De Profundis

We all watch porn, or we all have at one time or another. Different things turn on different people, but we all watch, or have watched, at one time or another...it might be women I know who get so turned on by two men going at it, men or women watching two women or two men, men watching women getting every orifice plugged by a penis, reaching out for more, or so they would have you think. Even She gets turned on by watching intercourse and oral sex in commercial films.

There was a time when I watched amateur porn almost exclusively, most of it coming from either Homegrown Video, which was truly amateurish both in content and in production level, and Odyssey Group, which seemed to be equally divided between semi high-polished and truly joyful couples or groups just getting it on before the camera. But every once in a while, the darker element came out...in my mind it was always a woman in way over her head, unable to cope either physically or emotionally with what she was doing on camera, and a look of utter despair and regret would cross the woman's face.

There's a fiction book out by Charles Bock, a first novel, called Beautiful Children, that takes place in Las Vegas, and is sort of a nouvelle Less Than Zero. There are about five different plot lines going throughout the book, all braided together in the last thirty pages. One plot line features a pole dancer, and the reader follows her through her descent into porn films, another plot line is about a runaway, still another about the runaway's parents. About 2/3 of the way through the novel, there is a description of the look, that look, that faraway look, that I'm lost and don't know how to get home look, the despair, the oh please let this be over, as the father of the runaway sits and watches porn in his office.

The entire novel is well written, but this one passage, this one or two pages, is brilliant, and should be read.

Earworm-Philip Glass, Soundtrack to The Hours