In Search of Good Porn- Mission Accomplished

I am always in search of quality queer smut on the screen and In Search of the Wild Kingdom fits that bill to a 'T'. Pink and White Productions director Shine Louise Houston has outdone herself with this latest jem of fantasy fodder. To emphasize that point, let me just confess that I've been trying to write this blog for a few hours now and keep getting distracted by the website and myspace pages of Pink and White and friends. "Research", we'll call it...

If only there were more directors like Houston, a queer woman of color who works with Good Vibrations in San Francisco. The fact that her work has won Best Dyke Sex Scene at the feminist porn awards for the past two years and Best Trans Sex Scene this past year is a testimony to the scarcity of this kind of work. The credits of her movies always thank her "inner fourteen year old boy." How endearing is that?!

Wild Kingdom, a mocumentary of a mocumentary, follows a straight girl's film crew through their quest to uncover the true nature of the mating habits of San Francisco "lesbians". The term "lesbian" is used throughout the film by the faux director Georgia Mann, but the folks that we see throughout Wild Kingdom cover a much broader array of gender expressions- from black and Boricua studs and transguys to full figured femmes who keep condoms stashed in their long hair and Hitachis stashed under their pillows.

As in her two previous flicks, Houston strikes an almost perfect balance of plot and romp. In my opinion, that's about ninety five percent romp, five percent plot. (Take that, Candida Royalle.) Just enough plot to give people vague outlines of personalities and a thread that ties all the scenes together, that's what I say. Though the footage of Georgia and camera crew that is interspliced with the four hot scenes of other folks gettin-it-on are slightly longer than the plot pieces in either The Crash Pad or Superfreak (Pink and White's two previous films), I barely minded cause they were so damn witty. There's lots of subtle but potent jokes that reference straight culture's often absurd misunderstanding of queer sex. For anyone with much experience of mainstream porn, Wild Kingdom's brief parody of the girl-on-girl play is dead on. You know what I mean, a skinny blond poking one long-nailed finger at a time into the vagina of a woman who could very well be her twin. Houston's queers, on the other hand, have real orgasms. (The friend I was watching this with actually turned to me, toward the end of the first scene with Beau Flex, Trouble Royalle and the Hitachi Magic Wand and said with astonishment and delight, "they're really coming!:) )

Though the orgasms are real and enthusiastic in Houston's movies, they tend to be quiet, or, for my standards, not very verbal. If I could craft my perfect porn, it might be Wild Kingdom with more dirty talk. One of the few pieces of dirty talk, from Papi Coxx to Wil Thrustwell post sexy stainless steel butt toys and pre squirting- "fuck me, motherfucker, i love you" just about melted my kinky little heart though and mostly made up for the other tighter lipped stars. Houston also does music well. It's there, but the breath and sound of the actors is a much more dominant sound in the experience.

Beau Flex (who has appeared in both the Crash Pad and Superfreak as Jiz Lee), in my opinion, steals the show. Every show. Beau smiles, laughs, and whispers things to hir partner throughout the first scene with Trouble and that smile only gets bigger in the third scene when Beau becomes a boi-sandwich for Papi and Wil and their strap on cocks. Rozen and Dylan, a pair of femmey-hipster dykes in the second scene also appear to be near-overjoyed to be fucking each other with their mouths and hands. This film is a celebration of sluttiness, polyamory, and thwarting stereotypes. It left me feeling warm, fuzzy, and wanting more and the friend I shared it with ready to pack her bags for the wilds of San Francisco.