Empire of Illusion - Chris Hedges [47]
“I have one doll, Sunni, who is blonde, hooker-style,” he says. “She’s really good at blow jobs. She’s like a California beach bunny. She has dark skin and is always tanning herself. She’s happiest in a black bikini and a blonde wig. She looks great in her bikini. I keep most of them dressed in underwear and sports bras. They hang out together, like a sorority. Personally, I have never ejaculated inside my dolls. I use the rhythm method. The cleanup is easier. I have a hanging apparatus in my tub and use the shower massage. They can absorb body oil. Look, you have old people who need to be taken care of, you can think about these dolls as being in a coma. Your job is to keep them comfortable. I am always a gentleman around them. I never have sex without asking permission. I sleep with them. I cover them with an electric blanket, and the silicone absorbs the heat.”
The dolls, like the porn stars, are a compliant mouth, vagina, and rectum. They exist solely to allow a man to penetrate, usually with a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, into their orifices at will. You can spit on their faces, slap them around, verbally abuse them, as is done with women in porn films, but with the dolls there is no chance of rebellion or complaint. The silicone mouths will always have the thick, slightly spread lips, offering themselves silently to their owner’s penis.
The culmination of the AVN Expo is the awards ceremony, often referred to as the Oscars of porn. Porn actors and actresses walk down a red carpet into the cavernous Mandalay Bay Convention Center. The stars, producers, and directors sit at tables on the main floor, and fans are seated in the U-shaped bleachers around the main stage. Awards include Best Anal-Themed Release, Best All-Girl 3-Way Sex Scene, Best Double Penetration Sex Scene, and Best Big-Butt Series.
When an actress named Stoya wins the statuette for Best New Starlet, she thanks “each and every person who jerks off to my smut.”
The Best Anal Sex Scene award goes to Sunny Lane and her role in the film Big Wet Asses 13. She tells the crowd, “I can’t help it, I just love that cock.” Introducing her co-star, Manuel Ferrara, she says: “This is the man. I had to choose Manuel to be my first anal because he is so passionate, so loving, and he definitely knows how to work that soda-can cock. I prepared for this scene by sitting with a butt plug in while I was doing my makeup time so I was ready to go, all for you.”
“I did exactly the same for you while I was getting my makeup done,” Ferrara quips.
“Oh, really, very nice,” she says. “I would like to thank Elegant Angel for all of this, for the opportunity to let my ass show in all the right ways.”
I sit through nearly three hours of this vapid banter, an irony-free reflection of the banality of mainstream awards ceremonies. The rap-per Flo Rida provides entertainment along with local dancers from the Spearmint Rhino gentlemen’s club. Evil Angel owner John “Buttman” Stagliano leads a dance sequence that incorporates images of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib, Halliburton, the Iraq war, and freedom of speech, which the porn industry champions as protecting its Constitutional right to disseminate porn. The five-minute dance sequence is Stagliano’s artistic objection to the federal government’s use of the Patriot Act to persecute adult entertainment companies and customers.
“Did we really believe them when they said they would only use these laws to prosecute terrorists?” he asks in the sequence.
Stagliano, once a Chippendale dancer and also a porn actor, has tested positive for HIV. He was charged by the United States government for adult-to-adult obscenity. He is married to ex-porn star Tricia Devereaux, whose stage name was Karen Stagliano and who is also HIV-positive, as are many former members of the industry.
Porn has evolved from the airbrushed misogyny of