Reflections from Hyperreality

Well, I had definitely made it to Los Angeles.

I’m standing outside a bedroom staring intently at a laptop. On the screen, two partially clothed women lie on a white bed, softly caressing each other. Still a constant 30fps. Good, good. Hopefully their headsets are still working too.

Things are moving pretty fast. A minute ago everyone still had their clothes on and ten minutes before that I was explaining to Juliette and Riley how to adjust their headsets and what to watch out for while filming. Not that I know what the hell I’m doing.

No, all I know is that I am here in Los Angeles creating what may be the world’s first modded reality porno, and as I watch it play out on the bed and on the screen before me, I’m not entirely sure what brought me here or even what’s really real anymore. Modded reality indeed.

I flew in the day before. California was burning and haze from the wildfires made the city look like it had passed through an Instagram filter. This was my first time in the city and it was strange to finally see all these familiar places in person, especially like this.

The TSA had come swarming earlier. Can’t say I blame them. Who carries-on a router, a pair of VR headsets, three iPhones, two Raspberry PIs, six phone batteries, two laptops, and an entire bag full of miscellaneous wires?

I’d been sleeping with a camera above my bed for the past month. Wake up and there it was: two tiny black lenses at the end of a long pipe sprouting from a tower made of PVC. You get used to it after a while though. And it wasn’t like the camera was even on most of the time.

This was all for some last minute testing and to verify that the whole thing wouldn’t collapse mid-shoot, horrifically injuring someone. That’d be another good one to explain at the emergency room. So far so good. Only a few bumped heads and a couple of rug burns.

This was the third time I’d set the thing up. I first constructed the camera tower back in April for a project that aimed to stick cameras up near the ceiling of my apartment. Video from these cameras would be streamed to a VR headset so that you could see yourself walk around. The idea was to be able to live like a Sim.

Soon though, I began cantilevering the camera out to create top-down perspectives. Laying on the floor one evening, watching myself from above, I began thinking again about how this top-down tower cam could be used for another project that had been on my back burner for a while…

It was a beautiful sunset. I was at the Santa Monica pier like a proper tourist, and the sunset seemed to last for hours and just keep getting better.

I’d watched the total eclipse just a few months earlier, zonked-out atop a cliff in the Oregon desert. One moment I was there, and the next everything faded away leaving me in an alien world under an alien sky. Moonage Daydream was playing in the distance.

That’s what the light reminded me of. Must be the haze.

You could look directly at the sun too, a great red orb of nuclear fire slowly sinking into the ocean. Everyone seemed to be looking out there: the tourists, the homeless people, even the surfer dudes. Most had their cameras out too.

I even waited around to see if there’d be a green flash. Not tonight.

Keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe

Modded reality began with a simple question: what if you had eyes in your hands?

What is it with me and eyes anyways?

But beyond eyes and beyond just having fun—and beyond all that stuff about exploring how technology can be used to change one’s sensory experience of the world—upon reflection, I think these modded reality experiments also meet some personal need. At the very least, they have been a safe way for me to challenge myself. Must be, because now I’m here.

The hotel room’s ceilings were too low. Had to cut the tower down a foot or two from its normal height. Not a lot of space for construction either. Guess I should have stayed at the Hilton.

The BBC was showing Total Recall on repeat. I started setting up a little after Arnold got his ass to Mars and finished a little before Kuato.

Then I lay there for a while with the goggles on, testing the setup one last time and listening to Arnold choke to death on the martian surface. I can’t have watched this film that many times, and yet I can picture just about every scene. That eye popping effect still gets me. You know he used to be governor here?

My upstairs neighbor seemed to be running suicides the entire evening. Sounded like they might break through the ceiling at any moment. What was going on up there?

Do you think they could ever imagine the scene below: The tower of PVC? The man with VR goggles watching himself lay on the bed? And even if they could peek in, could they ever know what led here or what lay ahead?

Whatever was going on up there was probably far stranger than anything I could come up with.

Looking back I can see the progression. You’d never have this project without my aborted attempts at Sim Life for example, which itself was directly inspired by Selfie reality, and so on.

I’ve known for the past year and a half I was headed here, and yet, on some level, I still don’t fully understand why. Maybe all blogs turn into pornography given enough time. Well at least I was going to be explicit about it.

And now that I’m here, I’m nervous as hell. Months of planning and all I can picture was everything going wrong. What if I forgot something? What if the latency is too high? What if the recording fails?

But who am I kidding. Those were the least of my concerns. I guess people are supposed to be excited about this sort of thing. Not me.

This is way outside of my comfort zone and now I’m doubting the whole idea of the project more than ever. Why do this? Why take the risk?

I never set out to shoot pornography but I do know what led here. Sexuality, technology, culture, media, reality. These are all terribly interesting and important topics that I wanted to explore. This was something I needed to create.

And so then, where to next?

And now as I watch the vision become a reality from out here in the hallway, part of me wonders why I had been so nervous. The equipment is working great, the people are friendly and professional, and none of it honestly feels like a big deal. Not that it isn’t strange mind you, but, then again, isn’t it all?

It must have been a pretty absurd scene too. Not the sex part—well that too actually—I mean the scene beyond the scene. Picture it: three people standing quietly out in the hallway while on the bed two women wearing bulky VR headsets awkwardly try to stimulate each other. A tower made of PVC pipe cantilevers a camera out over them. Wires run everywhere across the floor.

Someone should have captured that.

As I said, I’d been thinking about this project for some time but had no clue how to actually realize it. For starters, I couldn’t well film myself and company. That would completely obscure the point. Besides, ain’t nobody want to see that. Not even me. Give it another few years though…

And one of the appeals of this project was that it would force me to work with other people. All of my past projects have been mostly solo efforts shared with friends only after the project was complete. The nature of this project made that fallback quite impossible.

These modded-reality projects have always been a way for me to challenge myself. I don’t dance well for example, and yet I did an entire project about dancing like a fool and posted the videos online, just as I dislike the physical act of eating, and yet now I’ve done two projects that look at eating in a very visceral way. And writing up my exploration of modded reality and sexuality those first few times was exceedingly stressful. It still remains difficult for me to put more of myself into these pieces.

No, I knew the only way I could realize my vision would be to work within the adult entertainment industry. I wanted to create something authentic and of some quality using the medium itself. At the same time, the project was never supposed to just be an erotic film and I spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this clear.

So I tried reaching out to several adult video production companies about the idea. Never heard anything back. Maybe I didn’t present the idea well. After all, I was sick the day they covered this scenario in Professional Communications 101. Or maybe these studios are used to fan mail asking to “help out with a great project idea.” Or maybe they thought the idea sucked. Can’t say I blame them. Even I was pretty sure the resulting video wouldn’t be good in any traditional sense.

An article in The Guardian is what eventually made this project possible. The article spotlight the world of professionally produced, custom fetish videos. Apparently that is a thing, and it actually sounded exactly like what I needed: people who I could work with to make my weird project a reality. I could even pretend to have have a VR headset fetish if that’s what it would take. Or perhaps an eyeball fetish…

(Idea for porn stage name: T.J. Eckleburg)

The company spotlighted in the article was Anatomik media. So I wrote up another rambling email and sent it off. And this time I heard back.

That email is what led me to the San Fernando valley this morning, to this house on the top of the hill, to this hallway. Apparently this valley is the Mecca of porn.

Howdy pilgrim

John Wayne said that. Well actually, I’m pretty sure he didn’t but that’s what everyone remembers him saying.

Anyways, I’d checked out the address on Google Maps the night before. Looked like a normal residential neighborhood. Even made a quick sweep in Street View to confirm.

Dan from Anatomik later told me that there are houses like this all over the valley that companies rent out for filming. Weird.

I’ve been sitting in my rental car outside the gate here for the past twenty minutes, listening to some Lauren Bousfield and trying not to think.

You know, if I had just taken I-5 south instead of north this morning, I could be in Disneyland right now. Not that I’ve ever really wanted to go mind you, but I have been reading a lot of cynical European philosophers recently, and man do those ol’ boys love hating on the place. They say it is fake, capitalistic, manufactured, and so on. Kind of makes me want to see it for myself.

I mean, how can a place be fake if you can visit it? You can literally go to Disneyland for chrissake! You can go strolling down Main Street USA, and fist-bump Donald Duck, and stand in line to go soaring through space, and buy a real giant turkey leg for a very real $14.99! Where does the fake begin?

Wouldn’t it be easy to just turn around? Only a handful of people even knew about this project. And a giant turkey leg sounded pretty good right now.

But now it is five minutes past.

The views were spectacular. Certainly a nice backdrop, not that people really look at the backdrops. And you probably wouldn’t even see any of this in the film anyways. Shame.

The house looked unremarkable from the outside too, although certainly fancy. Even had an infinity style pool and all that.

Don’t get me wrong though, when I stepped inside I instantly knew where I was. I mean, where else but in porn do you see overstuffed white leather couches and white shag throws? The studio lighting and other equipment scattered about only confirmed things.

Rhiannon and Dan from Anatomik were really nice. I feel bad for making this sound like it was a surprise or something, given that they had been nothing but friendly and helpful in coordinating the project up until now.

One of my concerns going in was that I would feel incredibly out of place here. For example, I never even knew what terms to use while planning this project. What are standard industry terms and what would mark me as an interloper or potentially even be offensive? Just a small example: I kept referring to actors or actresses but I noticed that Rhiannon and Dan always used the term model.

In hindsight, this terminological confusion was sometimes pretty entertaining. Take an email in which Anatomik described potential models as “not augmented”. For the life of me, I could not figure out what this meant. You see, I was thinking augment as in augmented reality or perhaps in terms of Deus Ex’s augmentation. It took me far longer than I’d like to admit for me to realize what they were actually talking about.

I’m quiet by nature, but when I’m nervous I tend to talk a lot. We had about half and hour to setup before Riley and Juliette showed up, and the whole time I was prattling on about some of my other projects, asking questions about what to expect, and generally interrogating Dan and Rhiannon about the history of Anatomik and their experiences in the adult entertainment industry.

I really was interested too. I love learning about people and what they do, especially when it’s so unfamiliar. And the adult entertainment industry itself fascinates me. Not for any salacious reasons, but for what it is, and what this content and how we relate to it says about us. America is certainly an interesting case in that last regard at least.

Fun fact: Only California and New Hampshire have laws that protect the creation of pornography. And after seeing this place, why the hell would anyone want to film in New Hampshire? Not that the unclear legal status stops people from filming in other states mind you.

Come to think of it though, isn’t it kind of strange that so many of our great states don’t have something to say on the matter?

From my cold, dead hands!

Charlton Heston really did say that. He’s dead now.

Another fun fact: I grew up in the same town as him, and now here I am in California too! It is a small world after all.

Shit. First Arnold, then John Wayne, and now Charlton Heston? Why do I keep bringing up all these hyper-masculine actors? Might as well toss in a few Hugh Hefner references while I’m at it, or perhaps some big phallic symbol or something…

Another point of confusion: I originally thought that Anatomik would put together a script for the encounter. After all, thirty minutes seemed like a whole lot of time to fill.

However, Rhiannon kindly explained that sex scenes themselves are typically unscripted to make them more natural. Makes sense. And I’m not entirely sure what I imagined the script being like anyways.

Act I, Scene IV
===============

[Fade In]

[Camera pointed down at a white bed with black and purple pillows. Vase of red flowers sits on the nightstand. Riley and Juliette lay looking up at the camera]

Riley:
    I dream’d a dream to-night.

Juliette:
    And so did I.

Riley: [Turning towards Juliette]
    Well, what was yours?

Juliette: [After thoughtful pause]
    That dreamers often lie.

...

When Riley and Juliette showed up, I made sure I was busy pretending to be doing something upstairs. Even after making it out here, the idea of meeting the people who would actually be in the film still made me very uncomfortable. Both of them had worked with Rhiannon and Dan before, but for me the dynamics felt weird. What was appropriate? How did they feel about this project? And I worried that by trying to keep my distance, I was somehow making things even more awkward.

So after a quick introduction, I mostly hung around on the periphery while they talked with Dan and Rhiannon and got ready. Again, every one was friendly enough, it was just that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

The thing was, I again really did want to talk with them because they were the experts. What did they think of the project? Had they ever worked on anything similar? Did they have any ideas on how such technology could be used? And maybe we didn’t really have the time for conversations and maybe they wouldn’t have been interested anyways, but I was too scared to even try. And now I deeply regret this, not only as a missed opportunity, but also because I honestly do not know how they felt about any of this.

The film was premised on being the home video of two amateur lovers, real girl next door types, played by Riley and Juliette. In this fiction, wearing VR goggles to watch yourself have sex is a perfectly normal thing to do. Everyone does it. It just happened that it was the first time these two were giving it a go.

And like all great fiction, there was a grain of truth: this really was Juliette and Riley’s first time using the setup, so the exploration and discovery would be somewhat genuine.

The larger idea was that these two amateurs were acting out a sexual encounter in the style of how such an encounter would be presented by pornography. In this way, they literally become their own pornography, both as observers watching themselves and through the act of trying to recreate pornography in their “real” lives.

There was a bunch of paperwork before we could begin filming. They never show that part.

“Lesbian” is another term that’s been bothering me with this project. Almost all women only pornographic films are created for men. They are not created for actual lesbians, nor do they provide realistic portrayals of such relationships.

Yet that’s what Wikipedia terms the genre and Wikipedia can’t be wrong. Sapphic just sounds pretentious and I’m not sure its really any better, while girl on girl sounds like something you’d see on the marquee outside an adult movie theater in Sarasota.

Plus, I kind of liked the idea of poking fun at how in most women-only sex scenes the actresses are basically performing for the man behind the screen. This project makes the performance part explicit.

The sex was initially supposed to be simulated. To be honest, going in, I did not understand what this meant. Is all porn sex simulated because it is manufactured? Or does simulation mean something that looks like sex on film but doesn’t involve actual stimulation or penetration?

But after we talked through the intent of the scene, Riley asked if simulation was a requirement. I still didn’t know what this meant exactly, but said it honestly didn’t matter to me as long as everything looked real enough. She also suggested that simulated sex would be a great deal more difficult to pull off than the real thing. Interesting. So after Juliette and Riley talked it over among themselves, non-simulated sex it was.

This of course required more paperwork.

And then the filming began.

Those cynical philosophers like saying the same stuff about porn as they say about Disneyland: that it is fake, capitalistic, manufactured, and so on. Now that I’m here seeing it for myself though, again I must ask, where does the fake begin?

The bedroom was real. I subtly tested a few walls before filming began just to make sure. Juliet and Riley are real. They are real humans with real bodies and with real feelings and emotions. And even the sex seemed real, at least from out here in the hallway.

But, you stammer, it wasn’t really real… not really. That bedroom wasn’t really a bedroom but a set made up to look like a bedroom; Juliet and Riley are just personas, not real people; and while the sex may have looked real and perhaps even involved intercourse, it was just acting.

Perhaps.

But now, I think that, even if this is all fake, that doesn’t make it any less real. No, if anything, it makes it more real.

When most people put on one of these modded reality headsets for the first time. they typically only last thirty seconds or so. A few tries later, maybe they’ve worked up to a few minutes immersion but still don’t trust the view enough to actually move about. Even I, after all these experiments, still don’t do so with complete confidence.

Meanwhile Juliette and Riley here are still going at it. I’d only shown them the setup for the first time ten minutes ago, and now here on their first outing they already have: entered the shot by walking to the bed, snuggled, somehow remove their clothing, and were now busy engaging in various sexual activities. That’s just plain showing off.

Heck, they had already even well surpassed me. Not that this was difficult mind you.

Juliette later said the whole experience reminded her a little of being blindfolded. And while the overhead view helped her with blocking, she also sometimes found it easier to just close her eyes.

I guess familiarity with blindfolds is a good thing because the streaming conked out once or twice early on. Watching the film you’d never really know when this happened.

We had to reshoot this first scene though because they got to the sex too quickly. It was a little unrealistic.

And even though everything appears to be going well, I do have to wonder how Juliet and Riley are feeling about this. How much of this is acting? When they comment on what it’s like to see themselves this way, is that what they actually think or are they just saying it for the film? After all, there is no script.

Even talking to them off camera, this doubt persisted. Maybe this is because I only ever knew them by their stage names. Then again, is any of this really so different than normal?

At the end of the day, I can’t know what they actually felt and I can’t speak for them. My only hope is that the project was a little different and that they really did have some fun with it.

Back on the subject of Disneyland: how can something fake be real? Well, allow me to offer a simile: pornography is like Main Street USA in this regard. Or maybe the reverse. Who knows? (Probably Baudrillard.)

See, as Baudrillard observed, Main Street USA exists, but it is fake in the sense that it is manufactured. It is a recreation of small town America as it used to be: the wholesome atmosphere, tidy stores, barbershop quartets, parades, and so on.

But more than that. Step back one hundred years and you won’t find Main Street USA. Nor does it exist anywhere today. Today’s main street is a faded, ugly place of boarded up shops and Dollar Generals. Compare these places to Main Street USA, and which feels more like the main street you know? Unequivocally the latter.

That’s because Main Street USA is main street’s dream of main street, all nicely condensed and neatly packaged up for your convenience. And in these ways, it is more real than the real main street itself could ever be or ever was.

Now consider pornography. It too is manufactured but built around something that exists. And just as with Main Street USA, the fantasy world of pornography is an idealized version of reality. Porn has more sex than reality and it has better sex than reality. In this fantasy, there are no consequences, everyone is beautiful and willing, and even the portrayal of intercourse shows only the erotic aspects of the act. In this way, it is more real than the real itself can ever be. It is hyperreal.

But what do I know?

Here I am shooting a pornographic film with two professional models pretending to be amateur lovers who are shooting a home movie that tries to recreate pornography. So I guess Juliette and Riley are playing amateurs emulating professionals?

And is this even porn? I didn’t come here to create porn, and yet that’s exactly what I’m creating in order to make that point clear. Let Justice Stewart mull that one over.

Or maybe this whole thing is just one big meta clusterfuck.

And is this even me? Is this my voice? Why am I even writing this?

Is that you John Wanye?

Damn it.

All I know is that I’m creating whatever this thing is for the right reasons: to explore, to think, and just maybe make the world a more wonderful and strange place. And I hope it makes other people do the same.

At least that’s what I have to keep telling myself.

You know, this was the first time I’d ever watched people have sex. I mean you see it in movies and stuff all the time, not to mention in porn and what not. And, as I’ve said many times before, I am a boring person, so maybe that explains things.

That’s kind of strange now that I think back about it. Although I can only speak of personal experience, even SexEd in a fairly progressive American school never provided even vague portrayals of what sex looks like beyond biological diagrams, let alone discussing how to actually sex.

How many people are introduced to the idea of romantic love through Disney? How many introduced to sex through pornography? I could understand delegating education to hyperreality for something like unicycling or quilting, but romance? And sex? Are we crazy!?! We’ve handed the fate of our species over to the porn industry, and it was the prudes who handed them the keys!

Most of us grow up though. But even now, when I talk of love or making love for example, what am I talking about? Those things as I know them, or as they have been shown to me? Or are these one and the same?

For adults at least, perhaps the artificiality of Disneyland and pornography actually becomes part of their appeal. Porn for example takes sex and culturizes it, makes it safe and accessible. And when we declare that porn sex is fake, that also implies that there is real sex somewhere out there too.

I think the fact that we created these fantasies in the first place and that we still willingly suspend our disbelief for them says something too. And maybe that’s also what some people find so offensive about Disney and what others find so offensive about pornography: we believe them into existence and now, in these new realities, we see ourselves reflected in all our nakedness.

It’s all really pretty absurd. I mean the sex part this time, but all of it too actually.

The point of this project was never to try imagine what the future of sex would be like, but to think about technology’s possible role in it. We are already at a point where we can use technology to change how we see, feel, and experience. I suspect that in the not too distant future, most people’s first shared sexual experiences will be mediated by technology. By that I mean experiences beyond sexting or webcam antics, rather ones where technology is used to directly enable or enhance physical sexual sensation. Hell, these experiences may not even be with another person.

A simple example of this interaction today would be smart sex toys that allow you to connect digitally to a partner. However, despite what the marketers claim, these are totally lame and I very much hope that the future will be a good deal more interesting. And if that future involves wearing a VR headset so that you can watch yourself fuck, well at least that’s a whole lot better than the current direction that things seem to be headed.

Side note: ever notice how when sex toys advertise “public play”, it’s always the woman who is out in public while the man controlling the device lurks in some shadowy office or something? What the hell? Why is that ok? Just imagine if the scene were reversed. That would be creepy as fuck!

What do all these fantasies say about us? And what does the fantasy I am trying to create here say about me?

The funny thing is that Juliette and Riley actually made the entire thing work somehow. Watching the film, you could even be forgiven for believing that this overhead camera setup is very practical and perhaps even could enhance your sex life. My personal experience suggests otherwise however.

While I certainly found using the setup to be entertaining, it was also very awkward—although it is a good deal better than having the camera strapped to your partner’s navel. For example, I don’t know how Juliette and Riley managed to remove their clothing while wearing the headsets, and I had been convinced that oral sex would never work (although kissing remained pretty much impossible, even for them). So I guess while I can’t blame the hardware anymore, at least I can console myself by remembering that one generally shouldn’t try competing with hyperreality.

But technology brings it’s own complications. Example: during one intimate moment, Riley quite literally was blinded when iOS 11 decided that now would be the perfect time to configure Do Not Disturb While Driving. Dear Apple, I appreciate that you are trying to save lives and all, but seriously! I also imagine that the bug report for this incident would have been highly entertaining.

Sex is already complicated enough and now we’re going to throw software updates and notifications and adverts and ransomware and fake news into the mix? The future will be interesting indeed.

Frames of video slowly replace memories. Is this really something I created? Was I really there?

Back in Seattle, I still find it difficult to judge how much of my experience was reality and how much was fantasy. I obviously saw beyond the top level fantasy world that you see in the film, but how much further? Beyond the reality-TV style presentation of the industry that is offered to fans? Beyond any Hollywood-ish glamorization? Beyond cultural cliché? Beyond the personas?

Anatomik did a great job making this project happen, but at the same time, I wonder how much of my experience was actually some sort of expertly guided meta-fantasy: the fantasy about creating the fantasy. That is what the company specializes in after all. With no other reference points, I honestly cannot say.

Watching the finished films, I am proud of what we created. They are a hazy, beautiful mess that reflects my own confusion and uncertainty around this project, as well as the experience of creating it. And it sounds funny to say but these films are probably the most professional thing I’ve created so far.

But will anyone else see them as I do?

Youtube wasn’t going to be fooled at least. Five minutes after uploading the first video, it was gone. Poof! A nice strike on my account too. No matter that the video was unlisted and properly marked as adult content.

Lost the appeal too. They weren’t having any of my, “ok, so it’s porn, but that’s the point of the piece, so really it can’t actually be porn,” argument and they certainly weren’t going to be having any of the old, “but art!!!”

That’s the problem. Everything needs to be all nice and clean.

And the optics are terrible: male software dev creates film about two women having sex…

I hate even having to think in those terms.

I hate having to worry more about how people could misinterpret rather than what I’m trying to say.

And I hate all the men who got us here.

Would it look any better if it were a man and a woman? Or two men? But no. This was an intentional choice.

Accurate or not, my perception was that heterosexual sex scenes focus more on the sex and often invoke sexual conquest and domination, while scenes with only women are more exploratory and intimate. The latter was a much better fit for what I was going for.

It’s not like I’m the first male to depict the female form and call it art either. Seriously, if you want an example of real pornography, go to an art museum. Those old oil paintings and sculptures display great craftsmanship sure, but Biblical or mythological allusions don’t somehow make depictions of naked women profound.

But, then again, you can justify just about anything to yourself.

Do you think there is porn on Mars?

And why should I even care?

I keep telling myself that I don’t, and yet I clearly do.

I’ve since come to terms with creating pornography—and I think I’ve also come to terms with the fact the people may not see this piece the way I do—and yet there is still one doubt that I cannot shake: what if this is truly something ugly? What if beneath all these layers—beneath the hyperreal fantasy and the artistic pretensions—there is only a tawdry reflection? And worse, what if I’ve just been lying to myself this whole time?

No matter where you go, there you are

After we finished filming, I took Highway 1 up the coast. I didn’t know where I was going, I just wanted to see it.

It’s beautiful.

As I drive, I try to process it all. What just happened? Have I become a pornographer? And can anything ever be the same?

What if all this is just a fake Main Street USA? What if all these shining mansions atop hills are just fake porn sets? What if all of us pilgrims are just fake John Waynes?

Why can’t I just toss something out there? Slap a blue filter on it and be done. No need for six thousand words of pretentious, angsty, bullshit. It’s not like anyone will care anyways.

The highway turns inland now. It is getting late. Time to turn around. I take the next exit.

Or maybe I should create a persona… T.J. Eckleburg Presents: Sex From Above! (The Musical)

Something catches my eye on the other-side of the overpass. There, in the middle of an otherwise empty field, stands a Polaris Missile.

In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead

Strange place this.

Here I am standing before a metal tube once capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people. They built it to protect Main Street USA. Now it sits on a literal pedestal at the literal end of the road.

So this is how it was supposed to end? And this is supposed to be reality?

Watching, I see art.

Watching, I see pornography.

Watching, I see myself naked.

Watching, I see the future.

Watching, I see.