I visited a professional acquaintance at his job the other day, actually I was invited to watch a taping of a locally filmed TV show, and when we had time to chat he told me he’s going to the Adult Video News awards and convention in Las Vegas next week. He seemed excited to "find people to have on the show" and that he’d already been "invited to a few orgies." I’ll bet he has, and I told him he wouldn’t have any problem finding chicks to take off their tops on his show. "What you will have a problem finding" I told him, "is substance."
I wanted to give him advice. Dozens of thoughts raced through my mind. My experience last year was Boot Camp for the Female Ego, and I wanted to translate it to him from one side of the gender divide to another. I won’t be going this year — though I would if my publisher had a booth this year and if I didn’t have a huge SRL show in Vegas a month from now. I’ll really miss meeting some cool people that I’ve formed friendships with via email over the past year, people who like me, want to make intelligent places for women and porn consumers in general to go, forward-thinking backlashes against the seas of cheese. If I did go, I’d surely lurk at Freddy and Eddy‘s booth, pester the guys at Wantedlist and Sugar DVD, drink many drinks with Carly Milne, and hide out with other friends who will be on hand such as Carol Queen, Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene.
But here is what I wanted to tell Producer Guy about what I learned at AVN last year:
* Women really can have voices like car alarms. They will speak to you with the patter of evil babies.
* The ratio of men to women is about fifty to one.
* There will be three gay men there — I found them all last year. Where’s Waldo?
* They have to post security guards outside all the women’s bathrooms to keep the men out. This is chilling when you think about why.
* As a het guy, one with a brain anyway, you will despise your own kind in about five minutes. When a woman drops a pencil, twenty guys ("fans") with cameras stick their lenses in her ass crack — literally. You will think you were raised in a different country, one where sheep were safe to sleep alone at night.
* It is most fascinating to take pictures of the crowds of men trying to get their cameras as close as they can to titties, pussy and ass. They have no awareness of anything else and do not notice their pictures being taken, or how much they are rubbing up against other men to get their shot. I took many pics with the porn chicks on the left and hoards of men to the right. Whenever anyone was aware of a camera pointing in their direction or their picture being taken, they were female.
* With one or two exceptions, every "fan" there wants to find out how he can "bang porn chicks." None of them ever do.
* Wear a condom. Always. Even when you’re walking around.
* If you are a woman and you are not in couture de Frederick’s of Hollywood, you will have discovered a magical invisibility spell. I wore leather pants and one of my mechanic’s shirts, and was totally ignored; though I pushed to get a few interviews for my video book. I got very few, and no one of high stature would speak with me — that was fine, because I wanted to know how regular women (women who watch porn, natch) would be treated by the industry. That experience is a whole other entry.
* You will think everyone in the porn industry is speaking with the translation of a wrongly dubbed foreign film. "Did you see Fluffy Cumsalot axmightyipo supulopsity in her repindytoism toglahdash, turn around for a little nobishty bitoshing, take witumin stumpido up her frodifer doky, then got plodkin while Dick Everhard came all over her face?"
* The Las Vegas strip was designed as a special kind of hell for vegetarians.
* Hunter S. Thompson got the dosage of medication correct needed to survive AVN. I will not go back unless I have really good drugs.
* In person, surgically enhanced porn chicks and trannies are indistinguishable. Just try to tell them apart.
* The only way to attend and keep your sanity is to be paid for your time there.
* You are one of many "producers."
* Somehow, a convention on porn manages to remove the pleasure for everyone involved.
* You will never get the smell of smoke out of your hair or clothing. Try to wait until you leave to burn all of your clothing and shave your head.
* Your intuition is right — "gaping anal" has nothing to do with the craft of filmmaking.
