Perhaps the strangest single figure in 1970s-era porn, the performer who called himself “Dr. Infinity,” and has been credited as the first to perform an act of auto-fellatio in a major porn production, is the subject of a new, in-depth article published at this link by The Daily Beast online magazine—and even by the standards of porn’s freewheeling golden age, the tale is a bizarre one.
The tale of Dr. Inifinty begins in 1969, when a 20-year-old Boston, Massachusetts man identified in local media accounts as Vito K. Aras—though as it turned out much later, that wasn’t his real name either—was caught attempting to pull off a spectacular heist from the Harvard University library of a Gutenberg Bible, valued even in 1969 at $1 million. (That would be nearly $7 million in today’s dollars.)
Aras appeared to have the whole caper planned out, dressing in ninja-style black and making his escape by climbing a rope dangling from the library roof. But his attempt failed because he forgot one important factor. The 500-year-old Bible weighed more than 60 pounds. Aras simply couldn’t hoist both himself and the precious volume all the way up the rope.
He made the effort, but eventually grew exhausted and fell 50 feet, straight down to the cement. The Gutenberg Bible, one of only 47 known to exist, was none the worse for wear. The same couldn’t be said for Aras, who was rushed to a nearby hospital, unconscious—but alive.
Just as miraculously as he had survived the fall, Aras also beat the criminal charges against him, walking away a free man when a judge ruled him mentally unfit to stand trial. Aras told the court that he had not tried to steal the Bible for money. He simply wanted to read it.
According to the Daily Beast investigation, the next time Aras surfaced came six years later, when a black-clad man calling himself “Dr. Infinity” made his first appearance in a porn film—and what an appearance it was.
In the 1975 film, Every Inch A Lady, Dr. Infinity portrays a character named “Joe Blow,” who quickly lives up to his name by stripping completely nude, climbing onto a desk, and giving himself a full-on blow job, all the way to orgasm, pausing only to insert a cucumber into his anus.
“I hope to introduce a new psychological understanding of human behavior. If we turn within ourselves, we find a great deal," Dr. Infinity explained in an interview with National Screw magazine the following year. "Through sucking on my own cock, I have created a human condition that is very stimulating. I am psychologically contained and don’t need other people. I am a romantic and have found the ultimate love—myself.”
He went on to elucidate an entire philosophy behind both his particular skill, and his screen name.
“The release of sperm from yourself into yourself becomes the energy which can lead to infinity,” he told National Screw. “Self-generating energy will allow you to be anything you want. Control of one’s sperm leads to infinity, and through infinity to a new world.”
During the lengthy conversation, National Screw interviewer Mara Mills told Daily Beast, Aras referred to himself only as “Dr. Infinity,” and was “completely serious” about the name and the cosmic world-view that inspired hm to adopt it.
The Daily Beast also spoke to Ashley West, of the porn history site Rialto Report, who published an article about Dr. Inifinity in 2014. That Rialto Report story may be accessed at this link.
“He was completely crazy, and full of explanations as to his crazy life and times,” West told Daily Beast reporter Aaron Skirboll. “He was hugely entertaining and completely unreliable.”
West also said that Aras went by “many aliases,” but Skirboll finally discovered that the legendary Dr. Infinity was really Vytautas K. Kerbelis. He had been living in Barcelona, Spain, with artist Conxita Pladevall, who said she met “Dr. Inifinity” when he worked briefly as a babysitter for Yoko Ono, looking after her son Sean.
The couple quickly fell in love, despite Dr. Infinity’s philosophy of self-containment, and entered into a relationship that endured 37 years, until his death from emphysema in 2017 at age 68. They even had a daughter, born in 1982.
Pladevall described Kerbelis to Skirboll as a misunderstood genius whose troubled upbringing led him down the wrong path in his youth. But his disastrous attempt to steal the Gutenberg Bible, she said, was the pivotal event in his life.
“When he fell with the Gutenberg Bible, he changed a lot,” Pladevall told The Daily Beast. “That’s what he told me.”
Photo by Screen Capture via Daily Beast
