Blowfish is where I discovered sex didn’t suck. Or rather Blowfish is where I discovered that the sex business didn’t have to suck. It was in their online catalog that I first found things like Vixen Creations Dildos or the work of Jullian Snelling and started to wonder why there weren’t sex videos that were equally well made.

Blowfish was also the first American retailer to buy our first film, MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, so I’m always anxious to hear what they think of our films. It’s not that I think they’d hate anything we’d produced, but I hold Blowfish in extra high esteem, and I want them to be extra charmed with what we offer them. You can imagine the sigh of relief when I read this in the Blowfish weekly newsletter:

“We like Tony Comstock’s movies. He specializes in documentaries that all follow the same basic pattern: a long interview with a couple, mostly about their sex life but also about the origin of their romance, followed by a long sex scene. The end result is strangely intimate — having heard so much about their lives, it’s quite moving to watch these people have sex. In a field where sleaze and vulgarity are pretty much part of the atmosphere, Comstock’s films provide a welcome touch of class, and they’re often as much about love as lust.“Ashley and Kisha: Finding the Right Fit is Comstock’s first film devoted to a lesbian couple, and they’re wonderful subjects, funny and sweet and willing to laugh at themselves. (The fact that they’re totally gorgeous is a bonus.) Their story has the satisfying contours of a romantic comedy: Ashley the openly gay student athlete pursues straight college girl Kisha, who turns out to be not quite as straight as she’d always assumed. There’s even a cute meet, when Kisha barges into the bathroom at a party where Ashley is making out with her ex-girlfriend; Ashley confessed that, though she slept with her ex that night, she was really thinking about the glimpse she got of Kisha’s ass in the bathroom.

During his promotion of his film SHORTBUS one of the things John Cameron Mitchell said was, “We tried to de-eroticize the sex to see what kind of emotions and ideas are left over when the haze of eroticism is waved away…by the end if you’re thinking only about the sex, then you have a problem.”

Peggy and I watched SHORTBUS together, in bed, on a Friday night, after the kids were fast asleep, and I guess we don’t have a problem, because by the end of the movie we were not thinking about sex so much that we didn’t even have sex ourselves. Mitchell had so successfully “de-eroticized” the sex that SHORTBUS effectively squelched my usually rampant libido.

The problem that I do have is with the idea that arousal, that sexual desire, that erotic pleasure is some sort of haze that keeps us from seeing our better selves. This idea utterly pervades the discussion of sexual art – from The United States v. Ulysses, to Sir Quintin of the BBFC, to Mitchell’s strange pride that although “all the orgasms and all the semen in SHORTBUS were real…no one in the audience got a hard-on” – artists and audiences both are obliged to deny and devalue the the erotic, to say (true or not) that their interest in sex lies elsewhere.

Fine. Whatever. Not me.

I love exploring the erotic. I love hearing what turns people on, I love seeing what turns people on, I love seeing what people do when they are turned on. I love the idea that sex can be restorative, curative, and connective. I love that getting hard or wet or whatever is a part of falling in love, and being in love, and staying in love. And I love making films about it.

I love when people watch my films and laugh and cry and sigh, and most of all, I love when people watch my films and get turned on. I love hearing about the gushy wanks and lusty tumbles these films inspire. I love hearing about how, after watching our films, lovers trip down memory lane, recounting their own “hardcore love stories”, and then add another chapter right there and then!

Does that make me a romantic, or a recovering romantic or a delusional romantic? Yes, and I’m proud to be one, and proud and delighted to see another one of our films at Blowfish.com!

It’s official! Blowfish is the first US retailer to officially place an order for MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, and we couldn’t be happier!

Blowfish was the first US retailer to pick up MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY (dig the old cover!), and the first retailer to pick up XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT and DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER.

But then, that’s what Blowfish does – they find the good stuff, and they find first. Blowfish is where I first discovered theVixen Creations String of Pearls. Blowfish is where I discovered the wonderful work of erotic jeweler Jullian Snelling. And it was back in around 1995, after seeing that not even Blowfish had the kind of sex films that I wanted to see that I concluded that they must simply not exist and that I’d have to make them myself.

Indeed, aside from pleasing myself, one of my thoughts as I embarked on this quixotic journey was “I want to make something that people who shop at Blowfish might like.”

Anyone want to make a bet who will be the first to carry ASHLEY AND KISHA?

Somewhere back in the very early days of the World Wide Web I stumbled across Blowfish.com, and as it turned out, it changed my life. Blowfish.com is where I discovered sex wasn’t stupid or gross, or rather it’s where I discovered that the sex business doesn’t have to be stupid or gross.

Blowfish is where I saw, and then purchase my first silicone dildo. Blowfish is where I first saw the work of Julian Snelling. Blowfish is where I found Bodywise lubes (the only lube other than Eros Bodyglide that Peggy and I use). And Blowfish is where I started to wonder “Why aren’t there sex films as nice as all these other very nice things they sell? Why aren’t there sex films that made me feel as happy and sexy as these dildos and buttplugs and lubes?”

Not too long after that, Peggy and began shooting the studies that became the foundation for Comstock Films, and some five or six years later, Blowfish became the first American retailer to stock Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story. Now they’ve added Damon and Hunter to their selection of video offering, and we couldn’t be happier with what they have to say about the film:

“We like Comstock films because they are documentaries about real couples who really like each other and really like sex. And we get to see the couples not only having sex, but talking about sex. They also talk about love, romance, how they met, and all sorts of other very personal, intimate things. It’s regular porn, and communication porn brought together.

“Consider yourself warned. The first half of the film cuts back and forth between long scenes of Damon and Hunter talking about their lives and quick Nouvelle Vague style jump cuts of them having sex. It’s sort of like a Godard film with a hard on. The second half is the hottest boy on boy sex you’ll ever see. They just seem like real people and not porn stars, because of course they are real people. But just for the record, they are real people who have great sex. These two boys are so yummy they pretty much transcend gender and sexual orientation. We’re pretty sure they will appeal to just about anyone.”

Blowfish gets it. Blowfish gets that passion is the key to great sex, whether that’s sex with your lover or the business of sex; and Blowfish is passionate about finding, appreciating, and promoting passionately made sex products. Just yesterday one of Peggy’s friends, upon seeing the Blowfish review of D&H said, “Oh wow! Blowfish! They’re picky!”

Blowfish is picky. They’re picky because they’re passionate; passionate about the idea that the sex business doesn’t have to be stupid or gross, and that it doesn’t have to be medicalized self-help education either. At Blowfish sex is fun, sex is play, sex is pleasure, sex is passion. And we’re so very happy that our films have a place at Blowfish!