The Blowfish Blog

Two Erogenous Zones Walk Into A Bar: Sex and Humor

I want to like it.

Really, I do.

But mostly, I just don’t.

I’m talking about humor in porn. And to some extent, I’m talking about humor in sex.

If you’re one of these people who complains that porn is too serious and you wish they’d lighten up and have some laughs with it . . . well, I guess I’m part of the problem. Sorry about that. I’ve written some laugh lines into some of my porn, but I do it sparingly, and I never do it when a story is heading into the home stretch.

I just don’t like it. Not usually. Not as a porn writer, and not as a porn consumer. I find it distracting, I find it un-sexy, and I find it a mood-killer. Or a mood-dampener, anyway.

Part of the problem with funny porn, of course, is that so much of it isn’t actually funny. In the same way that commercial porn often winds up with half-assed writing (for books), half-assed lighting and framing (for photos), and half-assed writing and lighting and framing and acting and music and everything else for porn videos, the attempts at humor in all porn media often wind up being pointless, labored, and flat.

But even when humor in porn is done well, I still don’t often like it.

It’s not just porn, either. It’s sex itself. I once had a sex date with someone — a couple, actually — who wanted to have sex with Warner Brothers cartoon music in the background. They were definitely of the “people take sex too seriously, we wish they’d lighten up and have some laughs with it” camp. I liked the idea in theory . . . but in practice, I found the music extremely distracting. I’d be working up to a nice erotic climax, when I’d hear some comic “boing” in the background, and completely lose my momentum. I felt bad — I felt like I was one of those people they were complaining about who took sex too seriously — but it absolutely did not work for me.

So here’s what I think the problem is:

Laughter is a tension breaker.

And I don’t want the tension broken during sex.

Sex is about tension. Obviously sex is about a lot more than that . . . but tension is one of the main things that makes it work. The slow, gradual, rise-and-fall buildup of tension, the amping up of erotic tension to an almost unbearable level of pleasure, the sudden, explosive release of all that tension in orgasm . . . that’s what it’s about, baby. And I don’t want it interrupted with some silly dirty pun or a comic “boing” on the stereo.

I’m not saying I never laugh in bed. Of course I do. And laughter can have some real benefits to sex. It can be a bonding experience, making sex feel like a naughty conspiracy that the two (or more) of you are in on together. And it can release the bad kind of tension as well as the good, smoothing over awkward moments and making you feel good about yourselves and each other.

I’m saying that when I do laugh in bed, it tends to break me out of my erotic mood. And it can take a little doing to get back into it and find my place again. That’s true for sex with another person, and it’s true when I’m enjoying porn by myself. Humor and laughter can definitely add to a sexual scenario . . . but for me at least, it does so at the cost of sexual arousal. It releases the tension too early, and in a non-erotic way. I can be turned on, and I can laugh, but I can almost never do both at the same time.

It can still be worth it. It can definitely be worth it when I’m with someone else and we’re getting the good bonding stuff you get from a good laugh. And porn can sometimes use humor in a similar way: early on in the story, to establish a mood and get you to bond with the characters. But once things really get going, I want my erotic tension to be broken in a shattering orgasm — not in a fit of the giggles.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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Couple’s Couch: Left the SuperBowl to Do It

It wasn’t planned. We had intended to stay for the duration of the game at the neighborhood pub. We were drinking $2 Bud Lights and eating hot wings and cheering on the Giants’ dismal opening game thinking of nothing but the moment, the beer, the company, and how many hot lesbians were packed into one, 12′ x 12′ bar in the Castro.

And then, fate betook us in the form of a Victoria’s Secret commercial.

Now, I’m not much a fan of Vickie’s bras or panties, they tend to ride up on my skinny frame, but something about watching one of the angels spin a football between her index fingers with a “couldn’t give a damn about the game” look made me throw down a handful of bills to settle the tab and drag my own little lady out of the bar and into our bed with less than two minutes on the clock.

What is a Victoria’s Secret commercial doing in the middle of the freaking Superbowl anyways?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not football purist. When it gets right on down to it, I really couldn’t give a crap who wins the game in the end anyhow. I go to Superbowl parties for the pretty girls in pigtails trying to look sporty, the copious booze, and the hot wings. I love hot wings. As one of the 100 some-odd “fans” that were supposedly “watching” the game from the Castro, I can say with confidence that if we’d intended to stay up to date with the score, we would have stayed home.

What’s with watching sports if not to glean some sort of vicarious sexual energy, anyhow? We know that the only reason you even pause the remote over national-level gymnastics events is to watch those impossibly tight tushies clench for dear life as those tiny women fly through the air. Same goes for watching runners do track events. Round and round and round is just not that interesting unless the runners are in their skivvies.

There is way too much ass slapping and skin-tight tights in the majority of “boys” sports to discount the fact that most of us could bypass the game action in favor for some up close and personal glimpses at taught flesh.

I admit it; I’m guilty. Guilty for objectifying star athletes, guilty for using sports as some arbitrary way of getting by blood pumping, guilty for turning on light a light bulb when Jasmine (or whoever she was) blinked her sultry, shadow-plied lids at me while wearing the latest version of the push-up bra.

I’m guilty for gathering in a sport’s space with no desire to actually partake in the sport that these athletes have spent their lives working for.

I watch sports for the potential nookie that may come as an afterthought to the game after we’ve all gotten hyped up cheering for a winner and stealing glances at the cheerleaders. Adrenaline is a powerful thing and I believe we should take it when we get it. Take it and run like a banshee home and into bed with it. We left in the 4th quarter for some touchdowns that were way better than what the Giants handed out in the last minute-thirty of the game. Somehow Victoria’s Secret knew this (genius marketing agent bastards) and capitalized.

And why shouldn’t they have? It certainly had some effect on a bar full of lesbians. Even the dykes were cheering the demi-cup princess’ coy attempts to steal our attention. Is there anything wrong with this? Shouldn’t I care more about the things that matter like the state of the world or the elections?

Then again, in the middle of an election year where Fox News refers to its delegate coverage as the “Ballot Bowl” to encourage viewers to stick around, going even as far as selling us the information that one of the Bush family members is really into football as “Breaking News,” I suppose we must admit that American’s truly want their grunts before their government.

Sports and sex prevail in this country, and I keep buying into the same old line just like everybody else.

— Rebekah Skoor, MA

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Don’t Mess With Texas!

A reader sent in this item: A Federal Appeals Court has overturned the Texas sex toys ban. Yes! Finally, some common sense.

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Caught in the Net: Oldest Profession

The internet forever changed the way people find prostitutes. You don’t have to drive around seedy parts of town with your windows down, or hear about a place from a frat brother, or read the ads in the back of the local free weekly rag, or visit shady massage parlors and hope for the best — anyone with an internet connection can find someone to love them (for a fee), and the professionals out there have a whole new way to reach potential clients.

But let’s say you’re lost, and don’t know how to begin — fortunately, sex expert Melissa Gira is here to help (at least if you’re in the tech corridor of California). Consider her simple instructions for how to get a Stanford girl to blow you, aimed especially at men more comfortable with compiling code than talking to girls. (Unsurprisingly, Craigslist is the key.)

The internet also provides a place for those in legally gray (or outright illegal) branches of sex work to talk frankly and, if necessary, anonymously about their experiences. Belle de Jour is the most famous example, an erudite call girl whose blog became a book (and whose book became a TV show starring erstwhile Doctor Who companion Billie Piper). A newer exemplar of the genre is Confessions of a College Callgirl, which includes write-ups about clients, interviews with people in assorted branches of the sex trade, and the usual personal bloggy stuff, all in a clear and often witty style.

Susannah Breslin of the legendary Reverse Cowgirl blog, has started a new project to give even more prostitutes a voice: Letters from Working Girls, featuring real letters from real working girls about their lives in the business. There are only three entries so far, but it’s fascinating reading. The same is true of companion blog Letters from Johns, which gives the men who pay for sex a place to talk about why they do so (and what it’s like). It’s great to find frank, anonymous discussion about a subject that is still largely taboo.

For those of you who prefer pictures to words (or at least like pictures to go along with your words), Susannah recently interviewed Peter S. Conrad, an artist who transforms the stories of sex workers into sad and beautiful comics. There are a few examples of his work in the interview.

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OTAKU MAnKO: Self-Made Porn

The first time I got my hands on a video camera, I tore my clothes off and wanked.

Actually, let me revise that a bit—I didn’t actually get my clothes off before I started wanking. The intention was to strip for the camera, all sexy and debonnaire, and perform moderately dirty acts on myself while first-gen deathrock played in the background. I don’t think it quite worked like that.

This was in the old days, when home video cameras were the size of a schnauzer and used those enormous VHS tapes—remember those? The lack of a tripod meant that I’d propped the thing on a chair; when I reviewed the first few seconds, I had some really hot footage of my booted left foot bobbing up and down while I caressed my crotch through a tight pair of black 501s. I relocated the camera to my pillow and tucked my feet against the wall above it—great shot of my left thigh, soooooooo sexies.

I should point out that in these bygone days there were no pivoting LCD screens, so while I frolicked in front of the camera I had no idea what I was shooting. Once I found the sweet spot, sort of, planting the camera on a stack of Gun Digests atop a folding table, I tried to prop a mirror behind the viewfinder—but as you can imagine, that didn’t go well. Finally I just gave up, stripped my jeans off, and jerked off, acutely aware of the camera with my every move, glance and utterance.

Why’d I do it? Just to do it, that’s the obvious answer. I created porn because it was there to create, because I had a camera, because the camera had an on button, because I had a dick. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time, and all told it was one of the more interesting experiences of my sexual life—and I’ve had some exceedingly interesting experiences.

When I reviewed the tape later, I immediately got turned on. I revisited it for several private screenings, each time getting impossibly turned on despite a vague sense of embarrassment—I have never considered myself photogenic; I doubt most people do without a fair amount of effort. For several years I had the tape stashed in various hiding places, thinking “Fuck, somebody is going to find that thing and laugh their asses off at me.” I wasn’t so concerned that what I’d done would be disapproved of on moral grounds—just that it would seem ridiculous.

My concerns about being “discovered” as the star of a self-made porno tape seem, in hindsight, sort of paranoid. VHS tapes are rarely the first thing a burglar steals, and my friends, even in those days, were not people who ridiculed other peoples’ sexual foibles. They were more the types who, if they’d discovered such a tape, would share their own fuck films with me, doubtless asking for pointers.

But no one ever found it, and one time when I moved I decided it was finally time to shred my one and only amateur-porn appearance. I tore the tape into little bits and slashed it with a razor.

It’s something I’ve actually regretted since then, and I’ve often wondered: What would I think of that tape today? Would I find it hot, weird, disgusting? Would I bum out on my pot belly or freak out on my dick size? I haven’t got the foggiest idea.

I haven’t yet made a repeat performance on camera—why, I don’t know. I am hard-pressed to explain what exactly turned me on so much about it the first time. Exhibitionism? I doubt it—I’ve been to enough play parties to know I’m not much of a natural exhibitionist. Voyeurism? I am not particularly aroused by the sight of guys jerking off, Tina Tyler’s Handyman series notwithstanding. Transgression? Maybe . . . it certainly felt edgy and weird to perform on camera, but transgression for the sake of transgression isn’t actually a big sexual button for me personally, though I certainly appreciate it in other people. Purely aesthetic pleasure? No. Just no.

My long-lost one-and-only smoker reel comes to mind lately because I recently acquired a video camera. But the camera sits in its case with a stack of DVD-Rs, its creative potential having produced some footage of me saying “Is it on?” and a few scenes of my cats high on catnip.

Nowadays the web makes self-made porn easy to make and distribute. Why haven’t I planted that camera on a stack of Gun Digests and stroked myself for your viewing pleasure, or at least my own? Lack of exhibitionism would be my first excuse, but the fact is, I write and talk about sex almost constantly and I think my pleading shyness would be questionable. Do I not find myself hot? I didn’t find myself hot twenty years ago, either, but still found the process a turn-on.

The answer is that I have no idea why, at twenty, I found it hot to perform for the camera and now, years later, I don’t—at least not naturally. Some day maybe I’ll get bored and it’ll seem like a great idea to create some self-made porn. I’ll do it just to do it, because it seems like the thing to do at the time—how many awesome sexual experiences have happened to me for that reason? A few terrible ones have as well, but then, quite frankly creating self-made porn is one of the safer things a guy (or anyone) can do with his body.

Hopefully it’ll end up being hot to do and hot to watch, and I’d be shocked if any of you ever get to see it—but then, it’s not for you.

Thomas Roche is the managing editor of Eros Zine, teaches at San Francisco Sex Information, and also blogs on sex, drugs and cryptozoology at thomasroche.com.

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Manipulating Sex Fears For Fun and Profit

Two pieces of sex news. Seemingly unrelated, except that I happened to come across them in the same week.

But they’re striking me as having an oddly common theme.

In Piece of News #1: Remember that company, CleanFlix, that would take DVDs of feature films and edit them to produce sanitized, sex-free, “family-friendly” versions? (Before they got hit by copyright laws, anyway.) According to the Salt Lake Tribune (via The Hollywood Reporter, Esq.), Daniel Thompson, one of the managers of the company, has been arrested on suspicion of having sex with two 14-year-old girls . . . and of using the movie-sanitizing business as a cover for a porn studio.

My initial reaction to this story: Is there a sex-phobic right winger who isn’t fucking guys, hookers, or teenagers? Any at all? Anywhere?

And my second reaction: You wanna know what really bugs me? These right-wing sex-phobes are getting more action than I am. Here I am, being vilified by the right — well, I would be if they knew about me — as a Godless wanton pervert . . . and I actually lead this very tame life, at home with my wife watching Project Runway. Our non-monogamy is largely theoretical, and I haven’t been to a sex party in years. But do I get credit for my wholesome life? No, I do not. But put on a squeaky-clean, sex-loathing facade, and you can get away with buttfucking goats in your rec room, without anyone calling you anything but a good Christian. Bastards.

But that’s not where I want to go with this piece. I don’t want to gas on about right-wing sex hypocrisy for the forty billionth time. I want to talk about . . . well, let’s get to the second piece of news.

In the second piece of news: From the (Cincinnati) Enquirer, via Eros Blog, comes the story about the makers of Enzyte, the obviously fakoid “natural male enhancement” pills advertised ad nauseum on TV, being prosecuted for fraud.

And not just for the regular “false advertising of an ineffective product” sort of fraud. The fraud goes much deeper and broader than that. According to the testimony of the company’s former vice president of operations, the company flatly made up fictitious doctors, numbers, and customer satisfaction surveys to support their claims. They enrolled customers in a monthly “continuity program” without their knowledge, charging them every month for more product, and deliberately making it difficult to un-subscribe from the program. And in particular — take note of this, it’s important — they required customers to get a notarized statement from a doctor saying that the Enzyte didn’t work before honoring any requests for refunds.

And they did this last part, specifically, because — quote — “it was extremely unlikely someone would get anything notarized saying they had a small penis.”

“Interesting stories,” you say. “But what do they have to do with each other?”

Just this:

They illustrate how easy it is, in a culture that’s riddled with shame, fear, and anxiety about sex, for frauds and liars to use that shame and fear and anxiety as a cover for their misdeeds.

In the first story, Thompson was able to use people’s fears about filthy smut in the movies as a smokescreen for making porn and having sex with underage girls. He apparently figured that nobody would suspect the manager of the “we provide wholesome, sex-free family entertainment” company of being a smut merchant. Given recent events, you’d think this wouldn’t work so well any more . . . but he apparently figured right, at least for a while. If it hadn’t been for the 14-year-old girls — and the mother of one of them who figured it out — he might still be getting away with it.

(FYI, the original founders of CleanFlicks are disavowing Thompson; they point out that he became a manager of two CleanFlicks brick- and- mortar stores only after the original company sold them off, and in fact they’re suing him for trademark violation. The point still stands, however — which is that Thompson was using the clean, wholesome, anti-sex image of the CleanFlicks company as a distraction and a cover for his activities.)

And as for the second story: Well, it’s obvious that the Enzyte company was able to prey on men’s anxiety and shame about their sexual adequacy to make millions selling an obviously fraudulent product. But they did more than that. They were able to prey on men’s anxiety and shame about their sexual adequacy to ward off complaints and demands for refunds. They counted on men’s shame — not just their shame at having been taken in by a shamelessly fraudulent “male enhancement” product, but their shame at “needing” the product in the first place, and their unwillingness to acknowledge it — to keep their fraudulent business alive and humming.

Now, I’m not saying that, in a perfectly sex-positive society, nobody could use sex as a smokescreen. I’m idealistic, but I’m not that idealistic. Sex is important, sexual feelings and desires are powerful, and there will always be people around to take advantage of important, powerful feelings and desires. When we want something badly enough, there’ll always be someone promising that they can give it to us. And when we’re afraid of something — and important, powerful things will always inspire fears — there’ll always be someone promising that they can protect us from it;

What I’m saying is this: In a sex-positive society, in a society without our reflexive, amped-up fear and shame about sex, these people would have a lot less cover. In a society where people weren’t terrified of sex — and sexual failure — the promise to protect us from it wouldn’t be nearly as effective a smokescreen. We wouldn’t be taken in by it nearly as easily, and we’d be a lot more willing to fight it A sex-positive society wouldn’t make us completely invulnerable to sexual frauds and liars . . . but it’d give us much better defenses than we have now.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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Couple’s Couch: Having vs. Wanting

I’ve been thinking about sex a lot lately. To be more precise, I’ve been thinking about what happens to my body when a regular moment somehow magically becomes one that holds the whispered promise that sex is near. My pulse quickens. Blood swirls into my temples and warms my ears, down into my belly, and deep into my clit. My mind starts racing with the possibilities of what is to come.

Will the sex feel as good as it did last time—or the first time? When I come, what will my lover be doing? Saying? What toys will we use? Will I be able to hold myself back from spending the whole evening consumed in the moment?

In The House at Pooh Corner, the author A.A. Milne penned that for Winnie the Pooh, “Although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”

I do. That moment is called “desire.” It is called the “moment of wanting.” What Pooh Bear knew for certain and we all know intrinsically from experience is that the anticipation of the most gratifying moments is almost always better than the moment itself.

With sex, the wanting is arguably the least celebrated aspect of the interaction. And yet, the wanting is often the most powerful. Consider what thoughts race through your mind when you see a lover’s tongue about to make contact with your nipple. Savor that awareness for a moment. Think about moments where the anticipation of touch was so strong that your body actually trembled, a moment where you felt your body become aroused. Potent stuff.

If you take a minute to remember what happened after those moments of anticipation, you may find that the burning hot memories get a little bit fuzzy once the sex has gotten underway. We remember the chase of a lover, the first kiss, the initial taste, the very moment where our bodies come together as if the whole dance around sexuality was more about the build up than the actual act.

But, what am I saying? That the wanting is more important than the having?

This isn’t a trick. I’m not trying to talk you out of having the sex that you crave any more than I want to diminish your moments of wanting in any other areas of life.

When we think about the act of wanting, however, it begs the question what we are wanting for? In the case of sex, I’m sure many would agree that we want the pleasure that comes from contact. But what else do we want? To feel adored? Fulfilled? To have orgasms? To feel pushed and pulled beyond ourselves? Do we not also want to feel as if we, ourselves, are wanted?

I’m not suggesting that feeling wanted will eliminate our desire for sex. We ain’t that easy! But I wonder what it would be like if we allowed ourselves to feel the depth of our wanting for what it is. It would take a radical form of self-acceptance to look into our desire and ask ourselves what it is that we are truly aching for.

I think the difficulty in digging into desire is fear of what we might find underneath. When I look into my “need” to have sex an X-number of times a week, I come eye to eye with the truth that the sex itself is not what I am asking for. If I needed the orgasms, I’m deadly certain that I can take care of that on my own, thank you very much. If it was the closeness or intensity, I’m getting that all week long in other forms. The same goes for nudity, for caressing, and for connection. What is it that I mean when I say I want sex, then?

I, personally, want to feel like someone wants me enough to take me out of my analytical, over-worked brain and force me to pay attention to my inner body. I want to relinquish control over myself and feel taken and swept-up and free. This is what wanting sex is for me. When I feel aroused, this is the feeling that fuels me.

But why go through the trouble of finding out what is “behind our desire” at all? Well, given the increasing levels of marital and relationship discord often centered around issues of sex, I believe we need to face up to the fact that we do not always get what we want. Not even close.

If we are willing to concede that what we really want from our lovers goes far beyond the ins and outs of sex, then we do not have to stand around in skimpy panties getting cold waiting for fulfillment to fall into our laps. We could then go about the business of finding ways to think about those feelings, to act upon them in some other way, or to talk about them with ours lover and take care of our relationship instead of feeling weighed down by the elements that we cannot change.

We are used to focusing on the getting, the having. What if we were able to shift our focus back to our core, back to our desire, and really question what is inside of our wanting. If Pooh is right, and I believe that he is, the wanting in and of itself can be even sweeter than the reward.

— Rebekah Skoor, MA

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Caught in the Net: On Display

Exhibitionists and voyeurs go together like chocolate and peanut butter. The internet makes potential voyeurs of us all . . . and, fortunately, there are people willing to put everything they have on display for our long-distance screen-mediated perusal. (I know I just did an exhibitionism column a couple of months ago, but I can’t help it — the links are piling up!)

Consider Nora Ness’s Erotic Mirror, a website devoted to the many, many, many erotic photos she’s taken of herself in mirrors (she’s even got a whole book of the pictures). She was never happy with any of the photographers who took pictures of her nude, so she took matters into her own hands. Talk about cutting out the middleman.

Exhibitionism and voyeurism (which is a combo that really needs its own shorthand, like S&M or D/s) can inspire architecture, too. Consider this article about a Manhattan apartment building built for peeping, not just by people on the street, but by your own roommates — where the bathrooms are totally visible from the rest of the apartment, say. I stayed in a trendy hotel once in LA where the bathroom was a glass box, totally exposed to the rest of the room, and decided that, while it might be hot under certain circumstances, it was mostly inconvenient (the friend who met me for dinner chose to wait in the hall while I peed, understandably enough). The creators of the building above are apparently making a statement about how privacy is vanishing in the age of YouTube, etc., and while they might have a point, I’m not sure I want to live inside something built to make a point, however valid.

It’s possible to be a modest exhibitionist, as seen in this remarkable photo; it’s a long-exposure shot of a couple having sex on a bed, and you can’t really see anything clearly, since it’s just the aggregate image of all their varied positions, but it’s strangely erotic anyway.

Some exhibitionist types love fucking in public because of the thrill of possible discovery — it’s the fear of being caught that jazzes them, not actually being caught. For those, here’s some helpful advice: Tips for having sex in an elevator (fake maintenance signs, mind the maximum occupancy limit, etc.) and Ten tips for public coitus (dress carefully, bring something to sit on, don’t litter). Mostly common-sense stuff, but who says exhibitionists display common sense?

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