An Unnecessary Love Story

A renowned female pornographic actress had visited a college campus to participate in a public debate on pornography. Of course, speaking openly about pornography is never easy. In any country, it is a most delicate task. Yet, by the law of nature, the raging hormones of students bear uncanny resemblance to the hormones of pornography. Therefore, in practice, one might expect revolutionary students and the pornography industry to share far-reaching agreements—though they may never confess it aloud. Whether such an alliance existed or not, the undivided attention of the students was locked upon that debate. Inside the campus, there was but one subject burning under the fluorescent lights.

 
Professors and rival students alike had been sneaking glances at the classical works of this actress, buried deep within the university systems. Elderly professors, unwilling to lag behind in knowledge, had also gravitated toward this unfamiliar medium—drawn by a strange joy, a voracious hunger for impossible wisdom. All had one goal: such opportunities rarely visit the temples of learning. To gaze at a painter after seeing his paintings, to meet a writer after reading his prose—these are altogether different from meeting a pornographic actress after consuming her art. First of all, in pornography both mind and body are used mercilessly, to their absolute limit. And since this new medium of art carried within it the inevitable pledge of epochal change, there was no path left for us except to acknowledge it as great art. Only the French Revolution before had brought such fundamental upheaval upon society. Though we preserve Bolshevik debris in plastic packets and leave them rotting in landfills, still, at the history professor’s words, all nodded silently in agreement. It seemed as though a new chapter of history had just been inaugurated in this very classroom.
 
In the teachers’ lounge, the tension had reached its zenith. Who would be permitted to ask what questions? Even the decrepit elders, with their fading virility, squirmed impatiently for a chance to display their masculinity. Those denied the opportunity sat sulking, raising noise about the decline of modern civilization—corruption in social life, the relentless surge of sexual crimes, the grotesque secret lives of certain classes of men, and their poisonous effect upon the public. The Vice-Chancellor felt proud. For in his ideal vision, an exemplary teachers’ lounge must contain both progressives and reactionaries, cohabiting in the same stale air. He even resolved, then and there, to deliver a not-so-brief speech on this harmony to the Governing Committee.
 
A student of literature—who had long wondered what question he might ask if ever he met Dostoevsky—had prepared one carefully. He had written and rewritten it in his notebook, refining it to elegant precision. He even showed the line to his favorite professor for an opinion. The question was: “What exactly did you feel during your very first climax?”
 
The professor read the line, then replied gravely: “When Dostoevsky was accused of nihilism, condemned to death, and stood against a prison wall in Siberia facing a row of rifles, he closed his eyes, ready to embrace death. At that moment, a captain rode in with a horse, shouting that the execution was cancelled. Hearing this, Dostoevsky fainted, collapsing to the ground. Years later, a devotee asked him what he had felt in that instant. Fyodor said: My throat was dry. I was only trying to remember whether I had drunk water with breakfast that morning. Then I lost consciousness, and recall nothing more. Do you understand something now?” The professor with greying hair tapped the student on the shoulder.
 
When the actress arrived at the college, she wore a crisp, smart outfit. As a result, most students and teachers failed to recognize her. Draped in expensive clothes, she looked like a creature from another planet. Many thought she must be a new professor, always smiling. Needless to say, this is what happens with almost all great artists: their real selves never match their on-screen avatars.
 
The debate began in solemn seriousness. Both sides—proponents and opponents—had come well prepared. Yet even before she delivered her opening speech, the woman had already been established as the most liberal among the debaters. Her sweet smile had charmed everyone—everyone except the stiff-necked members of the Governing Committee. She avoided saying anything that might provoke too much controversy. It was almost as if the college authorities had begged her onto the stage and were now basking in gratitude. On anti-pornography questions, she answered with the precision and humility of a sociologist, patiently dismantling the bluster of greying professors who fancied themselves guardians of morality. But she also moved her body with grace, as though asking for the crowd’s sympathy. Professors who had thought they might measure her dimensions secretly with their eyes found themselves unexpectedly successful. Without tapes, by intuition of physics and biology, they gauged her proportions with exactness.
 
Whenever she paused for breath, the tremor of her undergarments beneath the air of her chest doubled the hesitation of her sociological arguments—making them at once fragile and irresistible. The other speakers did not dare provoke her further. Their goal was only to keep her within their sight, for as long as possible.
 
These kinds of debates quickly devolve into shouting matches; and in truth, this one too, like a pornographic film, turned into a vulgar exhibition recorded in the pages of history.
 
One side raised the horrors of rape, incest, and bestiality; the other painted the grotesque society that would result from fundamentalists and narrow-minded moralists—a society skilled at censorship, suppression of freedom, and suffocating all expression.
 
One panelist suggested that her films should not portray sexual coercion as if it were pleasurable or comfortable.
 
The remark angered her.
“It is fantasy!” she shot back.
“Of course it does not glorify rape.”
 
To prove her point, she spoke at length about her own experiences of being assaulted. She asked every woman in the hall who had ever imagined being raped to stand up. None did. Then she turned to the men: did any of them secretly enjoy watching rape scenes or reading juicy rape reports in the newspaper?
 
At once the men erupted, protesting with fury. They insisted men were the very symbols of universal knowledge, that men had forever stood firmly against rape.
 
The porn actress laughed.
She reminded the crowd that it was women who most frequently nurtured rape fantasies—and men, in their cowardly honor, secretly enjoyed watching them.
 
“It is not my invention,” she said. “It was researched right here by the students of this university.”
 
She even produced proof. And she did not fail to remind everyone that the university authorities had sold this research to various journals and newspapers, earning handsome money from it.
 
Irrelevant though her point may have been, its effect was inevitable: it silenced the patriarchal audience, while exposing the feminists as a crowd of hollow pretenders caught in their own contradictions.
 
Toward the very end of the program, whispers spread. The porn actress’s flight was booked for the next day. That meant she would spend the night on the university campus.
 
Many doubted whether there was even a single place on this campus suitable for a person of her stature. After all, most of the residential quarters—whether for students or professors—were notoriously filthy. Intellectuals seemed to prefer living amid dirt. The stereotype was famous: beer bottles scattered across open fields, half-smoked cigarette butts, torn condom wrappers. Inside—oil-stained bedcovers, foul-smelling rooms.
 
Wandering bohemians might endure it, but for a celebrity porn actress? Impossible.
 
Yet it was revealed there was a five-star-graded guest house on campus—reserved only for industrialists and political leaders. Without their donations, the university’s prestige could not be sustained. One philanthropic industrialist had in fact sponsored the actress’s visit. He had arranged everything: funding, invitations, logistics. This industrialist was also tied to a powerful politician, himself a patron of the university and its chaos-soothing projects.
 
When this magnate was invited on stage to be thanked, everyone assumed he would speak for two minutes. But since it was an election year, he clung to the microphone for a full half hour. The Vice-Chancellor tried politely to restrain him from turning the event into an election rally. Yet he urged the students: their sacred duty was to honor him at the ballot box.
 
After his endless speech, he finally thanked the actress. The student union leaders garlanded her with flowers. Among them, the most talented young revolutionary leader was chosen to personally host her, as the university’s honored guest. He accepted with reverent enthusiasm.
 
One by one, elected student representatives and selected members of the faculty welcomed her warmly. A few special men, from the “Guests’ Escort Committee,” were given the grave responsibility of accompanying her.
 
The chosen student representative was a young man known vaguely to all—respected, devout, a singer of devotional songs. Once, it was said, he had performed in the university’s guesthouse before a select audience of committee members. What exactly had happened that night no one knew; all were only rumors. Best to ignore such whispers.
 
Yet the students outside heard much—snatches of voices, bursts of laughter, the long echo of mirth. The woman’s voice, others’ voices, tangled together. These sounds nourished a thousand amorous fantasies in the minds of the students to this very day.
 
The porn star herself, it seemed, had been quickly moved. Excited, even shivered. The young revolutionary leader glimpsed, all at once, a luminous political future unfolding before him. He was honest, respected. Yet in the nearness of such an openly sexual woman, he felt a secret thrill—a collision of curiosity with the monotony of his life. A sudden, unprecedented excitement filled him.
 
To speak truth—there was no reason to imagine this woman as hopeful in real life, as if she might offer romance. For her, the thought of a one-night stand was as wearisome as an office worker dragging home extra files at dusk.
 
And though the young leader sang decently enough, was that enough to call him a singer? Perhaps not. Most men, once their bellies warmed with whiskey, crooned songs just as well. That was hardly an achievement to seduce a woman who lived in the company of global elites, whose weekends blazed with sex and parties, where real amusement only began once the big men of society arrived. Compared to that, this band of hungry dreamers were nothing.
 
Her disdain for education and its institutions, already strong, only grew firmer during this visit. Yet, paradoxically, so too did her conviction that pornography was a great art—perhaps the greatest art.
 
The woman was at least ten years older than the student leader, and the signs of age had begun to show. Strangely, this made her all the more attractive to him. Especially when she criticized women themselves—comparing them to men, weighing them on the same scale. Why should the all-knowing gods of reason begrudge joining two such figures in one frame?
 
Imagination—especially amorous imagination—prefers to handle special individuals with special rituals. It reshapes people into childish categories: their gestures, their speech, their gait reduced to archetypes. And then it consumes them in a primitive feast. Heroism dissolves. Revolution goes to hell. And though we swear to resist such simplifications, the more we deny them, the deeper their temptation grips us.
 
When ancient sages in epic times were seduced by dancing courtesans, those encounters might have been “just another day at the office” for the courtesans. Yet for the sages, a lifetime of accumulated spiritual merit collapsed in a single instant. In today’s world, to cling to such primitive beliefs is absurd. Better to call it what it is: “Got some additional work at the office.”
 
And then—through imagination’s prism—the scene unfolded:
Panties draped across a chair.
Playful straddling.
Daring invitation.
Descent, kisses, the first taste of tongue on flesh.
Nervous laughter.
Fumbles, strokes, thrusts.
Pauses, smoothness, hairiness.
Faces that absorbed themselves like sponges.
Bodies transformed into serenity.
Limbs clasped long after passion, exhausted in this supremely holy labor.
 
There was nothing extraordinary in it. Why describe at length what happens everywhere, always? Half of human civilization is built upon this.
 
The porn star and the student leader, finding each other irresistible.
Revolution and sexuality, lying across each other like twin shadows.
 
Elsewhere in the city, in a silent room decorated with expensive furniture, a businessman sipped his tea. Opposite him, a politician smiled faintly and said:
 
“Thank you.”
 
His strong wrist lifted slightly, trembled with power.
 
“Long live the Revolution.”
 
The university students were already asleep by then—either from the exhaustion of the day, or under the spell of intoxication.