America Unzipped (23 page)

 

T
he next morning I pick Susan up and we go to the diner. “Are you sure you aren't in love?” I ask. She admits that she would like to be in love with Michael. And to make a solid go of it, whatever that means. Not marriage, probably. But what? Getting this right is important to Susan because she knows I will be explaining it to you and she thinks there ought to be far more understanding about people who don't conform to a traditional conception of sex and love. But we have to leave the thought hanging in the air because there isn't really a good box into which such a relationship should be placed. In any case, Michael is not ready. She doesn't want to force him to prematurely confront the idea of love. Right now, he is full of wanderlust and has picked Internet World as his terra incognita.

The next day, I receive a phone call from Susan. They have met Christine and Christine's boyfriend.

Susan and Michael arrived at the bar where they arranged the meeting only to find Christine plowed and maudlin. It was ten thirty. There was no sign of the boyfriend.

A few minutes later, he arrived. He is a county cop and there was a delay back at the station, so he wasn't able to leave on time. He is older than Christine, about Michael's age, which complicates matters with Christine because she is more than a decade younger. The fact the cop is married and has a family and that his wife has no idea he is screwing Christine, not to mention cruising for group sex, doesn't help either.

Michael suggested they all go to a different bar; maybe a change of scenery would lighten Christine's mood, though more booze didn't sound like a good idea. So they drove in separate cars to the other bar, and when Michael excused himself to go to the bathroom Christine announced that Susan and her boyfriend should kiss. She pushed their heads together. Michael saw the kiss but didn't mind, of course, because kissing other people is the point of the exercise.

Outside, there were roadblocks all over the place. The local police were trying to nab drunk drivers. So they all elected the county cop to be their free pass through the roadblocks and Susan got in the cop's truck, while Christine poured herself in Michael's car and they caravanned in tight formation. Just a few minutes into the drive, however, Christine began sobbing.

When they arrived at Michael's house, Christine sat on his couch and cried. Susan told Michael to go hang with the cop while she had a woman-to-woman chat with Christine.

“Look, hon,” she said in that way she has. “There is no pressure here. It's no big deal. Just relax, nothing has to happen.” Susan got up, retrieved some tissues, and handed them to Christine.

“Take off your underwear,” Christine barked.

Susan took off some of her clothes. Christine grabbed Susan's hand and said, “Where's the bedroom?”

Susan heard the men searching for the women but couldn't say much because Christine was mauling her. After Michael and the cop found them, all four spent the next five hours in every conceivable combination. Man–man, woman–woman, man–woman, man–man–woman, man–woman–woman. Vin Scully couldn't keep track of this game.

“It was awesome!” Susan tells me later. “Everybody had a really great time.”

But Christine called Michael the next day, upset again, arguing that she did not receive enough attention. “Too much drama,” Susan says. “We want it to be easy and we think it can be easy.”

They have not seen the couple since. On the other hand, Michael did pull out a bunch of sage, burned it, and then smudged himself and Susan and the room to “re-create the sacred space between us.” Susan took that as a very good sign.

There have been other fun nights since then, like the time Michael and Susan went to a sex club in Washington, D.C., and Michael stuck his penis out of his fly and Susan held on to it like a raver's glow stick and danced and danced.

“We are in love. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely we are in love,” she tells me months later. “We were probably in love when you were here, but I just did not use the
L
word or the
C
[commitment] word.

“We are brother, sister, lover, friends, confidant. We both do not like the words
soul mate,
but we are pair bonded and really solid together. He can talk to me about anything. Everything about this relationship is fulfilling.”

Michael changed jobs again and makes a little more money now, and he works closer to Susan's house. He comes over for lunch sometimes and all they do is eat and talk. Michael gets lonely going to his own empty house. There have been hints about moving in together.

“Michael and I have a tremendous amount of trust, and there are few walls there. Most of the people I know in relationships have very, very little trust, or respect for that matter, for each other. That is hard to get anywhere. Very few people have that level of trust with me. If he asked me to marry him tomorrow, I would say yes.”

Wait a minute. Susan has contradicted herself. She claims to value trust above all, and yet she has sex with a man, and that man's mistress, when the man's wife remains clueless at home with kids.

“The primary relationship must be one of trust,” she explains. So as long as she and Michael trust each other, they don't worry about lies a playmate might be telling to somebody else. She realizes this is flimsy. “To be honest, that level of drama with mixed people or couples has proven a hindrance to having a good relationship with another couple. We have decided that only unencumbered people should be considered or their partners informed or involved.”

That may not be much of an issue in the future, because “We have a girlfriend,” she tells me, someone they found online. “She is wonderful so far, and actually, she is my girlfriend, and I share her with Michael. We are all clear on our individual roles and responsibilities. She is subordinate to me so the dynamic is great for Michael who directs traffic.”

“You know,” she says, “I think this is as good as it gets and it is pretty damn good.”

CHAPTER
6

Beat Me, Shock Me, Call Me Artist

I W
ATCH
P
ORN
A
RTISTES
T
RY TO
M
AKE
S
EX
A
VANT
-G
ARDE

Tits, cock, pussy, whatever. That's old.

—Johnny V., Internet porn consultant, 2006

J
oe Obenberger plays it to the rafters. “I never feel as charged and proud as when I stand in front of this audience that shapes the sexual fantasies of the world!” he tells the online pornography producers. “You are the cutting edge of liberty!”

His voice, made imposing by a pronounced Wisconsin accent, and amplified by a frame bulked with decades of bratwurst and beer, fills the room at the XBIZ convention inside the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. “Heroic!” Like the minutemen at “Lexington and Concord!” You are not just fighting for American liberty, he shouts, you are advancing human enlightenment! Like “Prometheus! You developed the technology that will keep kids in classrooms! I think you are patriots!”

Greek mythological figures and doughty Revolutionary War fighters are not the usual metaphors used to describe pornographers and so most of them smile and nod, bathing in the warm affirmation of their importance to the world. The huzzahs Obenberger sprinkles like holy water on the heads of the faithful are not so much an acknowledgment of their role in keeping humanity supplied with naked eighteen-year-old hotties from Ukraine and middle-aged MILFs (mothers I'd like to fuck) as for the way these entrepreneurs have shaped the Internet and defied government oppression. Obenberger is stroking their self-image. Shop online? Well, that's because porn sites figured out how to collect charges, see? Got high-speed service to your house? Well, porn drove that. All those pictures and videos take up a lot of bandwidth. Porn defeated Betamax! For a long time, the princes of online porn have been the dirty street urchins of the digital age, and by God, they think it's time to join Bill Gates and the Google guys in the gilded halls of business.

Obenberger may be their most vociferous legal champion. He was a star prosecutor in the U.S. Army's Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, held small-time elected office for a while, but now has laid his body down in the path of the moralists and the Republicans who have declared war on naked people having sex online. He defends obscenity cases partly because he believes “fucking and the Trinity are the two most interesting things to talk about” and partly because he is a civil libertarian, a free-speech absolutist, who believes porn is the thin wedge being driven between our liberties and the censor's red pen.

He overplays his role, but rhetorical flourishes are necessary sometimes. Like right now, see? He is sighing heavily. Perspiration breaks out on his brow. His neck strains against his shirt collar and tie. This is the transition moment, act 2 of what amounts to a parental speech. A second ago he wanted his audience to know how proud he was of them so when he makes this sad face, they know he only scolds them because he loves them.

In a much quieter voice, he says, “Some of you are delusional.” You're sending spam to computer users that “has a woman's face looking like a glazed ham!” You're putting porn in front of people who haven't asked for porn because “you want to become the next twenty-seven-year-old millionaire!” Why antagonize people? Why ask for trouble? The government is gunning for you because porn is a red-meat issue for the Republicans and the Christians, so “if you have incestuous bukkake scat midget tossing, you will be prosecuted.”

Most of the people who should be hearing this bravura performance aren't. This being Las Vegas, not to mention the middle of summer when the temperature outside is 111 degrees, most of those who might actually be creating incestuous bukkake scat midget tossing are already out by the pool ordering up margaritas and beers. Most XBIZ attendees are not, apparently, worried about jail.

In the porn Stone Age, producers and consumers used to pretend that sexy photos were about sophistication and sipping good scotch while sitting through a Coltrane set with the gorgeous “girl next door.” That was the
Playboy
ethic, sex as part of a cultivated life. These days, nobody pretends porn is about anything other than getting off and exploring the next coolest, most radical thing.

Outside, the pool cabanas are occupied by “content” companies, which produce images and videos, and billing companies, which collect user fees. These big fish in the cabanas are trying to attract minnows, the Web masters (a grandiose name for a guy who runs a website) who offer short doses of free porn but include links to the big sites where, for a fee, a surfer can see hard-core action. Every time a surfer “clicks through,” the big site pays baksheesh to the little guy.

This system creates a problem. There are now so many free porn sites, nobody has to pay for it. The one way to be sure you get customers, and customers who stay, is to offer something unique, like incestuous bukkake scat midget tossing. This is another reason why, as Kim Airs told me, “the Internet has done a lot of normalizing.”

“
O
ooh…what do I like?” Madison Young pretends to think, milking the slightly wicked grin on her face, though she already knows the answer to Princess Donna's question. “Rope would be number one on my list. I like rope and I like pussy. I like rope and pussy and pain. Single tail [whips]. One of my favorites is hands. I like hands around my throat, hands around my mouth, hands smacking my ass, smacking my breasts. Grabbing the hair. All the things you can do with hands.”

“Yes,” Donna replies. “I am a big fan of hands also; they are great.” Donna pauses, working up another question.

“How old are you?”

“I'm twenty-six.”

“How long have you been doing porn?”

“Mmm…I've been doing BDSM porn for the past four years. BDSM is pretty much where my heart is.”

“Are you nervous at all?”

“Holt!” Chuck, the cameraman, says, meaning “halt” or “stop” or “cut.” Something like that. He says this every time he needs to change his position for another angle, which is quite often. “Say it again from ‘Are you nervous…'”

“Are you nervous about anything? About me and the electricity?”

“I am a little nervous about the electricity,” Madison replies.

A little, yes, but not too much. Madison is an artist. Actually, Tina Butcher is the artist, although it is possible, I suppose, that Madison, as Tina's alter ego, is an artist, too. So she is willing to make sacrifices. Last night Madison and I walked from her apartment in San Francisco's Castro District to Café Flore, one of those oh-so-precious little places dotting the city. I was hoping for a steak, maybe, or a plate of pasta because I was starving, but Tina wasn't feeling quite as chipper as she might. Her TMJ was bothering her, for one thing, and when your temporomandibular joint is sore, aching, really, as Madison's is pretty much all the time lately, you don't have a big appetite. Madison did see a dentist for it and he explained that all she had to do was use a smaller-diameter ball gag. TMJ is a common occupational hazard of being a queer bondage model, he said.

Madison was cramping a little, too. She had an IUD placed in her uterus a few hours before we met, and as her gynecologist said would happen, she was feeling achy in her abdomen. So just some chai latte, please? she asked when we ordered. We sat down outside and she wrapped her cardigan tighter around her petite body and curled into a catlike lump on her seat. She sipped from her chai latte and explained that the good news from the gynecologist was that being suspended naked upside down by her ankles, having an electrified dildo inserted into her vagina, being shocked by a cattle prod, ought to be okay because the IUD won't conduct electricity and fry her insides. Another doctor told her that the irregular heartbeat she has had since she was a kid shouldn't be affected by the amount of electric current running through her body either. She's probably not going to have a heart attack or anything. See, the great advantage of San Francisco, Madison told me, is having such knowledgeable health-care providers. “It's one of the beautiful things about living here.”

The IUD represents something of a moment for Madison. She has started sleeping with men, or rather one man, James, her new boyfriend, her first male lover. This created some confusion, both for Madison and for the label-rich San Francisco lesbian/queer/ transgendered/transsexual/gay/bisexual/bicurious community of which she considers herself an important part.

When Tina Butcher opened an art gallery in San Francisco she called it Femina Potens (Latin for girl power, or powerful woman). She has a talent for naming her own art, too, like a 2005 work called
Big Hard Meat—Why I Became a Vegetarian Dyke,
which is, according to Tina, a “Web intervention piece exploring the boundaries of art vs. porn. In this piece I sexualize the destruction and capturing of a phallocentric piece of meat. Meat in this said piece signifies a greater power construct and destruction of that meat signifying the destruction of that same power construct. Madison Young uses sexual signifiers to capture the viewer's attention and ‘meat.' This capturing of one's ‘meat' leaves the viewer in an unsettled and uncomfortable weakened state. While the subject, who is often viewed as ‘a piece of meat' and objectified for the enjoyment of others, turns the table, objectifying the viewer and the power and privilege of the viewer for her own enjoyment.”

So you can see why the people who know Tina Butcher, to say nothing of Tina Butcher herself, might be troubled by a phallus-equipped boyfriend. She is still a vegetarian, but she can't really call herself a dyke anymore. At one time she tried the descriptor “pansexual,” but now she prefers “queer,” which leaves a lot of wiggle room. And you can see, too, why Madison and Tina can be easily confused because Tina Butcher's art is all about switching roles. Madison is Tina's alter ego, and when you see Madison performing it might be just Tina making art and turning you into the subject of the art. Or maybe not. Tina doesn't seem entirely clear on this point either.

At the moment, Madison is wearing a conservative, print dress not unlike one I would picture her wearing back in our mutual home state. This fits with Madison Young's identity as the cute, tiny, farm-bred girl with the red hair (she has let her hair grow out to play down the dyke image and play up the midwestern girl-next-door image) who finds herself in all kinds of distressing situations.

Currently she is handcuffed to an overhanging pipe in a basement room of a big building in the Mission District catercorner and across the street from the
San Francisco Chronicle
building and a block away from the James R. Browning federal courthouse. It's known by the people who work in it as the Porn Palace, the home of Kink.com, one of the most successful and popular porn sites on the Internet. The room has big sewer conduits hanging from the ceiling, an electrical junction box, a bank of electric meters on another wall. The walls themselves have been painted to appear as the dark and forbidding bowels of an abandoned industrial building, a place where a girl could wander in and fall into the hands of an evil sadist like Princess Donna, a recent graduate of New York University who studied photography and human sexuality, and who has just grabbed Madison by her hair, released her from the pipe, and forced her to kneel on the floor.

“You want me right where I am?” Madison asks.

“Action!”

Donna, who is wearing nothing but a minidress that looks like it was made from a black volleyball net and patent leather platform boots that make her about six feet tall, and who has a heart tattooed on her left upper arm—not a cute Valentine's heart but a heart out of a
Gray's Anatomy
illustration—says yes, then pulls up Madison's dress so Madison is mooning the ceiling.

Smack!

Madison groans.

Smack. Smack!

“Oohoh oh ah ha.”

“Holt!”

Chuck and still photographer Lisa Mackie scramble to get a tight shot of Madison's butt, which is already pinking nicely.

“She can scoot over for you, too?” Donna asks Lisa. “Is that okay here?”

“Action,” Chuck says in almost a whisper.

Smack!

Donna leans over and spits into the cleft between Madison's cheeks.

“Um um oh ahh.”

Smack! Smack! Smack! Donna is slapping Madison's labia.

“Holt!”

Chuck, dressed in a mechanic's coverall for some reason, is already working up a sweat as he scrambles for a shot directly over Madison's ass. Lisa is kneeling on the floor, her lens about a foot from the silver ring piercing Madison's labia.

“Action!”

Smacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmack.