Load Warriors

"I don't get called trash by no one," she says.

Later, on the way back across the lake, we see Delilah on the deck of a police cruiser in handcuffs. "You know," confides Willie, "she reminds me a lot of my ex-girlfriend."

GIRLS GET PAID

WHEN ASKED, THE GIRLS INSIST THEY DO THIS FOR fun. They deny that it's for attention, or -- citing a lack of sexual gratification in the act -- that they are exhibitionists, and claim they have internal limits on what they will and will not do, and that things that might be appropriate on the lake would not be elsewhere.

Cleo, who for the most part avoided taking her clothes off the whole weekend, claims her limit is flashing her breasts. Except that just before we left the cove on the last day, Cleo met someone named Scooter with a double tongue stud and a massive member, and, at Keith's urging, she fondled it on camera.

"Oh, I did," she says. "I forgot about that. I was a bad girl. That's when I got too drunk; I shouldn't have done that. Plus he was really hot. But guys don't want to see girls grab another guy's dick."

She seems somewhat distressed to learn that, well, no, in fact, that's not entirely accurate.

"If my face isn't on it, I don't care," she decides.

Rosanna is less inhibited on camera and admits to occasionally being with women in real life, but still draws the line at onscreen sex with men. "I don't know if you saw what I was doing yesterday with the other girls, with the strap-on," she says, "but I think that's way different than actually doing it with a guy on camera. It wasn't for love -- it was for fun."

But the girls do get paid. "I'll pay you for the model releases, and I'll pay you for the scene," George says. "Anywhere from a hundred to 500 bucks." This is confirmed by Rosanna, who has made as much as $300 per day.

"I don't think I'm getting paid," Cleo says.

"Well," Rosanna explains, "I get paid because I do a lot."

"I grabbed that guy's dick," protests Cleo.

"Whoever George brings up here, he's going to expect a little something, you know what I mean?" Rosanna says. "In other words, you can't go on the boat and act like you just want to enjoy the ride."

Neither girl has ever danced professionally, but Rosanna at least entertains the possibility of one day doing adult films. "If I was going to be a porn star," she says, "I would have to be older, late 20s or early 30s. I'd rather do stuff like this for now." She currently works as a high school driving instructor. Cleo is a telephone operator.

The other revelation they volunteer -- as if it weren't evident from hanging out with them for three days -- is that whatever happens at the river, they're not really all that wild.

"I met guys all night long," Cleo says. "Hot guys, like kissing guys and having fun. But all the guys I met out here, they're going to think I'm a hootchie."

Even Scooter?

"The guy on the river? That guy's a slut. He would expect to have sex with me -- that's why I wasn't going to tell him where I was. I mean, last night, none of us got with anybody. And I think tonight none of us will probably be with anybody. [Rosanna] kissed that guy, but if she wants him to like her, she's not going to do anything with him, you know?"

Also getting paid are the handful of male porn stars GM has brought with them on occasion to the river: Kid Vegas, Johnny Toxic, Bruno -- all those names that showed up in the opening scene with the girl in the boat on the river.

"That's Bruno's girlfriend," says George, amazed that anyone could have found that scenario even remotely disturbing. "It's all model-released. That was a scene -- that's separate from all the public stuff. Those were my cameramen."

George seems to realize the disparity between the subterfuge of staged action and the consumer need for plausibility, the line between pro and amateur, realism and reality, the paradox of the Penthouse Forum. Reality TV is often seen as the abdication of dramatic ideals by a public that's willing to settle for anything in their entertainment. But it's actually the flip side of deserved successes like The Sopranos or The West Wing. Because reality TV is a reinvigoration of the element of show business that traditional television has systematically extinguished: spontaneity. Of course, television being what it is, its powers that be can't leave well enough alone, and so they are once again in the process of controlling it out of existence, just as they did to quiz shows, comedy-variety and live drama the first time around.

But the porn industry endured this crucible a decade earlier. The solution, in that case, was amateur porn, where volunteers replaced the professionals. "Amateur, as a rule, has no production values, but it's really hot because people are really into it," explains an online porn columnist. "[GM] falls into what we call specialty. Specialty is not hardcore -- it involves nudity but not actual sex." Of course, those distinctions become a bit blurred on the field of battle. But GM's niche is that it was the first to bring amateur or specialty out into the world, to give it a documentary framework. And so, despite the handful of hardcore titles in his catalog (e.g., The Doctor's Exam), George still bristles at the term "pornographer." George Martin salutes his audience.