Said Hawes to the Telegraph: “[The critics] have pored over every memorandum he ever wrote, every insurance report he ever compiled, looking for clues. Yet they have chosen not to show this undoubtedly very dark stuff.”

When I hear “very dark” associated with pornography, I give myself a high-five, and here the Telegraph says we’re talking about, among other things, “images of a hedgehog-style creature performing fellatio, golem-like male creatures grasping women’s breasts with their claw-like hands and a picture of a baby emerging from a sliced-open leg.” Ach du lieber!

But the Telegraph article quotes Ranier Stach, another Kafka expert as being outraged by Hawes’ “outrageous marketing play,” claiming the so-called porn was “playful.” A baby emerging from a sliced-open leg? I want to know who Herr Stach has been playing with.

Outraged posts by my friends M. Christian and Violet Blue got me interested in this issue, with Violet saying “Of course Kafka checked out porn and had to stash it; it’s a time-honored tradition.”

But was Kafka’s porn known or unknown to scholars, and is this whole thing a cheap ploy to sell Hawes’ books? At press time the Wikipedia article on Franz Blei ridiculed the contrversy, referring to the Hawes story as a “Silly Season press story,” which, like Kafka’s work, gave voice to a nameless existential horror I’ve known all my life — I never knew the term Silly Season, but I always wondered why round about early August, so many fur seals wear bowler hats. But I digress.

Why Franz Blei? A friend and collaborator of Kafka, Blei edited some of the porn in his friend’s stash. In 1905 and 1906, Blei edited two private magazines, Amethyst and The Opals, described by Wikipedia as “mildly pornographic.” They included classic poems by French poet Paul Verlaine (about whose asshole, incidently, Verlaine’s lover Arthur Rimbaud occasionally wrote poetry) and images by Aubrey Beardsley. Kafka apparently had a subscription.

The Wikipedia article references its statement that the journals were “known about by Kafka scholars for many decades” to the Times Online piece, which says nothing of the sort. Instead, that piece focuses on Hawes’ portrayal of Kafka as different than popular and critical consciousness generally portrays him — as a tortured loner who was, as required by his very genius, sexless. Hawes says none of that is true, and in that as far as I am concerned he is very, very right.

Kafka was certainly a man of extraordinary complexity, and he was far from “just” a tortured loner if he was one — which I don’t think he was. He certainly harbored deep and troubling thoughts. He accused his father of emotional abuse throughout Kafka’s childhood, and most biographers seem to agree he suffered from depression and anxiety.

But anyone giving a serious read to his only short novel, “The Metamorphosis,” must be struck by the bizarre humor of it all. Kafka also had a tendency to write unbelievably complex sentences with a humor that would be impossible in any language other than German. This sort of thing is not the behavior of a tortured loner, but of a writer amused by the possibilities of language. For my money a vein of hilarity runs through Kafka’s other works. What’s more, whether or not he was tortured, Kafka was part of a literary clique, as evidenced by his friendship with Blei. He had intense personal relationships.

Does that mean he rubbed one out to images of a hedgehog performing fellatio? Maybe, maybe not. Quite frankly, my own porn stash, if anyone cares, has more than a few things friends sent me that would I would be exceedingly unlikely to wank to.

Did Kafka wank? Of course he did. He was a genius, and wanking’s smart stuff, my friends. Since the history of art is the history of sex, and vice-versa, a serious discussion of Kafka’s porn belongs in any discussion of his life. And if Hawes is just grandstanding and trying to hype up interest for his book, then I’ll give him this, for which I’m grateful: At least he got Kafka back in the newspapers.

Thomas S. Roche blogs about music, politics and hunting Bigfoot at thomasroche.com.

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(Regarding the title, “LitFic” is a term for mainstream literature — you know, the respectable stuff — most often used by those who write genre work like science fiction or fantasy. So “LitFuc” is, um, literature about fucking. Maybe I should leave the neologisms to the pros.)

What prompted this column? Kafka’s porn. Yes, the author Franz Kafka, a writer so influential that the adjective to describe his work, “Kafkaesque,” has been appropriated by hipsters the world over, wrote hardcore kinky porn. One of the world’s leading Kafka researchers discovered the smut, and says it’s not for the faint of heart: “These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action . . . It’s quite unpleasant.” (I personally wouldn’t equate bestiality with lesbianism, or call the latter inherently unpleasant, but I guess a lifetime spent studying Kafka might skew your perceptions of normality a bit.) Some of the smut will be published in the researcher’s book Excavating Kafka. And now next time you see a couple of drunk girls kissing in a bar, you can fairly exclaim, “That’s so Kafkaesque!

This next bit isn’t strictly literary, so much as extra-literary, but I’ll get there: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, which was adapted into a film, which then inspired various spin-off films, most famously The Bride of Frankenstein, starring Elsa Lanchester with an improbable hairdo. Now photographer Aleksey Galushkov has re-imagined the Bride as a scantily-clad beauty, without being cheap or exploitative, and while retaining the feel of the original! It’s actually quite beautiful. And to bring things back to the literary, there’s another re-imagining of the Bride I should mention. Elizabeth Hand, one of the most talented writers and prose stylists working today, has written The Bride of Frankenstein, a vision of what the Bride’s life might have been like if she’d survived the events of the film. Check it out.

And no column about smut and the written word would be complete without one of Melissa Lion’s “Sticky Pages”, where the literary blogger digs into fiction and extracts the dirty bits for your perusal. This time the book under discussion is The Sexual Life of Catherine M, “the memoir of French, art critic Catherine Millet. She was also a connoisseur of the orgy and anonymous sex. The book itself is a detached account of so much of the sex she had. And it’s a lot of sex. The sex is on nearly every single page. Some of it is hot, some of it is uncomfortable, some of it, despite the content, is antiseptic in its cold observation.” Interested? Click the link to read the passage that kept Melissa up awake nights. It’s totally Kafkaesque.

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Hooray for a well-deserved death, I say, and I hope it was agonizingly painful. But the very fact that such a tax could be proposed is, to put it mildly, a little creepy to me. As a lifelong Democrat now used to hearing anti-porn tirades from Republicans, I find the fact that Calderon is a member of no organized party infuriating. It recalls for me the glory days of the ’80s when you were as likely to see attacks on porn from the left as from the right.

Calderon claimed that the law would generate hundreds of millions in tax revenue, which the state could use to mitigate the “secondary effects” of the porn industry. Calderon’s Chief of Staff Tom White was quoted in UC Davis’s paper, the Cal Aggie as claiming “There is a high rate of drug and alcohol abuse in the industry, STDs, mental health problems and pregnancies. The industry is such that oftentimes people get burned through and come out with nothing, no job skills or education, so they need job training or state services.”

Similarly, Stephen Yagielowicz’s XBiz article on the bill’s defeat quotes Diane Duke of the Free Speech Coalition: people called by Calderon to testify before committee “were telling lies about the industry; that people were committing suicide and that drugs were rampant on the set.”

Hey, I’m all for state services being available to porn performers, but the very idea that “the industry” leaves people burned out and messed up after a period of making between $200 and $3000 for a few hours’ work seems pretty suspect to me. Plenty of former porn performers are indeed scarred and messed up by their time in the biz; so are plenty of former temps, and they make $15 an hour if they’re lucky. And does targeting sexual speech in order to generate cash for phantom services the State does not provide really fall within the boundaries of reasonable government? Of course not, and commentators from the right of center to the pro-porn-but-anti-bad porn lobby agree, for wildly differing reasons — as do members of the Assembly. That’s probably why the bill died such an ignominious death — which pretty much everyone expected it to, maybe even Calderon.

Then why did someone like Charles Calderon introduce such a bill? Calderon, in 1988-89, was part of the “Gang of Five,” a group of conservative Democrats who tried to stage a hostile takeover of the California Assembly from then Speaker (later San Francisco Mayor and current mayor Gavin Newsom’s mentor) Willie Brown. Calderon then served as the first Latino Senate Majority Leader in the California State Senate. Now back in the Assembly, it’s pretty clear that he’s bucking for the conservative pro-family vote in an era when many conservative groups feel Republicans aren’t anti-porn enough — or more accurately, aren’t effectively anti-porn enough. The recent assertions by “pro-family” groups that the Feds should prosecute “mainstream obscenity” goes hand in glove with this kind of attitude; the porn industry itself is what these forces object to, not any particular kind of porn.

But if you’re going to start pointing fingers at industries that cause problems, you’ve got a long list of products that cause more trackable and concrete problems than porn. Take the alcohol industry — which does business in an area not protected by the First Amendment. That’s the principle behind San Rafael’s Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group that tries to publicize the costs of alcohol abuse, from drunk driving to underage drinking to disease and lost work days. I’m far from stoked about jacking up alcohol taxes for a lot of reasons: the specific damages are ill-documented, the industry is already regulated, alcohol taxes amount to a poor tax and if you’re going to be jacking up poor taxes, why stop with alcohol? Let’s tax the chips and soft drinks and other processed crap they sell at liquor stores in poor neighborhoods where residents don’t have cars to hit the nearest Whole Foods for some organic arugula, capiscio?

But my principle objection to a porn tax is actually not affected by my love of porn, or the fact that I make my living working in the porn industry. Rather, I object to a porn tax because porn is legal. Calderon and his cronies claim porn does damage, fine — prove it. Then introduce a bill to outlaw, not regulate it. But if the government doesn’t have the political will to outlaw an industry, proposing crippling and bizarre taxes is ultimately nothing more than an attempt for do-gooders to make an end-run around the mores of the majority. Porn could never realistically be outlawed in the US. Pointing to ill-defined and in many cases fraudulent “secondary effects” is ridiculous.

This sort of thing reminds me of an ill-advised lawsuit filed by the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, late in the Clinton years. HUD sued gun manufacturers on behalf of people who lived in federal housing projects, because those people were getting killed by guns. Back up a minute — the federal housing projects were funded by HUD. HUD was unable or unwilling to ensure that they were safe. So they sued gun manufacturers. Weird.

Peoples’ reaction to the HUD gun lawsuit of the late ’90s invariably reflect their opinion on gun rights and the supposed right to bear arms in the Second Amendment. Similarly, attitudes toward Calderon’s Porn Tax are governed by peoples’ ideas about porn. It’s reassuring to me that the bill was so overwhelmingly criticized — almost nobody seemed to like it. But the mere fact that Calderon got his claims out there in front of legislators and the general public is a bad sign.

People have once again heard the impossible to prove but difficult to disprove claims that porn does abstract damage. Next time free speech advocates have to face down another lunatic like Calderon, some people will remember those claims and won’t remember, or won’t accept, their totally unsupported and unsupportable nature. Every half-assed feint by pro-censorship groups has the potential to do damage. Let’s hope Calderon’s doesn’t do too much.

Thomas Roche blogs about spanking, Dungeons & Dragons, and South Ossetia at www.thomasroche.com.

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Want a nice sleeve that feels good inside, doesn’t look too graphic on the outside and doesn’t smell like, well, processed petroleum products? The Sidekick #1 Elastomer Sleeve is just the thing. Smooth, shiny elastomer on the outside (read: it doesn’t look like a plastic pussy), the Sidekick #1 is covered on the inside with caressing nubs (we show it turned inside out, the better to admire its soft caressing nubbiness). At 6-1/2″ long, it’s long enough to accommodate most average-sized men, but the 100% phthalate-free elastomer is stretchy so if you do hit the closed end, it will stretch with you a bit (not to mention the added sensation of the tip of your dick hitting a soft, pliant surface, ahhh!). The closed end means suction-like action, which is the closest thing we’ve found to “blow-job action” since we tested the Head Honcho Sleeve. And the Sidekick #1 is the color of tropical waters on a sunny day, which is pleasing all by itself. The Sidekick #1 will have you saying “Holy nubby goodness, Batman!”

• Sidekick #1 Elastomer Sleeve
• Head Honcho Sleeve

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We have an unusual new lube this week, and those of you who are bored with the same-old sexy sensations might want to check this out. I’m calling it the Icy Warm Menthol Lube and, unlike other stimulating gels (such as the Kama Sutra Intensifying Gels or the O’My Clitoral Stimulating Gel) this one can actually be used as a lube, which means you’ve got a lot more surface area being tingled by the icy sensations. Upon application, it feels cool on the skin, blow on it and it goes from cool to icy. Brrr, but in a good way. It’s water-based, and, as I said, can be used as a lube for sex (it’s even safe to use with condoms), and the friction from fucking will increase the sensations of the lube. I have heard that it turns to a warming sensation after awhile, but it didn’t happen for me — just thought I’d mention it in case you notice it warming up! As a lube, it stays slippery for a good while and can easily be re-slipperfied (yes, I just made that up) by adding a bit of water (or spit). A cool new way to add a bit of tingle to your sex life!

• Icy Warm Menthol Lube
• Kama Sutra Intensifying Gels
• O’My Clitoral Stimulating Gel

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I’m a huge science nerd. I’m a huge sex nerd. How could I not love a book called Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex?

Well, let me tell you how. Exactly.

First, I should disclaim for a brief moment: Bonk is not a terrible book. The subject matter — the history of the scientific study of sex, and some of the more interesting examples of its current state — is a compelling one, loaded with fascinating ideas both about sex itself and the appallingly/ entertainingly conflicted attitudes society has about it. And the author — Mary Roach, celebrated author of Stiff and Spook — is no slouch. She’s a thorough researcher and a clear, chatty writer, adept at taking complicated and potentially boring scientific ideas and making them accessible to the lay reader.

Please note that I refrained from making a childish, Beavis and Butthead- esque sex joke about the “lay” reader.

Which brings me to the problem.

The problem is this: The author’s attitude towards sex is annoyingly adolescent, bouncing back and forth between giggling and gross-out. Especially when it comes to some of the more unusual or extreme sexual variations she’s writing about.

And that really gets up my nose. It’s irritating; it’s insulting to my intelligence . . . and it leads to some actual misinformation.

Take this. From the introduction, discussing the fact that she injected some of her personal experiences into the book:

My solution was to apply the stepdaughter test. I imagined Lily and Phoebe reading these passages, and I tried to write in a way that wouldn’t mortify them. Though I’ve surely failed that test, I remain hopeful that the rest of you won’t have reason to cringe. (p. 18)

Well . . . no. Why would I cringe? I’m reading a book about sex. Why would I cringe at descriptions of the author’s sexual experiences, or responses, or participation in sex studies?

In fact, I did cringe when reading this book. Repeatedly. But it wasn’t because the author was being too sexually explicit. It was because she was clearly cringing herself.

Or this:

One research team collected specimens of “the expulsion [female ejaculate] and asked outsiders to characterize it. It is a testimony to the generosity of the human spirit that these volunteers both smelled and tasted the specimens. (p. 198; emphasis mine)

Hey, you know what? I have both smelled and tasted female ejaculate. And it didn’t require any “generosity” on my part. I was, to put it mildly, happy to do it. Admittedly it wasn’t in a laboratory setting . . . but the point remains that not everybody would need to search for the generous spirit in their hearts in order to take part in this experiment. If Ms. Roach is grossed out by female ejaculate and would need to buck herself with the spirit of volunteerism in order to smell and taste it, that certainly doesn’t make her unqualified to be a sex writer . . . but her blithe assumption that everyone shares her reaction is a pretty big strike against her.

Or this:

I’m not saying there’s a link between Catholicism and sex toys. I’m just saying I’ve got a brand-new interpretation of Isiah 49:2 (”The Lord . . . hath made me a polished shaft”). (p. 216)

Tee hee. You said “shaft,” Beavis.

And my final example before I move on:

In one of the sections on erectile dysfunction, Roach has a longish and fairly detailed discussion about cock rings (pp. 136-237). But the discussion focuses almost entirely on cock ring mishaps — trips to the emergency room and whatnot — resulting from too-tight cock rings made of too-rigid materials.

And nowhere in this odyssey of penile disaster does she mention that the majority of cock rings are flexible and removable: made of stretchy material such as leather or rubber, and fastening with snaps or laces or Velcro or some such for easy removal. If you read Bonk and had never heard of a cock ring before, you wouldn’t come away thinking, “Hm, interesting, that could be a nifty alternative to Viagra.” You’d come away thinking, “Who in their right mind would do something that stupid?” And you’d come away misinformed.

I don’t know if Roach didn’t know about flexible/ removable cock rings, or if she simply chose not to mention them because the disasters were funnier. And I don’t much care. Either excuse is, well, inexcusable.

I understand that she’s trying to present her subject with humor. That’s not the problem. I’m all in favor of the humor, and have even been known to apply it to the topic of sex myself from time to time. But there are varieties of humor available to a writer other than adolescent fits of grossed-out giggles. And they’re rather more appropriate to sex writing . . . both for an adult writer, and for an adult audience. I hate, hate, hate sex writing by writers who seem embarrassed by their topic.

It might be easier to talk about what this book does wrong by comparing it to a book that does it oh so right. The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction is hilarious. It had me laughing out loud on roughly every tenth page . . . a feat that Bonk almost never accomplished. And at no point in the book did I get even a whiff of a sense that the author was embarrassed by her topic. Quite the contrary. Rachel Maines approaches sex in general, and the history of vibrators in particular, with an earthy, blunt, clear-eyed gaze, and no embarrassment whatsoever.

And that absolutely does not interfere with her humor. Heck, it’s the foundation of it. Maines is vividly aware of how laughably absurd sex — and people’s reactions to it — can be. But she doesn’t find the very existence of sex to be the source of the laffs. Her humor isn’t the humor of discomfort. It’s not the unnerved giggle of an adolescent; making light of sex to dilute its importance, and making a show of being repulsed by it to deflect the powerful hold it has.

Roach’s humor in Bonk, alas, is exactly that. Not all the time . . . but way, way too often.

And while it doesn’t make Bonk completely unworthy, it does turn it into an interesting but irritating book . . . when it could have been a truly great one. I have rarely opened a book with so much excitement and anticipation. And I have rarely closed it with so much frustration at the opportunity it missed.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. By Mary Roach. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06464-3. Hardcover. $24.95.

The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. By Rachel P. Maines. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-801866-46-3. Trade paper. $17.95.

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

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Moving Out is pretty funny and pretty hot, and the combination is pleasing. A lot of porn tries to be funny, but mostly it isn’t, relying on exceedingly crude and clich•d jokes. (The clich•d bothers me a lot more than the crude!) The writing here is far more amusing than I expected, especially with Renae Cruz (looking adorably nerdy in glasses) explaining how she plans to solve global warming by running a coal-powered factory to make air conditioners in Africa, references to dating site “Mismatch.com,” and various other genuinely funny gags . . . which, wonder of wonders, are jokes actually generated from the characters and their situation. Somebody working on this movie — I presume director Jonathan Morgan, long known for his sense of humor — actually gave a crap, and it shows.

I couldn’t help thinking the premise was like the setup for a sitcom clip show — you know, like an episode of Friends or something where Joey’s moving out and they all stand around the half-packed boxes and reminisce about the time they made out on that couch or found their friends drunk and passed out under the kitchen table or whatever. And there is a certain sitcom quality, with the odd couple (technically odd trio, but whatever) vibe of the roommates — the slutty blonde, the sophisticated Latina, the geeky activist Latina — and their wacky misadventures. This is no big-budget extravaganza, and it would be mere gonzo porn with an unusual flashback structure if not for the infusions of humor, and the fact that the performers make an effort to keep playing their characters even when they’re fucking. Speaking of the fucking, Renae Cruz is the cutest of the women here (and gets all the best jokes), but Maya Gates is the star of the hottest scenes, with some exceptional blowjobs and fantastic anal; her enthusiasm is wonderful to behold. It’s not all good — the final all-girl three-way is kind of confused, with too many toys flying around and not enough actual human connection — but the flick is mostly hot, and that relative consistency combined with the funny makes Moving Out worth looking up.

• Moving Out

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Most of the poly (that is, loving more than one person at a time) people I know did their poly-training-time while clutching a copy of The Ethical Slut. When it was handed to me, (way back when I was trying everything for the first time, it seemed) I was told to skip the first part because it was “too new agey” and might turn me off. And, while I love, love, love my old copy of The Ethical Slut (even if it does still fall open to the section on jealousy), there is that danger that the person you’re trying to help cut their poly teeth will not relate to that section of the book.

But this is poly we’re talking about here, and one of the things I love about poly is that one person doesn’t have to contain every quality you’d desire in a lover. The same is true for books, which is why I can share my love with Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino. Written in a clear, non-new-agey style, Opening Up is fun to read, but is still full of all the serious information you need to guide you into the world of loving more than one person at a time. From deciding if an open relationship is for you to how to create and sustain such relationships, any issue that comes up can be looked up easily and is discussed in a thorough, clear fashion. And it’s peppered throughout with stories from real-life poly folk, which is both entertaining and reassuring (no, no, you’re not the only one who has felt this way). And don’t miss the beginning where Taormino gives a very well-researched, fascinating history of all types of marriages. Opening up is an excellent secondary (or primary, if you’ve never read The Ethical Slut) reference on the art of open relationships.

• Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships
• The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities

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In honor of the recently-completed Comic-Con in San Diego (which I didn’t attend, because I decided this year to save all my convention-going money to take a trip to Hawaii instead, where there will be fewer people dressed like storm troopers but far more mai tais), I decided to devote this week’s column to sex, superheroes, and science fiction.

First, straight from Comic-Con itself, a recap of the Marvel Fashion Show, featuring the gorgeous ladies of the Marvel comics universe live, in the (largely explosed) flesh, and in costume. Well, to be fair, they’re not actually depictions of particular heroes, mostly, but hot women in vaguely superhero-themed skimp-wear, from an oddly sexy Captain America to more expected lovelies like the Black Cat and (yum) Emma Frost. Video and pictures at the link.

In the world of online episodic science fiction, there’s buzz about a new show called The Fold, described as “Part sci-fi, part sex comedy, part art movie, THE FOLD interweaves stories involving a time-traveling geek with Aspergers Syndrome, an investigation by a Gaming Babes Magazine reporter, a sex-cult guru, a right-wing CEO determined to remake history, and a New Jersey hot tub salesman for whom things mysteriously start to go the right way.” It does look promising — check out the uncensored trailer here (boobies! girls kissing! obscene origami!).

From new media to old — Sci-fi blog io9 had a recent rant, “Spock Is Sexy? Illogical!”, with Graeme McMillan responding with shock to the assertion by several female acquaintances that the pointy-eared, logical, green-blooded, nerve-pinching, mind-melding, Vulcan science officer of the USS Enterprise is the sexiest character from Star Trek. He considers many possible explanations for Spock’s apparent sex-symbol status: “Is it the character himself? Is it the portrayal and good looks of Leonard Nimoy (and, soon, Zachary Quinto)? Just the very idea of makin’ it with an alien in the first place?” Me, I can see the attraction in a lover who’s smart, reasonable, dependable, trustworthy, and loyal . . . except when they occasionally go into a frenzy of violent and uncontrollable sexual desire. It’s the best of both worlds!

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Years ago when Sunny Lane was a new and relatively green porn star and I was a new and relatively green porn reporter, I interviewed her after watching perhaps a half dozen of her movies. What did I think to ask her? “Do you plan to do anal scenes any time soon?” I asked this both because I am a devotee of the butt love and longed to see Ms. Lane ploughed (by Jesus or anyone), but because it seemed like the thing to ask a porn actress in the days when anal sex was swiftly growing in popularity. I mean, if she hasn’t done it, will she?

This is a recurring obsession on message boards where guys discuss porn — “Does ______ Do Anal?” would not be an unusual subject line to see, and Sunny Lane is the first non-buttsex actress to make headlines by engaging in the buttsex or, in porn parlance, giving up her anal cherry, which is, I’ll admit, a disturbing concept.

It isn’t exactly surprising given how much anal sex is beloved in porn, not to mention sought-after and fantasized about by men, who constitute the bulk of porn’s consumers. What is surprising, however, is that such a media kerfuffle would ensue in a time when anal sex is so de rigeur for porn actresses. Many if not most of the biggest porn actresses nowadays do anal sex quite frequently, and the porn labels considered “high quality” in the gonzo side of the industry, in which Sunny specializes, most frequently feature oodles of anal sex whatever the theme of the title. While there’s still a substantial representation of plastic bimbos out there who don’t seem to do much of anything in bed, more and more the popular girls seem to be the ones who get fucked every which way, including anal. So why does it remain so hot for so many porn watchers — enough that when Sunny finally decided to let Manuel Ferrara plumb the depths of her back passage, it’s front page news?

The blandest of sex-positive assertions would be that anal sex is a healthy form of sex enjoyed by healthy people who are getting off; very nearly as bland is the explanation that it’s a kinky, taboo variation that’s hot. But this is also about virginity. I would be a little less insistent on pointing that out if I hadn’t gone bugfuck to Sunny Lane’s portrayal of a virgin female patrolwoman inveigled into life as an undercover agent and then reluctantly corrupted by oversexed criminals in James Avalon’s 2005 movie She Bangs, which remains some of my favorite private entertainment material. I especially like the part where she gives her boyfriend a handjob in order to preserve her virginity, even though she’s already done it with the criminals. But she can’t tell her boyfriend, see, because he’d think she’s a slut. Guilt, secrecy, corruption, lies and handjobs: these are a few of my favorite things.

The things that are hot about virginity are kind of the same things that are hot about anal sex: they’re both taboo, they’re both intense, they’re both kinda scary to a lot of people. And while anal sex may be de riguer in porn, virginity is far from it. The stereotype of porn where schoolgirls pretend to be innocent gives the lie to the fact that, frankly, almost none of these girls can act. Usually in porn, if you spot an actress in a white dress pretending to be innocent or naive, fast-forward a minute and she’ll probably be wrapped up in a triple penetration scene with two Hungarians and a man in a Nixon mask. Virginity, for all the cultural obsession that’s focused on it, is a topic of some delicacy that video porn never seems to tackle with class, wit, or verve.

That’s why I find it so interesting that Sunny’s selling us the loss of her anal virginity onscreen to mammoth-donged Manuel Ferrara. Can anyone legitimately claim that Sunny Lane engaging in anal intercourse after starring in like 100 porn film constitutes losing any sort of virginity, let alone “corruption,” which I’m so fond of? It has to be, in a jaded age where even for non-professionals, if you’re to believe most porn movies and all the CNN headlines, getting fucked in the ass is no longer saved for the second date. As a porn actress, if you want to plead inexperience you have to find increasingly esoteric things you’ve never done.

Still, that anal virginity thing is kind of a hard sell. But Sunny’s one hell of a saleswoman. In a recent podcast, Sunny goes to great lengths to emphasize that this was the first time she’d engaged in receptive penis-anus intercourse, though she does say she played extensively with dildos before she was ready to try anal fucking on camera. But regardless, the fantasy being sold is just that, a fantasy, and the Porn Valley hype machine has made front-page and podcastworthy news of much less interesting moments in porn history.

Personally I’d cheerfully buy the Brooklyn Bridge from Sunny Lane, and probably give her a tip. But that’s hardly the point.

I applaud a couple of things here: the fact that Sunny is, at least partially, furthering the idea that women should do what they want, when they want to do it, and that if you want to get fucked in the ass the best way to do it safely is to fuck yourself with a dildo a whole damn lot first.

And perhaps more foolishly, I applaud that she’s selling us the fantasy of a first time, because that sort of thing implies a subtlety that, nowadays, commercial porn doesn’t usually bother with.

Thomas S. Roche blogs about Goth, God, and Zombies at thomasroche.com.

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Sometimes we could all use a hand in bed. Even the most basic sexual positions can pose certain challenges, or could be a little better if you just had a little help keeping your feet up, or something to hold onto while you leaned back just so. If you find yourself skipping the reverse cowgirl because you can’t stop from falling over, or if your lover is so enthusiastic during doggie style that he bruises your hips, the Penetration Station might be just the thing for you. This set of straps is installed ahead of time under your mattress (and, admittedly, this is the trickiest part), but once there it’s simple to hide and always ready to lend a helping handhold during sex. Our testers enjoyed using the headboard straps to hold onto instead of her hips in doggie-style, giving him previously unheard-of leverage for some intense fucking (apparently he even yee-hawed, it was so wild). You can also use it to help hold your legs up for missionary or oral sex, leaning back in cowgirl (or forward in reverse cowgirl) . . . the possibilities are many. Great for adventurous couples as well as those needing an extra handhold, the Penetration Station will give you an extra handle on your sex life.

• Penetration Station

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The Soft Serve Silicone Dildo is one of my favorite new dildos, and if you’re looking for a versatile, non-realistic dildo, you ought to check this one out yourself. Made out of Vixskin, so there’s a squishy outer layer of silicone over a firmer core, the Soft Serve is firm enough for easy insertion, but comfy enough for hard thrusting. What’s cool about this dildo is the versatility of the spirals, which start about an inch below the tapered tip of the toy — you can just thrust the dildo in-and-out for a really bumpy, ripply effect, or you can insert it while spinning the toy, working down the spirals as you ease the toy inside. This is especially awesome for butt-play, as it really helps guide the toy inside (though due to the size I’d call this an intermediate anal toy). Once you have the toy inserted, spinning it makes the spirals seem to “travel up” the walls of whichever orifice you’ve got it in, which can be quite the delightful experience. It’s a really pretty sherbert-orange color (with a white base), and is so tempting sitting on the bedside table that my lover pestered me until we finally found time to try it together. With a partner, the variety of sensations can make this a very fun toy — is he going to twist it next or thrust it? Try working it over the clit and labia for some gentle flicking sensations as the spirals move past. With so many possibilities in one pretty little dildo, I’d have to say that this is one sweet treat!

• Soft Serve Silicone Dildo

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It seems even more ridiculous now.

Why — in a world where I have almost infinite pornographic material at my fingertips — would I find a ten-second spanking scene in a cable TV comedy series so erotically compelling? Why would I rewind and re-watch it a half a dozen times . . . and then fetch my vibrator, and watch it a dozen times more?

What is it about sex scenes in non- porno movies and TV shows, novels and comic books, that makes them hot? Not necessarily better than porn; but different, and different in a way that makes them special and exciting?

I’d like to say it’s how unexpected it is. You rent or download a spanking video, you expect to see a spanking. It’s fun, it’s hot, but it’s a bit anticlimactic. But you’re watching a regular old TV show — okay, on Showtime, but still — and you see a spanking? (Or a lap-dance, or blowjob, or whatever it is that floats your boat?) That’s a bit of a shock. And the shock of having one of your erotic buttons pushed out of nowhere can jolt you out of your TV- watching haze, and wake up your libido like a slap in the face.

Sure. Sometimes that’s true.

But in this case, it would be a filthy lie. The spanking I’m talking about had been heavily foreshadowed in the previous week’s episode. Heck, it had been highlighted in the “And now, scenes from next week’s episode” clips. I didn’t see the spanking come out of nowhere. I’d been waiting for it all week. With bated breath, and a twitchy hand on the remote.

So that’s not it.

It’s not the authentic feel you get from good acting, either. Usually when I rave about porn, it’s the authenticity that I rave about: the feeling that the performers have genuine enthusiasm and passion about what they’re doing. But that’s almost the exact opposite of what I saw here. In a spanking video, there’s a pretty decent chance that the people you’re watching are really getting off on it. In “Weeds,” these are highly- skilled, professional television actors . . . and while they did an excellent job convincing me of the characters’ passions, I have no idea how the actors themselves felt about it. That’s what makes them, you know, actors.

And I’d like to say that it was exceptional porn. Exceptionally erotic, exceptionally well-made. Something.

But honestly, it wasn’t. The scene was fine by spanking porn standards — it was certainly better- filmed and better- acted than most — but it wasn’t wildly extraordinary. And the actual spanking only lasted ten seconds . . . which is a pretty major downside for porn. The very fact that I had to rewind and re-watch it a dozen times was something of a hassle. It did lend a certain sleazy, drooling- pervert charm to the proceedings (especially when I was watching on frame- by- frame slow- forward); but it’s hard to keep a sustained arc of sexual arousal when you’re hitting “Rewind” every ten seconds. And while it was a good, hard ten- second spanking, from a purely porny standpoint it wasn’t all that and a bag of chips.

See for yourself. If you Google “Weeds Nancy Botwin spanking,” or go to YouTube and search on those words, you can see what I’m talking about. You can watch it here, if they haven’t taken it down already. But unless you’ve been watching the show and care about the characters already, it probably won’t seem all that interesting.

And that, I think, is the key.

That is what the ten-second spanking scene on “Weeds” has to offer that the overwhelming majority of porn doesn’t:

Caring about the characters.

You can get some of that in written porn, if you know who the good writers are. But for reasons that surpass my understanding, from a purely porny standpoint I’m a much bigger fan of video than I am of fiction. And alas, the overwhelming majority of porn videos completely suck at engaging you with the characters, giving you a sense of what all this sex means to them, getting you to give a damn about them.

But I already care about the characters on “Weeds.” I’ve been watching “Weeds” for close to three years now, and it’s an unusually smart and well- written TV show. So compared to any porno vid I’m going to watch, it already has a three- year head start . . . not to mention the considerable advantage that a well-paid writing staff will give you.

So when I watched Nancy Botwin get spanked, it was like watching a friend get spanked.

No, not a friend exactly. I don’t think the characters I watch on TV are my friends. But a reasonably close acquaintance. A friend of a friend. Someone I know a lot about and have come to care about from a distance.

And I think this is part of why people get so excited about sex scenes or kink scenes in non-porno TV and movies. (Apart from the celebrity fetish, of course; but that’s not my thing, so I can’t say much about it.) It’s not like porn, where nine times out of ten you sit through a stupidly- written, woodenly- acted pool- boy seduction scene that’s both unconvincing and unsurprising before you get to the “good stuff.” The spanking in “Weeds” had all the complex intensity and emotional depth that my own sex fantasies have . . . with the added treat of not being made up in my own head, and therefore being at least a little surprising and new.

And that’s something I’ve only gotten from a handful of porno vids.

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

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What I know about tantric sex I learned from the movies (where it’s generally about mystical male orgasms that last for hours, etc.) and from jokes about Sting, so it was nice to learn a bit more about the subject. Tantric Sexual Massage for Lovers is the beginner’s disc (there’s an advanced program we hope to review soon), and it starts with sex experts Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson explaining the basics, labeled neatly as Key Concepts in Tantric Massage. Rubbing, blowing, kisssing, biting, pressing, etc. — at this level it’s a lot more about massage than about fucking. (Though at one point they do say that massaging a hand is like putting a penis in a vagina, which makes me think they’re doing it wrong — or else I have been!) The focus is mostly not on stroking the naughty bits, but on various pressure points that can be used to induce relaxation — hands, Achilles tendons, lower back, etc. They later move on to whole body massage — where you rub your oiled body against your partner’s oiled body. Now we’re getting somewhere — human slip-n-slide action!

Some of the demonstrating couples and their scenes — with nipple stimulation and genital massage and such — are quite hot, but even with the explicit demonstration scenes this isn’t really a flick to watch for titillation. It’s a movie to watch for the sake of learning how to better please your partner (and be better pleased yourself). The instructors don’t really teach you tricks or moves so much as an entire revision of the way you approach sexual experience, and as such you should watch it with your partner. They’re going to wonder why you’re blowing on the soles of their feet or tweaking their nipples for twenty minutes straight if you just try to spring these techniques on them without the proper context.

The instructors seem quite knowledgeable, but my one complaint is this: their delivery is dull. They should take a break from teaching people to rub one another attentively and use the time to take a couple of courses themselves, in public speaking if not drama — they talk about embracing fun and being joyful, but they sound like they’re reading from a script most of the time, and it’s not especially lively, which is a shame. They tend toward the clinical in their language, too. Is there a phrase to describe sexual activity that’s less sexy than “massaging the genitals”? (Well, okay, sure, there are lots of less sexy phrases, but they could have definitely done better.) Still, the information is there, even if the delivery is on the dry side, and the lessons are clear and comprehensible. If you’re interested in opening up and expanding your sexual experience, this is a good place to start.

• Tantric Sexual Massage for Lovers

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Perhaps this is a strange time to be thinking about education, since school’s out for the summer, but I believe learning is a lifelong endeavor, so prepare to receive some knowledge:

Shockingly, it turns out that abstinence-only sex education doesn’t stop teenagers from having sex. At all. They have just as much sex as their better-educated classmates. The study also says that students who only learn about abstinence in school — and not, say, condoms — don’t necessarily engage in riskier behaviors than their better-informed counterparts, which is surprising and heartening. Then again, it’s not like teenagers these days can only learn about sex from their teachers and their ill-informed peers and those magazines dad hides in the back of the closet — with the internet, you can learn all sorts of useful things about sex, and as long as you know how to delete your history and clear your cache, mom and dad need never know. The internet can also help you find many useless, but titillating, things. But I’ll get to that later.

While we’re on the subject of sex ed, there’s an interesting comment thread at the Midwest Teen Sex Show (not as prurient as it sounds), where various students chime in to answer the questions “Does your school offer sex education? What sort of topics are they covering? Are you learning?” The answers vary pretty wildly — from just being told “Don’t have sex! Ever! Sex bad!” to frank demonstrations of how to use condoms and explanations of various STDs — and include answers from assorted countries. It’s a nice random sampling that might give you some idea of what a confused mess sex ed is.

Things get a little better once you get to college. Why, at Columbia University, there’s even the occasional lecture on using sex toys to improve your sex life, where a representative from a sex toy company comes under the auspices of the school’s Health Promotion Program to teach kids about the joys of things that vibrate and rotate and inflate. Learning is fun!

Hmm. I appear to have devoted this entire column to links that provide you only with pages of words. I’ll rectify that. First, an illustrated math problem from a Korean textbook (which you can see at the top of the column above), translated and explained — it does indeed recommend the use of trigonometry to determine whether or not it’s safe to sneak a look up the skirt of the girl sitting across from you on the train. Who says you never use that kind of math in real life?

And, finally, simply and without attribution, courtesy of the Sexoteric blog: A photo of a row of Asian schoolgirls standing up with their panties down around their knees. Sex education is so much more sophisticated in other countries . . .

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This conflation of a place, and therefore a place’s population, with its courts is one of the things that annoys me most about journalism in general and sex-related journalism specifically. It’s a kind of anti-travel writing that mainstream news sources engage in, an attempt to paint a given location as monolithic and of a single mind. Clearly Iowans are not of a single mind about nude dancing, as the residents of any state are not of a single mind about such a subject. And the fact that mainstream news is portraying this case as more than it is — the case of a strip club that let in an underage patron and then let her drop trou onstage — is more about the fascination news reporters and readers have for nude dancing and barely-legal sexuality. In this case, the 17-year-old daughter of the local sheriff happens to have sneaked her way into a strip club one night, and then leapt on stage and took her clothes off not once, but twice — not exactly a dream case for free speech advocates.

Shotgun Geniez Sensual Entertainment Theater, aka “the Hamburg Center for the Performing Arts,” is in Hamburg, Iowa, near where the state meets Nebraska and Missouri. Listed at iowastripclubs.com, Shotgun Geniez nonetheless operates under a loophole in Iowa law that says it’s not in fact a strip club, but a performing arts venue (tomato, tomahto). Says Shenandoah, Iowa’s Valley News Today, the law “exempts theaters, concert halls and performing arts venues from some state obscenity laws.”

This makes plenty of sense to me — after all, what if someone wanted to open a gallery, show an Erte, have a poetry reading and scream “Fuck!”? Clearly cutting the arts some slack is a win-win for society, and apparently Iowa (there I go!) thinks the same. That’s right — there in the heartland, somebody thought of the children.

Shotgun Geniez portrays itself as an “arts center,” as opposed to, say, a “strip club,” because the courts seem to hold that those things are different. Shotgun Geniez is not exactly an art gallery poster girl. You can’t really draw too many conclusions from the fact that its website advertises 24 hour truck and RV parking, or that the venue advertises itself on the sides of semi trailers parked on the freeway. Hey, if something isn’t art because truckers love it, then every Literature major wearing a Johnny Cash T-shirt is in for a serious shock. Plus, at Geniez, the presumed lack of dudes with goatees, wire-rimmed glasses and black turtlenecks is of course counterbalanced by, I’m sure, plenty of girls in Bettie Page haircuts carrying riding crops, so that one’s a draw. That by way of welcoming me “To the Garden of Sex at the Fluffy Bunnies Brier Patch,” the Geniez website shows me a series of tempting women with their legs spread — well, that’s a draw, too, given some of the randomness I’ve encountered in San Francisco galleries. Could it be art or trash? Who knows? Or maybe — gasp — both!?!?

I am, of course, joshing, since it’s pretty obvious that your position on this particular case is going to be determined by whether or not you think dancing for purely erotic intent should be legal, not whether you think it might serve the “higher purpose” of art. Those two opinions might intersect, but you’re not going to convince anyone who thinks nude dancing is obscene that it’s nonetheless cool because it’s “art.” And Geniez is far from the first strip club to present itself as a performance art venue — there’s a time-honored tradition of strip clubs and dance halls-theater venues having a fuzzy line, or no line, between them; that tradition stretches back at least to the Barbary Coast era in San Francisco, and arguably further back, to dance halls in England.

The dancing of the unnamed 17-year-old was probably not a high point for the legal rights of fine arts devotees in southwestern Iowa, since if she’d waited a few months ’till her 18th birthday, there would have been no legal problem. That’s despite the fact that the girl was the daughter of the Sheriff. The authorities deny that’s what this is about — and we all know 17-year-olds never sneak into strip clubs, right?

The case is being pushed by the media not because it will offer any meaningful precedent, but because there’s oodles of prurient interest here. Theoretically, the case could hinge on whether nude dancing is protected speech. It won’t, though, because the dancer whose rights may have been violated is 17. The idea that a 17-year-old would have a constitutionally protected right to dance nude is in my estimation an idea that “Iowa” and “The United States,” are utterly unable to comprehend. Regardless, any decision in the case would have to be appealed before it could be evaluated on state constitutional grounds, let alone making its way to the Supreme Court. It probably won’t be.

KNCY Country Music Radio reports that we could have a decision in this case as early as today . . . for all the difference it will make in legal terms, despite the media’s hand-wringing. But as for my summer vacation roadtripping to Hamburg, Iowa to experience The Garden of Sex in the Fluffy Bunnies Brier Patch — that’s hanging by a thread, my friends.

Thomas S. Roche blogs about Goth, God, and Zombies at thomasroche.com.

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With a body like a rhythm fish, all ridgey goodness, you know that the Purr Silicone Vibrator isn’t one you’re going to ignore easily. The small, closely-spaced ridges start about an inch and a half down the purple shaft and add a noticeable ripply sensation as you insert the toy. Yes, that’s right, this dildo is ribbed for your pleasure, though this is far bumpier than any ribbed condom you’ve ever tried. Add the vibrations from the (included) one-touch bullet vibe that fits into a notch on the bottom, and you’ll soon realize just how the Purr Silicone Vibrator got its name!

The silicone is on the firmer side (though still with some give to it), which means that the vibrations are transmitted rather well, especially near the base. And, for those who like a bigger toy up the butt, those vibrations are right at the entrance, where a million nerve endings are going to thank you for your thoughtfulness. Not a beginner anal toy, the ridges definitely add an intense sensation in this area as you insert the Purr. 6-3/4″ insertable, about 1-3/8″ wide. Whether you use it to make a happy butt or a purring pussy, the Purr Silicone Vibrator is sure to please. Here kitty kitty!

• Purr Silicone Vibrator

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If you’ve been curious about e-stim play, but you don’t want to shell out the big bucks for a whole system just to see if it’s for you, the only option, up until now, was to try something like the Electrosex Remote-Control Butterfly. Which is way fun, don’t get me wrong, but doesn’t really let you feel the tingly sensation of insertable e-stim play. Our new Electrosex Silicone Vibrator All-in-One Unit solves that problem, giving you a sweet silicone vibrator with its own dedicated power box; even the batteries are included, so its ready to go!

The silicone means that it’s not nearly as hard and unforgiving as the metal dildos that you usually see as e-stim attachments, which makes it that much better for beginners. The current cycles on its own through various sensations — from pulsating bursts to tingly strokes, and so on — for three minutes each; note that this means you cannot control what type of sensation comes when. But, you can control the intensity, which is a good thing, as the first cycle is very much a warm-up, and you might need to dial it down by the second cycle of sensations, (though this toy does not get as strong a current as other, full e-stim systems will). The current passes from one side of the dildo to the other, making the walls of your vagina contract — some folks say it feels like the dildo is fucking them by itself. A very unusual and delicious sensation indeed!

And, of course, it’s also a vibrator, which makes it even more stimulating (or tingly, as the current feels stronger when the vibrator is running). The vibrations are controlled separately so if it turns out you hate the e-stim part of the toy, you still have a very useful vibrator you can play with. 6″ long overall, 5-1/4″ insertable, the shaft is oval, not round, and measures 1-5/8″ wide at widest point one way and 1-7/16″ wide the other. Because the base is small (1-5/16″ one way and 1-1/16″ the other) we don’t really recommend this as an anal toy. A shockingly good time in an All-in-One unit!

• Electrosex Silicone Vibrator All-in-One Unit
• Electrosex Remote-Control Butterfly

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If I had, I would have gotten my ass to the gym long before I finally did.

I wish I’d known it years ago. Which is why I’m telling all y’all. It’s this:

Working out is hot.

I don’t mean that it makes you look hot and attractive: i.e., gives you a firmer body, better posture, a healthier and more attractive appearance generally. It does, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

And I don’t mean that it makes you feel hot and attractive: i.e., increases your libido, gives you better energy, makes you feel more comfortable in your own skin. It does, but that’s not what I’m talking about, either.

I mean that the activity itself is hot. Arousing. Sexually pleasurable.

Or it can be, anyway.

For one thing, if you’re at all into kink, there’s a wonderfully kinky flavor to working out. The weight equipment at the gym especially. The one that forces your legs apart and makes you squeeze them together? The one that puts you on your back with your hands and your chest pinned down? The one that presses your arms back and pushes your tits out? Yum. And there’s a toppy aspect to it, too: a feeling of forcefulness, of power, of pushing against resistance and making it yield.

Even if you’re not into weights, the soreness and endorphin high you get from pushing your physical limits a little bit more each day will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s enjoyed a good spanking. (Although you have to be careful with this — I actually did myself a mild injury from bench pressing too much weight, because it “hurt so good.”)

But it’s not just about kink.

There’s also the whole “being in a room full of healthy, athletic people, many of whom are dressed in skimpy or tight- fitting clothing” thing. Personally, that often doesn’t do much for me: I tend to go into my own little world when I work out, and I don’t usually pay much attention to the other gym patrons. (In fact, I once lost points in the “lust” section of a “seven deadly sins” morality quiz because I didn’t think of the gym as a cruising ground.)

But sometimes, it just can’t be helped. I don’t like to cruise at the gym — if you’re not a gay man, I think it’s kind of rude — but I’ve definitely spent some of my time at the gym pumping my thigh muscles and surreptitiously admiring other people’s . . . um, tattoos.

But that’s not the main thing.

The main thing is this.

I am:

(a) a person who tends to live in my head, and

(b) a person who tends to be horny.

So anything that pushes me out of my head and into my body will usually get me thinking about sex.

And being at the gym does exactly that. It forces me to pay attention to my body, to feel what’s happening in my flesh and joints and bones. And that almost always gets me turned on. Not in a generalized, “being in touch with my body” way, but in a very specific, immediate, “firm nipples and hard clit” way. It gets me paying close, careful attention to my thighs and my ass, my back and my chest, my hands and my feet.

Which gets me hot.

And which keeps me going back every week.

So consider this a public service announcement. People talk a lot about exercise as a natural anti-depressant . . . but it’s also a natural aphrodisiac. And I think if more people knew this, a lot more people would be getting their asses to the gym, and keeping them there.

The gym per se might not be for you. I personally find weightlifting to be totally hot, but I’m also a firm believer in the idea that the best exercise is the one that you enjoy and will therefore stick with. So if weights and treadmills don’t do it for you, then try basketball or fencing or synchronized swimming.

But if you’re trying to find inspiration to get more regular exercise, and if you’re also a horny person who lives too much in your head, you might find that this works for you as well. Working out is hot. It doesn’t just make you healthy and energetic; it doesn’t just reduce stress and depression; it doesn’t just improve your sleep. It also turns you on. It gives your body something it loves and is hungry for . . . and your body pays you back in sexual pleasure.

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

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Porn triple threat Madison Young (she writes, she directs, and best of all, she performs) is in a period of explosive prolificacy right now, creating heaps of hardcore porn with heart and verve. Can she keep up this pace without the quality diminishing? I hope so — and her latest, Writers and Rockstars, is just as good as the others. These are smart, short indie flicks, gems of boutique filmmaking, without a lot of bullshit or artificiality, just people who love fucking, doing what they do best. Though most known for her bondage work, Madison moves away from the reliance on ropes and chains a bit in this one, and proves herself equally adept at straight porn — though there’s still some improvised bondage and S&M moments, of course.

Madison plays a poet with extensive experience fucking rockstars, which has given her great insights — like, for example, the realization that rockstars fuck the way they play music. Some go hard and fast and overwhelm you with noise, some go slow and carefully and overwhelm you with technique, and some are better off just playing by themselves in their bedrooms. The sex scenes mostly include Madison, and they’re all fantastic. In the first, she does astonishing cocksucking work with James Mogul, while he records her on a handheld video camera (except for the moments when he puts the camera down to pull her hair). Next she has a backstage romp with Daniel, and their chemistry is undeniable — he chokes her with his belt, gags her with her panties, and fucks her silly. (Eventually he pours candlewax on her, which is afterglow of a sort.) Next, while helping busty blonde musician Dia set up for a gig in a bar, the two get understandably distracted and start to fuck. Licking, fingering, a Hitachi magic wand, a big dildo, more candlewax . . . Alas, the final scene doesn’t really involve Madison — except emotionally — but it’s hard to find fault with it otherwise. Dia, still naked and disheveled, walks in on indie porn pro Dylan Ryan in the bathroom and has a fangirl moment of her own. Dylan fucks Dia with a strap-on, and it’s punk-porn perfection. (Madison does walk in on them, and has a moment of horror at what she witnesses.)

It’s a great movie overall, and it’s a turn-on knowing the leading lady wrote and directed these scenes . . . after all, one can assume that she’s doing things she really wants to do, and her enjoyment seems totally genuine.

• Writers and Rockstars

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From psychology to sociology to neuroscience, there’s scarcely a branch of science relating to the human condition that doesn’t occasionally delve into the mysteries of sex. Nothing’s hotter than scientific rigor and large diverse sample populations, after all, so here are some sexy results:

Scientific American had an article on “The Orgasmic Mind: The Neurological Roots of Sexual Pleasure,” revealing the incredibly complex neurological changes that happen in the course of sexual desire and fulfillment. It turns out achieving orgasm requires “a release of inhibitions engineered by shutdown of the brain’s center of vigilance in both sexes and a widespread neural power failure in females.” (Neural power failure in females would explain some of the hot girls I see dating total assholes, I guess.) It’s an interesting article, drawing on a variety of brain imaging studies, experimental hormone therapy data, and good old fashioned biology to explore all the weird things that happen in our bodies just so we can get off.

Speaking of hormones, a study of 300 male students revealed that they have the same hormonal reaction to pretty much every woman they encounter, whether they find them attractive or not! When placed in a room with a strange woman, even one they considered ugly, the testosterone level in these guys went up by about 8%. The guys then reacted unconsciously by squaring their shoulders, standing up straighter, flaring their nostrils, and telling lies about how awesome their jobs are. (Seriously!) Their testosterone levels didn’t change when they were left in a room with a man. You see, ladies — we can’t help it.

On to bisexuality! It turns out bisexuality is not a transitional phase among women, but is a distinct sexual orientation. Bisexual women tracked over ten years displayed a “stable pattern of attraction to both sexes.” (I never doubted you!) So next time you hear someone say their bisexual college roommate (or teenage daughter) is just “experimenting” or “in a phase” or “easing into lesbianism,” point ‘em at the link above. The study also refutes the notion that bisexuals are unwilling or unable to commit to long-term monogamous relationships, with many of the women surveyed being involved in stable exclusive relationships. Though given the incredibly high incidence of cheating in most heterosexual “long-term monogamous relationships” one wonders how much this particular population differs . . . but that’s a study for another day.

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To be sure, the fact that Spanked was featured on AVN’s home page has to do with proper promotion; a press release goes a long way toward getting space in the publication (or any publication). Most of the time, “literary” erotica books don’t bother to include adult video and novelty industry sources in their promotion. There’s a great divide in retail between, if you’ll forgive me, “erotica” and “pornography,” and the sale of the written word in dirty book form doesn’t usually show up in industry sources like AVN. The main reason for that divide is not about any prejudice on the part of book publicists or illiteracy on the part of adult video sellers. It’s about simple economics, and as the gap is bridged we see great forces at work here.

For some years, most adult stores have focused on DVDs and novelties; there’s been a steadily dwindling representation of dirty magazines and, for at least a decade, almost no paperback books in your average mom & pop or chain local/regional sleaze shop.

Magazines once formed the backbone of the wank industry, but started hurting for circulation in the ’90s as the magazine industry in general lost market share to other entertainment options like VHS and later DVD; in the porn industry that decline was even more dramatic. The magazines often featured dirty stories, but the real sources for erotic text were the porno paperbacks, 150-to-180-word pocket books that featured nonstop narrative fucking. To my way of interpreting things, two trends almost eradicate that species of sleaze: porn tapes and DVDs got cheaper, and people started reading less. When looking for a wank, a tape from the bargain bin that costs the same as a couple of paperbacks offers more immediate titillation for a lot less work. Ditto goes for tape or DVD vs. a magazine, and plus the pictures move!

Now, the video porn industry is hurting. For what it’s worth, industry scuttlebutt I’ve been hearing is that DVD sales are down 30% since last year, partially replaced by download sales but also showing an overall downturn. Many in the biz blame it on tube sites, which give away porn for free. Also having an impact are pay-per-minute services, where frenzied masturbators can pay only for the five minutes of a porn movie they really need, rather than for a whole DVD. Then there’s the anemic US economy, which doesn’t help. Simultaneously, the profusion of mobile players like the iPod and mobile gaming devices means that more people are enjoying their media in public; has that had an impact on whether they choose adult material when spending their entertainment dollars? Nobody knows. But it’s clear that porn, like movies and TV, is competing with more types of entertainment every day.

Meanwhile, over on the retail front, the ease with which novelties can be ordered online, and porn downloaded, have made the traditional sleazy, icky porn shop, which only felt (just barely) comfortable for male consumers, less viable. Consumers buy online with greater ease; the privacy offered has easily trumped the oft-spoken of fears of credit card fraud. And while we’re at it, more and more women are comfortable with porn, making women and straight couples a growing part of the market. When it comes to buying porn and novelties, it’s the consumer’s choice: click and download, or click and wait a few days if you want a dildo — or brave an uncomfortable retail environment with some very interesting smells.

The end result of all this? The “boutique,” a “classy” store meant to be comfortable for an “upscale” clientele, has become important both online and in brick-and-mortar. The adult retail industry knows it, too; the purchase of Good Vibrations by adult retail giant GVA-TWN is just one example of mainstream adult trying to get into the “boutique” market. Hustler Hollywood is a somewhat more famous example. When I lived in New Orleans not long ago, the adult stores in the French Quarter always seemed fairly clean and fairly hip, and on Saturday nights would feature a clientele at least 25% and sometimes 50% couples.

Clearly this is a growing trend, and it’s been going on for a while. To my mind, the growing interest in the “boutique” style by porn giants represents the co-opting of the indie esthetic by mainstream porn forces — and to be more direct about it, the potential ripping-off of sex-positivity in the name of retail exploitation. Or maybe I’m just a cranky old man, and it’s actually about social forces making sex positivity and women-friendly porn more viable. I opt to be cranky.

I don’t want to be too much of naysayer, anyway, because as an erotic writer I find a big piece of ironic love in all this market shift: those swanky boutiques, faux or not, are a lot more likely to carry books. And every time you wank to a dirty story, God sends me ten cents in an unmarked envelope. So get to it.

Thomas Roche blogs about fish, mobsters and cocktail-fueled interracial ’80s dance orgies at thomasroche.com.

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I’m talking, of course, about cheating. Specifically, cheating in a sexless relationship.

And today, I want to connect it to how high a priority we place on sex.

Because I think that’s something that’s been missing from this conversation.

When I wrote my first piece on this topic, I put the question in terms of a social contract. I argued that yes, cheating is a violation of the unspoken (and in some cases, spoken) terms of a relationship agreement. But I also argued that unilaterally and permanently depriving your partner of sex is also a violation of those terms. And I argued that, when one person violates their half of an agreement, the other person is no longer obligated to keep theirs.

Now, over on my own blog (where this question was also being discussed), a lawyer friend of mine, Jon Berger, clarified a point of law that’s very much relevant to this question. (Don’t worry — I’ll get out of all this contract stuff soon, and back into the stuff about sex.) He pointed out that in contract law, there’s a difference between a simple breach of contract and a “material breach” — and only when a breach becomes material are you no longer required to keep your end of the bargain.

And I think this whole “material breach” thing is crucial to what I want to get at today.

Because, in my opinion, the unilateral, non-negotiable, permanent cutting off of sex in a monogamous relationship is a material breach.

One that’s every bit as serious, every bit as significant, every bit as harmful, as cheating in a monogamous relationship.

And I think this is a concept that many anti-cheating advocates are not seeing. (Or maybe they’re just not agreeing with it. I’m not sure.)

Jon is right, of course. It’s not like any violation of any relationship agreement gives you license to cheat. If your partner promises to take the garbage out on Friday nights, and one week they forget, that doesn’t give you license to run off to the nearest singles bar. Forgetting the trash one week is not a material breach, and cheating wouldn’t be a proportionate response. (Or, for that matter, a relevant one.)

But to unilaterally cut off sex in a monogamous relationship, without any willingness for negotiation or even discussion, and with every intention of it being a permanent arrangement? To unilaterally force your partner into a situation where their only options are cheating — which is admittedly not that honorable; breakup or divorce — which many people in many situations would also consider dishonorable; or lifelong celibacy — which many, many people, myself included, would consider intolerable?

You’re damn right I think that’s a material breach.

And while I don’t think I’d personally choose to cheat in that situation, I can easily see how a good person might decide that cheating was both a proportionate response and a relevant one.

Now, some argue that cheating is always indefensibly wrong because it’s non- consensual: one partner is non-consensually forcing the other into a type of relationship that they didn’t agree to and don’t want. And this is an interesting point, with some validity to it. (FYI, there are other anti-cheating points being made in this debate that also have validity: I just don’t have space to address them all.)

But my counter-point is this: It is equally non-consensual for one partner to unilaterally decide that the relationship will now, and forevermore, be sexless. It is equally non-consensual for one person to try to force another into a life of lifelong, permanent celibacy.

And in my opinion, it is an equally serious moral violation, with equal potential for harm.

I’m not sure why I’m being so tenacious about this. (Apart from the fact that I’m a tenacious person, and am like a dog with a bone when I get hold of an idea.) I have a sex life that I’m happy with, and I’m not monogamous. So for me personally, this is all something of a moot point.

But I’m always troubled when I think people are trivializing sex, and sexual desire, and the high priority that some of us place on it.

And that’s some of what I’m seeing in these debates.

I’m not saying that all anti-cheating advocates are trivializing sex. But I am saying that, in the debates about cheating in sexless relatio