Ordinary People

Even before Attorney General Edwin Meese's famous porn commission had published a single word, Meese warned that pornography was "available at home to anyone, regardless of age, at the mere touch of a button." He added, "We are dealing with a general tendency that is pervading our entire culture, including the culture known to very young children." His commission has since reinforced his early prejudices about the availability of erotic material. Still, despite all the rhetoric, we're a country of individuals. The best recent example of that was the Maine referendum in which voters defeated by a margin of 72 percent to 28 percent a proposition that would make selling or promoting obscene material a criminal offense. We wanted to get behind the politics and prejudice and find out what is really going on in the privacy of American homes. According to Lester Baker, president of the Adult Film Association of America, 65,000,000 Americans rented or purchased X-rated video cassettes in 1984. Given that figure, we decided to focus our inquiry into the home use of X-rated movies not on fast-lane New York or L.A. but on the Midwest, where God-fearing, hard-working average citizens presumably reside and go quietly about their business. Are these "normal" Middle Americans responsible, sane viewers, or do they turn into violent werewolves at the touch of the VCR button, as Meese and company would have us believe?

We picked Bellwood, just outside Chicago, found the town's full-service video store and hung out there one weekend to see for ourselves just what the VCR-equipped households of America were screening--and why.

A hard rain is making a mud ditch of Mannheim Road, the main drag of the middle-class, ethnically mixed Chicago suburb known as Bellwood. And it's seven o'clock on a Friday night, the end of another long week for Bellwood's industrious citizens--all in all, a night to stay in. But Claudia Degan, a 38-year-old housewife, and her husband, Robert, 39, a factory supervisor, are negotiating their 1985 Buick down flooded Mannheim to Precision Video & Audio. (We have changed names and identifying details, with the exception of those of Precision Video's owners.) There's one more errand before settling in for the night. They're about to rent their first X-rated movie.

Now they're standing in front of a glass case of video tapes, the most secluded of three rows of cases separated by aisles. As they study the titles on the cassette boxes displayed behind the glass, Claudia is giggling and Robert is grinning as wide as a man can grin without giggling himself.

"My son's gone off to Baltimore to visit his wife's parents," explains Robert, "and he said we could borrow his VCR for the weekend. When he dropped it off, I was lying on the couch, watching Knight Rider. I'd come home from work feeling a little sick, like I was getting a cold. But then Claudia said, 'Let's go rent a real sexy movie.' I felt fine after that." As soon as their son pulled out of their driveway, they were off to Precision. They don't have much time; in a reverse of Tom Cruise's situation in Risky Business, they've got to be done with the "watching and whatever" before their teenaged daughter gets home from a party.

"We're going to rent two movies, a scary one for her and a dirty one for us, and we'll hide ours when she gets home and tell her we rented only one," says Claudia. "We don't really need any movie for good sex. We've been married 21 years and we've raised three children and we still like to do it a lot. But I want to try one of these movies. Maybe it will be exciting."

Claudia's searching the display cases for The Little French Maid: "My girlfriend told me about it. She said it had some cute guys." But they can't find the film, and the store has no listing of it. Eager to get home--it's already 7:30--they ask Dan, a salesperson, to recommend something. He gives them Sex World ("It's good for beginners," he says). The couple pay in cash for the rental and promise to report their reactions the next day, when they return the tapes. "Unless we're still in bed," Claudia says, ogling her husband.

Eight P.M.: Maureen Schuyler, 26, a stylish woman who works as a medical secretary, asks Sid, one of Precision's owners, to recommend a porn movie. She and her husband, Ralph, 27, a foreman at a steel company, are having friends over. Maureen and Ralph have been renting X-rated films once a week, whether for company or for themselves, ever since Ralph suggested it "out of curiosity" a couple of years ago, when they purchased their VCR. "Before that, we'd watch The Playboy Channel," Maureen explains. "It doesn't sound nice to say we see them just for the purpose of sex, but that's what they're for when we're alone. We've been married nine years, and after a while, you need a little inspiration."

Later, Ralph tells me that he selected the first film out of a catalog when he recognized the names of actors he'd read about in men's magazines. "I usually decide when we'll watch one," he says, "but sometimes Maureen will push for it. That's a turn-on for me--that she's the one who suggests it." Ralph says the films have been "occasionally boring but pretty educational. I've learned about technique, and it's given me ideas about what women might like. We'll be watching some scene and I'll say to Maureen, 'Is that something you want me to do?' and if she says yes, we'll try it."

When they have a tape and they're not having friends over, Maureen and Ralph wait until their two small children are asleep, then Maureen will put on some "nice lingerie" and they'll head down to the basement family room, where the VCR is set up in front of the sofa. They'll "create an environment--light some candles, have a glass of wine," says Maureen, and settle in on the sofa to watch. They fast-forward until they get to a good scene, and "soon," she says, "we start to make love right there on the couch. We never bother to go up to the bedroom."

Maureen leaves the store with two films: something for the kids and Lustfully Seeking Susan for the grownups.

•

The sale and rental of X-rated movies is a small fraction of Precision Video's business. The 20,000-square-foot store stocks all manner of electronic entertainment equipment and accessories, from the basic to the wholly high-tech. Despite the vastness of selection and space, Precision has the feel of a friendly neighborhood hangout. On weekends, babies in Snuglies sleep in strollers and teenagers check out albums as well as one another while their parents ponder major purchases. On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, a Precision employee keeps an old-fashioned popcorn wagon spewing fragrant kernels at the store's entrance, then scoops them into paper bags and gives them out to customers. Huge framed posters of Rambo and Indiana Jones hang overhead as you walk through the door; Springsteen croons My Hometown from the CD player on display at the front counter.

Sid Radomski is in charge of video tapes and accessories; the equipment is her husband, George's, territory. She is careful to keep the adult movies at a discreet physical and emotional distance from the overall GP ambience of the store. She even flicks off a tape of Trading Places playing on the VCR near one of the front cash registers when Jamie Lee Curtis looks as if she's about to take off her shirt and flicks the monitor back on only when the potentially offensive scene is over. "You don't want to make people upset with you, so I keep the X films in a separate aisle that doesn't face anything. People shouldn't just stumble upon dirty pictures while shopping for a stereo with their kids." She hasn't always been so discreet: In 1980, at another location, the adult films were housed on two open shelves in front of the store. A female customer objected to their prominent placement and complained to the police, who confiscated $40,000 worth of merchandise. Although Precision won back the merchandise in court, it's not an experience Sid cares to go through again.

Sid, the mother of three sons, is a hefty, hustling 39-year-old blonde who works in the store seven days a week. She deals cautiously but jovially with customers in the selection of X-rated films. "People come to us for recommendations, and if they're new to porn movies, we have to win their trust and confidence. These people are conservative. You don't want to give them something they can't handle, or they'll never come back. So the first time, you give them something with lots of variety but nothing specialized or kinky, and then, when they come in to return it, you ask them questions to find out what they liked or didn't like, which gives you guidelines for what to try out on them next. Whether they're single or married, male or female, most of them want straight sex, no animals, no violence, nothing like that. They may know the names of stars they like, which helps with the selection, but no one remembers titles; people say, 'What have you got in Marilyn Chambers?' The women are more knowledgeable than the men and tend to be more specific about what they want."

The staff scan tapes with which they're not familiar on fast forward to check content so that a customer looking for "regular" stuff doesn't unwittingly wind up with hard-core S/M or worse. "We never recommend weirdo stuff unless someone specifically asks for that or we know the customer well," Sid says.

•

Saturday morning, 9:30: Stan Woodie, the affable 37-year-old cabby who's driving me to Precision, wears a baseball cap and says "All righty" a lot. Divorced a year ago, he "dates around," especially on Saturday and Sunday nights, because he can get to work late on Sunday and Monday mornings. He rents at least one porn (continued on page 159) Ordinary People (continued from page 114) tape a week from Precision, "just to have on hand for a hot one.

"Some girls, you don't mention it to them, even after you've slept with them, because they think the movies are anti-women. But others, you can't hold them back once you've got a good one in the machine. There's this one, Fire Storm. There's a scene where this girl has three men, and it's made every woman who's seen it with me go crazy. I try to have that one around all the time, and I know exactly where the scene is. I fast-forward as if I'm just fooling around. I don't let on that I know what I'm looking for."

Stan has learned through experience to preview the films before trying them out on dates. "Certain things turn them off immediately, like obnoxious men with big cigars or too many lesbian scenes or, especially, scenes where the woman in the movie doesn't like what's happening to her. Anything like that and the mood is ruined and you won't get laid, even if she started out being real excited at the idea of watching a film." Stan is careful to "have three or four tapes stacked next to the VCR, and only one of them is X-rated. The others are just normal movies, so it looks like a natural assortment of things." The VCR is purposely not in the bedroom: "It's all part of the natural effect I try to get. You're a lot more likely to get a girl to say 'Sure' to a porn film if she's sitting on the living-room couch. It doesn't seem as obvious as if you were in a bedroom." Stan usually pops the question this way: "Ever seen one of these movies? My sister and brother-in-law watch them all the time, and she said this was a really good one." Stan, of course, has no sister.

Eleven A.M.: Porn films have long been a part of Paul Leone's recreational-activities roster. Now a strapping 42-year-old ex--varsity football player, he works variously as an account executive, a music producer and a photographer. He and his first wife, whom he married at 18, used to watch eight-millimeter stag films together. Now he's on the sixth year of marriage to his second wife, Ann, 32; they live with their Shih Tzu, Avedon (named for Paul's idol, the fashion photographer), in nearby Oak Park.

Five years ago, Paul bought a VCR and suggested to Ann that they rent X-rated movies. "She rooted me on but insisted I would have to be in charge of going out and getting them."

Ann also makes Paul pick up batteries for her vibrator, as well as for her girlfriends'. "I feel silly going into stores asking for such things," Ann says later. "I don't want to put myself in a situation where I'm Little Miss Feminine going through a rack of dirty films, with guys making dirty jokes. It even embarrasses me to be in the grocery store with Paul, who has a loud voice, when he asks me, 'Honey, do we have this Playboy at home?'"

The Leones, who watch porn films three times a week, prefer to see "straight stuff and threesomes with two girls and one guy." The latter, Paul explains, is a mutual fantasy that every once in a while they contemplate carrying out in real life; but as yet, they've always "chickened out." On X-rated nights, they follow a ritual: "First we gotta relax. We're both in sales [Ann, an ex-model, sells cosmetics in a fashionable department store], and it can get pretty treacherous out there," says Paul. "Ann likes to unwind with a joint and one of her favorite fashion magazines, Vogue or Mademoiselle. I'll have a couple of Scotches and a copy of Playboy or Penthouse. After an hour or so, I'll say, 'Hey, I rented a new movie,' and she'll tell me, 'Great; put it on.' I'd watch them any time, but she has to be in the mood."

Once the film is on, "I get hornier sooner than he does," says Ann. "We start playing with each other about 20 minutes into it, and we never get through the whole film--though if we're both really exhausted from work that day, we may get lazy and use the vibrator.

"Paul's learned stuff, too. At first, he kept bringing home John Holmes movies just because he's so big, but I explained that it's the whole person who gets to me. I'm not just into a size thing. Holmes is too skinny, and I don't like his face; it always looks the same. If I saw that guy in a bar somewhere, I wouldn't look twice. Any creep on the street can stick a big one into a woman, but that's not what does it. It's the way he wraps his arms around you, the way he makes it special, his voice, how much passion he shows. I'll take John Leslie or Jamie Gillis over Holmes any day."

Paul estimates that 80 percent of their lovemaking is accompanied by a porn movie. "It was good before," says Ann, "and now it's even better. You find yourself getting more passionate from the sights and sounds of people on the screen." Ann and Paul never have friends over to watch X films. "There's not a couple I know that I'd be comfortable watching a dirty movie with. It's too intimate," Ann says.

One of the couple's favorite films to date is The History of Blue Movies. "I loved it," Ann says, "because it wasn't fake; it was actual footage of real people, and it all seemed so innocent. In the early scenes, people wore bloomers and their hair in buns, and they were fucking and it looked really funny but also really erotic.... There was a scene in the Sixties with a woman just talking about what turns her on. She's wearing that heavy blue eye shadow of that era and a hippie long skirt, and she's got long hair, and her legs are spread and she's talking dirty and playing with herself. There was another scene that showed a little struggle, a woman who didn't want to go down on this guy, and all her emotions were written on her face. Then another woman comes in and starts going down on the guy, and the first girl gets jealous and pushes the second one off and does it herself. It was exciting, because it could happen to you in real life. You don't want to do it, maybe, but you like the guy and some other girl comes in and you're damned if you're going to let her do it instead of you."

Noon: Tim Perry, 36, and wife Susie, 29, are from Moline, Illinois, a few hours from Bellwood. They had business to do in Chicago and, on their way back, they stopped at Precision, as they often do, to check out the porn selection. "Where we live, there's not too much choice," says Tim. Both come from "very repressed" Midwestern Protestant backgrounds, and one of the reasons they enjoy watching porn films a couple of times a month is that "seeing people who like having sex makes me realize that it's good," says Tim. "I'm always trying to get over what I was taught, that sex is dirty if it gives you pleasure."

They started watching porn at the beginning of their five-year marriage, at Tim's instigation. They search for films that will accommodate their differing fantasies: Susie can't get enough of watching "blond, blue-eyed guys" (Tim has dark hair and dark eyes), while Tim likes to see "busty women" (Susie is not well endowed). Still, "what it boils down to is good-looking people enjoying life and sex, whether or not it's all an act. It gives me a feeling of freedom," says Tim.

"I can shut off the voice in my head that says you're condemned to hell if you enjoy it for one minute," adds Susie.

Tim feels that it's OK to watch porn films with a woman as long as you're married to her, "but if you were just dating someone, it would be too threatening. She would think that was all you wanted."

Both Perrys are fascinated by the people who act in the films. They're curious about the players' double life. "Do they go home to a husband or wife; and if they do, aren't they too tired to have sex with them?" Susie wonders.

Tim can't get over the fact that "beautiful, desirable women do it for a living. I'd like to know their lifestyle and how they were brought up. To know that they're clean, intelligent, interesting people--it's like knowing where the universe ends."

One-thirty P.M.: Carl Norris, 36, has a sad air and a crisp, close haircut. He has come to Precision to rent his monthly porn tape. Carl hasn't had a woman in a long time, though he'd like to for the companionship as well as the sex. But he's been wiped out emotionally and sexually since his last girlfriend betrayed him with a friend of his and left him, three years ago. "It doesn't matter what film I get here," Carl says. "I do it only to see if my equipment's still working."

Two P.M.: Phillip King, a 39-year-old physician, is dressed, in a blazer and slacks, more formally than the rest of Precision's Saturday clientele. He and his wife, Molly, a psychiatric nurse, saw their first porn film together while still on college--"In those days, they were called art films."

Married 17 years, they consider themselves discerning consumers who view porn films for "entertainment, not stimulation. We've been to nudist camps and made love all over the house, but an X film hasn't had anything to do with that." If regular TV programing is "particularly mediocre on a given day and we want a change of pace," Phillip may flick on a porn film on his VCR, located in the basement rec room. Sometimes, the film will provide the focal point of an evening with friends--"a sort of modern substitute for playing bridge."

Phillip is usually the one who selects the films at Precision, because Molly "would be too embarrassed to do it." As a black man, he'd like to see "more regular black folk--I'm tired of seeing Caucasian couples banging away, or else it's some black stud, like Johnny Keyes, screwing some frail white chick, as frail as possible, since most of these films are made for the sexual fantasies of middle-class white males."

Phillip often comes in to Precision with his teenaged son, and although he doesn't attempt to hide the type of cassette he's renting, he says he "wouldn't feel right about watching one of these movies with my son. But he doesn't seem interested, anyway. I worry that I may have a real weirdo on my hands, because all he wants to see on the VCR is violence. Maybe he should be looking at sex instead."

Two forty-five P.M.: Maggie Leary, 30, and Donna Pines, 32, are hunting for the "perfect porn movie" for an all-girls Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow, their boyfriends are going to a football game with the husband of their friend Jennifer. It was Jennifer's idea to have them rent a film and take it to her place--she's the one with the VCR. The plan, says Maggie, is to drink screwdrivers, "get high and goof on these things, then jump on our boyfriends' bones when they get back from their game. The guys think it's a great idea."

Jennifer, the only one of the trio who is not an X-rated-movie virgin, can't be at Precision, because she works Saturdays as a restaurant hostess, but she's made the selections in absentia. "Jenny says there's usually too many women in these movies, so the best ones to get with lots of men are The Dancers, which is about male strippers, and a new one called Stud Hunters, which is about a woman photographer who photographs naked men," says Maggie. But when they get to the glass case, they get confused.

"Some of the pictures look great. That one over there looks really good, in fact," Donna says, pointing to Raw Talent.

"Let's stick to what Jenny said," Maggie insists. "Remember, she told us the pictures lie, and if we go by them, we'll end up with something stupid or with just women." They are still staring into the case 15 minutes later.

Three-thirty P.M.: Theresa Morgon, 29, an assistant bank manager and the mother of a four-year-old daughter, is rocking back and forth in her red-laced blue tennis shoes in front of the X-rated case. She's finishing up a Saturday afternoon of errands, and Precision is her last stop. She'll get a kiddie film for her daughter and a porn film for herself and her husband, John, 32, who works in the same bank as she does. "Usually, we come in together to select these things once a week, but he's busy today," she says. Once, they made a bad choice--"something with animals in it; we turned it off right away"--but other than that, "it's been a good thing for us, especially me."

Theresa explains, "I never really saw why people like sex so much. I'm not too relaxed with it. It embarrasses me. But there's something about these movies, the good ones, that helps me loosen up. I pretend to be the girl in the movie, as long as the girl is Marilyn Chambers or Seka."

"Terry never refuses me sexually," John says later, "but it's hard to be making love to someone who wishes she were doing something else. With the right movie, she's able to lose her hang-ups a little. I was surprised she would even watch one, the first time, but I think she really wants to want sex, and that's why she tried it. It was her idea. It was the day we got our VCR, last summer, and she said she wanted to see what a sex movie was like."

Their first movie was Behind the Green Door, the Marilyn Chambers classic of the early Seventies, involving a languorous kidnaping, a big black stud and lots of priapic men lowered on trapezes for Chambers' consumption. According to Sid, the store doesn't recommend Door to neophytes, because "it's a little rough for first-timers," but Terry had a friend who'd seen it in a theater and liked it. The Morgons have rented it three times.

John likes scenes of mutual oral sex, while Theresa's favorite is to see women on top of men. "Those are the most common scenes in these movies, so we both get juiced," notes John. Do they play copycat? "Nah. It's still straight missionary for us. I don't like her to be on top, and she doesn't like any kind of oral sex."

Five P.M.: Claudia and Robert arrive to return Sex World before the store closes at six. "We really liked it." Claudia is clearly enthusiastic. "It put us in the mood to make love."

"Yeah," agrees Robert, "but we were just about to start when our daughter came home early and we had to hide the tape. It was one night when we hoped she'd miss her curfew, but she's such a good girl. And now we have to give back the VCR."

Sex World definitely won't be the last adult film for Robert and Claudia. "We made a decision to get a VCR for the whole family this Christmas instead of presents for each person," says Robert.

"Santa's coming," says Claudia.

A Survey from the Heartland

the results of our own x-rated exit poll

Most scientific research on people who watch X-rated movies takes place in labs. People are hooked up to machines that measure various responses from arousal to discomfort. Well, 99.9 percent of the millions of men and women who rent X-rated movies every year are watching them at home, hooked up only to their erotic impulses and their curiosity.

When Susan Squire spent the weekend at Precision Video & Audio in Bellwood, Illinois, talking with people who rent X-rated movies, we also left a one-page questionnaire with the owners to give out to anyone who wanted to respond. We got back 109--77 from men and 32 from women.

The answers were revealing. Erotic films are clearly a couples' activity: 68 percent of the men and 59 percent of the women who rented tapes said they were married. Whatever their marital status, almost no respondents said they watched the films alone: 57 percent of the men and 50 percent of the women said they watched with a spouse; 13 percent of the men and 22 percent of the women watched with their lovers.

Why do we watch X-rated movies? To develop callous attitudes? Sorry, no: 69 percent of the men and 59 percent of the women said that they watched to become sexually stimulated, which probably explains the answers to the question we naturally asked next. About half of the men and women said that watching such movies always led to sex, and almost as many said it usually led to sex.

We wondered if the movies ever produced negative reactions. Surprisingly, 48 percent of the men said they had felt denigrated by adult films, compared with 19 percent of the women. About half of the women said that they had felt disgusted or depressed. As for the theory that porn leads to hostility or violence, only two percent of the men said they had ever felt hostile after seeing an X-rated movie, and not one man said he had been violent (one woman, however, admitted to violence).

The Reverend Donald Wildmon likes to say that erotic movies are harmful to relationships. The people who actually use them disagree: The overwhelming majority of men and women said that those films are not harmful.

Feminists often charge that porn films present an unrealistic view of sex. Not according to the people who watch them: 57 percent of the men and 56 percent of the women said the films were realistic. In an odd turnaround, though, 56 percent of the women and 48 percent of the men also admitted that films might create unrealistic expectations of sex--but until you try what you see, you don't know whether or not it's unrealistic.

In general, the good news is that erotic films work. Two questions centered on spreading the news. And here an odd difference between the sexes emerged.

Nice girls don't--tell, that is. Almost 87 percent of the men said their friends knew they watched X-rated cassettes. Only 59 percent of the women had told friends. About 84 percent of the men said they did not feel guilty about watching X-rated cassettes; only 59 percent of the women made that claim. This is private entertainment.

And sexual stereotypes emerged in one other area of questioning. Women have always been the gatekeepers of sex, men the initiators--in other words, he says please and she says yes. A large minority of the people we surveyed (48 percent of the men and 38 percent of the women) said it was the man who decided to watch the film and chose which film to watch. However, almost a third of the women said the decision was the woman's, and 28 percent said it was mutual. The women may have thought that the decision was theirs, but 44 percent of the men said it was mutual. Only five percent of the men said the women decided. We can see a lot of arguments starting out there in video land.

Some critics have said that porn movies are a symptom of sexual distress, that they reflect a cultural malaise, a loss of desire.

Nonsense. Almost 84 percent of the men and 69 percent of the women who rented tapes said they were satisfied with their sex lives, and since 58 percent of the men and 40 percent of the women are making love more than once a week, we can see why.

Are X-rated cassettes addictive? Nineteen percent of the women and 13 percent of the men said they watched every day, which means that erotica is slightly less habit-forming than soap operas. More than half of the men and 28 percent of the women indulge weekly; 34 percent of the women and 23 percent of the men settle for a monthly night in.

Ordinary pleasures aren't always dull.