I was too lazy to write my own erotic gift guide this year.
I read Tristan Taormino's list, and realized I wanted to just xerox hers, and send it off to the North Pole for immediate fulfillment! I'm presenting Tristan's top choices here, with a little editorializing by moi.
Tristan writes:
"Porn-loving lesbians are in luck: Adult movies by, for, and featuring real dykes are enjoying a resurgence, so you can stuff the stockings of the queer women in your life with lots of DVDs this year:
Belladonna's Evil Pink 2 features super-hot girl/girl sex ($37.95).
These aren't just the best "lesbian" movies... they are the most innovative, interesting, and memorable porn that ANYONE is making. I cried in the interview section of Ashley and Kisha. I laughed my ass off at Wild Kingdom and Special Delivery, which takes place in a vibrator warehouse. And what can you do with Belladonna— besides try to keep up?
This past year, a friend turned me onto Comstock Films, a unique erotic movie company who make in-depth erotic documentaries that center on the story of one couple and their relationship.
Each couple are very different: age, race, gender-matchups, personal style. It's like the reinvention of the Melting Pot, with sexual chemistry as the starting point.
I say they're "documentaries," because even though you would easily call these movies "porn," or "erotica," they're also the kind of thing you might see at a film festival— or some PBS series, if Public Broadcasting suddenly woke up tomorrow and went X-rated. It's MasterFuck Theater!
I was so intrigued with their work, I had to find out who "Comstock" was. I knew it had to be someone witty enough to give their company the name of the most famous Puritan of the 20th Century, the man who founded the original "New York Society for the Suppression of Vice."
The auteur I was looking for turned out to be the pseudonymous Tony Comstock, a prolific blogger as well as filmmaker, who was kind enough to give me an interview:
SB: You're... a straight guy? After watching Ashley and Kisha, I'm ready to give you the Black Lesbian Awareness award. Who interviews the lovers in your movies?
It's the Religious Right's latest problem: Too many otherwise-decent women are suffering from sexual addiction.
"You never would have thought that the woman sitting next to you in Sunday school might be viewing porn," says outraged Pure Life Ministries author Kathy Gallagher. "But with the growth of the Internet, the gap between what men and women do in secret has been drastically reduced."
This week on my audio show is part two of my discussion with sex historian Jeffrey Escoffier. We blurt out gay film secrets, discuss
why straight male porn stars enjoy queer sex, how to achieve the perfect double-penetration shots, and the manner in which exhibitionists get ahead in the film industry.
Jeffrey wears many hats, but one of his most distinguished is as the editor of a reference book I use on a weekly basis:Sexual Revolution. It's a collection of the seminal (and ovulastic!) documents of modern sexual liberation: Susan Sontag’s "Pornographic Imagination," Al Goldstein’s notorious review of Deep Throat, Anne Koedt’s classic "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm," Norman Mailer’s "The Homosexual Villain," Helen Gurley Brown, Lenny Bruce, Erica Jong, Lawrence Lipton, Masters & Johnson, Betty Dodson, Gayle Rubin, Timothy Leary, Henry Miller, Huey Newton, Sigmund Freud, Simone de Beauvoir— whew! I find new gems to mull over every time I read it.
Finally at the end of this week's show, in the "Try This at Home" mailbag, I get a letter from a listener who finds cheap thrills on freeway overpasses, and right in the middle of her dental checkups. Sexual revolution is indeed a guerilla enterprise!
Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 312, October 5, 2007)
This week on my audio show, I premiere an excerpt from my new audiobook,The Best American Erotica 2007.
It was hard to pick which story to sample; they're all so good. I chose an excerpt from Daniel Duane'sA Mouth Like Yours, read by the velvet Richard Brewer.
Yes, this is the same Daniel Duane who wrote one of the most compelling surf memoirs of all time, Caught Inside. This story is about a different, yet equally dedicated obsession!
Next up, I talk with sexual historian and scholar Jeffery Escoffier about the beginnings of the gay porn-film industry, which in many respects defined modern American porn, period. Who knew... that Stonewall and Deep Throat were preceded by gay porn-makers who were unsatisfied with beefcake magazines and unrealistic portrayals of gay life?
Jeff and I talk about perversity, porn chic, and straight guys who do gay porn. If you have any curiosity about the history of American porn, this is a must-listen. We'll do part two next week!
Finally, in the "Try This at Home" mailbag, I can't resist talking about another close shave— and I bet it won't be my last!
Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 311, September 28, 2007)
A NYT story today, in their Jerusalem Journal, reports on a new documentary, Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel, which reveals that the much-disgraced "SS Camp" porno-booksthat thrilled and shocked their countrymen since the early 60s, were created by Israeli authors who mined an apparently unbeatable combination of horror and titillation in the wake of the hair-raising Eichmann trial.
The Times writes: "The most famous Stalag, I Was Colonel Schultz’s Private Bitch, was deemed to have crossed all the lines of acceptability, prompting the police to try to hunt every copy down."
At the time they were published, the Stalags were introduced as if they were translated from English, the memories of American soldiers who'd been tortured by big-breasted Nazi dominatrices. But as you can see from the interview with their original publisher, Ezra Narkis, it was all a big P.T. Barnum-style set-up.
Just to show you how touchy the subject is, journalist Debbie Nathan alerts us that the NYT censored
their print edition to exclude a quote from an Israeli scholar, who
insisted there were “no Jewish whores” at Auschwitz. The professor was trying to say something reassuring, but the fact that she used a phrase like "Jewish whore," in any context, clearly freaked out the Times' editors.
Nathan writes:
What should we make of this? “There were no Jewish whores” goes beyond simply saying [there were] none in Block 24. It’s a more comprehensive denial of debauchery and sexual victimization of Jewish women at Auschwitz. Which could be some small comfort to Jews, and you’d think the editors would want to preserve it. On the other hand, the point of this troubling piece is the extent to which Jews – like everyone else – often fantasize the darkest terrains of sexuality, including, sometimes, by using their own historical tragedy as grist (again, not unusual across cultures). [The scholar's] sentence, with its titillating word “whore,” just might add to the mill.
The Stalag pulps were banned in Israel, after selling like hotcakes, but the icons endured. Witness the revealing clip of an Israeli reserve officer talking about these stories as an essential part of his boyhood fantasy life.
Some of the torrid myths of these pulp novels were so influential on the public's mind that they became part of the public school curriculum— and, with the film's release, the angst over their veracity and "message" is a hot topic all over again.
Depending on your distance from these historical events, the memory of the boomer-exploitation Stalags may seem like the cruelest nausea, guiltiest pleasure, or most hilarious kitsch you've ever seen. They have their own lunatic cinematic dimension, with films like "SS Hell Camp," which are still banned in much of Europe.
One thing I have in common with the late Andrea Dworkin is that whenever we would get off a plane in a new country, we would seek out a sample of the nation's pornography. Why? Because it's like stepping into the sticky pool of a community's greatest historical burden.
The basics of erotic representation are people in various states of undress, fucking and sucking and rubbing and kissing. For many viewers, this is stimulating enough on its own.
But so often, erotic expressions are surrounded by a story, a fascination — and this is where cultural memories come into play.
While Dworkin was outraged that old-school Israeli porn sought out the frisson of Nazi uniforms and camp-style S/M scenarios, for me, that discovery was poignant, and reminded me of its parallels around the world.
The U.S., for example, has a black/white interracial obsession unmatched by anyone else, and it's a direct result of our legacy of slavery and the Civil War... which, you'll remember, ended 144 years ago. It goes to show that as long as something remains in the sexual imagination, it proves that the guilt and and unresolved issues have never died.
In overwhelmingly Catholic countries like Mexico, you'll see the wildest and most banal pornography featuring actors dressed as priests and nuns.
In Japanese porn, the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and surrender to the Allies provoked a new image: the specter of masochistic male castration and the eroto-humiliation of impotence. It has no Judeo-Christian aspect; it is entirely rooted in the tradition of war, honor, male power, and its shameful submission.
The irony about the current state of Mideastern porn— if one can call it a genre!— is that it's no longer consumed with Nazi insignias, but rather a next-generation view that incorporates all the hysterical racism between Jewish and Islamic culture. Doctrinaire Muslim communities have "secret" anti-Semitic porn, while Israeli erotic angst pools around images of evil (yet sexy) Arabs, with requisite historical nods to Germanic predecessors.
It begs the question, if human beings didn't create massive tragedies, horrible wars, and cruel betrayals, what on earth would we manufacture for the taboos of our erotic lemonade? The unbearable is matched by its erotic catharsis. I guess we'd always come up with something.
This week on my In Bed audio show, I talk with award-winning author, columnist, and pornographic film director Tristan Taormino.
Smart Ass Productions, Taormino's sex film company, has a new sex education series that Tristan is proud to say breaks every rule.
Like... a cunnilingus movie that actually does that one thing: going down, and how to do it.
I know this may shock Captain Obvious, but there has NEVER been a sex-ed movie like this. Every other "eating-pussy" how-to has thrown everything in but the kitchen sink because they couldn't figure out how to creatively and expressively pay attention to this. one. thing.
Tristan and I also talk about how to make an education film that doesn't look like an industrial short, female squirting, and what's happened to gay literature since we first started reading it.
In Bed with Susie Bright 305: Author and Anal Sexpert Tristan Taormino
Then, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I respond to a listener who
asks: "How come I only have the hots for the certifiably insane?"
Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about
the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode
305, August 17, 2007)
Photo by the illustrious Paul Sarkis, who has a coupleother websites where you can see the more "fun" photos he partner and his partner take, and to learn about his Porn Star Couples photo project.
If you listened to my interview with Jamie Gillis two weeks ago, you've probably been waiting for the second half, where he talks more about his family, the art of jerking off, women's bashfulness about coming, and how dignity shouldn't be expected to come with age.
I asked Jamie about his dad, once known as "The Mayor of Roseland"—the famous ballroom— and why he recommends your should never hook your father up with a porn star.
In the last part of my show, I hear from a listener who wonders how she can support her autistic son's sexuality.
Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 298, June 29, 2007)
"A man is as faithful as his options" — Jamie Gillis
Mr. Gillis is a former mime, Columbia grad, Shakespearean actor, and very nice Jewish boy— and better known as one of the most influential actors and innovators in the history of American blue movies.
He also isn't the type to seek out interviews, or spill his life story, so I was honored to have an interview with the legend who's made his mark in the most memorable porn movie of all time.
I got into porn to support my acting habit...
Sometimes I think of myself as a straight guy who happens to have had more fag sex than any fag I know.
This business is dick-driven...
I was with Long Jean Silver when she said one day, 'Let's find some boys to fuck...' and they weren't easy to find! ...Finally we found a group of seven, and I said, 'Look, we're not taking seven, pick three.'
The Navy tried to throw a guy out for being in my North Beach [gonzo] and I said, "But he's not even the one that did the fucking..."
No, you can't live with someone who's straight, who's not in the sex business— if it's a 'quote,' normal girl, it's ridiculous.
If you know Jamie's work, I know you're drooling to hear it all. If you've never heard him, you're in a for an education.
I couldn't help but sputter my indignation at the Georgia case of Genarlow Wilson, a popular athlete and college-bound senior, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for having blow job with a freshman girl at a high school party.
An appeals judge recently threw the sentence out, after much grassroots outrage (including a plea from Jimmy Carter!)
But get this: the GA Attorney General is insisting that that young man deserved to have his life destroyed and that the sentence be upheld. Let's start taking his life apart, shall we?
Finally, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I answer a letter from a fan of The L Word who wonders if lesbians really do have sex like that.
Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for free-show girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 297, June 22, 2007)
It's bare bones. I decided to use the "food template" design from my blog server, because something about "sticking a fork in it" seemed appropriate. I published all the reviews we've received so far, with little pictures of each box cover next to the plate settings.
New reviews include: the unholy mess that Eddie Van Halen has created: "Sacred Sin," the lesbian-made "Crash Pad," (which sounds incredible) a new perspective on "Bend Over Boyfriend," Chicago's own "Urban Friction," the classic that gets everyone's panties in a twist, "Anna Obsessed," and something called "Beautiful" which is apparently not.
Thank you to my new subscribers in Dallas and Southern Indiana for keepin' it real! I get the biggest kick out of your candor on this subject.
I looked up all the above movies to compare the official reviews that appeared about them. In the case of the big budget projects (big budget by porn standards, which Van Halen certainly qualified for) every voice was glowing. Porn reviews are the worst case of everyone telling the Emperor his new clothes look swell.
I remember when I first got hired by Forum— many years ago when they were still in business— to write a monthly erotic film column. This was at the dawn of VHS! My first question to them the editor was, "And if it sucks, can I write about that?"
Now my comment makes me laugh, because he hired me when the porn still had a lot of traditional cinematic talent in it, particularly actors, DPs, and directors. They were shooting on 35mm and 16mm. In any case, he told me to "write whatever you want" —music to the nubile critic's ears. That's what I'll whisper in your ear, too!
If you want to publish an honest review of a porn movie, on our new blog, subscribe to my journal, (all the details are here, if you want to ponder) and then send me your snail mail to I can send you a free movie from my attic. Watch closely, and email me your review after you've spell-checked your way to infamy!
Photo: The 500-Strong Orgy in Japan, which coincidentally holds the world's record naked peace signs flashed in one group.
This week on my audio show is part two of my discussion with sex historian Jeffrey Escoffier. We blurt out gay film secrets, discuss
why straight male porn stars enjoy queer sex, how to achieve the perfect double-penetration shots, and the manner in which exhibitionists get ahead in the film industry.
"A man is as faithful as his options" — Jamie Gillis
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