experience and imagination to make those details believable, accurate and universal. In my porn fiction I strive to inform and entertain readers but no matter what I must always get them off. The best erotic fiction not only keeps readers turning pages, it makes their fingers sticky after they’ve put the book down. About eighteen months ago while perusing the offerings on Xvideos.com I happened upon a short animated video, one unlike any I had ever seen before. Its animation, color, and score were reminiscent of old Hanna-Barbara cartoons, early versions of The Flintstones, The Yogi Bear Show, Jonny Quest and The Huckleberry Hound Show. The video, alternatively titled Sophomores of ’64 and School Fantasy, spotlights the randy exploits of Coach Ben, a blond beefy-butt power bottom who lies on his back, gleefully spreads his hairy legs and offers his manpussy to three wiry high school students and a fellow faculty member in his office just off the boys locker room. The individual credited with making this video calls himself Animan. The sex in this as in all of Animan’s films is grounded in reality so that viewers can synesthetically experience what they see on screen, yet at a certain point the balance between reality and fantasy tips and the sex acts and scenarios defy plausibility. But that is what makes these cartoons so appealing: besides the enticing bodies and sex acts we see, we are also turned on by the fact that these improbable or impossible scenarios take place. Even live action pornography is limited by the corporeality of the real world. Animated porn, however, allows its creator to toss verisimilitude out the window. Viewers can still derive pleasure from what they see because while the characters may defy natural law they are still engaged in sex acts that take place in the real world. Most of us who create pornographic art maintain alternate lives and careers in the buttoned-up real world, and as such the maker of these cartoons calls himself Animan. Anyone interested in contacting him and ordering his films—which, for seven dollars a DVD are quite economical—will learn his name, but I will continue to protect his identity and refer to him as Animan in this essay. After finding Animan’s blog a year ago I decided to send him the following email: I’ve spent the entire weekend watching and rewatching all of your films on Gaytube. I stumbled upon School Fantasy on a porn site several months ago and was both entertained and aroused by Coach Ben’s nasty exploits. I’d been trying to find more of your films ever since and on Friday, to my great 42 RFD 156 Winter 2013
surprise, I found Twist Party online. It is my favorite of all your films, not only because of its orgasminducing, manic sex scenes that defy reality but also because of its retro setting, colorful animation and its take on sex. Your characters inhabit a world in which same-sex sex holds no stigma or shame and is devoid of political complications, and I think that’s what so many of your fans respond to. So much of gay porn is rough, mired in darkness and danger. Gay porn in 2012—populated by tattooed, steroid injected men who seem more concerned with looking good on camera and earning a paycheck— lacks the free spirited nature of your films. Each of your films exudes tremendous joy; watching them puts me in a very happy mood and a very horny mood. While 2012 porn stars busy themselves trying to be as gruff, aloof and masculine as possible, your characters, regardless of their size or station in life, delight in their sexuality and are genuinely secure in their masculinity. If all porn could be like your films I think there would be a distinct change in the . . . sexual attitudes of Western gay men. Animan was so flattered he decided to post the letter on his blog. From what I have surmised through our limited email chats and the tone of his blog posts, Animan strikes me as a man with a great deal of talent for drawing and animation who, like me, simply wants to create erotic art in his spare time. I know that in many of my erotic short stories I live out sexual fantasies that I cannot act upon in real life. I can only assume Animan is doing the same. Pornographic art is a labor of love in every sense. Writers, artists and sex workers who craft art that delves into the erotic possess a type of mettle peers outside the realm of eroticism can never know. Sex art amplifies the risk every artist assumes yet crafting it situates sex as the nexus for multiple cultural and political arguments to take place and strengthens non-porn artistic endeavors. Moralists scorn it and libertines champion it but between these opposing views the reality is pornography, when done well, is a legitimate form of art and should be taken seriously. Pornography serves as the only sexual outlet for untold numbers of individuals, especially gay men, closeted, single or married. Unlike straight men, who have more options and opportunities to fulfill their sexual desires, the number of men who engage in sex with other men is greatly limited, and if a gay man has a desire for a certain type of man or a certain fetish, his number of available partners diminishes further. Prudes, fanatics and moral crusaders that rail against pornography fail to understand this.