Listen to the Swallow, Dept.

As you may know, on rare occasion and for fact-finding purposes only, your sobsister visits Web sites that feature, gratuit, short erotic films, and by "short erotic films," I mean five-minute unSteadicam sextravaganzas with descriptive titles like "Russian facial slut" and "Little but a huge dick." Which, coincidentally, is also a new biography of Mickey Rooney.

Redtube, YouPorn, xhamster, PornHub, it's all one dizzying blur of ejaculate, silicone and salon tan. The pro material I won't touch. If I want to see grotesque tits, I'll watch a Teabagger debate. *ha ha* I don't joke. No, I cast a glance, instead, at those done by "amateurs." Some of whom are "amateur," while others are simply amateurs. I favor the latter, mainly for their "authenticity," a word that, once quote-bracketed, refutes itself. Like those downmarket burger joints that splash a quotey "Best Burger in Town" on their façade, wholly unattributed, so that one can only imagine the hipsterish quote-fingers and rolled eyes of it all. "Oh, yes, it's the 'Best Burger in Town.' Just like I have 'hope for the future.'"

I myself ask why any of the nice ladies in these films--all of whom get the big DeMille closeup as they work the boyfriend's/husband's/filmmaker's balls like Captain Queeg on the witness stand--would allow themselves to be filmed when, within minutes, their eye-bulging gag and eyeful of spunk will be fodder for every wanking cretin on the planet. Clearly, I do not share their view of the appropriate and desirable. But, for good or ill, it is they who drive the proceedings. The men are merely semi-erect offscreen voices, like Charlie talking to Sabrina, Kelly and Jill, except through a glory hole.

The semi-erectness, in fact, is notable, as a number of these auteurs can't quite manage a honest hard-on before the camera's unblinking eye, yet inexplicably want to make that fact known to all of us, even as they're being energetically serviced by reasonably attractive women who one would hope might've had something else to do that afternoon. Finish À la recherche du temps perdu or make a cup of chamomile tea or alphabetize their nail polish or, really, anything other than, as mentioned earlier, get an eyeful of semen.

Parenthetically, I can't imagine why everyone feels the need to have the television on in the visible background while they film themselves fucking. Is it a soundtrack thing? Like, were it silent, the blonde smoking her boyfriend's pole would be unspeakably loud? Or do they really, really not want to miss that Chris Rock concert film? For that matter, I also can't imagine the presence of mind that would allow one to operate a camera while being serviced. All of which explains why this site isn't called "The Sobsister's Porn-Cam Bloopers and Boners." And "Boners" would be in chubby fuchsia type.

At any rate, let me circle back to what might be the point of this lengthy meander: my inability to understand why someone would consent to have a sex tape made of herself for the benefit of an invisible but inescapable leering world.

I've tried and failed to find a passage I read sometime in the dim and distant past. I thought it was the porn actress Montana Wildhack in Slaughterhouse-Five who said it. Something to the effect of feeling sometimes like the attentions of all the unseen men who saw her in the dark were drowning her in semen. Maybe it wasn't Vonnegut at all, but it's still a useful image to capture the mood of displaying oneself for an anonymous, insatiably concupiscent audience. I don't doubt that, for some women, it is that display and desire that constitute the attraction, but, given the toxic levels of cretinism and creepiness in many corners of the Internet, it's not like George Clooney and Brad Pitt are leading a circle jerk in your honor on the other side of the screen. I suppose it's much to do with how one feels about drowning in semen of uncertain provenance. If you're thinking of having a bukkake bachelorette party, then five minutes of Internet time might not be such a big deal.

At any rate, the world of amateur short-form porn. Where on a clear day you can see Alcatraz. If you can't stand the meat, get out of the genre. And other pre-dinner aperçus.