A college student’s real-life encounter with a porn star causes his erotic imagination to go wild.
A porn star visited my college campus to participate in a public debate about pornography. Of course, porn isn’t easy to discuss in public (though raging hormones ensured the undivided attention from students). The woman was well-spoken and smartly-dressed. She made utterances about subjects not even the most liberal among us would mention in mixed company. The anti-porn sociologist countered her points cogently and politely, but the crowd’s sympathies surely rested with the beautiful emissary of lust who twirled sociological arguments as deftly as a stripper waving discarded lingerie in the air.
Such debates quickly turn into shouting matches; and indeed, this debate, like a porn film, was more of a histrionic exhibition than an honest meeting of minds. One side raised the gruesome specter of rape, incest and bestiality; the other portrayed a future society governed by fundamentalist wackos, full of censorship and suppression of liberty. One panelist suggested that her films portrayed sexual coercion as satisfying. That remark made her indignant. “It’s fantasy!” she said. “Obviously it’s not extolling rape.” To prove her point, she asked every woman who had ever fantasized about being raped to stand up. No one did. The porn star laughed, reminding the audience that rape fantasies were common among women. This stunt, though quite irrelevant to the point at hand, had the effect of silencing an audience and turning a crowd of feminists into a bunch of lying hypocrites.
This erotic notion is not about the woman but her trip to the hotel afterwards. University speakers typically are picked up at the airport and driven to campus by student association members. In her case, two male students were her escorts (or that’s what they say). One was someone I vaguely knew; a respected honor student who sang in the church choir. I have no idea what really happened, but erotic possibilities fill my mind. The porn star, far from home and looking for a quick thrill, would have viewed the boy as an easy lay. The college student, though honest and respectable, must have felt a secret thrill at being so close to a sexually open woman. Her boredom combined with his curiosity must have ensured a strange and exhilarating tension during the trip to the hotel.
To be fair, there is no reason to think this woman as promiscuous in real life as in the movies. Perhaps to her the thought of a one night stand was as fatiguing as the thought of bringing home extra work. And although the boy sang in the church choir, did he have to be a saint? His weekends could very well be filled with sexual dalliances and partying. Perhaps this woman, who was at least ten years older and already showing signs of age, just didn’t seem attractive to him (especially when compared to the girls he dated). All this I know, but why do I continue pairing these two figures erotically in my mind? The imagination – especially the erotic imagination – prefers dealing with types to individuals, prefers making humans reducible to a few elemental drives. I recognize this simplifying and stereotyping tendency, but am unable to resist its allure. The imagination revels in alleged details: the panties over the chair, the playful straddling, the bold invitations, the descending kisses, the tongue’s first taste of sex, the nervous laughter, the fumbles, the strokes, the thrusts, the pauses, the smoothness and the hairiness, the face that changes from self-absorption to tranquility in an instant, the limbs that cling long after passion has been spent. In my mind, the porn star and the choir boy keep joining together, each finding the other irresistible.
Interlude: If it’s not important … Why?
Lisa asks, “Why write erotica when people are dying in the Middle East?” The narrator tries to answer, but stumbles.
When I met Lisa at a cafe, I expected feedback about the most recent story I showed her titled The Porn Star and the Choir Boy. It was a harmless little piece, but Lisa wanted to talk about porn from a feminist perspective. (Did I mention that she had majored in Gender Studies?)
“Ultimately,” Lisa said. “Erotica isn’t important. It’s just a retreat from the burdens of living.”
“I wouldn’t disagree,” I said. “But that’s true for all fiction. “
“No, literature is different from erotica,” Lisa said. “Literature offers perspective and fresh insight into life as we know it.”
“But many literary works have no social significance. Jack London or fairy tales are what they are – nothing else. Fun tales to keep you entertained.”
“Then they have no value,” Lisa said. “Fantasies ought to have value. Stories that are merely pornographic just trivialize sexuality.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s the point.”
“You may say stories about the promiscuity of teenage girls are harmless, but they distract readers from sexual exploitation when it actually happens. Maybe porn doesn’t cause sexual abuse (not in normal people anyway). But it undermines your sense of outrage. If you served on a jury during an aggravated rape case, and you had read or watched dozens of rape fantasies in your personal life, wouldn’t that influence your unconscious attitudes?”
“Please,” I said, “let’s not talk about these things. It’s a never-ending debate.”
“Why not? First, you say erotica doesn’t have any positive value. Then you don’t want to talk about harms. But if nothing is redeeming about erotica, why have it at all?”
I didn’t have an easy answer here. When talking about porn and erotica, it’s hard to have rational debate; I can talk only about what I feel. It seemed futile to try to construct a philosophical and sociological defense of erotic literature compelling enough to shoot down the sociological harms.
“Erotica,” I said, “is simply a description of the sexual things we imagine, whether we are actively involved in them or simply a spectator to them. Then, these descriptions are molded, refined (and yes, censored) to produce experiences which not only titillate but leave an indelible mark on the brain.”
“But the human brain can only store so much,” Lisa said. “The time spent contemplating orgies is time the brain could be thinking about the Middle East or homelessness or ecological devastation. If I were homeless or hungry, how would erotica make a difference? Why would I care?”
“The homeless man might disagree. These sexual experiences (real or imagined) can be the only positive thing in his day. His erotic imagination could be his last remaining luxury.”
“Maybe. But why should you write it? Your time would be better spent going to a social function or making human contact – real human contact – not the glistening hypothetical kind you find in fiction. Fundamentally, the act of writing an erotic story is an act of isolation. Masturbation and isolation. Why would you – or anyone else – do it?”
“That is a gloomy assessment, to put it mildly,” I said, chuckling. “I suppose you could indict most artistic expression in the same way. Perhaps what justifies this isolation is the attempt to use stories to connect with society. Maybe some people just write for themselves, or maybe some intend to write for others without ever really succeeding. Writing erotica is an attempt to put the scariest and most irrational impulses into words. Writing (and rewriting) allow us to reformulate these impulses and yes, to humanize them. There are risks in using words to capture these secret thoughts. Yes, I admit that. But when you write, you are expressing confidence that humans can express or read about these things without turning into savages. It is this faith and optimism that ultimately redeems the erotic writer.”
“Or ultimately what dooms him,” Lisa said.
This story (and the accompanying interlude) come from Existential Smut 1: Youthful Indiscretions by Hapax Legomenon. Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) . Read more about this project and how to get the ebook.
Artwork(Above) “The Porn Star and the Choir Boy.” ISPs (Internet Sex Photos) Pr0nography, digitally edited to remove the figures. (Approximately 2001). Jon Haddock (USA), www.whitelead.com, (CC BY-NC). View Haddock’s full gallery here (Yes, it’s SFW)
Artwork (Below): Masqueraders (1875–78). Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz (1815-1894) (SPAIN), (Public Domain)