The world at my feet

John Holmes, the most famous male porn star of all time, died on 13 March 1988. The Spanish daily El Pais dedicated a commemorative article to the death of this pop icon. Why is John Holmes a pop icon? For a start, I take myself as an example: I have never seen a porn film, but I know John Holmes. He’s a pop icon because has inspired books, songs (like John Holmes by the Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese) and movies like Boogie Nights and Wonderland. At last, a pop icon usually doesn’t have a long and quiet life. He died of Aids at age 44 and had a fairly full life : drug, alcohol, prison and naturally much, much sex.

The El Pais article tells a few little known anecdotes. He was noticed by a photographer standing next to him at a restroom urinal (porn has its talent-scouts as well..) and in his career appeared in gay films too. He was a gigolo, a stripper, a stool pigeon. For his cocaine addiction, that forced him to snort a line every 15 minutes, he started to keep the underworld and was involved in the Wonderland murders. The rest is story, or rather,  is myth. Little wonder that our times have as a myth a man famous only for his penis. After all, the Greeks already venerated a certain Priapus.

Have you ever seen the Italian film Boccaccio 70? It’s a old film framed in four episodes. One (La Riffa, directed by Vittorio De Sica) tells of a lottery that has a beautiful Sophia Loren as a prize. Like it often happens, reality surpasses fiction. But the times change and instead of a lottery there is an online auction.

Prostitution is legal in Germany and there are websites that put up at auction attractive girls. The participants are protected by a nickname and the best bidder wins a hot night with his “prize”. But not all goes smoothly. These twits worry so much to safeguard their identities, but not to have safe sex. A girl gets pregnant and wants to know the true identity of six clients who might be the father. The website doesn’t want to provide her with the information but the Stuttgart court admits she’s right. So, our modern fable ends with a DNA test: our baby will hug his daddy. But it’s better his mummy changes job.

There is Antoine, 47 years old, that offers (only to girls) “comfort” and a “nice room” in a flat: no rent, no deposit, but payments in kind. His co-tenant must only wander round the flat naked and give herself regularly. Then there is Laurent, 32 years old, that shares his roomy flat in the XV arrondissement in exchange for “not classic sexual relationships”.

According to the French daily newspaper Libération, in Paris there is a boom of ads that demand sex for a roof. The rents in the French metropolis are more and more expensive, and some smarty-pants takes advantage of the situation. Websites like Missive, Vivastreet and Kijiji are real mines of these ads. Usually the word “sex” is not mentioned and is disguised under formulas like “for girl”, “for supply of services” and is not specified the amount of the rent. I presume there are ads “for boy” too. I think who accepts such conditions isn’t a victim, it’s an exchange between two consenting adults. But at this point it’s better to opt for the classic prostitution, at least one is relaxed at home. I am imagining my landlord, naked, that whispers smuts in my ear..I prefer to sleep under a roof of stars for life.

A lot of Dutch people will be glued to the TV on 23 February. The public television will beam Deep Throat, the most famous pornographic movie of all time. The manifesto of oral sex, realised in 1972, will be the pièce de résistance of the programme Sex and Drugs. In the liberal Netherlands Deep Throat is considered a landmark of the big screen and, in a way, this film is really a milestone for the big impact had on the society. I suggest you to see Inside Deep Throat, a very interesting documentary that reveals what went on behind the scenes and describes how the porn came in within the American intelligentsia and the star system. It also digs in the mafia business that gravitated around the film. So, Deep Throat is much more than a simple skin-flick but, sincerely, I don’t believe it’s right to broadcast it on a public channel, where a kid can also see it. Then, to tell you the truth: free drugs, free prostitution, free porn movies on TV..what zest is there to live in the Netherlands?

Photo by MissK Lorina

In the morning she’s an undergraduate who follows the lectures, at night she turns into a call girl who sells her body for paying studies. She’s Laura D., authoress of the autobiographical novel “Mes Chères Études” (My expensive studies), the new French literary case. The girl tells her experience, today concluded, with an abundance of more scabrous details. She found her clients on the web, the first payed her 250 € only for seeing . I stop here, I wouldn’t induce some damsel to do likewise. This story reminds me of Melissa P., an Italian Lolita who sold a pile of copies of her “One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed”, a very mediocre book, which owes its success to the alleged authenticity of the plot. In this case too, the rather trite topic of a girl’s double life arouses more interest with the “reality” label. Well, trust me, I’m a worldly person: Laura D. is an hairy fifty-year-old man with a fine pot-belly. Now, who is still ready to cough up 250 € only for seeing?