“Real Sex” has all the virtues of improvisation: no discernible premise, no host and virtually no celebrities. The first 45-minute-long segment, which has been shown a dozen times since November 1990, revealed the goings-on at a women’s vibrator workshop, a home striptease class and a studio that makes pornographic movies for women. The premiere was HBO’s top-rated documentary for the year. A second installment also has been shown 12 times, and a third will debut on Feb. 22. It is always shown late at night. Executive producer Sheila Nevins insists the show has not “crossed any sexual boundaries. We don’t show intercourse, we don’t show erections. Considering its success, the quotient of criticism from the audience is minuscule.” She didn’t describe the response from people not in the audience, but HBO has been uncommonly modest about the show, taking several days even to come up with someone to speak about it on the record.
Throughout, “Real Sex” has kept the same tone, blithe and uplifting and full of relaxed, happy post-orgasmic smiles. “Real Sex” was conceived at a time when “it seemed like life was getting pretty depressing and sex had become mortally wounded and if we could do a program about safe sex that had a sense of humor people could laugh free of charge,” says Nevins. That explains a lot about the show, including the home-porno sequence of a man in a propeller-topped dildo beanie, and the fact that the women’s pornography producer, “Candida Royalle,” seems to have chosen a stage name strongly reminiscent of a vaginal yeast infection.
But there’s also lots to be learned about “Real Sex,” even for people who may have had it once or twice themselves. Experience the chaste thrill of going on a date with a beautiful 31-year-old dancer who wants to stay a virgin! Find out about the tupuli, supposedly a Cherokee term for “the sacred black hole of creation” (a linguist at the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma said he’d never heard of it); learn to make love the HBO-Cherokee way, by “placing your tipili in front of the tupuli” and moaning on a blanket. Hear “Auntie Maim” explain why “business executives, lawyers and airline pilots” pay $175 to be handcuffed to a wall and whipped by a woman in a leather collar. (It’s because it’s a relief for them not to have to be in charge.) Discover what’s really on the minds of savvy Nevada prostitutes. (How to save for their retirements.) And remember, someday ‘Real Sex" might make you famous for 15 minutes, in which case… well, try to make it last 15 minutes.
