Good Vibrations Magazine

Governments around the world are delivering SARS-related travel advisories, but the deadly epidemic is only one of many troubling travel issues today. Since 9/11, air travel has become complicated, frightening and irritating, turning routine business trips and leisure vacations into Kafka-esque nightmares. Even so, while the “mile high club” may have become an urban legend, [...]

A common complaint I hear from porn viewers is that they want to see S/M mixed with sex — but the combination is nearly impossible to find. It’s easy to think that pornographers just don’t “get it,” especially considering how they handle and produce bisexual and female-penetrating-male porn.
BDSM is a sexual practice, and porn is [...]

On a rainy San Francisco Monday night, at midnight, I found myself on my way downtown to Union Square to have a drink with Axel Braun, an AVN award-winning director, hot on the heels of his success at this year’s AVN Awards show. Braun was a total stranger, and I knew I was taking a [...]

The world of porn is much like the arena of non-erotic mainstream films: mainstream porn operates and produces videos (and stars) in the same formulaic manner as does Hollywood. Just as this is true, there exists outside both worlds an exciting backlash of independent filmmakers — and for me, nothing is more exciting than film [...]

I am erotically fixated on Traci Lords’ mouth. I have been for many years. Her petulant pout has inspired many juicy femme-on-femme fantasies of mine, but what makes her mouth so very sexy to me is knowing where it’s been and what she’s done with it. Who she’s licked, sucked, fucked and kissed, in films [...]

One of the things I love about working in the Good Vibrations retail store is that I get to be there when new products arrive. The newest butt plug, the latest dildo and all sorts of fun odds and ends ship into the store, and we all check the new kids out, marvel or ridicule [...]

Movie music is an art. Porn is seldom art, so it’s no surprise that most porn music sucks. Movie music is seldom done well either, but in regular non-erotic films, the person (or team) doing the scoring takes into account a variety of factors with the goal of enhancing the feeling, mood or action onscreen. [...]

When the hero leans over to kiss the girl in a Hollywood film, they “cue the music.” The affection starts, the music swells and fade out. But in porn, when the action begins, they usually cue a wholly different type of music, music sure to dampen any prior arousal the viewer has cultivated, a sort [...]

I’m of the opinion that you can learn more about sex by watching someone masturbate to orgasm than by reading any book, taking any class or even having “typical” partnered sex. That’s a pretty serious statement from a sex educator like me, but that’ll tell you just how much I think you can learn by [...]

In portraying harmless fantasy, porn often gives us a world that can only ever be that: pure fantasy. A good porn film delivers the fantasies well, and we get off with success — wet, sticky, throbbing rapture. However, in the realm of portraying healthy and safe sex, porn often fails. The main reason is because [...]

Oh, the constant hype over the next new wave of consumer-oriented technology — it’s never ending. Because we are constantly barraged with ads about what’s just around the corner for the next generation of cell phones, or how the next Palm Pilot is going to bring you the paper and your slippers on Sunday mornings, [...]

In the glaring eye of our culture, the men in porn are only seen for one thing: their dicks. It’s interesting to note that in a superficially focused industry where the women are judged harshly by viewers and pornographers for their looks, men are seen as simply a penis. For observers such as C. Everett [...]

I recently received a letter from a reader who wanted a few recommendations for older tapes that featured the legend Ginger Lynn. What a pleasure! Like her counterparts Nina Hartley, Marilyn Chambers and Juli Ashton, Ginger is an exceptional adult actress who has lasted the test of time, and is still making films that make [...]

The other day while researching girl-girl adult videos for another project I’m working on, I was discovered by a lost, handsome baritone player. He acted surprised and horrified, though attracted to the bedroom by the sounds of oohs, ahhs and feline-feminine grunts and groans, and I suspected that his shock was all an act. Especially [...]

Every year the same old crappy gift guides come out in catalogs, magazines, advertisements and commerce web sites. Predictable in suggestions and short on scope, these guides — from companies who want to sell product or writers who have a column to write — make me feel tired just reading them. My bad attitude about [...]

Performance art. Did I scare you? These words are the equivalent of the word “mime” to most people, and with good reason. Someone told the makers of porn movies that these words exist. Whoever it is should be forced to live with the consequences — those consequences being the resulting Ass Artist series.
Granted, I like [...]

Double dildos figure heavily in porn and sexual fantasy. Lots of women and men fantasize about two women simultaneously penetrating themselves with one toy, both getting off at the same time. Similarly, the fantasies cover all possible combinations; I’ve talked with heterosexual couples who want to enjoy simultaneous penetration, and gay male couples who are [...]

I’m a young writer. I’ll be the first to admit that when the legendary film Deep Throat made its sensational debut in theaters in 1972, I was barely learning to walk and talk. Lacking the experience of watching porn filmed with real film, up on a big screen, it’s easy for me and writers of [...]

Penis pumps have been around the sex toy world for decades. In the non-sex toy world, nipple pumps have long provided relief to lactating mothers. It was really just a matter of time until nipple pumps made the trip downward to be used on the clitoris. But though it took a while for clit pumps [...]

Put a few adults in a room in a casual, conversational atmosphere, put an adult video box on the coffee table — and see what happens. One by one, each of the adults will probably eye the box; the item in question will certainly be the topic of discussion within minutes. Chances are high that [...]

When you rent an S/M video from your local video store, you usually end up taking home a tape of surgically enhanced porn stars mechanically mimicking a bondage or whipping scene — or a real-life dominatrix cruelly taking same starlets to task. The whole tape usually looks cold, unsexy and forced, filmed in rooms unconvincingly [...]

Remote-controlled vibrators have always been a source of fascination for me. It’s partly because I’m a gadget freak. I’ll just come right out of the closet and admit to being a Mac enthusiast with an iBook that’s tricked out like a custom hot rod — and I seriously lust after the yet-to-be-released CD burner from [...]

As someone who has been reviewing porn for years, it’s amusing for me to hear the adult industry begin to change its tune about porn made for couples. Until recently, the at-large attitude of the industry for fare directed at heterosexual couples who want to watch films together has been, er, somewhat impolite. Still, even [...]

What do you want when you watch an adult movie? You want to see something that turns you on: an image or set of images that flip your arousal switch into the “on” position, igniting a charge running from your eyes straight to your groin, no stops along the way. For a few people, the [...]

On Monday, April 22, Linda Lovelace died from injuries she suffered in a car crash on April 3. Lovelace was taken to Denver Health Medical Center with massive trauma and internal injuries after the accident. She was taken off life support Monday, said hospital spokeswoman Sara Spaulding. She was 53.
The mega-star of porn’s golden age [...]