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You had to treat your porn like a commodity back in my day. It would get traded and passed around. You would show up at a buddy’s house with a shopping bag full of porn magazines and trade them like baseball cards. The aforementioned Dave of the Shave Dave party worked at a convenience store, so he would often pilfer porn (among other things). I’d go to his place and turn it into the floor of the New York Cock Exchange. There’d be heated negotiations. “One Gent for two Milkin’ and Poppin’s? Are you nuts?” At one point, it got so tense that Dave’s roommate, who worked the third shift, came out and shouted, “Can you keep it down!”

And you’d have to hide your collection. It was a nice treat when you’d put it away for a while and forget about it, only to rediscover it a few months later. That’s a pleasure you’ll never know. One night, back when porno used to be on VHS tape, after a couple glasses of red wine, I stumbled across my stash and saw one that was named Head Cleaner. I got excited until I realized it was an actual head cleaner for a VCR. I still beat off.

And you’ll never know the awkwardness of visiting the porn section of the ma-and-pa video store. Now everything streams wirelessly onto all of your devices simultaneously. When I was a teen, there were little local video stores that had the porn section shoehorned into the corner. The entire place was nine hundred square feet, so they took a four-by-four corner and hung Western doors, beads or a shower curtain in the opening. It was like the world’s worst — or best — voting booth. If there was anyone else in the store, you’d have to pretend to read the back of the box for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre while you waited for them to walk out with their rental before you ducked into the porn section.

One time, I was in that section and an Asian guy came in. It was uncomfortable, because I didn’t want to offend him by looking at the Asian section. So I meandered over to the blacks and lesbians. Who knows, I could have been looking at his sister on the box of Charlie Chan in Her Can.

And God forbid you had to call in advance to find out if they had the title you wanted. I interviewed the great Ron Jeremy on Loveline when he was promoting a movie called Spank Me, Fuck Me (featuring number-one Asian big-boob queen, Minka). Given that cast, I had to see it. So the following day I called my local video store. It’s the first and last time I ever did that. I used to just wander in and pretend that I’ve never even heard of porn. “Hmm, what’s in this section behind the beaded curtain? Pornography? Okay, I’ll try anything once.”

So I called and uncomfortably asked for Spank Me, F’ Me. I didn’t even want to say the full fuck. The guy didn’t know what I was talking about. So I had to ask again, I got really formal. “Spank Me, F’ Me… It’s an adult feature.” As if that was going to make it better. The guy said “What?” again. After one more round of this I finally said, “Spank Me, Fuck Me,” and the guy hung up. He must have thought I was making a prank call. But I’d say this, Vivid, you lost yourself a sale with your stupid title.

As weird as it is to think about, porn used to be a marker for where we were in our cultural evolution. Looking at porn titles now shows that we’ve lost all sense of nuance and subtlety in our society. I was skipping through Pay-per-View and looking at the porn titles recently, and it was all MILFs Who Crave Black Cranks and 18 Year Old Anal Loving Asians. Huh, wonder what those are about? I’m intrigued.

What happened to porn titles where you used to have to use your imagination like Emmanuel or Behind the Green Door? You knew it was porn, but you didn’t know what type. But you and your penis were going to find out.

It’s not just porn titles. It’s everything. We used to have sandwiches called the Reuben and the Monte Cristo. They used to name sandwiches after celebrities. Now the burgers are “The Double Angus Mushroom Cheddar Bacon Bar-B-Q Thing Between Two Buns That You Put In Your Mouth Sandwich.” Everything has to be completely described and on the nose because everyone is a checked-out idiot.

Eventually every porn title is go