By Josh Gilbert

Pornography is not healthy, I know from recent, personal experience. I’m not talking about the quotidian yank or the hours spent cruising the internet for those ubiquitous digipic spreads of genital mayhem. I’m no hypocrite. I’m talking about bar food. Greasy bar food that you wash down with ale.

Several days ago, William and I met at an old bar in Chelsea for a drink and a chitchat. We ordered some burgers and fries, angsted and drank and the more we drank, the less we angsted, and as the merriment drove us deep into the night and on into the wee hours of the morning, the crowd thinned out to the diehard few and the "closed" sign went up on the door.

Bellied up to the old wood slab, expecting the boot, the bartender cordially asked if we’d like another round and of course we did. Was there a better place to be at 4:30am in New York City, the world locked outside the old wooden door on the scum infested sidewalks?

We sipped the foam off our fresh new beers, relaxed and surveyed our fellow after-hours countrymen: 8 jovial old barflies with fading blue collars, callused hands and meticulously groomed moustaches, and continuing down the line, two aging, overtly sexy vixens sitting on the dog leg of the bar to our left, angled towards us, deep in chatter, well drinks in hand, smoking Virginia slims, occasionally glancing up with a furtive blink or smile. We struck up a conversation, during which one of them told us she’d been in over 250 porno movies and her friend here had just completed her porno debut and would we care to see it?

Will and I glanced at each other for a reality check, but before we had time to reply, she’d summoned the bartender, who happily complied, and popped the vhs tape into the deck.

After several raunchy trailers and a lot of shushing, the feature presentation hit the screen. It was a detective mystery, complete with 1940’s gumshoe costuming, murky lighting and cigarette holders. The acting was stupendous, the dialogue sublime, and cutting to the chase, as pornos are wont to do, we watched, mise en scene, the aging neophyte porn star watching herself getting plowed by an over-weight, red-titted Slavic co-star, wearing a gigantic strap-on.

"I haven’t heard the bar this quiet since we screened Citizen Cane last January!" bellowed a ruddy faced regular, breaking the ice, as a close-up money shot revealed the dildo's ultimate destination; the essence of all mystery: a dark amber parabola of hair framing a hole that seemed to go in forever.

"Cock looks real enough!" the bartender barked, wiping a beer spigot with his towel, "but those testicles look like they've been cut in half!"

And sure enough, the rubber member was long, wide and realistic in all respects (including an artistically inspired, anatomically correct vein running lengthwise up the shaft), but the scrotum was a front with no back. The scrotal facade, as it were, hid a flat, smooth edge where the eye expected (yearned?) to see a full rounded ball sack from behind.

This was obviously a low budget shoot, I thought to myself, but "A" for effort. After all, it was only her first porno. And economically speaking, the scrotal facade did make sense. Half a plastic sack surely represents significant savings over time. Add to this the reduced rates in world-wide shipping charges and, well, you do the math.

The plot turned and thickened (like the swelling curtains of her dark amber moshpit of love) when the dick, a real dick, the dick's dick, entered the bawdy narrative.

Grunts of recognition came from the rawkus crowd. Apparently (news to me and William) this was the other bartender’s day off.

"Now that’s a real cock there!" an Archie Bunker look-a-like applauded enthusiastically.

"Isn’t it a great cock!?!" the proud wife crooned back, above the fray. "It’s so long and thick! I just adore that cock!"

"Does he come in your face?" a pot belly enquired from down the bar.

"Be serious," she shot back, indignant, " I never let a man come in my face on camera. Not even my husband. It’s a question of self-respect."

"Yeah, uh, we’ll see about that after you do another 20 triple x pornos, honey," the industry veteran warned her friend sagely.

Antics ensued. Elements of composition and style were bandied about the room as the tit-fucking, pussy licking, ass ramming and genital slapping shenanigans built to an energetic crescendo: a no holds barred, good old fashioned blow job.

"Would you look how clean our kitchen looks!" the bartender crowed merrily, as we all suddenly realized this video had been shot in the tavern's very own kitchen. "Just look at those metal counters sparkle and shine!" he chirped in the b.g. as she sucked her hubby off, laying bare-assed on the steel prep counter next to a stack of china plates and a bin full of set-ups.

Suck! Tickle! Spit! Slap! Moan! Suck!

I suddenly blanched at the memory of all the food we'd ordered that night. (Note to self: no more bar food. Ever. No more choking down those gamy burgers, cheese melts and fries in dark NYC watering holes with kitchens used for who-knows-what...)

My mood suddenly grew somber in a rousing finale as she licked, sucked and blew her sweaty husband's knob; a real knob; red; swollen; cycloptic; into ecstatic release all over her breasts, positioned ominously close to the plates we'd been eating off of all evening.

We left the bar in stunned silence and walked through the dawning light to the L, where William hopped the train to Williamsburg.