The Sunday Hangover with Warren Ellis

THE SUNDAY HANGOVER
010
WARREN ELLIS


The "Hot Carl," apparently, is where a mentally ill man loosely stretches cellophane across the open mouth of a mentally ill woman and then defecates on to the surface of the cellophane, which of course sags around the weight of the stool and thereby lowers a fresh shrinkwrapped turd into the mentally ill woman's mouth.

America broke sex.

Due to my small notoriety, people send me information that they say they believe is useful research material but which in actuality they hope will hurt my brain. They send articles, anecdotes, pictures and clips. Due to having written a couple of things related to the American porn industry, I get sent a whole bunch of stuff related to that, and so build up a vague picture of what's going on. And America has broken sex.

In my novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, I lightly fictionalise a TV interview with a male porn performer. In the novel, he says:

“Anal sex was edgy. It wasn’t a mainstream thing. But time was, cum shots were edgy. And there was a response to cum shots, and then every porno had cum shots, and now there’s bukkake. Same with anal sex. Big shock when it was first shown, and now anal sex is in every movie. The audience takes that on and then says, what’s next? What’s new? So all this stuff, that was hidden away for years, is mainstream now. You know what else? There was a movie in England last year, an arty movie, based on a literary kind of novel. And it has blowjobs. The actress – and this was straight actors and actresses, not adult performers – had to suck the actor off on camera. Porno’s already crossed over, man. We’re mainstream American shit now. If people out there want to worry about something, tell them to worry about what comes next. Worry about what comes after us.”

I was softening this more than a little (despite the mention of bukkake, as chilly and dehumanising a spectacle as you'll find). It's early in the novel, and people didn't need to be beaten in the head straight away with the actual state of commercial American porn. This is male porn performer Dick Nasty discussing the 2002 film ASS CLOWNS 3:

"I kill Osama bin Laden by cutting his head off with a knife, and we shoot everybody else that's with his little group of murdering cutthroats... There's lots of blood, and there's lots of, basically, rape; they all rape the American journalist before we go in and save her. I play a British Special Forces guy going in with an American Special Forces guy, and then we d.p. her, but when we do it, she's [consenting]."

Obviously, this is a retarded film and these are all performers and all consenting: Extreme Associates, who produced the thing, like making films that simulate murder, rape and child-fucking. Also, sex in a walk-in shower room filled with piss. Their latest is evidently called WHITE TRASH PIECES OF SHIT.

A couple of months ago, I viewed a clip from the seamier end of the "gonzo" (near-plotless, amateur-ambience, cheap-and-nasty) market, where a guy lays out a plastic sheet before inducing a woman to gag on his cock, explaining that she could puke on the sheet if she has to. Which she did, which is of course why some bastard sent it to me. But the more of these things you see or read of, the more you realise that American porn now has no relationship to sex. Seriously, when was the last time you laid out sheeting for your girlfriend to throw up over in between blowing you? When was the last time you punched your girlfriend in the back of the head while you were coming in her?

Yes, here we are at the Donkey Punch: smashing your girlfriend in the brains so that she involuntarily tightens and spasms around you while you're dribbling your grey, poisoned little load up into her anal cavity. And DONKEY PUNCH, the movie, where you can see a man violently beat a woman in the side of the head while she begs him to stop. It's been since alleged [1] that the woman had a weak spot in her skull from surgery and the (ring-wearing) man was in fact repeatedly targeting it. One of the producers later says, on camera, "There's no wrong spot to hit a woman." The woman was, of course, contracted and consenting -- although she plainly wasn't acting during the beating. You'd ask yourself why anyone with a weakened skull would sign up for that kind of gig -- but if you did, it'd mean you have no idea how life is lived down in the porn business.

The Donkey Punch was actually made up for a book called "The Complete Asshole's Guide to Handling Chicks." It is, or was, completely fictional. But someone in America said, what's next, what's new? Triple-penetration anal has been done already. Who goes home and says, honey, can you call two of your friends, because I'd really like it if all of you could turn my arsehole into a twelve-inch semen tote tonight?

This is how you know you're living in the future: when the pornography bears no earthly resemblance to sex as even the filthiest of us know it. You may as well be renting DVDs of aliens fucking. And America, as Martin Amis once said, is where they road-test the future.

Anyway. I'm off to saw through my knob with a pair of rusty scissors. If I had any sense, I'd switch on the webcam and put the whole act behind a pay gate...