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(02/04/99) Strap-on epiphany By Virginia Vitzthum In becoming the penetrator, a woman learns to see sex -- and the world -- through male eyes (01/28/99) Confessions of an office pervert By Angie Monroe In satisfying her own nasty desires, one woman discovers the key to worker productivity (01/21/99) Bonfire of the porn queens By Benjamin Weissman Trapped between a silicon breast and a hard place, the Adult Video News Awards struggle to boost their legitimacy (01/14/99) - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Urge archives - - - - - - - - - -		DR. BLOCK'S LITTLE HOUSE OF SEXUAL HORRORS | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Max, Susan Block's self-declared publicist, footman, butler, husband and sex slave, offers to show me the art. Gray and a little slovenly, he has the quick, weak eyes of a salesman from a David Mamet play. He keeps touching me the way some men do, as if a little pressure on a woman's hand will make an argument more persuasive. He points out a carving of a naked, leaping woman whose head is a giant ruffled vulva, and a small old-fashioned bottle stuffed with a pair of dirty panties. Both pieces are profoundly depressing. "We've got everything," he says proudly, then segues into interview mode. "I'm the most prosecuted publisher in America. I've been prosecuted 20 times and I've spent 18 months in jail." He ticks off the charges on his fingers. "Industrial espionage, rack ordinances (I put the first pair of tits on the streets of L.A.), conspiracy to publish ..." I protest that most porn is legal, but he will have none of it. "You know you can't show a woman fucking a horse --" He grabs my hands to prevent my retort. "We can't make that distinction as artists. The minute we do that we become workers of the state." He excuses himself to take the microphone and issue a stirring defense of our recently exonerated president. "We're here to celebrate the spirit of America ... those people said let's get that motherfucker, but they didn't get him!" He introduces LaVonne, a bespectacled black woman in an unfurling corset and G-string who seizes the mike and paws at herself while singing a bubblegum pop song, "I Touch Myself." She doesn't sing for us but for the camera, which kneels before her, zooming in on her crotch and hand. "You guys want to hear it again?" she cries as soon as the song is over. "HBO ran out of film." This time the song ends in a long, very fake orgasm. LaVonne squeals and rips off her corset. She holds her boobs and pogos around the room. "Can you imagine enslaving tits like these?" crows Max, inaugurating the racial healing phase of the evening. "But that's what our forefathers did!" At this majestic moment, Dr. Susan Block makes her grand appearance. She is dressed like a Victorian hysteric who has had one too many clitoral massages from her doctor and succumbed to her illness by tearing off her dress but keeping on her hat. In a way, this isn't so far-fetched. Having grown up in a conservative Jewish household, she has acted as her own doctor, and made up her own cure. Building upon the now-established theme of enslaved black breasts, Dr. Susan cries out in a Southern preacher's vernacular: "Brother Roy, where is brother Roy? Come forward and be healed, Brother Roy!" Finally, a modestly dressed African-American man appears. He does not look like a member of this perv circus, but more like one of the quiet, nondescript characters who hang out in front of the seedy hotel across the street. "From black people," she declaims, "we learned spirit." Then she begins to preach the way of ethical hedonism, a philosophy that she claims to have invented. The chief tenet seems to be: Do what feels good, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. But Roy and LaVonne's presence complicates the simplicity of this message. Standing behind her, they testify as if they are in church: "Yes!" "Tell the truth!" "That's right now!" Suzy works herself into a froth. "How dare they try to impeach our values?" she cries. Then she performs a blow job on a dildo formed in the likeness of President Clinton. If anybody is hungry to disseminate her images, it's Susan Block. She recently tried to get a squirt of national media attention by presenting Kenneth Starr with an award for best pornographer of the year. The theme of Clinton's victory seems equally contrived. Suddenly, HBO interrupts. The mike is interfering with the camera sound. "But the people can't hear me otherwise," she protests. "That's OK, you're crystal-clear on film," the sound operator assures her. To her credit, Block opts for reality over image in this instance, but by then few people are listening and she has to beg the audience not to talk. The advertised "journey through the senses" involves sound (being quiet for the TV cameras), smell (burning sage and smelling our armpits) and finally taste (the "aphrodisiac buffet" of cheese and crackers, grapes and lox). As the small crowd veers toward the meager feast, a rock band bangs out a single tune before HBO complains that the music is too loud and the band must wait until 1 a.m. The band leader and Max nearly come to blows. Angry tears glint in two of the musicians' eyes as they pack and go. "Get me away from this disgusting place," one whispers. This eruption of hostility seems to have fueled people's spirits and the circus begins to whirl into orbit. Two six-foot women enter, one dressed as an angel, the other as a devil. LaVonne has changed into a new outfit that consists entirely of a leopard tale that fits around her butt crack and ends in a claw over her pubes. Two gentlemen shop-talk like business men on the golfing green. "I own a gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Here, let me give you my card. Beverly Hills is like Iraq when it comes to showing erotic art." The other counsels him: "What you do is show the work, the police will come and shut you down. Contact the ACLU and you've got national coverage." Images disguise themselves easily as political principles. In this case, the penis wags the dog. "Your class was really good," says my student, coming up behind me. "I got a new job. In fact, I got two new jobs." He tells me that, being an avid fan of Dr. Susan's hot line, he'd gotten an invitation in the mail for this party and decided to drive down from San Francisco. I'm beginning to think he's the only person here who's just a regular, ticket-buying pervert. After the Rodeo Drive businessman, under the pretext of showing me some art, leads me to a briefcase full of glass vibrators and tells me that they can help strengthen the walls of my vagina; after the ubiquitous cameras become almost invisible; after Dr. Suzy whispers, "You're going to be all right" to a drug-addled woman in a mesh pantsuit; after my poor friends find a distant wall where they stand clutching beers, it happens. We watch the simple animal act. Two bodies intertwining, potentially making babies or pleasure or meaning, but remarkably making none of these. The overwrought attempt to make everything sexy, explicit, titillating, groovy, has created a vacuum. The two people fuck and it's not interesting, except insofar as it's uninteresting. He is playing to the camera; she is somewhere else. We conclude that they must be paid performers and he must be gay. Otherwise, wouldn't there be some there there? Later I learn that these two are a married couple, porn stars Cassandra Knight and Antony Stone, whose mission together is to present "healthy, loving but exciting sex." They smile sweetly when they say this. I feel suddenly sad for them. As with so much explicit eroticism nowadays, so much gets lost in the presentation. SALON | Feb. 18, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.