Flipping through a series of usenet binaries showing a large, bosomy young woman posing half dressed and going through the photographer's update of the dance of the seven veils I found my self thinking, "I hope they don't show her pissing." You never know these days. Odd that I'd first discover my inner fuddy-duddy by pining for the slightly more tease-oriented hardcore pornography of the '70s and '80s. Call it pining for Trinity Loren, though they even had her performing pregnant and lactating before she retired to a short unhappy life trying to fit in as a retired porn star married to someone in the business and trying to raise children in the suburbs of southern L.A.
It's not that the porn was good back then. It was atrocious. Trying to out myself to my lover by showing her the best possible porn I can find backfires, because for the most part it's still so laughably bad, with acting far below dinner theatre, weak gestures at dialogue, artistry. Come to think of it, maybe I should collect the very best of that stuff, though the touted Café Flesh is remarkably lame in its execution and the Taboo series, I suspect, won't really hold up. Those Taboo movies probably heralded the race to the fringe that dominates porn today, as a kind of gonzo coercion-rape verity has become the norm, informing young people and music video producers alike to the latest advances in male-style sexual-drive titillation.
I found the edge pretty quickly. Times Square imported some pretty raw stuff, mostly European and Asian back then, covering every bodily function and species imaginable. A French movie with romping nuns stays ever in my mind. Looking at that stuff moves your line—that place where you go "ugh, who could find that sexy"—out from the center but I doubt you ever lose that line. "Milking and breeding a human cow? Who could find that sexy?" "Dressing up as stuffed animals?" Plus the inevitable incest and rape fantasies that never become acceptable so ever hang outside the circle of light, available to spice up any willing reverie.
Capital Influx confesses her frustration with the success of Jonathan Safran Foer. When I first started hearing his name (of course he's a Princeton guy, too) it sounded like his last name was 4. Like that writer for the times who uses 8. as a middle initial. Jennifer 8. something. Maybe it's short for "8 of 9"?