The Montreal porn machine part 3: auditions

“Ils sont en action. Ça bouge bien!” The bouncer guarding the door of the RV is all smiles as three would-be pornstars and three actual pornstars race the clock. There is a one-inch gap at the base of the window, and at the bouncer’s behest, I peer inside. To the left was a guy who looks like Pitbull, mirror sunglasses and all, getting a handjob and pushing rope big time. To the right, a young woman is getting the business doggy-style, standing up. I look longer than I should have.

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, the bouncer adds, “Une belle soiree, c’est certain!” And with that the seventh AD4X porn casting party is underway.

Even if you’re not into porn or want nothing to do with porn, you’ve still heard of AD4X. Remember Heidi Van Horny, who caused an uproar by having sex with 23 guys on-camera for her 23^rd birthday? That was AD4X. Or how about Zoé Zebra‘s “Boule-O-Thon,” where she raised money for breast augmentation surgery by having sex with 25 guys in a camper van parked behind a Gatineau strip club? AD4X again.

Say what you will about the product, these guys know how to generate buzz. Then again, buzz is kind of a given when you park a Winnebago behind a bar on St-Laurent and hold public porn auditions in the  middle of frosh season.

10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

It’s a beautiful late-summer night and everyone at TRH Bar is out back on the rooftop terrasse, smoking, drinking, and milling around in an abstract VIP area where some of the talent hold court. The crowd is a bizarre mix of hardcore skate punks, porn industry insiders, and a motley crew of bros hoping to get a go on-camera in the van out back.

How it works: if you want a chance to audition, you pay $20 at the door and they give you a special sticker to wear. Then you make your way to the rooftop porn zone and just sort of stand there, hoping that an AD4X rep notices you and invites you to audition. Ergo, $20 does not guarantee you sex with a pornstar. This is really smart, because appearance alone is enough to weed out a good swath of psychos, uggos, and other assorted scuzzy undesirables. If you’re selected, you get brought down a flight of stairs to street level, where you then walk around the corner and into a parking lot behind the bar. Waiting at any given time are about a dozen guys. They go in waves of three, with three female performers working the sex trailer at a time.

Once inside, the rules are thus: you’re more or less guaranteed a handjob; if after about ten minutes you can’t get it up, then it’s pretty much not going to happen. If things go well, then the performer can decide if she wants to proceed to a blowjob. If she likes you and the vibe is right, then sex is a strong possibility. Total time, ballpark, is about 20 minutes, so stay focused.

I sit down with AD4X president André Grenier, who looks more California casual than porn pimp – crisp, patterned dress shirt, expensive jeans, and a deep, George Hamilton-esque tan. Definitely over 40, with a smattering of grey hair. It was 10:30 p.m., and they had already found two guys who would go on to do scenes for the website. “Cool guys, nice face, nice dick, good attitude,” he says.

Sitting across from us are Leena Ray and Kelly Summer, two AD4X fan favourites, the latter sporting an adorable sailor’s cap and arm tattoos. But it’s too loud and they’re too far away, so I focus on André, who breaks down the audition process for me. “It all depends on the girl – if she likes you, she can just shake your dick. We never push the girls; they all do what they want… but we need a minimum of a handjob. That’s the deal.”

The whole night is being taped and packaged into a video for the website, and he stresses that the event is less of a porn audition and more of a branded AD4X sex-perience. “There’s no place you can party with pornstars – the only place you can see a pornstar is in a strip club. But she’s onstage – you can never fuck with her, take pictures… that’s one reason why we do this. The second is that I don’t do this for fun – I do it to make money. And everybody’s happy in the end.”

He talks a lot about branding, and the need stand to out in a very crowded field — especially when competing with powerhouse markets like Los Angeles. Their approach, he says, is not to try and be something else, but rather, be as authentically Montreal as possible. “We have to be what we are in Montreal — you go to the hospital and the road is bad, these are the problems we have here in Canada. No cops kill black guys, there’s nothing [like that]. So we try to do something different.”

Feeling antsy, I suggest we get a photo of the ladies together. We move over to a nearby set of stairs and take a battery of shots, with André directing my photographer Rudiger to climb higher up the stairs for a more audacious angle on their ample cleavage. Masterful.

11 p.m. to 12 a.m.

Emboldened, we ask to go downstairs. And there it was: a camper van (about 18 feet long) with the blinds drawn, a bouncer on the door and a bunch of guys waiting patiently — some not so patiently — for their turn. What a group — not what you would call porn stars so much as porn enthusiasts. One kid was wearing an honest-to-goodness pirate’s eye patch, and reminded me of a boyish River Phoenix. Another guy was the spitting image of a late ’90s-era Chris Cornell, but skinnier and more of a psychedelic goa trance vibe. My favourite though was the elf-like man-boy with long silken hair and titanium spike protruding through his lower lip. He was alright.

André takes us aside and explains how it’s going to go down: when the current batch exit the trailer, we head inside with two girls and two guys for a brief Q&A before shooting begins. As this is happening, Leena materializes and asks the bouncer to hand her a nearby pack of moist towelettes. “Hurray for wet wipes!” She exalts. And in a single fluid sequence pulls one from the package, hikes up her fire engine red dress, and washes her nether-regions with a few efficient swipes.

The door opens and out bursts Amy Sweet like a tiny blonde thundercap, her petite frame wrapped in ornate, skin-tight white lace and barely-there purple panties. “Ça coule, ça coule!” She squeals to her rapt fans, describing the guy she just got off; apparently he denied himself for three weeks, and the ensuing cumshot was borderline cataclysmic. One guy asks her if they had sex and she says no, but that she would have loved to. “Il avait un esti de beau cock.” The firehose in question then exits the van, and the two of them embrace as she guarantees him they would definitely be shooting a scene together soon. God bless those crazy kids.

By then everyone was out and a crew quickly set to work preparing the RV for the next wave. We got close enough to get a whiff, and there’s no other way to describe it than the smell of sex. It smelled like hardcore sex. And much like a fart, you are disgusted by it yet can’t stop inhaling those funky, funky fumes.

We pile into the trailer next to two AD4X cameramen. To our right are goa trance Chris Cornell and the forest elf, with performers Brindlove and Ariel Bellerive standing over by the kitchenette. Is it work or fun tonight? “Les deux,” they say in unison.

I awkwardly ask Brindlove — tall, thin, tan, wearing as little as possible and rocking a short cherry-red crop — how the guys have been so far. “We’ve had some amazing ones, but it’s hard working in porno. Not for me, but for new boys or girls. When the camera is on you, it’s not the same thing. You realize what you’re doing, and suddenly you’re worried about how your face looks.”

As goa trance Chris Cornell randomly kissed the womens’ bellies for no apparent reason, I ask the elf if he was up to performing on camera, and he likened it to being a famous singer performing at the Hollywood Bowl. “I’m actually more into it when the camera is there than when it’s not.”

Then in my clumsiest French, I play up the fact that Ariel and Brindlove are adult entertainment superstars in Quebec, that guys (and girls) recognize them and worship them… what is that like? “It’s nice,” says Ariel, looking at the floor. Brindlove was more forthcoming: “I love my fans and I love my job. It’s my life.” ■