One Five Seven: Lacunae

There are gaps in my education. Even at my age, there are things I haven't done and things I know nothing at all about. That frustrates and irritates me, which I suppose is something you might expect. I've always obsessed over learning new things, or least learning about new things. I spent a great deal of my life in universities--- undergraduate, grad school, professional school. I still live inside books, and I still make the local library use its interlibrary loan services on my behalf on a frequent basis. So I do hate not knowing about things.

Tonight, mind you, what I don't know about is...rice. I don't know about the role of rice in the porn industry. Let's consider--- I saw an article on line about backstage life on porn video sets. The author noted off-handedly that it was important to take care of certain issues before being on camera. Not just make-up and a fresh Brazilian wax, but things that could make a scene seriously unpleasant for all concerned.  One needed, she said, to take...certain measures prior to some scenes. Well, fine. I can see the need. I can see why those measures would be necessary and what equipment might be needed. Or, she said, you could starve yourself for a week or two...or eat nothing but plain, boiled white rice for a few days before the scene. 

You can probably infer what she was talking about. The equipment would be for what the fetish world delicately calls lavage--- a somewhat antique medical term, though better than its period contemporary clyster. And starving a bit, well...yes, that makes sense.

But the suggestion about rice leaves me blank. I understand what a rice diet is supposed to do, or at least what the author says it's used for in the porn world. What I don't understand is how it's supposed to work. What's the actual mechanism here? The article didn't explain. Is the mechanism something I'm supposed already to know? Also...exactly how effective is this advice? How often is this a chosen method in the porn world?

I don't look to the porn world for sets and settings for sex. I look to obscure novels and films for that, or at least to fashion, design, and architecture magazines. But I would think that porn performers know about mechanical things, about techniques for controlling and mastering the body. I have my own fear and phobias, of course. So performers' knowledge would be something I'd look to.  Yet I would like to know why know just what works, but why and how. I'd like to have a set of user's checklists for these things.

It says something about me, though, that I'm more comfortable looking to advice about what we can call damage control or prevention than I am with taking advice about actual techniques of lovemaking. The consequences of mediocre technique seem far less risky than the consequences of not having control of the body and its mechanisms.

Well, here's a research question: would a dietician know at least as much as a porn performer about the plain, boiled white rice issue?