I Went to a Porn Casting Party in Montreal

Montreal might be known as the North American capitol of euro-sophistication (albeit a teensy bit of a racist one), but let's face it: a significant chunk of our tourism depends on Boston steakfaces coming up to visit our sex workers, eat at topless breakfast joints, or peruse our galaxy of strip clubs with weird names like La Caleche du Sexe (literally "the horse-drawn carriage of sex"), places that allow all kinds of touching.

It comes as no surprise that Montreal is also the third largest porn-producing city in the world—after Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Giant porn corporations like Manwin have set up shop in this French speaking flesh-palace creating a multi-million dollar industry. But beyond the porn titans, smaller adult entertainment companies also manage to thrive thanks to Quebec's unique star system—it's the only province in Canada that proudly supports its own celebrities, TV shows, and controversial set of values. Somehow Quebec's culture bubble allows the ultra-local French-Canadian porn industry to stay relevant in an overcrowded online sex landscape.

That brings us to AD4 productions, a company that gained notoriety last year when they took a viral video capturing police brutality against student protesters and turned it into a spoof porn thereby proving rule 34 of the internet. Evidently, the company has a pretty special and locally-motivated approach to porn-making. As one of the producers told me over the phone, "if you don't want to be like the others, don't do like the others."

Naturally when I heard about AD4's recent porn casting party where they promised squirting, wet t-shirts and an RV where normal folks like you and I could be chosen to go at it with actual porn stars, I had to check it out.

The event took place at a bar called Eclipse located on a street aptly named Beaver Hall. When I walked in it felt a bit like a mix between an awkward high school dance and a cheap Serbian sex trafficking den. There's probably a bar called Eclipse in every major city in Europe and they probably all feel like this. I braced myself for what could be the most depressing night of my life.

The scene upon entering was pretty much what I had expected: a bunch of drunk and overly excited dudes: bros sporting "Fuck Buddy" shirts and starry-eyed guys who've probably never interacted with women IRL.

Once I decided to mingle I was assaulted by the music: ultra loud euro-electro dance courtesy of this guy, DJ Crazy Mike. We're not sure if the moniker really suited him, but maybe DJ Retired Golf Dad was taken.

Despite the overpowering music and overwhelming tangy funk of testosterone, everyone looked pretty harmless and in good spirits.

My vagina, however, started shriveling when guys started taking pictures with me and following me around despite my carefully selected frumpy attire. Apparently this guy is at every AD4 event and is a superfan of one of the actresses. My mother—who once said "porn destroys lives"—would have been thrilled to hear porn groupies tell me that I have a future in the biz. Things were getting uncomfortable so I went out to check out the RV.

A sketchy stairwell at the back of the bar opened into a dark alley with an overflowing dumpster presenting the most unsexy scene I could have imagined. Despite a rule of 'only people filming or fucking' being allowed in, we managed to sneak into the RV and grab some shots before the action started.

This is where the magic happens. Okay so it may look like the kind of place your grandparents would play canasta while waiting for the Niagara Falls bingo hall to open, but sometimes you have to make do. Note the decorative flair of matching the pink blanket bench covers to the weird floor pads that are obviously meant for a child's playroom. It really balances out the cheap faux rustic Ikea cabinets.

Plenty of masks and condoms were available for all sorts of protection, both disease and shame-based.

I made the mistake of opening the fridge. What sort of sexy food items do they stock for a porn shoot? Maybe some champagne… or sexy fruit like peaches or strawberries and whip cream or…what the hell is that? Okay, maybe it's just there to catch the freezer drippings or something, but my mind wandered to strange and dark places. We decided that everything was getting too creepy so we went back into the bar as apparently the wet t-shirt contest was starting.

Before you scoff at how vanilla a wet t-shirt contests are (Oooh, I can see your breasts through your now moistened translucent top, boner time) keep in mind this is Quebec, things are done a little differently around here. AD4's version of it goes as follows: take some girls in white outfits…

… duct tape an 8-foot plastic tarp to the stage…

…and bring in Vandal Vyxen—a raver-punk Suicide Girl pornstar with an albino snake and a "SWAG" belt who's specialty is female ejaculation. What do you get?

If you said "a slip 'n slide-squirt show-wet t-shirt contest," then you be both right and disturbed. It might not come across here but there was a LOT of liquid shooting out of that vagina. I imagine it was sort of like being at a Grand Prix podium celebration but slightly saltier. Attempting to comprehend this Squirt-du-Soleil where girls volunteer to dive head first across a stage, under and through a seemingly constant rain of bodily fluids, broke my brain. I had so many questions. How does she reach orgasm so quickly? How much squirt can she possibly have? Where does it come from? Who are these girls and do their mothers know what they're doing? What could they win that could possibly be worth this? Why am I enjoying this so much?

While I still don't even know if those girls actually won a prize, I do remember that at this point, everyone was ready to get their porn on, so the host began to invite audience members to the stage to see what lengths a human male would go to have his penis touched by someone whose job it was to touch penises. One guy put a finger up his own ass. This guy—who we named Baby Gary Busey—tried to suck his own dick.

Then the host asked if two guys would come up and French kiss each other, nobody volunteered. I guess sticking a finger up your own butt or attempting auto-fellatio in front of a room full of strange men falls on the not-gay side of the masculinity scale. Instead he asked someone to lick the entire length of the splooge tarp, which at this point has been squirted on, slid on and stepped on…

Before he could finish, this guy ran up and did it. Apparently risking some sort of horrible stomach virus or mouth-AIDS is not as gross as touching tongues with another guy. Go figure. Then came the final dare for the last spot in the RV: Doing pushups while getting squirted on.

Sure, no problem.

I guess this guy's the "winner".

We decided we'd had seen enough so we returned outside to the RV where these guys were getting ready for their big debut. Keeping yourself erect prior to a scene is known as "fluffing" and these guys clearly wanted to be professional. Again: two guys kissing equals too gay. A bunch of guys standing around jerking themselves off in an alley while looking at each other equals totally not gay. Surprisingly everyone was pretty blasé about what was going on despite it being totally strange and insane event. Maybe this sort of stuff happens all the time to guys, but my mind was constantly being blown while everyone else seemed pretty chill. The other girls who were there all seemed to be in high spirits and not once did I feel threatened or unsafe.

In fact some of them felt so comfortable they felt they could wear anything. Even, well, whatever this is.

You know how some strip clubs are just tragic? Where the collision of daddy issues and the grim consequences of capitalism slap you in the face like a pair of tits tattooed with the words "Change The World"? There was none of that here (except the tattoo). If it wasn't for their outfits and the fact that they've probably had more dicks inside them than I'll ever see in my life, these girls seemed like well adjusted gals just pallin' around.

But surely there was something weird and sinister going on in that RV. After all, isn't porn the domain of dark exploitation, drug abuse and damaged girls? I needed to go in there and see just how bad it was.

Turns out it wasn't as bad as I thought. In fact it all seemed sort of silly and fun. The whole night I tried to wrap my head around the reason why people were here. In the end I realized, why the fuck not? When are they ever going to get a chance to have an orgy in an RV in a Montreal alley again? Likely never. In an oversaturated industry where you can find whatever makes your dick hard in a split second on the interweb, standing out is hard. AD4 isn't interested in producing porn where girls have hot-air balloons tits and guys get to drill them for hours without ever coming. That's why AD4 has a sex RV, I guess.

Clearly there was actually a business model hidden underneath all the squirt, engaging your audience to the point where they can actually fuck a pornstar—while they're at a party, and being filmed for a future AD4 project—is a smart business move. Even if the attendees and lucky fuckers don't become porn stars themselves, those who attended the casting party will now feel like they're part of the greasy porn family AD4 is curating. It's about doing something different and creating a community. And that's good, because it ensures the internet will have even more thrusting cocks on it—but these cocks aren't just any cocks. They're made local and organic. Right here in Montreal, where anything can happen.

Photos by Raf Katigbak. Follow Steph on Twitter: @smvoyer

More about porn in Canada:

A Pepper Spray Loving Lady Cop from Montreal Is Mad about a Porno

Filtering Out Online Porn Is a Dumb Idea

I Got Creeped Out at Vancouver's Last Porn Theatre