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?
4 I have since learned that More Dirty Debutantes was really about actresses who were making their debuts in adult films, not about women from the yacht club circuit getting down.
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,