Our Happy Hell

After a few aborted attempts, I got to work on my novel, Happy. The novel is based on my experiences in Porn Valley, but I had the cast of characters that populate this book in my head for so long, and I had tried so many different ways of writing this book that I needed a new beginning. This time, the central character is a young woman in a mental hospital. What helped move me in this direction was watching an ad about human sex trafficking and starring Emma Thompson, "I Am Elena," that I found on Adrants. This kind of intense splitting or dissociation mirrors the mind of Happy's central character--and is a characteristic I have found to be common among sex workers I have known. In this post-feminist era, some sex pundits have promoted the idea that "porn is good," but what some pro-porn post-feminists have failed to do is discern between porn the product and porn the industry. As long time readers of this blog know, I have spent some time around the adult movie industry. A decade ago, I entered that world with the same assumptions as the pro-porn post-feminists. Over the years, my attitude changed. Eventually, I began referring to the porn industry as a meat grinder for the human condition. In my opinion, it is a lot to ask someone to get fucked in the ass for a living. Shalom Auslander has put it thusly: "I have never had a day as bad as a woman named 'Cloey' had the day they shot the video that appeared on that [Web] page -- that is to say, I have never had a day where someone wrote the word 'Cockwhore' on my forehead with lipstick, tried to shove their entire fist down my throat and then 'choke-fucked' me with their penis until I barfed on their testicles." Real life in Porn Valley isn't easy. It's hard. The pro-porn post-feminists say that porn is empowering, that this kind of porn isn't representative of the industry as a whole, that my experiences in Porn Valley and my understanding of pornography is my opinion, that it is nothing more and nothing less. I accept that. After all, pornography is a mirror. In porn, you find yourself. In the end, Happy is nothing more than my very own Porn Valley story, just one more puny inexhaustible voice, still talking about pornography.