Whither the fluffer?

No porn shoot is complete without a "fluffer," right? Wrong. "Fluffers haven't been used since the '70s," claims Joanna Angel, who heads alternative porn site and production company BurningAngel.com. "People don't realize this." In the past, a combination of bright lights and nerves might quell a porn star's, ahem, zest for performing, so a fluffer would be deployed to keep the male talent erect by any means necessary. But these days, Viagra and healthy competition mean actors are more likely to always be at the ready. "I don't bother hiring new guys just because they are willing to give me a good ole college try. Fuck that," says director Henri Pachard. "I'm hiring people who are capable of going."

Michael Lucas of Lucas Entertainment is a little more forgiving, but he doesn't use fluffers either. "We show models pictures of their partners, and 90 percent of the time it works perfectly well," he says. "If it doesn't, the performer pops a Viagra."

Back in the golden age of fluffing, the job description came down to having a talented mouth. "[The fluffer] would blow the actor that needed to be blown," Pachard says. "We never paid much attention. Some were hired as part of the crew as a 'general helper,' which included fluffing." But it wasn't always done openly. "I've seen situations where there might be a guy working that is more gay than straight, so maybe there will be a gay makeup artist that fluffs a guy kind of privately," says photographer Barbara Nitke. Eventually, the fluffer was phased out, with directors casting battle-tested performers. "Most of the guys don't need someone in addition to the person they're working with," Pachard says.—JH