This article originally appeared onVICE Canada.

A few months ago I convinced my editor it would be an excellent plan to get a VICE crew together to venture to a mansion in Vancouver and follow five men's journeys to get sucked off for a competition known as "Porno Bootcamp." Yes, that's right, because why the hell not? What started as just an interesting albeit slightly traumatizing story became so much more than that. From Porno Bootcamp came four weeks of PTSD, countless penis-inspired nightmares, and the genuine belief that I would never be able to have sex again (and maybe, just maybe, a very small amount of joy).

When I was at a festival recently, my hungover friends thought it a wonderful treat to pass around a paper cup of lukewarm strawberry milk to share around the circle one morning. I thought watching the milkily satisfied faces of 10 of my friends as they gulped down the shared teat juice was one of the most disturbing things I had ever seen—until I attended the aforementioned Porno Bootcamp. The faces of five men fapping off in a hot and thickly carpeted room burned those milky mustaches clear from my memory.

Now, PSA: if you were perturbed by the milk, you're not ready for what's coming, so please sashay far, far away.

Porno Bootcamp is the brainchild of Samantha Mack, a performer and producer and CEO of Mack Models, an adult film agency based in Vancouver. Samantha Mack is like the Yoda of the porn industry. She takes eager amateurs and lends them a (literal) hand in making their moves to a professional career in porn by teaching them the necessary skills.

Like all good business people, Mack saw a problem in the industry and set about to fix it. There was a lack of decent talent (and ejaculate) in Vancouver, and she realized if she needed guys, she would need to train them herself. From the lackluster pre-existing embers of the professional cocks of Vancouver, Porno Bootcamp rose like a Phoenix from the ashes.

Porno Bootcamp is the male casting couch equivalent. It involves three rounds designed to test the guys' endurance, stamina, and spurt to see if they're ready for the big screen. The competition even crowns a winner at the end of it, for the best and most handsome sperm (and for shooting within the allotted time). The winner will then get to film a video with Mack herself.

When we met Mack, she welcomed us comparatively sexually stifled normies into the throng with open arms and 16-pound breasts. From the beginning it was clear what an impressive and genuinely nurturing matriarch she was. Unlike a female casting couch, which has become a prevalent and troubling trope in porn videos, this one was about making the experience actually valuable for the attendees, and was in no way a sleazy attempt for a director to get their hands in someone's pants.

Porno Bootcamp is the brainchild of Samantha Mack, a porn star and producer and the Yoda of the porn star industry. Screenshot via VICE's "Porno Bootcamp"

The round we got to attend was one aptly named "Musical Dicks," and I'm sure you don't want to know the rules but I will tell you anyway. In "Musical Dicks" the five male porn hopefuls get sucked off by three women (Mack being one of them). The men are trying to last eight minutes and the women are trying to stop them lasting eight minutes. If a man finishes before the allotted time they are out, and the women win. However, after the eight-minute buzzer goes off, the men must themselves buzz off before the 10-minute mark; otherwise they are also out of the game. Complex, I know. If you're struggling to understand, then maybe you're one of the lucky ones.

"There were five penises out in this room in various states of half to full mast"

So, suddenly there I was with five naked men, three naked women, a director, and the VICE crew. It was an awkward mix of naked and lubed-up bodies and clothed ones. A shirts vs. skins situation, except here there could really be no winning for us clothed people. No matter how much I wanted to pretend it wasn't the case, it was in fact, sadly, the case; there were five penises out in this room, five (!), in various states of half to full mast. No amount of small talk was going to change that.

We had spent the last day getting to know the guys, a motley crew of hopefuls whose ultimate obsession over pleasing Samantha superseded any hesitation they might have had in competing.

"I want to make Sam proud," Taylor Thick, the "three-minute man," told me, a sentiment echoed by the rest of the contestants, including Shredz, Samantha's real-life husband. The muscled, heavily proteined, dick- swinging guys acted like her entourage; they carried her bags, brought her coffee, and hung from her lingerie like they would their mother's apron strings. Her claim over them was palpable.

Male porn hopefuls trying to not get in their heads. Screenshot via VICE's "Porno Bootcamp"

"At the end of the day I want them to do well," Mack told me. "We're setting them up in an impossible situation because it's the best way to learn." So while her matron-esque speech about how unimpressed she would be if the boys got any juice on the freshly steam-cleaned carpet seemed strict, it came from a place of love.

The atmosphere was, even for us clothed folk, warm, non-intimidating, and relaxed. I guess being in a room with a bunch of people who were formerly strangers but are now getting blow jobbed right next to you means it is immediately more open. We were all allowed to laugh, which helped.

The lead-up to the festivities was fine, almost fun, in fact. The contestants were touching their appendages constantly, sure, but for the most part were all happily chatting away and exchanging top tips: which penis pumps to use, which way to turn their partners to create a flattering angle for their johnsons, which protein shake is best for extra viscous sperm. Yes, I was clothed and they were all in various states of undress, but it felt, strangely, just like a group of pals hanging out.

"Do you feel nervous?" I asked "Spaniard," another hopeful, who was psyching himself up in the corner with his iPod and what I could hear was hardcore grime blasting through his headphones.

"I'm trying not to get in my head," he replied. Ah yes, I'd heard the dreaded head can get in the way of a good performance. In fact, for guys in porn, being in your head is like rust on an old boat: Once it's there it's nearly impossible to fix and will, ultimately, cause severe sinkage. Shame.

"'Look into his eyes,' was my mantra"

While the general chitchat continued, I was desperately trying not to let my eyes flick over his genitals. "His eyes, look into his eyes," was my mantra. Yet no amount of chanting could distract me from the fluffing going on in my periphery. It was like talking to someone when they have spinach in their teeth; you can't stop looking at it, despite how uncomfortable it's making you feel. Eyes, eyes, eyes.

"Oh that's interesting," I said. What was interesting? I wasn't hearing anything he was saying. Eyes, eyes, eyes. "I see, I see," I was nodding now, to what I wasn't sure; I think we were talking about protein. Eyes, eyes, eyes. It was lurking just below my eye line and I could hear it: the sibilant hiss of skin on skin.

Just as suddenly as I heard the siren call, I had forgotten my mantra, and with the melancholic sigh of inevitability, I locked eyes with his bellend. There it was, staring right back at me.

At this point, I excused myself to go talk to one of the other men whose penis I had not just stared down the barrel of. Needless to say this experience happened with all five men.

Soon we were all being ushered into a room. I was quickly reminded that we weren't just going to be standing around chatting to naked men, that they would soon be performing real-life porn and we would also be there.

Because everyone else was either filming or had too much lube on their hands to hold anything other than a shaft I had to then go nose to nose with their lower halves and take photos of their dicks with an Instax camera (always a team player, me, but mainly because Mack had asked me to, and it turns out I was firmly under her spell too).

"I have never in all my life felt more gay"

"We need extra girls if you want to play?" Mack asked nonchalantly as cocks slowly bloomed onto the Polaroids in my hand. It was an immediate hard pass from me. Always wanting to be involved though, I agreed to be the person who announced the time, and I did, with gusto.

There was nothing sexy about what we saw in that room. In fact, I have never in all my life felt more gay. The faces of us clothed people were different stages of a disconcerted grimace, none more so than our sound guy, who had all the fapping and gagging sounds playing directly into his headphones. Mack had normalized the experience so much that I think I had forgotten that, at the end of the day, they would be fully making actual porn, with sperm and boobs and all sorts.

Realizing this while trapped in the room with said sperm and boobs was a little alarming. Phone in hand, I focused on my task, instructing the girls to switch partners every minute. I was glad for the distraction because it at least in part meant I could attempt to concentrate on other things. I focused on the clock, seconds ticking slowly, each elongated like a particularly gruesome slow-motion car crash.

Finally, we had made it. "That's eight minutes. It's sperm time!" I heard myself say. Then the rest happened. I won't say anything else because I can't bring myself to quantify the levels of the ensuing ejaculate with words.

It was remarkable how quickly proceedings were tied up after the last man finished. Once the final whistle was blown (sorry), the room emptied, everyone who had been spermed on hopped into the shower, the people doing the sperming got dressed, and the clothed people stood silently and tried not to lean on anything sticky.

After an extremely brief surmising speech from Mack, with their egos suitably stroked the men were sent on their merry way.

Like most other formatively traumatizing experiences, I wasn't sure who I was when I left that room. I bought cigarettes (I don't smoke) and drank whiskey (I hate whiskey). I needed to eat but when I went out to get food I couldn't stop staring at the sausages (I'm a vegetarian). I was lost, tumbling existentially through a deluge of dicks, and flashes of cocks and breasts were hitting me like bullets whenever I closed my eyes.

The car ride from location was silent. Four wide-eyed humans had all experienced the cyclical simultaneous horror of both being disturbed by what we had seen but also derailed by it being over. It felt like returning home after a long vacation; everything was the same but I myself had changed so much. I was back in the real world, and people were actually wearing clothes and not noshing each other off. It was wildly unsettling.

I wanted to talk about other things, but I couldn't. It was like some Miltonian hell; I had left the room but I was still there, in part; still watching the poor man whose stage fright never let him get fully hard, and instead his sperm had sprayed from his softie like water from a tiny elephant's trunk, his dick waving around like those funny inflatable tube men outside car garages. It was a sight I wouldn't even wish on my worst enemy. His semen, truly, hath no limits.

"When she spoke, all I heard were dicks. When we kissed all I saw were dicks"

"We can hang out but you can't touch me," I texted the person I was dating. Normally when I'm seeing someone the trials of my job prove quite an interesting conversation. This time though, I didn't have words. Instead she picked me up in my two-piece pajama set and I lay in silence for a while until she tried to touch me, which caused an instant flinch. When she spoke, all I heard were dicks. When we kissed all I saw were dicks. Just dicks. Constantly. I now know what the P in PTSD really stands for. I was visibly shriveled, recoiling from a spermy Satan that was out for the rest of my soul. Relent, Satan!

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked. "In no way," I replied. So we simply lay side by side, abiding by the Catholic six-inch rule between us, in silence.

The celibacy and fear of intimacy lasted over a week. After about 10 days, I was able to touch my girlfriend again without thinking of semen. A couple of weeks and I was only needing to wash the demons off my skin twice a day, then after three weeks, just once a day. A month later I was only having penis-induced nightmares on bad days. Slowly, the trauma eased off, and I felt myself becoming nearly normal again.

Now, I feel lucky when my dreams revisit the sex faces of those five men, because it reminds me of the time we spent together, and like most other challenging trials in life, in hindsight, I've grown strangely fond of the experience.

I think about Bootcamp, often. I think about the guys: where they are, what they're doing, who they're with, and whether or not they've eaten eight chicken breasts that day for that extra viscous cum shot. To this day I can still quite easily identify each man by his penis, far more easily than remembering their actual names. I even bumped into one of them the other day, and we greeted each other warmly like old friends. When you've seen someone's ejaculate soaking brazenly into a shaggy carpet, you are, in a way, the best of friends.

So who was I before porno Bootcamp? Sometimes I'm not so sure. I remember being happy I think, blissfully unaware of what sperm en masse might smell like, adorably naive about what it might feel like to put my elbow into a pool of lube, and sweetly innocent to what a flaccid penis might sound like in someone's mouth. A few months ago I had never even heard of Porno Bootcamp, and life was good—but far less interesting.

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