David Wallace - Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY of Emergency Medicine confirms it: Each year, between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves. With kitchen tools, usually, sometimes wire cutters. In answer to the obvious question, surviving patients most often report that their sexual urges had become a source of intolerable conflict and anxiety. The desire for perfect release and the real-world impossibility of perfect, whenever-you-want-it release had together produced a tension they could no longer stand.

It is to the 30+ testosteronically afflicted males whose cases have been documented in the past two years that your correspondents wish to dedicate this article. And to those tormented souls considering autocastration in 1998, we wish to say: Stop! Stay your hand! Hold off with those kitchen utensils and/or wire cutters! Because we believe we may have found an alternative.

Every spring, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents awards for outstanding achievement in all aspects of mainstream cinema. These are the Academy Awards. Mainstream cinema is a major industry in the United States, and so are the Academy Awards. The AAs notorious commercialism and hypocrisy disgust many of the millions and millions and millions of viewers who tune in during prime time to watch the presentations. It is not a coincidence that the Oscars ceremony is held during TVs Sweeps Week. We pretty much all tune in, despite the grotesquerie of watching an industry congratulate itself on its pretense that its still an art form, of hearing people in $5,000 gowns invoke lush clichs of surprise and humility scripted by publicists, etc. the whole cynical postmodern deal but we all still seem to watch. To care. Even though the hypocrisy hurts, even though opening grosses and marketing strategies are now bigger news than the movies themselves, even though Cannes and Sundance have become nothing more than enterprise zones. But the truth is that theres no more real joy about it all anymore. Worse, there seems to be this enormous unspoken conspiracy where we all pretend that theres still joy. That we think its funny when Bob Dole does a Visa ad and Gorbachev shills for Pizza Hut. That the whole mainstream celebrity culture is rushing to cash in and all the while congratulating itself on pretending not to cash in. Underneath it all, though, we know the whole thing sucks.

Your correspondents humbly offer an alternative.

Every January, the least pretentious city in America hosts the Annual AVN Awards. The AVN stands for Adult Video News, which is sort of the Variety of the US porn industry. This thick, beautifully designed magazine costs $7.95 per issue, is about 80 percent ads, and is clearly targeted at adult-video retailers. Its circulation is appr. 40,000.

Though the sub-line vagaries of entertainment accounting are legendary, it is universally acknowledged that the US adult-film industry, at $3.54 billion in annual sales, rentals, cable charges, and video-masturbation-booth revenues, is an even larger and more efficient moneymaking machine than legitimate mainstream American cinema (the latters annual gross commonly estimated at $22.5 billion). The US adult industry is centered in LAs San Fernando Valley, just over the mountains from Hollywood. 1 Some insiders like to refer to the adult industry as Hollywoods Evil Twin, others as the mainstreams Big Red Son.

It is no accident that Adult Video Newsa slick, expensive periodical whose articles are really more like infomercials and its yearly Awards both came into being in 1982. The early 80s, after all, saw the genesis of VCRs and home-video rentals, which have done for the adult industry pretty much what TV did for pro football.

From the 12/11/97 press release issued by AVN (visitable also at www.avn.com):

The nominations for the 15th Annual AVN Awards were announced today. 2 This years awards show, commemorating AVNs 15th anniversary, celebrates History. [sic] Awards will be presented in a record 106 categories over a two night period. The adult industry released nearly 8,000 adult releases [sic] in 1997, including over 4,000 new releases (non-compilation). AVN reviewed every new release in every categroy [sic] this past year, logging over 30,000 sex scenes. 3 By comparison, last year there were approximately 375 films eligible for the Academy Awards that these voters [sicmeaning different voters from the AVN voters, presumably] were required to see. AVN had to watch more than 10 times the amount of releases in order to develop these nominations [usage and repetition sic, though 4,000 divided by 375 is indeed over 10].

From the acceptance speech of Mr. Tom Byron, Saturday, 10 January 1998, Caesars Forum ballroom, Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino complex, Las Vegas NV, upon winning AVNs 1998 Male Performer of the Year Award (and with no little feeling): I want to thank every beautiful woman I ever put my cock inside. [Laughter, cheers, ovation.]

From the acceptance speech of Ms. Jeanna Fine, ibid., upon winning AVNs 1998 Best Supporting Actress Award for her role in Rob Blacks Miscreants: Jesus, which one is this for, Miscreants? Jesus, thats another one where I read the script and said Oh shit, I am going to go to hell. [Laughter, cheers.] But thats okay, cause all my friendsll be there too! [Huge wave of laughter, cheers, applause.]

From the inter-Award banter of Mr. Bobby Slayton, professional comedian and master of ceremonies for the 1997 AVNAs: I know Im looking good, though, like younger, cause I started using this special Grecian Formula every time I find a gray hair, I fuck my wife in the ass. [No laughter, scattered groans.] Fuck you. Thats a great joke. Fuck you.

Bobby Slayton, a gravelly-voiced Dice Clay knockoff who kept introducing every female performer as the woman Im going to cut my dick off for, and who astounded all the marginal print journalists in attendance with both his unfunniness and his resemblance to every apartment-complex coke dealer wed ever met, is mercifully absent from the 1998 Awards gala. The 98 emcee is one Robert Schimmel, alumnus of In Living Color and a Howard Stern regular. Schimmel looks like a depraved, deeply tan Wallace Shawn and is no less coarse than B. Slayton but a lot better. He does a pantomime of someone attempting intercourse with a Love Doll hes been too lazy to blow up all the way. He contrasts the woeful paucity of his own ejaculate with the concussive orgasms of certain well-known male performers, 4 comparing these mens ejaculations to automatic lawn sprinklers and doing an eerie sonic impression of same. All of 1998s marginal print journalists are together at Table 189 at the very back of the ballroom. Most of these reporters are from the sorts of mens magazines that sit shrinkwrapped behind the cash registers of convenience stores, and they are a worldly and jaded crew indeed, but Schimmel gets a couple of them whose noms de guerre are Harold Hecuba and Dick Filth laughing so uproariously that people at the Anabolic Video table nearby keep looking over in annoyance. At one point during a routine on premature ejaculation, Dick Filth actually chokes on a California roll.

But all this is Saturday night, the main event. And there are a whole lot of festivities preceding Saturdays climax.

The adult industry is vulgar. Would anyone disagree? One of the AVN Awards categories is Best Anal Themed Feature; another is Best Overall Marketing Campaign Company Image. Irresistible, a 1983 winner in several categories, has been spelled Irresistable in