR FINGERS IN.YOU'RE A LITTLE SLUT." The director says we need some ball talk. That means he wants our lead girl to talk about the guy's balls, how he likes them sucked and yanked. The guy's having a not so hard time, and there's talk of him retiring or at least popping some Viagra. I'm listening and watching and I'm transfixed but not turned on, and I think of everyone watching "Cops" and "Survivor" and "America's Most Wanted" and I read in the paper that you can go to the sports arena and for $125.00 you can share a spiritual day with the Dali Lama. Parking is extra. This is such an extreme environment. To be right here on the set of a $50,000.00 porn film in a rented mansion with some of the top porno stars. To watch them act and come and act and turn into an idea of what sexy is. One of the actors greets me with a warm and firm handshake and tells me how he just got back from Boston where he watched his mother graduate from college; college that he paid for. He said he tipped the ushers and got his whole family the front row and he said how he dressed in an expensive suit and how he looked like a thousand bucks. It's a miracle more people aren't out of their minds. Maybe we're all out of our minds. Some of us have high paying and respectable jobs that require us to lie and cheat and cause suffering for millions of people. Some work at taco bell or make paintings or fix and break cars. Some make huge Hollywood blockbusters that promote guns and smoking and the raping and dismemberment of young women. Some market and sell disease. Some sell the antidote. Some make music. And some fuck for money. And a lot go home and jack off alone.
We are in strange times. There's a side of me that's happy that porno is becoming mainstream and that a lot of people are making money off it. I wish that the world was not what it is and people didn't have to sell huge chunks of their selves to survive. I wish we could all swim and wear sheets and make love and feed each other grapes and live in luxury and talk of philosophy and freedoms. But for right now we make the best of it, and try not to get swallowed and spit out. To remain recognizably ... human. I work in porn ... occasionally. --Johnne Perez Remember, this is just the boy's day job. In reality, among other talents, Johnne Perez is an artist. Please go see his beautiful sculptures in the first ever Artist of the Month feature. Text
copyright © 2000 by Johnne Perez. All Rights Reserved. |
