America Unzipped (26 page)

“Who is Andrea Dworkin?” Lisa asks when I wonder out loud what Dworkin and MacKinnon would say if they were here.

“They did those antipornography sex ordinances, that whole confusion that being antiporn, antisex work was feminist; it was antiwoman, actually,” Donna interjects as if Dworkin, or the very idea of such a thing as an antiporn feminist were phlogiston, a quaint, wrongheaded notion from the history she learned at NYU. “It is so funny. That was the one time that feminism became completely confused with right-wing politics. Like the church and the right wing? And feminists making laws that were supposed to support women…

“I just laugh about it when people ask me how I can make porn and consider myself a feminist. I make porn
because
I am a feminist.”

Donna turns to Lisa and asks, “Is my hair okay?”

 

“
A
ction!”

“
OH OH
mmmm oh gah, oooh oh gah oh oh ooohh uhh ooo hmmm ah oh hmmm…”

Donna has hung Madison upside down by one ankle. She bends Madison's free leg back with rope, wraps the rope around her ankle, and threads it through Madison's mouth so Madison looks like a masochistic ballet dancer in inverted airborne attitude. She turns Madison's labia into a Baskin-Robbins French vanilla cone by spitting on them and then licking with gusto. Chuck and Lisa surge forward for tongue-on-vulva close-ups, the money shots.

Clickclickclickclickclick.

“Ah ah ah ooo ah ooooo mmm m m ohh ahh.”

“Holt!”

Donna retrieves clothespins attached to electrical wires and attaches one to each of Madison's labia. Next comes a glass dildo wired for electricity. She slides this into Madison's vagina, then crouches down onto her hands and knees so her ass is in front of Madison's inverted face.

“Action!”

“Oh
OH HA HA
oh oh oh oh ah ha ha uuuuuhhhhhh.”

“I am not asking for you to do it!”

Madison somehow manages to slip her tongue from behind the rope in her mouth to lick Donna while Donna masturbates.

“I want to make sure you are really turned on before I fuck you.”

“Holt!”

There's a mad scramble to get the girl-on-girl oral shots. Lisa splays on the floor; Chuck leans over, dripping sweat off his nose. They are inches away from Donna's organs of reproduction, a phrase that occurs to me because they remind me of medical interns at their first gynecological exam.

“Action.”

Donna is a screamer.

“Oh
OH HAMM HAMMM
oh oh oh oh ah ha ha oh ahh ooh ahhh hahh oh mmmm mmm hmm hmmmm oh oh hmmmm oh oh ha ha ha ha hoooooooo oh ha ha ooh oh
OH OOIHA OHA SMMMMMM OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH
…”

Things are moving quickly now and it's tough for me to keep up. Wait! There's Donna with a cattle prod. Zzzzut! Zzzzut! Zzzzut! Miniature static lightning bolts race across the gap between the two copper nodes at the end, and for the first time Madison's expression betrays some genuine fear.

“
AYEAH
!
YAEAH
!
OW
!
OW
!
OW
!
OW
!
YWEAH
!” Is she being shocked by the prod? The thing in her vagina?

Clack clack clack clack clack. Donna and Lisa rush to winch Madison to the floor. Madison can take a lot of pain; she thinks being a redhead gives her more pain tolerance. But even Madison has limits to how long she can dangle upside down, contorted, with her breasts sucked into glass tubes, electricity shooting through her body.

Madison is standing now, awkwardly because she's got her hands tied behind her back with rope. Donna has it looped over…what? The ring in the winch? A pulley? And she's brought it down to tie it into a big knot of Madison's hair. Oh, I get it. Every time Madison lowers her bound hands, she'll pull her hair.

Diabolical.

But there's more. A lot more. The finale is coming soon, I gather, because there is some serious gearing up. A candle is lit. Objects are brought in from the storage room next door. In all the fussing, however, somebody has forgotten to remove the dildo from Madison's vagina. Finally, Lisa notices it's still in there and she and Donna laugh. “I always forget those things,” Donna says.

 

P
eter Acworth is thirty-six years old and favors the slightly stodgy fashions of a clubby banker working in the city of London. His shirts are usually buttoned down, his brown hair neatly trimmed, his soft face closely shaved. He can often be found standing with his arms folded across his chest on the periphery of a clutch of people, smiling congenially. He is, in fact, a congenial fellow. If it hadn't been for the Internet, Acworth would have been one of those unassuming chums Britain seems to grow as regularly as the barley harvest, a well-to-do, educated banker with a small country house, an appropriate wife, a loyal dog, and a kink for bondage and domination.

In 1997 he was living in New York earning a graduate degree in business at Columbia. He had already graduated from Cambridge where he studied mathematics, and he had worked at the staid British investment bank Barings, so his future seemed set: maybe a stint in New York after Columbia, some time in Singapore to learn the Asian markets, then back to London and the pinstripes. But then he latched on to the idea of throwing a few bondage photos he had purchased onto a website he created, Hogtied.com, figuring to make a little extra money. The hit counters on his Web page started moving the first day. The money followed. America, it turned out, contained many people like Acworth who appreciated the sight of people being tied up for sex.

Soon thereafter, Acworth became a full-time pornographer. He moved to San Francisco and happily rode the boom–bust–boom cycles of the Bay Area's wired economy, virtually immune from the panics that decimated other dotcom businesses. In what amounts to a small-time re-creation of the old Hollywood studio system, with Acworth as Louis B. Mayer, Acworth built his own studio, hired the talent, and exhibited on his own websites. Now, his fifty or so employees churn out up to four or five new productions per day for the Kink family of sites. There is Wired Pussy, of course, and the original Hogtied, but also Whipped Ass, Fucking Machines (in which women, typically, ride mechanical devices equipped with dildos, something like the bucking mechanical bull from
Urban Cowboy
), Men in Pain, Water Bondage, Sex and Submission, and Ultimate Surrender, a female wrestling site. More are planned. Madison's boyfriend, James Mogul, is producing one called The Training of O.

The popular sites gross about $300,000 per month. If you're a good site producer, you could make up to $150,000 per year. That sort of money attracts people like Reena Patel, vice president for marketing. She joined the company four months ago after working in the Bay Area's pharmaceutical industry. In fact, about half the employees are women.

When I arrived at the Porn Palace this morning, there was no evidence of this success. I wasn't even sure I was standing outside the right building. It was completely anonymous without signage of any kind, on a run-down block. But inside, success was obvious. On the top floor, offices lined one wall and in the open floor spaces, where another company might have stuffed cubicles, about ten video editors sat in the dark in front of banks of large flat computer screens. Each wore headphones. The soft tapping of computer keys and mouse clicks provided the only accompaniment to a mosaic of body parts floating unconnected in digital space-time.

When Madison arrived, we walked down a flight of stairs and into a realistic-looking castle set Acworth obtained from the Walt Disney company. This level also contained a jail set, a barn, a functional bar, an operating room—a backlot crammed inside a building in the middle of San Francisco.

In the basement several heavily tattooed guys pounded on wood and steel, backed by a heavy-metal sound track. They were building new set pieces and creating new fucking machines or servicing old ones. The other half of the basement contained a storage room for supplies and equipment, some technical, like cameras and lights, and some props and safety devices like surgical gloves, lube, dozens of ball gags, dildos, chains, handcuffs, leather straps, whips, and electrical devices whose functions I could only imagine. Madison is shooting in an attached dead-end corner room.

But even as I am watching Madison and Donna work, Acworth is negotiating for much larger space. He is arranging to buy the landmark San Francisco Armory building for $14.5 million so he can turn the former home of the California National Guard into the new Porn Palace.

After our walk-through, Madison and I went to the “green room.” Literally. It was painted green. She sat down for makeup and costuming, not that there was much makeup to apply or anything elaborate to fit. While the makeup artist, a woman with green hair and spiderwebs tattooed behind both knees, worked on Madison, I couldn't help noticing a stack of empty enema bottles, a one-gallon pump jug of Platinum Premium lubricant, and a supply of Ocean Spray cranberry juice.

The customer and set designer, who works for San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater when she's not working in porn, picked out Madison's dress, and Madison swallowed an ibuprofen; her IUD cramping was better but hadn't disappeared. Not that she'd notice in a few minutes anyway.

 

D
onna hobbles Madison by affixing a wooden dowel between Madison's ankles. She sticks weighted clamps to her nipples, turning Madison's breasts into a parody of an ancient Bantu matriarch's. Then Lisa and Donna apply little round patches like those used for medical monitoring onto Madison's butt, her labia, her inner thighs. Wires lead from the patches to the electrical generator.

After some discussion about ball-gag diameters, Lisa picks out a smaller one than Madison used to prefer in deference to her TMJ. Donna straps it around Madison's head. Then Donna straps a giant black silicone dildo around her own waist. As she walks, it flops up and down, back and forth as if it is trying to escape the steel ring holding it into the harness.

“Action!”

A black leather flogger flies back and forth through the hot, still air, the strips beating against Madison's already crimson bottom. With every stroke, the strap-on waggles, Madison moans and yelps, the electricity hums and buzzes.

“Oh oh hmm hmmmm oh oh oh mmmmmm…”

“That's making your pussy wet, isn't it?”

“Uh-huh…”

“Holt! Repeat that…‘is making your pussy wet.'”

“Can I get a pussy shot here?” Lisa asks.

“Action!”

“Oh ahh ooh ahhh hahh oh mmmm mmm hmm hmmmm oh oh hmmmm oh oh ha ha ha ha hoooooooo
OW
! oh ha ha ooh oh
OW
!
OH OOIHA OHA
Shhthththt
OW
!
OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH
…”

Donna turns on the juice. “Is the fuck doll dancing for me? I can see it shaking your ass.”

“Oh ahh ooh ahhh hahh oh mmmm mmm hmm hmmmm oh oh hmmmm oh oh ha ha ha ha hoooooooo oh ha ha ooh oh
OH OOIHA OHA
Suuuuuhhhh
OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH
…”

Donna then picks up the lit candle and pours hot wax from it onto Madison.

“
OW
!
OW
!”

Sure as the sun sets, Donna points the floppy dildo strapped around her waist at the target of Madison's vagina.

“
OH HAM HAM OH OH OH
…”

“Holt! That was good,” Chuck says, apologizing for stopping the action. “I just thought I was going to trip.”

No wonder. The floor has become a puddle of spit and lubrication. Chuck has to skate across the surface while shouldering his video camera.

“Can I just get the insertion shot?” Lisa requests. Donna obliges, backing up and then pushing forward again.

“Can you, uh, maybe if you go back and forth a little bit?”

“Action!”

Donna drives the strap-on in and out of Madison.

“
OPHS OHS HA AH AHA HA HA AH OH OH OH OH MAH AHA HA HA AHA HA AH AHA HO OH OH OH OHA HA OH OH OH AHAH AHA AHA OHO OH OHOHAAAAAAAAAHAHAAH AAHAAHA A
…”

“Holt!”

“Need something?” Lisa asks.

“I got some lube on my lens,” Chuck says. Now I know why Chuck is wearing coveralls.

“Okay,” Chuck says after wiping his lens. “And…thrusting action!”

“Hmmmmm
HMMMM OH AHA AH AHA HOOO HO HO OH OH AW AH OO
!
OO
!
OO
!
OO
!
OH OH OH OH
yeah mmmm
OHO H
ah ah ah aah ah ha
OOO
!
EE EE EE EE
!”

“Can you come one more time for me?”

“Oh ah wawa um. I wawa um. I wawa um, Mishresh Hanhah!”

“Okay, so you do some work. Come on! Come on! Do more of the work.”

Madison is trying to move her hips back and forth, but she has nowhere to go, being roped to the ceiling and all. Still, she makes a brave effort.

“
OOOHHH OH OHOHHHHH OH OH HA AH AOHA HA AH EEEEEE AH AHAH A HEEE HA AHA AHA HJAEER HO HO HO HO HO HOH OH OH HJAEER EAH UCK EAH UCK OPH OH OH OH OHOH OHA HHAH AHA HA OHA AHA HA AHA HMMMMMMMM HM MMM HMMM MM
haha aha
HAMMMMMMMMM OH OH OH OH OH OH OH AAA AAA AA AAA AAA AAA OH OH HO HO HO HO MMMMMMMOHHH HA AHA HA AHA AH AHA AHA HA AHA AHA AHA AHA AHA AHA AH AHA HA HOH OH OH MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM HMMMMMMMMM OHHA OOHAA
eeeaahhhh eeeaahhh oh uck eah oh eah oh eah oh eah eah eah eah aye
AYEAH YAEAH OW OW OW OW EAH
…”

“You gonna come? Hmmm?”

“Esh, Mishrish Haa uhh.”

Thunklurp thunklurp thunklurp thunklurp thunk…

“You wanna come for me? You wanna have an orgasm for me?”