Read Consider the Lobster Online
Authors: David Foster Wallace
Anyway, the point is that yr. corresps. were on Thursday night lured to this supper meeting by Hecuba’s reports that S. Schwartz had become sort of the unofficial mascot of the adult industry, and knew absolutely
ev
erybody, and was a near-manic chatterbox: We figured that he’d be a good source of background and context and gossip. H.H. had already prepared us for Schwartz’s personal manner (which is ticcy and breathless and neurally irritating in the same way a musical note held much too long is neurally irritating), but what Hecuba neglected to mention was that Scotty Schwartz is also totally incapable of talking about anything other than himself. Two courses and half an hour are spent on Scotty’s mainstream résumé and the fucking-over he got from fate’s fickle finger (alliteration and anatomically mixed metaphor Schwartz’s) and the comparative injustice of the arcs of his and C. Feldman’s careers, then another 20 minutes on Schwartz’s budding and allegedly platonic relationship with a born-again Christian girl he met on the Internet (during which whole initial 50 minutes one of yr. corresps. kept having to put his napkin in his mouth). Nor did Schwartz seem able or disposed to tell any story of which he himself was not the hero. Here — as close to verbatim as stupefaction permitted — is Scotty’s tale of his introduction to Mr. Russ Hampshire, head of VCA Inc. and what Scotty terms “a very very big fish: like
this
if you know what I’m saying to you here” in the adult industry:
“So I’m at this party and hanging and schmoozing up the girls and there across the room is Russ Hampshire and Russ catches my like eye if you know what I’m saying and and goes, like, you know, ‘Hey kid, c’mere’ and so I do I go over I mean this is Russ fucking Hampshire you know what I’m saying here and I do I like go on over to where Russ is at and Russ comes over to me and goes, ‘Scotty, I been watching you. I like your style. I’m a good judge of people, and Scotty, you’re good people. I never heard one person say one bad thing about you.’ [Keep in mind that this is Scotty telling this story. Note how verbatim he gets Hampshire’s dialogue. Note the altered timbre and perfectly timed delivery. Note the way it never even
occurs
to Schwartz that a normal US citizen might be bored or repelled by Scotty’s lengthy recitation of someone else’s praise of him. Schwartz knows only that this interchange occurred and that it signifies that a big fish approves of him and that it redounds to Scotty’s credit and that he wants it widely, widely known.] ‘Kid, I just want you to know you’re fucking OK in my book, and if there’s anything I can do to, you know, help you, anything at all, I just want you to say the word.’”
…End of vignette, and now Scotty — like Max, like Jasmin, like Jenna and Randy and Tom and Caressa — looks around the table, examining his auditors’ faces for the admiration that cannot possibly fail to appear. What is the socially appropriate response to an anecdote like this — a contextless anecdote, apropos nothing, with its smugly unsubtle (and yet not unmoving, finally, in its naked insecurity) agenda of getting you to admire the teller? The few seconds after, with the vignette hanging there and Scotty’s eyes on your correspondents’ faces like fingers, were the first of countless such moments over the AAVNA’s weekend. How is one expected to respond? It was very uncomfortable. One of yr. corresps. opted for “Gosh. Wow.” The other pretended to have had a brussels sprout go down the wrong way.
(back to text)
30
(Apparent pun accidental… although one of your corresps., on receiving Filth’s overall review in the fleeing taxi, responded that surely we had penetrated as far into the core of Max as any sentient organism could ever want to penetrate. Filth’s subsequent rebuttal, which consisted mainly of a long string of unsubstantiatable Max Hardcore stories, is, for basic legal reasons, here omitted.)
(back to text)
31
Mr. Tom Byron, by the way, who broke into the industry in the mid-’80s as a young man whose adolescent skinniness and Howdy-Doodyish mien were as compelling and distinctive as his penis, is now having the same weird thing happen to his face that Christopher Walken seemed to have happen to his face sometime after
The Dead Zone
. It’s not just that Byron’s freckles are now gone or that his eyes have taken on a dead menace — the actual skin of his face has become shiny and sort of plasticized-looking, overtaut in the way a death mask is overtaut. For anyone who remembers what Byron looked like as a kid fresh out of the University of Houston, his face now after thirteen years at the top of his trade is a chilling contradiction of the industry’s claim that it’s all about pleasure and unfettered play.
(back to text)
32
(physical location of this Hall, if any, is unknown)
(back to text)
33
[Laughter, cheers.]
(back to text)
34
Let us note that the slick, full-color 15th AAVNA Official Program is itself an advertiser-sponsored document, its lists of categories and nominees scattered among full-page production-company ads hyping the nominated films themselves. This doesn’t seem beyond the pale — certainly
Variety
does the same sort of thing at Oscartime. Other ads in the AAVNA Program are for things like Wet Platinum–brand lubricant —
STAYS SLICK EVEN UNDER
WATER… NEVER DRIES… WILL NOT HARM LATEX!
— plus several from California Exotic Novelties Corp., maker of the RAMROD Penile Pump, of Doc Joc’s Incredible Jack-Off Device, and of the “Anne Malle Facsimile Fullsize KNEELING DOLL”:
• KNEELING POSITION — READY TO BE TAKEN
• EXCITING ANAL PENETRATION
• RIPE LUSCIOUS SQUEEZABLE BREASTS
• VIBRATING ACTION
• BEAUTIFUL BLACK HAIR
BEND OVER and TAKE ME NOW!!!
Whether these ads are niche-directed at industry Insiders (doubtful, although they’re pretty much the only ones who are going to see the Programs), at retailers, or at plain old mooks is unclear.
(back to text)
35
There are 45 official voters listed in the Awards Program. Here are some of their names: Avie Chute, Rich C. Leather, Marlon Brandeis, Roland Tuggonit, Stroker Palmer, S. Andrew Roberts & Slave Girl (so actually there are either 45 or 44 official voters, depending on whether Slave Girl gets her own vote or is just along to rubber-stamp S. Andrew Roberts’s vote). Oddly, Ms. Ellen Thompson appears on the list both as Ida Slapter and as Ellen Thompson, so one sort of wonders just how many ontologically distinct voters there actually are. Nor does an independent Big 6 accounting firm tally the ballots in secret under armed guard or any of that Oscar-type security. According to Slapter/Thompson, the Awards voting is “secret,” but the completed ballots are all turned in to Paul Fishbein and Gene Ross, who are the Publisher and VP (and Fishbein a co-owner) of
Adult Video News,
and who thus have an obvious interest in happy sponsors and healthy ad revenues. The whole thing inspires something less than rock-solid confidence.
(back to text)
36
What many of the top woodmen resemble most are gymnasts. They’re compact and muscular and move with the liquid economy of athletes, as if equipped with internal gyroscopes. Little of their physical grace is ever visible on tape.
(back to text)
37
We are not kidding — the Oscars are brisk and minimalist compared to the AVNAs.
(back to text)
38
(e.g.
Debbie Does Dallas, Behind the Green Door,
something ill-lit with John Holmes in it,
The Devil in Miss Jones,
etc. — nothing identifiable from
Deep Throat,
though, and definitely nothing involving the statutorily infamous Traci Lords…)
(back to text)
39
There is something deeply surreal about standing behind a female performer in hot-pink peau de soie, a woman whose clitoris and perineum you have priorly seen, and watching her try to get a microwaved egg roll onto her plate with a cocktail fork.
(back to text)
40
(platonically)
(back to text)
41
Despite the fact that the movie presents everybody in porn as cretinous, pathetic, or both, the adult industry has evidently embraced
Boogie Nights
the same way the music industry embraced
This Is Spinal Tap,
and the Anderson rumor (which never comes to anything — if P. T. Anderson ever shows, it’s deeply incognito) generates the least cynical enthusiasm of the evening.
(back to text)
42
(We’re on duty.)
(back to text)
43
For instance, H. Hecuba has strictly enjoined us from buying any sort of distilled beverage for Dick Filth, for reasons that become clear as the evening wears on.
(back to text)
44
(The waiters’ special 15th AAVNAs fringe benefit, which sharply reduced yr. corresps.’ empathy with them, wasn’t revealed until the gala concluded — see below.)
(back to text)
45
Filth is shouting because between the screens’ clips’ audio and the stage band warming atonally up and the ambient conversational roar it’s close to deafening in here. When the Awards Show starts, the audio techs will have the amplifiers turned all the way up to Shattering, which, even though it will tend to cause mussed hair and spilled drinks in both directions’ front rows, those of us way back in mookland appreciate.
(back to text)
46
As both the screens’ preliminary clips and the Musical Salute indicate,
Adult Video News
appears to believe that the History of Adult begins circa 1975, when in fact this is merely the year when the locus of US porn moved from New York to California.
(back to text)
47
E. just one g.:
AVN
head Paul Fishbein takes a moment out from his welcoming remarks to announce that his proud parents are in the audience tonight… and they
are
.
(back to text)
48
(Nobody mispronounces
Sodomania,
though, we notice.)
(back to text)
49
There is no will left to inquire about this (much less about the gynecological logistics of a Triple Penetration); by this time yr. corresps. are slumped in opposite directions in their chairs, only slightly less fried than the lady from ABC Radio.
(back to text)
50
Yes — it’s a real category. There’s also Best Anal Sex Scene/Video, Best Group Sex Scene/F & /V, Best All-Girl Sex Scene, Best Gay Sex Scene, Best Foreign Sex Scene, Best Tease Performance, and something called Best Solo Sex Scene. Etc. etc. Hence the Awards Show’s extreme and numbing length: There’s a total 104 categories overall, plus three Special Achievement Awards, an AVN Breakthrough Award, and sixteen new inductees to the already engorged AVN Hall of Fame.
(back to text)
51
Though Ms. Swift won for
Miscreants,
she is here actually alluding to her and director R. Black’s real breakthrough video in 1997,
Gangbang Angels,
which is essentially a one-woman show and features the year’s most infamous scene: Twelve woodmen line up and do an about-face, and S. Swift performs analingus on each in turn; she then kneels and assumes a prayerful/compliant posture as the twelve men all do a right-face and form a moving line and take turns hawking and spitting in her face.
(back to text)
52
(Meaning people in the live audience.
Adult Video News
is taping the whole Awards Show, and they’re going to distribute the tape for sale/rent; and in the taped version, clips from various winning scenes are going to get spliced in, which seems clearly designed to mitigate at-home boredom.)
(back to text)
53
(who is no J. Whatley but at least doesn’t screech)
(back to text)
54
No woodmen are invited to join in, or at any rate none try to.
(back to text)
55
(whom D. Filth is still hectoring for $13.00 in alleged Grand Marnier change)
(back to text)
*
Hereafter, GMNs.
(back to text)
*
Unless, of course, you consider delivering long encomiums to a woman’s “sacred several-lipped gateway” or saying things like “It is true, the sight of her plump lips obediently distended around my swollen member, her eyelids lowered demurely, afflicts me with a religious peace” to be the same as loving her.
(back to text)
1
Compare e.g. in this regard the whole “What was the old man in despair about?”– “Nothing” interchange in the opening pages of Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” with water-cooler zingers like “The big difference between a White House intern and a Cadillac is that not everybody’s been in a Cadillac.” Or consider the single word “Goodbye” at the end of Vonnegut’s “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” vs. the function of “The fish!” as a response to “How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
(back to text)