The BB revival

Things are beginning to break down … Uhm, well, kidz, summer’s here! Close enough, in any case — if not by the calendar, then certainly by the thermometer. The dawn of June’s nowhere in sight and already we’re diddling three-digit highs? Has torpidity turned squatter?

Hey, it’s summertime, y’all. The livin’s supposed to be easy! Whatever happened to just kickin’ back, relaxing and watching some decent porn, you ask? Well, lean back, kick your shoes off, whip your cock out, and I’m gonna tell you whatever happened to them good old days.

First up, though, we gotta wade through all the litigiousness disclaimers. After all, who are we to suppose nobody would even think to stoop so low as to actually sue an X-rated film house for causing you mental trauma upon watching, unforewarned, what you’d paid them good money to get to see in the first place?

WARNING! MANY OF THE SEXUAL PRACTICES IN THIS PRODUCTION ARE VIEWED AS UNSAFE AND CAN SPREAD SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES — INCLUDING HIV, THE VIRUS THAT IS BELIEVED TO CAUSE AIDS.

Dear Howard: I’ve a confession here: I’m playing a game with my three gay bro BFFs. But I’m the only straight one. I’ve gotta win this thing, too. It’s a pride thing. Ho’, I really need your help.

Here’s the nut buster: None of my 3 roomies had the stuff it takes to land dick. Not even nasty dick. Street shit — stuff, I mean — not even street stuff would swipe ’em sunny-side of an app. ’Course, then Cora (aka ’Rona) came ridin’ in, and none of ’em laid claim to any steady bae, or maintained any sort of friends with benefits tree. Lickety-split, the bars and baths all closed down. Then didn’t take even a week ’fore they all got sick of havin’ to play grab-ass with just each other.

Point I’m making is, gradually, I just watched the life start fading out. The pandemic gets to now claim me on its victims’ list of another bored survivor converted, unwillingly, embarrassedly, with too much free time on his hands into a raging “hobbyist.” The perky, “Oh?” responses I get upon such admission couldn’t sound more disinterested if rehearsed.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS THIS PRODUCTION TO BE VIEWED BY MINORS!

Porn. Gay porn. Vintage, Pre-Condom Classics. Somehow, I’ve dragged all my friends — even the straight ones — into it now, too. Suddenly, we’re in competition. All of them think I’ve stumbled into the front end of an untapped, potential goldmine — that stuff from the ’60s and ’70s, those obsolete studios like Nova, Catalina, Colt, Red Falcon, and on, and on. Like, somewhere out there is the world’s first post-Vintage Era bareback dick flick — the assignment I’ve been given to track down. I don’t even know where to start. Any navigational tips you care to bless upon me, Howard, to at least get started off in the right direction?
— Attacker Mac

Dear Big Mac 2Pac: Gangsta, you sure you don’t rap for a living? “Cause this old lily-white, milquetoast honkey-jack homo here does not even have one tiny inkling clue what question you’re asking me. Gotta love those gay, late-90s porn intros, though, right … Dawg? Their masterfully-worded credits, exploiting every morality loophole imaginable and even some not, absolving all legality issues any jizz-biz studios’ might face in a daring hostile takeover — re-introducing bareback videos in an era of still untreatable AIDS — just the godless chutzpah!

All those “Pre-Condom Classics” productions you mentioned permanently fizzled out, overnight and forever, on Oct. 3, 1985 — exactly one day after Rock Hudson’s death, thus, ushering in the most boring era in porn movie history, the “Wrapped For Life” years, in which the porn industry, as any sort of profitability investment.

Who’d ever have guessed that porn’s second coming was just around the corner? Its salvation resuscitated from the furthest-extreme, fetish-edge outposts imaginable, flicks that were suddenly poised to upend the entire jizz biz industry altogether.

YOU MUST “AGREE” TO PROCEED.

THE FOREGOING VERBIAGE HAS INFORMED ME OF THE NATURE OF THIS PRODUCTION. THUS, BY CLICKING “I AGREE” BELOW, I FREELY AND INFORMATIVELY WAIVE ANY RIGHTS I MAY HAVE TO BE PROTECTED FROM “OBSCENE” MATERIAL … I FURTHER CERTIFY THAT I AM OVER THE AGE OF CONSENT IN MY COMMUNITY, THAT GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF THE AFOREMENTIONED ACTIVITIES ARE LEGAL IN MY COMMUNITY AND ARE NOT DISTASTEFUL, REPUGNANT OR “OBSCENE” TO MY SENSITIVITIES, AND THAT I DESIRE TO WATCH THESE ACTIVITIES ON THIS DVD IN THE PRIVACY OF MY HOME.

I AGREE.

Taking the honor of being the first-ever porn flick to use the term “bareback” (abbreviated as BB nowadays on hookup profiles) goes to an early Dick Wadd production, first making its emblazoned debut for the ages late last century:

BAREBACK, DW MEDIA, LLC, 1998

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS ADAM (FINLAND). LIFE WAS GOOD IN THE SLING OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS. DAY IN AND DAY OUT, ADAM ROCKED IN HIS SLING. AFTER 23 YEARS, ADAM FELT A VOID … A DEEP AND WIDE VOID THAT ONLY A BIG, SLICK, RAW COCK COULD FILL.

It starred Adam Finland, rapturously rocking cock after cock in his sling hadn’t so much as a jizz-junkie/bug-chaser clue. It would become porn’s ignition switch game-changer. The days of relying upon star magnitude alone to open a horny man’s wallet were over. Overnight, the money shot now meant every shot — and not a condom in sight.

In closure here, let us give a big, celebratory, Silver Jubilee Anniversary shoutout to, 25 years ago this very month, the release of what in its day claimed title to simultaneously being both the world’s most expensive and most profitable film ever to be made. That said, everybody, now close your eyes and drift back to a scene visualizing your standard, Edwardian-era textbook fop, clothed and coiffed in his gilded gay best — one gloved hand clutching at the most expensive diamond ever unearthed, the other white-knuckled on a precariously tilted deck railing. A simmering indignancy hovers ’bout the icy tableau, totally incongruous to First Class passage aboard the world’s most luxurious folly ever, where Cad Cal, his era sinking into extinction verily beneath him, gurgles his pitch-perfect, comic-relief epiphany of the obvious: “Things are beginning to break down.”

—Howard Lewis Russell

Anything in particular you’d like Howard to rail, epiphanic, an impassioned spin upon? Then, all you gotta do is ask him, at AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.