Weekend Edition
November 12 - 14, 2010

When the Interpersonal Goes Hardcore

My Porn Star Girlfriend

By Dr. SUZY BLOCK

There’s a new generation of Porn Stars for whom making that genre of populist erotic art commonly known as “porn” is not a source of shame, but a reason for pride. 

These are young ladies and gentlemen, as well as a bevy of late-blooming MiLFs and Cougars, who got into porn not “by accident,” for quick cash to score dope, nor because their Hollywood dreams were shattered shortly after their high heels hit Sunset Boulevard.  They are pursuing porn as a consciously chosen career path, as a means to actualize their exhibitionistic dreams, to explore their hedonistic desires, to express their creativity or as a thrilling yet increasingly viable mix of all of the above.

A few are even in it for the *right* reasons, using their fame and porn-found fortune to educate their audiences about safe sex, save their favorite endangered species, help their less generously endowed friends, support sexual freedom-positive political candidates, combat the spread of HIV and/or create award-winning, “artistic” or “feminist” works that rise above the usual stroke-off fare.  Art, politics or wanker fodder; for love, lust or money; the porn industry has broken out of the dank dungeons, ranch homes and warehouses of Porn Valley and entered your neighborhood—in fact, the next porn you see could be starring Thy Neighbor’s Wife.

Porn has always been with us, but in the Age of the Internet, everyone and anyone can be a pornographer—or a porn star.  We’re seeing a tsunami of porn being created by many different types of pornographers, including lots of regular people who could well be your friends—even your boyfriend or girlfriend.  

Porn Stars at Yale

Porn stars and pornographers no longer need be revolutionaries or freaks on the fringe.  They are now Everyman and Everywoman: regular working people, not so different from folks who work in the shopping mall, the corporate world, academia, athletics, the local hospital, church or temple.  They have their strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, hobbies, politics, charities and chatty Twitter pages.  They have boyfriends and girlfriends—who sometimes become husbands and wives—many of whom also work in the porn “industry,” or a related field like music or photography. 

As a talk show host focused on the broad and all-encompassing subject of sexuality, with all kinds of guests and callers, I am privileged to witness first-hand the rapid evolution of this new generation of proud porn stars, erotic performance artists, political sluts, intellectual whores, tantric goddesses, stylish fetish models and caring sex workers.  A golden few of these sexual progressives work for my Institute as telephone sex therapists. 

Several have joined me as fellow honored guest lecturers at Sex Week at Yale.  Some, like cool, collegiate-looking crossover star, Sasha Grey, seem a bit out of their element when the questions get tough.  Others fit right in; award-winning alt porn star/producer/director and Rutgers grad Joanna Angel even brought her two younger sisters, neither of whom work in porn, both apparently looking up to their Big Sis the Pornographer as the artistic and business role model that she is.

The Girlfriend Experience

One of the brightest stars of Joanna’s Burning Angel productions, Misti Dawn, was recently a guest on one of my radio shows, along with her Porn Star Girlfriend (PSGF) Cadence St. John, her porn star boyfriend (PSBF) Michael Vegas (who also happens to be an old friend of radioSUZY1 engineer and hair tamer Brandillio), their mutual porn star friend-with-benefits Keni Styles, his PSGF Amanda Blow and her PSBF Bon Jon Syn. The interconnections were labyrinthine as they often are in the porn community. 

Our phone-in guest that night was Rebecca Daikin, former escort and author of The Girlfriend Experience. Though the book is not linked to the Steven Soderburgh film starring Sasha Grey, it is about the same subject.  Rebecca explained that, in escort parlance, The Girlfriend Experience (GFE) is quite different from The Porn Star Experience (PSE), in that the GFE is more about kissing and conversation, while the PFE is more about kinky sexual athletics. 

That may be, but our porn star girlfriends and their boyfriends conversed quite articulately on the show, then kissed and engaged in kinky athletic sex in every corner of the Speakeasy, from the bathrooms to the beds to the couches to the bar to the fire escape to the pool table.   It was an orgy of friends, two of whom, Misti and Michael, are so in love (as of this writing) that we  couldn’t help but name the clip of their passionate Speakeasy sex “Porno Romance.” 

Porno Romance

It was a hot summer night at the Speakeasy.  I’m not sure how we wound up on the fire escape. But it was a beautiful night for a blow-job, overlooking the boulevard, under the stars, in the Soul of Downtown LA.  The perfect night for a Porno Romance.

M&M: Misti and Michael… They fucked like porn stars, but they made love like soulmates.  So sweet and yet so dirty. So wild and yet so down-to-earth. So emotional and yet so physical. Such a fantasy and yet so real. So romantic and yet so pornographic!  They’re not exclusive of course; they’re porn stars!  They’re 21st century proto-bonobo humans, friends, colleagues, co-stars, co-conspirators and lovers…caught in a Porno Romance.

Most experts say that humans can’t have sex with as much orgiastic joie de vivre as bonobos do.  Having witnessed these porn friends at play, I can’t say that I agree.

As others have noted, there are three reasons (at least) for sex: “recreation, procreation and relation.”  In other words, sex is more than just fun and babies.  Just like bonobos, humans use sex and erotic activity to enhance our relationships with each other.  More and more, the porn world is about merging sexual recreation and the erotic imagination with real-life relationships.

PSGFs and PSBFs have made their way into mainstream promotions.  Calvin Klein is just a zipper away from being a hard-core pornographer.  In fact, the fashion maestro, Mr. Calvin Klein himself, has his own real-life Porn Star Boyfriend: a young blonde by the name of Nick Gruber, aka gay porn star Aaron Skyline.

Since they all have Twitter accounts, not only the close-up gynecology but also the inner psychology of porn stars is out there for all to enjoy.  You can follow thousands of them and you probably can get at least one to follow you.  Then you’ve got a virtual porn star girlfriend.

Porno Economics

One major stimulant for the new wave of PSGFs and PSBFs is our relentlessly tanking economy.  America is enmeshed in two losing wars and the worst economic crisis in 80 years.  Over 40 million people are on food stamps.  The bottom has fallen out of unrestrained capitalism (at least for the moment) and the American dollar is in freefall. Many are losing their shirts, their homes and their hope.  Whether you know “The Secret” or not, there are simply fewer and fewer good jobs out there. 

So, just as many did in the heydays of Weimar Berlin, millions of honest, hard-working, law-abiding, job-seeking women—and quite a few sexy men—are very deliberately choosing to “go into” porn, stripping, fetish modeling, massage or whatever form of sex work is most suited to their talents and interests.

Education levels, academic degrees, resumes, CVs or even past work experience have little, if anything, to do with the algorithms of Porno Economics.  Moxie rules, but intelligence, creativity and imagination are big pluses.  After all, any nerd with a cam can take off their clothes and make a sex clip; only a few can parlay that into noteworthy porn star success.

No doubt sex sells.  It may be the only thing that does sell, besides food and fear.  When everybody’s selling it, however, you’d better make yours interesting.  A bonus of the Porn Star Girlfriend Revolution is that the quality of erotica is slowly improving, although the sheer mind-numbing quantity of it makes that rather difficult to discern.

Porn Star Parents

Porn stars used to be exotic outcasts in their families, often cut off from childhood pals.  Now most maintain old friends and relatives who help keep them down-to-earth and balanced as they venture off into the brave new world of 21st century porn. 

Sometimes their parents are right behind them—or, at the very least, are emotionally supportive, bemused by their beloved offspring’s chosen profession, but not horrified by it like the moms and dads of yesteryear.  Some porn starlets are understandably reluctant to tell their parents…”yet.”  They choose a porn name and tell the folks they’re doing temp work.  Of course, they know that their parents or uncle Ernie *could* find them on the Internet; it’s just a matter of them ending up face-to-face with their photo advertising a porn site.  Ultimately, they tend to figure that: “If they find me while they’re looking at porn, they’re just as guilty as I am.”

When I interviewed a young starlet named Jenna Jameson for Playboy TV back in 1996, I was shocked when she told me that her father fully supported her decision to become a porn star.

That parental support turned out to be well-placed—even from a conservative dad’s point of view—when his wily daughter became a hugely successful businesswoman and best-selling author, something almost any 21st century dad would be proud of.

Of course, many parents, like Montana Fishburne’s famous father (he who splendidly played the title role in Othello and Morpheus in The Matrix), still can’t accept that their offspring are having sex on camera.  But at least Lawrence Fishburne didn’t disown his saucy daughter, as so many distinguished dads of previous generations would most certainly have done with any child so prodigal as to become a porn star.

Though it remains to be seen how she’ll capitalize on her *overnight* fame, Montana seems to be approaching her porn star turn as a fairly well-planned career move. “I've watched how successful Kim Kardashian became and I think a lot of it was due to the release of her sex tape,” she opined.  Indeed, before Vivid released Montana Fishburne, no one knew who she was; then she took the red pill, and now she is finding out just how deep the rabbit hole is.

Porno Therapy

How deep is it?  What does it all mean?  Sex-phobic pundits and prudes see the Porn Star Girlfriend and Boyfriend trend as further proof that human civilization is going to hell in a XXX-rated hand basket.  I see it as evidence that societies around the world are becoming more humane—opening up to humanity’s natural promiscuity and becoming more like our bonobo cousins and our old hunter-gather human ancestors, as referenced in Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s book Sex at Dawn. 

There are, of course, possible drawbacks, such as porn addiction, personal alienation, interpersonal conflicts, jealousy and the potential spread of sexually transmitted diseases.  But in general, the benefits of a more sexually open and honest society far outweigh the drawbacks.

And if it’s tough to deal with your porn star girlfriend or porno-loving husband, well, that’s what sex therapy is for.   I agree with my old friend and show guest (not a porn star!) “America’s Rabbi” Shmuley Boteach, who believes that marital counseling should be tax-deductible so that couples who need help can afford it.  As a sex therapist, I know that more and more couples need help coping with all the porno romances going on in their computers and imaginations, as well as in their beds.

Our Porn Star Girlfriends and Boyfriends are thrusting us forward into a Brave New World of porno romance, porno economics and hard-core interpersonal issues.  They are also taking us back to a time long ago when we all watched each other make love. 

Dr. Susan Block is a internationally renowned LA sex therapist and author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels.  Commit Bloggamy with her at http://drsusanblock.com/blog/  Email comments to her at liberties@blockbooks.com

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