An excerpt from Slut Summer
July 28, 2002
I just got back from the porn shoot. I've got quite a little story to tell about it.
5:30 pm. I'm at the Wicker-Park rendezvous location *Thomas and I agreed to meet at before making our way to the suburbs. It's hot, I'm sticky, I'm listening to Ben Folds sing "I love you, goodbye," over and over and over again. Five minutes pass, then ten, the twenty, and I start asking myself what kind of fool I am for allowing myself to be played for a chump twice in a row by the same person. Thomas finally makes it, though, and we head out.
For those who have never been to Chicago, our metropolitan area is set up very similarly to most other large American cities: there is a centralized urban area next to the lake, with neighborhoods that range from very poor to filthy rich; and then surrounding this urban center is an ever-growing ring of smaller cities, ranging in general from lower-middle-class to upper-middle-class, existing primarily to provide housing for the millions of workers who commute each day into the city. They're commonly known in the US as "the suburbs."
The suburbs. Man, I always forget what the suburbs are like until I'm actually in them again, which usually only happens for me anymore about once a year, if that. I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis, in fact, and every time I'm in one anymore I'm reminded all over again why I had to get the fuck out of mine when I was eighteen; because the suburbs drive me crazy. American suburbs are utter wastelands of strip malls and Wal-Marts and frontage roads; as far as the eye can see, the landscape is littered with dozens of chain stores and cheery overmarketed restaurants and cheap condos...and, really, not that much else.
I'm nervous; I've come out to the suburbs tonight with not a single penny on me, and I keep thinking of what would happen if I suddenly got stranded out here or if Thomas' car broke down and I was suddenly responsible for making my own way back into the city. The first part of all this seems to actually be working out - I mean, we're out here, after all, and Thomas' hotel reservation went through without a hitch - but there's still a part of me that's positive that this woman is never going to show up at this bar where we're all supposed to meet.
7 pm. We show up at this dive/sports bars where the couple has asked everyone to rendezvous. A sign on the door says, "Please, no torn jeans or offensive t-shirts." Thomas and I walk in; sure enough, the couple we're meeting with are already here, over in the corner and sucking down drinks. Their names are Ginger and Joe, who Thomas knows through this suburban "gangbang club" of which he's a member. They're not what I'm expecting: Ginger is cute, a little older, still holding her figure nicely even after having a couple of kids; Joe is middle-aged with a ponytail, looking kind of intimidating, his forearms covered with fading tattoos. The two are originally from the city; they both grew up in a notoriously sketchy neighborhood here in Chicago and ended up making the move to the suburbs about a decade ago.
And another surprise: both Ginger and Joe are incredibly nice, really sincere, talkative and inquisitive. Given what my experiences have been like this summer with other suburban swingers, I wasn't expecting this at all - I had already steeled myself for what I thought was going to be an excruciating evening of awkward small talk before the actual sexual activities took place. The two of them weren't like that, though; they had lots of interesting things to say about their swinging history, laughed at my jokes, seemed sincerely intrigued by my journal (which I just call a "sex column" to people I meet, because it's easier than explaining the complicated truth about this document). Ginger has this habit of looking you deeply in the eyes when she talks to you; every time it happened, I found myself looking more and more forward to when we would all actually get to the hotel.
Three other guys end up straggling in over the next half-hour: *Aaron and *Bob, two seasoned veterans who have already had sexual experiences with Ginger several times; and *Carl, a guy who found out about this via email and whom no one in the group had actually met yet. I never really got a chance to talk to Aaron, so never did find out that much about him; Bob, though, turned out to be a really interesting one. He's a professional musician who plays with three different bands and occasionally goes on regional tours. He's also writing a semiautobiographal novel concerning his adventures in swinging; he already has an agent, as a matter of fact, who is simultaneously trying to sell the book and the movie rights as we speak. I'm impressed - fuck, man, I don't even have an agent yet!
It's incredibly interesting to be at a table full of people with so much more swinging experience than me. The majority of the hour we sit there, I mostly try to just be quiet and listen to the snippets of other people's conversations:
"...Well, of course he got busted. He set up a goddamn brothel in the middle of Lincoln Park..."
"...Have you fucked Loud-Mouthed Lisa yet? Holy crap, man. Once I was outside the hotel having a cigarette, and I could still hear her screaming and yelling from the third floor. 'FUCK ME! FUCK ME!' She's a trip..."
"...So then I posted this message after the whole thing became public, just saying, 'Well, does anyone actually have any Michael Jordan stories?' Oh, you wouldn't believe the emails I got about that one..."
This is...good. Everyone who's shown up (five male performers, Ginger and Joe) are nice, kinda nerdy, very sincere and not into male bravado whatsoever. It makes me feel really comfortable, not to mention excited about the actual sexual activities, coming up very soon.
8 pm. We all make our way to the hotel. I should mention, by the way, that the "porn shoot" is not exactly what one might think when first hearing the term. In other words, Joe actually is videotaping the whole thing, as well as snapping off a bunch of still photos, but the two don't actually make any money off the videos or even show them in public, other than occasionally posting photos to the Yahoo adult group where Thomas originally met them. I've asked them specifically about this, in fact, back at the bar: given how much really filthy original content they're producing every week, haven't they ever thought about making a profit from it?
"Ah, you know how it is," Joe replies in his gruff, disarming voice. "I got these fuckin' guys contacting me all the time about it - how they're going to set up some big goddamn website for us and how we're all gonna be rich. I dunno - I've thought about it. Most of these guys turn out to be full of shit anyway, and I'll never fuckin' hear from 'em again."
"We mostly shoot the videos for ourselves," Ginger says. "You know, so we can watch them later."
"Well then," I ask her, "why do you keep participating in gangbangs, if you're not doing it for money?"
Ginger looks at me funny and smiles. "Because I like it," she says matter-of-factly.
Well, right on. Ginger's a pretty fascinating one - she's the only woman I know who will have sex with five guys simultaneously for no other reason than that she likes having sex with five guys simultaneously. (At least, she's the only woman I know who's admitted it to me.) In fact, it's probably her amateur status that allows her to continue enjoying it for the simple sexual pleasure in the first place - if there's one thing I've learned this summer, it's that adding money to one's sex life forever changes the way one looks at sex or feels about it in the future.
We're all in the room now - a suite at the local Super 8, containing a queen-size bed, a couch, and a table in the middle of the room with four chairs. All the guys sit down in various locations, so I do too. Joe starts getting his equipment set up; a couple of guys run down the hall for sodas, while another couple get in one last crack at the bathroom. Ginger asks if everyone's ready, and then goes into the bathroom herself for about ten minutes. I literally don't know what's going to happen, or what my role should be in any of this. Thomas has described it to me in advance thusly: "Well, I asked Ginger if she'd be up for a bukkake shoot. So technically, she hasn't actually agreed to any sexual interaction with any of us. I do know, though, that she really enjoys being sexual with multiple guys, so the chances are good that that you will actually interact with her. I guess we'll just have to wait and let her take the lead on it all."
I'm confused as fuck about the whole thing, so decide to just follow the lead of all the other guys, most of whom have a lot more experience in this kind of thing than me. Unfortunately, there's no lead to follow; during the ten minutes Ginger is in the bathroom, the guys continue to just sit around the hotel room, fully clothed, still shooting the shit with each other. Eventually Ginger comes back out; she is completely naked, save for a lacy corset around her midsection (worn apparently because she's sensitive about her stretch marks, Joe admitted earlier) and a pair of nylons that go all the way up to her inner thighs. She throws her hands in the air in exasperation. "Am I the only naked one in this room, guys?" she playfully asks. "C'mon, I thought you'd all be ready by the time I came out!"
So, we all jump up and remove our clothes rather quickly. I still don't know what to do, though; the guys are all just standing around, watching Ginger as she lays on her stomach at the edge of the bed and poses for some photos. Finally, though, Aaron walks over in front of Ginger, and she proceeds to pop his cock inside her mouth and start sucking it. It's literally the first time in my life that I've ever seen a man and a woman engage in sexual activities physically in front of me, and it's...um...well. Well, it's hard to describe; it's simultaneously one of the more surreal things you'll ever experience, while also being a great turn-on.
I feel this weird push-and-pull sensation, standing naked in this hotel room and watching these other guys sexually interact with Ginger. (Thomas and Bob have both now climbed up on the bed, and are massaging Ginger's body while she continues giving head to Aaron.) I mean, people are having sex in front of you, and there's just no way to get around that fact. I found myself responding to it, just like one would expect to do when people are having sex literally inches away from you; I could feel a stirring in my loins, a certain amount of excitement, and I ended up starting to masturbate while I was standing there in the background. On the other hand, though, I felt really distanced from everything going on; it was almost like I wasn't actually in the room at all, but rather simply watching the most vivid and realistic porn tape ever produced. It's really difficult to get into group sex at first, or at least when it's a bunch of strangers you've just met an hour previous. You want to just throw all caution to the wind, but it's simply an impossible thing to realistically do at first.
After five or ten minutes of this, Aaron backs up and looks over at me. "Jason?" he asks, pointing at Ginger. Ulp - the moment of truth.
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