Bodybuilding Body Painting
Image via The Atlantic
Don't Jizz on the Seats
Image via The Verge
The Wall Street Journal has a lively review of the new $253,242 Bentley Bentayga.
Leaving me midslide for the moment, let’s interrogate this notion of a quarter-million dollar SUV. It’s frustrating because it brings into proximity contrary notions: luxury and utility. This has real-world consequences. For example, after climbing up and down from the Bentayga a few times to take pictures, I found mud from my shoe had smooshed into the driver’s door speaker grille (from the esoteric and awesome Naim Audio company), previously pristine as sterling. I also did unspeakable things to deep woolen floor mats.
[WSJ]
Instagramz
If you're looking for cool people to follow on Instagram, here are a few I recommend.
"Vegas, you're one dope-ass cunt who likes money ✌🏻"
Jacq the Stripper: author, dancer, sextrepreneur.
"should I wear this to my psychiatrist appointment today y/n @_namilia_ @vfiles"
Maidenfed: model, fetishist, hater-obliterater.
"Share is one of my virtues. . . . #eroticart #arterotica #drawing#female#girl#pigolin"
Pigolin: artist, troublemaker, pervert.
Go Away, Gwyneth
Gwyneth Paltrow and co. have bought Larry Flynt's to-be-closed Hustler store on the Sunset Strip, and the Blonde Monster is going to tear the structure down and turn it into some stick-up-the-ass club for douchebags.
My fondest memory of the Hustler store is the time they asked me to do a reading there, and I gave some sort of a lecture about how to make bukkake comics. I blew up the panels so they were very large and propped them up an easel. (I think it was the prequel to this one.)
[TMZ]
The Rialto Report
If you haven't checked out The Rialto Report, do. It's an amazing, unrivaled collection of "Oral history, audio, photo, and documentary archives from the golden age of adult film in New York, and beyond."
Take, for example, "Deep Throat" shooting locations:
The opening scenes were shot at Handsome Harry’s place. Handsome Harry lived in Fort Lauderdale. He was a bachelor, maybe 28 or 29 years old, a nice gent who lived solo in his ranch-style house with a swimming pool. Most of his waking thoughts turned lightly to love in any season… and swings and orgies. Our crew – and our project – could not have been more welcome.
Handsome Harry never could figure out why after a long hard day in front of the cameras we weren’t all chomping at the bit to swing into a wild orgy.
We're #1
A fun image by Jaime Rojo via This Isn't Happiness.
What I'm Reading
"👀"
Currently I'm reading The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry by Legs McNeil.
Entertainment weekly called it "eloquent and sleazy."
I opened a page at random, and here's what I read:
JOHN WAYNE BOBBITT: But she'd had it all planned out already. The week before she'd threatened me with a knife, but she didn't point it at my dick. She knew exactly what she was doing when she sliced me. Believe me, it was premeditated.
[Amazon]
Porn Watchers Are More Feminist Than Others
According to recent research published in The Journal of Sex Research, those who watch porn are not, in fact, misogynist pigs. In reality, they're down for making love, not hate.
According to radical feminist theory, pornography serves to further the subordination of women by training its users, males and females alike, to view women as little more than sex objects over whom men should have complete control. Composite variables from the General Social Survey were used to test the hypothesis that pornography users would hold attitudes that were more supportive of gender nonegalitarianism than nonusers of pornography. Results did not support hypotheses derived from radical feminist theory. Pornography users held more egalitarian attitudes—toward women in positions of power, toward women working outside the home, and toward abortion—than nonusers of pornography. Further, pornography users and pornography nonusers did not differ significantly in their attitudes toward the traditional family and in their self-identification as feminist. The results of this study suggest that pornography use may not be associated with gender nonegalitarian attitudes in a manner that is consistent with radical feminist theory.
Take that, Gloria Steinem.
We All Watch TV
Image via FoodieCrush
Maureen sat on the sofa, watching "The Ellen Show." Technically, the show was called "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," but Maureen thought of it as "The Ellen Show" because while the show had guests and talked about other things, the show was really only about Ellen. On the TV screen, Ellen smiled brightly, flashing her unnaturally white teeth. Instinctively, Maureen smiled back. Today, Ellen was wearing a white jacket that nipped in at the waist and a pair of dark blue slacks. There was something comforting about Ellen: her idiotic dancing, her non-confrontational clothing choices, her weirdly glowing skin. "That is ENOUGH," Leonard barked from the next room. Maureen stuffed another Tagalong Girl Scout cookie into her mouth. Without chewing, she compressed the cookie between her tongue and the top of her mouth. The insides smooshed out, pushing gooily between the gaps in her teeth. Leonard was talking on the phone. Probably to some person selling newspapers. They were always calling, and Leonard was always roping them into long-winded conversations about global warming and whether or not the country was becoming more communist or not. Maureen chewed slowly and tried to remember the Girl Scout's name. Something terrible ... like ... Regina, but starting with a W. The girl had smelled poorly and not left when Maureen had told her no. Instead, the girl had leaned her head against the screen in the door until Leonard had seen her there, and gone out with five dollars, and taken the Tagalongs. On the show, the scene cut from Ellen on the sound stage where she went to work every day to one of her producers standing on a front porch somewhere in America. A woman opened up the front door, saw the Ellen producer, and screamed loudly. The producer followed the woman who was running away down the hall. Eventually, the producer was able to cajole the woman back in front of the camera. The woman was panting heavily, her glasses crooked. "I'M ELLEN'S BIGGEST FAN," the woman shrieked. In the studio audience, everyone laughed jovially. "I do not agree with your positioning on Alaskan glacier retreat," Leonard announced haughtily. This was the segment where the woman who was Ellen's biggest fan got to choose between what she wanted and what she needed. "What'll it be?" Ellen inquired from the studio in her chipper manner and tilted her head at the camera like she was trying to hear the glaciers disappearing. "WHAT I WANT!" the woman screamed, strident and abrupt. The woman's family had crowded around her in the hall, which now contained the producer, the camera crew, the woman, the woman's husband, and the woman's son. The boy was wearing glasses and looked confused. He was maybe six. He had on a red polo shirt with his name embroidered over his heart. STEFAN, it read. "A trip to Mexico!" the producer shouted. The woman jumped up and down, almost crushing the boy and knocking the husband against a wall. Maureen considered what she would do if Ellen's producer showed up at her front door. Yell and cry, for sure, and then maybe pee a little in her underpants from the excitement and nervousness. She wondered if given the opportunity to pick between what she wanted and what she needed, what she would do. What they needed was new tile in the bathroom because every time Maureen took a bath, she was faced with not the shiny tile, but a gaping hole where the tile was supposed to be, and instead of there being tile there, there was the water-stained wall behind it. Maureen looked down at herself. There were Tagalong crumbs all down her front, and the box was empty. "Impossible!" Leonard chastised somebody he did not know and would never know. What she wanted was a cruise to Alaska. She would go by herself. She would witness the glory of the Aurora Borealis. She would eat freshly caught oversized shrimp. If things got too boring, she would throw herself overboard, and she would swim to a loose piece of ice, and she would build an igloo on it, and she would fish in the frozen sea. On the TV set, the applause was almost deafening.
The Wrapped Gift
Image credit: Christopher Herwig
Every so often, I'm not sure how often, Aimee Bender posts a Writing Exercise. The latest one is: "There is a wrapped gift at the bus stop." Here's my pass at it.
There is a wrapped gift at the bus stop, Maureen said. Next to her, she could feel Pauline stiffen. Pauline ruined everything. Panicked during bus rides. Screamed loudly if others stood too close. Fainted dramatically if storm clouds gathered overhead. Maureen took a step forward, daring to leave Pauline behind. Pauline gasped loudly. You can't, Pauline was saying. But couldn't she? Maureen considered and took another step. The wrapped gift tantalized. It didn't make sense. It was mid-April, and nothing interesting happened in mid-April. It wasn't Christmas, or Valentine's Day, or even some kind of special day. She took another step. It appeared the box had been wrapped in some sort of gauze, the kind she used to see when she was a nurse at the hospital. YOU CAN'T DO THAT, she heard Pauline shriek suddenly from somewhere in another world. Maureen watched as her hand floated out in front of her and wrapped its fingers around the box. The package was light, not heavy, and emitted no particular smell. She resisted the urge to shake it. What if there was something alive in it? She heard a noise behind her, which was probably Pauline either fainting or pretending to faint. And who could blame her? When Pauline was a toddler, her mother had shot her father in front of her, and then Pauline's mother had shot herself. All of this had happened as Pauline had eaten a bowl of SpaghettiOs in her highchair. I remember the drawing of the giraffe at the bottom of my bowl like it was yesterday, Pauline was fond of quavering every time she told the story, which was sometimes once a week, or even more during the holidays. Death was the rope to which Pauline clung, the thread by which she hung. Maureen slid the box into the front pocket of her coat. Briefly, she wondered if she should give it to Pauline. If whatever was in the box would fill up the hole that Pauline's mother had left inside her daughter. Maureen could see the bus coming in the distance. Probably, the bus wasn't even big enough to fill up the bottomless pit of want and need that was inside Pauline. She would open the present later, when she was alone, Maureen decided. Maybe it contained a jewel box filled with rhinestone necklaces, or a pet mouse that had been trained to stand on its back legs and beg for small bits of cheese, or a tiny golden gun with Pauline's name engraved on the side of one of its miniature bullets. You never knew, Maureen shrugged and stepped on the bus, not sure if Pauline was coming or was still prone on the dirty sidewalk, where she belonged.
Fallen
I've neglected my blog here, and not posted every day. I'm not sure what the solve is here. But this is a start.
Don't Sell Your Soul
Break your life in half.
Do one part for money.
Do one part for passion.
Humiliate Yourself
"Waiting."
Today I got invited to join again the improv group that I was in last year. I waffled over whether or not to do it. I'm better at sticking with what I do well and staying in my lane. But I decided to do it. For however long I'm there, I'll be confident. It's important to stretch yourself. I'm stretching.
Anatomy of a Longform Story on the Porn Industry
That's Tori Black.
In 2009, I wrote and self-published "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?" It's a 10,000-word longform investigation of how the Great Recession impacted the adult movie industry. It was written for a specific publication, but I ended up publishing it myself. What I've written here is sort of an addendum or annotated-ish version of it. (Of course, this is how annotation should be done, but nobody asked, so I figured I'd do it myself.)
The Start
I wrote "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?," a longform piece on the Great Recession's impact on the adult movie industry, in 2009. [I decided to take out the specifics regarding the publication for which it was originally written, since I'm trying to be less of an asshole, which is working only intermittently and mostly unsuccessfully.] With a question -- How did the Great Recession impact the adult movie industry -- some experience -- I'd been writing about the porn industry since 1997 -- and a plan -- as mentioned previously -- I got on a plane and got off it in Los Angeles. I spent a week there, doing interviews, and visiting sets. Then I got on another plane and went home. I don't recall when the idea for the title came to me, but it is obviously a redux of the title of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which is about a dance marathon during the Great Recession and the great lengths to which people will go in order to survive when survival seems nearly impossible.
The Open
When I first went to write the piece, I believe I spent time doing what I describe as "writing it wrong." Oftentimes, I don't get the voice, initially, or the point of view, or I get anxious about how someone might respond to the piece, so I play it too safe. I think I spent maybe two weeks "writing it wrong," before mostly tossing that version out (or perhaps it was entirely), and then starting all over again. In my experience, it's best to lead with what my shrink would describe as what's "hot" -- which is to say, the piece of the story that generates the strongest emotional reaction within you. The moment in Los Angeles that had impacted me most significantly was when I visited a man who showed me an extremely graphic and emotionally complicated porn scene on a laptop. Obviously, I'm tough to shock or offend or even vaguely stir, but this footage was beyond the pale. It had been directed by someone in the industry who was widely disliked. The man who showed me the clip asked me not to identify him, and I wasn't entirely comfortable identifying the director, so that opening scene -- "Outside, a woman whose hair has been dyed the color of cherry Kool-Aid is smoking a cigarette on a narrow balcony overlooking a half-empty parking lot" -- is written somewhat in the abstract, although details bring it alive. By the time I sat down to write, I had a copy of the clip of the scene itself, so I was able to watch it again later and render the actions and dialogue accurately: e.g., "Absolute whore, right?" The heart of this scene within a scene -- it's probably worth nothing that in the real scene in my writing (i.e., we're sitting in a living room watching a porn movie), nothing actually happens, and all the action takes place in the porn movie itself -- is the idea of someone breaking someone else. I chose this scene as the opener because it showed how challenging conditions had become for pornographers and performers, and I wanted to really home in on how "we" (what people in the industry call "civilians") merely look on passively while people struggle. As I write: "There can be no mistake. This is when he breaks her."
The Backstory
The second section begins by going back in time, so you get how I wound up in this place: "It had been a long time since I first set foot in the adult industry." I'd visited my first porn set 12 years earlier, so I wanted to go back and explain: how the industry had changed, how I'd ended up hanging around on porn sets, and give readers a better understanding that this is an industry with a long, interesting history. The third section, which is more like a subsection of the second section, focuses specifically on the first porn set I visited. That was "Flashpoint," which was made by Wicked Pictures, and which featured seven people having an orgy on a firetruck in a parking lot. Since it had been a dozen years since I'd been on that set, I paid to rewatch the movie online (I'm pretty sure they sent me a copy years ago, but I'd long since lost that VHS tape), so I could get the details right. I wanted to bring to life what it's like to be there: surreal, fascinating, interesting. "'What’s a FIP?' I whispered to the nearest porn writer. 'A fake internal pop' was the answer." My hope as a journalist is to play Virgil to the reader's Dante. I'm not a fan of this sort of gotcha, giving funny looks to the camera journalism. I don't care how "terrible" or "great" you think your subject is. If you get in there and tell me what to think, I never have a chance to think for myself. (Also, every subject is interesting. No thing is "terrible" or "good." Interesting things are complex and should be rendered as such. I don't see the porn industry as "good" or bad," and to discuss it as such would be the height of lazy, stupid journalism. Porn is complicated. It is my responsibility as a journalist to render it as accurately as I can, and let the readers draw their own conclusions.) In this section, I get more at what's behind my interest in porn: "Despite the smoke and mirrors—the fake orgasms, the unreal bodies, the cockamamie premises—something else altogether lay behind the curtain." In other words, in porn, I suggest in this piece's thesis, we see ourselves as we truly are.
The Wide Shot
Arguably, I should've started the entire piece with the first line of the fourth section: "In the late 19th century, California State Senator Charles Maclay stood atop the Cahuenga Pass that runs between Los Angeles proper and the San Fernando Valley and, of the pastoral landscape that lay before him, proclaimed: 'This is the Garden of Eden!'" If this was a movie, this would be your wide shot, a vision of the grand, sweeping San Fernando Valley in all its sprawling glory, panoramic and once pastoral. If I had the opportunity to write the piece all over again, I might start here. Since I'm older now, I'm probably more likely to start slower and less inclined to reach out and throttle someone in the lede, as I did. This section is short and conveys how the Recession impacted the entire landscape, not just porn: "'FOR SALE' ranch-style houses and bloated McMansions; 'FOR RENT' strip mall stores and closed gas stations; 'FOR LEASE' warehouses and empty gravel lots." If this was TV, I'd call this B-roll of the Valley as a kind of post-economic collapse dystopia.
The Medium Shot
The fifth section, again, functions as a kind of subset of the fourth section. Now that we've seen the Valley in all its expansive beauty, I place myself in a car, heading west, going deeper into the Valley in order to go to a set. To note the obvious: SCENE. No one wants to hear what you think. They want to feel what you feel. This is action: the car is moving, I am driving, the road unfurls before us. Now we are moving together, looking for the center of the action. We find it in a house on a hill. It was a really wonderful location, from a journalistic standpoint. A big house, rose bushes, weirdly decorated rooms. The house is interesting because it is not being used as a home, it is being used to make porn, and it is doing so not in a production facility but next door. Somebody once told me that I write about the ordinary in the extraordinary, and I suppose that is correct. There are senses in here, and a sense of creeping, spying, being somewhere we're not supposed to be: "I step into the foyer. It’s cool and quiet." There's boring shit, like a foyer, but then there's a door with glory holes cut into it. Where are we? Some kind of fun house? Let's explore it together. I've pulled you out of judgement (thinking) and into exploring (feeling). That means this story is something we are sharing. (Or, put more roughly, I've made you complicit.) This scene features Jim Powers, one of my favorite porn directors to interview. At this point, I'd been visiting his sets for nine years, I believe. Jim is always doing something crazy, and he certainly was on that day as well, making scenes in which robots -- or dildos attached to machines -- were having sex with girls. There were stained couches and a ceiling swing, and Jim's mad scientist approach to making porn is always contagious. I make it clear that porn has changed, and in no small part due to technology. "[T]he mecha-dildo thrusts robotically in Hunter’s direction, its engine whirring softly." The star of this scene is a young woman named Ryan Hunter. She appears to be conflicted about her role in porn, and there's a difficult scene in which Jim needs Hunter to do something, and Hunter seems unsure how she feels about that. At one point, the sex machine accidentally gets kicked into overdrive, nearly goring Hunter, who bursts into tears. This scene is tricky. These are people, but at the same time, this is business. Is this exploitation or survival? I'm not going to tell you. I'm going to let you decide for yourself.
The Closeup
The sixth section -- now a scene within a scene within a scene -- features Jim, who is something of a quote factory, complaining about how content piracy, the recession, and various other factors have made it much harder for him to make money in porn. Jim complains about how the bolts keep falling off the sex machines. "[W]e're just living in piles of shit," Jim observes of the state of his business. A redhead appears at the door to do the next scene. A double-headed dildo awaits her. This is the sausage factory, and this is where you get to see the strange process of exactly how porn sausage gets made.
The Wanderer
This seventh section is a classic vignette of me on a porn set: I wander. This is micro: "a copy of Deepak Chopra’s The Return of Merlin, the back cover of which promises readers 'the resplendent peace that each of us enfolds within our own hearts.'" Is this funny? Probably. It is contrast. There's nothing less interesting than reading a one-note. There's also a fun exchange in which I try to interview the guy who owns the house, and he's too distracted because he's trying to hit on one of the girls. "'So,' he asks her, 'you choose the machines over me?'" The recession has impacted gender, as well; now men must compete with robots for pussy.
The Interview
Here, I interview Hunter. The eighth section consists of Hunter and I talking at a table. This is after her sex scene. She reveals her history with drugs, her desperation over money. This isn't meant to be archetypal of the female porn star; it is but one example. (There'll be another later, and she'll be quite different.) Hunter also articulates the anxieties of the common man/woman in the post-Recession era: She is financially imperiled, and she is trying to survive. Ergo: Who are we to judge her? Are we not her? (She's not Other, she's us.) She indicates she's thinking about escorting, which has become far more prevalent in the years since, so it's a nod towards a piece of that transition into what the biz will become. (More ... entrepreneurial, if you will.)
The Overhead Shot
I step outside, hear the thudding of helicopter blades, and, lo' and behold, there's an LAPD bird circling overhead. Not passing by. It's taking a look. "Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the helicopter turns tail and leaves, heading for the Hollywood Hills, the great divide between Hollywood, where the real stars live, and the Valley, where the porn stars reside." The lesson for journalists in the ninth section is: Serendipity is your BFF.
The Snapshot
I think this tenth section is the shortest. The PA washing dildos in the kitchen sink. Nuff said.
The Sit Down
The next day, I meet Jim at his offices. He makes me get there early. *shrug* Here you get quite a bit about Jim. He's very over-the-top, sort of like a circus ringleader, and I've always felt sort of inexorably drawn to him as a subject. He has never failed to deliver. And because we're talking about porn in this story, it's important to include some of the filth. So, let's look at the bookshelf: "The bookshelves are lined with rows of binders, their crudely rendered titles scrawled upon their spines: 'Black Snake Boned,' 'Escape from Women’s Prison,' 'DP Virgins: The Classic Years,' 'Fuck Pig: The Movie,' 'Garbage Pail Girls #1,' 'Mouth Meat #6." We learn how Jim got into the business. This longer scene isn't afraid to stretch, as Jim stretches himself and those around him: "Equal parts freak show, horror movie, and Russ Meyer-on-crack, his X-rated visions are deranged, demented, mind-boggling expeditions into the dark, unexplored continent of human sexual perversity. Fascinating, horrifying, and amusing—oftentimes all of those things at the same time—Powers’ celluloid world is one populated by midgets, bald chicks, and crazed men outfitted with monster-sized papier-mâché phalluses which spew torrents of goo onto the naked bodies of supine women, movies in which everyone has sex all of the time, and in which, most of the time, no one appears to win." Welcome to mystique de la merde. We're pigs wallowing in shit. "In this canon, the real subject is not human sexuality but humanity itself. 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?" Jim reminds us that he's just one more businessman trying to make money. He recalls the good old days -- "'It was like the last days of Rome,' he says wistfully. 'We were in the vomitorioums.'" -- and decries the new era -- "'Everybody talks about content,' Powers bemoans, disgusted. 'What the fuck is content?' he sneers." What journalist among us has not voiced the same complaint?
The Long Arm of the Law
This twelfth section is about the history of obscenity in Porn Valley, and I believe this one took me the longest to write. I'd watched the whole thing play out over the years -- from Bush's anti-porn strategy to the indictments and convictions -- and I finally got a chance to write about it here. "What fresh hell would the Bush administration bring?" The Obscenity Prosecution Task Force! The War on Porn! At the end of this section, I indicate Obama would likely not crackdown much on porn, and he certainly didn't.
The Joker
We return to my conversation with Jim in the office. More abstractedly, I'm drawing a link between Bush and his buddies and this pornographer sitting in front of me. These groups are inextricably conjoined, despite their mutual dislike. Possibly because we were in the more formal setting of Jim's office, he was a bit less colorful than he can be on set. And he was being a little nonchalant. I listen for quotes when I'm interviewing, and something was missing. I think I asked Jim what he dreams about at night, in an attempt to prod him, which I think he took to mean, How do you sleep at night, which isn't a question I would ask, and he took that and ran with it. "'We are helping these girls! Anybody that comes into this business, for the most part, is a broken toy.' He leans towards me, earnestly attempting to make himself understood. 'We’re giving them a place where they can make money, and get by, so they’re not standing on line in a welfare department. Thank God for people like me!' He bangs the desk." Jim doesn't exactly see a rosy future for porn. He equates his situation to the plot of "Rollerball." Jim notes of "Rollerball"'s dystopic vision of the future: "'People still went to watch gladiators in the future … to see if they could persevere.'" The internet has change the medium, not the interest. "'Pandora’s box has been opened,' Powers observes darkly. 'The Internet did that.'"
The Monster
The fourteenth section is short. And another "wandering" episode. I meander through Jim's warehouse, where I spot a giant vagina costume hanging in the gloom of the rafters. “'You’re always welcome on my sets, Susannah,' Powers calls after me as I walk out the door.'"
The Scene of the Crime
This section is a stomach-churner. It starts with a scene I didn't witness. I met Jim years ago because he used to let me visit his bukkake shoots. This scene takes place at a gukkake shoot, where someone robbed the gukkake: "'It just goes to show we're in a recession and people are taking desperate means.' It was one more sign that hard times had hit Porn Valley." More importantly, this fifteenth section includes the most notorious incident in the entire 10,000-plus words of this piece, and it is the one people who've read it most frequently mention to me. It is the "sperm omelet." (Someone on set used the phrase, and I dutifully wrote it in my notebook.) The woman who'd eaten the sperm omelet was at the shoot with the robococks in the house on the hill, so while I wasn't at the gokkun, I got to meet the girl who'd eaten the sperm omelet. (Jim said it was her idea. She said it was Jim's idea. You figure it out.) She had red hair and described herself to me as "an attention whore." Here's a bit from our chat about the sperm omelet incident: "I asked Emerson what the experience had been like. She took a moment, then replied matter-of-factly, 'I like that I set the cum omelet eating record.'" Porn: The quotes just write themselves. The redhead was doing great financially and gave me hard numbers. The following week, she'd be making six grand doing a gangbang and a blowbang. "'I'm doing this to afford my starving actor lifestyle,' she told me, and smiled."
The Health Issue
The sixteenth section is about porn, HIV, and condoms. It is too short and not enough in depth. If I had this to do over, I'd go deeper on this. It includes a question that wouldn't get answered for years (last year, actually). I'd been asking people if they thought porn would one day die, if porn stars would someday be replaced by pixels. And it's an interesting thing to consider in the context of the health issue. Digitize the business, and you negate the risk. But then ... it's no longer human.
The Bottom Line
On my last working day in the Valley, I visit a set where a male and a female porn star -- James Deen and Tori Black -- are doing a scene. I pass Rocketdyne to get there. The set is classic, in that there are various rooms with three walls, and each is a set pretending to be something it isn't. Because the director -- who goes by Quasarman -- is a smart ass, there's more joking around. The shoot is for an interactive video, and I ask Quasarman about the title. "We were going to go with 'Existential Musings of a Porn Star,' but we thought we’d dumb it down," he cracks. "If you want to have sex with Tori Black and don’t have chloroform, this is your next best option." It also bears mentioning that writing about people having sex is no easy task. I mean, what are you going to say? I watched the sausage slide in and out of the sandwich? The ceiling had a hole in it and so did my brain? It was a rare moment of beauty that reminded me of swans mating in the woods and music played softly? Sex scenes happen several times in this long piece, and I deal with it primarily by being clinical and/or mechanical. I also use humor. You can also use imagery. "Deen plows away at his costar like the man whose assigned task is to dismantle the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner" is my contribution to the genre. I'm trying to capture this very intimate physical act, but the crew is totally bored and you're trying to stay engaged and wondering if you're going to get a parking ticket.
The Girl
In the dressing room of that set, I hang out with Black and take some photographs of her. I'm not a photographer, but I think the shot I took of her at the mirror is the one I like the best. It shows how complicated being a woman -- and being a woman in porn -- can be. There's her, and there's her reflection, and there's these images of different faces hanging on the wall. Who is she? I then mosey over to where Deen is hanging out. He gives me sort of the master quote on porn and money, as far as men are concerned: "If I was a billionaire, I'd still do porn." That said, he isn't making much per scene. When he says, "My job is contingent upon my dick working," you get a sense that this is a tough career choice. Oh, you want to have sex with women for a living? That's a nice fantasy. But you probably aren't up to it, buddy.
The Close
The nineteenth section is this story's last. I suppose it is the part that I like the least, and the one I would be most interested in rewriting. It ends with bukkake, and the DoJ, and something a pornographer once told me: "If people didn't want it, it wouldn't be made." This is my other core point about the porn business. Frequently, the business is treated like it's something different, and its performers are considered to be Other. But the argument I'm making here is that porn isn't about them or their business -- it's about you. It's about a group of people who are contracted to act out other people's fantasies that for one reason or another can't be realized. Why we demonize people for acting out what we want is beyond me. If we negate what they do or the choices they've made, we're projecting our sexual pathologies onto them. And nowadays, the situation is all the more acute, as people no longer feel the need to pay for porn, and pornographers, performers, and everyone else in the business are left holding the short end of the stick. You value what you do. You think it has worth. But you deny those who work in the porn business the ability to make a decent living because of your own guilt and shame and self-loathing. That's America: a self-aware human that denies its true status as a beast.
The Aftermath
I came home, like I said, and wrote one version of the piece, and then I wrote this version. I submitted it to the editor, and then, as I recall, I didn't like the feedback I got. If I remember correctly, there was talk of it being run as a series. And that wasn't going to happen, as far as I was concerned. So, in a fit of pique that everyone could've lived without, I withdrew it. I spent six frustrated, depressed months shopping it around to various publications. Mostly, editors didn't bother responding. A few did, and declined. Why? I don't know. I seem to remember that it was too seedy for the papers and the ladies' rags, and the men's pubs had their designer pants wedged too far up their ass cracks to dig it. Finally, I decided to publish it myself. At the time, I found that choice humiliating and frustrating. I had spent all this time working on something that I thought was really good and really important, and people just didn't give a shit. So I got the amazing DC-based artist and designer Chris Bishop to build a standalone site for the piece and illustrate it. And when I finally self-published it, I think it was October. The day it launched, I was so frustrated that I walked into the tiny kitchen of the one-bedroom apartment in which I was living, jerked back my head and rocked onto my heels, and slammed myself forward and rammed my head into the cupboard as hard as I could. I was at my wit's end. But then, something happened. I got a headache. And people read it. People appreciated it. People linked to it. Over time, it reached hundreds of thousands of readers, and it grew a long tail. Readers seemed to especially appreciate that it was self-published. It ended up getting on several best of lists. Six years later, the fact that a Pulitzer Prize-winner had read it years ago got me invited to spend a month at an amazing nonfiction writing residency in upstate New York. I love the piece like it's a child, one that I gave up and shared with the world. It isn't normal. It isn't traditional. It doesn't have one main male character. It's graphic. It lacks a traditional "plot." It's not that ever popular true crime. It never got nominated for an award in part because it wasn't produced by a machine. It was a thing that I made. And you can make things, too.
[Don't read this part if you're a man: If you're a woman, and you write longform journalism, or you want to write longform journalism, please, please keep writing it, and keep publishing it, and keep trying to make it your career. It matters. You matter. I know it's hard with all these fucking asshole male editors picking their junior versions of themselves to publish their shitty true crime or jerk off to a vision of manliness pieces, but I want you to know that I'm with you, girl, and I see you, and I hear you, and I want you to keep going. This is really hard. I'm still struggling. But you're not alone. I don't know you, but I'm cheering you on, because this is the important stuff; the short stuff, the garbage stuff isn't worth your time. Go long, girl.)
Tomorrow
I'm working on a longer post. Come back tomorrow.
How Freelancers Should Spend Their Weekends
"Monster."
Do not hide in your hole. Be in the world. Bear witness to nature.
How Some Guy Got a 7-Figure Book Deal
"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.
On book proposals ...
A good point amidst this drivel:
"During his presentation, he stressed thinking of your proposal like a business plan—because, really, that’s what it is."
You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.
How to Double Your Blog Traffic in a Month
"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.
In December of 2015, my monthly traffic for my Forbes blog was 63,469 total monthly visitors.
In January of 2016, my monthly traffic for my Forbes blog was 130,154 total monthly visitors.
The most popular post in January was: "See Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's Custom Guns Created by Jesse James."
Here's the first line: "Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are box office gold, and they’re armed with a pair of Cisco 1911 firearms that were created by infamous customizer and reality TV show star Jesse James."
To date, the post has 57,310 views.
I got the idea for the post from RECOIL magazine's Instagram page. RECOIL's editor had instagrammed extensively from SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, including a photo of the Jesse James Firearms Unlimited booth.
I did some research online and ended up at the JJFU Tumblr page, which features the custom 1911's James made for Pitt and Jolie and includes photos of the pair of pistols, as well as the story behind them. The guns are especially interesting in part because Pitt's is engraved "BIG PAPA" and Jolie's is engraved "MAMA KNOWS BEST."
That said, the post would not work unless I was able to use, with permission, the photos of the firearms.
I emailed JJFU and asked if I could use the images. JJFU responded, including full-size versions of the images.
I wrote the post, adding in some relevant information -- Pitt's support of the Second Amendment ("I got my grandfather's shotgun when I was in kindergarten"), an old rumor subsequently dispelled by Pitt that he had built Jolie a $400,000 shooting range on their French estate, how James left Hollywood and ended up in the gun manufacturing business -- and hit publish.
Why was this post successful?
It was visual.
It was about celebrities.
It was about guns.
And after the post went live, JJFU promoted the post on social media.
Thanks again to Jesse James and JJFU for the use of the images.
You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.
How to Find Your Spirit Animal
"My favorite part is about the dog shit."
January Blogging Self-Analysis
"lol"
"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.
A Self-Analysis of Blogging During the Month of January
# of Posts: 30
Positives: Only missed one day
Negatives: Self-indulgent ramblings of a nonsensical person who occasionally, halfheartedly tries to be helpful
Conclusion: Need to rethink this
You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.