Sabbath, Porny Sabbath: "We Did Porn"

In "We Did Porn," Zak Smith's memoir of his life and times as an "AltPorn" performer, he states it would have been easier to corral the disparate wherefores and contradictions of sex in movies for money had someone been murdered.

We Did Porn

"Then I would call it 'Who Killed Tina DiVine?' or 'Who Killed Max Clamm?' and all my observations about porn could be wrapped around that death and loaded with the sexy intensity of true crime," Smith writes.

Tina DiVine, who shares certain characteristics with Joanna Angel, is one of dozens of second degree pseudonyms Smith employs in the book. He uses this method, he explains, to remind readers and himself that "there is probably more to them than I managed to see or record."

But, save for some anonymous porn performer in Berlin, no one dies in this book, and so the reader struggles with Smith (nom de porn: Zak Sabbath) on an as-it-happens examination of this "detour" through the pornimondes of Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Vegas, Berlin, and Barcelona, as the narrator serves up judgment on what he's figuring out.

Smith's perspective as a porn tourist (we are all porn tourists unless we are Jack Fuchsmore/Max Hardcore) is one of such precision, wit, and education that one can coast through most of "We Did Porn" before realizing that it can be as heartless and passionless as an episode of "Family Guy" or a fucking machine.

Take this observation of attendees at the annual Adult Entertainment Expo:

These bumblers in lines, programmers, two-handed clutchers, these bloggers with their pictures near breasts, these meatstacks, sad-sacks, these weezing mouth-breathers, nodding Cro-Magnons, ghost-costume-sized hip-hop shirt roamers, these collectors, these enthusiasts, pederasts, Ozzytees, these waist-touchers, wasted brokers, jokers, grinners, tit-seekers, watchers, these bulky humans and beanpoles processed in bulk, these barn-door-sized target audiences, these red bosses and red employees and simultaneous electronics-convention attendees, these men, these fat-ass motherfuckers in their bloatiness and massy fat pants. Whatever, civilians.

Smith spends most of a wildly entertaining discourse on porn and art and pornographers and/as opposed to artists masturbating over the heads of masturbators with deft references to Cthulhu, Boba Fett, and "Blade Runner."

It is only as Smith/Sabbath encounters - and falls in love with - Candy Crushed/Mandy Morbid and Osbie Feel/Benny Profane, and learns to admire the work of Gina Giles/Kimberly Kane and Rob Chuckle/Bob Coulter that we find a little humanizing joy in that (as Smith describes a late night Vegas Coco's discussion with fellow travelers such as Auspicia Clay/See If You Can Guess) "sauna of listless hate" that might have been this book.

Not that a memoir of a pornographer's life should be touching. "We Did Porn" accurately describes America in the Zeros for a lot of people, and Smith can go from macro (the 2008 election) to micro (naked girls on his collapsing bed suggesting goddesses of a 1500-year-old sculptor's wet dream) as fast as the burst of pleasure and relief that is the backbone of an industry that employs thousands and serves millions.

"We Did Porn" is a satisfyingly weighty 500 pages of Taschen-textured text and art that name-checks (sort of) many people beloved of Fleshbot readers ("Tasha Rey," "Monty Pentagram" - I was there for Smith's first movie) and does a great job explaining Zak Smith (and his friends; remember the "We" in the title) to himself and their world to you.