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Quantify the effects of the experiment.
Thursday, 8 p.m.
As I settle in at my desk with TV, VCR and portable DVD player at the ready, I opt to start off easy, with The Villa by noted director Andrew Blake. I’m intrigued by the women on the DVD cover: more suited to walking a Milanese runway than doing anything vaguely naughty, they make the Victoria’s Secret girls look like menopausal soccer moms.
Unfortunately, the sex is to porn what Kenny G is to music: soft, trite, “sensual” — something your parents would enjoy, perhaps after a shared bath with candles. Several unconnected vignettes feature smooching, rubbing and creative uses for pearls, feathers and clear glass dildos. Like, gag me with a spoon. Mouths threaten to come into direct contact with genitalia occasionally but never do. Oh, wait — scratch that. There is some cunnilingus, but it’s strictly PG. The girls look dry. I worry that they’re chafing. My friend Jamye stops by with a coffee and a concerned look on her face.
Thursday, 9:25 p.m.
After all that pouting, sultry cockteasing, I’m ready for something a little nastier. I put on an instructional video called How to Give a World-Class Blowjob. In the first scene, a middle-aged doctor smugly promises to reveal the secret to a perfect blowjob in “all its explicit, delicious, lip-smacking detail.” Easy, tiger! Sounds like he’ll be giving the demo. But no: the video cuts to an attractive couple — European by the looks of them — who demonstrate techniques for the next hour.
Five minutes in, it’s already the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. “Try practicing on a banana. It feels like a penis and is high in potassium,” drones the female narrator with all the energy of a flight attendant running through a safety card. The background music sounds like instrumental Jimmy Buffet. I observe a technique called “Licking the Ice Cream Cone.” “Imagine, if you will, that it’s a hot day and ice cream is about to drip from the cone,” the narrator says. “Seeing people eat ice cream will give you and your lover a special tingle forevermore.” Everything seems legit until the female model smothers her playmate’s generously proportioned cock with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Jamye says that whipped cream on skin is a markedly bad idea: “It’s like warm milk . . . ew.” The video then cuts back to the doctor, who concludes, “Now that’s what I call a world-class blowjob!” He flashes a thumbs-up and urges viewers to “get out there and practice!” In spite of how silly this video sounds — or perhaps because of it — I find it extremely arousing.
Thursday, 10 p.m.
Japanimation. Desert Island Story X. Animated, tentacled sea monsters raping young girls. The less said about this, the better. I confess that I don’t really get anime: okay, so big-eyed, big-breasted, tiny-waisted cartoon women run around, or are in some way restrained, while nightmarish video-game music pumps. Did I miss a memo at puberty? I don’t know how people get off by watching this, what with all the wanton destruction and monsters bursting out of people’s ribcages. I’m glad Jayme’s here to help me make fun of this one. It really is a two-person job.
Thursday, 10:20 p.m.
Mercifully, Desert Island Story X is only twenty minutes long. At Jamye’s request, we put on some gay porn. Babycakes in . . . Ignition! Apparently, Babycakes is so named because of his “innocent” facial features, which are unwisely obscured by a neatly trimmed P.M.B. (Paul Mitchell beard). The plot: Babycakes looks at porn on his iBook, then jerks off. Short and sweet, simple yet effective. I’m starting to feel a little loopy. There are twenty-two hours left. I scarf some chocolate, hoping for a sugar high. Pleading boredom, Jayme leaves.
Thursday, 11 p.m.
Next up: Thrills: Part One. Good old-fashioned San Fernando Valley porn. Fake tits, bad lighting, worse dialogue. This stuff is so conveyor-belt it’s not even funny. It brings back memories of the time I visited a porn set in Chatsworth. I think I even recognize bits and pieces of furniture. Because I’ve gone behind the scenes, I can’t really appreciate this stuff as an art form. I can only visualize the mechanics: Make-up girls spackling pimply asses, production assistants running out for lube and condoms, cracked-out actresses coming to work hours late, an actor grabbing a fistful of Cheez-its at the snack table while tugging his dick to keep it hard.
One by one, my friends drop off of instant messenger. I imagine that I’m the last person on Earth. It’s been almost four hours, and I feel like I’ve been up for weeks. I pop a Ritalin and wonder exactly what it’ll do to me.
Thursday, midnight
This movie isn’t so bad.
Friday, 1 a.m.
Every man’s fetish is eighteen-year-old girls. That’s what the makers of Every Man’s Fetish 2 would have you believe. It’s supposed to be a compendium of “barely legal girls” masturbating, but, pah-leese: every one of ’em is 30-plus. Putting the entire cast in Britney Spears-style uniforms only emphasizes the fact that most of them could tell you where they were when Kennedy was shot.
Friday, 2:25 a.m.
It’s time for a classic: 1982’s Amanda by Night. Not only does this look like the definitive source material for Boogie Nights, it also yields some of the most imaginative plot development I’ve ever seen in porn. In one setup, a young stud announces that his sexual prowess is the stuff of legend and that he can fuck all night without coming. A ghetto-fabulous pimp begs to differ and throws down a challenge: he bets $500 that his two best girls could fuck the stud “limp as a rag.” An impromptu adjudicator decrees that the girls will have to get the guy hard in two minutes and get him off in three. The partygoers watch, enthralled. The contest eventually ends in a tie that leads to a “fuck-off:” last hard dick at the party wins the pot. Genius.
Friday, 4 a.m.
My friends in England come online and wonder why I’m still awake. I tell them. My answer isn’t met with much surprise.
Friday, 5 a.m.
With some trepidation, I insert American Bukkake 4 into the DVD player. I’ve never actually seen a bukkake flick. If you haven’t had the pleasure, here’s a plot summary: about seventy pervs, nerds and workaday Joes are picked at random to ejaculate on a girl’s face. As classy as it sounds, the result is actually quite revolting. If you ever thought professional porn actors were disgusting, you should see what happens when directors open the door to all comers. As the film begins, a bunch of weird, misshapen men with beer guts and goatees line up like they’re at a lunch buffet. A few seem to sport botched penile augmentations. The first girl enters. She wears a pair of goggles and tilts her head back while the performers — referred to by the emcee as “gentlemen” — step up, two at a time, to “pop” on her face. The second girl seems determined to up the ante, brushing off the goggles and holding a glass bowl under her chin to catch the run-off. I never found out what she planned to do with the cumulative efforts of the seventy or so Hell’s Angels who’d been drafted to help, because I had to turn it off.
Friday, 5:20 a.m.
Given that I’m being forced to watch twenty-four hours of porn, it seemed fitting that I should sample the triple-X version of A Clockwork Orange, cunningly titled A Clockwork Orgy. It’s stunningly faithful to the original, almost scene for scene. The character Alex is now “Alexandra,” and her Droogs are female. They drink moloko at the Korova to get in the mood for ultra-sex, then wreak havoc by bedding every male who crosses their path. Alexandra is captured and rehabilitated by being forced to watch porn. I’m starting to know how she feels.
Friday, 7:40 a.m.
Continuing in the vein of classic remakes, next up is A Midsummer Night’s Cream. I can only discern two pieces of information from this film: 1) Nina Hartley appears to be playing some kind of wood nymph, and 2) fucking isn’t quite as nasty when accompanied by a lute ‘n’ harp soundtrack. Two Ritalin left. No need to take them now. I think I’m dehydrated.
Friday, 8:30 a.m.
“You’re a bad fairy.” Ha ha ha.
Friday, 9:30 a.m.
I’m starting to feel fairly awful — but not nearly as awful as the 1993 gay flick Hairassment. The entire budget must have gone into thinking up that title.
Friday, 9:45 a.m.
Co-workers trickle into the office. Noticing my disheveled state, they tiptoe gingerly around my desk. A few of them hover fifteen feet away, drinking coffee. I feel them watching me. “WHAT THE FUCK? DO YOU FUCKING MIND?” I snap. I’m beginning to lose my grip on reality and all that is decent. Because I’ve hardly made a dent in the stack of tapes on my desk, I’ve started playing DVDs and VHS movies simultaneously. It’s like Guns N’ Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle video, when Axl Rose is confronted with all those TVs. Yep, it’s just like that.
Friday, 9:50 a.m.
Axl’s a mess these days.
Friday, 10:15 a.m.
I’m watching the Vivid flick Open All Night. It’s about a man who orders a meal at a diner and hallucinates that the staff and other patrons are all having sex with each other. But is he really hallucinating? The movie keeps us guessing until the end. I’m starting to see strange things myself. My neck is hot, my ears are burning up, and I swear that people are talking about me. Someone brings me a coffee. The generosity would make me cry if the coffee’s aroma didn’t make me nauseous. I have to talk myself into taking a sip, which takes about twenty-five minutes. I’m not really thinking in terms of linear time at the moment. I count two blowjobs, three vaginal penetrations and an anal scene.
Friday, 11 a.m.
I’m experiencing phases of euphoria followed by deep depression. I pop another Ritalin and gulp down a can of Red Bull in time for The Devin Lane Show. Wait, it’s not a TV show! It’s porn masquerading as a TV show! In the opening scene, Devin, a natural-boobed brunette, reads “viewer mail” to illustrate how her “show” is different from most porn. “Jim from Duluth writes: Why can’t there be more girls in porn that look like they are having fun? I wanna see more of that!” Devin doesn’t really answer Jim’s question but gamely smiles into the camera while getting coarsely banged in the next scene.
Friday, 1 p.m.
Lunch at my desk. Chicken soup. Whether it’s for the soul is unclear. Remarkably, in spite of all the fluids arcing across my monitors, I’m still capable of keeping my food down.
Friday, 3 p.m.
Behold the logical storyline. In Wicked Pictures’ Fast Forward, a series of people go into a video store, look at a box cover and fantasize about being in the pictured scenario. Dissolve to fucking. One guy imagines himself as a mobster. Another fantasizes about going through boot camp with a hot female drill instructor. It is this film, the latter scene specifically, that makes me realize that porn can actually be good. I feel a tear spring to my eye.
Friday, 5 p.m.
Joe Gallant’s Black Mirror Productions holds the distinction of being the only company that produces hardcore porn in New York City. And hardcore it is. The company pioneered the genre of “butt painting,” in which colonic irrigation meets Sherwin-Williams. In a typical scene, a gallon of semi-gloss is shot into a performer’s keister so she can spew it all over a canvas. The inspiration is Hirst, the effect Pollock. The box cover boasts of much more weird and wonderful activity involving the rectum. In my increasingly fragile emotional state, I decide to bypass the opportunity to watch assorted miscreants defecating on paper plates.
Friday, 5:30 p.m.
I put on NYC Underground: Time Square Trash Vol. 2, which was named “Best Pro-Am/Amateur Tape” at this year’s Adult Video News awards. I feel incredibly depressed. My eyelids are beginning to close. Strange things are floating in my peripheral vision. Only one question seems to matter now: how are thousands of adult titles produced every year when there are a finite number of sexual positions and no one cares about the storylines anyway?
Friday, 6:30 p.m.
The last tape of the evening, thank Christ. Unfortunately, it stars Dave Cummings, silver-haired sexagenarian and all-around dirty old man. The film is titled Knee Pad Nymphos No. 5; the information contained therein isn’t really making it to my brain. Everything has become the visual equivalent of white noise. The seconds tick away as Dave sweats all over another nubile starlet. My neck and ears feel like they’re on fire. I’m one or two money shots away from puking.
Friday, 8 p.m.
7:58, :59, YES! It’s finally over. I’ve never felt such a sense of relief. I laugh like I’ve been dying to piss for hours and can finally let go. No one is around to share in my joy; they’ve all fucked off home. As I stumble through the frozen streets of Manhattan to my apartment, the euphoria wears off quickly, and I pass out for sixteen hours. It’s the deepest, sweetest sleep I’ve ever enjoyed.
Summarize your findings. Don’t forget to attempt to identify possible variables that could result in different findings for others trying to recreate your test results.
I thought my trip to the set of a porn movie would have turned me off the stuff for life, but I fell off the wagon three weeks later. This time, I might have reached critical mass. In the two weeks since this experiment, I haven’t even dreamed of hunkering down for a night of smut. Not even for the usual five minutes. Simply discussing this experiment brings back the hazy feelings of nausea I had throughout my entire trial by money shot. I’m not sure if the experience left me with a more positive or negative overall image of porn, but it certainly taught me what I like and what I find utterly reprehensible. In a nutshell, I prefer porn al fresco. Stuff shot outdoors, in natural light, makes all the difference. Makes it look like it’s happening in the real world or something.
I’ve flashed back to my night of porn on several occasions, but thankfully, not during flagrante delicto with a real live girl. About a week after the porn-a-thon, I attempted actual sex and was pleased to discover post-traumatic stress disorder was not in effect. Unlike Alex in A Clockwork Orange, I was able to participate without rolling up into a ball.
Do you have an idea for Grant’s next I Did It for Science? .
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