Half Empty (19 page)

Eventually, some 1,500 people arrive (that’s the estimate of the organizers; eyeballing the crowd, I’d put it at about half that number), almost all men. They run a not terribly broad gamut of exurban-straight-white-guy phenotypes. There are outer-borough packs like the cast of
Entourage
, minus a famous meal ticket (sample T-shirt,
YOU BETTER BUY ME ANOTHER BEER BECAUSE YOUR
[
sic
]
STILL UGLY)
. There’s a cadre of tattooed motorcycle types, one of whose jacket reads
IF YOU CAN READ THIS THE BITCH FELL OFF
. Their dynamic is frosted with a homoerotic, gay-bashy, date-rapey menace. They jostle and spar and work one another up as they stand in line for autographs and have their photos taken with the various porn stars who are appearing. The undisputed number-one draw of the whole fair is a woman named Tera Patrick. An Internet superstar, apparently, she is part Thai and truly beautiful.

It’s fascinating to watch the guys wait their turn. You’ve no doubt seen the loudmouth at jury duty. The one who snorts in short-fused disbelief at every instruction, or angrily rustles his newspaper, muttering under his breath while trying to catch your eye. He is the one who, at the first sign of conversation breaking out between anyone, immediately inserts himself and posturingly announces that he’s just going to march right in there “and I’m just going to tell them,
I hate cops
. That’s what
I’m gonna say, just like that,
I like rape, and I hate cops!,
” only to be cowed into respectful, truthful monosyllables by the solemn civic duty of it all when it actually comes time for his voir dire. At the moment the men reach the front of the autograph line, their horny, boisterous energy—all the muttered, snickering innuendo—dissipates and they stand there beside the objects of their desires, smiling shyly. I see no victory signs, no folded-arms gangsta posing. Few of them even dare to put an arm around the living object of their fantasies. And it’s not just the magisterial beauty of Tera Patrick that’s chastening them, nor even her tattooed bodybuilder husband standing nearby. Even Devyn Devine, “the Double D with the Triple D’s,” a sweet-faced dumpling of a woman with the proportions of the Venus of Willendorf, perched on her platform stilettos like a beer-can chicken awaiting the grill, a woman who could not seem less threatening, elicits the same audience-with-the-queen respect. There is one randy old retiree who continually tries to cop a feel, but he’s so far out to pasture that no one really seems to care. Blond, buxom Brooke Haven—whom I immediately dub “Belle Laboratories”—smacks his hand lightly as it creeps toward her huge, architectural breast with a good-natured, “Oh, you.”

It’s no wonder so many of these guys have come here in groups. Like anyone with a computer and an Internet connection, I’ve enjoyed a private, vicarious, frictive moment or two gazing at the erotic antics of folks far prettier than I (I do manage to put aside my dramaturgical skepticism now and then), but I wouldn’t have the courage to attend an event like this
except
as a writer, and certainly not by myself. Admitting something like “I jack off to you. A lot” might make for a zesty and heartfelt testament of one’s ardor to a loved one, but there is something simultaneously vanquished and courageous about saying it to a
stranger, and the guys’ presence on line, cameras at the ready, is tantamount to saying just that. It makes my young Asian friend seem that much more admirable for having come on his own. And I’m not overstating it when I say that it’s lovely to see that he is getting such good return on his investment. Even after six hours, his face remains the same mask of almost reverential disbelief at his good fortune that it was the moment he breached the portals of Pier 94.

I have some sense of the hypertrophic attributes straight guys like in their porn stars: the hourglass far more than the test tube. Jessica Rabbit of the Parking Lot, for example. She has changed into a Lady Guinevere getup in red acetate and is giving out postcards advertising a line of topical unguents. (Arthurian romance is a fantasy mainstay but it requires formidable powers of imagination over and above the usual suspension of disbelief, given the current insistence in porn on an almost autoclave level of depilated sterility. Just think about the smell of two bodies, adhering to medieval standards of personal hygiene, coupling in sexual congress and try to keep your lunch down.)

Violet Blue is something of a departure from that model. A petite, twenty-nine-year-old with an almost ballet dancer’s body whom one would never pick out of a crowd, naughty schoolgirl outfit notwithstanding. Even her walk is a purposeful, career-girl-on-the-move march rather than a siren’s bump and grind. And still, she has more than three hundred and fifty titles in her filmography and is apparently a huge star. (“One of the top ten,” says the correspondent for PNN—the Porno News Network—a human lipid of a man in a fuchsia silk shirt and, of course, double-breasted black
leather
suit. This is the man who, when I ask him if there is fraternization between members of
the adult-industry press and the stars, skeevily clarifies, “There’s fraternization between
friends
.”)

She’s here with her boyfriend, with whom she lives in Seattle. They left Los Angeles to have a somewhat more normal life for her six-year-old son. She is easing out of the business—her fiancé has made it one of the conditions of their eventual marriage—and she has made only a handful of movies this year (she gets paid by the scene, according to a sliding scale depending on the acts).

She is the youngest of nine children, “And I’m the
good
one!” she says. I tell her she’s funny, apologizing if I’m stating the obvious. I’ve never clapped eyes on her before and have no idea if this is something for which she is also widely known. “That’s okay,” she says. “I’ve never heard of you, either.”

I ask if her parents know what she does. “It would be kind of hard to keep this kind of thing from my parents.” They live next door, in fact. “My mom altered my skirt for me,” she says, standing up, showing the tartan kilt that has been abbreviated to little more than a pleated belt. “I LOVE MY PARENTS!” she cheers. I posit as how that might be a fairly unique narrative in this environment. She knows what I’m driving at: that people go into porn because they have lives of abuse and pain. It’s presumptuous of me, to be sure, and she lets me know this gently, by saying, “I don’t really know. I don’t usually ask people how they get along with their parents.”

Whaaaaaat?!?!
It is this, more than the photographs of her introducing erect penises into her orifices, more than the images of models being double-penetrated or smiling for the camera with jism-glazed faces, it is
this
that I find most shocking. And no clearer proof that, although geographically still in Manhattan, I am visiting some alien principality that has nothing to do with New York City.

But everything is confusing about this event, right down
to its very name: Exotic Erotic. It conjures up notions of a no-holds-barred display of our richly colored tapestry of human libido, where anything goes. Freedom of Expression, as advertised. There is an extravaganza of women exposed to the male gaze, for sure, but beyond that, anything most emphatically does
not
go. There is nary a nod to female desire, and as for deviations farther afield, say, a reasonable expectation of a homo presence—especially with June’s Gay Pride Parade looming just a few weeks away—it is limited to just one gay exhibitor: Lucas Entertainment, the porn studio owned and operated by Russian impresario Michael Lucas. Lucas is the Sergei Diaghilev of gay erotica, known for his high production values and array of impossibly perfect men. The table is spread with DVDs of Lucas’s titles and model cards of his stable of stars, printed on one side with close-ups of their intimidatingly handsome faces and on the reverse with full-body shots of their equally flawless anatomies. Richard, the studio’s national distribution manager, had been told there would be five other gay studios present. Instead, he has been a lone presence and a figure of derision since his arrival, when the guys working security called him a faggot. “This is New York City. It’s not Utah, for God’s sake. I almost jumped over the table to kick somebody’s ass,” he says. Still, he finds it amusing that when seated at the table he is largely kryptonite, but when he has walked the floor, he has been stopped by numerous men wanting information on how to break into the business.

There is even a panel discussion, moderated by Christopher, the guy in charge of public relations for the expo, about how to break into the business. This is, when all is said and done, a trade fair. Commerce is on many people’s minds here. Christopher’s co-presenters are the PNN correspondent and a meaty little fire hydrant of a girl named Cat, packed into a corset and black
skirt. If this were Gilded Age New York, she would be the toast of Tammany.

The PNN guy gives the introduction. “Porn is a $6 billion industry. In porn, people work out of their homes. Their homes get bigger and bigger and their kids go to better and better schools.” During his speech, just as at any panel discussion one might attend, Cat is kneeling at the edge of the stage, pushing her breasts together for a photographer.

Because the industry is so vast, he continues, with so many people clamoring to get themselves or their products noticed, breaking in is in large part about being able to write an effective press release. “I have to rewrite 99 percent of everything that comes in, except for Chris’s stuff because it’s damn near perfect.”

“Thank you,” says Chris with Sammy Davis Jr. humility. New York City has some fairly parochial proscriptions against public nudity and sex, so it is refreshing, after hours of relentless soft-core timidity, to finally witness a blow job.

Cat gives a lot of commonsense advice on how to make any kind of business call. She concedes that cold-calling can be difficult. “It’s even hard for me on the phone when they can’t see my boobs.” I doubt that’s true, actually. Cat is completely charming and funny. “Get straight to the point. People are busy. The first thing you should ask is,
Do you have time to speak to me?
Don’t annoy people. If someone says they’ll call you, you have to hear that and let them call you. But at the same time, your job is to make yourself seem like the best thing that’s out there. Also,” she finally advises, “this is
porn
. It’s not brain surgery. Don’t be afraid to get a little dirty on the phone. Crack jokes. Make it fun.”

Make it fun. Advice worth heeding as I look over to the lounge area that has been set up with inflatable chairs. Two men are there reading car magazines. It is bus-station sad. A woman walks by, talking on a cell phone (“English,” pause. “Technical
support,” pause). She idly taps a hand against her fake breast like she is drumming her fingers on a countertop. No, fun doesn’t really seem to be on order at the expo, and it’s not just joyless, gay me who seems to feel that way. I spot them from yards and yards away, mainly because of her flaxen, naturally curly hair, cornflower blue eyes, peasant shirt, and Birkenstocks. He has a fresh moon face. They are twenty-nine and twenty-six years old, respectively. She’s an accountant; he’s in the military, on leave from the Iraqi desert. They came down from Vermont for this, having seen a video of the San Francisco Ball via a friend who organizes passion parties, the suburban sex-toy equivalent of the old Tupperware get-togethers. They are disappointed, to say the least. They thought there would be more vendors, that it would be denser and more convivial than it is. They’re not going to stay for the ball. “It doesn’t seem worth it, and I don’t have a lot of time off,” he says. They’ll drive back to Burlington this evening.

If only they had the leisure to take it all in like the older couple sitting in the café area, who wear looks of mellow amusement on their faces. She looks like Bella Abzug, right down to the hat. He, a man of at least seventy, is dressed in a polo shirt and khaki shorts. With tan skin and a brush cut, he is shuffleboard-ready. They are not a couple, actually. They just met here. “I was born and raised on the Lower East Side and I’ve lived in Brooklyn for the past thirty years,” she tells me. “I came here because I like sex and I wanted to get back in touch with it. My husband died a few years ago.” There is not a trace of self-pity in her voice.

He lives on Long Island. “On Monday, my son’s girlfriend is going into rehab. She has four Emmys. She doesn’t know what’s about to happen. If my son doesn’t clean up his act, he’s going to have to go to rehab, too. I had to get out of the house. In my spare time, I hunt for pythons down in the Everglades. Did you
see that picture of the python that tried to eat an alligator? We caught a python and chopped it up and fed it to the gators so they’d develop a taste for them and start to eat some of them. I have an eighty-eight-year-old pal who, for his birthday, I got him a hooker for a week. I partied with her all week during the day and he got her at night. For his eighty-ninth, I took him to Scores down in Florida.”

Approaching the pier at 10
PM
on Saturday, I meet a young woman with a wristband walking the other way. I ask if the ball is over already—it is scheduled to go until 3:00
AM
. She’s just off to get something to eat. She’s volunteering in some capacity, which gives her free admission. I ask her how it is so far. She is very enthusiastic. “Oh, it’s awesome! There are these gymnasts on a trapeze. It’s really cool.” My hopes up, I cross the West Side Highway and make my way through a murder of smokers in the parking lot. There are markedly more folks attending the ball than were at the expo and a healthy representation of women, but they are using the entire space for the ball. The pier is now double the size, and where once there were mere yards between people, it is, at 180,000 square feet, an absolute salt flat. Christopher the PR guy informs me that this is nowhere near critical mass. By midnight, the place will be packed and the big-name musical acts will be driving people wild. I hope for his sake he’s right, because I can’t imagine that this has been anything less than a financial fiasco.