I was telling my best friend the other day that I won’t watch any more porn with all white dudes in it. In real life I love white guys, but there’s something so narcissistic, annoying, racist and troubling about watching porn where two white guys are fucking each other. Well, the annoying part isn’t that two white guys are fucking because that’s perfectly fine, but more that the majority of porn companies (pretty much all of them) refuse to use models of color for no reason except racism. When you’re combing through videos and scoping out models, there’s rarely, if ever, a brown soul in the house.
I have to find stuff that’s more ethnically diverse. My friend prefers a very elegant sounding company called Machofuckers, which, though hot, is really just bare bones sex with no storyline. Not my taste! But I got to thinking about the things that make porn great.
Intensity: I hate watching porn where it looks like the person fucking or getting fucked doesn’t seem like they’re enjoying themselves. They just lay there—yawn—doing this job and waiting for the director to yell “cut” so they can go collect their check and rush to the dollar bin at the local Big Lots! Come on, you’re getting banged on camera. Be into it! That’s why what I like to see most in porn, even more than a nice body, is intensity. I want to see a guy get laid so good he can’t even deal with society right now. Porn is a fantasy, just like real sex is to some degree, so I want to be assured that both parties are enjoying themselves so much that they sort of forget they’re on camera. I don’t like scripted mess like “Unnh, unnh, take that dick” because that’s not even a real thing. But I do like when people get flush in the face and turn red, and I love when their eyes roll back into their heads and when their toes curl and when they are on the bed but not even really there.
Diversity: Is there anything worse than looking at a porn roster and seeing that there’s only one type of guy in the house: white or white-adjacent? There’s absolutely no reason for the lack of diversity in porn. In fact, “ethnic porn” is a more a sub-genre or a fetish cult in the adult film world than a mainstream interest. Why? If you’re one of the weirdos who’s into guys of color, you can’t have Sean Cody or Dirty Tony or Cockyboys—and in my mind Cockyboys makes the best gay porn—but even they don’t have a roster of black men. If you want guys of color you have to hit up the Latino or black-only porn houses. But why is there such segregation? Shouldn’t everybody just be fucking everybody?
Roughness: This one is a bit delicate, I know, but there’s something hot about roughness in sex. I’ve seen some porn where people are totally and completely dominated with masks on their faces and they’re getting peed on and they have leashes around their necks and it all just seems like too much. But I’ve also seen some stuff where a guy will be topping his partner and in the middle will put his hand ever so close to his partner’s neck, like he’s going to strangle him—but of course he doesn’t. Without fail the bottom seems to get into it even more, and sometimes will even hold his partner’s hand on his neck. Part of the appeal might just be that sex is always already about the exchange of power, and the insertive partner is not always the one with it. That said, part of the mystique of sex is ravaging someone or of yourself being ravaged. It’s hot.
Reality: When I first started watching porn back in high school I remember a lot of kitsch narrative tropes. Like, “Hey, Professor, I need some help with my reading assignment. Can I come see you during office hours for a little extra help?” And then the Professor says, “Of course you can, Brandon (unzips pants).” Now, I feel like most porn just jumps right in with the main event. Forget all that narrative/bad set/build up stuff. We watch porn not to feel like we’re watching porn, but to think about ourselves being in that porn. That’s why we need diversity in adult movies because not everyone is white, and I can’t imagine myself as the white person in that particular scene. And that’s why we need intensity, too, because I’m less focused on body parts in a porn and more on real reactions. When we cue up a porn (or several porn windows, alternating between them), we think about our boyfriends and girlfriends and crushes. We need to imagine ourselves in the scene. A flimsy script and lousy porn acting won’t do the trick.
Chemistry: You should know by now that sex is really different when you are having it with someone you are extremely attracted to mentally, physically or emotionally. A Grindr hook-up or whatever it is you straight people do can be a wham, bam, thank you ma’am situation, or you could discover that you’re so incredibly attracted to this person that the sex is out of this world. Chemistry is key, because it’s the one thing that convinces us that we aren’t watching a carefully filmed and edited version of sex but that we are actually watching real sex before our very eyes. Otherwise, it’ll just seem scripted, and what’s the point of watching two people have sex if neither of them wants to be there?