When I started thinking of myself as transsexual, someone sent me this thing called 'Bi and Beyond,' which purported to be hermaphrodite porn. I knew that coitus-functional hermaphrodites were very rare to nonexistent, but still I hoped. As I watched it, I was disappointed to learn that most of the girls featured were ordinary women with prosthetic dicks welded to their pubes with spirit gum. It was basically science fiction with an effects budget... the scene with the chicks with dicks on their chest and tailbone was kind of a giveaway. There was only one girl who looked authentic; she was rather mannish and not especially stiff, and I imagined she was a male-to-female transsexual.

Recently I screened it again, being rather wiser about such matters, and found that all the girls were fakes. After the porn was an early-morning show on Canadian television featuring an Anglican pastor, and then a documentary about the dingo.

I thought about tossing the tape, but I regret the last time I threw away bad porn. I was mailed a German fetish-porn tape, featuring whippings, strap-ons, hoods and harnesses, and a female chauffeur who fastidiously collected her own shit. There was heavy use of video effects and audio delay, as though the film's editor typically did reggae videos, and the heavy breathing and German voiceovers were pushed high into the audio's dynamic range. It was so overwrought it didn't register as pornography. I gave it away... ah, foolish youth. If I had it now I would probably be cramming copies into the hybrid TV-VCR units at Wal-Mart.