Old Porn Blog #4

“It’s like poppers!”
Video 1 (from Scent of a Fetish)
San Francisco Fetish Factory, 1999/2004

Providence, where I live, is an interesting city. It’s chock-full of
gays (including the mayor), but there’s almost no gay life here at all
unless you like bars, but even those close at one. There’s no gay
bookstores and only one (really lame) gay coffee shop; and that’s
about all. I mention this because it’s all the more shocking that
there’s, like, no gay fetish porn to be found in this city.

I think Scent of A Fetish is literally THE only movie of its kind at
the porn store near my house. I have no clue how it even got there.
It’s meant for guys that get off on each other’s aromas and, oddly,
it’s kind of a really sexy movie. It’s divided into two hour-long
parts, called Video 1 and Video 2, that were released separately by
the San Francisco Fetish Factory in 1999 but released together on DVD
in 2004.

(Unrelated personal story: I almost puked the one time he ever slept
with somebody into stinks. He showed up at my house wearing a hat that
said ‘HAIRY’, and he was, in fact, one of the hairiest people I’ve
ever seen. Then he proceeded to rub his socks in his armpits and sniff
them while I tried really hard not to pay attention. It was horrible,
and even listening to Dilinger Escape Plan’s Miss Machine album didn’t
help distract me from my awful circumstance. Okay, I just had to get
that out.)

Anyway, I guess Frank Parker is a San Francisco fetish star; he’s kind
of handsome in a disarmingly down-to-earth way, although he has one of
those nasty goatees that the dirty gays always seem to like having. He
looks like the kind of guy it’d be fun to grab a beer with. The first
half of Video 1 is all about him; an anonymous guy with a camera and
gropy hands interviews Parker in the basement of his apartment
building. He’s wearing a t-shirt that he’s had on for days, and he
tells us he’s about to mail it to somebody for some extra money. He
seems really sincere about it, mentioning that he includes a
handwritten note with each order letting the guys know what the
shirt’s been through.

The camera lingers over his body for a long time. It’s a whole
half-hour before he whacks off and jizzes on the shirt, so you get to
know more or less every inch of his body–even the dragon tattoo on
his chest that he says he got after watching Dragonheart.

As soon as he’s done, he stuffs the shirt in an envelope (no note,
though), and then we meet a new guy, who doesn’t act like he’s aware
that there’s even a camera in the room. He’s on his bed and opens the
envelope with Parker’s shirt in it. Then he jerks off with theshirt in
his face, uninterrupted, for half an hour. Half an hour.

The guy is cute enough, but what I really like is how the movie is
really committed to showing every last detail. I don’t know if I’m
reading too much into it, but it seems pretty Warholian. If sex can be
boring, as we all know it can, then why can’t boredom also be sexy?
Throw in some unexpected New Wave-y jump cuts and you’ve got yourself
a movie!

That’s Video 1 in its entirety. Video 2, the sequel, starts out with a
shot of Parker and the other guy making out. Parker, I’m glad to see,
has ditched the nasty goatee. And–that’s all I know, unfortunately.
The DVD froze at that point and I couldn’t skip ahead. So yes–the
only gay fetish movie in the entire video store freezes in the middle.

(And can I just say, all these years on, that I still don’t see what
the big woo about DVDs is? Aside from bonus features which are almost
always boring and an improved quality that isn’t really visible on
mosy TVs, they basically jsut scratch easily and skip a lot. There, I
said it. DVDs are dumb, and I’m not looking forward to this hd-dvd or
BluRay thing, either, because I bet those’ll just be even dumber.)

Anyway, I might try to track down Video 2 somewhere else. If you get
off on slowness (which, apparently, I do), then this is the perfect
movie for you.