The Future of Porn

"In September 2001, San Fernando Valley pornographers feared for their lives. In 2014, they fear for their imperiled livelihoods." -- The Future of Porn Is in Your Hands

The Stars

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

Porn stars seem different these days. The girls have changed. Something about them is more ... self-contained. No longer meat puppets, they are machine operators. The piracy, the recession, the laws have trimmed the fat, made this industry's processes more lean, and these are the last porn stars standing.

The Machine

Finding a home for a story on the adult movie industry -- that isn't one more shit listicle or waste of space exercise in parachute journalism -- isn't always easy. Editors don't quite get what it is you're doing. They try to plug it into their model -- "[I]s there a central character (or central group of characters) that go through a specific dramatic experience?" -- or cringe at the subject -- "It's just that we might not tend to feature really explicit scenes involving, say, robotic fuck machines." It may be that less traditional approaches require less traditional delivery systems.

Punch

Thirty-six hours in Los Angeles. Everything's the same. Everything's different. Gritty, if you skip the freeway and drive in through Culver City. Then cartooning, as you move east and climb north. The Mike Tyson statue waiting to throw a punch. The girls perched on corner benches with makeup on their faces that gives them pig snouts and surreal squints. Words carved into the sides of mountains and clouds that look like lines of coke enduring sunsets. On the other side of a mountain, I keep cutting back and forth along an artery of traffic, going somewhere.

Don't Look

Not looking at naked photos of Jennifer Lawrence doesn't make you a better person. It makes you a masochist.

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) September 3, 2014

The Pornography of Violence

Imaginary Enemy, The Used

"Today, films that promise spectacle, intensity, and, above all, whore-bashing are not the totality of the pornographic universe. But they are the primary thing that millions of heterosexual men flock to when they are alone at their computers (check out the popular titles at http://business.avn.com/charts/.) Author David Foster Wallace (2006) spent some time with Max Hardcore at the AVN Awards in 1998 and left convinced that the snuff film was the apotheosis of porn -- the 'horizon' towards which the industry was traveling (28). More recently, journalist Susannah Breslin (2009) left a movie set of director Jim Powers with a similar impression: 'The products that Jim produces are videotaped vivisections, studies in which homo sapiens lie upon the operating table, the director is the doctor, the camera is the scalpel, and the only question worth asking is, How far will we go if we are pushed to our limits?" Breslin suggests an answer in the ambiguous title of her essay: 'They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?'

There is good reason why critics entertain visions of lethal violence when they consider pornographers' commitment to the intense and extreme, to the hostile and aggressive. But there is less reason to believe we stand on the precipice of something else altogether new and more threatening than what came before. The apocalyptic visions of Breslin and Wallace are not unique in the twenty-first-century. For instance, pornography and pop culture in the 1980s left David Cronenberg with a vision as ominous as Breslin's and Wallace's: The sleazy pornographers of the fictional Videodrome (1983) promised to bring snuff to the hungry masses on their home televisions. And decades earlier -- well before the dawn of pornography's Golden Age -- George Bataille (1962) believed that murder was the essence and the end of pornography, that sex and death were ever fused in human minds and bodies. Bataille's work, like that of the Marquis de Sade before him, shows that sexual violence has long been a staple in the pornographic -- and the popular -- imaginary (Moore 1990).

What changes with time is the form our most violent desires take, how extensively they dominate our sexual imaginations, how we choose to express them, and, perhaps, how far we are willing to go in exploring and satisfying them. The power of violence to captivate a wide audience is far from new, but the warnings of pop culture's soothsayers should not go unheeded. We must consider what is born when we so readily fuse arousal with contempt, sex with fury." -- Violence and the Pornographic Imaginary: The Politics of Sex, Gender, and Aggression in Hardcore Pornography, Natalie Purcell

Working Girl

I'll be in Los Angeles next week working on a story about the adult movie industry. If you work in the business in any capacity or used to work in the business in any capacity, I'm interested in hearing from you. [EMAIL]

How Feminism Pathologizes Sexual Desire

Blindfold via Wikipedia

It's hilarious, or ironic, or expected, really, depending on how you think about it, that feminists, or, should I say, "feminists," are those crowing most loudly that people shouldn't be seeking out those recently leaked photos of various nude celebrities. Jessica Valenti, of course, leads the charge, befitting her role as one of the most annoying, nonsensical, hateful female pundits of recent memory. Her assertion that looking at nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence is tantamount to rape is offensive and twisted, the sick-thinking born of a mind that has spent far too much time pathologizing sexual desire, that of men in particular and women increasingly. Obviously, we want to look at the photos, and we will, and we should remember that to long to see those who are everywhere and masked in private and unmasked at last is perfectly reasonable. It is human, really. Because that's what we see when we sees stars stripped bare: their humanity.

Life Is Fiction

In the past year or so, I began writing short stories again. In January, I self-published "The Shrink Convention," the story of a psychoanalyst who attends a dreary Midwestern conference where she discovers a magical hat made from a colander. This fall, PANK Magazine will publish "Dash 2," which is about a married couple, the military, and ex-wives. Last month, I self-published "Famous Not Famous," a peek inside the mind of a female celebrity struggling with aging and how she attempts to hold on to her youth, her fame, and her mind. Short stories are for fiction writers who are better sprinters than marathoners. They are good reminders of one's ability to write at will, complete (micro) projects, and offer the results up to the world for others' consumption.

Blogging Redux

I started blogging regularly again recently because I saw this tweet from Elizabeth Spiers noting that Lockhart Steele was returning to blogging. Yesterday, Spiers wrote a little bit more about why she's chosen to do so, as well, and Fred Wilson talked about "the personal blog where I can talk about anything that I care about."

At least for me, it's in part a response to what blogging unbecame. In 2002, I created what became a very popular blog, The Reverse Cowgirl. It was one of the early blogs about sex (see: "A Brief History of Sex Blogging" and "A History of Sex Blogs"), but, as most blogs are, it was about far more than that.

In 1998, I moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, and by the time I started blogging, I'd spent four years as a freelance journalist. I was successful, and did TV work as well, but I was tired of being told, "No, you can't do that," by various editors, agents, and producers to whom I pitched story ideas, book ideas, and TV show ideas.

At the same time, I had a problem with my leg that made walking painful, and I was relegated, for a time, to my house. Unable to tromp about as I once had and exhausted by rejection, I forged out on my own and launched a blog that was housed on Salon's servers. I loved blogging. I loved the lack of censorship, that I was my own boss, that there was no wrong or right, just that "puny inexhaustible voice, still talking." It was indisputably mine.

Years later, I was hired by Time Warner, where I spent several years generating hundreds of blog posts. There, blogging became something else entirely. It was a numbers game, a way of generating "content" that brought in unique visitors and lined pockets. That had its benefits: There is no room for writer's block when you are blogging for dollars. But it made blogging commercial for me as blogging became more commercial for everyone else, and something about blogging died, in the world and in me. I did not blog from within; I blogged for someone else.

After that, I blogged for Forbes for three years, which was great, but it was, at its heart, not truly me.

Eventually, I found myself making $100 an hour writing Facebook updates spoken by a bottle of pink medicine manufactured by a multibillion-dollar company obsessed with engagement, branding, and PowerPoint presentations filled with colorful pie charts.

I had become a digital ghost of my former self.

I think if there is a renaissance of blogging it is in reaction to that, the invisibility imposed when you commodify yourself, an attempt to recreate something that was lost, something, one hopes, that's more about autonomy and freedom than engagement and revenue.

Or, at least, one hopes. We'll see. Won't we?

The Congress

"You have a dream? Be your dream, for God's sake." -- The Congress

What a strange movie "The Congress" is. Part live action and part animation, it's a dreamy, looping, psychedelic exploration of Hollywood's human meat machine, what happens when beautiful women get older, and the threat technology poses to our souls. Starring Robin Wright as Robin Wright, Jon Hamm as a besotted animator/fan, and Danny Huston as the shouty Harvey Weinstein-esque head of Miramount Studios, it serves as both a revelation regarding the cost of celebrity and a scorching exposure of the toll it takes on us as vampiric aspirers. In order to take care of her sick son, Wright sells her likeness to the studio and scores immortality as a techno-replicant of herself. The movie is at its best in cartoon-land, featuring funny cameos by Ron Jeremy, Tom Cruise, and Frida Kahlo. Unfortunately, it's no "Waltz with Bashir," a profound consideration of the toll that war takes on our collective humanity. "The Congress" is something of a beautiful, riveting mess, albeit one that tells a truth most movies -- and Hollywood -- struggle to hide.

I Get Email

 (Read) your artical about being
a pornstar . Thaught if i e-mailed
maybe i would be closer to
becoming one.
  If I got the wrong person (apologize)
   i was looken for the journalist
which wrote : the  articke .

Lightbulb

A visit to Thomas Edison's estate in Fort Myers, Florida, the lab in particular, is of interest to the average writer. The lab is chockablock with things: test tubes, a darkroom, straps and wheels, desks and work spaces, burners and corks. Looking at the orderly mess of it, the writer is jealous. Here, the inventor makes manifest what only exists in the writer's mind. This is a place that says, I am working. It indicates, Serious things are happening here. It reminds, This is mine and not yours. The writer's lab resides within, and so, invisible to others, its boundaries are crossed, its time squandered, its experiments foiled. Oh, but to have an Edison lab in the head.

Mugshotz

Mugshotz is a publication that I have found at various convenience stores, such as 7-11, in Southwest Florida. It costs $1 and is usually for sale near the cash register so you can grab it and go. The current issue is #97. It features the most recent mugshots from Lee and Collier counties. Usually, the photos above the fold include at least one attractive female. Here, Frances McGinley, who was arrested for "DRUGS," is the eye-catcher. Wade Discuillo's battered face may be equated with his "RESIST OFFICER." Brian Garrison Jr. looks resigned to his "PROB VIOLATION." The publication has ads from bail bonds companies (gobailmeout.com), humor ("Bubba says:  If robbers ever broke into my house and searched for money I would just laugh and search with them"), and advice ("With the craze about social networking increasing day by day, cool sayings are attaining more importance."). There's also a photo page of boats with funny names like "Full Of Seamen," "Boobie Bouncer," and "Ship For Brains." Sometimes I google the names of those in the mugshots. Oftentimes, you can find their full lives on their Facebook pages. Prostitutes swearing to stay sober. Addicts arguing with their mothers. Parents posting photos of themselves with children of which they no longer have custody. Sometimes, if you wait a few weeks or a few months, their face appears in another edition of Mugshotz. 

How Much I Got Paid: #8

Title: Contributor

Publication: Forbes.com

Date: 2011 - 2014

Word count: N/A

Payment: See below

Notes: I blogged for Forbes.com for three years. Looking back, I would describe the experience as "awesome." Sure, assholes like this dumb fuck can say contributors like me besmirched the Forbes brand, but, for me, it was a great gig. My first post was about what it was like to get shitcanned, my most popular post (1.5M+ views) revealed how hard it is to be a male porn star, I shot a gun for fun, I wrote about being diagnosed with breast cancer five days after it happened, and I ate a hamburger topped with an unconsecrated communion wafer. My editors were the great: they got out of my way and let me do what I do. One of the best things about blogging for Forbes is that when you ask people if they're interested in being interviewed, they almost always say yes. For a journalist, it was like scoring one of Willy Wonka's Golden Tickets. I was paid a flat fee every month, which required a minimum of five posts a month. On top of that, I was paid a certain amount for how much traffic I generated; I was paid a certain amount for one-time visitors and a higher amount for repeat visitors. The last couple months, I made around $5,000 a month because I wrote this.

Conclusion: Sometimes I miss it.

[How Much I Got Paid]