What Happens On A Gay Porn Set

Part 4

In this series, we’re going to explore what happens on a gay porn set with a special emphasis on what we can learn from it in our own sex lives.

How They Film

A pious, religious man checks into a hotel and says, “I hope the porn channel in my room is disabled.” The front desk clerk replies, “No, it’s regular porn, you sick bastard.”

No matter what kind of porn you ask for at a hotel—or search for in your browser—chances are they share the same production and performance dynamics. Here are a few we discovered in our research.

A Minute Takes An Hour To Shoot

Most gay porn videos go from eye glance to anal penetration in less than ninety seconds, but porn stars never show up to a shoot and start banging instantaneously.

It typically takes between five and eight hours to shoot a typical screwing scene.  Even a simple blowjob scene takes an average of about two hours to film. One famous director put it this way: “There’s no formula.  It really just varies from director to director.  But on average, I would say that it could probably take 4-6 hours to produce 30 minutes of usable tape.”

This poses a big problem for the top. How do you keep erect for that long when the Viagra wears off? It’s no picnic for the bottom either. He’s got to keep his starfish winking for hours and hours at a time.

Your favorite porn scenes may seem spontaneous and intense, but they’re not. Staged to death, they take an eternity to shoot.

Filming Out Of Order

On-screen you might see oral seamlessly transitioning into anal, but it never happens that way. Sequencing happens in the editing bay, not on the set. For example, it isn’t unusual for a foreplay scene to be shot after everyone’s ejaculated.

The tried-and-true formula of porn – a little bit of kissing leading to a lot of sucking leading to hardcore penetration – is made possible through the magic of editing. Rarely is there a natural transition from one activity to another.

Once the banging starts, there are frequent time-outs for position changes, lighting, and sound correction—even the odd pubic hair stuck on the camera lens. Every two-minute clip of different positions – riding, doggie, missionary – can take at least an hour to shoot.

This, of course, poses some continuity issues. If you’re an avid porn viewer, I’m sure you’ve caught “continuity errors” like seeing the top sporting boots he wasn’t wearing ten seconds ago.

Lastly, a top rarely pulls out and delivers the money shot without a fair amount of time in unseen masturbating. Making it appear otherwise is how video editors make their money.

Straight Guys In Gay Porn

One of the most shocking aspects of the gay porn industry is the number of straight performers in it.  It’s hard to quantify just how many because the number depends on whom you ask. There is a wide discrepancy in estimates but of the porn industry folks we interviewed, it ranged from as low as 20% to as high as 50%.

Some gay performers don’t think they’re all that hetero.  One told us, “No, if those guys are there, they’re not really straight.  They’re turned on by the cameras. It’s kind of secretive and dangerous. It’s like they’re getting away with something that they’re not supposed to be doing.”

Still, most industry folks believe there are plenty of hetero performers in gay porn.  Which brings us to the question of how straight guys get hard for their gay partners. “They would prepare the same way as any other guy would prepare,” one gay performer told us.  “They use a lot of Viagra! But as straight guys, they’re more focused on the money, how much money are they going to make rather than will this feel good. They usually have their girlfriend fluff them or have straight porn available so they can stay erect.”

Wax, Wax, Baby

Some studios require, as a standard of performance, to wax your anus.  This is changing somewhat as natural hair is beginning to find some popularity.  Here’s how one performer put it, “If I bottom for a scene, I wax.  I would never shoot a scene if I waxed that day, but I would bottom if I had waxed within seven days of the day that I waxed.  I would have a groomer wax. The personal groomer is from the spa, the same guy who does my manicures. It’s hard to find somebody though at a legal establishment who is willing to do that kind of personal service at a reasonable cost.”

Yes, waxing can be a rip-off.

And The Academy Award Goes To…

Bottoms are the only real actors on a porn shoot, and often their work is worthy of an Oscar. The porn star bottom has to make viewers feel like they’re engulfed in the flames of sexual ecstasy—even though they’ve often taken more pleasurable shits than the banging they’re experiencing on set.

That also applies to the times you see a bottom writhing in rapy pain. He’s acting.

Hung or Photoshopped Hung?

The one thing you don’t want your boyfriend to do when you’re both watching porn is to elbow you, point, and say, “Now, that’s a cock!”

But it turns out that the cock he’s pointing to may not be very big. Not everyone’s hung in porn. It just looks like they are. As we’ve all learned from trading dic pics on hookup apps, creative camera work can make a daffodil look like the trunk of a palm tree. It’s no different with porn.

Interestingly, directors also heavily edit performers that are hung like bison. That’s because some angles can make the big look small. This is when the porn director becomes a physical artist, figuring out how a cocked leg or hyper-pronounced back arch can further enhance the endowment of the well-endowed.

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How To Cum More And Shoot Further Part 8

The Harder You Get The Further You’ll Go.

The more blood that rushes to your penis the further you’ll cum. This chapter will show you some neat tricks that will get your dick harder than a frozen turkey.

In healthy men, desire and blood flow go hand in hand. Well, there are times when the blood doesn’t follow the desire. Often it’s a lifestyle choice that’s getting in the way. Smoking, for example. It narrows the blood vessels so that eventually your erections don’t get as hard. The single best way for a smoker to get harder hard-ons is to STOP SMOKING.

The same thing goes for heavy drinkers. Alcohol mugs libidos. It sneaks up behind you, knocks you to the ground and steals your valuables. It relieves you of your libido and absconds with your performance. Alcohol metabolizes in the liver, which is also responsible for metabolizing testosterone, a crucial sex hormone. Too much liquor and your liver may start converting your testosterone to estrogen, contributing to a loss of sex drive. Alcohol also dulls the nerves that transmit sensations and decreases the body’s ability to pump blood around the genitals, which is critical to sexual functioning.

True, alcohol has wonderful thigh-splitting properties for the partner you’re hawking on. But like any tool you put in your hand, you have to know how to use it. For the average 150 lbs. man, 3 1/2 drinks is the limit. After that, the only thing that’ll be standing upright in your house is the vacuum cleaner.

It isn’t just drunks that need to worry about alcohol’s ability to put the nix on dicks, it’s also guys who want to shoot further. Maximum blood flow to the penis is critical for you to shoot far. You don’t have to stop drinking altogether but you probably shouldn’t have more than two drinks if you want peter to paint the porpoise with a big splash on the canvas. In moderate amounts alcohol actually causes blood vessel dilation, which is why people feel warmer when they’re drinking.

What If You Don’t Drink Or Don’t Smoke?

Then get a life! Seriously, what if you don’t do either and still want to improve blood flow? A regular exercise regimen promotes blood flow so get thee to a gym, a court or a track.

And speaking of the gym, I have some great advice to get your partners more turned on—make sure they work out with you. Neuroscientists at the University California at Berkeley recently made a breakthrough discovery: Sniffing a compound of male sweat called androstadienone causes hormonal, physiological and psychological changes in women that result in sexual arousal.

Sweat has been the main focus of research on human pheromones. For example, we’ve known for years that male underarm sweat improves women’s moods and affects their secretion of luteinizing hormone, which helps stimulate ovulation. Androstadienone is a derivative of testosterone that is found in all body secretions but it is in especially high concentrations in male sweat.

In the most recent trials, women were asked to take 20 sniffs from a bottle containing androstadienone. Don’t worry, they didn’t gag. It smelled vaguely of musk. When compared to sniffing a control odor (yeast), the women who sniffed androstadienone reported significantly higher sexual arousal. Researchers also noted an increased physiological response, including blood pressure, heart rate and breathing. These results were consistent with previous studies but they also discovered a tantalizing new development–androstadienone has the power to elevate hormone levels. In this case cortisol, which is associated with alertness and stress. In fact, it remained elevated for a full hour after the sniff test.

So what does all this mean for you?

The treatment applications for this discovery are unclear, but clearly, it will not hurt for you to work out with your partner and be conscious of having them sniff your armpits (I suggest you do it when nobody’s watching). Don’t let them sniff when the smell is so bad it could peel the skin off a battleship. Do it when it smells good. Sweat is naturally odorless. It only begins to smell when bacteria that live on the skin digest sweat and excrete waste. That’s why sweat smells clean in the beginning and slowly turns into mustard gas.

By the way, you don’t have to sweat enough to water a lawn; even a dab will do. Be sure your partner sniffs your armpits when you’re making out, having foreplay or making love. The research is solid and beyond question: Androstadienone changes mood, and increases both sexual arousal (blood flow, lubrication) and physiological arousal (blood pressure, heartbeat). This doesn’t mean taking a few sniff of your pits will make your partner’s ankles float to the ceiling. They won’t yell, “Take me like a vitamin!!” The effects are far more subtle. What it does mean is that you have one more proven way to arouse your partner and that in itself will improve your blood flow!

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How To Cum More And Shoot Further Part 7

To cum further, you have to exert more pressure in your reproductive system. Exercising your PC muscles to make your muscles contract harder (and consequently push out the semen more forcefully) is going to be a big help. But those muscles will do their job a lot better if you give them more to work with.

The physics of pressure is at work here– the more weight or mass exerted on the system, the more pressure it creates. The more compression in a small system (like your urethra), the more explosive the release will be.

Obviously, the more semen you have the more pressure it puts on your reproductive system to release it forcefully. So how do you get more semen in your system? Three ways.

1. Drink More Water.

The amount of what comes out of your body is directly associated with the amount that comes in. Want to shit more? Eat more. Want to pee more? Drink more. Want to cum more? Same thing. And by drink, I mean water, not beer!

Ninety five percent of your ejaculate is liquid. Sperm only makes up about 5% of it. If you don’t drink enough water you are robbing your ejaculate of more volume. It’s that simple. You should be drinking at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day. A good rule of thumb is to look at the color of your urine. The darker it is the more water you need to drink. A well-hydrated person’s urine should be clear, NOT yellow.

This tactic may put a crimp on your martini-swilling ways. If olives come out of your dick when you pee, you’re never going to ejaculate like a porn star. Alcohol dehydrates the body. It doesn’t mean you can’t drink; it just means that you have to drink even more water to compensate for the alcohol. The same thing goes for heavy coffee drinkers.

Remember that semen is water-based. The more you drink the more that will land on your body’s face and body when you’re three feet away. If that doesn’t make you thirsty I don’t know what will.

2. Don’t Jerk Off So Much.

The less you beat off or have sex the more ejaculate that builds up in your system. The good news is that you don’t have to remain abstinent for very long. It only takes the body one or two days to completely replenish its store of ejaculate. If you wait much longer than that it simply gets absorbed by your system. It’s not like you have a storage tank that you can fill for weeks on end.

To give you a sense of how fast your system works to reproduce ejaculate, know that your body produces sperm at an astonishing rate of more than 1500 every second. That works out to almost 200,000,000 sperm cells a day. Because you produce so much sperm on a daily basis your body also quickly produces the semen for the sperm to swim in.

The best way to build up semen is to keep your hands to yourself for 48 hours before you have sex with your partner. A short period of abstinence will ensure you have a bigger load to spray.

3. Trick Your Body into Producing More Semen.

Every time you get close to an orgasm your prostate and seminal vesicles start producing more semen to carry the sperm out. What happens if you stop yourself right before the point of ejaculatory inevitability? The ejaculate recedes from the urethra. While there are no real “storage tanks” to speak of in your reproductive system there is room for some storage and build-up. By masturbating and then refraining from orgasm you essentially “prime the pump,” producing more semen. The process of bringing yourself close to an orgasm but backing away at the last minute is called “Edging.”

The more you “edge” the more you trick your body into producing more semen. By the time you allow yourself to orgasm on your partner’s body they will look like a Jackson Pollock painting. Of course, this takes enormous discipline. Who among us can resist the detonation when it is at hand (or somewhere else)?

You should practice how to divert an orgasm not just for the ability to come like a porn star but so that you can last longer for your partner. You can “edge” before and/or during sex. For example, if you are anticipating sex in the evening you could start the morning by jacking off in the shower but not bringing yourself to orgasm. You could do this throughout the day (talk about torture) or during your session with her. The great thing about “edging” is that it teaches you to be the master of your own domain. If you can control your orgasm you can also control the force with which it comes out.

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How To Cum More And Shoot Further Part 6

Want to see passion’s power? Try this experiment. Blindfold each other in bed. By subtracting one sense, blindfolds require the other four to work harder. Without vision, two hands can feel like four or six. The intriguing part is that you don’t know where the next touch or probe is going to come from. Sensations are heightened and here’s the best part: Everybody looks like a million bucks!

So here’s how it works: You and your partner blindfold yourselves and sit naked on the opposite corners of the bed. On a whispery count of three, slowly advance toward each other. Touch, explore, discover. What do you do? Where do you go? You don’t know. That’s the point. If neither of you can see each other’s facial expressions during the action, it’ll leave you with a tingling curiosity: “What’s my partner thinking?” “What’s my partner feeling?” Think of it as a blank canvas for the imagination. By depriving yourselves of sight you create anticipation and heighten the senses. When that happens every position is a new position–unless darkness works its mischief and you knock your partner off the bed or they call you by the wrong name.

Talking. The Second Best Thing You Can Do With Your Lips.

Passion pretty much requires talking. Dirty talking. There’s scientific backing for this. Speaking or hearing sexually charged words is known to spike dopamine transmissions in brain chemistry, triggering sexual excitement.

This is how “Tabasco Talk” ignites an erotic loop: You make a sound or say something. Your partners respond. Their acknowledgement of your arousal arouses you. Your excitement excites them and soon you’re both sucked up into a vortex of pleasure.

What Does Talking Sexy Mean?

Most people think “talking dirty” is a vulgar, in-your-face prison-style accounting of what you want to do behind closed doors. But there’s a lot more to it than the lunatic ravings of a horny junkyard dog (although there is much to say for that, too). Learning the art of sexy talk is easy. All you have to do is…

• Notice the sensations in your body. Express them.
  Ask for what you want. Talk about it.
  Anticipate how good it’s going to feel. Breathe heavy.
  Think about your fantasy. Voice it.
  Notice your partner’s body. Compliment it.
  Does it feel good? Tell your partner.
  Do you like the way they’re touching you? Moan.
  Are you getting hard? Groan.
  Are you close? Announce it.

I Want To Verb Your Noun.

It’s not what you say but that you say. If you think you’ve got to come up with something flowery, STOP. Back up. Let me introduce you to the first rule of Tabasco Talk: NO POETRY. Any word with more than two syllables is a word with too many syllables.

Are your partners too shy? A great way to ease them into it is to practice on the phone when you’re out of town. There’s no eye contact and the distance provides an emotional buffer. Another good way to get comfortable with naughty words is to play a word game I call Naughtirati. Your draw naughty words on your partner’s naked back and they guess what they are. Be playful. This isn’t serious. It’s fun. And wet, too, if you draw the words with your tongue.

Verb Me! Verb Me Now!

It doesn’t matter what you say but the authenticity with which you say it. Well, unless you say something that’s going to break the mood like, “I’m going to drill you with that axis of evil between my legs!”

The objective isn’t creativity; it’s conductivity. Think of talking in bed as caressing your lover with words. Entice, Excite, Enchant. Don’t be captive to silence. Free your tongue, the zest will follow.

Oooh, Ahhh, Huff, Puff, Gasp!

Passion is erotic energy unleashed. The formula is simple: Words + Action= Oh My. Go right, fake left, bend low, go up the middle. Get into it. Zing, zip, rest, start over. And talk, moan, laugh or groan through all of it. It’s sex Tivo style: Play …fast forward…slow motion…stop…rewind…play.

Pant, pant.

Next week in the series:  Exerting more pressure on your reproductive system to propel semen out more explosively.

Resources

What Happens On A Gay Porn Set

Part 5

In this series, we’ve explored what happens on a gay porn set with a special emphasis on what we can learn from it in our own sex lives.

Gang Bang Roulette

The hottest action in a lot of gang bang scenes is often not caught on camera. There’s usually a lot of fluffing going on among the tops in a gang bang scene, mainly to get each other hard enough and long enough to plow their on-screen partners.

What Do Gay Porn Stars Earn?

Remarkably little.  While some name-brand stars can earn up to $5,000 a scene, the vast majority make about $500 to $1,000 per scene.  No matter how you do the math, that doesn’t come to a whole lot of money. Very few performers make a living off of porn.  Most use it as a way to supplement the income they make from their day jobs or as a way to jack up their prostitution rates.  They can charge a lot more money if customers perceive them as “stars.”

Do tops make more money than bottoms?  The industry folks we spoke to said top and bottom don’t matter nearly as much as celebrity status.  The more well-known you are the more money you’re going to command, no matter what position you take during filming.

Some folks told us tops tend to make more because the penis is always the star of the show and that they’ve got to stay hard for hours on end.  But some said bottoms make more because they’re at a much higher risk for HIV and as one performer charmingly put it, “We have to keep our holes gaping open all day.”

Post-Production Rituals

Besides heading to the bank as soon as possible to make sure the check clears from the porn studio, the first priority of many porn bottoms is to soak in a hot bath of Epsom salts. Stretching your butt open for hours can cause some serious rectal inflammation, and post-bottoming care is essential to make sure the next time a director yells, “Action!” it doesn’t happen in the Emergency Room.

It’s A Wrap!

I originally intended to write a book about porn’s approach to bottoming because I was certain they were drinking from the fountain of knowledge. Turns out they were only gargling.

The porn industry’s secret to painless bottoming—drugs— ruined my book. When I first got the results of the research it reminded me of a French quote: Le petit quelque chose qui fout tout par terre—the little thing that fucks everything up.

I had to rethink my fucked up book. How could I possibly recommend illegal drugs as the path to painless bottoming? It’d be like recommending you light a match to see if your gas tank is empty.

Left without a hook to my book, I scrambled. Figuring I could come up with my own “secret,” I assembled an all-star cast of ass specialists— proctologists, colo-rectal specialists, and physicians with a truly alarming knowledge of anatomy. We had one goal: Create a game-changing “ass hack” that lets you bottom like a porn star without becoming an ER victim.

You can check out the book here.

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