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are forbidden to draw includes subjects as banal as “marijuana leaves” and “nudity,” and also the vague lunacy of “anything degrading to women.” Maybe someday they’ll be old enough to express the world the way they see it—marijuana, nudity, and all—rather than having to follow their protectors’ prescriptions for pious living.

    I told Jon it was a good thing I wasn’t teaching his art class because I might just retaliate out of sheer sarcasm and make a whole install-ation of vagina-dentate octopi who would graphically display one degraded male figure after another. My gender reversal would technically fit within their censorship criteria!
    What has been degraded, in the sense of an idea that has fallen apart because of continual disrespect, is the notion that erotic expression deserves a place in public life—a place that isn’t entirely commercial and driven toward the most formulaic common denominator. Thankfully, the younger generation does not consider porn either criminal or pathological. But they are, at the same time, cynical that porn can ever be anything but a “money shot.” There isn’t a booming alternative erotic industry, because no one is ponying up the big bucks to experiment, and public arts funding has driven sexuality out of the spectrum of public art.
    I’ve interviewed a lot of first-generation porn stars, men and wo-men who are in their fifties now. I was talking to Georgina Spelvin, who made her 1970 debut as the wretched spinster in The Devil in Miss Jones; when I asked her how she got from food catering to starring in the picture, she said, “It wasn’t the money; that wasn’t remarkable. It’s hard to explain, but there was a feeling in the air that you could do whatever you wanted.”
    Nowadays, no one auditions for a standard porn film without having a clear idea of exactly what kind of numbers the producers want to get out of it. What they will be asked to perform will be as stock as Campbell’s tomato soup. I think it comes as a shock to many of them that there is a unique personal consequence to what they’re doing for a paycheck. That consequence could be uplifting or it could be depressing, but you don’t per-

    form for the public without being affected at all—ask any athlete or Hollywood professional. I find myself relieved that the porn business is no longer thought of as satanic, but I’m deeply disappointed by its new hell-is-money reputation, a sort of Marxist spoof on late-stage capitalism.
    The first time I ever agreed to let someone shoot a movie of me making love, I did it because my director-friend Cecilia Dougherty was making a video, and she couldn’t find a single soul in her Hip-per-Than-Thou art school who would take their clothes off and do it.
    I was publishing my own erotic ’zine at the time, and she had been very critical of every photograph we printed. “I will do this for you,” I told her, “if you will agree that any model who tries to do something erotic on their own terms should be given a medal, just for having the guts.” Of course she was so desperate she would have agreed to anything.
    Cecilia was making an “art” film; it was never shown on the porn circuit. She didn’t give my lover or me any direction at all; she wanted to be a fly on the wall. We didn’t rush or pose or move into a well-lit position. When the film had its first showing, I sat in the dark and listened to some people behind me giggle. One woman wondered aloud, “Is she asleep?” just before my orgasm.
    I was anonymous and unrecognizable to the other spectators. I went with my best friend, and I whispered to her, “I suppose this should be entirely humiliating, but it’s not. This really gets to me.” I had never seen myself come, I’d never seen the look on my face, never seen my eyes as I was touching my lover. I wondered if there were any other quiet appreciators in the crowd who weren’t so dismissive as the group behind me. I suppose my