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The Porn Director

After a little over a year hiatus, during which time I published and promoted my book, I’m back as a senior contributor to Forbes.com. In my latest story, I spend time with Ricky Greenwood, a very popular, very busy porn director. Ricky is a big bear of a guy, and I enjoyed watching him work. The scene I saw him direct features two award-winning veteran performers: Cherie DeVille and Mick Blue. Read the story here.

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My, My American Bukkake (Excerpt)

This is a panel from “My, My American Bukkake,” a comic that I made in 2002. First, I went to a bukkake porn movie shoot and took photos. Then, I ran the images through Microsoft Paint. Finally, I edited the results. The comic has been published in Headpress 23, Dirty Stories Volume 3, and Best Erotic Comics 2008. In a review of Dirty Stories Volume 3, “A Fresh Look at Porn Comix,” TIME deemed my comic a “non-fiction standout.”

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Porn Star 3.0: This X-Rated Social Media Influencer Makes Seven Figures A Year

This story was written by me and originally published on Forbes.com in May 2020.

She goes by the moniker Lena the Plug. Never heard of her? Well, you’re in the minority. She has 3.5 million Instagram followers, nearly 1.6 million YouTube subscribers, and 1.1 million Twitter followers. And she’s built this empire herself.

At 29, Lena is a new kind of adult performer. Once upon a time, adult actresses signed exclusive contracts with adult production companies. Today, influencers like Lena create their own adult content and use their social media platforms to promote their content and score paying subscribers.

Lena didn’t set out to disrupt the porn business. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz and has a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Her family is Armenian, and she grew up in Glendale, California.

Think she’s an amateur?

She earned seven figures last year.

Susannah Breslin: You have millions of followers across your social media platforms. What do you think is your appeal?

Lena the Plug: My YouTube fan base has transformed a lot. I think my appeal at first was purely sexual on YouTube. People showed up to subscribe to my content because they wanted to see me make a sex tape when I reached a million subscribers. Mostly men were watching, but some women showed up as well to see the train wreck they thought I would be. I ended up just sharing the most real and raw, most honest parts of myself on my channel. I sort of treated my videos like they were diary entries for a while. It was an outlet for me. I cried on camera. Yes, I shared the exciting party life I was living with my boyfriend, but I also talked about my eating disorder, losing a good friend to suicide, and how I struggled with the hate that comes with sex work. I went from a 5% female demographic to a 45% female audience, which really stood out to me. I think my YouTube channel has done a lot to really flush me out as a “whole” person, if that makes sense. People see a sex worker, and to them, she is purely a sexual object. It is hard for the consumer to see past that, but when you open up and show “the good, the bad, and the ugly,” you’re humanizing yourself to an audience. They can relate to you in a way that they couldn’t have imagined before. I think that’s my appeal. Getting a person to say: “Okay, she has a totally different type of occupation than the one I do, but I can relate to her. I can see myself befriending her. We are not so different, in a way.”

Breslin: Some people might be surprised to learn that you're bringing in seven figures annually. What are your revenue sources?

Lena: I have a big YouTube and Instagram following, but 95% of my revenue stream comes from selling access to my premium Snapchat and OnlyFans subscriptions. The other 5% is a combination of YouTube revenue, Instagram and YouTube brand deals, adult tube sites, and merchandise. It’s hard to get brand deals when you do 18+ work, or earn a high amount of revenue on Youtube when you are a sex worker—videos get demonetized even if they abide by YouTube community guidelines—so I have always relied on creating and selling quality adult content. It is the bread and butter of my business. 

Breslin: Was being an entrepreneur something you planned or did you more fall into it?

Lena: I’ll be honest. I didn’t think I had an entrepreneurial bone in my body until I started doing this work. I began selling access to my premium Snapchat back in 2016 when it became very apparent that because of my high follower count on Instagram and Snapchat, I would have guaranteed financial success with it. A few different people who ran sites that girls could sell access to their Snapchat on had reached out to me to join their sites. They wanted 50% of the revenue for me showing my entire body online, while they just hosted the site that processed the credit cards. It struck a nerve with me, and I couldn’t get myself to take any of those deals. I decided to have a site built for myself, where I could keep a majority of my earnings. I’ve since moved to larger, more mainstream sites—like OnlyFans—because they offer a reasonable revenue split, but I think that experience with creating my own website is what started me out as the entrepreneur I didn’t know I could be. 

Breslin: Even though adult content is ubiquitous on the internet, there's still stigma attached to sex work. How do you navigate that?

Lena: It used to be really hard, at first. I was overwhelmed with negativity when I first gained notoriety online. I felt I had truly made a mistake in choosing this work and should have never entered this space. I wasn’t used to the repeated name-callings back then. I’ve since gotten used to it and grown thicker skin. If someone calls you a whore thousands of times, it just doesn’t hurt anymore, you know? I see the same negative comments all the time. They lose their meaning after a while. The commenters of these words don’t feel like real people anymore. I basically just block and ignore now. Internally, I acknowledge that whoever is commenting is coming from a very different world than the one I know. They haven’t been exposed to the same things that have allowed me to be open-minded about sex. I try to be forgiving about their hatred and remind myself that there was probably a time where I was more close-minded and would have probably thought poorly of sex workers too. It doesn’t make it right, but it helps me to put it into perspective and try to understand them better. 

Breslin: Years ago, adult performers had exclusive contracts with production studios. What role has the internet and social media played in your career?

Lena: Without the internet and social media, I would have no career. Without Instagram and Snapchat, I would have never known that selling adult content online was even an option. I would have no clue that you can make an entire career off of it. I only got into this business because so many of my followers kept asking me if I had “premium” content. Now I use my social media platforms as marketing tools for my business and [as a way] to meet other creators to work with. I owe everything to the internet and these platforms. 

Breslin: How has the pandemic impacted your business?

Lena: The pandemic has affected a majority of businesses in a very negative way, but my business has been growing steadily during the past couple of months, in terms of selling memberships to my OnlyFans. Also, I always worked from home, so the pandemic hasn’t changed that for me. The one difference in my business is that the type of content I create is a little different. I can’t meet with other performers to shoot content, so I mostly film solo content or shoot videos with my partner, who I’m quarantined with. I have shot a couple of Zoom orgies, which are fun, but I look forward to when I can physically work with other beautiful women in person again. 

Breslin: You announced not long ago that you're pregnant. What was the reaction like from your followers? How has being pregnant impacted work?

Lena: Yes, I am currently 17 weeks pregnant! I made my announcement on social media a few weeks ago, and as with most things, it was good and bad. I was overwhelmed with beautiful messages from many of my followers who are excited for this new chapter in my life. However, many people felt the need to vocalize their opinions about the mistake they seem to think I am making. The number one concern is that my child will be bullied because of my career choice, and that it is selfish for me to bring kids into this world. Others believe that if I’m choosing motherhood, I should leave sex work behind. It’s apparent that these people subscribe to the idea that women cannot be both maternal and sexual, they must choose one or the other. I’m ignoring everyone and continuing to do my job and live my life. I shouldn’t have to leave my career, especially while my success is constantly growing at a steady rate, just because I am having a child. I’m a business woman, just like any other business woman, and I’m in the very fortunate position where I don’t have to give anything up. So far, my pregnancy hasn’t affected my work. People still love my content, even with the extra weight. As I grow and look undeniably pregnant, I am sure I will lose some amount of subscribers who miss my smaller frame, but I will surely gain some new ones who prefer a big-bellied body. 

Breslin: Who's your role model? Kim Kardashian? Steve Jobs?

Lena: I wouldn’t really say I had any role models when I came into this business because I sort of fell into it without even realizing what was happening or how big I was getting.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Extreme Porn Crackdown

This story was written by me and originally published on Salon in July 2001.

These days, it seems like the Los Angeles Police Department has got a thing for porn. Understand, the kind of porn the LAPD wants is not just any kind. When it comes to the LAPD and porn, the LAPD wants the nastiest, dirtiest, most extreme porn around.

"What kind of porn is that?" you might ask. (They are, after all, the police.)

The kind of porn the LAPD wants has naked women fisting each other, and guys peeing on girls, and 80 men masturbating onto the face of one kneeling woman. That's the kind of porn the LAPD wants.

Got any?

The adult-movie industry does. That's why, on Dec. 15, 2000, a posse of L.A. cops showed up with a search warrant at the San Fernando Valley offices of a man who goes by the name of Seymore Butts to get a fisting tape they wanted.

And that's why on May 16, 2001, they pulled over the car of a man named Jeff Steward in nearby Woodland Hills because they heard he was their guy when it came to a popular new porn genre called bukkake that involves one woman, 100 or so men and lots of semen.

As payment for the porn, the LAPD handed Butts two counts of obscenity. It's likely Steward will be awarded a few counts as well.

And it is quite possible the LAPD will be coming back real soon to Porn Valley, USA, for more. Because these days, it looks as if the LAPD has a big hard-on when it comes to hardcore porno.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Seymore Butts lives in a low-lying ranch-style home behind a locked gate at the end of a driveway in the Northridge area of the San Fernando Valley. Outside is a kidney-shaped pool, in the living room is a porn-star girlfriend and in front of a TV is Butts himself.

Seymore Butts is famous. Famous for being a pioneer of gonzo porn in the '90s, setting off with video cam in hand to chronicle sexploits that, as his name implies, involved more than the missionary position. Famous again in the mid-'90s for a porn movie in which his girlfriend gave a blow job to a fireman -- an on-duty fireman -- on the back of a fire truck.

Now Butts may become more famous, perhaps even most famous, for his most provocative production to date.

It's called "Tampa Tushy-Fest Part 1."

In this particular filmic endeavor, two female porn stars, who go by the names Alisha Klass and Chloe, can be seen convening in a Florida hotel room. Klass and Chloe are two of the adult movie industry's "anal queens," postfeminist sexplorers who take howlingly orgasmic pleasure in their experiments at the anal end of extreme porn.

Once situated before Butts' camera, they embark on a trip to the outer reaches of the extreme sex frontier. In a frenzy of erotic competition and mutual admiration, the women end up putting their whole fists into each other's orifices to loudly orgasmic fanfare.

This is where Seymore's trouble began.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Adam Whitney Glasser was born and raised in the Bronx until 13, the Jewish son of a clothing-company sales-rep father and a secretary mother. When the family moved to Santa Monica, Calif., Glasser discovered he preferred girls to books, lost his virginity at 14 and found a cache of his father's adult videos. He was disappointed when he did; as he says now, "I didn't know my Dad just didn't have good taste in porn."

After graduation, Glasser hosted nightclubs and went to junior college, but he quickly came to appreciate where his true interests in life lay. "Once I started dating a lot of women," he says, "I always kind of dated a lot of women." By 24, Glasser had become a personal trainer and opened a gym in Los Angeles. To make extra money on the side he rented the gym out as a movie location, and one night in 1990 in a video store he espied John Stagliano. And Glasser knew Stagliano was the king of the then new field of gonzo-porn.

In the '70s, adult movies meant relatively big-budget affairs shot on film stock, but in the '80s, the advent of cheap and portable video meant anyone could make a porn movie. Stagliano, as a veritable porn pioneer, had created a persona to match the new medium -- "Buttman," a pervert adventurer documenting his "real" sex life so guys back home could watch directly through the eyes of both porn-maker and performer. (A double shooter, really.)

As Buttman's videos gained in popularity among porn consumers, they inspired a new generation of DIY porn auteurs.

Glasser was to be one of them. He offered his gym to Stagliano as a set, and the day Buttman came to film, Glasser says, "I watched, and after that day, I thought, I'm in the wrong business."

These days, Adam Glasser is 37 and known to a certain segment of the world as Seymore Butts. Over the last decade, the porn industry has grown up with him -- into big business. America's hunger for pornography has led to the annual shelling out of billions of dollars on adult videos, erotic magazines, pay-per-view adult programming and porn Web sites. (The exact figure, while widely estimated in the range of $10 billion to $11 billion, is currently being contested by Forbes.com, which estimates it between $2.6 billion and $3.9 billion.) The number of porn videos produced each year has surpassed the 10,000 mark.

Riding this wave, Glasser has made some 90 films, and thinks, after a considerable pause, he has slept with perhaps 400 or 500 women. Today, he is tan and muscular, although his dark hair is going gray in parts and there are lines around his eyes. But if you look at the movies Seymore Butts made, you see why he became as popular as he did.

In videos with titles like "Buttholes Are Forever," and "Tushy Con Carne," Seymore Butts sports a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. He is no stud workhorse at plow, but a man relishing a "spontaneous" sex life with girlfriends and gal-pals. The women apparently enjoy themselves as well. Butts' camera scans their faces almost anxiously for their reactions. Glasser says: "I hated when it looked to me like the woman wasn't enjoying herself, [when] it looked like work, like she was waiting for the paycheck."

Seymore and Adam -- they just wanted girls to have fun.

Glasser had his first big hit when he hooked up with Shane, one of several now ex-girlfriend costars. In his mind, they were the "Burns and Allen of porn." Together they entered the porn pantheon in 1994 with "Seymore and Shane: Playing With Fire," in which Shane engaged in her fireman tryst. After the movie's release, the city of Elmont, N.Y., filed suit, asking $172 million in reparations for the indignity of having its fireman debauched, its firehouse converted into a porn set and its station emblem displayed on-screen. (The suit was eventually dropped, and the credited "Marv the Fireman" resigned.)

Over the years, as a pornographer, Glasser had other encounters with the law. In one, at a Los Angeles porn convention in the summer of 1998, Alisha Klass and two other women were charged with obscenity when the women exposed themselves, and Klass united a cigar and her butt in an ode to Monica Lewinsky. "She doesn't remember completely whether she stuck it in her ass or just put it around her ass," Glasser says today. The case was later dropped.

So by the fall of 1998, when he was in a Tampa hotel room with Klass and Chloe, it must have seemed only natural to be pushing the envelope while making porn. That day, someone had brought up fisting, as in the insertion of the fist into the vagina or anus for erotic purposes. The practice, while not unknown in certain parts of the gay and S/M communities, is for many, even in porn, considered extreme.

"We were sitting around talking about what we would do in this girl-girl scene, and I said I would love to do that," Klass recalls. She was Butts' girlfriend, a relationship repeatedly consummated on camera, in "Behind the Sphinc Door" and "Best of Bunghole Fever," among other videos. The brunet has begun some moves into the world of mainstream filmmaking, including a small part in Wayne Wang's recent "The Center of the World" and a rumored fling with Bruce Willis, documented in the tabloids. ("I'm not in love with Bruce," she told the World Entertainment News Network. "It was all fun for me and now it's over.")

Neither Chloe nor Klass was an average gal. Chloe was already a devout fister in her private sex life, and Klass is famous for talents like self-fisting and accoutrements like a tattoo on her rear reading "SEYMORE BUTTS." When it came to fisting, as a stripper Klass had done research. "Sometimes I'd be onstage and put my hand in my ass, and sometimes people were shocked by it and sometimes they liked it," she reports matter-of-factly.

For their scene in "Tampa Tushy-Fest," Klass and Chloe do seem to like it. To begin with, Klass vaginally fists Chloe with one fist. Next up, Klass vaginally fists Chloe with two fists. After that, Chloe anally fists Klass with one fist. And, as a finale, Chloe anally fists Klass with one fist while Klass vaginally fists herself.

To describe Klass and Chloe's performance this way, of course, removes their actions from the context in which they were created. There are plenty of other interesting moments in "Tampa Tushy-Fest": Klass' bong-toking, her substantial "squirting" and her proclamation to Chloe's crotch, "I wanna stick my whole head up there!"

There is orgasmic moaning to consider for consensuality, Chloe's hand instructions to be debated as points of education and, for political significance, the post-fisting moment near the end when Alisha turns to the camera and crows, "Fuck, yeah, that's girl power!"

"It was a really positive, fun thing," Klass says of the fist fest. For her, it was "enlightening" and "empowering."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

In the five years or so preceding, porn makers had already been producing increasingly more extreme porn. Take "The Houston 500," in which porn-star Houston has sex with an alleged 620 men. (There were actually only about 125 men involved.) Or "Girls Who Puke," in which several women have sex and then, as one might surmise, vomit. Before the current "Tampa Tushy-Fest" imbroglio, there was Anabolic Productions' notorious "Rough Sex 1," which was recalled after female stars claimed they'd been physically abused.

To stay competitive with the Web, where anything goes, shock-porn grew in the 1990s under the benevolent shade of Bill Clinton's perceived hands-off policy toward porn. Porn flourished under the benign rule of a president with whom some porn makers felt a certain kinship in the erotic dalliances arena. By the end of the decade, porn sales were growing larger, and the perception by some in porn was that legal risks were becoming rarer.

But most of those in the porn industry still stayed away from certain erotic acts, those themes and images traditionally considered taboo in commercial porn and most likely to garner porn prosecutions. Simulated rape is one; the pairing of S/M practices and sexual intercourse is another. Other classic porno no-no's include bestiality, implied incest, insinuated pedophilia ... and fisting.

With "Tampa Tushy-Fest" in his hands, Butts got to thinking: What was so wrong with fisting? "I wanted people to give it a chance," he cries plaintively now.

"I called up one of my lawyers," Butts recounts, "and I said, 'Can you please refer me to the specific legal reference to fisting? Please just tell me the page?' And he says, 'Well, you know, it's obscene per se.' And of course, I had to get the definition of obscene per se, which means it is likely to be found obscene. Which to me is just utterly gobbledygook! I mean, what the fuck are they talking about?"

What the fuck they were talking about is, in fact, the sanctioned method used to assess obscenity, dictated by a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case called Miller vs. California. According to it, a work is obscene if it appeals to "the prurient interest" as dictated by "contemporary community standards"; if it exhibits "in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law"; and if it lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Then, and only then, is it obscene. Since all pornography, by definition, appeals to the prurient interest, one could perhaps forgive Butts for doubting that a judge or jury would find the taboo practice of fisting any more shocking than a garden-variety porno act like double penetration.

Butts decided to cut two versions of "Tampa Tushy-Fest" -- one with fists, one without. Then he sent several thousand fist-filled copies out to retailers across the United States. A week later, his phone began ringing. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" demanded one retailer. He received 50 calls about the tape, Butts estimates, half negative. If they didn't want it, he told them, all they had to do was send it back, and he'd send the edited version in exchange.

Ten percent sent back the original "Tampa Tushy-Fest." "To this day," Glasser says, "the number of requests we get for that movie are great."

Some porn producers were angry, believing Adam put them all at risk. But at the 2000 Adult Video News Awards, "Tampa Tushy-Fest" won "Best Gonzo." Klass and Chloe, for their part, won "Best All-Girl Sex Scene."

The fisting debate died down.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

That is until 8 a.m., Dec. 15, 2000, when several members of the Los Angeles Police Department showed up at Seymore Inc. in the town of Chatsworth, on the far western edge of the San Fernando Valley.

They were looking for porn.

The LAPD served Adam Glasser's 69-year-old mother, Lila, now a divorcée and the company bookkeeper, with a search warrant. Glasser was called to come down. He says the cops acted reluctant, like they were fans of his -- and of his girls.

The police left with the master tapes for "Tampa Tushy-Fest Part 1" and the yet-to-be-released "Tampa Tushy-Fest Part 2."

They'd let him know by mail, they said, if he'd be charged.

Three months later, on March 16, 2001, Butts was charged with two counts of obscenity: "distribution of obscene material" and "advertising of obscene matter for sale." The charges were misdemeanors, threatening a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. As secretary of the company, Lila was charged along with her son.

The boys in blue, it turns out, had had their eye on Butts for nearly two years, according to court records.

Upon receiving an anonymous tip in January 1999 that there was fisting to be found in "Tampa Tushy-Fest," two vice officers began surveillance of Butts and company. After a few days in January staking out, appropriately enough, the back door at Seymore Inc., the officers ordered themselves a Seymore Butts catalog in February. In March, an officer obtained his own trial membership at SeymoreButts.com, and in May, an officer purchased a copy of "Tampa Tushy-Fest" online. After a bit more surveillance in June, in July the cops took a personal field trip to a Los Angeles porn convention.

The LAPD stayed on the case. In what may have been one of the more spectacular perks ever accorded working police officers, members of the vice squad traveled to the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas in January 2000 to watch Butts and his muses accept their porn awards. An officer then bought a second copy of the video in May, and in November, the LAPD finally got its warrant.

Implicit in the investigation was what Butts' lawyer told him: Fisting is obscene.

What Adam wants to know, like Nancy Kerrigan, is "Why?"

Sexpert Tristan Taormino, after all, announced last spring in her Village Voice sex column that fisting has gone mainstream. "Fisting is not just for muff-divers anymore," she decreed. There have been other fisting films made since, including Chloe's unmistakably titled "The Fist, the Whole Fist, and Nothing But the Fist," from Elegant Angel.

"You think they'd go to the scene where the nun is raped in the wheelchair and then thrown in the swimming pool," Butts says darkly, referring to a film by a rival producer.

Because these days, extreme porn is all around him.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Five months later, the LAPD was back in the valley. Because on May 16, 2001, the LAPD decided to add "American Bukkake" to its porn collection. If the department was developing a taste for extreme porn, then why not bukkake?

Bukkake is the deformed, molested stepchild of traditional smut. The tale told in porn circles is that bukkake was born in ancient Japan as punishment for adulterous women. Taken to a cave, bound and forced to kneel, she would then endure all the village men masturbating onto her face.

Bukkake lives on in present-day Japan as a porn genre. In its classic form, no one touches, no one speaks. With a clap, the loincloth-clad men stand. With a clap, they remove their loincloths. With a clap, they throw their loincloths in the air to shout, "Banzai!"

Then the bukkake-ing begins.

In hindsight, one supposes the American porn industry and bukkake were destined to meet. It was 1999 when Jeff Steward, who owns JM Productions, the Chatsworth-based porn production company, came into possession of a Japanese bukkake tape. Not long after, the "American Bukkake" series was spawned.

Every third month, 60 to 100 men have been showing up for bukkake, American-style, on Wednesday nights at a North Hollywood sound stage. Its mostly amateur male performers are brought in through advertisements in Los Angeles weeklies and a busy "bukkake hotline." The men bring proof of a negative HIV test. They are paid $35 each.

By last September, according to video tracking done by Adult Video News, "American Bukkake" was proving quite popular among U.S. consumers. The February 2001 issue of AVN lists "American Bukkake 11" as the seventh most popular video sold the week of November 2000.

The day "American Bukkake 11" was shot last September, some 80 men -- and this reporter -- made their way to North Hollywood. Waiting in a threadbare holding room, the men were white and black, Asian and Hispanic, short and tall, fat and skinny, handsome and not. They were handed black garbage bags for their belongings. Then they stood waiting in the crowded room in their underwear.

Many of the men wore masks or bandannas to hide their faces. Some of them kept their socks on. One was a midget.

Kiki D'Aire was the bukkake girl that night. A sweet-faced and Vargas-bodied blond porn star, D'Aire has appeared in roughly 100 adult videos, among them a number at the extreme end, from "Missionary Position: Impossible" to "White Trash Whore 19." She is the cheery type of 24-year-old who makes people feel fine about everything, even the prospect of 80 men about to orgasm on her visage.

D'Aire entered the large stage-area room wrapped in a red silk robe and asked for vodka before the bukkake began. The set behind her was that of a business office, and for the movie's opening scene, D'Aire masturbated alone on top of the desk while the men waited testily in the next room, their eager hooting now muffled.

Filming D'Aire was "American Bukkake" director Jim Powers, a good-humored stockbroker turned porn director. He is known for shooting some of the most shocking porn being made today -- "Freaks & Geeks"; "Fatter, Balder, Uglier"; "Perverted Stories." The black T-shirt he wore that evening read "Can't Hold Back the Demons."

D'Aire was escorted from the room. The bukkake men were funneled in. When D'Aire was brought back, the men cheered. One man, in a Darth Vader mask, breathed heavily through his vents.

"You guys are turning me on so much!" D'Aire announced to the crowd.

Powers implored the men, "Please try to come on her face!"

The group was directed to take off their underwear en masse. At Powers' prompt, they threw their boxers and BVDs in D'Aire's direction, shouting, "Banzai!" D'Aire giggled.

Powers emphatically coached the men, "When you're done coming, jump back!"

D'Aire sat naked on a towel down on the floor. The men formed concentric circles around her. For the next two hours, the men masturbated from ladders and on desks, jockeying for closer position.

D'Aire encouraged them. "Oh, yeah," she said, her eyes closed.

The men were generally orderly. It was, for the most part, quiet.

Of those I talked to afterward, one man told me, "It was a lifelong fantasy to do something like that." Another said, "I don't consider it degrading. I don't want to degrade anyone." Another revealed, "It's a way of being a pervert but not really hurting anyone." Another confided, "I'm not involved with anyone right now."

And one discovered, "For me, standing around jerking off with a bunch of guys isn't exactly my fantasy."

In the end, D'Aire left for home with $500.

A girlfriend of D'Aire's, who had done a bukkake, told her beforehand that bukkake was "the easiest $500 in the universe." Looking back, today D'Aire judges bukkake hilarious.

"If you go in there and have fun and treat it like this humorous thing, you'll have a good time," she advises.

What was on her mind during the bukkake?

"What was going through my head was how absurd the whole experience is, how wacky it is that men are so in awe of a girl that they're willing to stand next to 60 other guys jacking off," D'Aire replied. "Two years ago if someone told me I was going to be sitting on the floor waiting for 70 men to come on my face and hair, I would've thought they were crazy. But, you realize there's a place for everybody in this world sexually."

She added, "I woke up the next day and my hair was soft. Semen is full of protein."

D'Aire is very open-minded.

She will tell you she controlled what happened that evening. She believes strongly there are more important things in the world than someone who took so many, in her words, "shots to the face."

If you're going to have fantasies, you have to acknowledge that fantasies aren't always nice, D'Aire says. That is where people have a hard time, really, with porn, she says, because it is happening but at the same time it is not.

When you bring a fantasy to life that way, says D'Aire, sometimes it clouds the issue.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

On May 16, Jeff Steward was pulled over by an LAPD car outside his Woodland Hills home. In January, someone -- likely a policeman, as the same pseudonym was used in the Seymore Butts case -- bought two Steward-produced videos, "American Bukkake 11" and "Liquid Gold 5," a peeing tape, through his Web site.

Now, the police had a search warrant for the same videos and wanted to search Steward's car, home and office. As he was being pulled over, Steward's wife, driving their 15-year-old son to school, was also detained, she says, by a total of 10 police cars.

Steward says he was taken back to his home in a police cruiser, where 20 LAPD officers searched his house. They retrieved invoices and fliers for those videos purchased through his Web site. Steward says he repeatedly volunteered to the LAPD that the things they were looking for -- three copies apiece of "American Bukkake 11" and "Liquid Gold 5" -- were at his office in Chatsworth.

The officers finally followed him there. He gave them the tapes they wanted. They left, pornos in hand. Soon, Steward may be getting a letter, letting him know if he will be charged with obscenity.

Four days after Steward's run-in with the police, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story by Frank Rich profiling the adult-movie industry. The cover's headline was "The World's Most Profitable Back Lot," and it noted below, "There's no business like porn business." The essay posited that porn is a business, run by businessmen, who happen to trade in sex.

In an echo of Rich's thesis, Steward himself informed the police, "I have done nothing wrong. I'm a businessman." And at present, as a businessman, Steward defends his work at the extreme end of porn in nakedly capitalist terms. "This is no different than people selling cars at a car lot," Steward says exasperatedly.

The product he pushes, he says, is no different from the rest of the products of pop culture, like the gross-out humor being offered from cable channels to movie theaters. "It's like 'Jackass' on MTV," says Steward. "Some guy swims in feces on MTV, and that's OK. But for a girl to swallow 80 loads of cum is obscene? I don't think so."

After all, when it comes to bukkake, Steward says, he has moved some 200,000 copies already. JM Productions is only up to "American Bukkake 14," and Steward isn't even the only producer making it. The same day teward encountered the LAPD, Jim Powers was back shooting another bukkake that night in North Hollywood.

According to AVN.com, Powers declared on the set, "We're doing this for all of America."

Of bukkake, the businessman says, "If people didn't want it, it wouldn't be made."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The case of Adam Glasser, who estimates his company earned $1.6 million last year, is scheduled to start in October. Fortunately for Glasser, he has found himself a lawyer with fisting experience. In 1976, attorney Roger Diamond defended the maker of "Plunge 1," a gay fisting film, and won. Diamond says with confidence, "This thing will be a trip down memory lane."

Steward insists, "I didn't do anything wrong." He, like Glasser, with lawyer Alan Gelbard, plans to go to trial, if necessary, rather than cop a plea. He would be fighting for his First Amendment rights, but for his finances as well. Porn makers who take guilty pleas may face fatally high financial penalties if federal agents later pick up the cases of those who already have state obscenity convictions.

Several porn companies, though, are already discontinuing their extreme video lines. Metro Video's "The World's Biggest Gangbang 3" is no longer available at an adult video store near you. And the porn industry is still trying to figure out if, as they fear, the advent of George W. Bush and his unabashedly moralistic attorney general, John Ashcroft, will generate a conservative trickle-down effect when it comes to obscenity prosecutions, with extreme porn the Achilles' heel for the entire industry.

"This is a crackdown," proclaims criminal defense attorney Jeffrey Douglas, who works regularly with the adult-movie industry and sits on the ACLU's Southern California board of directors. As Douglas sees it, the LAPD was just lying in wait for the likes of Ashcroft, hoping that with Bush in office more federal monies will become available for obscenity prosecutions.

The LAPD vice squad, believes Douglas, is hoping extreme porn will lead to easy convictions, resulting in bigger budgets and providing them sought-after respect. "If all you do all day long is watch X-rated movies and search porn Web sites," Douglas says scornfully, "it's harder to get status amongst your colleagues."

Regardless, pornographers pushing the obscenity envelope didn't foresee that this day would come, says Douglas. "I've been at meetings and events where, if you're talking to a 25-year-old porn-maker about federal prosecutions for obscenity, you might as well be talking about the Spanish-Mexican War," he says ruefully.

And with extreme porn, hypothesizes Douglas, a conservative government struggling for a popular foothold could find the perfect political tool. "In order to pursue obscenity prosecution, you need the convergence of two things," Douglas explains. "You need to have both an ideological commitment and a political payoff." Extreme porn would provide a bone to throw the rabidly anti-porn right-wing constituencies who helped Bush into office, as well as an easily demonized enemy to fight against for mainstream support.

Nevertheless, "Tampa Tushy-Fest," says Douglas, isn't obscene by today's community standards. "If what's available to California consumers and on the Internet is taken into account, then Adam should get a written apology," he says.

The LAPD, for its part, says this is all just business as usual. "I've been doing these type of investigations for the last 16 years," says Detective Steve Takeshita, who is overseeing the latest obscenity cases. "This is standard practice."

Sex in the bedroom may have gotten wilder but, Takeshita asserts, that doesn't make movies featuring provocative sexual content any less obscene when distributed. "What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is between them," he says. "As soon as that activity is distributed publicly, that's where obscenity statutes come into practice."

Regardless of the result of the "Plunge 1" case, Takeshita predicts "Tampa Tushy-Fest" is going down, based on his previous experiences with porn. "I think it will be found to be obscene because of past cases that we've done," he says confidently.

Was the LAPD pressured by the federal government? Takeshita says no way. "The LAPD doesn't receive direction on how to do investigation from the feds," Takeshita snaps. "We are not doing anything we haven't done for the last 16 years or even longer." (The investigation of Seymore Butts, it should be noted, began in the Clinton era.)

Deborah Sanchez, the prosecuting attorney in the Glasser case, agrees with the LAPD. What's new is only that the cases are going to trial, she says. "We've prosecuted dozens of obscenity cases," she explains, "but we've always gotten pleas. This is getting attention now that the city attorney is involved."

Sanchez asserts pornographers like Glasser, who push the limits of porn, won't be able to hide behind the First Amendment in court. "From what I've seen," Sanchez says of Glasser's tape, "this goes beyond what the First Amendment covers." The porn industry, Sanchez says, knows full well the unwritten rules of what they cannot do without risking prosecutions. "The industry knew there are things you just don't distribute."

It remains unclear why 100 men masturbating on a woman is less protected by the First Amendment than, say, three men doing the same thing. It's a state of affairs that only serves to illuminate that, when the subject is porno, the criterion of "community standards" becomes increasingly hard to define.

If extreme porn is the adult industry's indirect attempt to narrow the definition of obscenity further to give themselves greater freedoms, Sanchez says, it will backfire: "They want to see if they can test the waters and push the boundaries a little more as far as the First Amendment."

Sanchez expects to win -- "Juries have sided with us," she says -- and she promises that the city will give the producers more of the same if porn continues to test the obscenity limits of adult video in the future. "It's going to continue to be prosecuted regardless of whether Glasser is convicted or not," she says. "If others are distributing videos with bestiality, fisting, defecation, [they are] going to be prosecuted."

Not everyone in the porn world disagrees. "We've had a free ride for a long time," concedes self-appointed porn spokesman William Margold these days, somewhat wistfully. The act of bukkake, he says, encapsulates what's gone wrong with porn.

"I think the biggest thing bukkake proves is that the adult-movie industry has forgotten how to create," Margold sighs. "When you've forgotten how to create, you go through the motions over and over and over again."

But that's not how Steward and Butts and their cohort see the world. "I'm innocent of any wrongdoing and I'm going to fight," pledges Steward. "Why do people have the right to watch what they want to watch in the privacy of their own home?" he asks rhetorically. "That answer is we live in the United States of America."

Porn producer Rob Black, head of Extreme Associates, has since searched his own online buying records looking for the same pseudonymous "Steven Peterson" of the Butts and bukkake cases. It turns out Peterson had already paid Black a visit. The movie purchased was "In the Days of Whore," and, as Black points out, it is not just any video. The finale was shot in a church and features a multi-money shot accessorized with urine and a crucifix.

"We extend our arms openly with a warm embrace for the consequences to come," Black taunts the LAPD from his Web site. "Give us a call if you want to purchase any other products!"

In a plea for support on AVN.com, Glasser is seeking support from porn friends and fans. He asks that distributors push his product more aggressively, retailers introduce their customers to his videos and, "last, but certainly not least, I simply ask fans to whack off a little more!"

Already, Court TV is calling Seymore Butts.

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So You Want to Be a Male Porn Star

As I’ve written previously, I regularly get emails from men who want to be porn stars because I wrote this story a dozen years ago. So far this week, I’ve gotten two — no, three. Oftentimes they are from India or Pakistan.

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Scenes From My Life as a Sex Journalist

Yesterday on X, I posted some photos I’ve taken over the years as a sex journalist. You can see the thread here.

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Canoga Park

Two porn stars shoot a scene in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley. Photographed by me in April 2009.

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The Flesh Eaters

This short story was originally published in Construction Literary Magazine in June 2018.

Dolores didn’t expect to spend the last year sewing pubic hair into a disembodied silicone vagina, but that’s the way it happened. One day, you’re working at the 7-11 on the corner of Tujunga and Magnolia, and the next day, you’re submitting your job application at a place your mother will refer to from this day forward as “the dildo factory.” In fact, it’s not a dildo factory. They make many things here. In the three and a half years that she’s worked at this place, she’s spent six months stringing anal beads, fourteen months assembling penis pumps, and two months boxing vibrators. A year ago, she found her niche: masturbators. The name sounded like something for which you should spend your Sunday mornings confessing, but in fact it was just her and four other girls in the far corner of the warehouse bent over a never-ending supply of thermoplastic rubber that had been molded to resemble the vaginas and assholes and entire rear ends of famous porn stars. At this point in her career, Dolores didn’t really think about what she was doing anymore: her head bent inches from the factory sculpted labia of a woman she’d never met as she poked the thick needle into the rubber surface and threaded another plastic pubic hair through the fake flesh. Sometimes she wondered what the real women were like. Somewhere in the Valley, they were famous actresses. On the internet, their images were beamed to places Dolores had never been in order to make men that Dolores would never meet happy, if only for a few fleeting moments. The demand was so great that Dolores and the other girls could hardly keep up with the pace. And right now, it wasn’t even the busy season. Come fall, the boss would hire another half dozen girls to work a second shift. The trucks would pull up to the back of the loading bay with increasing frequency, carting the boxed vaginas off to parts unknown. It made Dolores sad to see them leave, like watching your children head off for their first day of school. How would you defend them from the world? A week ago, Dolores was the last one leaving, and without thinking, she walked over to the table, picked up one of the boxes with a vagina in it, and dropped it into her bag. It was heavy—remarkably so—and she wondered briefly if the camera mounted in the corner where the wall met the ceiling had seen what she had done, even though she had turned her back to its prying eye. At home, she removed the vagina from her bag, set it on her dining room table, and considered it. On the cover of the box, the woman whose vagina it was had been dressed up like a waitress and was holding up her fake vagina like she was serving it for dinner. Dolores supposed that’s what men wanted: some piece of you offered up like a slice of pie for their consumption. To be honest, the thought didn’t make her mad. It made her lonely. As the sun set outside, and the room glowed with the golden hour, she had to believe that there was someone out there who would want the person Dolores really was, served on a platter, whole and ready to be eaten. Perhaps there was one man for whom she—meat and bone, organs and innards, blood and matter—would be enough to sate. 

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Pink Fishnets

I took this photograph of a porn star on the set of an adult movie in Woodland Hills, CA, in the spring of 2009.

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The Convention

I took this photograph near the red carpet at the AVN Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada, in, I believe, 2013.

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The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star

This article was originally published on Forbes.com on April 23, 2012.

You might think being a male porn star is easy. Have sex for a living? That's a piece of cake.

So, what can some of the biggest woodsmen in the porn business teach us about work?

As it turns out, guys who get it up for a paycheck have something to offer when it comes to career advice.

I heard from seven of Porn Valley's biggest studs via email and got the secrets to becoming a successful working stiff.

TIP #1: Get your coworkers to like you.

In the porn business, it's doubly important your coworkers like you.

According to Brandon Iron, star of "Perverted Planet 7" and director of "Sex Crazed," getting along with your costars is the key to getting ahead in porn.

"The hardest thing about being a male porn star is convincing your female co-workers that you are an interesting, well-rounded, fun guy who they might consider dating in a parallel universe after a few drinks," Iron says.

TIP #2: Don't confuse the professional with the personal.

For male porn stars, the line between professional and personal can get blurry. If you think keeping the professional professional and the personal personal is tricky in your line of work, you should talk to a male porn star, who may have a wife waiting at home for him to finish his latest scene with another woman. 

Jeremy Steele, star of "Naughty Neighbors" and "M.I.L.F. Money," says the hardest thing is what happens when he's not working.

"[The hardest thing is] having a relationship with a significant other," Steele says. "The first time I told a girl I was in porn she disconnected her phone number the same night, and I never saw or heard from her again."

Not only that, changing career tracks can be tricky, especially if you leave the adult business and try to reinvent yourself.

"The second hardest thing is having a post-porn career that doesn't make you 'infamous' if or when it is discovered that you were a sex worker on film/video," Steele reports. "You can lose a job or not find one if you're too well known for having been a whore on camera, in spite of it being legal."

TIP #3: Be cognizant of how others perceive you.

Whether you're a twentysomething or fiftysomething, your age can impact how management perceives your abilities. Are you too young to be getting the salary you're negotiating for? Or are you perceived as too old to be promotable?

Dave Cummings may be the oldest working porn star on the planet. At 72, he's appeared in "The Sopornos 2" and directs his own series, "Sugar Daddy."

On the one hand, Cummings owns a niche market. On the other hand, his age can be an impediment.

Sometimes, Cumming says, he worries his coworkers would "prefer working with a younger guy than me."

TIP #4: Rise to the occasion.

Seymore Butts has had in his own Showtime reality series, "Family Business," and he's directed and starred in adult movies for years.

According to Butts, it's not the porn starlet, the director, the producer, the cameraman, or the production assistant who has the toughest job in porn. It's the guy who has to get wood -- or else.

Butts opines:

The most difficult part about being a male porn star is the hard-on. They have to get it up and off on cue essentially and all the while in between maintain [it] for two to three hours. This must be done under the most difficult of circumstances, including not being attracted to their female co-star, having sex in the most uncomfortable settings, i.e. on hard surfaces, cold/hot weather, etc., and/or having to stop frequently for direction or shot setups. They have to be in great shape in order to perform. It all adds up to being the most difficult job in porn, in my opinion.

TIP #5: Successful negotiations are key.

You may have seen Richard Mann in "Freaknic 2" and "Big Mann on Campus," but Mann says he and his brethren are getting stiffed when it comes to getting paid what they should.

"I'd say dealing with the fact that you don't get any royalties" is the hardest thing about his job, Mann says. "When you shoot, they pay you once, and that's it."

Will male porn stars unionize? Unlikely.

TIP #6: It's all about confidence.

Zak Smith is an artist, author, and male porn star. With his unique resume, he's found porn is a tricky industry because it breeds insecurity.

"Everything that happens [on a porn set] affects whether people will want to sleep with you," Smith says. "The stakes could not possibly be higher. Every other thing -- including things that might lead to losing the job -- are just subthings of that thing."

TIP #7: Perspective, perspective, perspective.

Arguably the most famous male porn star of the moment, James Deen's work can be seen in "This Ain't Ghostbusters XXX," "Simpsons: The XXX Parody," and "Batman XXX: A Porn Parody."

Deen's secret to success: a positive attitude.

"I guess the hardest thing about being a male performer is ... um ... I don't know," Deen says. "My job is pretty easy."

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Consider the Woodsman

“Two of the [male porn stars] I interviewed have since died.” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter: “The Hard Thing About Being a Male Porn Star.” Subscribe to get it Sundays in your inbox.

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Porn Star in Fishnets

A porn star on the set of an adult movie in 2009. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.

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A Rough Trade

“Where do porn stars go when they die? I don’t know, but I hope it’s heaven—or something like it.” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter and subscribe: “They (Still) Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?”

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The Lost Vagina

“The point is, I started thinking, you know, what if my silicone vagina didn’t have to be lost?” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter here, and don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter while you’re there.

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The Hidden Pervert

My latest newsletter is out. It features the perversions of dead people’s houses. Read it here. Subscribe here.

I’d assumed the place had belonged to an older gay man who had spent his final years contentedly rendering artistic homages to the penis, but when I got to the bedroom, I realized the deceased resident had been an older woman.

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How We Become Who We Are, Porn Valley Edition

My latest newsletter trades in how the things that happen to us change who we are.

“As I recall it, when I asked the porn star about her background, she explained that when she was very young—a toddler, I think—her father killed her mother and then killed himself.”

Subscribe here.

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