"It seems the artists these days are not who you think."

In preparation for the next few days of switched roles, I decided that I would rent some "educational" videos to get a bit more comfortable with things. The beauty about these videos, I've realized, is not so much the skills that they teach but that they instill confidence by reinforcing what I already know (I have been reading trashy novels since I was 12, after all).

Last night it was "Nina Hartley's Guide to Sensual Domination" and "Talk Dirty to Me." True to form of the "educational" sex video, there is education interspersed with sex. But these videos were two very different experiences.

Nina Hartley is a pretty well-known porn star/sex educator around here. At UC-Berkeley, I took an undergraduate survey course on controversial topics in health and medicine and she was a guest lecturer. I'm not exactly sure what was controversial about what she said (she did not demonstrate that particular day), but there it is. Her video featured another woman, who I can only imagine is also a well-known porn star. She certainly had the breasts for it. The sex scenes were pretty stereotypical porn with beautiful people having sex - the men somehow managing to keep an erection for a heroic amount of time while the women are driven to multiple orgasms.

The other video was a production of SIR Productions. I believe they are a local Bay Area production company. These are not porn-star beautiful people who are staging scenes in very un-porn ways. Over half of the sex scenes involved lesbian couples, and the advice was given with humor - there were even outtakes of the educational portion.

It was an eye-opening experience to find that the second video was so much hotter. Here were people who were having sex, pretty much as most people are wont to do. I could easily imagine myself in one of those scenes. In the first video, I kept getting distracted by the oversized breasts, the fake moaning throughout, and the thought that the only way I could achieve sex in a couple of those positions is if I spent most of the rest of my life on a stair master (I really am in awe of how strong that one woman's thighs must be as she spent most of her scenes in a low squat over her man...which if she was dominating him, why was she doing most of the work?) The people in the SIR production scenes weren't overly loud or acrobatic, but they were obviously enjoying each other. Much hotter, in my opinion.

Okay, then. I have a mailing to fold, stuff and stamp. Hmmm...after talking about porn, even that sentence sounds a little dirty.