Indeporndence Day
Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the first time I saw a porn video. It was The Devil in Miss Jones, and I saw it at a friend’s house, after the parade but before the fireworks, with about a dozen other guys from my high school. I was still a virgin. All I can really remember was being bored/fascinated, but not aroused; and being totally puzzled that the guys pulled out before they came.
While Penthouse was a staple of my late teen and early twentysomething jacking habit, my experiences with video porn were mostly disappointing. Back then seeing video porn involved renting a VCR, and having to sift through the box covers in the “naughty section” of the video store. I only remember a few successes:
1985, the end of my freshman year of college and my girlfriend’s roommate had already moved back home so we had her dorm room to ourselves. We got a VCR, a couple of videos, and a four pack of Bartle and James wine coolers. One of the tapes was Cafe Flesh, which a friend had recommended with the proviso that, “The set ups are pretty good, but then it’s like 10 or 15 minutes of flesh that gets boring pretty fast.” I really don’t remember the effect of either the porn or the wine coolers on the evening’s festivities. I do remember that Cafe Flesh was the first (and very nearly the last) feature-style porn movie I saw where the movie part wasn’t manifestly idiotic and unwatchable.
1986, I was living in New York for the Summer. On this particular Summer day I was out of work, so I went to the video store and rented Talk Dirty to Me IV. I jerked off four times in about 90 minutes. (A year or two later I tried watching this video with the same girlfriend that had watched Cafe Flesh with me. Her comment was that it was good until Tracy Lords started talking.)
1990, new girl friend, she’s never seen any porn. Let’s try Andrew Blake’s Night Trips, which I had once read about in a copy of Penthouse magazine. Night Trips was out so we got Night Trips II. Worked as advertised. Film is prettier and sexier. Absence of bad writing and bad acting helped too. We fucked like bunnies the rest of the night. (Sadly Night Trips nor any other Andrew Blake titles had the same effect. Nor did re-watching Night Trips II.)
2004, marketing Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story had been slow going until I found AdultDVDTalk.com. At ADT I found the beginnings of a critical community interested in the aesthetics of sexually explicit moving images. I decided that since I had not watched porn in years, some wood-shedding was in order. I got a mail order rental account and tapped several people to help me make my rental cue. The only one we could watch more for more than about 5 minutes was The Opening of Misty Beethovan, a film produced when I was about eight years old.
Misty was fun. The script was witty, the acting ran from sufficient to quite charming, and I loved the way the people looked (even if the clothing and grooming styles were rather “period”). The sex scenes dragged a little, not enough to ruin what was a solid little indie sex comedy. I don’t do scripted films, not yet at least. But I’d be very happy if I ever produced a scripted film as watchable as Misty.
So there you have it. 22 years of (now and again) porn watching; four instances that were not unqualified failures. Obviously I never gave up on the idea that watching a film about people having sex could be interesting, entertaining, and arousing; after all, people make interesting and entertaining (if not arousing) films about all manner of human passions and pursuits. Why not interesting, entertaining, and arousing(!) films about sex too?
-TC
