Pleasure Doll & Amyl Nitrate: A Bolshevik Pornography

Pleasure Doll & Amyl Nitrate: A Bolshevik Pornography

Right now, pornography is more popular than ever. It’s an industry that finds its profits in the billions of dollars each year (larger than the regular film market) and increasingly it is finding it’s way into the mainstream. Gone are the days of men in trench coats and sunglasses scurrying into dimly lit XXX video stores to purchase movies. Instead we see porn stars such as Traci Lords, Jenna Jameson and Nina Hartley trying to make the crossover from the world of adult film into mainstream entertainment. Porn movies themselves are no longer just for men, with films being made with a female audience in mind. In Pleasure Doll & Amyl Nitrate, author Vern Smith, tries to present the reader with a story that focuses on the hypocrisy/paradox of on screen adult porn promiscuity and the harsh reality of real life, hardcore, anonymous sex. Taking place in a porn theatre, it details the cruise and come action going on within, while a porno entitled “BI-Dacious” plays out on screen. The truth is we know that in adult movies everything is fantastical: from the ease at which people are willing to engage in sex to breast and dick size. Thus, the story lacks impact when it tries to elicit sympathy or disgust from the reader from the harsh realities of the gay men cruising and, sometimes bruising, for anonymous sex in the theatre. These have simply become universal truths. It’s a good effort, thwarted simply by the time we live in. (KJ)

litzine, 19 pgs., Vern Smith, Belly Of The Beast, 666 Spadina Avenue, Room 1110, Toronto, ON, M5S 2H8

Leave a Reply