True Porn Clerk Stories (5 page)

He caught me trying to figure it out as I checked him out. "No, I don't fly for the airlines," he said proudly. (Because I am a good clerk, I refrained from saying "Of course not. You're dressed like a flight attendant,") "I just have a thing for uniforms," he went on, loud enough for the whole line to hear, "I'm trying to pick someone up this morning!"

And with that, he and his homemade uniform were gone.

There's a New Porn Freak in Town

We have a new visitor to the porn section. He's been in twice now. Actually, he's been in at least three times, as he is a registered member, but he's only stood out twice.

He comes in, goes down to the straight porn section, and whips out a hand mirror. Then he applies makeup for about an hour.

Seriously.

No browsing, no chatting people up, no whacking. In, mirror, makeup and out. And again, he's in the straight section.

No one's sure what to do yet.

The last time he was in, two clerks went down to ask him a) what was up and b) to leave. He pointed out that he was a registered member, and that he wasn't stealing, whacking off, or bothering anyone. Since he wasn't hurting anyone, why did he have to leave?

Nobody's thought of an answer yet, and we're not really sure we want to toss him for loitering. He is, after all, just putting on makeup.

But why in our porn section? It has such harsh fluorescent lighting.

I'm sure we'll find out eventually. I can't wait.

Guttermouth

I'm having another existential video store crisis. I have them every now and then, but this one is biggish -- this Friday will be my one-year anniversary at the store. It isn't the worst job in the world. It's helped me plow through some difficult financial times, they're terrific about letting me take off for an audition, and they have twice let me take a full month off to go do a show. The pay sucks, but there's no dress code and you can't beat the flexibility.

But still, holy fuck. I know it is exactly a year this Friday because I started the job (a year ago -- have I mentioned this was a year ago?) precisely one week before my thirtieth birthday. Talk about your existential crises. That one was enormous, and it came on in a single moment: I was putting away porn tags, when suddenly I looked up and came face-to-face with the box for
Fuck Pigs 5
. I can still see the box. There was, of course, a woman on it, offering up her orifices for the pleasure of anyone who wanted a look. She seemed friendly, almost shy. And she was being called a fuck pig.

"Good Lord," I thought, "What happened to me? I'm about to turn 30 and I'm on my knees in a basement restocking incredibly degrading porn."

This time around I will be about to turn 31 and I will be on my knees in a basement stocking incredibly degrading porn. At least I can laugh about it. Sometimes I have to pull my lips into a rictus grin, peel my tongue off the roof of my mouth, and punch myself in the solar plexus, but a laugh is a laugh.

I've gotten numb to a lot of it over the past year -- and some of it I do find genuinely hilarious -- but I am still, sometimes, conflicted about the really degrading porn. The
Fuck Pig
stuff.

It took a long time for me to even admit to myself that porn can be degrading. I'm a sex-positive, first amendment feminist. I've been through the progressive arguments about porn: lesbians enjoy it too, so porn is not inherently degrading to women; the woman giving the blow job can be very much in control of the sex act; and besides, what if in censoring other porn they decide to come for your porn first? I got them, I believed them, and I was willing to defend to my death (or at least to my jailing) the right to produce porn, assuming all the actors truly consent.

As is so often the case, I had those lofty ideals before I really had any experience with porn other than as an abstract concept. Working with porn on a regular basis, while it has expanded my whatever-floats-your-boat tolerance, has led me to conclude that yes, sometimes porn is degrading. Indeed, sometimes it's meant to be degrading. Sometimes that's the whole point.

Take, for example, the
Guttermouth
series, the latest example of which arrived last week and triggered my current case of porn clerk malaise. In a way, it was satisfyingly cyclical moment --
Guttermouth
also refers to its stars, still young enough to look happy and proud on the box, as "fuck pigs". They look about 19. They look sweet. They're posing in bikinis and looking right at the camera, hoping you will like them. Fuck pigs. The box copy is what's really revolting. It's over the top, but I don't think it's meant to be funny. There are short fake cast bios of all the girls, in the same happy tone of theater bios before the actors grow up and get hip and cynical. One of them is called a dumb slut, another a worthless cunt. I'm fairly certain there was more on the other two, but it was just too depressing to keep reading.

This is the one porn impulse that I honestly don't get. (Oh, all right. I don't really get peeing on each other or hurting each other, but I think I understand intellectually how one might get there.) I don't understand the need to degrade someone. But that need is definitely, sadly out there. One of our best-renting titles of long standing is called
Grudge Fuck
.
³
It always rents right back out as soon as we can replace the tag. Every time.

Much as I hate to say it, it seems to be a straight guy thing.

There's definitely a Captain Kirk--style exploration up and down the imaginary social ladder in both the straight and gay sections. In addition to the dozens of variations on (oddly -- or sadly) still taboo interracial pairings, we have
More Dirty Debutantes
⁴
and
White Trash Whore
on the straight side,
Straight off the Street
and
The Other Side of Aspen
on the gay side. You can fuck rich or fuck poor on either side of the invisible barrier between the straight and gay sections. But you can only fuck lesser in straight.

I think it's because there's not enough otherness in gay porn. There's still bondage and S&M stuff, plenty of dominance and submission, but even the most submissive sub is still a man just like the dom, just like the viewer. How much separation can there be?

On the straight side, it's different. One of the
Extreme Penetrations
boxes shows a woman, legs spread and sticking straight up, with some sort of funnel or bowl shoved into her vagina. It actually has pretzels in it. Rocco's
Animal Trainer
series, I'm told, traditionally ends with Rocco fucking a woman up the ass while he shoves her head into a toilet and flushes.

Some straight porn does seem to be made in sort of a happy, fun spirit: women are beautiful and fun to look at, sex is fun and good to have. Whee!

And then there's
Guttermouth
.

Is it fear? Is it anger? Is it such an unfamiliarity in dealing with women that they don't even seem like real people? Or is it, as I'm prone to suspect on difficult days, that some people are just complete shitheads? I don't know.

What I learned in Women's Studies is that porn is not necessarily degrading. What I've learned at the video store is that sometimes it is.

My position on porn hasn't really changed. I would still defend to my death the right to produce it. I just sometimes wish they wouldn't.

³
Actually, the title is
Grudge F*ck
. There’s a picture of a guy reaming a woman right on the box. Why did they get squeamish about the F-word?

Our Heroine Has More Inner Fortitude Than She Thought.

This is -- almost -- a story of triumph.

I've always been worried about what I'd do if I actually caught a jerker in the porn section. I mean, of course, while I'm physically in the porn section. Catching someone on the security camera didn't bother me: Call the police and collect a bonus for busting a creep. Big deal. My only concern on that count was who's responsible for cleanup.

But actually catching someone while down there has always been a concern. I'm 5'3" -- not a terribly imposing presence. While, as I've said before, most of the people who attempt to masturbate in the store are cowards, there are no guarantees. I've read more than one study that indicates that rapists start off with indecent exposure before graduating to scarier, more violent stuff. It wasn't like it was a constant fear for me, but it certainly popped into the back of my mind more than once.

And it had been in my mind recently because Jonathan caught a jerker a couple of weeks ago. By the way, it turns out the managers are willing to take care of the mopping.

The porn section is not completely isolated from the upstairs counter, but it's a hike. You could get around (or over) the counter and downstairs in maybe ten seconds. The whole section is covered by the cameras, but we usually have the sound off unless we're watching someone in particular. On the other hand, you can hear someone making loudish noises like knocking over shelves in the straight section. Essentially, one could get help from upstairs, but not without a few seconds' delay.

OK, so I have thought about it some. But I've honestly never known how I'd react. Scream? Run? Quietly go upstairs and then get help? What?

I found out this weekend. I was bored out of my skull about halfway through my usual nine-hour Saturday Shift of Doom, and I was downstairs putting tags back out. There was only one other person down there -- a young guy, not a regular. I'd been keeping one eye on him anyway because he was wearing way more coat than he needed, which is the I'm-gonna-steal-a-box uniform.

We were on opposite sides of the room with our backs to each other. Gradually, I became aware of movement behind me. I turned around. His pants were drooping a few inches below the waistband of his boxers. He had snaked his right arm up underneath his coat and it was moving rhythmically.