This is a Genuine Rare Bird Book

A Rare Bird Book | Rare Bird Books
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013
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Copyright © 2018 by Chris Zeischegg

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address: A Rare Bird Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 453 South Spring Street, Suite 302,
Los Angeles, CA 90013.

The following stories were written between 2010 and 2016, and closely resemble
my memoirs. They are also works of fiction.

Set in Dante

epub isbn: 9781947856455

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Zeischegg, Christopher, author.
Title: Body to job / Christopher Zeischegg, aka Danny Wylde.
Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Genuine Rare Bird Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2018.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572708
Subjects: LCSH Zeischegg, Christopher. | Pornography. | Pornographic film industry. | Sex-oriented businesses—United States—Employees—Biography. | Bisexual men—United States—Biography. | Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography. | Gay pornographic films—United States—Anecdotes. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts
Classification: LCC HQ472.U6 .Z45 2018 | DDC 306.70973/0904—dc23

To Luka Fisher,

for triple-tapping me with a staple gun, and for everything after

Contents

BEGINNING

Nothing Profound

Not the First Time, but Close

Amateurs

LOVE I

The Fire and the Thaw

Charley Parker

Tourist

EDUCATION

MILF Raider

Student Films

Guy With Camera

Good Enough

LOVE II

Fans

Young

WORK

The End

Spoiled

Can Whores Grow Old Together if They Buy Each Other Scarves?

Trying Something New

Welcome Home

DEATH

Thick

ART

A Dream

Mainstream

Pleasure

LOVE III

The Dissolution of a Post-Porn Relationship

AFTERLIFE

Transition

Six Months After Retirement

Twelve Months After Retirement

The Musician

On the Moral Imperative to Commodify Our Sexual Suffering

BEGINNING

Nothing Profound

2005

I was nineteen and living with my friend in a suburb just outside of Santa Cruz, California. We both attended community college and lived off our parents’ money and savings since high school. Neither of us wanted jobs, but we applied for them anyway. We knew the financial umbilicus was about to be cut.

After a month of unemployment, I attended a seminar on how to sell knives and Tupperware. Even I could tell it was a scam.

Eventually, I succumbed to scanning Craigslist for one-time gigs: something to tide me over. Most of them required prior experience, but I stumbled across an opportunity for a novice like me.

I made a phone call that led me to a loft overlooking Folsom Street in San Francisco. A man greeted me inside. He was tall and blond like me, but older and larger in the gut. He told me that he was an advertising agent. Photography was just a hobby that he did in his spare time.

The man asked about my background: how long I’d been a model. I gave him an answer that he couldn’t disprove: “I’ve done some stuff for life drawing classes.” If he could tell that I was lying, he didn’t show it. Or he didn’t care.

Removing my clothes in front of the man was easier than I’d thought. He took pictures of me near a window, standing first, and then sitting in various positions. I tried to appear brooding and intense, but when he showed me the pictures, I just looked naked.

The man told me that I was beautiful, a word no one else had used to describe my body. If he was lying, I didn’t actually care. It was just the type of flattery I needed to be coaxed into jerking off in front of a complete stranger.

He didn’t ask me to come, because it was supposed to be art. But I felt—I don’t know—special, or something. I was only paid fifty dollars, but it was fifty dollars for someone to look at me.

I spent the next month stealing condiments from fast-food restaurants because I still couldn’t afford to go shopping. But I also got used to the idea of being naked for money. Or for art. It was just that most of the artists I’d come across preferred the look of me with an erection.

By the time I was offered my first porn gig, I almost didn’t see the difference. I already had the erection. I just needed to stick it in something.

Or something needed to stick itself in me.

•

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. Should I, like, take a laxative the night before?”

“No, no, don’t do that,” said the voice on the other line. “That’s about the worst thing you can do. You want to go to your local supermarket and pick up a pack of disposable enemas.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a solution in there that acts like a laxative. But you want to dump it out, okay?”

“Yeah, no problem.” I made a mental note.

“Fill the enema up with lukewarm water and rinse yourself out three or four times the night before. You can do it again before your shoot.”

“Three or four times, and again before my shoot,” I repeated.

“For your wardrobe, we’re going to need you to bring a few casual outfits. And some collared shirts.”

“Most of the clothes I own are band shirts and jeans,” I said, with some embarrassment.

“Bring some options.”

“Of course.”

“You’re going to be working with Yasmine Birne. She’s a porn star from LA. Really cute. You’ll like her.”

“Cool,” I said, like it was no big deal.

“You have the rest of the info, right?”

I repeated the address and call time back to her and said goodbye. Then I did a Google search for Yasmine Birne and called my roommate in to look at her pictures. He laughed and told me he couldn’t believe I was going through with it.

Monday morning, I drove to the studio in San Francisco. The outside of the structure looked unassuming and blended into the surrounding commercial environment. Inside, I took an elevator to the third floor and walked into a large room, illuminated by computer monitors and the blinking lights of electronic equipment.

The woman at the front desk greeted me with a smile and asked if my name was Daniel. I nodded, even though Daniel wasn’t my real name. She told me to sit. Someone else offered me a drink.

I signed several pieces of paper, including a photocopy of my IDs and the negative results of my STD test. Then I was escorted back toward the elevator, which shuttled me to the basement.

We stumbled onto a set where the walls looked bled, or rusted, and the props spare. It was like something that would show up in the Eli Roth movie, Hostel, a few months later.

A woman with an Australian accent introduced herself as Domina. She said that she was the director. A girl stood beside her and struggled to slip into a tight latex nurse outfit. I recognized the girl from the pictures on the Internet. Her tits were out, which made her all the more familiar. She introduced herself as Yasmine and sounded just like I’d imagined a Southern California model would: bubbly, youthful, and high-pitched.

“You do this a lot?” I asked her, even though I knew the answer. She said something that meant yes and then asked the same question back. “This is, uh, my first time,” I said.

“You always put me with the virgins,” she said to Domina.

The director’s response was snarky, which made me feel even more out of place. It was like we were trading make-out stories in middle school and I had none to share.

“You have a piercing in your cock, yeah?” asked Domina. I nodded. “How do you feel about electricity?”

“I’ve never tried it before.”

Domina told me not to worry. I had a safe word if the pain was too much to handle. If I acted like it hurt, she wouldn’t turn up the voltage too high. Still, the thought of electricity passing through the glans of my penis was worrisome. But I was a good sport and would try about anything once.

The camera rolled and I walked into a “medical office.” Yasmine was there, cleaning the counters with a dirty rag and a fresh wad of saliva. My improvised line was, “What the fuck are you doing?” She assured me that it was standard procedure and moved on to the formal questioning.

“Do you have any insurance?”

I didn’t. I was also out of cash and had never applied for a credit card. It upset Yasmine more than I might have expected. Apparently, she was an opponent of health-care reform. To demonstrate her position, she tied me to a chair with rubber hosing and shoved her tits in my face.

“Good, good,” said the director.

We broke before the next sequence so that I could undress and Domina could attach an alligator clip to the side of my ampallang. She missed at first, and the metal teeth bit into my cock. When I’d finished complaining, and the pain had subsided, she continued to secure the device so that it firmly gripped the ball on one end of my piercing, and nothing else.

The electric shock was terrible, and I decided to never try it again. But we’d started filming the sequence, and I didn’t want to be a bother. I agreed to the smallest charge possible and did my best to bear it. Yasmine eased the pain by jerking me off until I came. Then we moved on to something else.

There was some whipping and slapping involved. I was tied chest-down to a metal table with wheels. I wore a ball gag in my mouth but had the safe word, “Unh, Unh,” if anything got out of hand.

Yasmine fingered my ass to warm me up and told me that I was clean. It relaxed me to know that I wouldn’t be shitting on camera, so I took her rubber cock with ease. She fucked me neither hard nor gently, but I squirmed and strained the muscles in my face. The more I looked like I was being raped, the less she had to try.

Mid-stroke, I felt the dildo fall from my ass. There was a crashing sound. Domina started to laugh and all attention was diverted toward my co-star, who needed help pulling herself up off the floor. I was still tied to the table, so I couldn’t see what happened. I was told that she slipped in a puddle of lubricant and landed on her back.

Yasmine wasn’t injured. The worst she had to worry about was ending up on Domina’s private spoof collection. But it was okay. No one took themselves too seriously. We’d done nothing artistic, nothing profound. Just porn. When the shoot was over, we went our separate ways.

A week later, I was back in my hometown, practicing for one of my band’s last shows. I got a call, asking if I’d spend a week in the Napa Valley for a shoot. One of Domina’s guys bailed last minute and she needed a replacement. I was offered more money than I’d ever made in a month. The decision wasn’t hard to make.

When the coffee shop managers and bookstore owners called back about my applications, I politely told them to fuck off. If I was going to kiss someone’s ass for a living, I preferred it not to be a figure of speech.

Not the First Time, but Close

2005

He placed a photo album on the table in front of me. There were pictures of naked women inside. They lay beside pools and couches, perched themselves on top of cars and erections.

The photos looked grainy, which I found odd. I’d never seen pornography shot on actual film.

The man said that the pictures were displayed in chronological order; to flip to the back to see his more mature work.

I did as he said. There was a yellow tint smeared across all of the images. Each model sported a full patch of pubic hair. Maybe some had been trimmed. He said that they were all shot last year in 2004.

He said I had the perfect look and then asked how old I was. I said, “Nineteen.” He said most guys who replied to his ad were at least a decade older. It sounded like a compliment, but he still needed proof. He wanted to see my abs before he turned on the camera.

Standing behind the lens, he asked me more questions: my best sexual experience, what I love about a woman’s body, and how often I jerk off in any given week. I tried my best to lie for every answer.

“Do you want to watch gay or straight porn?”

It felt like a trick question, but I said, “Straight,” without hesitation.

He put a disc in his DVD player and left the camera rolling as I unbuttoned my pants.

“I’ll fast-forward to the good parts,” he said.

When he pressed play, some girl was getting fucked in two holes at once. All I could see were stiff poles of meat, sliding and stretching skin. It was enough to get my cock hard. But closing my eyes might have done the same.

I spat in my palm and rubbed the saliva around my erection. When I looked bored, he told me to turn around and spread my ass. “The casting guys need to see this stuff,” he said.

I was obedient. I even arched my back to make my ass look more inviting.

“Are you close?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars extra to finish in my mouth.”

Proper girls used to make men buy them a ring before they put out. I’m sure they never thought of themselves as whores.

I demanded nothing. The money was simply offered to me in exchange for dropping my spunk in something more grateful than a tissue.

Of course, I let him swallow me, lick my ass, and finger the hole. I wondered if it was my calling in life: to be slightly misled into exchanging my pleasure for someone else’s.

Amateurs

2005

It was my third job through Craigslist. Despite the residential address, it seemed less sketchy than I was prepared for. There were other models, five to be exact. Some had flown up from San Diego. The rest lived nearby, in the outskirts of San Francisco.

I was told to wait downstairs until it was my turn. “You can watch TV if you want,” said the first-time director. “Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.”

I took a seat on the couch and watched a young man pace the room. Then I watched another stare him down. “Mmm,” said the gawker, licking his lips. “What’s your name, honey?”

The pacer said, “What?”

“We’re working together, right?” asked the gawker.

“I thought this was just solo stuff.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” said the gawker.

“Oh yeah. Me too,” said the pacer. “Jerry.” He sort of pointed to himself.

“Sebastian.” The gawker crossed and uncrossed his legs. “And you?” The question was aimed at me.

“Uh… I’m Daniel.”

“Mhmm,” said Sebastian, his eyes still on Jerry.

The other guy in the room talked into his cell phone, so no one bothered him. Or I didn’t stick around long enough to see it happen.

A creak filtered through the noise of television and one-sided conversations. I saw the director at the top of some stairs. He looked at me and said, “You ready?”

•

I sat on another couch. A camera pointed in my direction. “I’m going to ask you some questions,” said the director. “Then you jerk off for about ten minutes. When I have enough footage, I’ll let you know, and you can come whenever you want.”

“Cool,” I said.

“So…” He pressed a button on the camera. “What’s your name?”

“Daniel.” I used my middle name, because I hadn’t come up with anything else.

“Just Daniel?

“Yeah.” I shrugged and gave a sheepish smile.

“Okay. So are you gay, straight, or what, Daniel?”

“Whatever,” I said. “I guess I’m bi.”

“But you’ve been with boys?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Tell me about your first time with a boy.”

“I was…wait. Can I talk about that? I mean, because I was underage.”

“Don’t mention your age.”

“Okay.” I thought about it, and decided that it wasn’t interesting enough, or that it was too embarrassing. So I made up something more cliché: a story about fucking a boy at summer camp.

“That’s hot,” said the director. “Do you get turned on thinking about it?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Does it make your cock hard?”

I nodded and unbuttoned my pants. The director mostly shut up, but I could hear his breath become an audible pant. He moved the camera across my body while I closed my eyes and leaned back. I stroked myself to past fantasies, destroying each one. From then on, I would associate them with the disembodied sound of a grunting cameraman. But it wasn’t so bad. They still made me come.

He said, “You’re amazing. Thank you.”

“No problem. Do you have a towel or something?”

He groped at his crotch once more, then said, “Yeah. I’ll be right back.”

•

The director asked me to spend the night because he wanted to shoot me for another video. “It’ll be more convenient for you,” he said. “The guys from San Diego are crashing downstairs, so you can sleep in my room if you want.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not trying to fuck you,” he said. “Promise. Although, it would be nice.”

“Sure,” I said, and my voice sounded like a question.

“You want to meet the boy you’re going to work with tomorrow? You can come with me to the airport.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a late flight. He missed the one before it.”

•

We rode together in the director’s black sedan. “What are you into besides porn?” he asked. “Didn’t you say you were a student?”

“Uh huh,” I said. “I just transferred to UC Santa Cruz. I’m studying film.” It felt important to give the information to most everyone who hired me. I wanted to be viewed as something other than a dumb piece of ass.

“Really?” he said. “You know, this company’s brand-new. I’m partnered with an investor, so we have the funding. But as you can probably tell, I don’t exactly know what I’m doing. We could use someone with the technical know-how.”

“I just started too,” I said. “But I might be interested down the line.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, though I’d promised nothing. “Let me know if you like this kid, okay? I found him through an escorting site. He’s from Portland. Really young…like you. This will be his first porn.”

“A lot of newbies, huh?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You, me…”

“It might turn into something special. You never know. I’d sure like to sell a lot of copies of this movie.”

•

My scene partner, Brian, stood outside the baggage claim with nothing but a backpack. “Oh my God,” said Brian, as he entered the car. “I’m sorry I missed my flight, but my fucking stepdad just found out what I’m doing, which means he also just found out that I’m gay. So all my stuff’s in a dumpster somewhere. Gone.”

“He kicked you out?” I asked, surprised.

The director listened unaffected, as if he’d heard it all before.

“Yeah, but fuck that guy. Fuck him. Fuck that piece of shit,” said Brian. “I couldn’t care less. I don’t fucking want to live with him anyway.”

“But you’re seriously homeless right now?” I said.

“Yeah, but do you hear what I’m saying? Fuck him.” Brian seemed to calm down, and we shifted the conversation to small talk. He asked, “Do you think we could go out tonight? I’ve never been to San Francisco, and I want to do something fun.”

“I’m probably going to sleep,” said the director. “But if one of the models wants to drive, I guess I’ll loan you guys the car.”

“I’m totally broke, though,” said Brian, pouting.

“I could probably give you some money,” said the director. By the look on his face, he was more enamored than concerned. By the look of everything else, I concluded that he was just rich.

“What’s going on tonight?” asked Brian. He seemed like he was talking to me. “Like, what are your favorite clubs?”

“I don’t really go to clubs.”

•

Sebastian drove, because he was the oldest and actually had a license. Plus, he said, “I’m up here all the time for shoots, so I know all the good places in the Castro.”

What Sebastian didn’t know was that neither Brian nor I were twenty-one yet. Every club he suggested wouldn’t let us through the door. Brian’s night on the town devolved into drinking milkshakes at Hamburger Mary’s, complaining, and pawing at my cock underneath the table. Sometimes I pawed back, or kissed his mouth, even though it made Sebastian look pissed and bored. Probably because his crush hadn’t come along.

“We’re leaving,” said Sebastian.

Brian complained some more. But he was all talk. His feet walked as fast as ours, and he offered no resistance when I pushed him into the car.

By the time we made it back to the director’s house, it was 3:00 a.m. Brian woke the director by jumping on his bed. “Can I sleep here?” he asked.

“What?” said the director, delirious, as if he believed that he was still in a dream. Brian slid under the covers before the man could answer. Soon enough, they were snoring.

I retired to a pile of bedding that had been laid out on the floor. Another boy found me in the dark and started shoving his hands beneath my underwear. I felt for his chest and stomach, trying to figure out who he was. His skin was slightly pudgy, not like the San Diego models. So I wasn’t really sure what to call him. Maybe “Ghost” was appropriate. The house seemed to spawn boys like some portal to a gay dimension.

But I was tired and not in the mood. I pushed the boy off of me and worked my way down the stairs. Sunlight reflected off the window just as I fell asleep.

•

The sound of a blender woke me up. Most everyone else was milling around in boxers or pajama bottoms. Some were eating breakfast, others watching TV. The boy with a remote spotted me yawning, and he turned up the volume on a Saturday morning cartoon.

“Protein shake?” asked Sebastian, holding the blender loose in his hand.

“I’ve got fruit, and cereal, and eggs and sausage too,” said the director, poking his head out from behind the refrigerator door.

“I’m not picky,” I said. Then, “When are we shooting?”

“When everyone’s ready. Or when you, Brian, Sebastian, and Jerry are ready. Only two scenes today.”

“Okay,” I said. “Can I have some eggs?”

Brian’s voice preceded him down the stairs. “I totally forgot to get my ass waxed before the shoot.” As soon as he hit the kitchen floor, he was perched at the director’s feet like some sad puppy dog.

“Seriously?” said the director.

“I want to look my best.”

“I’ll get my wallet,” said the director. “What do you need? Fifty bucks?”

“Maybe,” said Brian. “Where’s the closest salon?”

•

We were packed into the back of the director’s sedan. Brian said, “We need to stop at a Whole Foods. The guy who waxed my ass said that if I don’t get this lotion, I’ll break out in a rash. I have, like, forty minutes. That’s it.”

“We’re already behind,” said the director. “If Sebastian and Jerry go first, you can walk to Whole Foods. Daniel?” He flashed me a worried look. “Can you go with Brian?”

“Sure,” I said.

We pulled into a small hotel parking lot. The director told everyone to wait inside the car. “I don’t want them to know what we’re doing. I’ll figure out where our room is, and you guys come out one at a time. Otherwise, it looks like we’re having a party. Or, you know, shooting a porno.”

“What about my lotion?” asked Brian.

“Wait a fucking minute,” said the director.

We sat in silence until we were allowed to enter the hotel room. The director asked me to help him set up his lighting equipment, which consisted of one four-paneled Kino Flo. Then he pulled out his wallet. “How much does the lotion cost?” he asked Brian.

“I know the name of it. Not how much it costs.”

“You need anything?” the director asked me.

“I’m kind of hungry,” I said, because it was true and I wanted some of his money, too.

The director handed me several bills. “I want you to hold on to this. And bring me the change. I want change, got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Lotion and food,” he said. “That’s it.” The shoot hadn’t even started and he was beginning to sweat.

•

“So, where do you plan to live after this?” I asked Brian on our walk to Whole Foods.

“I don’t know.” He looked at me and smiled. “Where do you live?”

“In a dorm room.”

“If I stay in San Francisco, will you visit me?”

I couldn’t figure out if he was joking, but I shrugged and told him, “Sure.”

“You should give me your phone number,” he said and skipped ahead.

•

We purchased the lotion, along with some sandwiches and Odwalla drinks. Brian bummed a cigarette off a guy standing in front of the store.

“Oh shit,” said Brian. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s already been forty minutes, huh?” He looked worried. “Can you rub this stuff on my ass?”

“Right here?”

“We’ll go behind some bushes,” he said.

“Where do you see bushes?” I asked him.

“Fuck, we have to run.” Brian took off, and I did my best to catch up.

•

The models were on separate beds, naked. They had scowls on their faces. The director was covered in more sweat. His camera rested on his stomach.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

One of the models stretched out his limp cock.

“No one has wood,” said the director. “You guys ready to go? I need to shoot something.”

Brian lathered himself in lotion and asked, “Does my ass look red? I’m scared it’s already happened.”

“Looks fine,” said the director. “Just tell me if you’re ready.”

“Let me smoke a cigarette,” said Brian. “Does anybody have a lighter?”

•

I felt nervous and depleted, so it took a while to get me going. And when I diverted the attention from my own limp cock, Brian said, “I just want you to fuck my ass. I don’t like blow jobs. I mean, I like giving them. Fuck. You understand, right?” I nodded and he continued to suck me off, putting his hands on my chest and tugging at my nipple rings. Eventually, I stiffened up and fucked his mouth. Then I slipped on a condom and pushed myself in and out of his ass. He came while riding me reverse cowboy. I pulled out and shot a load on his chest.

“We have something,” said the director. “What about you guys?” He turned to the San Diego models. “Feeling better?

“I’m ready,” said Sebastian, bent over and spreading.

Jerry looked at his partner’s naked hole. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Do you want to shoot this?” the director asked me. “It will give you some film school practice, right?”

I shrugged. “Can I take a shower first?”

•

I was clean and held the camera. “So, where did you guys leave off?”

“We didn’t really start,” said the director. “If they can’t get hard, just film them pretending to have sex.”

“Okay.” I steadied the camera as much as possible while the two models writhed on the bed. They looked exhausted and bored.

“Can we come now?” asked Sebastian.

“Okay, okay, how are we going to do this?” said the director.

“I have an idea,” I said. It included fake ejaculation mid-oral-sex. The boys pretended to come in each other’s mouths. Then I used some of the only tools I’d learned in film school: continuity and cheap special effects. “Sebastian, put some of Brian’s leftover lotion in your mouth and let it dribble out like cum. Then you, Jerry, put your cock back in his mouth. Act like you just shot your load.”

“If you were a real director, I’d hate working for you,” said Sebastian.

“Well, I’m not,” I said. “Just do it.”

“He’s right,” said the director, as if he’d had an epiphany. “That’ll probably edit together really well.”

“Fine, fine. I just want to go home,” whined Sebastian. He put the lotion on his tongue and cringed.

Afterward, the director ordered pizza and hid in the back of the room while the rest of us ate.

“I’ve been a part of worse shoots,” said Sebastian. “With good marketing, I think this movie could still sell really well.”

“Thanks,” said the director, “but…” He didn’t finish his sentence. By the time the sweat dried on his forehead, he said, “You know what? Maybe you’re right.” A grin grew on his face and stayed there for a while. It seemed like evidence of a hopeful dream.

“My car’s still at your place,” I said.

“Just a little longer,” said the director. His eyes darted between us, from body to body, across each canvas of skin. “Don’t worry.” He slumped back in his chair. “I’ll get you home. Just wait a little longer.”

LOVE I

The Fire and the Thaw

2006–2009

I’d just been tied, whipped, and fucked over the course of three hours. My skin was slick with sweat and silicone lubricant. Beneath the scent of Purell hand sanitizer, I could make out semen, leather, and rope. I didn’t shower because I had somewhere to be, a desk to sit in, and an essay to write on television texts and critical theory.

I sat in an office on the third floor of the Fetisynth headquarters, tapping my feet, and waiting for my check to be signed. If I could get out of there within fifteen minutes, I could make it—even with traffic.

The production manager approached. “I’d like to introduce you to someone,” she said and motioned toward the young woman who stood beside her. “Daniel, this is…”

“Jean D’Arc,” said the young woman. She extended her hand.

“Jean’s also talent,” said the production manager.

We exchanged some pleasantries.

“Is it weird that I came in early just to meet you?” asked Jean.

I didn’t know what to say.

“I saw you on ToppedBoundBoys.com, and…” She said something about browsing the list of male models and deciding on two that she’d be willing to work with (i.e. fuck). I guess I was one of them.

It was the first time I’d met anyone who’d admitted to watching my porn, and it kind of freaked me out. I’d imagined old, unhappily married men hiding in basements and jerking off to the stuff. Not a girl. Definitely not an attractive one.

“I have to go,” I said and wished that I’d uttered something more polite before it.

The production manager handed me a check. I gave a short wave and ran out the door.

•

The rest of my day consisted of driving, writing two thousand words on postmodern media, taking a shower, and then retiring to the confines of my dorm room. Like most kids my age, I browsed the array of social networking sites I belonged to. Out of curiosity, I searched for the girl I met in the office. She wasn’t hard to find.

Jean D’Arc had more friends on MySpace than there were people in the town I grew up in. Scratch that. The county I grew up in. Her profile described her as an “Internet phenomenon.”

I scanned her interests and found that she listened to one of my favorite metal bands, liked some of my top-ten movies, and was actually straight edge.

I’d yet to find anyone at my university who, like me, completely abstained from substance abuse. The fact that I’d coincidentally run into a teetotaling porn star completely blew my mind. Especially one who shared common interests. Especially one who wanted to fuck me. It felt like I’d been led through a gold mine and had never bothered to look up.

I typed out a brief message, in which I apologized for my awkward behavior. It ended with something trite and pointless, like, “It was really nice to meet you.” I hit send and considered the likelihood that she would never read it, much less respond.

But she did. Jean even sent me her AOL Instant Messenger screen name. We chatted intermittently over the next few nights. Information was exchanged. Some was expository: she lived in Los Angeles; I lived in Santa Cruz. Some of it was flirtatious. Some of it was photographic evidence: my cock; her cunt. She gave me her phone number and the date of her next trip to the Bay Area. I committed both to memory.

•

The day of Jean’s arrival, I shot a spread for Freshman Magazine in the small town of Guerneville. The scenario was simple: I bathed in a river, stripped out of my wetsuit, and jerked off. Then I went back to a house in the woods, took a shower, and jerked off some more.

The drive back to San Francisco took about an hour, most of which I spent leaving voicemails on Jean’s phone and counting down the minutes before I felt it appropriate to leave more.

Eventually, she called me to say that her shoot ran overtime. I could meet her at Fetisynth Studios in about thirty minutes.

I arrived early, so I parked my truck and waited in the alley that ran behind the building. Someone approached. He looked dirty and was probably homeless. “You work here?” he asked me.

I shook my head, “No,” but he didn’t seem to believe me.

“My dick is huge,” said the man, as if it were some sort of interview. “When I smoke crack, my dick grows thirteen inches.”

I walked several feet in the opposite direction and tried to ignore him. But he filled the gap between us. He fumbled with the zipper on his pants, and suddenly his cock was out. I pretended that I didn’t notice. Then he pulled a crack pipe from his pocket and set the rock aflame.

“Oh my God.” I was aware it wasn’t the most appropriate reaction, but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. Thankfully, Jean found it the perfect moment to text me. She let me know that she was waiting out front.

I excused myself and left the homeless man flopping his penis in the air.

•

When I saw Jean, she and I were wearing pretty much the same thing: skinny jeans, Converse, and black hooded sweatshirts. She looked beautiful, but I didn’t know how to tell her.

My hands were stuffed in my pockets, and I fumbled with my words. We didn’t hug each other or even shake hands. I told her the story of the penis and the crack pipe and hoped that it would break the ice. Maybe it did. She laughed a little and suggested that we eat at a restaurant down the street.

The diner was called Mel’s and it sported a retro fifties theme, complete with mini-jukeboxes at each table. Jean made fun of me for not being able to recognize most of the songs. She was only six years older than me, but the breadth of her musical knowledge extended far before I was born. I was almost embarrassed at how little I knew outside my own generation. But at least I was familiar with all the new shit.

Jean called attention to how unusually quiet I was and that when I did speak, my voice was barely audible. Her point was that I was shy, which seemed like a strange attribute for a pornographic model. But it wasn’t an accusation. She seemed to think I was cute.

Jean explained that she was also shy—in her own way. What other reason would she have for spending so much time on the Internet, amassing her MySpace empire? It was a form of solidarity, and so I followed her back to her room.

•

We both wore the stench of our daily routine. So we took showers, separately. Then we sat on the hotel bed and talked for a while. It was obvious that I wanted to kiss her.

I knew that she was filmed just hours ago, sucking cock and getting whipped. But something about her made me feel like I was still fifteen years old. My stomach churned with anxiety and I watched, blurry-eyed, for the cue to move in. It never occurred to me that her green light had been on the entire time.

“Are you going to make out with me?” she asked. The question was foolproof. Even I couldn’t stumble.

I grabbed her face and something in me came alive. My motivation was transparent. There was no promise of financial exchange. I was consumed by my own desire.

At the end of thirty minutes, we’d tasted more than each other’s mouths.

“Do you want to fuck me?” she asked, and my cock rested on her lips.

I nodded, eagerly.

“I don’t usually have sex on the first date,” she said, which sounded like the night could be an exception. I kissed her once more and pushed myself between her legs.

Then I proved that I was still a boy. I pumped once or twice and jumped backward, and clutched my cock in my hand. My palm became a makeshift barrier and caught the spurts of semen that dripped through my fingers and fell to the floor.

I apologized on principle. But there was an extra ounce of shame that came with the fact that I was supposed to be good at sex. I mean, I did it for a living—even if the work wasn’t consistent.

Jean laughed, but not hard, and not for very long. And maybe—though I didn’t believe it—not at me. Words were shared, my mess was cleaned up, and somehow, we were back to kissing. She transformed the moment in such a way that my embarrassment was almost erased.

•

I shot my first student film: an experimental narrative on the topics of feminist film theory and literary masochism. The finished product was uploaded to YouTube and emailed to Jean.

She sent me an instant message, letting me know that she had watched the video. It turned me on, she wrote. You’re so fucking smart. Then she typed, I showed it to this porn director. He says he likes the color correction.

Who’s the director?

He calls himself Leom McFry. Like Liam McFrei from that DC hardcore band. He’s going to put me in his next movie.

I wanted to know the name of the film and the exact date of its release. Because it was the kind of thing that would tide me over between her visits; the kind of thing that made me proud of her.

The way she performed in the movie reminded me that Jean wasn’t doing porn to get through school or save money until she could figure out what to do with her life. Porn was her chosen profession. And each film she was cast in marked another notch of success. She was the type of girl who wasn’t supposed to exist. She had sex for money because it made her feel good, not because she was strung out or recovering from abuse. And while that in and of itself seemed pretty revolutionary, she turned me onto something else that I never knew existed.

The director, Leom, had developed a niche market of the industry called Alt Porn. He got an idea in his head that a younger generation of consumer might want to watch a younger generation of performer. And not just another blonde, big-titted bimbo who happened to be eighteen. He cast punks, ravers, goths, and other less-obvious specimens of subculture, cut the smut together like art films, and layered it with soundtracks from independent bands—ranging in genre from electronica to black metal.

Jean and I didn’t exactly look like punks, though we had both grown up in our own aggressive music scenes. Our ink and piercings were minimal, but we were more or less what Leom was looking for.

I flew to Los Angeles one weekend to hang out with Jean, and she introduced me to the Alt Porn pioneer.

He looked different from the hand-drawn pictures on his website. I was actually mistaken for Leom at a nearby adult video store because I was the image of his caricature: young and thin with dyed black hair and a shaggy cut. But the real Leom McFry was thirty years old, with rectangular glasses, Vans sneakers, and a black zip-up jacket. He was a Cal Arts graduate and the ex-drummer of a Southern California death metal band.

I didn’t say much when we met. He and Jean did most of the talking. There was mention of the film he had just finished, Neu Wave Hookers, and talk of an upcoming project called Girls Lie.

•

Neu Wave Hookers was the first porn film that I purchased. Partly, it was so that I could jerk off to Jean when I couldn’t see her in person. But I also wanted proof that my work could have some clout. The movie was actually fun to watch if I wasn’t masturbating. I was even allowed to present it in front of my university class. It elevated porn to art, which elevated sex to a form of self-expression. The same kids who raised their fists at rallies and hardcore shows could make true their claims of “make love, not war.” And what’s more, they could be paid for such small acts of rebellion.

Someone else would profit from the material, but the man always profited. The kids just wanted their community. At least, that’s what I wanted.

I didn’t have to look far. We found a director named Alex Voltage in San Francisco. He was a bohemian city-dweller searching for young, sexy people to cast in couple-friendly porn that was well produced and spiced with rock ‘n’ roll. He was searching for people like us.

Alex rented a honeymoon suite at a place called The Victorian for me and Jean to fuck in. When the camera rolled, we spit, choked, slapped, and licked cum from each other’s faces. We said, “I love you,” because it was true, but also to get the point across. We were not our father’s stag film. Our acts were not those of misogyny or degradation. We were young, pissed, and passionate. A slap to the face just reminded us that we were alive.

•

Alex let us spend the night in the suite. Acts of generosity, like his, were how Jean and I funded our burgeoning long-distance relationship. We stayed in hotels and model apartments purchased by the companies that hired us. Sometimes, if we were really desperate, we paid for one ourselves.

Jean booked us an evening at the Hotel des Arts so that we could see each other on our own time. A different artist had designed each room. Jean said that her ex-boyfriend painted one. She told me that his artist name was Ripped Creature and that he was a douche.

Our room was not painted by Ripped Creature. It felt important to me. Not that exclusivity was a problem, but I would rather the designs of a past lover not stare down at us in bed. I preferred the colorful skulls that lined our walls and the wings that spread out from behind them.

At the Hotel des Arts, we stayed in bed all night and most of the following day. For twenty-four hours, my life was like a dream. I had sex, slept, and rolled around with my greatest infatuation. I stared out the window at a bustling city street and took a five-minute stroll to eat Thai food amongst mere mortals—I called them such because I felt elevated, like a lesser god or a titan, perched in his tower. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve such luxury at twenty years old. But the answer seemed simple: I’d become an idealist and a whore. And the luxury: it was all relative.

•

A phone call reached me days, or weeks, later. The man on the other line was Leom McFry’s producer. He said that Jean told him about our scene in San Francisco. She’d convinced him that I could keep my dick hard on camera. He wanted to fly me to Los Angeles to be in Leom’s next movie. I accepted with gratitude.

My flight landed at the Burbank Airport around 8:00 a.m., but there was no one to pick me up. When I managed to wake my driver, it was still hours before I was needed. Someone dropped me off at Jean’s apartment, and I crawled into bed with her until the early afternoon.

I tossed around in half sleep, took a shower, and was whisked away to the desert by a van full of pornographers. Of course, Leom was one of them. There was a still photographer named Rocktavio, who claimed to be passing a kidney stone. The driver’s name was Damien, and there was another girl, Stephanie, who introduced herself as a production assistant. She mostly drank beer and let the crew grope her when she started to feel buzzed. The only other passenger was a young, freckled blonde named Caitlin, whom I was supposed to fuck later.

We stopped at a modest-looking home in Lancaster to get a few shots of Caitlin riding a bike. Leom told me that they filmed a sex scene there the day prior, because it was a drug dealer’s house and the inside of it looked the way one might expect. “You can’t buy that kind of production design,” he said while Stephanie went inside to buy some pills.

Once back in the van, Stephanie popped something blue and pill-shaped into her mouth. She fed lollipops, wrapped in some kind of medical packaging, to Leom and Rocktavio. Caitlin took a lot of pictures for her blog. Leom filmed the passing street signs with his video camera.

We visited a liquor store, a tattoo shop, a trailer park, and a small desert hotel set where everything was fake, including the bathrooms. Leom filmed the sunset while we ate. Then I sat on the edge of the pool with Caitlin, held her hand, and listened to her muse about a fictional, burnout boyfriend. She hid many things from the man, including her job. I knew it because the next scenario we shot took place at a chronologically earlier time. It entailed the following:

I picked her up beside a dumpster and took her back to my hotel room. I explained how I’d never been with a girl before. She asked if I was a virgin, and I said, “No, I’ve mostly just been with guys.” She said that I wasn’t allowed to put my cock in her ass. I agreed. We rubbed each other’s thighs, made out, and things went on from there.

I ejaculated in Caitlin’s mouth at around four in the morning. We escaped the location before anyone noticed that Rocktavio vomited all over the fake toilet.

•

Jean was kind of upset when I arrived back at her apartment. It was too much for me to handle, because I’d been awake for more than a day. But I realized, soon enough, that she’d just been worried.

“I was calling at midnight, then two, and then four in the morning. I thought something happened to you.”

My explanation was sincere. My phone had run out of battery, or I had forgotten to look at it. Jean’s anger dissolved. I apologized and fell asleep with my arms around her.

•

A month later, it was my turn to worry. I flew to Los Angeles to shoot a video with a cute “scene” girl from the Midwest. Unfortunately, it was the same day that Jean had to shoot in San Francisco. It was like we were trading places.

I listened to my voicemail once my shoot was over. There was a message from Jean. She sounded like she was in pain and said something about being in the hospital.

I called her immediately.

Jean said that she was okay, but that the doctors were still doing some tests. She said that her shoot started fine, but the penetration gave way to something sharp and searing in her gut. The doctors thought it was a bladder infection, which turned out to be true.

Someone from the porn crew in LA agreed to take me to the airport so that I could wait for Jean. I used her car to drive us back to her apartment, and I extended my stay until she was nursed back to health. It was the first time that I actually took care of another person without necessity, grudge, or ulterior motive. I really wanted to be there, to make sure that she would be okay. It made me realize that I wanted to be there anyway.

There were plenty of reasons. Flying out of town on a regular basis was exhausting, especially as a full-time student. Jean was a huge factor. Plus, it seemed like I could actually make some sort of living doing porn while I was in college. And I studied film, so Los Angeles seemed like the place to be.

•

It was late in the academic year, and there was only one film school in Southern California still accepting transfer applicants for the fall semester. I crossed my fingers and went for it.

My GPA was high enough and I was kind of in love, so I jumped the gun before I found out whether or not I’d been accepted. My mother lent me some money, and I packed my truck to move down south. Then I found out that my transcripts were never mailed, and that it may have had something to do with the fact that my university chancellor had stolen a bunch of money and killed herself. The office staff was in disarray.

So I found myself in Los Angeles, surrounded by an air of uncertainty. I had a girlfriend, an apartment, but no immediate goals, except—I guess—do more porn. It was all I had before I went back to school.

•

The work was not abundant. I was cast primarily in Alt Porn movies and amateur productions. Most every other company was hesitant to try out a new guy, and the reason made sense enough to me. Regardless of sexual prowess, most men weren’t confronted by an array of lights, or with a cameraman hovering over their shoulders. Most men didn’t have to pause mid-stroke for photographs. And most didn’t have to keep their dicks hard while fucking women they weren’t attracted to, women who simply didn’t want to be there. Maybe most women weren’t used to porn, either, but at least they could fake their arousal.

Like most men who tried, I had trouble getting used to mainstream porn. I had my fair share of failures—moments where I believed that I wasn’t cut out for the business. The crews in Los Angeles weren’t as supportive as the ones up north. But Jean was always there to encourage me along.

It was strange to hear my girlfriend say, “It’s not your fault,” when I’d come home from a day of up-and-down erections. “She’s just ugly,” Jean would say. Or, “That girl’s a bitch. Any guy would struggle.”

Her intentions were good, and at each moment of defeat, they did wonders to move me along. But porn was a job. Like any job, it took time to learn the skills, tricks, and rhythm of what was required. Whatever body was put in front me, I had to figure out a way to fuck it. I had to ejaculate within moments of being told and learn to like it. I had to become a catalyst for others’ fantasies, regardless of whether or not they matched my own.

•

A streak of success worked its way into my life, and I was all too eager to share it with Jean. She congratulated me on my ability to fuck other women, and I congratulated her on her increasing level of stardom.

Jean was nominated for her first AVN award—the adult industry’s version of the Oscars. She was also asked to sign at a convention in Las Vegas, which preceded the show. Leom McFry’s Alt Porn imprint had taken off, and Jean had become a spearhead of the movement—an Alt Porn princess, so to speak.

She stood behind a podium on the convention floor and signed pictures of herself and copies of Leom’s movies for her fans. I blended into the masses, content with the fact that this beautiful, sought-after woman returned home every night to sleep next to me.

But when she returned, all was not well. Jean was exhausted, which was to be expected. Instead of going out to party, she resigned to her typical routine of checking messages and accepting friend requests on MySpace.

One email caught her eye, and she read it out loud. “‘Are you okay?’” she said, reading from her computer screen. “‘I saw that your place burned down.’”

“It’s probably a bad joke,” I said. “I mean, do you recognize this person? How would they even know where you live?”

“Right.” Jean seemed to agree. Still, she played the devil’s advocate. “It could be some crazy stalker. The behind-the-scenes footage in my movie shows the front of the building.”

“So call the fire department,” I said, hoping it would put an end to her paranoia.

She took my advice and dialed the station back home. Jean sounded embarrassed when she questioned the fireman on the other line. But her face dropped when he gave her an answer. She started to cry when she repeated it to me.

“Our apartment burned down.”

The place didn’t actually belong to me, but I’d stashed most everything I’d owned in Jean’s apartment. Ever since I’d moved to LA, my four-hundred-square-foot studio had acted as an overpriced mailbox, that, and a place to store my bed. My camera, guitar, clothing, and everything else had gone up in flames. It was inconvenient, sure. But I didn’t have the memories or treasures Jean had locked up in that place. All my sentiment was still packed in boxes in my mother’s garage.

It was heartbreaking to watch Jean from across the hotel tub, soaking in bath salts and misery. But as I cradled her in my arms, it seemed that we were not so hopeless after all. We had each other, and if we could get through the fire, we should have been able to endure anything.

•

The burnt carcass of Jean’s home was a shock to see in person. Leom lent us his camcorder so that we could document our first walkthrough of the ruins. Turning the experience into our own personal video project seemed to lessen the impact. But Jean still took it pretty hard.

She found a closet of clothes turned to ash, a couch tossed out the window by firemen, a desk full of charred electronics, and a kitchen marred by irreparable smoke damage. In the corner of her bedroom, Jean stumbled upon a box untouched by flame. It contained pictures of her family and several relics from the past. I filmed her as she savored each one.

It was strange to sit behind the shield of a camera while a loved one went through such emotional turmoil. But I felt the need to stand my ground. She’d lost enough that day. At least the tape would give her something new to hold on to.

It did more than that. The footage unleashed a wave of human kindness. We posted the video on MySpace next to the PO Box address that fans used to send Jean gifts and dirty letters. With the advent of our disaster, we received packages of clothes, towels, gift cards, and household necessities. Messages of goodwill poured across the Internet. Even members of our adult industry community reached out to help.

The only inconvenience was that Jean and I had to really move in together. My studio was available, cheap, and pretty much empty, so we used it to get back on our feet. Jean wanted to stay awhile so that she could save up money to buy a house.

We lost our sense of privacy and fought more often. But it wasn’t the end of the world. It just made us appreciate what would come next.

At least, it should have.

•

The change was gradual, but Jean would look back years later to blame the fire as a mark of our demise. It was as if she believed the flames were an omen of things to come.

Nothing appeared much worse on the surface. I was accepted to a prestigious film school, my work picked up, and I made more money. Jean and I were eventually able to rent a house—not own one, like she’d originally wanted.

But the small successes; they defined my job as a means to an end. Pornography was no longer just an adventure but a way to fund a small family. Jean bought us two cats, a television, and a Tempur-Pedic bed. We nested into our home and came to live like any other couple. Jealousy, rage, and resentment seeped into our relationship.

I started to think about the future and how I might have already fucked it up. Going to school was great, but who was going to hire an ex-pornographer? What job skills had I gained by fucking my way across hundreds of Chatsworth homes?

My time was cut short by school, and Jean started to believe that I hated her. Whether it was because of it or not, she started to pour her own hate on everyone else. Friends turned fearful at the thought of spending time with her, regardless of what charisma she’d once held. Jean’s belief about me never fully came true, but almost.

Even the Alt Porn community fell apart. Small feuds swelled up and the money stopped coming in. Like most young adults, our market demographic pirated the content with reckless abandon. The harder Leom worked, the more his budget was slashed on the next project. He quit because the business was like any other: a graveyard for idealists.

•

I left Jean one February when she was out of the country. It took me less than a week to find my own apartment and move my entire life into it.

We didn’t speak for six months, but I was constantly reminded of Jean’s contempt for me through her army of online fans. Every blogged mention of an asshole ex-boyfriend sent twenty anonymous emails to my MySpace inbox. Some read, Give her back the can opener, and others, You’re a piece of shit.

One day, I stumbled on set and found Jean standing there beside me. We didn’t have much to say at first, but there were no bitter words between us. She hugged me longer than I’d felt in ages. We agreed to have dinner that night.

We ate organic vegetables and meatballs while we brought each other up to date. She told me about her new braces and her spacious downtown loft. I told her about my studio in Koreatown, and how I’d had my car broken into twice in one day. The inevitable happened and she said things like, “I don’t think I can see you and not be your girlfriend.”

My reply was like, “I’d rather be a part of your life than not.”

“You used to think I was so amazing,” she said.

We paid our bill, walked twenty yards, and fell to the street to cry our eyes out.

I agreed to give it another go. We saw a therapist. I even spent Halloween cloistered up in her apartment, taking care of her while she was sick. It almost felt like old times, except there was some foreboding sense that we were going to fuck it up.

Whether it was the fact that she’d started drinking or that our goals and lifestyles had further veered apart, I no longer saw her as the person I once knew.

The last time that I was with her in the flesh, she was in bed beside me, saying, “Sometimes, when you look at me, I feel like I’m the most beautiful girl in the world. Then I remember that you don’t love me…and that you never will.”

I left the key she’d made for me on her dresser and locked the door on my way out.

Charley Parker

2007

Charley Parker wasn’t his real name, but the sound of it made me think of the fifties—the decade he was born. His house made me think of the fifties, too. It looked like he fought for the American dream and won.

Charley showed me pictures of all-American boys. They wore helmets, jerseys, jockstraps, but mostly nothing at all. They posed on the front of fitness catalogs and bent over in the spreads of wank mags. Parker represented them all. I wanted him to represent me, too.

He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I told him that I was going to film school. “I can introduce you to important people,” he said. “David Geffen will love you. He’ll probably want to suck your cock.” It sounded like great news.

One of the all-American boys showed up in the flesh. His name was Joe. “See what Joe’s driving?” said Parker, nodding toward an SUV in the driveway. “It’s his third car. I take care of the people who take care of me.”

Joe took off his shirt, as per Parker’s request. “You have a swimmer’s body,” said Parker. “We need to get you looking like this. How often do you tan?”

“Maybe once a week.”

“Let me see.” I took off my shirt and he said, “Go three times.” He paused. “In this business, you need at least one of three things: a great body, face, or cock. You’ve got two of ‘em. With a little work, you’ll be amazing.” Charley groped me as I flexed my arms, chest, and ass. He said my ass needed the most work. “Don’t spend your money on a trainer. Joe will help you out.”

On our way to dinner, Joe and Charley told stories about booze, vomit, and fleeing the police. Midconversation, my cell phone rang. It was Jean. I didn’t answer.

“Does she know you’re here?” asked Charley.

I said, “Yes,” because it was the truth.

“Why?” he asked me. “Never tell your girlfriend what you do. Joe, what does your girl think you do for a living?”

“Model.”

“That’s all she needs to know.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said, but he didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have, either. He could probably see it on my face. I hadn’t listened to her voicemail, but I already knew that she was pissed.

I hid my worries. We parked in front of an Outback Steakhouse. Once inside, we ordered drinks. Charley and Joe asked for cocktails. I ordered a Diet Coke.

“You’re a cheap date,” said Charley.

I smiled and told him that I quit drinking before I was legal.

“My father said to never trust a man who doesn’t drink,” said Charley.

I stopped smiling.

Joe ordered salmon and brown rice. Charley got a bowl of deep-fried onions. I looked to the both of them for guidance. “You should order the chicken or salmon. Something with lean protein,” said Charley. “I can eat like this because I’m an old man.”

Charley asked if I thought the waitress was cute. I shrugged. He said, “Joe, didn’t you used to date a girl who worked here?”

“I fucked her a few times.”

“That’s what I meant.”

My girlfriend called again and I put my phone on silent. “You can fuck all the pussy you want. Why tie yourself down at such a young age?” I mentioned something about love, and Charley laughed.

I got up to use the bathroom and took my phone with me.

I hid inside a stall and listened to seven new voicemails from Jean. They ranged from worried to savage. When I called her, she accused me of blowing dudes and getting fucked in the ass. I said that we were at dinner and that it was just taking a while. She said that I’d promised to be home hours ago; she told me not to do anything I’d regret.

Our conversation ended on a sour note. I couldn’t guarantee what time I’d be home.

When I returned to the table, Charley called me out. I spent the rest of the dinner feeling like shit and listening to a lecture on why I should dump my bitch and make something of myself, financially speaking. “She doesn’t understand that you’re doing this for the both of you. She’s actually hurting your relationship. If you listen to her, you’re destroying your career.” Finally, Charley paid the bill and we left.

“The last thing we have to do is the massage,” said Charley when we were back at his house. “Before I set you up with any private clients, I need to make sure that you can do the job.”

I used the bathroom and Joe caught me on the way out. “Just distract him enough and it won’t matter if you’re hard.”

We entered the bedroom. Charley was on the mattress, spread-eagle. “Turn off the lights,” he barked. “No one wants to see my pasty skin.”

I did as he said and then approach the bed. Charley ordered Joe and I to make out. We found each other’s mouths in the darkness.

Parker guided our hands toward his crotch. His cock stiffened over the course of several minutes, and he pushed my head down to take it in. I opened my lips to fit the thing inside me. It was small, so I struggled to shove it down my throat. Parker seemed annoyed at the gagging sounds I made. He started to jerk at my limp penis and said, “Stop, stop. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re thinking about your girl, aren’t you?”

Charley said that he understood. I was having a bad night. He instructed me to go home and give the whole thing some thought. “We can always pick up tomorrow.”

I scurried toward the bathroom and washed my mouth with a finger full of toothpaste. Charley asked for a kiss before I left. “How cute,” he mocked, inhaling my breath. “He brushed his teeth for the girl.”

I drove home and found Jean awake, watching television on the couch. I sat beside her in silence for the last thirty minutes of Interview with a Vampire. Eventually, she placed her head on my shoulder. I told her that I had a confession to make. “I didn’t mean to, but I sucked his dick.”

It turned into a bigger fight than I imagined. She called me worse things than I’d heard in my entire life. At the end of the night, I promised never to fuck another man. For the duration of our relationship, I almost made it true.

I checked my voicemail the following afternoon. There was a message from Charley. He said that he landed me a contract for ten scenes, at $1,500 apiece. I didn’t call him back.

Tourist

2009

My friend invited me to Rage—the gay club in West Hollywood for boys our age and younger. I could stand the music (something like a house remix of Gwen Stefani’s Bananas) for maybe five minutes. Lucky for me, it only took four to find a face to make out with. The music sounded better with a tongue in my mouth.

We danced like teenagers alone in our rooms. It felt embarrassing. Though, on someone else—strobe-lit and shirtless—the look was kind of hot.

The boy whose mouth I liked shouted something. His words were lost in the bass. I yelled, “Chris,” with a finger pointed to my chest, as if we’d introduced ourselves. He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me toward the exit.

“We should go to my car,” he said, once I could hear.

I held his hand and followed. His back seat was large enough for us to suck each other’s cocks.

He put his number in my phone—tagged his name as Trevor.

•

I left with my friend instead of Trevor and went back to my place after that. It was late, or early, and still hard for me to sleep. I read a chapter from a book and then some emails.

There was a note in my public Danny Wylde account that read like hate mail. The sender wrote that I was “as dangerous as Alan Chambers.”

I didn’t know who Alan Chambers was, so I Googled the name. The Wikipedia entry read, Alan Chambers is the president of Exodus International. I clicked through to find that Exodus International was an organization that promoted the message of freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.

The email fucked me up a bit, like any anonymous attack from the Internet, because I was sensitive and hadn’t yet grown numb to trolling.

I replied, Why? and thought that I might change someone’s mind.

The morning came with a response I hadn’t considered:

Some of the statements you made about your sexuality appear, to me at least, that you are now an ex-gay. Personally, I think these people hurt the LGBT community greatly and think they are dangerous to teens and young adults struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation. A lot of my gay friends won’t buy gay porn that promotes straight men because it promotes the idea that straight men are hotter and more masculine then openly gay men. I agree with them.

•

I texted Trevor. He seemed into hanging out.

We drank coffee at a shop nearby and spent the afternoon in my bed, coming into each other’s mouths.

He told me that he was a business student at Loyola Marymount, a sophomore. I said that I was studying film at USC. And that I also fucked for a living.

“Not that I watch a ton of porn,” he said, “but is it weird that I don’t recognize you?”

“Maybe because I mostly do straight stuff,” I said.

“Wait, so are you…?”

•

My first sexual experience was probably rubbing my dick while watching Sesame Street. If that doesn’t count, it was a hand job I received after puking booze all over my friend’s bathroom.

I think I was fifteen. It was New Year’s Eve. I was with my girlfriend. She’d cleaned me up and put me to bed beside her on the floor. I shoved my hand down her underwear. She groped back under mine.

Our mutual masturbation lasted roughly five minutes. It became clear that neither of us were going to come. We both stopped. I don’t even remember talking about it after.

A couple years later, I met a boy in a community college anthropology course. He wore cargo shorts and flip-flops. I dressed in jeans and black band T-shirts. When I talked about music, he said he didn’t understand. When he talked about anything else, I actually couldn’t.

But we had our own sort of language, and it seemed to say, “I have a life to return to where you don’t fit in. Also, I’d really like to suck your cock.”

It was a fun thing to do some nights in his car.

•

The first porn company to hire me had a routine. A week before most shoots, I’d receive a call. “You need to go here.” They’d give me an address. “It’s a blood-drawing station. We need to test you for sexually transmitted infections.”

I’d arrive at a clinic. Everything would be paid for. All I had to do was surrender my blood and urine.

They’d deliver my test results via email. “Negative” meant that I could fuck on film for the next thirty days.

It didn’t seem relevant at the time, but the company only filmed men with women or that “straight” porn version of lesbian sex.

•

“There must be others out there willing to pay for my cock,” I thought in the early months of my career.

I was nineteen and thin. My ass was tight. Gay men seemed into me, especially the ones who worked for porn companies. A handful paid for my holes to be filled.

“You don’t have HIV, right?” asked the director on my first gay porn set.

I answered to the best of my knowledge. “Right.”

One of the guys who fucked my ass that day told me he was a hustler. The other said little at all. As far as I knew, both were disease-free. But I knew nothing.

And I didn’t think about it much. Because we used condoms.

•

I was dating a girl when I moved to Los Angeles. We’d met on a porn set. She introduced me to the Southern California XXX crowd—the “straight” side, anyway.

A producer approached me on a shoot she’d set me up with. “How new is your test?” asked the producer.

“What do you mean?”

“When did you last test with [Adult Industry Medical]?”

“Oh,” I said. “It was less than a week ago.”

“Good.”

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“The girl you’re working with found out that you’re ‘bi.’ She’s scared you might have HIV.”

“Seriously?”

“You’ve done some gay shit, yeah?”

“Sure, but…”

“Listen, you’re lucky she’ll work with you at all. A lot of girls wouldn’t.”

•

“My agent’s been asking me to do solo stuff,” said the porn bro who’d performed in the scene before me. “I just don’t know.”

“I’ve done it before,” said another. “It’s not so bad, besides the sweaty fag standing over you with a camera. They tried so hard to get me to fuck a guy. Offered great money, too. Just to let one blow me. I laughed in their fucking faces.”

“But even in the solo shoots, don’t they want you to spread your asshole and, like, finger it, and stuff?”

“If they do, tell ‘em to fuck off. What’s some faggot gonna do to you?” He turned to me and stared awhile. “What’s with the purse, man?” he said, pointing to the messenger bag I had slung over my shoulder.

“It’s a satchel,” I told him.

•

Trevor—the boy I met at Rage—said that he felt insecure about dating bisexual guys. He said they always ended up with women.

I said that I was queer, as if a more ambiguous identity would put him at ease.

“Have you ever dated a guy before?” he asked.

“Yeah, but not seriously,” I said.

“And you fuck girls for a living.”

I shrugged.

“So, what are we doing?”

•

“I’m shooting my next movie,” said my friend Ezra. “I think it would be really hot if you and Max would make out while I give you guys a blow job.”

“Yeah, that sounds cool,” I said, with some hesitation.

Max was my friend. He was also a “crossover” performer—he’d gone from gay to straight porn. I knew there was a stigma attached to guys who were out about doing both.

Ezra, Max, and I did the movie. It was released to critical praise. In the aftermath, a journalist interviewed me for a magazine article on the state of queer performers. My scene with Max received more fan feedback than I’d witnessed on any other project. Mostly from women.

I felt important, because someone said my kiss was political.

A few girls on the Internet set up a private screening. They live-tweeted at me and Max; said how much we turned them on.

I mentioned it to Trevor. He said that I was like that drunk girl at a bar—the one who makes out with other girls to give her boyfriend an erection. “That’s fucking stupid,” I said, even though I knew that he was right.

•

Trevor and I continued to hook up. For several months, we might have even been dating.

I didn’t introduce him to anyone at work. But I tested the waters by performing, regularly, for a “bisexual cuckolding” website.

People trust me, I thought, and meant to tell my friends about Trevor. At least, if we became a real couple. Maybe I can help change the landscape of porn, I thought, to something more honest and fluid.

•

The industry shut down for several weeks after a performer named Derek Burts tested positive for HIV. He’d fucked some girls on camera and had also sucked some cock.

The adult industry turned social media into a gay-bashing zone. Fags became the scapegoat for our forced, unpaid vacation and for the viral fear that we might never work again.

I didn’t sweat it much. My test came back clean, and most of my friends seemed to have my back.

•

A big-name agent called me once I’d returned to work. He said that he’d been CC’d on an email: one that had been sent to every adult talent agency in Los Angeles.

The email listed several male performers thought to be at risk for disseminating HIV among the talent pool. I was among them. They’d included a picture from the back of an old DVD. It showed my cock in a man’s mouth.

“When was the last time you did anything gay?” asked the agent.

“What?”

“If it was more than six months ago, I’ll tell them you’re fine. That’s the cutoff. That’s what we’ve decided.”

I lied and begged him to defend me.

The next week, a director called to drop me from a shoot. He said that at least one agency had blacklisted me from working with their entire roster of girls.

•

Trevor lay on my mattress, wet with our sex. He asked if I’d be into letting him fuck me.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.

“You don’t trust me?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t sleep with anyone else. Not since I met you.”

“You can,” I said. “If you want to.”

“It just seems like a trust thing. And something you might do if you liked me. Or liked anyone. You know, to make him happy.”

“I do like you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But you’re just really into pussy.”

I texted Trevor, I changed my mind, once he was in his car, apartment, or somewhere else without me.

•

Six cocks were out. The only girl on set had run to the bathroom. She’d been tossed between us—gangbanged. We stroked in her absence and talked amongst ourselves.

“I’m not afraid,” said one of my fellow porn bros. “So enough with the ‘homophobia’ shit. I don’t care if you’re a fag. Just pick a side and stick with it.”

“I don’t get it,” said another. “Don’t they make more money? In gay porn, I mean. Why put us at risk?”

“It’s a thing,” said the first. “Fags who hate women.”

I laughed, and we met eyes; continued jerking off.

•

Trevor invited me back to the nightclub, Rage. I declined and said something about being put off by mainstream gay culture. We fought about it. He called me a tourist.

We fucked anyway. Or I fucked him. I meant to say, “I love you,” as he walked out the door.

He stopped texting me. I sent him a picture once or twice, and then followed suit.

In the month after, I thought about him often. But never enough to break my heart.

EDUCATION

MILF Raider

2007–2008

Jean was supportive. She wanted me to succeed. Given the opportunity, she’d drop my name to any producer, director, or cameraman responsible for casting adult talent.

Despite Jean’s enthusiasm, her efforts were mostly in vain. Reputation was the foundation of a male porn star’s career, and practically no one had heard of me.

It was a business where erections were gold and stage fright cost time and money. If a guy could keep his dick hard for hours, he could work nearly every day of the week. But if rumors spread that he was a “limp-dick faggot,” it might be wise for him to cash out quick.

Lucky for me, having no reputation was better than carrying a soiled name. Some companies would hire a new cocksman in order to save a few bucks. And guys like me were willing to work for less in order to gain some of that good reputation.

•

Jean overheard a director say that he was shooting a new line of MILF movies and that he needed a guy with a boy-next-door look to lay pipe. I was twenty-one years old, which was infantile as far as male performers went. Jean told the director that I was the one he was looking for.

He agreed to try me out. The caveat was that I had to work with Jean for my first scene. She was a bit upset to be cast in a MILF movie, because it implied that she was an older woman. But in porn years, anyone over twenty-five could be a mother. Jean was already two years into her XXX-maternity.

She did me the favor and temporarily blemished her youthful image. But she was well compensated, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.

•

The director explained the premise. He and I were a team of perverts who happened to be into hot, older women. We hit the streets and pretended that he was shooting a documentary experiment. Like, how would an ultra-awkward young man seduce older women?

We approached several strangers and asked them questions about sex and dating. Their faces were blurred or cut out of the frame. Then we “stumbled” across Jean, who pretended to feel sorry for me and agreed to come back to the studio to teach me a few things.

Once my cock was out, I told her that she’d been raided and proceeded to fuck her porno-style, or “like she was a dirty whore.” She acted like she’d been duped, but seemed to like it anyway.

He called it MILF Raiders.

•

The scene went well, which meant that I stayed hard and came. I was cast in a few more. During the third or fourth, I got the notion that the director didn’t really care what happened prior to the sex. I could basically do anything I wanted.

I changed my character’s act from awkward to unacceptable and started arriving to set in a knit wool cap and oversize glasses. A few years into the future, I might have been hipster-cute.

Before we shot the introductory sequences, I searched the studio for props to bring along. I typically didn’t know what I’d use them for, and I liked to keep it that way. At least, until we started filming.

Sometimes they were simple items, like footballs and plastic flowers, that made their way into the videos in obvious ways. But most of the time, their use was not immediately clear.

One day, I grabbed a book of mid-twentieth-century theatrical monologues and a toy gun that fired Styrofoam pellets. I brought them to the park where we filmed the intro for our scene. It was around noon, and real-life moms were out playing with their children. We couldn’t legally film the kids, because it was adult entertainment. But the moms were fair game as long as we blurred out their faces.

I hid in a tree and fired pellets upon unsuspecting parents, who quickly spotted me and escorted their children away. Then we signaled for my co-star to walk across frame. She acted like she was out for an afternoon stroll.

The girl looked vaguely like that actress, so I turned to the camera and whispered, “Hey. I think it’s Gwyneth Paltrow.” Then I fired a few pellets at her and jumped out of the tree.

I was still holding the book as I sprinted toward her, so I turned to a random page and read aloud. The words didn’t hit me until after they’d left my mouth. I’d been talking about Nazis from the perspective of a World War II-era Jew.

The Gwyneth Paltrow-looking girl freaked out, but didn’t actually run away because she’d been hired to appear in the movie. Still, she didn’t know what to say. None of it was scripted, and my off-the-cuff idea was probably stupid.

I stopped reading from the book and gushed at her like a crazed fan. “Gwyneth, Gwyneth…I can’t believe it’s you.” I went on to explain how I spotted her from across the park, and thought that it could be my one chance to break into show business. A spontaneous line-reading in front of Gwyneth Paltrow might allow her to realize how great of an actor I was. Of course, she’d have to cast me in her next film.

“What did you think?” I asked her.

The girl seemed to catch on, and she broke the bad news: she wasn’t Gwyneth Paltrow and she thought my audition sucked. Though, after much pleading from the director and me, she escorted us back to the studio and delivered a few acting tips.

Somehow the scenario led to sex, which didn’t make sense outside of porn. Also, we had to mention that she was a mom, so that we could actually put the scene in a MILF Raiders movie.

While I happened to find the whole thing amusing, it was weird to believe that a company would actually pay someone to act the way I did. Especially a nobody like me. I was basically turning their product into a poorly improvised skit.

•

The MILF Raiders director called one day to let me know that the company’s founder and CEO wanted to speak with me. But not on the phone. He wanted to set up a meeting.

My mind raced with unfortunate possibilities, but I figured, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Even if he hated me, I’d already cashed his checks.

When I entered the boss’ office, his computer screen lit up with one of my recent scenes. Some of the company staff were huddled around. Everybody was laughing. It seemed like a good kind of laughing.

“Have a seat,” said the boss. “Let’s get down to the reason you’re here. The first MILF Raiders movie sold well enough, and this stuff you’re doing… It’s great.” He rewound the clip and played it again, chuckling to himself. “We want to offer you a contract.”

It didn’t matter if I’d heard him correctly. “A contract?”

“You can still work for other companies, but not in MILF scenes, or for any other ‘older woman’ niches. You know, cougars, housewives, and stuff like that.”

“What do I get out of it?”

“We’ll up your rate and shoot you at least six times a month,” he said. “For a year.”

I told him that I was going back to school, and he agreed to work around my schedule. In my mind, there was nothing else to consider. Making at least four grand a month for only six days of work was not a bad deal. Especially as a full-time student.

“One other thing,” he said. “You don’t have a last name. If we’re going to market you as our contract guy, you need a last name.”

I’d been going by my middle name, Daniel. The CEO said that it sounded too formal. “How about Danny?” he suggested. “It just feels younger.”

You can call me Peggy-fucking-Sue, I thought to myself. Just tell me where to sign.

The staff members threw out possible last names, like Steamer, McCockee, and variations of the word “wood.” Most of the suggestions were jokes, but someone came up with, “Wylde. How about Danny Wylde?”

It sounded as silly to me as the rest. But the CEO thought it was a hit. Since he was writing the checks, I let him know that I agreed. So just like that, I became Danny Wylde, MILF Raider and contract star, or planet, or something astronomically minor.

•

Summer approached and the company hired a new director. His name was Eddie Lin. I found out that he wasn’t very new at all.

Eddie told me that he used to shoot for a website that ran into legal trouble because of its content. The themes were heavy degradation and abuse. Eddie said it gave him a bad reputation in the industry, but not to worry because he was actually a nice guy. “Plus,” he said, “the MILF Raiders stuff is too vanilla for me to give you a hard time.”

I shot my first scene for Eddie at a house in the San Fernando Valley. We drove around the neighborhood while he filmed me eating pupusas and talking about banging married women. Then we pulled up to our destination. The girl I was supposed to work with was out on the front lawn, watering some plants. I parked, snuck up behind her, and started to eat the flowers from her garden.

The girl spotted me, with petals falling from my mouth. She screamed and sprayed me down with a hose. Eddie stopped filming because he couldn’t possibly think of how we could turn the scenario into a porn scene. But I told him not to worry. She’d apologize and invite me inside to change my clothes. Once she saw me naked, there was no option but to have sex. “Just like real life,” I said.

But once my clothes came off, nothing really happened.

“Do you need a minute?” asked Eddie.

I sat on a purple couch, jerked my limp dick, and stared at my co-star. She looked average, slightly overweight, and lacking in most of the qualities one might fetishize on the female anatomy. There was nothing particularly wrong with her, but I just couldn’t work up the desire to fuck her.

“Yeah,” I said, and closed my eyes. My brain should have been racking up images of pussy, ass, and the penetration of both. But all I could think was, You have to get hard.

Eddie walked in and out of the room, had a conversation with my co-star about how he lost his virginity at age eleven, and occasionally eyed me with a look I knew too well. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know what was on his mind: You’re costing me money.

I gave up, and we rescheduled the shoot for the following day. “It happens to everyone,” said Eddie. While his statement may have been true, it didn’t change the impression I’d made with the man: I was a failure.

•

The next day, we were back in the same situation. I was limp on the couch. The girl sat across from me with sad eyes. Eddie paced.

He made a phone call, after which I was told to get dressed.

I sat in my truck, parked in front of the shoot location, and had a conversation with the old director. “These girls, man… They’re here to fuck you. There wouldn’t be a scene without the guy. You have to make it look like it’s about her, but you need to make it about you. Because if you don’t get off, we’re stuck with nothing, right?”

I told him that I’d been stressed out. School was the easiest excuse.

“I’ll give you a few weeks off to get your head together.”

•

Back at home, I sulked. Jean asked what was wrong and I had to explain how I failed twice in a row.

“Maybe you need to be more aggressive.” She described how guys made her suck their dicks when the camera wasn’t rolling. I imagined her blowing a bunch of random cock, which didn’t really help.

And then I remembered something that Jean used to joke about. “What’s that stuff called that guys inject to keep hard?”

“What?”

“You said you saw a guy shoot his dick up in a bathroom.”

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “I don’t think you should do that.”

“I’m just curious how it works,” I said.

Jean stared at me, which could have meant anything.

“I should at least go see that doctor in the valley. Talk to him about it. See if it’s safe, or whatever.”

She looked as if she’d say something more. All that came out was, “Okay.”

•

The Porn Doctor operated out of an urgent care clinic in Woodland Hills. There were no appointments. When I approached the front desk, the receptionist asked what for.

“Can I help you?”

“I, um…” Looking around, I found a waiting room filled with mothers, children, the elderly, and a twenty-something fake blonde in a Juicy Couture sweat suit. I acted my best “casual,” leaned in, and said, “I heard there’s a doctor here who prescribes, uh… Well, I’m in the adult industry and, can I just talk to someone about…”

The receptionist saw that I was struggling, so she filled in the blanks. “STDs or ED drugs?”

“The second one,” I said, with some relief.

“Just print here.” She pointed toward a sign-in sheet, then fetched a clipboard and a few papers. “Fill these out. We’ll call your name as soon as possible.”

“Thanks.”

I took my seat and didn’t look up until I was following a nurse toward a fluorescent-lit room.

•

The Porn Doctor couldn’t prescribe the drug that I was looking for. But he gave me a recommendation for a urologist in the same area. So I made another call, talked to another receptionist, and waited in another room filled with the old and contagious. Jean tagged along.

“You know that guy, Julian?” she asked me. “He wears a hat all the time?”

I nodded, because I was pretty sure.

“We were on set, and this girl was giving her male talent shit for having wood problems. Julian was like, ‘I don’t give a fuck. I’ll shoot my dick up right now and do three scenes in a row.’” She flashed a smile—the kind one might use to console a cancer patient. “So I know other people do it, too.”

My name was called and I was escorted to a room with a small examination table and several issues of Cosmopolitan. The doctor walked in, acting like a doctor, looking at his clipboard and not much else.

“So, what’s your problem?” he asked me.

It was weird to say out loud, but I wanted to get it over with. “I was referred to you by another doctor. He said you can give me an injection for erectile dysfunction. I’m, uh, a male performer…in porn.”

He looked back at his chart. “You’re twenty-one?”

“I don’t need it for real life.”

“Have you tried any of the oral medications?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They work fine most of the time. But I feel like I need a fail-safe. Sometimes I get nervous, or whatever, and it doesn’t matter how many pills I take.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” The urologist returned with a small vial of liquid and a box of syringes. “Drop trou.”

“Right this second?”

“Listen,” he said. “I need to know the dosage before I can give you a prescription. It’s very important that you never exceed this dosage. And never, ever inject more than once a day.”

“Okay.” I unbuttoned my pants and stood before him, my penis hanging in all its shriveled glory.

He put on a pair of gloves and started squeezing my shaft. I assumed it was standard procedure, so I didn’t interrupt. “I need to make sure you don’t have any lumps or bruises.” I didn’t. “Now, I’m going to do this the first time, but you need to pay attention. Are you right- or left-handed?”

“Right.”

“Perfect. You’ll administer the injection with your right hand, and into the right corpus cavernosum.” He squished the spongy side of my cock with his fingers. “Here.” He let go and picked up what looked like an insulin syringe. “The dosage varies by person. Since you’re young, I’m only going to give you point-two CCs to start with.” He plunged the syringe into the vial. “The erection should last about two hours. So keep track of the time and give me a call tomorrow. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Take a deep breath. Try to relax. You want to do this quickly, and try to avoid hitting any veins.”

I couldn’t look when he plunged the needle. The pain wasn’t bad, but the thought of metal in my cock stopped being fun after the first time I’d had it pierced. “Are there any side effects? Like, will it decrease my ability to get natural erections?”

“No,” said the doctor. “I do it occasionally. For fun. But like I said, never inject more than once a day. Worst-case scenario is you end up with priapism. We can give you some drugs, but if that doesn’t work, we have to drain your penis. That’s not fun for anyone.” His words hung heavy as I sat back down. “Now we wait until you achieve erection. Then you can go home.”

I was hesitant to ask, “Should I jerk off, or something?”

“It should go up by itself,” he said.

“Right.”

We sat without speaking. He checked his watch. I checked my penis. Within minutes, I was hard.

“Great,” he said, and we shook hands.

•

“What’s it feel like?” Jean asked me on the way home.

“Kind of cool,” I said. “I feel like I can fuck anything.”

She grabbed my cock while driving, and her smile meant something else.

•

Jean and I had sex as soon we were home. After, I felt like I might not be into having medication in my cock.

“I’m still hard,” I said from the bathroom.

“How long has it been?”

“I don’t know. What time is it?”

She said that it had been about an hour and a half since I injected. I figured that I had about thirty minutes left. We put on a movie and I tried to forget about the stretching of my pants.

•

The movie ended two hours later. My erection was still strong. I called the urologist’s office, but there was no answer. The voicemail said that they were closed for the day.

“I guess I’ll tell him the dosage was too much,” I said to Jean. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with my dick. So I probably don’t need that much.”

“But how long is it going to stay like that?”

I looked down and attempted to force the blood out with my mind. “I don’t know.”

Ice packs were followed by thoughts of my mother and blank stares at the wall. Two hours passed and I was still rock hard.

“Maybe if you come again, it will go away,” said Jean. She was willing to help me out, and I didn’t want to turn her down. But it hurt to fuck her.

“Stop, stop,” I said, even though she was just lying on her back. It was the only time in my life that I gave up on sex to search for erection cures on Google.

I started a thread on my favorite message board. Kids from across the world posted pictures of bloody cocks and horror stories they’d pulled from medical websites associated with priapism. The most severe warned of penile tissue death. I started shitting myself, metaphorically speaking.

It became clear that I should go to the hospital. But I didn’t. It might have been that putting on pants was painful and I didn’t want to be arrested for indecent exposure. But denial was the more plausible explanation. Letting myself believe that I might actually lose my penis was way harder to deal with than pretending that it was a minor inconvenience.

Maybe the reality was somewhere in between.

Eight hours post-injection, my erection disappeared. I’d never been so happy to be flaccid. I didn’t touch myself for thirty minutes, but then I had to be sure.

With my cock firm in hand, I prayed that I could still work up a boner.

My prayers were heard and answered, or else my body just remembered how to lust.

•

“He’ll be right with you.” The receptionist put me on hold.

I closed my eyes, bit my tongue, and prepared myself as a storm. The urologist wouldn’t know what hit him.

Something clicked on the other line. I could hear his voice. “Hello?”

“This is your patient, Christopher Zeischegg. Yesterday, I went straight home from your office and stayed erect for eight hours.” I waited for the doctor to panic, as if he’d done something unforgivable.

The urologist laughed. “Now you know to take about half of what I gave you.” He paused. “How much did I inject you with?”

“Wait.” My guard was down. “Did you hear what I just said? I could have lost my penis.”

He laughed again. “Did you read that on the Internet?”

“Uh.” I had to be honest. “Yeah.”

“That may be true with some cases of priapism, but not with the medication I gave you. There’s still blood flow to the penis.”

“So how much should I take?”

“Try half,” he said.

“Try?”

•

I was back at some porn house in the valley. Eddie Lin was directing. I’d brought along several needles, just in case. It felt like I was going to need them.

Eddie kept asking if I was “cool,” because his MILF Raiders scenes were way overdue and he needed to turn them in by the end of the week.

I smiled and told him that I was feeling much better, as if the last time I’d been sick. Eddie stared at me—a look between anger and confusion.

I hid in the bathroom and shot myself up. By the time I was back at the couch, my cock was ready for war. I undressed my co-star with mechanical ease and fucked her like a piston. Eddie seemed impressed. At least, until it was time for me to come.

“Do you need a minute?” he asked. It was deja vu but for all the wrong reasons.

I’d gone through all the motions but had forgotten to get turned on. It didn’t seem necessary.

But it became obvious that no pill or injection could make me ejaculate. It seemed that the orgasm was a psychological process.

Panic gripped me as I leaned back on the couch. Five minutes passed, then ten, and then I was lost in oblivion. Slivers of images raced through my head. None stopped long enough for me to actually focus on.

I heard Eddie breathe deep and felt the girl shift her weight on the couch. My cock turned raw from how fast I was jerking it. Eventually, my lungs slowed down and a fantasy clicked.

A girl from my German class. Her lips. Something about her ass when she leaned forward in her desk. The details were fixed in my memory so they could actually play themselves out. Before I could imagine what went on beneath my classmate’s clothes, I was close to popping.

“You ready?” I said to Eddie.

He rushed toward me with a camera. “Rolling.”

I stood over my co-star and dribbled semen onto her face.

•

The second needle-induced erection lasted about three hours, which was longer than I would have liked but short enough for me to deal with. I was afraid of failure so I kept shooting up and tried my best to actually enjoy the documented sex.

After a month of injecting my dick, I was booked for a scene that had nothing to do with MILF Raiders. It was a party scenario, in which I helped initiate local sorority girls by fucking them.

The crew provided the entire cast with alcohol, so everything took twice as long to accomplish. Girls disappeared, tempers flared up, and sex happened between people who weren’t supposed to be working. We didn’t finish until well after midnight.

My cock was still hard by the time I made it home. But I was too tired to wait it out. I figured that my penis would go down in my sleep.

I crawled into bed and dreamt of something bland and non-erotic. The nightmares only started when I woke up.

At first, I thought it was morning wood. But the fact that it wouldn’t go down meant something was wrong. That, and the throbbing pain. I soon realized that I’d been sporting an erection all night long.

A phone call to the urologist’s office let me know that—surprise—they weren’t open. So I headed to the hospital instead. The emergency room doctors laughed at me, from several yards away, before they relayed the seriousness of my condition. “Why did you wait so long to come in?”

“Because I was asleep.”

I gave up all of the information I had: my urologist’s name, the medication I’d injected, and the fact that I didn’t have any insurance. Blue-gowned staff asked me questions and then left to make phone calls and whatever else. Someone placed me in a wheelchair and escorted me outside. The same medicinal stranger drove me to my urologist’s office, which was open by the time we arrived. It was an emergency, so I was rushed to the front of the line.

“I told you not to inject more than once a day,” said the urologist.

“I swear to fucking God, I didn’t.” This was while I was on my back.

“Then you injected too much,” he said and prepared a variety of needles, tubes, and substances.

“No. I didn’t do anything different. Other than go to sleep.”

He shook his head and approached me with something long, thin, and painful-looking. “This is just an anesthetic,” he said. I winced as he shoved the needle in.

Moments later, my cock was numb. It felt cold. There was a brushing against my thigh, so I knew the urologist was doing something down there. My instinct told me not to look.

Several points of pressure engaged around my anesthetized penis. Then the brushing on my thigh stopped. I saw the urologist walk around me and stare at his watch. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “See if the swelling goes down.” His demeanor suggested that I was suffering from some ordinary wound, which actually calmed me down. That is, until he returned.

My cock still pointed toward the sky when the door opened to a team of medical staff. The situation elicited a small sigh from the urologist. “Looks like we need an old-fashioned, medieval blood-letting.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, more in protest than curiosity.

“Do your best to relax,” someone told me.

A female assistant asked the urologist a question that I didn’t understand. He answered, and she retrieved a syringe that looked to be built for an elephant.

I closed my eyes, gripped the bedsheet, and bit at my lip. The pressure on my cock was enormous despite the lack of pain. When I looked between my legs, the syringe was filled with blood. More of it leaked from the gaping hole in my shaft. The gauze around the base of my cock turned crimson.

A question formed in my mind: Why haven’t I passed out yet?

•

I requested the following weeks off from work because my genitals looked like they were beaten with a hammer.

“What happened?” asked the old director.

“I had a medical emergency, but I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” he said and paused so that I might reveal more. When I didn’t, he added, “Just let us know when you’re back up to speed.”

“Sure thing.”

•

Jean did more than insist that I never inject again. I could only agree. The problem was that I’d never successfully performed in front of Eddie Lin without cheating. I started to think that it was impossible.

By the time my next scene came around, I’d grown afraid of it. My nights were marred by lack of sleep, and I couldn’t stop recounting failure. It was the opposite of wishful thinking, the antithesis of everyone’s sound advice: “Relax. Everything will be fine.”

I received a phone call the morning that I was scheduled to shoot. The old director was on the other line. “Listen up,” he said. “There’s been a change of plans. We’re moving your shoot to Friday.”

I was relieved but had to ask, “What happened?”

“Eddie’s dead.”

“What?”

He repeated what I heard the first time. I almost felt guilty. Something like it had crossed my mind as a way to escape my imagined fate. But only in passing. Never did I believe that it would actually happen.

Of course, the death had nothing to do with me. From what I gathered, Eddie overdosed with his girlfriend in a small hotel room. The more elaborate rumors involved firearms and psychopathic behavior, but the speculation all returned to drugs.

It was strange to say, but Eddie’s death might have saved my career. With him out of the picture, I let go of the worries I’d stacked up in my head. Things returned to normal. I didn’t fail a scene for months. And when I did, I had the insight to understand that I wasn’t a machine.

In retrospect, there was still no room for mourning. On a cosmic scale, Eddie’s life meant just as much as anyone else’s. But not to me. I guess he was just getting in the way.

•

The month before my contract was up, I was asked if I wanted to renew it. Meetings were held, money was discussed, and everyone seemed happy with the way things were progressing. Except it was mid-2008 and the future wasn’t so bright.

Like many proud Americans, my boss put his earnings into stocks and real estate. And like many proud Americans, he cried when it all disappeared.

I’d invested in nothing but school, so I didn’t have much to lose. That wasn’t true for the rest of the employees. The old director lost both his car and his house. Everyone else lost their jobs.

No one from the company called me once the contract was up. And no one answered my calls. It was disappointing, sure, but I figured things could have been worse. If I had to start over, at least I knew what it was like to be on both ends of the spectrum. I’d been a contract performer and limp-dick failure. I’d starred in my own line of movies and bled through a hole in the side of my dick. No matter what happened, I couldn’t imagine that I’d be fazed. It was just porn. Sex, money, and any way to work.

Student Films

2008–2009

I was accepted to the University of Southern California’s cinematic arts program. The majority of my classmates were male. There were at least four blonds in my introductory film course. I was the fifth. I could spot one kid with darker skin than mine. Odds were that he had an excellent tan.

A professor claimed that talent had something to do with why I was there. Maybe it was true. But fear was the greatest motivator to make something good, or at least different. Otherwise, graduation just meant that I looked like the type of person who was supposed to make money.

•

My first assignment was to produce a short film. I wasn’t allowed to edit outside of the camera. Every shot had to be filmed in sequential order.

I was thinking something edgy, or gratuitous.

“What if…” I said to Jean. She was one of the only people I knew in Los Angeles who might help me out. “It’s only one shot. Like, you’re naked with an enema bag and a carton of milk. You fill your ass up with the milk, and then squirt it out into a dog bowl. I’ll crawl in with my leather slave hood on and drink it. As long as it’s clean.”

“First of all,” she said, “that’s disgusting. Second, aren’t you going to school so that you can leave porn? Do you really want to start it off by being ‘that guy’?”

I thought about it.

“Either way, the answer is no.”

The alternative was something I called Cat Competition. Jean agreed to help.

I filmed the short at a private gym in Pasadena. Our personal trainer lent me the space for thirty minutes. He said he was willing to be in front of the camera because he believed that I’d be famous one day. Or at least famous enough to shoot his infomercial. I nodded and told him, “Sure.”

Jean painted her face with whiskers and wore a pair of fake kitten ears. I placed a leash around her neck and tied it to one of the treadmills. She crawled on her hands and knees.

The trainer exercised, which was supposed to impress Jean, or something. They competed. He ate cereal and she drank milk. The cat version of Jean finished first. The trainer overemphasized how tired he was. Then the film came to an end.

•

One of my professors said, “I have no idea what this means, but I love it.” I wasn’t required to explain myself, so it felt like a good first impression.

A kid with a dyed-red Mohawk took the attention away from me. His film was introduced as, “From the Creative Mind of…” followed by his name. It was the first sign of pretentious film school antics, and it got him a lot of shit. Plus, his piece had to do with rape. He’d recorded himself breathing, or grunting, or both.

The professor asked the red-haired student why he’d decided to make a film from the perspective of a sexual predator. The answer was short, like a shrug, and not really an answer at all.

I was glad that no one asked me why I’d decided to make a film about my girlfriend at the gym. Because all I’d have to say was, “She’s my girlfriend. And the location was free.”

•

The personal trainer from Pasadena called to tell me that I’d broken his treadmill. He said I owed him fifty bucks. It was the last time I ever paid him. Because my tuition was $40,000 a year, and I could no longer afford a personal trainer.

•

“The idea is hard to explain, but it has something to do with romanticizing death,” I said to an actor on the phone. I wanted him to be in my next student film, and I was bombing the pitch.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” he said.

“I don’t have time to audition, but I feel like we’re intelligent people. I’m sure we can communicate our ideas well enough.”

I emailed a brief synopsis to all the actors. But there was still the process of figuring it out. Like when Jean drove us around to find the location. “That’s probably it,” I said and pointed toward an abandoned parking garage.

My first actor, Jerry, tried not to breathe as I covered his face with white paint. He closed his eyes as I masked the upper half in black. I told him that he represented death, and then chained him to a fence.

The other actors rode around in toy cars and spoke foreign languages into their cell phones. I had no idea what they were saying. But I told them to crash into each other.

•

Jean hung out with the actors while I filmed. At some point, she mentioned that we did porn. The reactions weren’t bad. In fact, the female thespian seemed to think it was kind of cool. “I’m going to tell everyone I worked with a porn star,” she said on the drive back to my apartment.

Later, I received an email from Jerry. He asked me to remove his name from the YouTube description because he’d just signed with an agent and didn’t want Death to be his most visible role. I’m afraid most people won’t understand, he wrote.

I doubted that he was ashamed to work with me, but the thought crossed my mind.

•

“Hey,” I said to Stephanie over the phone, “remember when you were working on Leom’s movie and I showed you one of my student films? You said you might want to be in one of them.”

Stephanie had stopped working as a porn production assistant. She’d found a sugar daddy to pay her rent and buy her a MINI Cooper, and had turned to stripping and modeling, and probably some other stuff, too.

“Yeah,” she said. “What’s it about?”

“Vampires,” I said. “Would you be down to get naked?”

“Okay. Sure.”

•

I called another girl I met on Leom’s set. She’d produced one of his movies. Her name was Priscilla and she was a Cal Arts graduate. She was also into making experimental films and art, so we’d gotten to know each other based on mutual interests.

“You want to play a vampire in my student film?” I asked. “Your character’s kind of a hippie, like you, but deaf, and into sucking blood. Oh, and you’d have to get naked and make out with my friend Stephanie.”

“Stephanie Santi?” asked Priscilla.

“Yeah. You know her?”

“Heard of her. And seen pictures. She’s pretty cute. So I guess the answer is yes. But…”

“But what?”

“I’ve never been naked on camera before,” said Priscilla.

“Oh. Well, how do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But I think I’m willing to do it for your stuff. Who else is going to be there?”

“Just my friend Kai. Everyone thinks he’s gay, and he’s got that vibe. So it should be low-key on the creeper scale.”

•

My vampire film featured a shower scene near the end.

I filmed Stephanie undressing. She cheated her ass to the camera, which ended up looking like a tease. I figured the medium was inherently voyeuristic, so I didn’t direct Stephanie to do another take. Plus, she was a stripper. It felt better that way.

Priscilla snuck into the bathroom, disrobed, and started to make out with a very confused Stephanie. I filmed the bite, and then stopped to cover Stephanie with blood. We broke the sequence into several shots—starting with a close-up of a prosthetic wound. By the end, blood (i.e. red dye and Karo syrup) covered everything.

Stephanie transformed into film-world dead, and Priscilla buried her in a yard with a bunch of flowers.

“I’m trying to figure out how to do this,” I said.

“I just want to get it over with,” said Stephanie.

“So let’s do it in one shot?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a trooper,” I said.

Priscilla carried Stephanie’s body—wrapped in a plastic bag—and dumped the girl in a hole. No one flinched. It was perfect.

I called it a day and thanked them both. Stephanie asked me for a towel to wipe off the fake blood and dirt. “Oh shit,” I said. “I didn’t bring one.”

She cleaned herself off with my shirt.

•

“I’m lukewarm,” said my professor. “Given your earlier work and the title of the film, I thought teeth were going to pop out of the ground in the first shot.”

“Okay.”

“But then it started to feel like a normal little short,” the professor went on. “When you introduced the homeless character, I thought, ‘Oh no, is he going to make this into some moral story?’ You didn’t do that, which is great. But the film finished and it was just like, ‘Oh, another vampire movie.’”

I nodded my head.

“What’s with the shot of the girl sticking her butt toward the camera?” asked the professor. “Was that really necessary?”

A classmate jumped in. “Yeah, I didn’t buy the homeless girl. She looked too clean. Her pussy was basically shaved.”

“She’s a stripper,” I said. “I wasn’t going to ask her to grow a bush for my student film.”

“Other than that, good job,” said my professor.

Some students threw in their compliments and critiques. Then it was on to the next film.

One of the blonds projected his short. It was basically two music videos strung together. The first was upbeat and accompanied by footage of a young couple holding hands, kissing, and looking happy, which meant laughing a lot in slow motion. It was intercut with a student actor lip-syncing the song in front of a sound stage door. The girl either died or broke up with the boy. It wasn’t entirely clear. The second song played out in a minor key with melancholy lyrics. The actor continued to lip-sync in front of the door. He was intercut with shots of the boy looking to the ground, crying, and grasping his hands at the air.

It was a laugh riot, and the whole class was clapping by the end of the film. Except the director. His face was red and leaking.

The professor tried to calm us down. “I have a feeling this was meant to be sincere.”

The student director nodded and the room turned quiet. I felt like absolute shit, and I wasn’t the only one. The vibe of the room was unbearable.

“I was trying to make a film about my last relationship,” said the student director. “It was supposed to be really personal.” He whispered, “I guess it still is.”

The professor said some things. It didn’t seem like any of them helped.

•

I stopped by Priscilla’s to show her the vampire film. “What did your class think?” she asked.

“My professor wasn’t into the genre, but the kids seemed to like it. Except no one thought that Stephanie played a convincing homeless girl.”

“Are you happy with it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You guys did an amazing job. At this stage of the game, I don’t know what else I could’ve asked for.”

We watched the movie together on her couch. She said, “I wish you would have let me paint the blood on my mouth. You gave me a blood beard.”

“It’s not that bad,” I said.

“But it looks like a beard.”

“The rest of you looks hot, though.”

“Thanks,” she said, and blushed.

•

Priscilla called me once I was back at my apartment. “You left your sweatshirt at my place.”

“Thank God,” I said and stopped thrashing around my closet. “I thought I lost it at school.”

Jean asked me what I was doing at Priscilla’s.

“I showed her the movie,” I said. “I was only there for, like, fifteen minutes.”

“Why did you take your sweatshirt off if you were only there for fifteen minutes?”

“What?”

“What am I supposed to think?” she said.

“It was just warm,” I said. “Seriously. And Priscilla is a friend of mine.”

“I don’t know her, and she was hitting me up on MySpace, trying to be all friendly.” She glared at me. “I don’t know this girl.”

“She’s my friend. And you’re my girlfriend. She probably wants to get to know you.”

Jean mentioned her porno release party the week prior. “You were flirting with Priscilla all night,” she said. “I saw you grab her ass.”

“But you were taking pictures with your fingers on some girl’s fully exposed cunt,” I said. “I thought it sort of gave me a free pass.”

“Pictures are promotional. They help my image. You were having fun.”

My face went flat and I stopped answering questions. “I have to go.”

•

I picked up my sweatshirt. Priscilla talked to me about her new video blog.

“I’ve been documenting my experience with this product called Female LibidoMax. It’s supposed to be like Viagra for women.”

“Does it work?”

“Not sure yet. I’m at this point with my boyfriend where we don’t have sex very often. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great partner. We work well together. But after a long day, he’ll come home excited about a book he picked up on urban gardening techniques. I just want to get fucked.”

I didn’t mention anything about Jean. But I wanted to.

•

My last film of the semester was definitely the most thought-out. I even held auditions for it.

Not many people showed up, because it was an unpaid student film, and it included a sex scene between two men. Those who did seemed invested in the part.

I cast the primary roles but still needed an actor to play the father—one comfortable with forking out emotional abuse. A couple of middle-agers stopped by my audition, but neither felt right. One said, “I can’t relate to this. I love my son, and I don’t know what he could do that would make me feel so disappointed.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” I said. But I didn’t give him the role.

I received a call from a man named Casper. “I couldn’t make the audition because of my work schedule, but I read your script synopsis. I think it’s really brave.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said over the phone.

“I can generally tell from someone’s writing if he’s got what it takes.”

“The fact that you’re so into this, just from reading the synopsis, means a lot. Is there any way we could meet? Or could I at least see your acting reel?”

“There’s a screening tonight for a USC thesis film I performed in last year. The role I play is, I think, very similar to what you want. If you’d like to come out, it could be a sort of audition for both of us.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

•

The thesis film was about a kid from West Virginia. His father was kind of intense and forced him to kill a sheep when he was about eight years old. The kid grew up, enlisted in the army, and was shipped off to Iraq. When he came home from duty, he killed himself in the same shed where he’d slaughtered the animal.

Casper played the father and did a great fucking job. The director even thanked him for “going above and beyond the call of duty.”

“I try to do whatever I can,” said Casper. “Even if that means more than just acting.”

“I’m impressed,” I told him. “From what I’ve seen tonight, you have the part. If you still want it.”

“Of course,” he said. “I have feeling about you. I think we’re going to be friends for a long time.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to respond to that.” He laughed. “I just have a feeling. Anyway, there’s an after-party. You’re more than welcome to come.”

“I should get some sleep,” I said. “I have an early morning ahead of me.”

•

Casper called me while I was in the car with Jean. The conversation lasted longer than it should have. He told me how much of a pleasure it was to meet, that he loved the script, and that he was having a gathering at his apartment with a bunch of like-minded people. He wanted me to stop by.

“Does he think you’re gay?” asked Jean when I hung up the phone.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you tell him you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Then he probably thinks you’re gay.”

“I’m a little bit gay,” I reminded her.

She rolled her eyes. “I think you’re just confused. Like, you only want to do gay porn when you’re stressed about money.”

“Because it pays more.”

“Or mad at me,” she said.

We stopped talking.

•

Jean accompanied me to a meeting with the two younger actors. She said, “I’m his girlfriend,” like it was crucial information.

“Nice to meet you,” they said.

We drank coffee, went over the shot list, and discussed everyone’s comfort levels with regard to the sex scene.

Jean said, after, “I really like Dennis. He was so cute in that little outfit. He almost looked like a marionette.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think he’s great, too.”

•

Jean had a porno event to attend, so I went to Casper’s get-together by myself. There were a bunch of young guys—film school kids, mostly—and Casper. He cooked us pasta and told a lot of bad jokes.

“How do you know Casper?” I asked one of the kids.

“I don’t really,” he said. “I go to CSUN and he auditioned for one of our exercises. We called him back for the piece, and he invited us to this thing.”

“That’s cool,” I said.

“I think he’s kind of weird,” said the kid. “But a good actor.”

Casper approached, clutching a bottle of wine. “A glass for you, my friend?” he asked, and pushed the bottle toward my face.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t drink.”

“Good for you.”

My phone rang, so I walked outside. Jean was on the other line.

“Where are you?” she asked me.

“At Casper’s place. He’s having that get-together thing.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t think it was important.”

It turned into a fight, but I wasn’t sure about what.

Casper found me as I hung up the phone.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just my girlfriend.”

“You should have invited her.”

“Right,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. “Look, sorry, but I have to go.”

“Oh… Well, next time.” Casper gave me a hug.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll see you in a week.”

•

My film was a post-apocalyptic gay melodrama, and I’d planned for a good portion of it to take place at an abandoned power plant in Lancaster. There was no discernible address, so I had to drive the actors out myself.

“I think we’re here,” I said, as we pulled up to a gate with a large No Trespassing sign. “Don’t pay attention to that. My friend lives in the area. He says kids shoot here all the time.”

“Okay,” said one of the actors.

“Stay put for a minute? I need to make sure it’s the right spot.”

I walked up a hill toward what I believed to be my shoot location. There was a noise, like an earthquake or a small explosion. Then a truck rushed by. The driver looked at me like I didn’t belong there. When I approached the top of the hill, I understood why.

A construction crew was tearing down the power plant. The set was all but destroyed.

I was shaking as I walked back to the car, but I pretended like I had everything under control. “This isn’t it,” I said to the actors.

“Do you know where we’re going?” asked Paul.

I picked up my phone to call my friend. “Hey Burgess, I just got out to the power plant to shoot my movie, and…they’re tearing it down.”

“That fucking sucks,” said my friend.

“Tell me you know of something else out here.”

“I don’t know, man. I can make some phone calls.”

“That would be amazing.” I hung up and forced myself to face the actors. “Did either of you see a spot where we could shoot this? Like, on the drive over?”

“Uh, there’s got to be something,” said Paul. “The script’s not specific about location.”

“Let’s turn around,” said Dennis. “I think I saw a rest stop. Or maybe it was a park.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know this makes me look like an asshole.”

“No,” said Dennis, and he sounded sincere.

Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into a state park lot. I modified the shots. Paul and Dennis wore gas masks and chased each other around. We finished in two hours.

“Thanks for putting up with all that,” I said. “Do you want me to take you guys out for dinner or something?”

“That’s okay,” said Paul.

“Yeah, I’m not hungry,” said Dennis.

•

Stephanie had been out of town, so I hadn’t had a chance to show her the vampire movie. But I received a text that said she was back in LA.

U want me 2 stop by 2nite and give u a DVD? I texted.

Yes, that’s fine.

It was the first time that I’d been to Stephanie’s apartment. Her place was a lot nicer than mine.

“How was your trip?” I asked.

“Great,” she said. “I hooked up with this cute boy who fucked me like this.” She put her ass up in the air. “He had his foot on my face and was fish-hooking me and everything. It was so fucking hot.”

“That’s awesome.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I did lots of other fun stuff, too.”

“So, do you want to watch the movie?” I asked.

“I’ll check it out later.”

“Okay, cool,” I said, and lay back on her bed.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

She smiled at me, and I couldn’t help myself.

“What’s that?” she asked and pawed at my erection. Before I could answer, she bit my lip. I kissed her until she dropped between my knees. My cock was out in seconds. A few more, and it was in her mouth.

“Fuck,” I said. “I can’t do this.”

She removed her lips and said, “Why not?”

“I have a girlfriend.”

“But you do porn,” she said.

“I know, but…” I searched for self-control and felt like I didn’t have any. “Porn is work. It’s different.”

Stephanie closed her bedroom door and stripped out of her clothes. “I’m dangerous,” she said, “but I can keep a secret.” She was back on the bed with her legs spread. The only thing between us was her underwear.

I placed my hand to her cunt. It literally dripped onto my fingers.

When I placed them to my mouth, the taste was sugar sweet. I thought of ice and winter and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”

“It’s okay.” She shrugged and pulled up her pants. Then she pushed me back on to the bed.

“What now?”

Stephanie grabbed a Polaroid camera and snapped a few photos of me. “For later,” she said. “So I can jerk off.”

“Okay.”

“Can we at least make out?” she asked.

I pretended to think about it. “Yeah, we can make out.”

I grabbed her. We stumbled out of her room and down through her apartment complex. I tried my best not to fuck her in the stairwell.

She straddled me on the hood of my car and whispered in my ear. The words weren’t for anyone else. I kept them that way.

•

There was a call from Casper as I pulled up to my apartment. “Hey, I’m having another one of those parties this Friday. I know we’re shooting the next day, but if you can make it…”

“Sorry,” I said. “But I have to prep for the shoot.”

“Of course. Just thought I’d put it out there.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” I said, like it was the end of the conversation.

But Casper kept going. He said that he saw himself in me, that I reminded him of who he was at my age. Somehow, he ended up talking about a hypothetical situation in which he might meet my mother. “I’m sure it will happen one day,” he said. “I just have a feeling about us.”

“Huh.”

“A lot of my friends say that I’m very straightforward. Pushy, even. Sorry, but not really. I just want to be your friend.”

“That’s great, Casper, but I have to go.”

•

Jean was in bed. “Where were you?” she asked.

“At Stephanie’s. I had to drop off a DVD.”

She glared at me, and then back at her laptop screen. I tried to kiss her and slid my hands toward her underwear. She didn’t seem to be in the mood.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She clicked at her mouse. “Accepting friend requests.”

I locked myself in the bathroom and thought about fucking Stephanie. My cock moved back and forth in my hand.

•

The final day of my shoot took place at a friend’s house. All the actors showed up on time. Most everything went as planned.

I checked my voicemail over lunch. There were five messages from Jean. The first was kind of cute. “Hey, I just wanted to say, ‘I love you,’ and I hope your shoot goes really well. Call me, okay?” The next was more frantic and had to do with some minor emergency. It was all downhill from there.

I excused myself so the cast and crew could eat in peace. “Did you figure it out?” I asked Jean over the phone.

“Yeah, but what the fuck? You can’t take five minutes to call me back?”

“I’m directing my film, Jean. I don’t have five minutes to spare.”

“What if I was in the hospital? You don’t fucking care about me. All you care about is school and your stupid little projects.”

“I’ll talk to you when I get home, but I’m hanging up. And I’m turning off my phone.”

“You’re a piece of shit.” Click.

Casper acted like a horrible father. Paul and Dennis acted like lovers. We wrapped the shoot in just under twelve hours.

I turned on my phone. There was a new voicemail from Jean: “Don’t even think of coming home tonight.”

•

There was no sleep at my apartment. I yelled at Jean. She cried and yelled back, cowered, too, as if she believed that I would hurt her.

“This is fucking over,” I said.

But it wasn’t.

•

The semester neared its end. My classmates no longer acted like they had so much to prove.

Someone said, “Oh God, no,” when the men started to kiss in my film.

The professor said, “It looks like we’ve got a young Todd Haynes in the class.” It was the worst comparison I’d ever heard.

The kid with the red Mohawk approached me once the class was over. “I really liked your film,” he said.

I said, “Thanks,” and we talked about horror films and goth music.

Someone else joined the conversation. Between the three of us, I was the only one who wasn’t married.

“But I live with my girlfriend, and I go through the same shit. Sometimes I feel like there’s no difference.”

“But you do porn,” said the kid with the Mohawk. The information had become all but public knowledge.

“Yeah,” said the other one. “If you fuck other people for a living, you have no idea what it’s like to be married.”

“None,” said the kid with the Mohawk. “For five years now, I’ve been with one woman. That’s probably the way it will be forever.”

•

Christmas break arrived. Jean and I agreed to work on our relationship.

•

“I was at the Glendale mall with my girlfriend. There was this skate shop with a rack full of Mayhem T-shirts. They’re, like, one of the most antiestablishment bands in the history of heavy metal. I thought, ‘If it’s possible to find this shit at the mall, it’s not so farfetched to think of a future where I could buy sweaters featuring decapitated goat heads at the local GAP, or purchase holiday music comps with Gorgoroth and Dying Fetus alongside Sheryl Crow at Starbucks…’”

It was my second semester. I had to pitch my screenplay in front of an intermediate film class.

“When you say, ‘black metal,’” said the professor, “do you mean heavy metal played by black musicians?”

“Oh, sorry. No,” I said. “I guess I should clarify. It’s just a subgenre. Like, fast tempos, high-pitched screaming, and maybe themes of Satanic or Nordic mythology.”

“Okay,” she said. “Carry on.”

“The name of my film is Death and Sports Bras.”

The professor shifted in her seat. “I still don’t understand. What are your characters’ motivations in this story? Who is the protagonist?”

“Well, I’ve been listening to a lot of black metal. And I have this thing for sports bras. Because they look kind of like an androgynous, uh, futuristic uniform. But I guess that doesn’t really answer your question.”

•

“How’s your new class?” asked Jean. “Or classes?”

“The production one’s okay. We were randomly assigned partners. I got this guy named Eli Goldberg. Seems cool. Just not really a part of the tribe.”

“From the sound of his name, I’d say he’s definitely a part of the tribe.”

“I meant my tribe, or our tribe.”

“Which is?”

“He’s just a different kind of person than I’m used to dealing with,” I said. “Anyway, we only have to make two films this semester. So I should have more free time.”

“I like the sound of that,” said Jean.

I pushed myself on top of her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she exhaled into my mouth.

•

Priscilla called me to say, “I’m shooting an art film with my friend Carlos. It’s based on this short book by Marguerite Duras. Each scene will be an expression of sexuality, and each will subvert heteronormative assumptions of gender roles. I’d love it if you could be in the movie with another boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have sex with a boy.”

“I can’t agree to something like that unless everyone is tested. And I’m kind of hesitant to do it for free.”

“It will be staged,” she said. “No penetration.”

“So, it’s not real sex?”

“No. I can’t ask my friends to do that.”

“Oh, okay. Well, that’s fine. Yeah, I’m definitely willing to do it then.”

“Thanks so much,” she said. “Do you have any cute friends who might be interested?”

“I still don’t know that many people in LA. At least not cute boys who would have fake sex with me on camera.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “I guess I’ll ask around.”

•

Eli Goldberg was tall and thin, and looked like he belonged behind a camera—if Hollywood DVD extras were any reflection of the industry. He asked me, “Do you mind going first?”

“Yeah, I was planning to anyway.”

“It’s just that my script still needs some work, and I just got back from New York, and I’m still waiting to hear from this actor who saw some of my photos at a gallery. I think he’d be perfect for this one part.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I like to get my work out of the way as quickly as possible.”

“You’ll still be working on my film,” he reminded me.

“I know, but it’s a bigger headache when it’s your movie. Like, when you’re responsible for everything.”

He nodded, which seemed to mean that he agreed.

“So, do you have any questions or concerns about Death and Sports Bras?”

“It seems…complicated.”

“Not really,” I said. “We have three weekends to shoot, so I’ve designed it accordingly. There are only three locations. If everything goes as planned, we’ll be on set for three days total.”

“What else do you need help with for preproduction?”

I handed him a piece of paper. “Just go over this shot list and let me know if there’s anything you want to change. Because you’re the one who’s going to be filming it.”

•

My friend, Leom—the porn director—let us do a test shoot at his house.

“This is great,” said Eli. “Totally works for that creepy, horror vibe.”

“Huh,” I said, because I’d never really thought of it that way. “I guess you’re right.”

Once inside, I introduced Eli to Leom.

“What are you working on?” asked Eli. He nodded toward the editing suite on Leom’s desk.

“Oh, it’s one of my new movies,” said Leom.

Eli asked a few technical questions. They seemed like hidden opportunities to expound on his own knowledge. Leom averted his eyes in a hundred different directions, so I decided to intervene.

“Let’s set up some lights,” I said.

Eli left the room. Leom asked me to stay a moment longer. “When you guys come back to shoot your movie, just make sure he doesn’t talk to me.”

“For sure,” I said. “Understood.”

•

I checked my voicemail on the way home. There was a message from Casper and another from Priscilla. I listened to Casper’s first.

“It’s Casper here. I’m having another one of my little parties this Friday. There are going to be some people there I think you’d love to meet. But if you can’t make Friday, maybe we could do coffee this weekend, or…”

I deleted the message, even though there were two minutes left. Then I listened to Priscilla’s digitized voice.

“I can’t find any boys to do the art film with you. But I have another idea. Give me a call when you get a moment.”

I hit some buttons on my phone. “Priscilla?”

“Hey. You get my message?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Like I said, I can’t find a boy. I was talking to Carlos, and we started thinking that maybe I should put myself in the movie.”

“With me?” I asked.

“Yeah. I mean, if that’s okay with you.”

“I think so,” I said. Then, “Yeah, that’s fine. But what’s the change to the, uh, heteronormative gender roles?”

“Maybe I’ll wear a strap-on,” she said. “You can still be aggressive, but I’ll be the one that fucks you.”

“Still no penetration, though, right?”

“All softcore,” she said.

“Okay. Sounds like fun.”

“I hope so.” She smiled. But I couldn’t actually see her, so it must have been my imagination.

“One more thing,” I said. “I’m shooting my next student film this weekend and I have a small role I think you’d be good for.”

“I’m not really an actor,” she said.

“But you did fine the last time.”

“Because I didn’t have to speak. Do I have any lines?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I’ll feed them to you. We can do as many takes as you want.”

“Okay.”

•

“You told me you were coming over at five,” said Leom after ten knocks to his front door.

“It’s a quarter ‘til.”

“Give me fifteen minutes.” Before he shut the door in my face, Leom asked, “Is that Eli kid here yet?”

“Soon.”

“Keep him away from me.”

I set up some lights and waited for the actors to arrive. We started later than planned, but things seemed to go smoothly. At least, until it started raining.

“Can I wait inside?” asked my lead actor, Dennis. “It’s cold and I’m covered in blood.”

“Sure,” I said and looked to Eli for help. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know. It’s your call, but it seems like it’s just sprinkling.”

“Will it ruin the lights?”

Eli shrugged.

“Okay. Let’s shoot this as fast as we can.”

The actors huddled together on a couch. Priscilla made out with a freshman theater student I conned into working on my film. Dennis shivered.

I grabbed Dennis and said, “Hey,” to Priscilla, as quietly as possible, because it felt like I was interrupting. “Can I get you for a minute?”

She smiled and wiped her mouth. “Yeah, sure.”

The freshman theater student looked more than enamored.

The rain came down hard. We pumped blood out of tubes hidden in Dennis’s neck prosthetics. The whole thing was supposed to look like a sort of demonic suicide.

“I think we got it,” I said.

“Yeah?” said Eli.

“Well, do we have any more film?”

“Good point. You’re like Ed Wood. One-shot wonder.”

I began to wrap lights and cables. Everything was wet.

Voices trailed out from the house. Eli’s was the loudest. I heard him offer congratulations to every member of the cast. “So what’s it feel like to be in your first film?” I assumed that he was talking to the freshman.

“What the fuck?” The voice belonged to Leom. He’d come outside. “It’s raining on all your equipment.”

“I know,” I said and closed the lid on a Mole Richardson lighting kit.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Leom threw his arm toward the house, and Eli.

“I don’t know.”

“Everyone out of my house now!” Leom’s voice turned from pissed to sarcastic. “Great job, Eli. You’re fucking up all your equipment.” He mocked him even harder. “Congratulations, congratulations. Your shit is getting destroyed.”

Eli didn’t seem to understand what he’d done wrong. And really, it was nothing. We were both students, learning and making mistakes; trying to figure it all out.

We rushed back and forth to our cars and carried as much as we could.

“What’s his problem?” asked Eli.

“I don’t know. He’s pissed about something. Who cares? We just need to leave.”

Leom stood outside, on his balcony. It was 4:00 a.m. and he was shouting, “Oh great, and you parked in front of the fire hydrant all night. What if you burned my place down, you stupid fuck?”

“I’m moving it,” said Eli, doing his best to keep cool.

Leom pulled me inside. “When I was in film school,” he said, “Werner Herzog came to speak to my class. There was a kid, asking all these questions. Werner just looked at him and said, ‘Your mind is destroyed.’ That’s like, you know…”

“I don’t have a choice on who I work with this semester,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what the problem was.

“I’m never letting kids film here again.”

“Okay. Well, goodnight.”

Eli and I raced back to his underground parking garage. We spent an hour drying off our equipment with towels.

I found out, later, that Leom had been inhaling amphetamines. “I guess that makes sense,” I said to myself.

•

“I’m doing this art project for Priscilla where she pretends to fuck me in the ass with a strap-on,” I said to Jean.

She looked like I’d said something weird. “I thought you hate that.”

“She’s not really going to fuck me. That’s why I said, ‘Pretend.’”

“Whatever.”

“I’ll see you in a few hours, okay?” I kissed her on the mouth.

•

I could tell that Priscilla was nervous because she said so. And because she sipped wine and listened to trip-hop—the kind that girls at my old school would play to get in the mood. Her friend Carlos set up a camera. I stripped down to my underwear at the edge of a bed.

There was something charming about the situation. Priscilla was the first girl I’d kissed in the past two years who wasn’t a sex worker. Her eyes weren’t glazed with dollar signs, and she didn’t rush to grope at my cock. It gave me time to look at her and to run my hands across her skin.

We moved on to the fake sex. Whatever I was feeling came to an end. Priscilla was obviously an amateur. Her attempts at humping me were forced and like a bad game. I went through the motions and jerked myself off to maintain an erection. Then I arched my back in ecstasy and pretended like I was having an orgasm or something. There was obviously no cum.

Carlos turned off the camera and said, “Good job.”

I gave Priscilla a hug and told her, “I have to get going.”

•

“How was it?” asked Jean.

I crawled into bed with her. “Good. It was pretty easy.”

“That’s good.”

“So, what did you do today?” I asked, before resting my eyes.

She stared at her laptop screen and shrugged. “Nothing.”

•

I received an email from Priscilla:

I have to admit I have a little crush on you. I’m a regular girl. It’s harder for me to separate my emotions from sex, even though we didn’t really have sex. I just wanted you to know that. Sorry.

Electronic flirtation was one of my vices. I didn’t think much before writing her back:

I think I have a little bit of that crush feeling, too. Maybe I can’t do much about it. But I’m open to a secret make-out sesh. :)

•

We filmed the second leg of my shoot at another porn director’s house: Rocktavio.

“Leom told me your camera guy is a little bit of a tool,” said Rocktavio.

“Listen,” I said. “He’s not, like, a good friend of mine. But he’s also not that bad. We didn’t do anything to fuck up Leom’s house. Worst-case scenario, we might have damaged our own equipment.”

“I’m just saying,” said Rocktavio. “I’ll stay out of your way. The place is yours.”

•

“It’s Casper again. I haven’t heard from you in a while. Just wanted to let you know I’m having another little party this weekend, and I think you’d have a great time. Also, call me back if you just want to get coffee, or lunch, or…” I didn’t finish listening to the voicemail because I was at school and didn’t care.

During a class break, I heard this kid talking about a creepy actor. “Yeah, I gave him my information because I thought he did a great job. He calls all the time and says how much he wants to be friends.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, “but what’s the name of this actor?”

“Oh, uh…” He paused for a minute. “Casper something.”

“Really?” I smirked. “Listen to this.” I shoved my phone up to the boy’s ear and played the voicemail.

“That’s totally him!”

“Good to know I’m not the only one,” I said.

•

I lay on my bed, tired of school and work and everything else. Jean rubbed against me. “Sorry,” I said, and rolled over.

It was one of those rare occasions when she wasn’t hidden behind a laptop. So I knew something was up. “Maybe you can rub my feet.”

“Really, Jean…” I buried my head under a pillow.

“Fine,” she said and stood at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed. I pretended not to notice.

•

We shot the last day of my film on a sound stage. I brought along two Alt Porn stars to play models. One of them was also a painter—more famous than I realized. “Can you put them in, like, high-fashion makeup?” I asked the makeup artist.

“No problem,” she said.

“You know what would be awesome?” Eli’s head was spinning. “We should bring down the light panel from the ceiling while we do our dolly shot.”

“Yeah, that sounds cool. How do we do that?”

“I’ll go figure it out,” he said and disappeared.

The male porn star approached. He had blue and purple lines painted near his eyes. “This is what you wanted?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re sure?” I could sense that he felt like a carnival queen. But from my perspective, he didn’t look bad. “I’ll do whatever you want, but I just want to make sure.”

My phone vibrated, and Eli started talking over everyone, so I didn’t have a chance to answer the porn star.

“Figured it out,” said Eli. He pressed a button on a wall panel. The ceiling descended.

I looked at my phone. There were a few voicemails from Jean. Instead of listening to them, I just called her.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I saw the trailer for that movie you did with Priscilla.” She sounded like she was falling apart.

“And…”

“What the fuck, Christopher? You two are all over each other, making out and everything.”

“I know,” I said. “I told you I was doing a project with her where she pretends to fuck me in the ass.”

“You didn’t say you’d be making out with her.”

I walked outside before I raised my voice. “So what? I have sex with multiple women a week. For work. I make out with most all of them.”

“That’s different!” she screamed.

“How the fuck is that different? It was in front of a camera, and we didn’t even have sex.”

“She’s not a porn girl. It’s different.”

“I can’t talk about this right now. But I don’t feel like I did anything wrong. It was for an art project, we didn’t have sex, and I sure as fuck didn’t lie to you about it.”

“You fucking asshole.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“If you do, I’m…”

•

The shoot ended sometime after dark. I made a few calls. The first was to Priscilla.

“I don’t know what to do.” She cried into my earpiece.

“You don’t have to do anything,” I said. “I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Jean called me and said all these terrible things. She threatened to kill me. Like, really kill me. I tried to explain where I was coming from, but she wouldn’t stop screaming.”

“Listen, I’ll handle it,” I said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“We were going to screen it on Valentine’s Day, but I guess you won’t be there, huh?”

“Please don’t take it personally. Jean can be crazy.”

There was another missed call. It was from my mother. I dialed her back. “Hello?”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Did she really call you?”

“Jean’s been crying on the phone for the past hour. She said you cheated on her, and she wants to break up with you. I tried to calm her down. She still loves you.”

I felt like I should have been laughing. “Mom, I appreciate your concern, but I didn’t do anything.” I tried to explain the situation from my point of view.

“Sometimes girls just need to be told that they’re loved,” said my mother.

“Yeah? Well, it’s kind of difficult when they’re screaming at you.”

•

I took the offensive with Jean. “I don’t care. You can’t threaten to kill my friends. Not under any circumstance.”

“I read your email,” said Jean. “This was all planned out.”

“That’s fucking great,” I said, as mean as possible. “Good to hear you’re hacking into my account.”

“She just wants to fuck you.”

“Jean…” I tried to talk over her, which meant that I was screaming. “Shut the fuck up.”

We blew out our voices by the end of the night.

•

Eli sat by my side. We showed our most recent dailies to the class.

“I don’t remember anything about nudity in your script,” said the professor.

“I have releases from everyone,” I said, my voice coarse. “And the models…they’re in porn. I don’t think either of them care.”

The student assistant for the class spoke up. “I think there’s a huge difference in the way you’ve chosen to portray the nude male body as opposed to the female. Do you care to talk about that?”

I was basically asleep and didn’t know how to answer.

Eli saved me. “I think that has a lot to do with me.”

“My cinematographer is heterosexual,” I said. “He likes tits. The girl has great tits.”

•

Jean sat next to me on the couch. “I let this guy fuck me in the bathroom at work. His cock was really big. And black. I was mad at you, and I wanted to feel like we were even. But I’m sorry.” She paused. “Are you sorry, too?”

I didn’t apologize, but we had sex anyway.

“I think that was part of the problem,” she said, after. “Everything would be nice if we just had sex more often. With each other.”

“Okay,” I said, and played with her hair.

“But I still don’t want you to see her. Or talk to her.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

•

The footage of Priscilla looked just fine, but the audio was horrible. My professor insisted that we re-record her voice.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Eli, as I held my head in my hands.

“What do you mean? She’s right. It’s a problem. Priscilla sounded like a scared little girl. Or like she’d never been on camera before.”

“What if we run her dialogue under the opening credits? And we only see her face when she stops talking?”

“We’d still have to re-record her.”

“So?”

“It’s a problem,” I said. “Fuck. It’s hard to explain.”

“We can get someone else to do the dialogue. I know a theater student who loves to do voiceover.”

“Really?” I said. Eli looked as if he were glowing. “You’re a fucking prince.”

•

Eli booked a session with a sound engineer. It ended up being a lot of fun. We recorded each other screaming, like demonic zombies and dying people, for the final doomsday shot of the film.

I composed the music and Eli worked on the visual effects. A couple of weeks later, we had a finished product.

“I have to admit that I didn’t understand it going in,” said my professor. “I’m still not sure that I do. Entirely. But it’s one of the more creative pieces I’ve seen come through this class.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot.”

•

We sat in the Norris Cinema Theater and watched Death and Sports Bras up on the big screen. The credits rolled, and I leaned toward Eli. “I can’t tell if that was good or not. It kind of blew past me.”

He stood me up so that we could make our speeches, or whatever.

“Without my partner, I probably would have never made a film like this,” said Eli. “But it was quite an experience.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t have asked for a better partner,” I said, which I felt was sort of true. “I mean, he suggested that we add more violence. That’s always a good sign.” I said some more things and ended with, “Hail Satan.”

One of my classmates approached me in the lobby. “I brought my friend along for the screenings. He’s a hardcore Christian. Says he’s going to pray for you.”

We laughed and I congratulated him on his film. “Great sound design,” I said. “Really.”

Jean found me. She held my hand and told me how proud she was. “Why didn’t you invite Leom or Rocktavio? They helped you out a lot.”

“You helped more,” I said, kissed her, but never answered.

Guy With Camera

2008

Photomayhem.com was a social networking site for models, photographers, makeup artists, and those who were looking to show off some well-framed skin. Anyone could set up a profile. I’d had one since I was nineteen.

Amid the thousands of aspiring stars, I was sure there were a few industry professionals. But Photomayhem.com was not a place to find work. With a bit of discernment, it could help build a portfolio. For the naïve, it was just another way to meet a guy with a camera.

•

I remembered being photographed for the first time. Not by friends or family, but by someone who’d practiced the craft. He was kind, patient, and flattering with his words. Later, I thought of him as a great deceiver: a gateway drug of sorts. Because in the beginning, I actually believed that I could be “a model.”

•

A photographer once requested that I drive an hour to meet him at his apartment. He asked me to bring a few polo shirts. I was poor but didn’t want to disappoint him. So I bought something striped and collared at an outlet store.

He said the shirt wasn’t what he had in mind, and then opened a closet full of short-sleeved polos. There appeared to be hundreds. He stuck me in a pink one.

I sat on the floor in his shirt and a pair of Calvin Klein underwear. He pushed some lights around my face and took a few photos. Then he asked me to take off the shirt.

He told me to look sexy. I didn’t know what that meant. “Open your mouth,” he said. I did as he told me, but my expression wasn’t enough.

The photographer looked frustrated. “Maybe you’ll loosen up if you jerk off.” I knew the shoot was no longer about the pictures, but I’d driven so far. And I had some desire to please.

“If I help you out, it will go faster,” he said. I didn’t respond. He reached for a small bottle of lubricant. A puddle of viscous jelly fell into his hand. He wrapped it around my cock.

The man jerked me off until I came, and then took some more pictures. After several minutes, he sent me on my way.

There was no payment involved. It was supposed to be a trade shoot. I received two pictures in my email. Each bore huge, semitransparent watermarks of the photographer’s contact information.

•

I quickly learned what it meant to be an amateur model. Just as quickly, I lost all interest. Porn felt like the better way to go. The more I was paid, the less I was promised fame. The only thing on the menu was my swollen dick and a paycheck.

•

I continued to use Photomayhem.com to find actors and models to work on my student films. Those who still “aspired” would do almost anything for free.

And it was flattering to see new comments after months of hibernation. Occasionally, people I knew would hit me up to say hi. Because the pictures were aging, it was my own historical relic. Really, it was just another way to be out there on the web, accessible to anyone who might be interested enough to search for my name.

•

Some photographer, Larry Corduroy, sent me several messages on Photomayhem.com. He was persistent, so I finally wrote back:

Hey Larry, thanks for contacting me. While I love your work and would have jumped at this opportunity several years ago, I just don’t have the drive to do it anymore. I “model” for the adult industry. It’s a steady job. I don’t need to update my portfolio or anything like that.

He replied within a day:

Thanks for getting back to me, Daniel. What would you charge me for a two-hour “adult” shoot?

His photos looked okay, and he was offering payment, so it seemed worth it to respond:

A solo shoot or hardcore with another model?

It kind of depends on what you’re planning to do with it. If it’s for distribution as pornographic content, I need to charge my standard rates, which are $400 for solo and $500 for boy/girl. I don’t normally do boy/boy scenes, but I might be interested in topping. It would cost a lot more, though.

I included my contact info. He sent me another email:

This would strictly be artistic/personal and it would be a solo shoot.

I tried to talk him out of it. Then I took to negotiating. My final offer was $200. He countered with this:

I appreciate the rate of $200, but for now, money is going out a lot faster than it’s coming in. If you could see it in your heart to do $100, I’d be able to afford that. I know you’re worth a lot more.

My first reaction was silence. The guy was a stranger and probably wasting my time. But he had a little talent, and at least some money. What was the harm in trying something different on a day off? I hadn’t been the focus of a photograph in over a year. It could be nice to be viewed as something other than the life support for an erect cock. Even if the cock was still part of the attraction.

I told the photographer that I was busy for the rest of the month, but that I could mark something off for the next.

•

The day of the shoot, I received an email from Larry:

Are we still on tonight for 5pm? I forgot what we decided about compensation. Are we doing it TFCD (trade for CD)?

It was a bad sign:

We agreed on $100. If it involves jerking off or any other kind of similar porno-
graphic content.

The reply:

Great! I will see you tonight at 5!

•

Larry lived in Orange County, nearly two hours from my apartment. Longer, with traffic. Especially during rush hour.

I apologized for my tardiness as Larry opened his front door. “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Can I offer you something to drink?”

“I’m fine,” I said and followed the man toward his kitchen.

We sat at his dining room table. He handed me a piece of paper. I recognized it as a model release, one far less complicated than I was used to filling out.

“Tell me a bit about your work,” said Larry.

“What do you want to know?” I wrote down my name, address, phone number, and finished with my signature.

“How long have you been doing porn?”

“About three years,” I said, as I admired the hulking beasts stomping around his living room.

Larry noticed my eye line. “Oh, they’re harmless.”

“Never seen a dog that big.”

“They’re English Mastiffs,” he said, and nodded toward the largest of the bunch. “Guess how much she weighs.”

“I don’t know.”

“A hundred and eighty pounds. Her father weighed nearly twice that. But they’re scaredy-cats. I take them out in public and they just cower.”

“Funny.”

“Anyway…” Larry seemed to have more important things on his mind. “You do gay or straight porn?”

“Mostly straight.”

“Mostly?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve performed in any gay scenes. I wouldn’t even know where to find them.”

“That’s a shame,” he said. “So, you’re straight?”

I knew I had to put his hopes to rest. “Yes.”

“That’s a shame,” he said again. “Do you escort?”

“Not on purpose.” The way it left my lips reminded me of something dangerous. Like, how children grew up to find their parents in the people they tried to fuck. Not as a conscious effort. I’d just heard there was something in the brain that made a guy attractive if he reminded you of the man who raised and beat you.

There was something like that going on in my head. Uncontrollable. I’d never met an aging queen who didn’t call me a tease.

But apart from my subconscious, I didn’t want Larry’s attention. He looked like a walrus, or a stubbled seal. And he was only paying a hundred dollars for me to be there. No way he could afford to keep me overnight.

“Escorting’s a different gig,” I said. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s really not my thing.”

“I think I understand,” he said. “Should we get started?”

•

Larry asked me to strip so that he could apply makeup to my abs, chest, obliques, and ass. “Did you know a bit of purple blush painted on the underside of your penis will make it look bigger?” I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but the guy was beginning to sound like bullshit.

“I’ve had a week’s worth of terrible models,” he said. “Thank God you showed up.”

“What was wrong with them?”

“Terrible bodies. Rigid poses.” He painted a diagonal line near my pelvis. “Most of them were straight. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Right.”

“The gay models are almost always in great shape. Six-pack abs and everything.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve never really had that kind of definition in my stomach.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about you,” said Larry. “Not everyone can have the perfect body. But look at this.” He put his hand to my chest. “And these, and this…” I guess he meant my arms, shoulders, and upper back. “No, you’re amazing.”

•

Larry asked me to try on some of the outfits he’d compiled for such situations. He said it was part of the process. “Girls get to play dress-up with dolls. I do it with a bunch of young men.”

“Most of these guys shoot for free, right?”

Larry nodded his head.

“So, what’s their motivation?”

“They all want to be models,” he said. “A lot of these boys have terrible portfolios until they come to me. I know plenty of my boys have gotten work off the pictures I’ve taken.”

I squinted my eyes.

“Okay,” he admitted. “Maybe nothing big, but I know there’s been paid work.”

“Everyone in LA is a model, though. It just doesn’t seem as if it’s a realistic job.”

“You’re a model,” said Larry.

“That’s different.”

“Well, I did shoot this guy from Alabama once. Cute kid. He said after a couple months he hopped right back on a plane. Too much competition. He found out everyone here is trying to be the same thing.” Larry made me believe that we understood each other. So I started to relax.

•

After a few fashion-oriented looks, Larry put me in a pair of jeans and a high school football letterman jacket. “I’m willing to bet this will fulfill quite a few fantasies,” he said with a wink.

I slid out of the jacket and unbuttoned the pants, just like with the other outfits.

“Don’t think I’ve ever had a model so willing to show me his dick,” said Larry.

“Well, that’s kind of what I’m here for.”

He smiled and asked me to pretend like I was throwing a football. “Oh, and can you balance it on your cock?” Even when erect, his request proved to be impossible. “Just hold it there,” he said, in compromise.

•

The final leg of the shoot took place on Larry’s bed. I started out in underwear and moved on to bare skin. My cock pointed to the sky and I writhed around in various states of faux-ecstasy. Larry seemed pleased.

“So, when do you want me to come?” I asked.

He glanced up from his camera and, in a voice I could barely hear, said, “I’m sorry. I can’t afford it.”

It took me a moment to register. So I held my pose for several photos more. Then my cock receded to its flaccid state, and I sat up. “What the fuck do you mean?”

“You said if it was a porn shoot…”

“I don’t want to be the asshole here, but I’ve been jerking off for you for the past two hours. Just because I don’t come, all of a sudden this isn’t a porn shoot?”

“I thought that was all part of it.”

“Listen,” I said, a breath below a roar. “I do this for a living. I’m already giving you a huge break.”

“I know,” he said. “And you’re worth so much more.”

I had to leave or else I’d end up hurting the guy. So I began to gather my belongings.

“Wait,” he said. “Will you do it for fifty?”

There was no way I could answer without turning it into a fight.

“Alright.” He held up his hands like a white flag. “I’ll give you a hundred.”

I stopped to consider. The better part of me begged to leave. But I wanted something more from the experience than a pissed-off drive home. “We agree on a hundred, you give me a hundred.”

“Yes.”

“Fine.”

“But don’t come right away,” he said.

My dick was small as could be. “Don’t worry,” I said.

•

I closed my eyes and lay back on his bed. Larry asked if I needed some help. Once, twice, and a few times more. Over and over, I said, “I’ll be fine.”

Eventually, I worked myself back to full salute. Larry’s demeanor changed completely.

Instead of the polite comments and standard bits of praise, I received the following: “Oh, that’s nice. Yeah, turn over like that and spread your ass. Oh my god, I love it when you rub the hole with your finger… Your asshole’s the most vulnerable part of you… I’ve got the most intense case of blue balls right now.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said. “Just tell me when to pop.”

“Hold on.”

“Okay.”

He directed several bright lights toward me. “Now you can go.”

His strobes flashed across my eyelids as I shot cum over my neck, chest, and abs. Larry put down his camera and scooped up the spunk with his fingers. He brought the stuff toward his nose and inhaled deeply.

“I love the smell of it,” he said. “Do you think…” he paused, “I could jerk off?”

“You can do whatever you want in the bathroom.”

“I just want to lie next to you. I’ll only touch your leg.”

I understood that most sex existed outside the frame of logic. It just blew my mind that every photographer I’d met seemed comfortable to stay there.

“Or are you not into that?” he asked, after an eternity of silence.

“I’m not into that,” I said flatly.

“You could drive a man crazy.”

•

I stood at his bathroom sink and wiped semen from my torso. Larry continued to take pictures.

“Do you want to shower?” he asked. “I could take some pictures of that.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’ll do it when I get home.”

“Whatever you want,” he said. “Anyway, I take about a week to Photoshop the pictures I like best. The models usually come back to meet with me. So that we can pick out our favorites together. Do you want to set up a time next week?”

“I don’t need the pictures,” I said. “Just the money.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s kind of you. I don’t know what I’ll be able to do with them, though. It’s not like I can put them on a Christmas card.” He laughed alone.

“Right.”

•

Larry fished a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. “It was a pleasure,” he said before handing me the money.

“Likewise.”

“If you could go to my Photomayhem.com profile and leave a nice comment, I’d appreciate it.” He smiled. “I’ll do the same for you.”

“Just email me a reminder. I don’t really go on that site much anymore. You were just so persistent.”

“I’ve been known to get the models I want,” said Larry.

“Well, I hope it works out for you.”

Before I could walk through the door, he stopped me. “Listen…I was wondering whether you’d do the same sort of shoot with another model. Preferably a boy.”

“What would you want me to do?” I asked.

“Anything you want. I was just wondering if you’d do it for the same price.”

“We’ll see,” I said, and laughed to myself.

In the end, I still hadn’t learned to say no.

Good Enough

2010

Some of my college friends spent their free days fetching coffee for rich people. In exchange for credit, not cash. Their parents thought it was a good idea for them to earn experience.

My parents hated my job. But we rarely fought about it. I was in school, and there was an understanding: students were supposed to do embarrassing things for money.

When I graduated, my mother set up a dinner party at a fancy Italian restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles. My grandparents were invited, as were my aunts and uncles. They were happy for me and offered their congratulations. As the celebration died down, each of them asked about my plans for the future.

I told the truth; said that I was writing a screenplay and in preproduction for a spec commercial that I hoped to direct—all post-film-school projects that sounded like success, or a path toward it.

A year later, I won a bronze Clio award for a Monster Energy Drink spec ad that the company’s representatives refused to look at. It earned a thousand views on YouTube and cost me more than $5,000.

I saved up another chunk of money and pressed on.

My friend and I built a winter forest in the back of her apartment complex out of cotton and burnt trees we’d stolen from the desert. We were going to make the most stylized, low-budget commercial we could manage.

On the first night of our production, a piece of fake snow fell into the lead actress’ eye. She had her boyfriend drive her to the emergency room. Her parents threatened to sue me if I didn’t foot the bill.

I spent the rest of our production budget on a doctor’s fee for flushing out the actress’ eye with saline solution.

•

Porn was easy most days, and it paid well enough—even as the country slid into recession and free tube sites became the staple for pop-culture masturbation.

Still, I turned down sex work to set up lights on student thesis projects and independent art films. I felt like I was legitimizing myself. Occasionally, a production would pay me seventy-five dollars for a grip job. A hundred at most.

Without porn, my story was typical. I’d gone to private school, earned a diploma, and walked away with a small mountain of debt. The best I could manage on a day job was minimum wage for fourteen hours of labor. I recycled a story, along with my peers. We would work hard and make it one day. For the time being, we were just paying our dues.

One month, I caught chlamydia twice in a row. Both times on porn sets. My adult gigs were cancelled for obvious reasons. So I put my energy toward other opportunities and hoped for the best.

No matter the effort, my bank account ran dry.

It felt like a miracle when someone broke into my car and stole the catalytic converter. Because I could stave off an eviction notice and spend the insurance money on rent.

•

Gradually, my priorities changed. I worked fewer production gigs and fucked more often for money. My life became less like a game of “how to keep my fridge from running empty.”

On a long enough timeline, I knew how things would turn out. Porn would lose its part-time status and become my career.

The future was frightening. Because I still thought of porn as something like a joke. It was only a matter of time before I’d become one, too.

Everyone I’d met in the adult industry—who I’d become friends with—had ended up there on accident. Or they’d tried it on a whim and stayed when the money turned better than anywhere else. I’d heard someone call it the golden handcuffs. Once you were in, it was nearly impossible to leave.

I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to leave to. But I hated myself, or the admission that I’d turned from student to pornographer. Until I started paying attention and learned how others hated me, too.

•

Porn felt stupid, I guess, because it wasn’t conventionally useful, socially respectable, or challenging in the way I considered good art to be. Basically, it didn’t meet my criteria for narcissistic self-fulfillment, or the idea I’d attributed to my ultimate dream job—making tons of money for a creative gig, in which I’d be considered a master of my craft.

On the other hand, porn rarely felt like I was doing something bad.

I was aware of (what I believed to be) antiquated anti-porn rhetoric. From the feminist left, or Christian right. But I always thought of it as history.

The anti-porn feminist, Andrea Dworkin, once wrote, “Any violation of a woman’s body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography,” in her book, Intercourse, published in 1987, roughly twenty years before my XXX premiere.

It seemed like a lot had happened in the time since. Maybe Dworkin had been wrong. Or maybe we’d learned how to make smut sans violation. At least it seemed as if a good number of contemporary porn stars enjoyed being fucked on camera. Even if they were women taking dick.

I certainly didn’t feel like I was playing the role of violator.

But then I began to hear things. Read them, too. I’d become insulated: bubble-wrapped by the porn professionals of my de facto community. So it was a minor shock to witness the resurgence of anti-porn sentiment in mainstream media. And with the accusation that men, like myself, were making it our business to degrade women.

Academics like Gail Dines hit the university circuit with lectures claiming that porn thrived on sex trafficking and coercion. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chris Hedges wrote about the “violence, cruelty, and degradation” of porn in his book, Empire of Illusion. Even the famed linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky went on record to say that “pornography is a humiliation and degradation of women.”

Sometimes I’d hear about the accusations from friends. Other times, I’d come across them in the news. The claims often upset me, but they did less to make me leave.

I was a real-time witness to the inner workings of pornography. And while I’d had bad days on set, and each of my friends could point to instances of capitalist exploitation, I didn’t feel as if we were being abused or forced to have sex. Neither were we dishing out violence and coercion.

We worked a job, simple as that. The perpetrator/victim dynamic seemed to have been grasped from thin air and put upon us by decades of exaggeration and mistruth. Or that was how I saw it.

Whatever was going on, the effect seemed relevant. Free Internet porn had begun its steady ascent. Porn stars were introduced, through tube sites and torrents, into every home in America. We were becoming a part of the public consciousness in a very real way. Yet the voices from our ranks seemed all but mute.

Everyone on the outside had something to say about porn. From where I stood, none of them had a fucking clue.

•

I wasn’t the first to stand up for porn. Free-speech crusaders had risked their livelihoods for the legalization of smut, and before I was even born. Sex workers had probably turned to activism the first time a cop threw a trick behind bars.

In the grand scheme of things, my contribution was probably laughable. But fuck it.

Porn had helped me pay for school. School had taught me, more than anything, to be a student. As a student, I knew how to write about the things that pissed me off.

Neoliberal pundits whining about my job to earn ratings and book deals and spouting bullshit advocacy claims for people they’d never met pissed me off. So, I decided to take a stance and balance out the conversation.

I interviewed my friends—performers, producers, and directors of the adult industry. My personal experience was valid, but limited, too. I needed a larger sample size if anyone was going to listen.

Over the course of several months, I sat down with my peers to discuss on-set dynamics, rough sex practices, feelings of degradation and empowerment, agency, consent, ethics, and more. The transcripts were posted to my blog and circulated via social media.

My exercise was simple, and perhaps limited in its effect. But it tapped me into a world to which I’d been previously ignorant. Response often came in the form of a suggestion; to look at this or that person or movement. Through introduction and research, I was made familiar with pro-porn feminism, scholarship, and sex work activism.

One of the directors I’d spoken to, Tristan Taormino, said that she was in the early stages of working on an academic text. She would be one of the editors, alongside several university professors who’d dedicated portions of their career to the study of pornography. It would be called The Feminist Porn Book.

Tristan suggested that I write an essay based on my interviews. She thought that it might be a great contribution to The Feminist Porn Book.

I took her up on the offer, challenge, or whatever it might have been. Her encouragement was a thing I’d been missing most everywhere else. The task gave me something to put my mind toward, other than how to fuck and make a living. And it reframed my attitude in perhaps a significant way.

•

I’d spent my years in porn dreaming of a future in which I’d leave. But it was a child’s dream, based on rumor and myth; an idea that success was out there, somewhere apart from me.

When I thought about the people I cared about, the majority were sex workers, or sex-work adjacent. If they thought of me, they might have felt the same.

So, I considered what it would be like to stay where I was valued and to not look down on the thing I’d worked at most.

If I’d been missing a sense of purpose, a solution had fallen into my lap. Sure, porn was a way to make a living, both arousing and mundane. But it was also an industry ripe for sociological discovery, unrest, conversation, and protest.

I fucked and then rushed home to write about the topics I found interesting, like consent, performer agency, consumer responsibility, and pornographic media literacy.

Two years after I’d conducted my interviews, my essay, “Our Pornography,” appeared in The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. I was humbled after reading the book. Friends and professional acquaintances had come together to voice their struggles, triumphs, politics, and hopes for the future of smut. We’d offered our bodies so that the world might come. It finally felt as if the cause was good enough.

•

In the time that followed, my colleagues were brought up on federal obscenity charges, the adult industry was nearly squeezed out of California under the guise of barrier protection laws, an Amnesty International sex-work-legalization proposal was killed in the media by out-of-touch Hollywood stars, and piracy continued to thrive.

We performers organized meetings on health regulations, attended Cal-OSHA hearings, set up advocacy groups, and produced educational films and literature for those looking to get into the industry. Many efforts failed, and I was discouraged just as often as not. But there was a reward in the uphill battle; a pleasure in the dirt.

•

A friend from college told me about a commercial he’d directed, and I felt a pang of jealousy. Then he showed me the product and said how little he cared about it.

“You’re lucky,” he said, because I’d fucked a girl he’d jerked off to, and I’d been paid for it.

I thought it was funny, because I barely remembered the experience.

“Do you ever do work that you feel is important?” I asked him.

He took a while to answer, then said, “Sometimes. And what about you?”

“Yes,” I said, and it was true. “Not always, but enough.”

“You’re lucky,” he said again. “Not everyone can claim that.”

LOVE II

Fans

2010

I once spoke to Kurt Ballou—guitarist for the Boston metal act, Converge—outside a concert hall on Wilshire Boulevard. He was leaned up against a wall, talking to a friend. I interrupted; gave him a speech on how the Jane Doe tour had changed my life when I was fifteen. The whole time, I referred to him as Ben (the band’s drummer). Halfway down the block, I realized my mistake and returned to apologize—like I’d hurt his feelings or something.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I knew you just meant, ‘Guy from Converge.’”

The man had written masterpieces; songs that stood as the anthems of my youth. I’d meant to convey my gratitude. But all I’d managed to do was embarrass myself.

•

I didn’t know how many people recognized Kurt Ballou when he walked down the street. I was pretty sure he didn’t live like a celebrity. At least not the kind I was used to seeing plastered on the news. But the guy meant a lot to a certain group of people. People like me.

I was fifty rungs beneath Kurt on the level of celebrity status. Probably lower. I hadn’t made anything that could be considered a masterpiece. But I’d learned that some people really liked the way my cock looked, and maybe some other things about me, too.

Some of my fans introduced themselves in the flesh—at conventions, nightclubs, and the occasional restaurant or coffee shop. The Internet upped the ante 1,000 percent.

Most who wanted to talk would hit me up through social media. Some preferred to interact through online cam sessions, where I’d talk about my day, jerk off, and shove toys up my ass.

I earned a few regulars—people who’d contact me several times a week for live shows on Skype. One young man wrote to me so often that we developed a sort-of relationship. His name was Damien (but not really).

•

I knew more about what was going on in Damien’s life than I did with some of my closest friends. I knew where he lived and worked, the trouble he had with his friends, the people he looked up to, his favorite hobbies, the television shows he liked to watch, and the music he was into—which included many of my recommendations.

I also knew that he was two years younger than me, had never been in a sexual relationship, and lived with his mom and dad. In Damien’s head, that was all about to change.

Damien told his parents about his online romance with a man in Los Angeles. He told them that he wanted to visit the man; to take a vacation. His parents’ response? They’d disown him if he went through with it.

I was that man in Los Angeles.

•

I first met Damien on a website called Streammate.com. He was a fan of my porn and happy to pay for sessions in which I masturbated and then allowed him to observe close-up shots of my flaccid penis. He told me how he’d love to play with my soft cock and lick the semen off my stomach. I told him how I thought it sounded hot, and that I wished he actually could.

All I knew of him, back then, was the black text that rolled across my laptop screen.

•

I gave Damien my screen name for an instant messaging client. He began paying me for sessions via PayPal and talking to me on Skype. It was a better option for both of us—cheaper for him, and I could keep all of the profits.

He said that I was different than most of the cam models. Because I wasn’t so full of myself. He thought of us as friends.

Damien eventually turned on his webcam so that I could see him while we talked. He said that it was more respectful. “If someone actually cared about you,” he said, “they wouldn’t hide behind their computer.”

Our sessions evolved into something less sexual. Damien claimed he only wanted me to do what came naturally. I still masturbated for him, but I put on less of a show. I’d sit at my computer and stroke my cock while watching porn and listening to him talk about his dreams. After I’d come, he’d say things like, “That was hot,” or, “I so wish I was there with you right now.”

He’d talk about how he wanted to visit Los Angeles because, “There’s no one here who understands me.”

I said, “That would be cool.”

Damien logged onto Skype one day and told me, “I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I think I’m in love with you.” I guess that marked our first fight.

•

It wasn’t that I disliked Damien, or that I didn’t find him interesting. He was just different than everyone else I spent time with.

Damien wrote fan fiction for children’s television shows from the 1990s. He claimed to remember every one of his dreams, each in vivid detail. His career goals amounted to working his way up the ladder at a local Walmart.

The kid was fascinating, but not in the I-want-to-be-your-boyfriend kind of way. I told him how much I wanted him to suck my cock, and I took an interest in his life. But that’s because he was paying me. In my head, it felt crystal clear: I was offering a service, and I wanted him to feel really fucking good about coming back for more.

I guess that I forgot what it was like to be on the other end.

•

Damien recanted his love. He said, “I was just joking. To see your response.” I knew that he was lying, but I didn’t care. If he was willing to downplay his emotional attachment, I was willing to strengthen it. As long as he paid me.

We had one serious conversation on the subject. I told him that I viewed myself as a whore, and though we were friends in some way, I also thought of him as a client. I reminded him that he didn’t pay any of his other friends to talk to him and that they didn’t jerk off for him on Skype.

He told me that he understood. So I stopped bringing it up. I wanted him to have fun while we were together. The goal was not to remind him how I didn’t feel the same way.

•

Damien told me that he wished I didn’t have to go on Streammate. He didn’t like how I performed those “weird things” for my “creepy fans.” I told him that I didn’t mind, and that it wasn’t creepy to me. My fans paid me to fulfill their fantasies. I was happy to make their (minor) dreams come true.

But Damien started logging on so often that I didn’t have time for Streammate. I couldn’t even keep up with the sessions he wanted for himself. “I think you’re such a nice person,” he said. “I don’t want you to have to do those other things.”

Then came the reality of the goals he had for us. Damien planned a trip to Los Angeles, purchased a plane ticket, and booked a hotel less than a mile from my apartment. At first, he planned to stay a week. Then he extended it by three. When his family disapproved, he told them to fuck themselves—all so that he might spend some nights with me and suck my cock.

•

I felt like I’d done something wrong, but I wasn’t exactly sure what. I didn’t know how most cam models conducted their sessions or how they dealt with their fans. But I’d always aimed to give my clients what they wanted.

There had been exceptions. A black man once asked me to call him a nigger and pretend that I was his slave master. I said that I was sorry, but I was uncomfortable shouting racial slurs from the center of my Los Angeles apartment complex.

Plenty of clients tried to befriend me. I’d been offered phone numbers, emails, physical addresses, and more. I rarely reached out. But I was never mean. I just didn’t want to give the impression that I was sitting in front of my webcam due to boredom and loneliness.

•

The last time I talked to Damien, he said, “Let me see if I have this straight… You don’t view your online friends the same as your real-life friends? You view them as ‘less than’ your real-life friends?”

“You are my only online friend,” I said. “I don’t hang out with people on Skype. It’s not something I do.”

“But if I pay to help you out, I don’t understand why we can’t still be friends. If we…not even have sex…but if I play with you and, like, suck your cock.”

“Because that means you’re a john,” I said. “If you pay me for sex, that means I’m a hustler and you’re a john. We’re not friends. Friends don’t pay each other for sex.”

“I understand that’s not normal, and that’s not what friends do. But if it was only one time, I don’t get why we couldn’t still be friends.”

“I know you don’t understand,” I said. “But you’re going to have to think about it like calculus. You may not get it, but that’s the way it is.”

•

Damien moved forward with his plans to visit me. My conversations with him became like talking to a brick wall. I felt like I’d implanted a fantasy that couldn’t be removed. He saw only one path to fulfillment: moving closer to me.

•

I decided to break it off completely. Then I packed up my belongings and moved.

A shadow of guilt followed me around. I’d accepted thousands of dollars from Damien over the course of several months. I wasn’t sure that he’d received anything in return—other than a wakeup call on how he might conduct his next relationship.

If I misrepresented myself—and I had—it was with the best of intentions. I wanted him to feel good, or to get off, or something. That’s what I thought porn was about, what sex work was about. It was the point of my career.

But I hadn’t learned to deal with the emotional response from a fan. It could obviously reach a point. Through a series of actions, I could cultivate tenderness and longing. And I could flip the switch to devastation, through honesty alone.

•

I still viewed Damien’s case as unusual. Fans had reached out to me on Twitter, Facebook, and even MySpace. They’d asked me questions, participated in conversation, and related to me through a number of shared interests. I welcomed the attention. Without the people who cared, I’d have been no more than a depersonalized dick.

But it seemed that sex workers were different than musicians, movie stars, and other idolized creatures of the entertainment industry. We had the ability to interact directly, one-on-one, in order to fulfill a specific need.

Kurt Ballou never wrote a song about me. He didn’t even know who I was until I approached him after a show. There was an inherent understanding that, once he’d left the stage, he no longer belonged to me. I could only take that experience home in the form of a memory, or a recorded song.

I wanted it to be the same for sexual performance. But maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe I’d crossed the line into something else.

•

To Damien, I’m sorry. I know you’re a person; that you feel, love, and hurt.

But I’m a person, too. And my life is not for sale.

Young

2010–2012

I met Mila in a house, foreclosed upon and left to skate-punk squatters. One of the kids had rented out his temporary home to a porn director.

The director paid Mila and me to fuck. Our sex felt better than normal, and it didn’t mimic a rehearsal.

After, we stood on the porch and talked while she smoked a cigarette, gifted to her by one of the skater boys. She asked for my phone number and said that we should go to a show or something.

A year later, I waited on the couch of a Woodland Hills mansion. The front door opened and Mila walked inside. She found her way toward me and kissed me on the mouth. Then she jumped into my lap and kissed me longer.

We were co-stars on the set of a XXX parody for the horror film, Scream. Our sex scene was scheduled to be the last of the day.

“I broke my phone the night after our last shoot,” said Mila, as if to apologize for never calling, or to suggest that we’d lost a part of our lives.

Someone interrupted and asked us to film a dialogue scene. So, I donned a mask and chased Mila around the kitchen while a cameraman followed.

We were given breaks between our lines and during other performers’ sex scenes. I ruined her makeup each time—my mouth and hands smeared across her face.

•

Mila was twenty years old and lived in the San Fernando Valley in an apartment she shared with another porn star. Her bedroom was full of Post-it notes, marked with goals she’d written down and aspired to. On one wall, she’d hung a giant map of the world and shoved colored thumbtacks through the countries she planned to visit.

She invited me over on the premise that her agent had been pressuring her to “do anal” and that I was someone who might help her practice. But it was clear that we had something like a crush on each other, and that we’d stay awhile past what we offered in bed.

Mila mentioned her love for EDM and said that she wanted to learn how to DJ. I’d recently started an electronic metal band and said that I’d purchased a mixer with some money I’d earned from camming. My mixer was the wrong kind for her, but neither of us knew it. We sat beside my equipment and played with the knobs, and then discussed our taste in music and played more with each other.

She invited me to a summer music festival held on a patch of lawn called the Los Angeles State Historic Park. I dropped acid for the first time since I was sixteen and danced into the night and into a warehouse until the sun came up. Mila danced beside me. She wore a faux-fur vest, purple wig, and neon makeup. I’d never been into the raver look, but on her, it played like magic. Probably because I felt a certain way; because I’d said, “I love you,” and meant it.

I invited her to my band’s first show in a downtown artist’s backyard. The crowd was small and seemed ambivalent toward our performance. But Mila filmed the entire set and said supportive things when we were finished, like: “You guys will make it one day. I’m sure.”

She told me of her plans for the future—to develop her brand in porn, and then expand into music and film, a career that would allow her to travel the world.

I’d lost some motivation throughout my years as a performer. My hunger for a life outside of porn had waned. Mila’s dreams were large and open, and they helped to bring back mine.

Together, I thought we might become something unstoppable.

•

Mila planned to spend a month in Europe and asked if I wanted to tag along. She offered to buy my plane ticket if I helped to film her directorial debut—a guerrilla porn film set in Ibiza.

I’d been outside the United States once, when I was five years old. So the opportunity felt precious, a twice-in-a-lifetime experience. It wasn’t a hard decision to make.

Mila left early so she could work for a handful of European porn companies and earn some extra money for the trip.

I traveled to Switzerland to meet up with our mutual friend, Chloe, a French performer who lived in Lausanne. Chloe had spent several months crashing on Mila’s couch while she worked the American porn circuit. We’d grown close in the time since—Mila and Chloe in particular. They’d planned their European vacation together. I was more “along for the ride.”

We rendezvoused in Budapest. Mila and Chloe continued to work. I roamed the city in search of art museums and food. On the girls’ days off, we visited bathhouses and historical landmarks. Sometimes, Mila and I would sneak away to film ourselves having sex for her future website.

•

Once the girls had fulfilled their professional obligations in Budapest, we packed up and flew to Ibiza, Europe’s island party destination. Chloe had secured us a villa several blocks from the water. It belonged to the family of a boy who’d once been in love with her.

We spent the first night at a club called Space and danced to live DJ performances by Richie Hawtin and Carl Cox. Chloe had some past relationship to Richie, which allowed us backstage access and near free reign of the VIP area. A man in a glistening astronaut uniform descended from the ceiling, blasting fire and sparks from every limb. The night felt like a dream, even sober. I tussled with a Saudi prince who’d spent 30,000 euros on a table with bottle service and whose view I blocked with my erratic dance moves.

The club let out just before sunrise—enough time for us to find our way to the beach. Light crested the horizon as I stood beside Mila, our ankles submerged in the ocean. I wrapped my arms around her and stared at a point where the sky and water appeared as one. It felt like we were doing something similar.

I slept the rest of the day while Mila and Chloe lay naked in the living room and consumed grapes and cocaine. They were joined by Chloe’s friend, Phil Hollyday—a performer who agreed to be in Mila’s porn film in exchange for a room in the villa.

We ate bread and cheese and lounged in recovery. Then, a day or two later, we started our production.

I filmed Mila and Chloe running their dialogue as they sipped wine on the veranda. And I filmed their sex in front of giant windows with white-lace curtains that overlooked the street. At night, I snuck a small camera into a club and captured the girls as they moved under gels and strobe lights. Chloe introduced us to her friend—a DJ who’d been billed to headline the night. She decided, with Mila, that it would be a great idea to suck his cock for the movie. The DJ didn’t need much persuasion. They took the camera from my hands and disappeared into the bathroom.

The DJ’s tour manager sat on the rooftop with me and said, in broken English, “That is crazy that you can let your girlfriend fuck with another man and be okay with it.”

“We both do porn, so it’s ‘whatever,’” I smiled and said more out loud to convince myself.

Mila returned and I could see near her mouth, and on her cheeks, where the makeup had been washed away by semen and saliva. She was laughing. The DJ seemed overwhelmed. I lied and said that I was tired and left the club to wander the streets on my own.

There was a pier I’d passed several times on my way to a local market. I found a slab of concrete near the end of it and lay there until morning. The water moved loudly beneath me. I thought about how it might be to drown.

It had been years since I’d been confronted by jealousy. At least, from within my own head. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted, or how things should be different, just that I needed to hurt someone and that I could only picture myself. The thought was childish, and so typical of men, so I chided myself for my anger and set out to walking. Then I felt sadness, and worse for feeling anything at all.

•

Mila was in bed when I returned to the villa. She said that she’d been worried and had tried waiting up for me. I told her that I’d been hungry and had gone out for a meal. She accepted my explanation, but with doubt on her face. We slept beside each other. A rift formed between our bodies on the bed.

The space we needed carried on throughout the day. It was tangible, even. Chloe whispered to Mila as she looked in my direction. Then Chloe asked if I would join her at the beach while Mila took a nap.

“What’s wrong?” said Chloe, as we lounged on towels and sand.

“Sometimes I can tell myself a thing over and over. Like, how to feel one way or not. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. My chest does the opposite. Or my brain. I don’t know.”

“You’re talking about what we did last night?”

I said something like, “Yes.”

“I’m dating a boy back home,” said Chloe. “He doesn’t like what I do for a living. But he tells me that he loves me. Sometimes I find it very sweet that he wants me to himself.”

“Yeah, but I can’t ask that of Mila. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

Chloe agreed, and I felt somehow better. We swam for a while and headed back to the villa.

The next day, we traveled via taxi to the northern part of the island. Everything I knew of Ibiza disappeared. The lavish clubs and crowded streets gave way to trees and rural houses. We stopped at a small cove, surrounded by beach and sparsely populated by hippies and tourists.

I felt stupid for brooding in the midst of a paradise. So I stopped, or pretended well enough. The sky over the Mediterranean looked infinite and blue. I thought of my heart as a speck, small beneath it: a thing already full.

Mila ran to the water and then back to me. She was there, by my side, when we left. And when we ended up somewhere else.

•

We filmed the rest of Mila’s movie on secluded beaches and in the rooms of our rented villa. I participated in one of her scripted orgies and remembered how sex could be fun and work at the same time. My erection lost its strength as I fucked Chloe in front of Mila. But Chloe smiled like it was a game and told me to jerk off on her face. I was relieved when it was over. The girls seemed to feel the same, as they’d begun to argue about how much time the production had subtracted from our leisure.

Our final evening in Ibiza was spent quietly, on couches and in beds. We wanted the night off before our flight to mainland Spain and before our daylong drive to Fraga, where the girls had planned for us to attend a twenty-four-hour music festival.

We danced in the desert in front of light shows and DJs, like we’d done in Ibiza and in clubs back home. By sunrise, I’d lost the ability to differentiate any beat or sound. Mila and Chloe ran out of drugs, and the festival ran out of alcohol, so we limped to our rental car and slept as long as we could.

Once rested, Chloe drove us north to Bordeaux—an old port city full of stone-laid streets and churches. It was easy for someone like me to mythologize it because I’d grown up in towns with less than a hundred years of culture.

We ate a lot of foie gras and slowed our pace as tourists. Without pornography and electronic music to distract me, I became engrossed in the violent, religious imagery within the Basilique Saint-Michel.

Mila took pictures of the city and tried to learn bits of French from Chloe’s friends, who’d been gracious enough to house us. I sat in their guest room and worked, alone, on some writing.

We returned to Lausanne just in time for Chloe to run out of money. We said goodbye to her. Then Mila and I hopped a train to the airport.

“I feel like we’re back on the same frequency,” she said, her cheek rested to my shoulder.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We fell out of sync for a minute. You know that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. But it was something I made up in my head. Nothing actually happened. Nothing I should be upset about.”

“It was me, too,” she said. “I started to think about the future, and if I really wanted to be with you. A week ago… Maybe I didn’t think we’d last.”

“What’s changed?”

“People can fall out of sync. For any reason. I think you need to work…to care…to bring ourselves back together.” She held my hand in the sweetest way possible. “I’m glad that last night happened. I think it really helped.”

I tried to recall the night prior; how we’d taken hallucinogens with each other and with Chloe’s friends. We’d ended up in a banker’s apartment. I remembered laughing more than usual, but I couldn’t be sure about what.

We stared together out the train window at the Swiss countryside in motion. I kissed Mila on the forehead and said, “I’m glad, too.”

•

Work picked up when we returned to Los Angeles, and more in the months that followed.

Mila put her extra money toward the fulfillment of a dream—her own adult production company. She posted an ad on Craigslist and met with several people who might help her. A man named Payton agreed to be her business partner. He said that he’d just left a job at Sony, where he’d worked marketing ringtones for artists like Kelly Clarkson and Kesha.

I agreed to edit video for Mila and shoot as much content as possible. She wanted to infuse her films with a contemporary aesthetic. So I agreed to write electronic music for her, too.

My first task, post-Europe, was to cut together the Ibiza movie. I saved the club bathroom blow job until last and prepared myself for minor devastation. Instead, I smiled at the DJ’s obvious performance anxiety and cut ten minutes of his flaccid penis from the beginning of the scene.

•

My dreams were smaller than Mila’s. At least, I never thought of my future as a business plan. The extra money I earned from performing went toward my band’s first EP, as well as a music video I produced with one of my film school friends.

Mila agreed to be in the video to play an amputee Lolita whose arms were sewed on for the purpose of inverse crucifixion. I thought it would be funny, in a metal kind of way.

We premiered the video to small acclaim, and my band was signed to an indie label out of Chicago. The label pressed our EP on CD, which felt like an accomplishment, even though the culture had moved on from the purchase of any kind of physical media. Still, it seemed as if I might strike a balance between work and creative output; that I might have a thing I could be proud of that wouldn’t be looked down upon or swept beneath the rug.

•

My relationship with Mila took a turn toward something serious. I visited her family in Washington for Thanksgiving. She flew with me to Northern California to visit my mother for Christmas.

We planned to move in together and browsed apartments on our days off from work. Mila found us a spacious two-bedroom in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. The apartment had an outdoor patio, with enough room for her to plant a garden, and a dining area that I could turn into an office for music and video production.

She painted white-and-grey stripes on our bedroom walls and designed our home with thrift store treasures and family antiques, donated by her mother.

Once our moving boxes had been thrown out or hidden in closets, we hosted a housewarming party and invited our friends. Someone said that we looked perfect together, and that we’d found a perfect place to call our own.

•

An advertising consultant named Cindy Gallop wrote me, via email, about a website she’d designed called MakeLoveNotPorn. She’d meant for it to showcase the differences between pornographic and real-world sex; not with the intention to shame one or the other, but to facilitate conversation in regard to technology’s impact on human behavior.

She provided an example of the text on her site. Porn world: Men love coming on women’s faces, and women love having men come on their faces. Real world: Some women like this, some women don’t. Some guys like to do this, some guys don’t. Entirely up to personal choice.

Cindy included a video of her infamous TED Talk, in which she described her sexual encounters with young men who mimicked the behavior of mainstream porn, often to their detriment.

She’d read one of my essays. My interest in the politics of sex work gave her cause to think I’d be a perfect candidate to participate in the launch of her new business.

MakeLoveNotPorn was expanding, said Cindy, to include curated content. In short, real-world couples would film their own sex tapes and introductory videos and upload them to the new MakeLoveNotPorn website. The company would charge the general public a small fee for a rental and pay out 50 percent of the profits to the content contributors. It would be porn without porn tropes. She would call it real-world sex.

I met with Cindy the next time I was in New York. And I introduced her to Mila during an adult industry convention in Las Vegas.

Cindy suggested that Mila and I make a video, showcasing the way we had sex in our personal lives in contrast to how we performed in porn films.

“We’re asked every day to do crazy positions and really stupid things,” said Mila, in our introductory video. “It looks great on camera. But it doesn’t always feel great. One of the reasons we did what we did is…I work quite a bit, and a lot of it is in my vag. So it gets sore. And I’m out of service. And it’s hard because we want to have sex and be intimate.” She nodded toward me, on the couch beside her.

“She’s saying this was all anal,” I said.

“I did ask for a lot of foreplay, though.”

“I’ve been thinking about how to do this for a very long time. And it got to the point where I was like, ‘I don’t know how to show real sex.’ Because every time you bring out a camera, that means it’s not real anymore. And if someone else is in the room, that’s not how we have sex. Like, it changes the dynamic completely. But I think we finally figured out a way. I hope you like it.”

I used double-sided tape from Home Depot to attach my cell phone to a piece of furniture. Then I secured a camcorder to a seamless stand overhead. The cameras rolled, uninterrupted, until we forgot that they were there.

•

Cindy loved our contribution and asked us to join her on The Jeff Probst Show to promote the MakeLoveNotPorn brand.

Probst sat across from me and Mila, fired questions, and allowed us to answer him in ultra-bite-sized speech. He said that he thought of us differently once he’d heard that we were porn stars. It was like we were specimens on display. Even so, I felt a kind of validation to be allowed on national television and to show off my relationship in some positive light.

Mila seemed inspired by the experience. Maybe because we’d been given a public voice. She told me, back at home, about her idea to add fun sex education segments to our production lineup. We started with a video about adult industry testing practices, and the risks involved in various forms of unprotected sex.

I cut the film together and dropped in a piece of music I’d written for one of her porn films. From concept to completion, we spent all of three days.

There was a momentum in the way we worked, fucked, and saw ourselves consumed by the world. I loved her stronger, in a way, because I’d let so many people hear me say it.

•

Mila cleaned out our refrigerator one day. She found a vial I’d been hiding behind some of our old condiments. When she confronted me, her voice was stuck between anger and concern.

“It’s probably what you think,” I said, after some long silence.

“You’re shooting up?” she asked.

“Almost never. It’s only a fail-safe. For worst-case scenarios.”

I’d told her, a year prior, about my frequent use of erectile dysfunction drugs. Pills, mostly. She’d asked me to stop for fear of the long-term consequences. I said that it was impossible; that almost every male performer used drugs to get through scenes. It was either Cialis, Viagra, Levitra, or a change in my career.

I’d never mentioned injections.

“And what about the risk?” she said. “You shove a needle into the side of your dick… That’s opening you up for HIV exposure.”

I was embarrassed, mostly. But I wanted to feel as if I had ground to stand on; a reason to fight back. “You get fucked in the ass for a living,” I said. “What’s the difference in risk?”

•

Mila’s porn site neared its premiere. To celebrate, she threw a party at Steve Aoki’s club in Hollywood. We projected portions of her videos on the walls while her friends played their DJ sets. Mila even mixed a few tracks of her own.

“I remember how she used to talk about her big ideas,” said one of Mila’s old roommates. “So many dreams. She used to write them all down. I know a lot of people who talk about starting a porn site. Almost no one follows through.”

I was proud of Mila, and also somewhat jealous. She’d started her own company. And though I was a part of it, her dream wasn’t mine.

Of course, I had my band and several ongoing video projects. But no substantial audience. I was a folk artist, playing for few others but myself.

It will give me time, I thought, and I looked at her, so happy. I would build up Mila and wait to figure out what moved me.

•

Mila’s business partner disappeared for several weeks while her web developer asked for more money.

I worked longer hours in preparation for our scheduled content updates, even as the website missed its launch.

Something seemed wrong, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. But Mila and I began to fight for reasons no one should.

“You’re just working harder to make it seem like I’m not doing anything,” said Mila. I rolled my eyes and stayed up late, writing a song we’d yet to shoot a scene for.

Mila would talk to me about manifestation; how I should picture what I wanted and write it all down. To better the chances that it would come true.

I took on an air of condescension once her web developer admitted that he’d been given only a small portion of the money she’d paid out. Her supposed business partner had taken off with the rest. In fact, he’d been stealing from her since the beginning; skimming from the top of T-shirt printing costs and marketing materials, and making up numbers for work that had never been done.

She’d spent thousands of dollars and had little to show for it. Her website wasn’t finished. Not even close.

•

Mila said that she would start over, but that she needed a break. I suggested that we scale down to what we could manage on our own.

We contacted several people we knew from the industry. They explained to us their production methods, the development of their websites, and how they maintained a low overhead. It all sounded great until we looked at their product—porn and design with the aesthetic of shit.

Mila moved toward her plans for recuperation. She dyed her hair blue so that she wouldn’t be able to work for mainstream porn companies. Then she shaved her head.

She told me how she mourned the fact that she’d never gone to college, and that she felt lost for never having developed any interests or skills.

I said it was a great idea when she mentioned a dance academy in Hollywood. She asked me to come with her while she signed up for classes. The way she smiled looked, in some way, new.

•

I continued to work while Mila spent five days a week at dance school. She turned to cam modeling to pay her basic expenses and to allow for a flexible schedule. But the money was nowhere near what she was used to making.

Toward the middle of the semester, she mentioned a plan to visit her family. At first, she said that she would stay a month. Then two. At last, her stay would be indefinite. She would move in with her mother for a time. Until she could figure out what she wanted, or until she could get back on her feet.

I secured a roommate to help me cover the rent while she was gone. Mila mentioned, offhand, a number of items she would leave in our apartment. I told her how rude I thought it was to leave a mess, and how I wanted all of her things out.

A tear poured down her face and she said, “But you’re my boyfriend. I’ll be coming back.”

I stared at her and said nothing.

•

Mila’s mother drove a U-Haul down from Washington and stayed the night in our apartment. I went to work while she helped Mila pack up her belongings. By the time I was home, there was nothing left to move out.

I pulled Mila into our room and locked the door. We spent ten minutes kissing and talking of the future—of how we’d find our way back to each other. I pushed a letter into her hands; something I’d written while she was asleep. At the time, it was a promise, and one that I’d soon break.

She climbed into the passenger’s seat of the U-Haul. I stood in the parking lot and watched her drive away.

I meant to wave but had both hands clutched to my face. To keep the neighbors from seeing me red, wet, and shaking.

•

Mila visited Los Angeles several months later and stayed with her former agent in the valley. He agreed to book her a few porn scenes so that she could make some money during her trip.

I drove out to meet her and brought along paperwork for her to sign—model releases and producer signatures for the content we’d created together. We meant to sell the videos on a clips site and split the profits.

She recommended a juice bar where we could have lunch, and a garden where we could talk after.

We sat on a marble bench, near a bed of flowers, and hugged each other. She said that it would be weird to kiss me. I agreed, but held her hand until she was back at her agent’s apartment.

She returned to Washington. Pictures surfaced on Facebook of her face pressed to another boy.

I continued to fuck for money and wrote her less and less.

WORK

The End

2010

When are we going to take pictures for your mom?” asked Ezra, referring to an unsolicited email she’d received from the woman who birthed me.

“Oh yeah. Weird, huh?” I laughed.

“I was afraid when I started to read it,” she said. “I thought it was gonna be this ‘What did you get my son into?’ type of thing. But it was actually very sweet.”

“Yeah,” I said. “My mom’s kind of come full circle. I don’t think she’ll ever be excited that I’m doing porn, but she’ll call me up and ask, ‘Have you heard of this Jenna Jameson person?’ At least she takes an interest in my life. I think that’s cool.”

“So, how does she know about me?”

“I guess she’s a good listener. I was telling her about some people in the industry who I think are doing interesting work. You were one of them. I must have mentioned that you’re into photography.”

“Well, let me know when you want to do it,” she said.

“I have a few days off next week.”

•

I was kind of a bad son, because weeks went by and Ezra had to remind me, and we still didn’t set up a time to shoot pictures. Then I found myself at the DMV, waiting to renew my license and checking the various social media accounts on my phone.

Ezra’s Twitter read: So bored, I’m checking for campers on Craigslist.

Another update mentioned the Los Angeles heat wave.

Saw your Twitter. Want to take some pictures? I texted her.

Sure! she replied. But only if you get me and the dog outta the house! I’m careless and have no AC.

Text me your address, I typed into my phone.

She did. I practiced modeling. The guy at the DMV snapped my photo.

•

My fist slammed, rat-a-tat-tat, on the door to Ezra’s loft. She answered with her pet Chihuahua in tow. “Hey,” she said and wrapped her arms around me. “Sorry, I’m all sweaty.”

“It’s hot out,” I reminded her. “It’s hot everywhere.”

“We’re moving.” She meant herself and the dog, and her boyfriend Jesse, too.

“Really? You just got here.”

“I know,” she said. “But it’s hot, and miserable, and noisy. And Jesse hates it. Plus, it’s not safe for Sueño.” She meant the dog. “I have to carry around dog mace. At night, it’s not even safe for me.”

“Where are you moving?”

“Maybe the valley. Maybe somewhere near the ocean.”

“If you still plan on people shooting in your place, maybe the valley’s the better choice. It’s closer to all the porno.”

“We’re going to be living in an apartment,” she said. “So that’s not happening.”

“Did anyone end up shooting here?”

“Yeah, Todd from Negative Tolerance shot here the other day. My friend did a free photo thing. But, you know, we don’t have much furniture or stuff to fuck on. I’m not willing to invest just to turn this into a porno house.”

“Okay. But, uh…” I was thinking about thirty seconds back. “The ocean? I thought you said you’d never move to the west side.”

“That was before I started spending so much time there. Wait and see.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought we could drive out to Santa Monica,” said Ezra.

“Yeah, that sounds like fun,” I said. “Maybe we should stop at my place, so I can grab a swimsuit.”

“Sure, but I didn’t plan on going in the water.”

“I’m still not really dressed for ‘mom photos,’ though.” I displayed myself like Vanna White. Instead of a dress, I sported some metal band T-shirt, soccer shorts, and a pair of flip-flops.

Ezra smirked.

“But fuck it,” I said. “I already have shorts, and I can just take off my shirt at the beach.”

“Great. So the only photos your mom’s going to have of you will be topless.”

I shrugged. “I don’t think she’ll care.”

She laughed and said, “Okay.”

•

“A quick update?”

We ate chicken at an open-air restaurant, about a block from the beach.

“Um. What’s been going on?” she said, in between bites. “My newest movie for Violet is done.”

“How’d it turn out?”

“Great. Look at the box cover.” Ezra flashed me a picture on her phone. “It’s supposed to look like the original poster for Taxi Driver.”

“Cool,” I said. “I love it.”

“It got Editor’s Choice in AVN. They said there’s been nothing like it since Violet-Alt.” She meant the sort-of-punk-rock division that Violet had financed until its founder quit. It meant that her movie was probably stylized in a way that didn’t parody some horrible TV show.

“Is Violet hooking you up with a directing gig?” I asked.

“If the owner, Steve Dirsch, will take a meeting with me. If he cares about his company’s image, he will. But I’m still waiting. I’m not sure what hoops I still need to jump through.”

“I can’t really talk about the stuff you did before, but every movie you’ve directed, since I’ve been around, has been really well received. I guess I’m saying I hope it works out for you. Because you deserve it.”

“Thanks,” she said. “It would be a nice bit of cash, too. Throw myself in a scene every once in a while and have Jesse take the pictures. It would help us out a lot.”

“Right.”

“Because, if you haven’t noticed, I’m really over-performing.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’m not even sure how I’ve lasted this long. I’m kind of past my prime, you know?”

“You’re what? Twenty-five?”

“Turning twenty-six this weekend,” she said.

“Oh, cool. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks. But yeah, things aren’t exactly getting better.”

“I know what you mean, but it’s not just because you’re twenty-six. Everyone’s hurting right now. This is the first month I’ve felt it.”

“It scares me that people who used to work all the time aren’t even working. Like Lilly Starr. She’s awesome. She’s Lilly Starr. Why isn’t she working?”

“Maybe that’s part of the problem with Steve Dirsch,” I said. “Everyone in production is quitting or getting fired, or the companies they work for just go under. There are a lot of directors looking for work. Plus, I’m sure he’s got some loyalty thing going with the old guys.”

“Hey,” she said. “I’ve been around almost eight years.”

“You’re still not one of the ‘old guys.’”

•

Ezra framed me up so that the Santa Monica Pier rested over my right shoulder. “Move that way,” she said. “The sun’s in my face.”

I smiled and clutched the concrete wall beneath me. “Got it.”

“This will be perfect,” she said. But there was no click. Ezra stopped looking at me. Her camera pointed down and she kept trying to wind it. “Uh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s not clicking. Fuck.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Yeah, but I saw the picture. It was the one. We could have called it a day.” She put the camera back in her bag and pulled out another. “I guess we’re going digital.”

My pose was pretty much the same, which meant that I sat still and smiled.

“Just testing the light,” she said. Then, “Ugh… Let’s go some-
where else.”

We followed her dog down the concrete walkway. I dodged pedestrians and rollerbladers. Ezra kept her eyes on the camera.

“You’re going to kill me,” she said.

“Why?”

She sounded like she might cry, but it was the kind of thing an actor would have attempted in grade school. “The battery’s dying.”

I laughed. “Okay. I guess it wasn’t meant to happen.” I referenced my clothes once more. “But we’re already here, so let’s just enjoy it.”

•

Ezra took us to a large patch of grass so that her dog could run around and I could chase him.

“Squat and put your arms down like a football player,” she said. “He’ll try to tackle you.”

I growled at her eight-pound beast and did my best to dodge him. We ran laps around the fifty-foot stretch of greenery.

“Aw, male bonding,” said Ezra.

It was my second workout for the day, so I decided to cut it short.

“Anyway, what’s new with you?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. I feel really boring lately.” I tried to rack my brain for a good story, but it didn’t come. “Like, today, for example. I woke up and realized I didn’t actually have to do anything. So I forced myself to drive to the DMV.”

“Looks like we’re headed down the same path.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been working on preproduction for my next spec commercial. Which is fun, I guess. Even when it’s stressful, it’s good for me to be doing something other than porn. Or something other than ‘not-porn.’”

“Something other than ‘not-porn’ is porn.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that…”

She cut me off. “Work’s slow.”

“Right.”

“Jesse’s been working more days at the photo place so we can have some money to spend for my birthday thing in Vegas. But I think it’s making him grumpy. He’s holed up in a dark room for eight hours a day. Or longer.”

My phone rang. It was the cinematographer who worked on my last short film. “You mind if I take this?” I asked Ezra. She nodded, so I talked on the phone about some unpaid project the cinematographer wanted me to direct.

After, I said to Ezra, “That’s what happens when you have a real job.”

She looked offended. “What? I take phone calls and do all the logistical shit on my movies.”

“I’m talking about Jesse,” I said. “He’s in the dark all day by himself. Of course he’s pissed.”

“Oh.” Ezra lightened up.

“I don’t have a fucking real job.”

“Well, you might have to get one,” she said.

“Yeah. Sounds great.”

•

On the way back to the car, we passed a group of dogs playing in a park. Their owners stood by. They wore stretch pants and floral prints and welcomed us with open arms.

“We ran into you the other day,” Ezra said to one of them.

Her dog chased another dog.

“Oh yeah. What was his name, again?” asked a floral-printer.

“Sueño. It means dream.”

“Oh, look at you,” said one of the owners. She addressed Sueño in a way that I wasn’t comfortable describing.

We left, and I said, “You’re the most normal-looking dog owner I’ve seen all day.”

“Yeah?” She stared off. “I can still imagine myself living here.”

“So it’s the beach after all, huh? The valley sucks anyway.”

Some women did group yoga on the lawn to our left.

“I could be one of those,” she said, pointing.

“You’d look great in stretch pants,” I said and laughed.

“The apartments here are really shitty. For what we can afford.” She seemed to change the subject, but maybe not. “Jesse has this dream of owning a house in Cape Cod. I don’t want him to hate where we live.”

I saw something in her eyes. Maybe I was mistaken, but it looked like the same sort of dream. Though there was no real sparkle. It was like wanting to be an astronaut when you grow up—a nice thought, but that was about it.

“I’m not really sure what we’re going to do.” It was what she said. But I was thinking it right alongside her.

We walked a beat in silence and took in the breeze, salt, and sight of eternal blue. I imagined something for the both us: a mythical past where getting fucked in the ass could guarantee a slice of heaven.

“So, we’ll reschedule for next week?

“Yeah,” I said. “Hit me up when you’re back from Vegas. I’ll wear something better.”

“I’m sure your mom would like that,” said Ezra.

“I’m sure, too.”

Spoiled

2011

“It wouldn’t be a job if everyone could do it.”

I’d heard it more times than I could count; written it—one way or another—in reply to a hundred emails.

The question still came. But I’d stopped answering. No matter how many times I tried to explain, someone out there would fail to understand.

Having sex with beautiful women for a living was fun. Except when it wasn’t.

•

A month went by. I forgot what it was like to close my eyes and dig up memories (and destroy them); to pretend the girl beneath me was someone else, or that she was a sobbing piece of meat.

Because I worked with women who looked at me; who squirted on my face and came around my cock. When we made out, I could tell that it was for real. Not love, but a feeling that came from somewhere just as deep.

They were the girls who made me believe that they couldn’t pretend. I couldn’t help but want to rip them apart. Because they looked so fucking cute sucking my cock, or they were enthusiastic enough that it didn’t matter.

After, it was easy to say, “I love what I do.” Because it amounted to enjoying myself and sharing the experience—which sounded more philanthropic than the truth.

•

Then there were other days.

I approached and she whispered, “Are we supposed to start?”

“Yes,” I said, because the cameras were rolling and pointed toward us. Plus, the director had said, “Action.”

I removed her clothes. She unbuttoned my shirt and dropped to her knees.

The blow job was easy enough, but something felt off. Maybe it was the way she squinted or looked somewhere between my eyes and the camera—into space, the void, nothing.

She began to nod off when I positioned her for sex. Then she stood up and away from me. I asked her why.

“I need lube,” she said. But she walked in the opposite direction of the lubricant bottle. And no one had heard her but me.

I motioned toward a production assistant. He helped her with some choices. She returned with her vagina slick.

We fucked on a desk. The more I thrusted, the more she backed away. I grabbed hold of her hips and dragged her toward the edge. It was a temporary solution. Because we remained in a sort of dance. I fucked her. She escaped. Then I captured her and pulled her back.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

She nodded. But it was clear that the position wasn’t working. We improvised and moved to a couch.

She sucked my dick some more and looked in my direction. Whatever she went to the bathroom ten times to snort, smoke, or swallow—it was getting in the way. I couldn’t imagine that I was more to her than protruding shapes and something warm in her mouth.

We had to move on. I fucked her pussy again, and she defaulted to moving away. When I leaned in to grab her breast, she slapped me. The scene came to a halt.

“I have to fuck you,” I said, loud enough for the crew to hear.

“You were just pinching my nipple really hard,” she said.

I didn’t remember squeezing her at all, but I remained silent. She walked off set.

She talked to another girl over a drink of water. I couldn’t hear their conversation. They both glanced at me. I returned their looks and shrugged.

“Not a good day for you with the ladies, huh?” said the other girl.

There was no room for conversation. We were in the middle of a scene. Everyone was waiting. I was expected to keep my dick hard. Given the circumstances, I could no longer think about her body, or about making her come. My eyes were closed, and I imagined her tears. Because I had to stay sincere or things would fall apart. Sincerity suggested that I was really fucking pissed. To be pissed and maintain an erection required something violent. It was just the way I worked.

In the flesh, I didn’t enact more than a light thrust. The girl couldn’t take it and I didn’t want to fight. It was just that we were no longer having sex. There was no connection. I moved my body back and forth. She moaned in no particular pattern. The scene escaped us.

In the past, it was where I would have failed. My dick would have gone limp and I’d have given up. But I’d learned new techniques. I’d trained my mind to be a piece of shit. Of course, the erectile dysfunction medications helped.

I dreamed up her mouth on a cock. Sobbing. Maybe some blood. It wasn’t the type of blow job that anyone enjoyed. Her eyes made her look like she was about to die. On the other end, someone was splitting her ass. It was probably me, but I couldn’t relate the images to any physical reality.

The anal sex part wasn’t that bad, because it was something that I would have done in real life. It was just that the fantasy only worked if it felt like rape.

I’d gone through the motions on camera. My hips had memorized the minutes it took for our completion. When it was time, my imagination beat her up enough so that I could come.

Someone took pictures of my semen on her face. Then we cleaned ourselves with baby wipes and looked away.

It wasn’t what anyone was meant to do. That was why it was a job. And for those who wanted to know, she was beautiful.

Or I guess her ass looked good before I learned that she never wanted me near it.

Can Whores Grow Old Together if They Buy
Each Other Scarves?

2010

I’d been single for over a year. It was part of why I’d stopped buying new clothes. Definitely why I didn’t own any accessories. I didn’t have anyone left to look good for. At least, not in a way that required something new or different.

My sex life consisted of fucking girls on camera and participating in online relationships with people I’d rather not see unless they were sandwiched between my skin and a mattress. I’d made a pact with myself: no dating until I quit porn.

But I almost had a reason to buy a scarf. Because I thought it would be funny. My friend, Mary, requested that I dress like a hipster for a porn scene that she was directing. In my mind, all hipsters wore scarves.

Ok. If u have like a purple or dark blue tight tshirt that would be good—or gold spandex bodysuit!!!, she replied, once I texted her my predicament.

Yeah… Except I don’t, I texted back.

Bwaha a scarf would be so perfect though…, she agreed.

I packed my bag with a hat, glasses, and a few other items that I’d owned for the duration of my twenties. Just in case my stuff was vetoed, I hoped that the production company would have a few accidental treasures stored in their private wardrobe.

•

I arrived on set. Mary was seated in her usual spot, behind a desk. Her bangs were freshly cut, and I told her that they looked cute.

“Thanks,” she said. “But…” She dropped a pair of glasses onto her face. “Do these kind of make me look like Velma? With the new bangs?”

The look on my face probably meant, “Yes.”

“I finally found frames that look good on me. But with this haircut…”

Her phone rang. She picked up. I headed toward the green room.

•

My cotalent, Alice, gave me a hug. “I was so happy when I found out I was working with you.” She smiled. “Because I really like fucking you.”

“Same,” I said. Alice was a friend of mine who happened to be dating another friend of mine. By default, thinking about Alice meant thinking about Paul. Even if Alice was one of the best looking girls in the business, I wouldn’t have said it to her face. I saw her often at movies and shows and stuff like that. She was always hanging off my friend’s arm, kissing his mouth, and whispering about how much she loved him. Despite my acquired ability to fuck a girl and completely forget that she existed, Alice was exactly my type and way too easy to fall for. I didn’t want to tempt myself into playing that game.

“Paul’s going to be here tomorrow,” she said.

“Yeah, I heard. How’s he doing?”

“Good.”

“What about you?”

“Busy. I’ve been working, like, every day.”

“That’s good,” I said, impressed. “You’re pretty much the only person I know who can say that.”

“I’ve just been lucky, I guess.”

Mary interrupted our conversation and suggested that I look for something to wear. She lead me to a back room filled with latex costumes and period piece attire, and started rummaging through plastic containers. “Here,” she said, and thrust a wool cardigan into my arms. “Hipsters wear cardigans.”

“It’s scratchy,” I said and slipped it on anyway. “Should I button it up, or what?”

“Whatever you want.”

“What if…” I followed Mary back to her desk. “…I wear your glasses?”

She laughed. “As long as you don’t get sex juice all over them.”

“Like, if I use my cock as a windshield wiper?”

She hesitated to hand them over. “Gross.”

•

The photographer reminded me to pause so that I didn’t look like a blur hovering over Alice. He told Alice to turn her eyes toward the camera and to stop sucking on my face. He photographed each of our positions. Alice and I stayed locked together for at least a moment longer. From what I could tell, no one was pretending.

I searched the room for my shirt, pants, socks, and underwear. Alice said, “It’s harder to pose when I actually want to have sex with the person. With someone like Arnold Spears, my back is all arched and I look fucking perfect.”

In a way, I hoped that our photos looked like shit.

•

“Wait until you see what I have planned for the intro.” Mary grinned like a Cheshire cat. “It’s pretty intense…”

“Yeah?” I said, like I was calling her bluff.

“Actually, no. It’s going to be super easy.”

I climbed on to the bed with Alice and played with her skin.

“This is a tattoo movie,” said Mary, “so you have to talk about her tattoos.”

“I hate my tattoos.” It was about the hundredth time that I’d heard it from Alice.

“They’re not that bad,” I said, which was probably the hundredth time she’d heard it from me.

“I just wish I hadn’t gotten them when I was eighteen.” She broke into a high-pitched voice that she used when she was pretending to be someone else. That particular someone else just happened to be her at eighteen. “Oh, I don’t care. I’ll just get my fucking area code tatted on my wrist. And some birds.”

“Act like you guys are a couple, being cute or whatever,” said Mary. “Remember to talk about her tattoos.”

“So, why do I have to dress like this?” I asked.

“Mostly because you wanted to,” she said, as if it were all my idea.

The camera recorded. I drew a blank on what to say. Kissing Alice bought me some time. So did exploring her torso. My hand stopped right below her navel. Inked orioles lay to either side of my fingers. “I love your tattoos. They make you look so ‘hard.’”

Alice laughed. “No, they don’t. They’re just birds.”

“Yeah, but…” I started to lose it. “Um.” I looked toward the camera. “Can we do it over?”

Mary scowled at me and called, “Take two.”

“Rolling,” said the cameraman.

We said the same things without laughing, or at least not enough to make us stop. Instead of further improvisation, we made out.

There was a moment of hesitation that often came with situations like that. Let loose on a stranger, I had to rediscover how to kiss. No one locked lips in exactly the same way. With Alice, the act felt almost too natural. It wasn’t even familiar in a way that might have seemed rehearsed. I’d worked with her twice before, and her mouth was still like my favorite album. I could have gone through it a hundred times and found something new to appreciate; could have done the same with the rest of her.

It was less tangible than love. My body was on autopilot, opened up to the lens, because in the back of my mind, I still knew where I was. But if I worked in a factory, I’d have cut my arm off. That was the danger of having sex with someone I could imagine spending my life with. Or at least the next week, or night, or whatever.

Alice asked me to slap her. The smile on her face made me fucking tremble. She felt perfect, and looked too close to be real, like a simulation pressed up against my eyes.

The problem with an experience like that was that I couldn’t hold on. It became trapped inside an idea. The idea was projected on a person, and that person became larger than life: a goddess. When I came, Alice was something like that.

But my path to divinity was severed by lights, a camera crew, and the production assistant who handed me baby wipes and paper towels.

I searched for the articles of clothing I’d left scattered on the floor. Sometime throughout, I locked eyes with Alice. Her face conveyed the same state of fuck-drunkenness I imagined to be plastered across mine. It felt entirely appropriate to tell her, “You’re pretty much my favorite person to work with. Ever.” The mention of work was supposed to keep an air of professionalism between us, but it wasn’t what I meant to put across. The words she used were more like it.

“I fucking love you.” She held crumpled lingerie on her fingertips and broke me down to my former self.

It felt like forever since I’d placed someone on so high a pedestal. I did my best to forget why.

•

We showered and gathered our belongings. I walked Alice to her car.

I wasn’t sure who mentioned it first, but I said, “Yeah, I saw that Paul changed his Facebook status to ‘in an open relationship.’ What’s that about?”

She shook her head. “He won’t even be my ‘friend’ on Facebook. But I guess it means that we can see other people. Or at least fuck them.” She paused. “I haven’t had sex with Paul in over a month.”

“That…sucks.”

She told me about fucking someone she regretted; someone crazy. And how Paul had been looking for a new girl to be with. “I still love him,” said Alice. “I’m so used to him being there when I get home. But we used to make our plans to accommodate each other. Now it’s just like, ‘I’m going out with some people. See you later.’”

I tried to remember a book I read on the subject. “Not that I’ve ever been in an ‘open relationship,’ unless you consider work to be ‘open.’ But I’ve heard this kind of thing doesn’t always start out consensually. Like, one partner is faced with the situation and maybe decides to try it out. I know that doesn’t sound like advice. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, even if it doesn’t seem like a good idea, it might not be a bad one.”

She talked awhile longer, and I listened. Her eyes look sad. By the time she was done I wanted to take her away.

She disappeared in a white Scion. My thoughts of her took longer, but they disappeared, too.

•

I lay in bed at night and played a game on my Xbox. My cell phone vibrated on the stand beside me. It was a text from Alice. How ironic…I just got dumped.

I wanted so badly for it to have something to do with me. Then I asked myself, Why?

Deep down, I was no different from Paul. In fact, our surfaces were much the same. I was just new and hadn’t shared the secret we were all afraid to give up. No amount of clothing could hide the fact that we were boring in the end. A hundred times was fine, but if played on repeat, I’d eventually kill myself to the chorus of a favorite song.

My memory of Alice was perfect. It had even been recorded on tape. If I really wanted to buy a scarf, I’d beg Mary to shoot a sequel.

Trying Something New

2011

There were two girls, no camera, a client who waited in the parking lot.

One of the girls, Annika, handed me her phone. “See,” she said. “He sent me pictures of what he wants. Just in case you were worried about consent.”

The cell phone flashed several porno screen grabs. I recognized one from a cuckolding website that I used to work for. There was an older man on his knees. His wife hand-fed him a young stud’s cock.

“And he’s straight?” I asked.

She nodded, then said, “He doesn’t know it’s happening today. I told him that he’s getting a surprise.”

“So when he shows up…”

She interrupted. “He’s outside.”

“Okay, so when he comes inside… Should I hide?”

“He probably shouldn’t see you,” said Annika. “At first. So maybe you could hang out in the girls’ restroom.”

•

I sat on the toilet and played with my cock, which stiffened, but slower than usual. I hadn’t been so nervous in years.

When Annika first called me, I said, “No promises. Older men aren’t my thing, so it’s possible I won’t get hard.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “If it doesn’t happen, I’ll blame it on him. It will give us a reason to beat him up more.”

Annika mentioned his “pilates body.” Probably to get me excited. But I didn’t know what she meant.

And I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t yell, “Cut,” or ask someone else to.

•

There was a soft knock at the door. I opened it. Annika was on the other side, whispering.

“Look at this,” she said, and flipped through a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Her eyes went wide and so did mine. “Five of them are yours.”

I pocketed the cash and followed her toward a dimly lit room.

“Juelz is working him over up front,” said Annika. She meant the other girl and, of course, the client. “So wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“Can I take my pants off?” I asked.

“You can do whatever you want,” she said. “This isn’t a movie. There’s no director to tell you what to do.”

•

I was naked and masturbating when they burst through the door. Annika led the way. Juelz was in back. The client was blindfolded. His neck and arms were stuck in a hinged wooden board, like one of those medieval stocks.

The man wasn’t gross—about forty, tan, and relatively lean. I relaxed a bit, but I still wasn’t dying to fuck him.

The girls forced him to his knees in the center of the room. Juelz poured a bottle of beer on his face and licked it up. There was some slapping. Annika motioned for me to do something.

I stood and approached. The girls backed away.

The client’s shaved head sweated in my left hand. I used my right to smack him in the face. If he couldn’t tell by the size of my palms, he knew then: I was a man. Because I said something like, “For the next thirty minutes, you’re going to be my fucking cum slut. Open your mouth.”

I gripped his jaw and slid my thumb inside his cheeks. His tongue felt rough and wet.

He clenched his teeth before I could enter.

“Red!” shouted the client.

I’d never heard someone use a safe word on account of my behavior. So I was confused. Especially since I’d barely touched him (by BDSM standards).

Annika, the responsible dominatrix, approached the client. She rubbed his chest gently. “Are you all right? Do you need a break?”

He whispered in her ear.

“I’m going to let Juelz take over for a few minutes, okay?” said Annika.

Juelz shrugged her shoulders. Annika escorted me outside.

“I think it was a good idea in his head,” she said, once we were in the hall. “But you know… The reality was maybe too much.”

I probably looked clueless, but I said, “I get it.”

“You’re okay, right?” she asked. “I don’t want you to feel rejected, or like you did something wrong.”

“No, it’s cool,” I said.

“Well, I’m going back in to see what’s up.”

•

Annika returned a few minutes later. “I guess he wants to eat your cum. But only if I feed it to him.”

“So…” I was trying to figure out the details.

“Stay here and jerk off. When you come, give me a little wave. I’ll step out, you pour it in my hand, and then you can go home.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Is that okay?”

“Totally,” I said. “This is the easiest thing ever.”

“Good.”

Annika returned to the client. I went to work on my cock. It took less than five minutes to squirt in my palm.

She caught my eye through a small window; saw me wave. Annika stepped back into the hall. I dripped my spunk into her outstretched hands. And that was that. We hugged each other and said goodbye.

•

Annika called me later. “Sorry about that. Straight people are weird.” Then, in a little perky voice, she said, “But he ate your cum without gagging at all.”

“Cool,” I said, and laughed.

We chatted some more and I said, “I don’t think it’s just straight people. Everyone has fantasies. Who knows what will happen if they actually come true?”

“Well, you did a good job,” she said. “When you started, Juelz and I were like, ‘Whoa.’ She’d never seen anything like that and was kind of bummed that it didn’t really happen.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I said. “But if you ever find another guy who wants me to slap him around, feel free to call me.” I added, “Of course, Juelz can watch.”

Welcome Home

2011

I arrived back on set after a five-week tour of southern Europe. The scene was as close to sex as possible. Driving home, I asked myself why I needed a break from porn.

I thought about the answer, and about the porn star I’d just fucked. Her ass was mine—sort of. It belonged more to the director, and the tube-site masturbator who would later steal the scene.

The director wanted a paycheck. The company that paid him believed the tube-site masturbator would actually buy the product and thus demanded consumer-friendly content. So I refrained from pulling out and eating the porn star’s hole exactly when I wanted to. Because everyone else expected me to wait, and to open up for three extra minutes of whatever-the-fuck position.

But during those five weeks in Europe, I did other things, like dance, eat, and lie on the beach. I made new friends and grew closer to the people I loved. I even fought with them a bit.

I thought about the nature of my work, and how I felt everything about it: how I was lucky, wasting my life, buying time, fulfilling dreams, promoting the collective life force, and sustaining ambivalence. Something about it was just too hard to narrow down or define. Like, all I could end up telling people was, “It’s weird,” no matter the question. As long as it had to do with my work.

•

Being home meant that I had to interact with sex, and all of its accessories—like the intersection of porn and youth; that bland coming-of-age ritual.

“Would you believe me if I said that I’ve never watched a porn?”

The girl was nineteen and American, so I thought, “No.” But all things were possible. Maybe I’ll discover the sexuality of someone who doesn’t know how to fake it, I said to myself.

“I talk a lot when I’m nervous,” said the girl. It might have been cute, but my face was buried in her crotch. We were in the middle of filming.

The refrigerator began to hum—louder than usual.

“Fuck,” said the director. He dropped his camera and disappeared. I assumed he meant to fix the problem, and to return our set to quality, production-level sound.

The girl remained on top of me, in reverse cowgirl. I thrust slowly to maintain my erection.

“This is awkward,” she said, and her words became truth. She was conventionally attractive, and her body turned me on. But she asked where I was from, and about my hometown; questions that tore my mind from sex. It took some difficulty to maintain my arousal. But I persisted, because we were on a porn set.

“How do you keep from going?” she asked, my cock still inside her.

I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“My boyfriend used to imagine potatoes when he’d fuck other girls. I heard one of my other guy friends say that he thinks about old people.”

“I’m trying to keep my dick hard,” I said. “So I’d rather not go there.”

She smiled, and I believed that we were having a moment. But she looked past me and toward another girl who’d wandered onto set.

The girl on top of me said, once more, that she’d never seen a porn film. The other girl admitted that she’d never been in a porn film. The girl on top of me replied, as if she were in a sort of competition, “I’ve never had an orgasm. In fact, he’s only the fourth guy I’ve been with.” I assumed she meant me. “I’m not very experienced. Sexually.”

The conversation moved on. I remained involved, if only because I fucked the girl, and she straddled me.

The director returned. He asked us to start the scene over, and from the top. “I’d like you to talk more,” he said to the girl. “It will strengthen your performance.”

“Wait,” she said. “Let me think of things to say.”

I tried to help her out with some dirty talk I’d picked up over the years, like, “I want to stretch your tight little pussy.” She said, “Yeah.”

During our final run, she asked, “How do you know so many positions?”

The director cut camera and said, “There’s only about four positions, and he does them all the time. Don’t give him too much credit.”

I said, “Hey. Keep the dream alive,” which was not the way I’d meant to put it.

•

Nothing about the girl’s demeanor suggested a traumatic experience. She just asked me questions, as if she were fishing for approval for a job well done.

I told her that she’d done great. But it was hard to say whether I’d delivered the truth. In another line of work, she’d have finished a day of training. In porn, we’d just had weird sex.

“I wish you well on your future endeavors,” I said, because I felt like we were colleagues. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

She smiled and hugged me, and I turned to leave. The director said, “Welcome back,” as I walked out the door.

DEATH

Thick

2013

My cock was swollen from medication. It had been that way for several hours.

I’d sprayed semen across some young girl’s face, kissed her, and said, “That was fun.” Then I’d walked away—off set—to shower alone and breathe deeply.

“Relax,” I said to the faucet and the steam. “This happens all the time.”

•

I swallowed half a box of Sudafed on my way home. A doctor told me to keep the stuff on hand. He said that it would constrict my blood vessels; maybe counter my paralyzed erections. For the times I’d  swallow too much Cialis, or shoot my dick up with a syringe full of Bimix.

It rarely worked. Just made my nose feel dry and my heart beat like I was going off a cliff.

•

The gym was my next form of release. Sometimes the adrenaline would kill my arousal, or the thing it had left in my pants.

It sucked to walk around in mesh shorts, my cock barely held down by a pair of too-tight boxer briefs. One wrong move and I’d be running toward the weight rack, pulling something heavy and absurd out in front of my crotch. I’d carry it to the bathroom, like an obvious thief; drop it on the floor, for what looked like no reason, and adjust myself in a stall.

Sometimes the adrenaline would kill my arousal. Sometimes I’d exercise for an hour and leave sweating and stiff.

•

I ordered takeout and sat in bed with a Styrofoam box of Thai noodles. It seemed like a good time to watch a film.

But the Internet wasn’t working. There was an outage in my area. I had a DVD from Netflix—the only one on hand I’d yet to watch. I put it in my Xbox and pressed play.

The film was called Albert Nobbs and starred Glenn Close as a nineteenth-century Irish butler: a woman posing as a man. It had most of my favorite narrative qualities (clichés), like unrequited love and the death of a protagonist. I should have been moved.

But I remained outside the film in every way possible. I held my breath often and imagined the skin of my cock as a sieve.

I’d developed a technique for such occasions. It involved pressing my fingers into the side of my genitals until they both turned numb. The effort would, in time, squeeze the blood back into my torso—unless I let go or didn’t believe in the act strong enough.

The film ended and I had to pee. So I stopped touching myself. But I felt something there, between my legs, cold and expanding.

•

Albert Nobbs played a second time. I paid more attention. Glenn Close wore a facial prosthetic to make her appear less like a woman. Her makeup was the natural kind, painted on by film effects professionals. It seemed designed to make her ugly.

She was, for the moment, enviable. Even though I looked at my reflection in my phone’s blank screen and saw that it was tired and wore an ugliness, too.

•

A girl named Andrea texted me. We’d made out a few days prior. Not on camera. Her body was the kind I’d dreamed of sleeping next to.

She said that she had a crush on me.

I wanted to fall in love with her. Or at least jerk off to the idea.

Instead, I threw my phone across the room and tried my best to forget.

•

My roommate was home. I could hear him across the hall—at least, his goth-elitist playlist. My room countered back with a piece of the Albert Nobbs score; whatever sixty seconds they’d chosen to loop over the DVD menu.

A girl’s voice rang out from somewhere in the apartment. Then her moans. It made sense that she was fucking my roommate.

I looked at the clock on my phone: 4:15 a.m. It was well past the time I should have gone to the hospital. The sound of sex made me think of how I might never want it again.

•

I knew what had to be done. I’d watched the doctors treat me twice before. Their tools were larger; more effective; less painful. But expensive. The small syringes stashed in the back of my dresser drawer were cheap.

“This isn’t real,” I’d said, low and quiet, a hundred times that night. I had to repeat it in order to stab myself, to draw back the plunger and watch my blood come out.

I cried as if someone were watching; as if I should do my best to hold back. Then in another way—like a storm becomes a flood.

Six, or ten, syringes filled up and lined my floor. The skin around my cock turned raised and purple. I looked long enough but couldn’t see the veins, or where to stab around them.

The damage was done, but not enough to make it worthwhile.

I slid on my clothes and felt something hard against the inside of my pants. It seemed my cock was no longer a part of me, and that it might have never been.

After all the times I’d fucked, it felt true—within a moment—that I’d been lying all my life.

ART

A Dream

2012

Most days, I would sit and masturbate until I was close. Then I would stand and masturbate some more. There was often a woman kneeling on the floor. Her back was arched and her mouth was open.

Nothing much had changed.

But the climax was less than typical. Underwhelming on my part. My semen didn’t spurt or spray. The woman’s face remained dry; her tongue spotless. My seed dribbled out. Perhaps a drop found its way to her outer thigh.

The woman looked happy. Someone else was not.

He held a camera. Not sure if he was meant to be a director. The man hadn’t said a word since I started fucking. No direction. I suppose, then, that he was a documentarian.

“That’s all?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He groaned. “It’s very important that she play with the cum. That she have it in her mouth.” He knew that I understood, and that it didn’t matter.

Everyone was gone. I was alone in the room.

I masturbated, because I’d remembered something explicit from my most recent romp, and because I could. Again, I came. The expulsion was more powerful. I’d say average.

•

I exited the room, entered another, and gathered my clothes.

The documentarian was on the couch in the new space. He balanced a camera on his knee. “I can’t end a scene like this. We need to shoot again.”

“I’ve come twice already,” I said.

“Before the scene?” he asked. “That’s why your pop shot was so weak?”

“No. After.”

“Just now?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then you can do it again.”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“It’s not possible,” I said.

He was close to another exit—a door that opened to the night. “You’re fucking me here.”

I’d performed. Done my job. All of the pieces were there; only one of them inadequate. I couldn’t understand the gravity of the situation, or the documentarian’s escalation to anger. It was just another piece of masturbatory video.

The documentarian didn’t hear my thoughts. He didn’t leave. In fact, he moved toward me and into my personal space.

He fumed and spit words that I didn’t understand. So I bashed his head into the floor. Over and over. He broke apart like a pumpkin. The hard parts were indistinguishable from flesh.

I noticed that my co-star still sat in the room. She sucked a lollipop and thought to herself, Part of life. I wasn’t sure how I’d been able to understand what was in her head.

Another man stood to her left. A production assistant, maybe? I hadn’t noticed him before.

The assistant said, “You should leave.”

I nodded.

He said, “Follow me.”

•

The sun appeared to be rising. Had we filmed the entire night? Otherwise, it was sunset, and we’d been at work for a day and a half.

The assistant ran away, and I followed him. The road seemed elevated, like a bridge. So did everything else. The city floated. I was hit with déjà vu—something I’d seen on television or a monitor. Maybe a video game or Japanese animation.

“Where are we going? How long until we get there?”

There was no answer. The sky turned dark. I couldn’t fill in the blanks, but I knew that something was missing. Passages of time had vanished from my memory.

How long had I fucked? Or did I sit around, waiting? The film must have been important to have had such an effect; to ruin my brain; to drive a documentarian mad; to kill.

•

We came to a place—as much a road as anything we’d traveled. It looked like a suburban cul-de-sac, minus the homes.

The assistant stood near a well drilled into the concrete, waved me over.

“Inside,” he said.

I peered over the edge into a pit. It looked like blackness without end. My eyes adjusted, and I made out bits of matter floating in space. They looked like the broken and dispersed gears of a watch—bright yellow, red, purple, and colors I didn’t know the names of.

The gears spun in endless rotation. Not for any discernible purpose; like planets without life.

“What are they?” I asked.

“A certain kind of work,” said the assistant. “I’m not sure. I felt the need to take you here. I hope I’ve assisted you well.”

“What do you normally do? Move around lights and stuff?”

“But that work’s no longer necessary. You killed my employer, the artist.”

“You call that guy an artist?”

“Yes,” said the assistant. “What do you call him?”

“I don’t know what to call him. He shoots porn.”

“Oh, okay. Are you an artist?”

“You mean, when I fuck girls for money?”

“In general,” said the assistant.

“I’d like to think that I make art things. But it sounds stupid to say, ‘I’m an artist.’”

“I’m not sure you’ve answered my question.”

“What do you care, anyway?”

“I thought, in some way, that I was an artist. I shaped the light. I helped construct the film. I was hired for my attention to detail. But my employer had no interest in me. You and that naked girl were more important. Mostly you.”

“How do you figure?”

“You’re the reason we spent a week on the project,” he said.

“A week?” It sounded excessive. But I had no memory of time spent otherwise.

“Add it all up, and there were maybe forty minutes of sex. You took a lot of breaks. Hours, even days at a time. My employer asked nothing of you. Not until the end. Then you killed him.”

“That’s not how I remember it,” I said.

“It’s the way it happened. Saying it aloud makes me like you less.” The assistant frowned and pushed me into the well.

•

I fell until I could no longer feel the drop. My only reference for what was near or far was the spinning gear, which grew large as I approached it.

I landed with enough force to knock the wind from me. Though not enough to kill. I remained whole and unbroken.

I was struck by the detail etched into the mechanism. The gear’s surface was dense with representations of women. Perhaps they were each based on the same muse. Every one was magnificent in its own way.

The closest to my feet moved about, as if swimming. She appeared alive, and yet distinct from what I would have called a person. “Hey,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”

Her cheeks turned red, and she said, “Thank you.” She wrapped her arms around her breasts, like a shield, and dropped her guard slowly. My eyes followed the reveal. “Will you listen to my story?”

“Of course,” I said.

She told me of her life, love, and inner thoughts. Each was a poem that brought me close to tears.

“Beautiful,” I said, again.

“What would you ask of me?”

“Do you know a way out of this place? I need to find one.”

She hummed for several minutes and said, at last, “I can tell you more of my story.”

“I’m sure I’d love to hear it. But I should go.”

“Yes,” she said. “Walk around a bit. See what else you like.”

I explored on foot and found many more representations: self-portraits, panels that moved like films, and visions of the woman with instruments and music. One of them noticed me and talked of her pain.

“Yes, I have some of that, too,” I said. “I fear that I may be stuck here; that I might never see my family again.”

“I’ve been stuck in my body all these years. Stuck inside my mind. There’s no worse place.”

“I’ve had similar thoughts,” I said. “I felt depressed as a child.”

“I’ve had thoughts of giving myself to the great abyss.”

“I’m sorry. Do you know a way out of here?” I asked. “You could come with me.”

“I’ve had thoughts of burning the skin from my face so that no one has to look at me again.”

The self-loathing went on in repetition until my head ached. I nearly collapsed.

A deus ex machina appeared from the sky—a ladder to an unknown place. Perhaps my rescue. The only way out.

•

I climbed for a small eternity and found myself at the end of the rungs. I’d been led to the surface of another spinning gear, and with its own representations—those of a man.

“I brought you here,” he said. “My purpose is to help.”

“I’m tired,” I said. “I need to rest.”

“Of course you are. Of course you do. You’ve been exploited, worked near to death.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Let me tell you,” he said, and he delivered a verbal essay on the economic crimes against humanity; on the anti-ethics of capitalism.

“You’re obviously brilliant,” I said. “I may be exploited. But not so much as you think. I’m paid well enough.”

“A tool to earn your complicity.”

“Look, I need to rest. Then maybe you could help me find a way out of this place?”

“I have my studies to attend to,” he said.

“I understand. Maybe we could use your ladder to climb out of the pit. You look strong. And I’m so tired. You could help me pick it up.”

“I am not just a body,” he said. “My mind is dedicated to knowledge so that I may help others. It’s a grueling task.”

“But you could help me with the ladder.”

“Perhaps I could read on the nature of strength, genetics, pharmacology… There is a way to help with this. Yes, I’m sure.” He wandered toward a set of imaginary books. “Give me time.”

•

I slept and woke up. The man hovered over me. He spouted exercise routines, dietary information, performance-enhancing supplements, testosterone injections, human growth hormones, renowned personal trainers, athletes, gurus, mystics, priests, martyrs, revolutionaries, and survivors. “Strength of body, strength of spirit, strength of will,” he said, in conclusion.

“Which one will remove me from this pit?” I asked, groggy.

“There are ways to reimagine yourself. I can help.”

The man continued talking, and I walked away.

•

How long have I pulled at this ladder? Inch by inch, day by day, it assumed the pace of continents across the earth’s crust. I finished and appeared aged past death. Still, I found the will to climb.

“I’m happy to have helped,” said the man once I’d taken my first step.

“Fuck off,” I shouted back.

There was another gear at the top of the ladder. And another beyond that. Lifetimes passed by the time I reached the top of the well.

•

It was strange to find the assistant standing by the pit. He was neither a corpse nor a skeleton turned to dust. Just a man, the same as I left him.

“How did you get out?” he asked.

“That’s a good question. Looking back, it seems impossible,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I left,” he said. “Only returned to dispose of the body.” The assistant nodded toward the headless documentarian crumpled by his feet.

“How long did it take for you to go back for him?”

The skin flaps around the neck of the documentarian began to flutter, as if blown by the wind. A voice-like sound came forth. “Not as long as it took you.”

“You’re alive?” I asked the documentarian.

“No,” he said. “But neither are you. I’m surprised you didn’t die when we were filming.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you take so fucking long to do anything,” he said. “A minute of sex and you’re bored. You have to read, check your email, play guitar. You even told us about a movie you planned to direct. I filmed you drawing storyboards, talking with a producer, and launching a Kickstarter campaign. I’d heard good things about you as a performer, and so I was patient. Thought maybe you knew what you were doing. In the end, you fucked it up. Couldn’t even deliver a proper cum shot. My movie was supposed to be about girls gargling cum.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “I don’t do those things on set. I’m a professional.”

“On set, off set. What does it matter? You fuck, and go home, and do some other shit… Who cares?”

“I care. When I play music, or write, it’s for me.”

“Then why make us watch?” asked the documentarian. “Selfish of you.”

“Make you watch? If someone likes what I do, all the better. It means we’ve found a connection.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.” His windpipe exhaled, like a fart. “Oh, what does it matter? Look at me. I’m no better than you.”

I laughed. “You used to be?”

“Sure. Everyone needs to come. Your father thought it wonderful to shoot a load into your mom. If he had one of my films, the world might be a better place. At least I’d have spent the last week of my life on something more interesting than you.”

“I don’t have to listen to this shit. I’m going home.”

“You can’t survive here,” said the documentarian. “You’re dead.”

“So are you.”

“That’s why I’m going into the well.” On cue, the assistant picked up the documentarian and tossed him over the edge.

“Hey, I wasn’t dead when you first threw me in there!” It was an accusation of murder.

“Yes,” said the assistant. “But if you don’t get it by now…” He sighed and pushed me in once more.

Mainstream

2011

“We’ll be a few minutes,” said the director, Matthew Goodman. “But pay attention. I want you to watch this. Have you seen Die Hard?” he asked. “What about Halloween?”

Mila said that she starred in the XXX parody.

I was tagging along while she auditioned for Goodman’s upcoming feature film.

“Well, he cut it.” Goodman pointed to a miserable-looking man. His video editor.

“What the fuck was that?” shouted Goodman a moment after the editor hit play on a rough assembly.

Mila and I sat on the floor and watched them piece together a dialogue scene. The director lowered his voice when he talked to us. “In porn, it’s all about the money shot. With this, it’s the acting. The editing. Watch these kids. They’re some of the best young actors in the world.”

We stared at the monitor and did our best to look impressed. Goodman said, “See. They do the same thing in every take. I want you to pay attention.”

He yelled at the editor and paced. Forty minutes later, he invited us upstairs.

•

“I can’t stand ‘old people energy,’ you know what I mean?” Not that he was ancient, but Goodman sported a well-formed pattern of gray throughout his hair. He was definitely a peer to the man he continued to slander. “I have to keep that guy in line, or he’ll fuck everything up. You saw what I have to put up with?”

We nodded, smiled, whatever. Goodman sat beside us on a couch. “You’re a porn star, too?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

“That’s so hot. You two should do a show for me right here.”

Mila laughed, as if he’d said it as a joke.

“I’d like to have a couple of you. My own porn-star pets.” He licked his lips.

Eventually, Goodman brought out a laptop. It seemed that we were on to business.

“You’ve seen one of these?” He dragged his cursor over several PDFs.

I leaned in to catch a closer look. “What?”

“A script. You guys have scripts in porn?”

The question was perplexing, because it was delivered so sincerely. It was as if Goodman believed that our entire profession relied on improvisation and chance; as if pornographers didn’t shoot multiple takes or write down what needed to be said. The man believed that he was teaching us by displaying words on a screen.

Never mind that we made movies for a living. Mila and I were middle-class twenty-somethings who lived in Los Angeles. Media was a part of our culture. To see a document so specifically formatted, with scene headings, dialogue, descriptions, and not understand what it was…we’d have to have been stupid or dead.

“So, what’s the story?” asked Mila.

“You two make porn. I make torture porn.” He wore his words like a badge of honor. “Here. Read this. It’s really cool.”

“The whole thing?” asked Mila.

“The last thirty pages at least. Make sure you read the end. I want to know what you think.”

We’d been at his studio for over an hour and had no idea what his film was about, or what role my girlfriend might play in it.

“I’ll be right back.” Goodman headed for the door. “Oh, and read some of the beginning, too. I want you to get a good feel for the movie.”

Once he was out of earshot, I said, “I’ll be the asshole if you want to leave. I can make something up. Say we have to be somewhere.”

“No, it’s okay,” said Mila. “We’ve been here this long.”

She browsed the last thirty pages of Goodman’s script. I looked over her shoulder at a few of them. It seemed like standard kidnap/torture stuff, I guess, with its own spin.

•

Goodman returned. Mila said, “Done.”

“You read it? Cool, huh? How about the last scene?”

“Where she cuts his dick off?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Goodman. “See, I’m a feminist.”

I didn’t tell him, but it was the same gag from Hostel 2. Derivative didn’t even cut it. The guy was stealing scenes from mediocre horror sequels.

“You read it, too?” Goodman looked to me.

“Yeah, it’s good.” I knew that I was a guest, and so I tried to be polite.

“There’s a young man in there. Could be you,” he said.

Mila told Goodman how much she loved horror movies. I chimed in with a few of my favorite splatter films. We sort of connected on our love for Ichi the Killer.

“Let me show you some of my research.” We crowded around Goodman as he opened a folder of images on his desktop—low-res screenshots from a porn site called WaterBondage.com.

I spotted a couple of friends and pointed them out.

Mila said, “That’s a Kink.com site. I work for them all the time.”

Goodman asked to see one of her scenes. She directed him to a trailer for SexAndSubmission.com. When it was over, he asked to see it again.

“Oh, that’s hot.” Goodman rubbed at the crotch of his pants. “Can I see you naked?”

“I thought this would be part of it,” she said. Mila stood and flashed her tits and pussy.

“That’s it?” said Goodman.

She laughed and said something like, “You can’t get everything for free.”

“Oh, come on,” he said as she zipped up her pants. Goodman looked in my direction. “What about you?”

“You want to see me naked?”

“Why not?”

I glanced at Mila. She shrugged, so I took off my shirt. Goodman asked, again, if we’d put on a show for him.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“We can’t,” I said. “For practical reasons.” I tried to gross him out so that he’d give up. “We both have gonorrhea. Caught it from work.”

“What if I just get a blow job? Can I catch it from a blow job?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It could be in her throat.”

“I’ve had a lot of sex. I mean, a lot of sex. And I’ve almost never used a condom,” said Goodman. “I’ve never caught anything. I think my body’s immune to it.”

“Have you ever been tested?” asked my girlfriend.

“Yeah, I’ve been tested.” He sounded offended.

“When was the last time?”

Goodman changed the subject. “I’d love to fuck the both of you.”

My eyes went wide.

“I want to take you on a date. We’ll drive around in my sports car and go out to eat. Somewhere nice.”

“Like Olive Garden,” joked Mila.

“I said somewhere nice! Maybe Japanese food.” He looked back and forth, between us. “I’m really open-minded,” he said, and followed with a monologue about his days spent in New York sex clubs, getting his dick sucked through a hole in the wall.

“We don’t really have sex with other people outside of work,” said my girlfriend.

I was happy to hear her take the lead, because I honestly didn’t know what to do.

“Well, let’s make a movie. How do I hire you?” asked Goodman.

She began to give him her agent’s phone number, but stopped midway. “Wait, seriously? You’re going to show your face on camera?” She dared him. “Could I use the video for my website?”

“My face… Well, I couldn’t show my face. But sure, whatever you want. Can I fuck the both of you?”

“He doesn’t do that.” She knew that I didn’t like being fucked in the ass, and that Goodman wasn’t my type.

“Yeah, I don’t bottom.”

“Okay, but seriously, we’re not going to have sex with you,” said my girlfriend.

We held onto each other and moved away from him, toward the corner of his couch. Goodman rubbed his erect penis through his jeans. His other hand groped at us.

“I’m really good at seducing people. Really good. Obviously. But I find porn stars are the hardest to seduce. It’s because you fuck people all the time, huh?”

“Right,” said my girlfriend.

Goodman told us about the woman who co-wrote his screenplay. He said that, during their writing process, she refused to wear panties. His point was that he wanted to fuck her, and that it somehow deemed him open-minded.

We were two hours into our meeting and neither of us had read a line for the man. All he’d tried to do was get us naked and fuck. After several more of his attempts, we stood up to leave.

•

He forced a group hug outside the studio. “I’ve been bad, huh?”

“You know what you’ve been,” said my girlfriend.

Goodman smiled. “I love how he’s rubbing his cock against me.”

I was the only one he could have been referring to, and so I immediately backed away.

“We’ll be in touch,” he said, douchier and in more words than we had time for.

•

Goodman called me the following afternoon. I was on set and couldn’t answer. He left a voicemail: “Hey Mila’s boyfriend, it was great meeting you two yesterday. We’ve all been looking at Mila’s stuff over here and jerking off. Anyway, I was hoping you could put me in touch with Kink.com. I’d love to talk to them about my movie…”

I stopped listening and texted him.

Me: No. You are one of the most unprofessional and condescending men I have ever met. Please don’t contact me again.

Oblowitiz: Wow!! I’m sorry if I offended you. I never mean to patronize; I don’t know what ‘professional’ means, other than some boring, conformist, conservative, narcissistic form of behavior. I’m sorry you cannot appreciate my art or the opportunity that I’m offering you. Obviously, I should stick to working with the kind of actors I’m used to working with. I didn’t mean to dredge up any trauma. I had no idea I was being so offensive. Apparently, we have massively different interpretations of open-minded. I seriously regret having let you read my screenplay. A massive character misjudgment on my part. Please know that all ideas contained in that script are copyright protected under the Writers Guild of America and any infringement thereof will be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. Good luck.

As I deleted Goodman’s text, I thought of the young actors I’d seen in the short edit of his movie. I wondered which of them had had to fuck him for their role.

Pleasure

2014

He was my favorite client because he both purchased private cam sessions and tipped me. So I tried harder than usual. I blew him extra kisses and made an effort to position my body so that he might see the inside of my ass.

My instinct was to ignore the other clients who’d filter in and out of my chat room. But my favorite would type, Who am I to keep you from your work? He once tipped me $300 while I directed my attention to the perversions of some other block of anonymous text.

He would type, You are the Shakespeare of porn, while I ranted on about objectively disgusting exchanges of spit, piss, and cum.

Then we’d be alone in my chat room—his money bleeding out at several dollars per minute.

Play me a song, typed my favorite.

“You want me to sing to you?” I asked, and hit a few off-key notes.

His request was far less demanding. He just wanted me to listen to his self-selected YouTube playlist.

At first, he sent me the name of a famous vocal soprano and the Irish ballad, Danny Boy. I thought it was a joke, because my porn name was Danny Wylde, and “the pipes are calling” could be read as a fairly obvious euphemism.

But the playlist kept expanding.

I listened to opera, Bollywood musicals, and several outdated pop songs. When I’d sway my body to the music, he’d type, Stop acting like a whore.

I closed my eyes in response and stroked my cock slowly. Without the erection, I didn’t know what to do.

I suppose if I’d been flaccid, the act might have retained its familiarity. I’d have displayed my body just the same and engaged in equal forms of verbal deception. At the end of each song, I said, “That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing.”

•

One day, my favorite asked me about porn. He must have seen one of my studio performances on a tube site.

It had been more than a year since my retirement, and so I told him that I’d quit.

He asked, Why?

“Are you sure you want to hear this? It’s not very sexy.”

He insisted, and so I told him about my medical scare and the end of my career as a porn star.

What do you plan to do now? Go back to school?

“I’ve already been to school,” I said. “I have a film degree from USC.”

A Mickey Mouse degree, typed my favorite.

“I wish someone would have told me that before I started.”

So, what will you do?

“With my life? I mean, I’m a freelance video editor and I do some film production work. Mostly in the adult industry. It’s not like I don’t have a job. I just come on here when work is slow.”

What would you do if money were no object?

I sat with my dwindling erection and pondered his question as if the answer were part of the labor I owed him.

Then he logged off.

•

A month or two passed, and I found myself back at my computer, streaming the Bollywood hit, “Nagada Song Dhol,” while jerking off for my favorite.

“How’d you get into this kind of music?” I asked.

I’m Indian, he answered. I grew up in Calcutta.

“Really? I guess I don’t know anything about you. Except that you must have a lot of money.”

Would you like to see the house I grew up in? he typed.

The man intrigued me because I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around his fetish, or whatever could be described of his interest in me. I thought a glimpse into his past might help piece together the puzzle. And he was paying me. I’d have said yes to almost anything.

He sent me a clip from a 1991 Bollywood musical called Henna. It was like most of the videos I’d watched at his suggestion. I couldn’t understand the language or context, but it held a certain opulent aesthetic. Dancers moved about in the center of an extravagant, white-pillared home.

“You lived in that mansion?”

In Calcutta, the poor are very, very poor and the rich are very, very rich, he typed. My family were landowners. But I moved away when I was young. All the wealth I have now, I built on my own.

“So, what do you do for a living?” There was a pause in his reply, which could have been for any reason. “You don’t have to tell me. I know this is supposed to be anonymous.”

Moments later, he sent me a name: Satvik King. I’m an artist, he typed. Look me up on Wikipedia.

The entry described him as a London-based immigrant who’d shot to fame in the international art world during his early thirties. He painted imagined paradises wrought with violent, sexual imagery. Each work was intricately detailed and inlaid with rare jewels and enamel.

I browsed JPEGs of his paintings on Google and felt a kind of admiration and jealousy. “These are amazing,” I said, and at last, I’d given him some truth.

He asked if I’d ever been to England. When I replied, “No,” he described the places I must visit. His favorite: a garden in Manchester.

Would you ever come here?

“I’d love to,” I said. “But I don’t think that I can afford it.”

What if I paid for your ticket?

I’d been asked to fly many places in the world; always with the addendum to sell my ass or cock to a man of moderate wealth. The few jobs I’d taken as a hustler were enough to put me off the subsequent offers. Besides, my retirement from porn had prompted a necessity to focus on a life post-sex-work, lest my body fail me again.

But a successful artist who offered to show me the most beautiful parts of a country I’d never seen; it was enough to make me reconsider my limits.

“What would I have to do?”

You’re asking if I want to fuck you or suck your cock?

I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. “Well, yeah.”

Don’t be ridiculous. What’s your PayPal address? I’ll send you five thousand pounds, and you can decide if you want to come here.

“I was banned from PayPal,” I said, “because I broke their terms of service to sell porn.”

How am I supposed to send you money?

The cam site we’d used to communicate thus far collected 70 percent of my profits. I didn’t really have a solution.

Give me your phone number, he typed. I’d like to call you.

•

I didn’t see the harm, even when I emailed him my checking account and routing number. If he turned out to be some crazy hacker, I figured he’d be disappointed with my account balance. The chance of profit outweighed the risk of losing what little money I had to call my own.

But the longer I listened to Satvik on the phone, the more I fell under his spell. He struck a chord deeper than greed and offered to save me, or else transform my life into a dream I’d given up on long ago.

“What do you want to do with your life?” he asked.

“If money didn’t matter, I would write.”

“Then write.”

He said that I would be among a group of young people whom he supported on an on-going basis.

“Why?” I asked. “All you know about me is that I jerk off on the Internet.”

“When I was young, I would ask questions, such as, ‘Why?’ My aunt, who often watched after me, would respond, ‘Because birds fly in the sky.’ That is why I’ve picked you, Christopher. Because birds fly in the sky.”

Later, he would retract his ambiguity. “When you told me that men in the porn business take pills and inject their penises just so that they can get keep an erection, I thought, ‘What a sad way to live.’ I look at you and your body appears young. But your eyes… Your eyes are very old. There’s a sadness behind them.”

He further explained his benevolence. “I had my first art show the year I earned my master’s degree. Art dealers came to me and said, ‘We love your work.’ But they didn’t yet trust that I could continue making art outside of the university structure. They said, ‘We’ll watch you for the next year and then decide.’ A year, to me, was eternity. How could I create art without the money to survive?

“A friend of the family offered me sixteen thousand pounds so that I could have the time to continue painting. I knew the chances of my success—about one in a million. I said to her, ‘I won’t be able to repay you.’ She simply replied, ‘Pass it on.’ So that’s what I’m doing. I’m passing it on.”

He told me that I must work very hard, and I promised him that I would. Then he delivered tales of the life that he had lived and descriptions of the natural treasures that I should accompany him to see. He said that he’d paid a friend to travel the world in search of the most beautiful place to die, and that when it was decided, I should go there with him. But mostly, he said that I should do what I wanted because there was not enough time in life not to.

When he hung up, I left my apartment and traveled the city blocks I’d come to know so well. I had no destination. Only a casual dread that I’d felt for as long as I could remember, and a need to displace it. Because I thought my life was about to change forever.

•

The next morning, I awoke to the thought that I’d been duped. One look at my bank account suggested it was true. Though I’d never taken part in an international wire transfer. I did a bit of research and learned that the time frame was still on my side.

Still, I carried on as if nothing had changed. I’d never been one to base my life on faith. I wasn’t about to abandon my philosophy on the promise of a cam client.

By nightfall, I was back on my computer, luring black text to a lo-fi stream of my heightened sexuality. Twenty minutes in, Satvik appeared in my chat room.

Evil remains, he typed.

I felt an unfamiliar sense of embarrassment. If his offer was real, I was the asshole for doubting him.

“Call me,” I said. “I’ll explain.”

My phone rang moments later, and I spent another hour talking to Satvik.

“If what you’ve told me is true, I don’t even know how to thank you. But you have to understand my hesitation. If I stop working, and you don’t come through, I’m fucked.”

He laughed. “It’s the same in the beginning with everyone I support. Now they all take me for granted.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But this isn’t the first time I’ve been promised something that never came true.”

“I don’t joke,” he said. “Really, I don’t.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I am.”

“It’s refreshing not to have to talk to politicians and billionaires,” he said. “Those who run the world; they’re the ones who drive the art market.” He laughed again. “Beyoncé? Justin Bieber? They’re not rich enough.”

He told me things of which I had no knowledge or experience to relate. “You Americans are ignorant,” he said. “I’m not trying to be mean. It’s simply true.”

I couldn’t be offended. Most of the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But our conversation further solidified my fantasy. I listened to his voice, and the man became like God.

•

That night, I returned to a manuscript I hadn’t touched in months. I put aside my financial goal for the day and wrote 1,500 words instead.

But I awoke the next morning with the same bank account balance and the same feeling of casual dread. The feeling continued for weeks as my freelance work picked up, and I returned to the more traditional labor I’d studied for in college.

Satvik and I exchanged emails to discuss the ongoing delays, and our correspondence gradually dwindled in length.

At least I have a story, I told myself. So I wrote the memoir of our time together online and on the phone and sent a draft to Satvik. In some way, I hoped to feed him guilt.

He replied almost immediately. Oh, don’t be so dramatic.

•

I understood how one could promise dreams that weren’t meant to come true. I’d done it a thousand times in the form of sex, my affection, and the love I proclaimed to those I’d experienced only as text. But Satvik was beyond understanding. After several months of silence, he wired me $8,000.

If there were an email equivalent to falling on one’s knees in gratitude, I must have hit the mark. He surely read a hundred of my thank yous, or else skimmed them over on their way to the trash.

Though, for each gesture of my appreciation, I received a sum of no response. Satvik had shot his load, I thought. And so I left him alone.

•

I spent the money on some unpaid taxes, and on two months of living, during which I planned only to write.

The stress of work rolled off my back, and I made significant headway on what I hoped to be a novel.

I fell asleep one night, about sixty pages in; felt the pride of my new progress and barely thought about Satvik.

•

Bright lights greeted me in the darkness of my bedroom and I was lifted—mute and screaming in my head—toward a ship, or structure, that whisked me somewhere far away. An alien abduction, I was sure.

Dark figures loomed over me as I lay motionless on a flat, cold surface. They applied pressure to the flesh over my guts, and I felt a warm bath spill out across my body. It was as if my belly had erupted, and without a wince of pain.

I awoke, some time later, on the floor of my apartment. There was blood in my underwear and I felt as if my hole had endured a rigorous thrashing.

A thick scar appeared near my lower abdomen. I poked at it and felt a rocky texture, like a jagged tumor, under the skin.

Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary, but it was already too much. I lay on the floor for the remainder of the day and wouldn’t leave my apartment for several weeks after.

But instinct was an unforgiving animal. At the threat of starvation, I could no longer indulge my debilitation. I ventured outside for food, and when my finances ran low, I returned to freelance video production.

Slowly, my life took on a sense of familiarity. I started to write again, and I had sex for the first time in months.

It was a one-night stand, and yet my partner—a twenty-one-year-old girl—proved sober and capable of giving pleasure. She kissed my chest and stomach on her way to my cock. When she reached my scar, she put her mouth on it, too.

“What happened?” she asked.

“My appendix burst when I was young.” I knew little of anatomy but figured the scar was somewhere near the right place. I needed a story she might believe, and one I might believe myself.

“It feels funny,” she said and kissed it again before making me come.

Nearly asleep, with the girl beside me, I thought about how easy it was to lie to her; how I would carry on lying for as long as possible.

•

I finished my novel a year later and had it published by a small, local press. When asked who I’d like to dedicate the book to, I thought for a moment, and remembered Satvik. Without the money he’d sent me, I might have never started writing the manuscript.

His name appeared in print—before the first chapter—and read, For all your support.

I took a picture of the page in my advance copy and sent it to Satvik via email. To my surprise, he replied.

Hey, fabulous… Would you like to visit me in Colombia?

•

There were discussions, arrangements, and of course, hesitations on my part. But I was growing older and had no real experience of the world outside Los Angeles; no assets to lose if I disappeared for a time.

There was also curiosity. It was, perhaps, my only chance to meet the sort of Good Samaritan.

So I boarded a plane, at no personal expense, and traveled to South America.

Satvik greeted me outside the El Dorado International Airport in Bogota. He wore the same silver hat and jacket that I’d seen in his press photos, and he carried a small poodle in one arm.

“It’s so wonderful to finally meet you,” he said before kissing me on the cheek. “This is Allison.” The dog lapped at my chin and I felt overwhelmed by affection.

“It’s great to meet you, too,” I said as I met the stare of a local militant. The man wore all black and cradled a machine gun.

Satvik took notice of my fear. “He’s with us. For protection.”

At that, we entered a black SUV and were escorted out of the city.

•

“You look thinner,” said Satvik on the way to our destination. “Like less of a gym rat.”

I couldn’t tell whether he’d meant it as an insult or compliment. “I stopped lifting weights after porn. But I’ve taken up long-
distance running.”

“Perfect,” he said. “You’ll need that endurance.”

“You’ve told me… Well, you haven’t told me much.” We’d talked at length over the phone, but only on the topics of culture and world exploration. Nothing specific of our plans. “What exactly are we doing here?”

“I have friends here in Colombia. Sometimes I visit my friends,” he said. “And you’re here…why?”

“Because birds fly in the sky.” I remembered our past and felt the need to bond with him.

Satvik laughed in a loud, staccato pattern. “Yes. And because my friends are boring. Oh, they’re all so rich and boring. You’re an entertainer.”

“Not outside of my bedroom.”

“Nonsense. You’ve heard of Juan Manuel Santos?”

I shook my head, “No.”

He burst out laughing—again—and it took some effort for him to regain his breath. “An American,” he said, and gripped me by the neck. “You know nothing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re perfect. An entertainer. Santos is the president of Colombia. We’re going to visit his son, Esteban. He’s twenty-two. Younger than you.”

•

Esteban Santos lived in an ultra-modern Craftsman atop a grassy hill in what looked like the jungle.

We were met at the door by several armed guards. They appeared nearly identical to the machine-gun-strapped militant who traveled with us from the airport. Satvik squeezed between them and I followed in after.

“Esteban!” Satvik shouted from the foyer.

A thin, boyish man scurried down the staircase. He wore nothing but a towel.

“Satvik, my friend!” They embraced and I stood close enough to see the sweat on Esteban’s forehead and the grinding of his jaw. He was surely under the influence of some raver pharmaceutical. “You must be Danny Wylde. Of course you are.” Esteban held me by the face. “I’ve done a lot of jerking to you. A lot of jerking.” And in his best California accent, “You’re truly wild, man.”

Satvik dropped his dog and rolled around on the floor, and Esteban joined him in laughter. I held onto my suitcase and suddenly wished that I’d never boarded the plane.

“When are we eating?” asked Satvik. “I’m starving.”

•

I forked down a healthy serving of patacones, chicharrón, and papa criolla—foreign taxonomy for what seemed to me to be bananas, pork, and spiced potatoes.

It had been sixteen hours since I’d eaten anything but airplane peanuts. So the meal put me in a better mood. Of course, the view from Esteban’s floor-to-ceiling window (a sun-drenched tropical paradise) helped, too.

“How do you know each other?” I asked.

“We met when I was young,” said Esteban. “My father took me to Europe. We visited a gallery in Milan. My father purchased…”

“No, he didn’t purchase anything,” said Satvik. “He couldn’t afford it.”

“Okay, he didn’t buy anything. I can’t remember. I was fucking obliterated.”

“He was obviously on drugs,” said Satvik. “That’s how we met.”

“This old Indian man…”

“I’m not old, you little shit.”

“Older than me. You’re Indian. It’s a fair way to describe you.” Esteban continued, “This Indian man of a moderate age found me in the toilet and asked if I had any ecstasy.”

“He was touching me, you see, like children do when they first discover psychoactives. ‘Oh, you’re so soft. I can feel the slickness of your aura,’ and nonsense like this. In several languages. Spanish, English, and… Maybe just the two.”

“I pulled down his pants,” said Esteban.

“Good,” said Satvik. “You admit it. What did I say to you?”

“You said that one day you’d pay me back.”

“That’s the end?” I asked, after several moments of silence.

“Of course, I sucked his cock,” said Esteban.

“And I’ve kept my promise,” said Satvik.

“That’s to be determined.” Esteban raised his voice and threw his arms into the air. “Ana Sofia!”

The woman who’d served us dinner suddenly appeared with a bottle of wine.

“Pour one for this wild man.” Esteban pointed to me but offered nothing to Satvik. For himself, he seemed content with a crystal flute of Coca Cola.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t drink.”

“But it’s a Le Pin,” said Esteban. “It cost me two thousand US dollars.”

Ana Sofia poured me a glass of wine despite my attempts to shoo her away.

“A toast?”

“To everything we do to save us from boredom,” said Satvik.

I raised my glass and sipped until I felt dizzy and blacked out.

•

A horror, like pain and nausea, brought me back from slumber. I saw—between the slits in my eyelids—Esteban knelt by my side. He reached into the scar on my abdomen, which was no longer a scar but a hole between flaps of skin.

“I think I feel it,” said Esteban.

“It’s there,” said Satvik. “I’m sure.”

Esteban pulled something from me and held it between his fingers. It was in the shape of rock and appeared the color of my insides.

“I’ll need to have it examined,” said Esteban.

“Oh God. You think I went through all this trouble to deliver a fake?”

“It’s a formality.”

“Look,” said Satvik. “He’s waking up.”

I could blink, but nothing else. My desire to escape was obstructed by complete and utter paralysis.

“Go and have your fun. It may be your last chance.”

Esteban positioned himself between my legs and tugged at his flaccid penis. “I think I’ve done too much blow.”

“That’s it?” said Satvik. “You were just going to fuck him?”

“I’ve ingested more drugs than God, and I still believe the orgasm to be a valid form of entertainment.”

“Whatever you say. While you sit there with your failed erection, I’d like to enjoy myself. I’m going to tell him everything.”

Esteban masturbated at various stages of success and played with my blood. Satvik sat cross-legged by my head and petted me.

“Christopher, I had so much hope for you. When you sent me that first short story, I thought I’d found a kindred spirit. You were truly manipulative. Wonderful. Your writing wasn’t bad, either. You at least showed potential.

“So I sent you a practical joke that should have assured you a degree of success. Remember the night you were kidnapped? I hired several mercenaries to cut you open and implant a rare diamond. But you were too stupid to dig it out. Did you even see a doctor? A simple X-ray might have changed your life. Now I’ve changed it for you.

“Esteban is an aristocrat, but a millennial, too. I would have given him a piece of my art, but the youth don’t appreciate any work that takes up space. Their parents accumulated wealth, property, and material possessions. Someone like Esteban wants only an experience. Of course, he wants money, too. So I’ve given him your diamond. The experience is you.”

“Get out of the way,” said Esteban suddenly. He’d worked himself up to a semi-rigid state and needed to put himself inside of me. It didn’t take long for him to come.

But my body wasn’t through with its labor. I was poked, prodded, stabbed, and shot. When it was over, and I thought myself dead, I felt nothing but relief.

I only cried when I awoke in a field, missing both my arms and legs. A small peasant girl stood above me and screamed. It was then I knew my value had been used up.

LOVE III

The Dissolution of a Post-Porn Relationship

2013��2015

“I’ll be yours forever,” I said on the night we first made love. Andrea prefaced my vow with something even more unreasonable. In the moments that followed, we were honest and meant the same thing.

We’d both been whores and mediocre porn stars, and had our time to experience the sexual palates of life. The world around us had moved toward the celebration of sexual liberty. But to us, it seemed old-fashioned. We preferred each other’s company and planned to give our bodies to the ritual of monogamy.

•

We were off to a good start. I turned down offers to sling my dick and Andrea quit working altogether. When the fear would rise in our guts, we’d fuck, and she’d cut herself open. We’d say, “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to die together anyway. Who cares if it happens next week?”

•

She liked to talk about dying. Some days, it would freak me out. I’d get worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger on myself, and that I’d waste away all on my own.

Her sugar daddy, Phil, told me to relax. “Girls like Andrea… They’re too narcissistic for suicide.” It made me feel better. Maybe it was his way of bonding with me. We did it often. Because Andrea would overdose at least once a month on the pills he gave her.

•

At some point, I wondered whether Andrea was fucking Phil. Because he fed her and let her stay in his guesthouse for free. And because he gave her all the drugs she wanted, and even more that she didn’t.

“Are you fucking Phil?”

“You’ve heard me tell him, to his face, how fucking disgusting he is.” It was true, but I knew certain guys to get off on that sort of thing. “Every time he goes out with us, I have to think about whether or not we can get him into the club.” Another truth. Phil would accessorize his outfits with blue jeans and flaming, goth-kid, New-Rock boots. It was an interesting choice for a forty-five-year-old man.

“Is that a no?”

She stared at me in disbelief. Though, later in the day, she would walk around his house naked.

•

An unspoken rule formed between us. It seemed to say that we could exploit our bodies to outsiders, save for penetration.

I was okay with the compromise, because I was running low on cash and a New York executive offered me $1,000 to mail him a condom full of my semen.

I’d been having exclusive, unprotected sex with Andrea. So I found it hard to masturbate myself to orgasm while wearing a prophylactic.

“Can you help me with this?” I asked.

“That’s gross,” she said, and then told me to jerk off in the bathroom.

“It’s crazy how historically valuable my cum is. How valuable it still appears to be. You don’t want anything to do with it. Won’t even let it near your mouth.”

“People used to give me a lot of money to swallow loads.”

“This guy in New York wants to swallow my cum. That’s what he’s paying me for.”

“I’d rather you come in my pussy,” she said while watching cartoons.

I locked myself in the bathroom and used my phone to look at PornHub videos of me fucking Andrea’s best friend. They helped to fill the condom.

•

I first had sex for money to subsidize my film school education. So it only made sense that—removed from conventional prostitution—I would find work as a full-time video editor. The labor was boring, but it allowed me the stability to dream about owning a house and raising children.

Andrea mimicked my thoughts about the future. “I’ve had enough abortions. With you… I want to have your baby.”

It was cute and gave me something to look forward to.

•

With talk of domestication, good moods were easy to come by. But they never lasted long. It was partly my fault for having a job and being stressed out. I also blamed Andrea. Though mostly (almost entirely), I blamed Phil.

It was difficult to plan for the future when an old man kept getting my girl blackout drunk and giving her coke; when he kept giving her Xanax and more coke; when he provided a steady stream of whatever to feed her growing chemical dependency.

Phil was great for when Andrea didn’t want to work, and he provided the perfect environment for being horny and suicidal. Past that, it was hard to understand his appeal.

“Maybe you should get some help,” I said to Andrea. “Whatever it costs, I’ll put it on my credit card.”

She was crying, bleeding, and had my cum inside her, so she said, “Yes.”

Then she told Phil about rehab, and I was banned from the guesthouse.

•

I wanted to not be afraid of Phil. He was small and out of shape, and I could have bested him in any spontaneous fight. But he was ex-military and imported drugs from a Mexican cartel. He had stupid friends, like eighties celebrities, but also the kind he could pay to have me killed.

“Maybe we should move away. Get a place together. Just you and me.”

Andrea agreed, and so I had to imagine my plan in realistic terms.

“Do you think you could get a job? Just for, like, a month, so that I know you can keep it? I can’t afford to support both of us on my salary.”

“I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with my life,” said Andrea. “I could be a bartender. One day, I could open my own lounge.”

She used Phil’s money to sign up for a two-week course in mixology. After several months of not graduating, she dropped out.

•

“I can’t live here like this,” said Andrea. “Phil has sketchier and sketchier people coming over. And kids. This guy from a Disney show stopped over to buy coke, and he brought his little brother, who’s only fourteen. Because I’m not working, Phil makes me cut up the blow and put it into little baggies. I’m an accomplice. When we get raided, I’m going to jail.”

“What if you do a few porn scenes? Just so you can save up some money?”

“You want me to do that? I told you that I belonged to you. Only you. I don’t want another man to touch me. Ever.”

•

I let a man touch me and fuck me up the ass. It was the only way we could afford the deposit on our new apartment.

I felt guilty about it, but I also thought that I was saving Andrea’s life.

She fought with me on the night we moved in, but it ended—like it usually did—with sex and vows of our undying love.

“This really feels like our place,” she said and pushed her nose into my neck.

“It is,” I said, “and only the beginning.”

After a week, our art was on the walls and the bedroom smelled like the both of us together.

Once, when she was out and I was all alone, I felt a sense of peace. Everything good seemed possible.

•

The lack of distraction (i.e., Phil) seemed to help. Andrea landed part-time work as a hostess at Tinhorn Flats.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said, and meant it. Ten dollars an hour was better than nothing.

On day two of her employment, she told me that she’d called Phil, because she’d had a panic attack and needed him to deliver Xanax.

“I know I offered before, but maybe I could pay for you to see someone. You don’t have to go away. Maybe just see a doctor? So you don’t have to rely on Phil forever.”

She nodded.

I called a psychiatrist and gave him my credit card information. Then I put him on the phone with Andrea.

•

I often worked from home. Andrea would use my car to drive to her hostess job. She’d come home late and say, “Don’t worry. I’ve only had a few drinks. And I only stopped by Phil’s to hang out with other people.”

I didn’t think of myself as authoritarian, so I tried not to care. Maybe I didn’t. It was just biology. I could have kept my cool if I was allowed to sleep.

Andrea wasn’t good at sleeping, so I wasn’t either. She watched cartoons until early in the morning. She paced the room and whispered to herself about where she hid bags of coke and prescription pills.

Every day, she told me that she loved me. When we stopped having sex, it was just because she quit her job and felt depressed.

•

I didn’t sleep with other people, but I masturbated a lot and sold pictures and videos of my hard cock to fans on the Internet.

The money was enough to afford us a fancy Christmas dinner.

“Are you going to open your present?” asked Andrea.

I tore through the wrapping paper to find a commercial art print she’d purchased at Marshall’s. It was aesthetically uninteresting, but it read, Love You More.

The phrase was something she often whispered to me. I think, because it was a line she’d heard in a Miley Cyrus song. When she said it, I forgot about how much I hated my life.

I hung the print above my desk while she did her makeup.

“Do you mind if I go out tonight? I loved our little holiday, but I want to celebrate how I used to. With my friends.”

“Of course,” I said. “You can do whatever you want.”

I watched a movie by myself and occasionally checked the social media profiles on my phone. Around midnight, I saw pictures of Andrea on Instagram. She was sipping from a bottle of Maker’s whiskey in Phil’s backyard.

She didn’t come home until late the next day.

•

“It’s weird that you spend all this time with a man who hates me,” I said. “He banned me from his house and basically insists that I’m not a part of your social life.”

She delivered some explanation that I cried over and didn’t listen to.

“Fuck that guy,” I said. “It’s either him or me.”

•

I bought us expensive tickets to a New Year’s Eve celebration. Andrea was on her new, doctor-prescribed medication, which impacted her ability to consume large amounts of alcohol. She did it anyway. As we left the party, she fell into me and asked, “When are we going to watch the ball drop?”

I said, “We did the ‘midnight kiss’ thing, like, thirty minutes ago.”

She laughed and ran into a bar on Hollywood Boulevard so that she could dance with a stranger.

I called an Uber.

•

She stomped around our apartment and yelled things like, “Out of all the shit you could do to me, it had to be this! Where the fuck did you put it, Christopher? Where’s my fucking blow?”

She threatened to chuck my iMac out the window, and I held her by the wrists. That’s when she started to cry. “I’ve never told anyone this before. My mom found out that I fucked her husband, and she beat the shit out of me. I was only eight or nine. It doesn’t make sense, but…to deal with being raped, I started forcing my little sister to eat my pussy. I’m going to Hell. I’m sure of it.”

I brought her head close to my chest and told her that everything would be okay. Eventually, I suggested that we go to sleep.

Andrea threatened to kill me and ran out the door, screaming.

•

I stopped thinking of myself as a person with feelings. But it was clear, from a point of survival, that I needed a change of space.

Our apartment was small, but there was at least a wall dividing the bedroom from the living room. I drove myself to Target and bought an extra blanket. Because the couch seemed like a better place to sleep.

Back at home, I found blood on the doorknob. There was more inside—on the floor and on our bedsheets. Andrea had crafted a sort of shrine on top of the pillows. There were various knickknacks that we’d given to each other. A suicide letter. And a framed picture. She’d smeared blood on the glass over her face.

Someone told me that addicts stopped developing at the age they first succumbed to substance abuse. Andrea had been fifteen. Maybe younger. If it was true, the cheesy suicide performance made sense.

There was no corpse in our apartment. So I knew Andrea was out there, alive.

I called the cops, because it seemed like the right thing to do. They found her at Phil’s.

•

Andrea was upset. So was I. Our relationship was over. Then we cried in each other’s arms and it wasn’t. We fucked, and we were in love all over again.

She told me she’d get sober: a forty-eight-hour promise.

I took her out to dinner, because she said she’d help with rent, and I believed that I could afford a good meal.

•

“That guy, Steven, keeps calling me about taking pictures for his dominatrix site. But I know what he really wants to talk about.”

“What?” I asked.

“He’s a pimp,” she said. “He wants to know if I’ll turn tricks for him.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I just had one regular client, it would help me out. Just for a little bit. Long enough for me to get back on my feet.”

“That’s cool,” I said.

“Just so you know… If you were to fuck anyone else, even for money, I don’t think I could handle it.”

•

Andrea came through with two months’ rent. She paid me in advance while crying. “Do you know what the fuck I had to do for this?”

I assumed she’d had sex. It seemed like a fair deal.

“Babe, I’ll be yours forever,” I said, as if it would make her feel better.

•

The next day, I went to the mall with Andrea. She bought us clothes from H&M and insisted that I get a pedicure with her.

An old Thai woman painted clear polish on to my toenails. I felt like royalty.

Andrea read a magazine and casually mentioned that her john from the night prior had been too fucked up on meth to get his dick hard. She’d mostly danced around his house. At one point, she might have handled his flaccid penis.

I smiled at her. We ate ice cream together. There were moments of happiness in which we nuzzled each other’s faces, like those cats you see in stupid memes.

•

We planned a trip to New York City. My sister was going to be married in Brooklyn. I thought it would be nice for us to attend the wedding together.

My work schedule only afforded me the weekend. Andrea wanted to stay for several days longer. She had some East Coast friends she wanted to visit, and she’d scheduled some unpaid fashion shoots and a porn gig—her only income for the month.

The morning of our departure, Andrea experienced her first herpes outbreak. She’d likely contracted the virus from me.

“Fuck you.”

I’d lived with herpes for six years. In porn, it was as common as the flu. Her reaction seemed, to me, extreme. “It’s fine. Just a little nuisance that visits when your immune system’s down, or you’re feeling stressed out.”

“That’s every day of my life,” she said. “What am I going to do about my shoot?”

I gave her some Valtrex and said that it would likely go away before her scheduled fuck date.

•

Because of the outbreak, we weren’t allowed to have sex. It made us miserable. Her body remained attractive to me. She claimed to feel the same way about mine. Our skin—together—brought us pleasure. Perhaps it was all we had left.

At the wedding, Andrea said, “I’m tired. Can you walk me back to the hotel?” I agreed and then returned to my sister’s reception. Someone took a photo in which I smiled.

We spent the next day riding subways and not talking much. I suggested we check out the MOMA. We arrived an hour before it closed. Still, it put me in a decent mood. Probably because I didn’t have to look at Andrea. Probably because she wouldn’t look at me.

The art had distracted us long enough to feel cordial. We began to kiss each other on our hotel bed.

“The blister’s near my pussy,” said Andrea. “Maybe you could fuck my ass.”

I fucked her shallow while she rubbed herself. Then I shot my cum inside her and took a picture on my phone.

Someone I met on the Internet sent me a forty-dollar Amazon gift card in exchange for the picture of my cock in Andrea’s ass.

•

I flew back to Los Angeles.

Andrea left voicemails about how she had to cancel her porn shoot. Then she left voicemails about how I was a piece of shit for not answering my phone.

I listened to the recordings and took a nap. There was a lot of work to do when I woke up.

•

“Not tonight, babe,” said Andrea. She looked out the window as I failed to deliver a kiss.

“How was the rest of your trip?”

“I have a really bad headache,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

We drove home from the airport, and then watched cartoons in bed. I lay close to her as I fell asleep. “Love you,” I said as my arm slid from her body.

“Love you more.”

•

I worked at my desk and Andrea disappeared for the day.

A friend invited me to a death metal show in South Central Los Angeles. When I arrived at the concert, I received a text: Sorry dude. I can’t make it. I was alone in the crowd until a girl approached me and asked for a ride home.

The girl didn’t mention that she recognized me until we were parked outside her apartment in Hollywood. “You’re a porn star, right?”

“Used to be.”

“You should put my number in your phone.”

I did, and we stared at each other for some time. She was physically unattractive, but I’d forgotten what it was like to feel desire in someone’s eyes.

Her hand reached for mine and then rested on my leg. “You can come inside if you want,” she said.

Instead, I drove home and slept with thoughts of my girlfriend and how she might die.

•

I woke with my face pressed to Andrea’s neck. She said, “Who were you with last night?”

“My friend, Michael.” I lied, for no reason. “You don’t know him.”

She pushed me off the bed.

“This is fucking stupid,” I said.

“You checked out months ago.”

“Yeah.”

She packed her belongings and asked to use my car so that she could move out. I agreed and helped to stuff her desk in the back seat. She made five trips to Phil’s house and then returned with the fat, old fuck, so that he could take her away forever.

I stayed inside for the last part; did a lot of crying and felt as if my chest would cave in.

Phil slashed my tires, as if to say he’d won.

•

My phone lit up with a text from Andrea. I glowed with the thought that I might have her back.

Can I ask you a question…? Did you get fucked by a man while you were with me? When I was packing up, I saw the enema. You would never need that. Be honest. It’s okay…

I began to text her back, even though I knew that she wouldn’t believe me. Then I considered how I’d stay with her in her memory. On top of everything else, I’d be a liar or a whore. I deleted what I’d written and sent her no reply. It was the only answer that would tell her I was both.

AFTERLIFE

Transition

2013

I’d learned to process almost everything through fucking. The thought that sex was no longer possible was akin to dread. It was the loss of pleasure, love, livelihood, and my ability to cope. While it was once just a part of me, sex had become my sense of self. To take it away was as close as I’d felt to death.

•

I cried on my way to the hospital. It was the third time I ended up there on account of my erection. I’d considered myself drug-free for the latter half of my life. But I’d spent my entire twenties consuming erectile dysfunction pharmaceuticals. Over the past two years, on a more-than-frequent basis.

It was normal by default. To be a male porn star meant that you swallowed pills or shot up your dick.

I didn’t think of it as fake. I’d found my process of arousal and allowed a sense of sincerity into much of my work. But the fear of failure always loomed. The workflow of modern porn didn’t allow for the unpredictability of human performance. My psyche didn’t allow for it either. I’d wrapped up my identity in the ability to fuck anyone under most any condition.

The choice was to fuck like a god until I couldn’t fuck at all, or to bring my sex back down to earth. An emergency room doctor had my attention once he’d opened a hole in my penis and let it bleed out. “You keep doing this and you’re not going to be able to get an erection, period.” There was something in his voice. It suggested that I’d already gone too far.

“What the fuck am I going to do?” I said out loud while driving home. It was meant for something greater than myself—a god I didn’t believe in.

•

A girl texted me that night. She thought that I was still at work. Her message was obscene in a way that might normally put me in her bed within the hour.

We’d fucked in movies and gone out twice the week prior. “I normally hate people like you,” we said together. But we’d connected on something like emotional vulnerability, aesthetics, and whatever chemical addiction we had to each other.

I told her half the truth: the doctor’s orders that I couldn’t be aroused for several days. That I couldn’t have sex for more than a week. My genitals were bruised and sore. They looked beaten with a hammer.

For whatever reason, she agreed to wait. We went from phone calls apart to nights together, our bodies fully clothed. I wanted to feel loved before it became clear that I couldn’t please her the way I used to. Before my impotence was forced out into the open.

I nearly failed on the night of my disclosure. My body wanted hers but couldn’t find a way to show it. She allowed me to penetrate her otherwise—with a needle. Then she did the same to me. I jerked off while she pierced my chest, and my cock engorged for the first time since I’d quit porn.

I flipped her over and she ripped the needles out while we fucked. My blood dripped onto her skin, and it became an act of love.

Mostly, I claimed to believe in nothing. Then there were moments where I couldn’t help but think, “This was meant to happen.”

•

The financial ramifications were next on my mind. A friend helped me with a resume, and another with meetings in the mainstream job market. No one knew who I was, so nothing stuck. I only received vague advice, like to apply somewhere else or speak to my old university counselors.

But I didn’t mean to leave porn, and had nothing against it. I knew people there. They knew me, too. Some reached out and offered me work. I accepted quickly, and with gratitude.

Two of my employers were gay porn producers. The nature of their sets put me somewhat at ease. I liked the conversations of male models. Without female sexuality in the room, the boys felt more honest. I could relate to their process, because mine used to be something like it.

They spoke of fluid sexuality, steroids, workout regimes, erectile dysfunction drugs, and so on. The myth of natural-born, straight-porn machismo was nowhere to be found.

For the first time, I stood with a camera and waited for an eighteen-year-old boy to ejaculate. It was supposed to be obnoxious. I knew most crews hated it when the male performers took too long. But I found something sincere and sweet about it. The vulnerability was hard to find elsewhere.

Closed eyes. Stroking. A boy tried so hard to lose himself in the fantasies of his head. The moment he acknowledged the rest of us, it stopped working. And an editor would cut it all out of the film.

I hated how quickly it lost its charm. After a week and a half of working ten-to-eighteen-hour days—sometimes for a tenth of what a model earned to get fucked—I didn’t care. It was just something that happened to drag out the day.

•

A month later, there were more opportunities. I pursued each one; tried to find my place in the market. It was clear that I wouldn’t starve, but I couldn’t tell more than that.

I’d honed my production skills over the years without the need for commercial viability. My film, music, and other projects were funded because I fucked for a living. Because I had both time and disposable income. I fed off the artistic expression of my own ideas and the consumption of others’. But mine were not important to the rest of the world. Not in such a way to become commercially sustainable. The frequency and leisure with which I’d indulged in my art was the hardest thing to lose. I’m still processing it now.

It shouldn’t have been so difficult to come to terms with. My new form of work was just more typical. I did something useful for people and they paid me. It only took up more of my time.

•

I thought the porn sex would be something I missed. If I were alone, perhaps it would be true. But I found some peace in monogamy. After a thousand paid partners, I fantasized about only the one. It was strange to know that I’d never have to fuck again. It would only happen if I wanted to, and if someone else did, too.

The feedback was the hardest thing to part with. I was curious to see how long it would take for people to forget who I was, and if it would matter to me at all.

Six Months After Retirement

2014

The greatest skill I’ve learned since I quit porn is how to sit still. Sometimes for twelve or thirteen hours a day.

People invested thousands of dollars and years of their lives for the opportunity. I was one of them. I went to school for it. It was around the time I first became a professional fucker. Porn helped me pay for the chance to earn a desk job.

Sometimes my job involved editing porn. I could do it from home. To break up the monotony, I usually masturbated. It was never to the stuff I was working on. But the porn I used to get off was just as boring.

Before or after work, I’d go to the gym. Sometimes people recognized me in the locker room. They told me that they liked my porn. It used to be important for me to hear. Then it became surreal.

In a hyper-masculinized way, I knew my best years were behind me. I used to fuck at least fifteen different people a month and get paid for it. My disposition wasn’t such to let me do it again.

Men told me that I’d lived their dream and asked how they might live it, too. I either told them it was impossible or said nothing at all. My way into porn was being young, sort of cute, and spontaneous. It wasn’t something I could turn into advice.

At one point, I started to write about porn. I had hopes to portray my life as something more than it was. People seemed to find my job interesting. I liked the idea of being interesting. Sometimes I felt close enough to the material to find it interesting myself.

Some political stuff happened, and it made me feel like I had purpose. There was a state-sponsored agency and a private one, too—the usual sort of outsiders that tried to fix a problem and mostly fucked it up.

I went to meetings to try and stop the process of fucking things up. It didn’t really help, but I wrote about the experience. It felt important. Like, as a white man, I was still able to document the struggle of my own marginalized sex-worker community. I’d always been one to fight the hegemony of my birth. Eventually, I lost.

The struggle continued without me. As conventional and underpaid as the porn star had become, someone still schemed up new legislation that proposed to throw her in jail. It was introduced in the name of safety.

I read about it some. Then I sat at my desk until it was time for me to watch television, fuck my girlfriend, or sleep. My fight became about finding time to write stories and play guitar. In place of activism, I preferred my few days off.

The depression I felt in the wake of post-porn performance didn’t manifest as much. I imagined it to be the same for anyone who once felt young and then had to grow up. I’d entered porn knowing that it would end with the likeness of my youth. The job never promised a future. It only prolonged my ability to dream about one.

Nothing happened after that I would describe as bad. I didn’t miss the sex or experience a void in my life. I only felt tired more often, and more in touch with what I once understood to be normal.

I’d still come across text, conversations, and opinions on pornography. Some insisted that paid fuckers still needed to be saved. I’d often think: What a worthless crusade it must be to snatch a young body from its value. Time will do it for you. I’ve learned it won’t discriminate.

Twelve Months After Retirement

2015

When I was twenty-one years old, I asked my lawyer uncle for help in resolving a contract dispute with my then-employer—an adult production company.

My uncle had just learned of my work as a performer. He’d had a conversation with my grandparents, who expressed hesitancy in discussing what I’d been up to, and mistook their secrecy as evidence of my homosexuality.

My uncle phoned my mother to share his support for my assumed sexual identity and coming-out process, which he immediately revoked when he discovered that I was fucking for a living.

I thought he’d help me out anyway, because we were family. And he did—sort of. But the conversation turned into a mild argument, which escalated via email, and covered all the typical arguments constructed by highly imaginative, or at least exaggerative, anti-porn feminists.

At the time, I was not as well versed in the politics and hyperbole behind his stance and simply knew that his claims did not reflect my experience. I remembered being more upset by the fact that, after explaining how I was involved in super-cool feminist and alternative pornography, he said something like, “Every generation of young people thinks they’ve invented sex. You’re not doing anything new and you’re not helping anybody.”

It was funny that, years later, I almost felt the same. Arguably, there were niche markets, like queer porn, that had helped a substantial number of people come to terms with their sexuality, or work through feelings of shame that had been ingrained in them by something like a conservative, religious upbringing. Though, in all honesty, that type of material comprised maybe two percent of my work.

To agree with my uncle meant absolutely nothing. It was not to condemn porn, or even have much of an opinion on it. Because I felt the exact same way about every form of entertainment. What differentiated the new from the old was completely trivial, and for the most part, it didn’t do a bit of good for anyone. But I’d devoted most of my life to making entertainment stuff, and I spent most of my free time consuming literature, music, films, and even porn. In the simplest terms, I enjoyed it.

It was just that I’d also spent so much time trying to convince people that porn was okay; at its worst, no different than any other bullshit where a company paid a person and exploited them. Once I’d been given the opportunity to no longer exist as an arbitrarily controversial laborer, I felt a vast sense of relief at taking a break, perhaps forever, from the political conversation surrounding porn.

There would continue to be those who took up the torch and did some good for the representation of sex worker communities. I wished the best for their cause. But I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nausea every time I read a new article about how porn was either good or bad, for any reason.

It was like discussing religion. The Christians knew they were right, and so did the Muslims, and the atheists believed it was all made up. However, most people seemed to have a casual relationship with spirituality (and porn), and that wouldn’t change no matter how many articles flooded the world’s Facebook feeds.

I’d hoped that we could all agree on certain realities: that a validation took place when one discovered they were sexually desirable; that on the whole, sex was fun; that when money was thrown into the mix, it became pretty fucking easy to understand why someone would choose to be a hooker.

But not everyone saw it that way. So sex work was still a reason for people to get mad, discriminate, criminalize, and so on.

I’d come to argue—with little fervor—that it didn’t matter. Or that it shouldn’t.

Like, how upset could one be about cat memes, or cheeseburgers, or music? By evidence of the Internet: really, really upset. At the end of the day, it was just stuff that entertained people or made them feel good. It was the same with pornography.

What went along with it—morality, labor laws, consumer addiction, exploitation, rape culture, feminism, and all the rest—was simply what one had to grapple with as a cultural warrior of the twenty-first century. None of it had to do with porn, except in the sense that porn existed, and it was influenced and reflected by the world around it.

•

I continued to work in the adult industry, my role removed from sexual fatigue and fulfillment. My job had to do with cameras, lights, and video-editing software. Sometimes it was interesting. Other times not. When I walked away at the end of the day, I wasn’t motivated to tell my story.

I still put myself out there as Danny Wylde, and I thought it had to do with what was attached to the name: an impermanence that existed in the past.

The novelty of learning to fuck and make money was almost irrelevant. I liked both things (fucking and money) and they will likely remain important to me until my death. But a public persona—thematically tied to the most boring class of machismo-pumped hip-hop music videos—was not what kept me attached.

I loved being in the midst of something that I knew couldn’t last. It was like the time before I entered university and people would say, about my life, that anything was possible. I held onto the myth that I’d temporarily escaped real labor, even though I publicly contradicted what I knew to be true.

The idea lived on in other people’s minds. Those who knew me only by the hard cock they saw on their screen. Some believed that my life was still the same. They said that I was still doing a good job (i.e., “keep it up”); that they wished their lives were so suffused with fun.

It was obnoxious, mostly. But then I remembered how I didn’t used to fear spending time on useless ideas; how I blew all my extra money making work that existed in a vacuum. The works, and their practice, had since become hobbies. They were the things I snuck away to.

I found the discussion of pornography as anything but conventional to be almost absurd. Yet I couldn’t help but feel thankful toward those who made it clear that my profession wasn’t real. Because I kept that somewhere inside me, and I believed it every now and again. And though my memory was surely nostalgic, I remembered existing in some ethereal space where I could do what I wanted and might later “figure it out.”

The Musician

2016

I heard about my father’s death on the first day of my new job. It was a presumptive passing. His body had yet to be found. But he’d been missing long enough to rule out whatever else. That’s what I’d been told.

“Because of his blood disorder, and because of the footprints,” said my father’s lawyer, on the phone. “Because his footprints lead into the forest. For at least a mile.”

“Did anyone look for him?” I asked. “Was there a search party?”

“Yes, something like that. Months ago.”

I hadn’t spoken to my father in over a year. He’d left me voicemails, every few weeks, like he’d done when we were close. I stopped listening because he took up too much of my time and didn’t pay me. Because he always asked about my life, and what good would come of it.

I might have continued on and played my role as son, but I preferred to speak to men whom I could easily lie to.

•

“My condolences to you and your family,” said my employer, Alexander. “Of course, I can’t keep you here at a time like this. It’s unfortunate for both of us. Though, I have to ask. When do you plan to return?”

Alexander was the chief operating officer at The Room—Los Angeles’s oldest manufacturer of BDSM apparel. He’d given me a position in their newly developed video marketing department.

“I’ll fly out tonight,” I said, “and be back as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” said Alexander. “Keep me posted. We start on the campaign next week… The one for rubber cock rings.”

•

I checked my email during the Uber ride to the airport. The standard messages filled my inbox: cam client requests, inquiries from stained underwear collectors, cock pics, admiration turned to hate mail when not responded to, and selfies from men who believed that I might help them break into the porn industry.

Below my inbox, there was a folder labeled “garbage.” It was where I’d filtered most messages from my friends and family. Given the circumstances, it seemed right to take a browse and see what I’d been missing.

There were 210 unread emails in the “garbage” folder. The most recent was from my father’s wife, Esperanza. She’d sent it two weeks prior:

I see your status updates on Facebook. I know you’re out there, enjoying your life. It’s cruel of you to say nothing. Even your brother has come to visit. Our lawyer will attempt to contact you. He’ll be your last chance. I’m selling the house. If you don’t respond, I’ll burn the last of your father’s belongings. The ones he meant for you.

•

My father’s house stood at the top of Banner Mountain in Nevada City, California. A For Sale sign stuck up from the ground, beside the driveway, as if any buyer had cause to drive so far into the wilderness. The lawyer I’d spoken to sat on the front step.

“It’s after midnight,” said the lawyer.

“My flight was delayed,” I said. “And the drive…”

“You could have called.”

I shrugged and took the keys from his hand.

“There’s a collection,” he said and led me toward the living room. “It’s everything he left you.”

The items had been stacked and strewn, haphazardly, along the carpet, as if to punish the scavenger for the act of digging through. There were boxes without labels, mounds of unfolded clothing, books and albums with pictures leaking from the pages, old vinyl (mostly German opera), a collection of VHS tapes, and some art I recognized from the 1996 county psychic fair.

“I won’t be able to take all of this back to Los Angeles,” I said.

“Your stepmother…”

“I prefer you didn’t call her that,” I said.

“Esperanza has scheduled a pickup for tomorrow afternoon. Anything you leave will be disposed of.”

“You’re not giving me much time.”

“It’s been a month since I first tried contacting you. And that was after the funeral.” The lawyer sat across the room on my father’s old couch; slumped there, like he planned to stay awhile.

We met eyes for several seconds. Maybe longer. I studied him, and was sure he studied me. His affectation looked familiar. It was the same I’d seen on every man I’d been alone with over the course of the past year.

I asked the obvious question. “You want a blow job, or what?”

His face turned red. “I’ll be back in the morning. There are papers you’ll need to sign.”

•

A moment passed in which I felt a desire to mourn my father’s death. I opened one of his old photo albums and hoped for a memory that would cause my eyes to water.

There he was, bloated from years of alcoholism, standing next to Esperanza on their wedding day. I flipped through several pages and saw him as a young, bearded oaf with long hair, sitting cross-legged beside a teepee. He looked happy. Probably because I hadn’t been born yet.

Near the back, there were photos of my grandmother. She’d lived in Germany, so I’d met her only once or twice. Maybe a third time when she was dying of cancer. I smiled, slightly, at the images from her childhood. One showed her marching in a Hitler Youth rally.

I grew bored and looked at my phone. The reception was horrible. It took several minutes just to load up my Instagram feed. I could only watch one video, on loop, of a girl I barely knew, in bed and wearing only her bra and underwear, writhing to the beat of a Drake song.

My stomach ached a little, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten since morning. I moved to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found a jar of pickles and an expired block of cheese.

I couldn’t sleep. Not in my father’s house. Or not yet. But I needed to take my mind off the hunger and everything else.

The house was mostly empty except for the pile of trash that had been passed on to me. But I found a television, perched atop a DVD/VCR combo, in the master bedroom. There was no cable or satellite connection, and no antenna. Esperanza must have forgotten about the old box. Or she’d left it for me so that I could sift through my father’s VHS collection.

•

I grabbed four tapes at random and shoved one, with a scratched-out label, into the VCR. It seemed to start in the middle of a home movie.

A red-haired man appeared suddenly in frame. He sat on a short stone wall and tapped his fingers at the lip of a bongo drum. I heard my father’s voice, from behind the camera, hum some wordless hippie shrill.

My finger itched, and I pressed at the fast-forward button until a scene played at night, with men circled around a bonfire. My father must have been there, among them.

“Let me read now from Robert Bly’s Iron John,” said a man—likely the one who’d appeared earlier. The image was dark, but I could see that his hair was red and that his face was deeply freckled.

“‘The fifties male had a clear vision of what a man was, and what male responsibilities were, but the isolation and one-sidedness of his vision were dangerous,’” said the red-haired man as he read from an open book.

“‘During the sixties, another sort of man appeared. The waste and violence of the Vietnam War made men question whether they knew what an adult male really was. If manhood meant Vietnam, did they want any part of it? Meanwhile, the feminist movement encouraged men to actually look at women, forcing them to become conscious of concerns and sufferings that the fifties male labored to avoid. As men began to examine women’s history and women’s sensibility, some men began to notice what was called their feminine side and pay attention to it. This process continues to this day, and I would say that most contemporary men are involved in it in some way.

“‘In the seventies, I began to see, all over the country, a phenomenon that we might call the soft male. Sometimes, even today, when I look out at an audience, perhaps half the young males are what I’d call soft. They’re lovely, valuable people. I like them. They’re not interested in harming the earth or starting wars. There’s a gentle attitude toward life in their whole being and style of living.

“‘But many of these men are not happy. You quickly notice the lack of energy in them. They are life-preserving but not exactly life-giving. Ironically, you often see these men with strong women who positively radiate energy.’”

The camera zoomed toward the fire pit. Flames filled the screen and turned fuzzy, as if the videographer hadn’t known how to use the focus ring on his lens.

The voice of the red-haired man continued. “‘Here we have the finely tuned young man, ecologically superior to his father, sympathetic to the whole harmony of the universe, yet he himself has little vitality to offer.’”

A shaky view of a man’s face replaced the fire. His features came into focus. He looked like one of the men I’d seen before in a wide shot. The camera panned to another face and didn’t stay for long. It seemed like the videographer was moving from one man to the next.

“I first learned about the anguish of the soft men when they told their stories in early men’s gatherings,” said the red-haired man. “In nineteen eighty, the Lama Community in New Mexico asked me to teach a conference for men only, their first, in which about forty men participated. Each day we concentrated on one Greek god and one old story, and then late in the afternoons we gathered to talk. When the younger men spoke, it was not uncommon for them to be weeping within five minutes. The amount of grief and anguish in these younger men was astounding to me.

“‘Part of their grief rose out of the remoteness from their fathers, which they felt keenly, but partly, too, grief flowed from trouble in their marriages or relationships. They had learned to be receptive, but receptivity wasn’t enough to carry their marriages through troubled times. In every relationship something fierce is needed once in a while: both the man and the woman need to have it. But at the point when it was needed, often the young man came up short. He was nurturing, but something else was required—for his relationship, and for his life.

“‘The soft male was able to say, “I can feel your pain, and I consider your life as important as mine, and I will take care of you and comfort you.” But he could not say what he wanted, and stick by it. Resolve of that kind was a different matter.’”

It seemed that each man around the bonfire had been featured in a close-up. I recognized none of them as my father and wondered if he’d been the one to operate the camera.

“‘In The Odyssey,” said the red-haired man, “‘Hermes instructs Odysseus that when he approaches Circe, who stands for a certain kind of matriarchal energy, he is to lift or show his sword. In these early sessions it was difficult for many of the younger men to distinguish between showing the sword and hurting someone. One man, a kind of incarnation of certain spiritual attitudes of the sixties, a man who had actually lived in a tree for a year outside Santa Cruz, found himself unable to extend his arm when it held a sword. He had learned so well not to hurt anyone that he couldn’t lift the steel, even to catch the light of the sun on it. But showing a sword doesn’t necessarily mean fighting. It can also suggest a joyful decisiveness.’”

There was a pause in the red-haired man’s voice, as if he meant to continue on, and then a sound, like half a word, before a cut in the tape.

The screen went black for several moments.

Soon after the next image appeared, I began to shiver uncontrollably.

There was no sound. But I saw a mattress wrapped in plastic bags, and a boy tied, face-down and spread-eagle, to the top of it. His hair was light blonde, maybe even white. From the size of him, I would have guessed that he was five years old.

The boy looked over his shoulder, toward the camera, with his wide blue eyes.

A man entered the frame. At least, a part of him. I couldn’t see his face. He wore a brown, loose-fitted shirt and no pants. Coarse, red hair peeked out from his ass.

The screen went black again, and I watched in darkness until the tape reached its end.

•

My skin felt moist, and my clothing stuck to me. It was like I’d been out for a run. Only I was cold and barely breathing.

I rewound the tape, to bring light into the room, and paused the frame at the scene of the bonfire.

What had the ginger been on about with all that talk of soft men? I felt like I’d been spoken to, and worse, because I hadn’t understood a word of it. Perhaps I didn’t want to. The red-haired man, and those around him, looked like the type my father called his friends—cultural embarrassments; reluctant professionals who wore Birkenstocks and liked to roll around in the dirt.

But what had come after? I tried to form an explanation for the boy on the mattress; the ropes; his bare skin. The image called to me and made me fear the night. It made me fear the thought of pressing play and what I might find if I looked closer. Because I’d been a boy once. My hair had been white, and my eyes wide and blue.

•

The lawyer returned in the morning, just as I was unloading a box of my father’s records and stuffing it full of VHS tapes.

“Sleep well?” asked the lawyer, as if he thought he’d told a joke.

“I’m taking these,” I said, and moved past him toward my rental car. “Esperanza can burn the rest.”

“Everything?”

“Except these tapes.”

The lawyer followed me as I dumped the box into the rental car’s trunk, and as I marched back to the house, and into the bathroom. He asked me, before I closed the door, if I knew when my father had written his will.

“Of course not,” I said. There was a wall between us, but I could sense the lawyer beside me, waiting.

“The day before he disappeared. Your father walked into my office and handed me a letter. We went over everything together. He was very specific about your inheritance.”

“My inheritance is a pile of shit.”

“Did you hear what I said? He wrote his will the day before he disappeared. You don’t find that odd?”

I thought about it some. Long enough to let the last of my piss dribble out. It was an unusual coincidence. “Are you suggesting that he committed suicide?”

“I’m suggesting that it’s odd.”

I exited the bathroom. The lawyer kept at my heels, like a parasite. “Does the Flour Garden Bakery still exist?” I asked him. “I’m starving. I need a cup of coffee.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” he said.

I checked the cupboards for any non-perishables that Esperanza might have passed over. There were two bottles of gin, near empty, beneath the kitchen sink. Otherwise, the place had been cleaned out.

“I also find it odd,” said the lawyer, “that your father gave you power of attorney in the case of a medical emergency.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said.

“He did. You were there to sign the forms.”

“Oh,” I said, and remembered several years back. My father asked me to let him die, when the time was right, but never in a hospital. He said that he preferred to be driven out into the forest so that his body could be eaten by wolves. “I thought those were a joke.”

“You wouldn’t even answer the phone when…”

“I know.”

We stared at each other for what felt like an hour. The lawyer took on the same affect that he’d had the night prior. I waited, because I thought he’d offer me money. Instead, he said, “You’ll have to sign for the tapes.”

•

I couldn’t find the bakery I was looking for. It hadn’t necessarily been torn down or replaced. I’d just been afflicted by a certain amnesia. Much of my hometown appeared foreign to me. I had to use a number of apps, along with my phone’s GPS, to find a place to eat.

There was a restaurant called the South Pine Cafe that boasted a high Yelp rating. I decided to give it a try and ordered the lobster scramble with jalapeño hollandaise and avocado.

Halfway through the meal, I heard a voice above me say my name, and then, “What the fuck?”

I looked up and saw a young man with long, dirty blonde hair. He wore a baggy sweatshirt over his thin frame. It took a moment for me to recognize him, even though he had my brother’s face.

“Oh, hey,” I said. “How’ve you been?”

“How have I been?” My brother looked at me as if I’d once tried to kill him.

I offered him a seat at my table.

“I’m eating breakfast with my fiancée.” He motioned several tables over to where a young woman sat before two plates of food. I was sure that I’d never seen her before.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“We’re getting married next week.”

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“I just came over here to tell you…” My brother swallowed hard. “Well, I’m not going to say it. I’m happy that you’re alive, but that’s about it.”

I was somehow troubled by the hurt on his face. “You know, things have been hard for me. I lost my job.”

“Yeah, I read about it on some website.”

I didn’t know what else to say, and so I told him that he looked good and healthy. He smiled—the way that meant nothing.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell Mom that I saw you.”

“You can. If you want.”

He turned to walk away, and then stopped himself. “About six months ago, I saw a picture of you standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. You posted it on Facebook.”

My brother was right. I’d gone to France with a sixty-year-old man named Richard. We’d met on a cam site. He offered me $5,000 to keep him company for a week, and to also fuck his ass. I liked the thought of spending his money, so I said, “Yes.”

Our days together weren’t bad. Richard took me to all the best restaurants and museums. But I failed him each night. My erections wouldn’t last long enough to penetrate him. At least, when he was close and I could smell his skin. We mostly sat across from each other in the hotel room, while I closed my eyes and masturbated and he fingered his hole. It wasn’t my fault that Richard was medically impotent, or that he considered himself a fierce power bottom. I tried to offer a compromise—my mouth, and even my ass—but he wouldn’t have either. Richard longed for the machismo that he’d seen from me in PornHub videos.

We returned to Los Angeles, and Richard said that he felt sick. He rushed home and left me at the airport with enough money for a cab. The rest, he said, would come later.

I checked my email and found a message from Richard, along with a spreadsheet attachment. He’d listed the expenses from our trip, and how much he’d spent on me—more than $5,000, in his estimation. He said that he considered us even.

The next day, I put in a bid for a gay porn-editing job. I lowered my rate to undercut the competition because I needed the money. But I lowered it too much and needed more to pay my bills. After twelve hours of watching cocks go hard and limp, I held another piece of flesh in front of my face. At least I’d learned my lesson, and asked the wrinkled john to pay me up front.

My life continued on, more or less, in the same fashion. I woke up and watched pornography for the purpose of putting it together, and then sucked some slug’s old cock, or sold videos of me jerking for a peasant’s price.

I’d become efficient with my tasks, and with collecting enough money to live in a decent apartment and eat good food. It didn’t seem right to speak to those I’d once cared for, or to remind myself that I could live a different life.

It was only because of my new job at The Room that I’d even considered my father, or anyone else, like family. I wished that my brother could understand how far I’d come.

“I’ve always wanted to visit Paris,” said my brother. “I could never save up the money.”

“It’s expensive,” I said.

“So maybe things have been hard for me, too.”

•

I had to buy a new suitcase at the airport so that I could fill it with VHS tapes. The airline wouldn’t check the cardboard box I’d taken from my father’s house.

When I returned to Los Angeles, I realized that my apartment didn’t have a VCR. I emailed myself a reminder to buy one, and then ate a box of gluten-free Oreo substitutes and fell asleep.

•

“You’re back already,” said Alexander. “We didn’t expect you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No. It’s good,” said Alexander. “I have a task for you.”

“Sure,” I said, as if I’d already agreed.

“One of our models cancelled the campaign… The one for rubber cock rings. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that he’d have to show his cock. Would you find us a replacement? Someone in the porn industry, perhaps? You have connections.” As an afterthought, he said, “I’d like a reliable boy with a nice physique.”

I sent direct messages to several male porn stars on Twitter. The straight ones found my request to be too gay, and the gay ones wanted too much money. I had to find a burnout who seemed desperate for work.

After some browsing, I remembered Andrew, a mid-twenties hustler who’d stopped posting pictures of his erection and had moved on to song lyrics—mostly the kind that hinted at suicide. He responded to my request and agreed to a rate of $300.

Can I see a current full-body shot? I asked via Twitter.

He sent me a selfie, in which his cock appeared long and fat, even when flaccid. I could see the definition in his abdominal muscles.

“He will do,” said Alexander, with a crinkle in his nose.

•

I went shopping for a VCR over the weekend. The department stores I visited no longer sold them. So I drove to Glendale and its suburbs in search of a yard sale. An elderly couple, surrounded by lawn chairs and trash, parted with their JVC 7500 S-VHS model for five dollars.

The VCR hummed loudly when I plugged it in at home. But it worked well enough. I stuck it with one of my father’s tapes and pressed play.

The screen flickered and turned to an image of a river, which seemed as wild as the videography. Whoever held the camera turned this way and that, never settling on any single view of the outdoors.

There was a cut in the tape, and I saw a white-haired boy run, screaming, through a room. The room looked like it belonged in my father’s house, and so I assumed the boy to be my younger self.

I was startled, then, to see the red-haired man appear in frame. Because I had no memory of him in the flesh, and because he was there, on the television, chasing me.

My childish screams weren’t fearful, though. In fact, they were interspersed with laughter.

The red-haired man grabbed my small body and swung me around by my arms. “See, your papa said I could teach you a few things.”

“No, no, no,” I yelled, with a voice I could no longer call my own.

“We could build a fort,” said the red-haired man. “Or maybe play a song.”

“I don’t know how to play songs.”

“So I’ll teach you.”

There were several more cuts in the video—a scene of my father pointing the camera at a mirror, and a handheld shot of the floor, which I assumed to be an accident—before my younger self appeared with a bongo drum in hand.

“Like this,” said the red-haired man as he tapped a simple rhythm into the drum.

My little hands tapped faster and wouldn’t stop.

“Oh, come on,” said a voice from behind camera. It sounded like my father’s, and like he’d meant to scold me.

“No, that’s a song, too,” said the red-haired man. “Your song.” He looked at the small boy before him, and with approving eyes. “I appreciate your will. Your defiance. That’s a lesson to learn, in and of itself. That you can and must know what you want. And that you must do that thing often. Otherwise, what is life?”

My small hands continued tapping, and there was laughter all around.

I paused the videotape because I’d begun to cry. The eyes in my old body leaked violently, and more.

My television flickered. The sun set and the moon rose high. All the while, I lay about, sobbing.

•

Andrew, the hustler I’d hired for The Room campaign, arrived late to the photo shoot. I rushed him in front of the photographer and presented him with the items he needed to model.

“I don’t know how to put this on,” said Andrew.

Alexander was there to oversee the production. He’d played the whole time at being upset—mostly at the mishaps that could be attributed to me. He was, like most men in charge, available for his critique and nothing else.

But the hustler’s inabilities had changed Alexander. Or so it seemed. He found the perfect task for himself, and an eagerness that surpassed all of his employees. Alexander knelt throughout the day at the edge of a seamless and helped Andrew in and out of several dozen cock rings.

Near the end, when I was packing up, Alexander took me aside. “Finish up your tasks, and be sure to wrap the crew. I’ve talked to Andrew already, and to the photographer. We’ll be taking a few extra photos.” And in a whisper, “We’d like our privacy.”

“What extra photos?” I’d catalogued all the shots and knew that we’d accomplished everything we set out for.

Alexander waved his hand in dismissal. “They’re for another product. It’s fine.”

I took the elevator to the first floor of the studio and sent the grips and stylists on their way. Then I rode back to the top, because I’d forgotten something—a box of merchandise and several work release forms.

The studio was nearly quiet. Only one light stayed on. It was focused at the seamless, where Alexander had undressed himself and positioned his lips at the shaft of Andrew’s cock.

No one seemed to notice me. But I watched for several minutes as the camera clicked and as Alexander’s head moved about like a starved and greedy beast.

From where I stood, the light appeared to wash away the hustler’s face. He gave off no expression, and I imagined him as a ghost.

•

I thought that I’d made progress, but my life continued to be about one thing only. There was no way to move beyond a vision of unreciprocated desire.

Yet I recalled the red-haired man and what he’d said to me on videotape. He told me that I should know what I wanted and to do it often.

What did I want? It seemed absurd that such a thing might exist. The thought, alone, brought me toward a state of panic.

I felt that I needed answers, and so I hurried home to watch another videotape.

•

A scene began with my father playing the flute. His melody was the kind that went nowhere. It was like he’d attempted a sort of new-age jazz interpretation. Eventually, he stopped and walked toward the camera. A hard cut followed, and gave way to a handheld shot of deer eating shrubs in my father’s backyard.

I fast-forwarded through the rest of the tape. There was no sign of the red-haired man. It occurred to me that he might not have been the focus of the videos, but merely a peripheral figure in my father’s documentation. There was a chance I’d waste the night searching for him. So I decided, instead, to re-watch the scene from the drum lesson.

It was a short piece of footage and easy to get lost in. I played and then rewound the clip at least a hundred times. The effect was like a drug—similar to first-time use, but without the same profundity. I cried, though not as quickly and not as much.

There was something in my younger self that I’d forgotten, and a teacher from my past whom my memory had worked to erase. I needed to find my way back to them and knew that if there were any chance at all, I’d need a change in my life.

By the end of the night, I had an act in mind. Not the answer I’d been looking for, but a step toward it, I was sure.

I’ll sleep on it, I thought, and tried with no success.

•

“Sit,” said Alexander, as I entered his office. “What’s this all about?”

I’d sent him an email thirty minutes prior. The subject line read, URGENT, and the body, I would like to meet with you ASAP.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’ve made up my mind.”

“About what?” asked Alexander.

“I’m quitting.”

“You started just last week.”

“Yes, but…”

He looked me over with a smirk. “I suppose I can’t be upset, as you’re completely replaceable. But out of curiosity, what put you off?”

“Nothing in particular,” I said.

Alexander laughed. “Fine. I accept your two weeks’ notice, thanks. That would make your last day…” He looked to his calendar.

“I’m quitting now,” I said. “I won’t be finishing out the day.”

Alexander folded his arms and stared at me, blankly. “Again, I’m not upset. Even though your way of going about this could be described as, I don’t know, shitty.”

I opened my mouth, as if to defend my character. But I caught my words and smiled, and I even offered him a shrug.

“I won’t have anything good to say about you,” said Alexander. “In fact, I’ll speak poorly of you if anyone calls. A future employer, for example.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “No one will call.”

“You don’t plan to work, then?”

“I haven’t decided.”

A growing satisfaction seemed to move across his face. “Do you have any plans at all?”

I took a moment to consider his question. Because he’d engaged me with no real hostility. And because I’d done so little work at the company and felt that I owed him something—maybe the truth.

“I guess I find some pleasure in music,” I said, and thought back to the footage of my hands on a drum.

“What does that even mean?”

“It might be hard to explain, like, anything that’s been going on with me,” I said.

“Jesus,” said Alexander. “I just remembered that your dad died.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, that’s what this is about?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I’m guessing you’ve come into some money. That’s why you can quit?”

“Just some videotapes,” I said.

“What?”

“I need to figure out what I want,” I said. “In my life.”

“Fuck,” said Alexander, like he felt sorry for me.

“I should probably go.”

•

I purchased an African drum at Guitar Center and brought it home to my apartment. The noise it made was awful, even when I tapped as fast as I could, like I’d done when I was a boy. I gave the act a rest and then started up again with a simpler rhythm. But the sound came ringing worse.

It seemed that drumming wasn’t my thing after all. I threw the instrument in the trash.

•

I searched out my friends on Facebook—those whose opinions I once held in high esteem. Most of them had favorite artists listed in their About section. I hadn’t listened to any music, on purpose, for at least a year. So I Googled my friends’ favorites and waited to be moved.

Each of the songs had a certain electronic quality, and could even be described as dance music.

I stood and swayed my body and closed my eyes to several passages. This is something, I thought, but didn’t quite know what.

•

My cell phone rang at 3:00 a.m., and once more when I didn’t answer.

I listened to my voicemail.

“Christopher, it’s Alexander from The Room. I know it’s inappropriate to call you so late. Or at all. It’s against company policy. Maybe illegal. I don’t know. But you quit earlier today. I mean, yesterday. The point is that I’m no longer your boss. So this shouldn’t be weird.

“Here’s a funny thing, though. I was searching RentBoy.com and saw your ad. I know you used to dabble in pornography, so maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was. I didn’t know you were available in that way.

“See, it broke my fucking heart to see you struggle so much with your father’s passing. It got me thinking. Maybe you and I could work out a situation.

“You need the freedom to… How did you put it? Figure out what you want in life.

“I have an extra room in my house. You could have it, basically, for free. Of course, we’d work out a situation. You wouldn’t have to worry about finding a job, or working for The Room.

“Let me know what you think, huh? Let me know.”

•

I returned to Guitar Center the next day and asked a clerk about electronic music, and how I might make some. He suggested that I buy a Roland synthesizer and a digital audio workstation, like Pro Tools.

“How much will it cost?” I asked.

The clerk said that he could set me up for just under $2,000.

I hesitated, because I had only $2,200 in my bank account. Perhaps a few cents more. But the red-haired man’s lesson stayed with me. I heard his voice and acknowledged that I wanted the synthesizer. Because it held so many sounds, and because it came with knobs and levers that promised more.

If I grew sick of any note, I could manipulate the sound until it resembled nothing of its origin. And I would be its creator, with no responsibilities but to love the way it filled the air.

•

Back at home, I unboxed the Roland synthesizer and plugged it into the wall next to my VCR. I pressed my fingers to several keys at once.

Nothing happened.

I remembered what the clerk had said; that the synthesizer lacked internal speakers. So I rushed to find a pair of headphones and jacked them into my new toy.

Again, I pressed at several keys. To my delight, I heard a noise.

The default patch hit my ears like a distorted church organ. I liked it okay, but not enough to continue on with it.

I turned several knobs until I found a patch that bore a complex melody at the stroke of a single key. This is wonderful, I thought, and I played into the night.

•

I tried to order delivery in the morning (scrambled eggs with gluten-free waffles), to celebrate my new passion, but my credit card was declined. My banking app showed that I’d been overdrawn on an automated student loan payment.

The refrigerator was near empty, and I had little food left in the cupboards. A slight pressure crept into my belly. It might have been from hunger, but also because I knew what I had to do. How strange, after a night of pure pleasure, that the thought of sex made me nauseous.

It would be no different than the weeks and months before. I repeated the words in my head to remind myself.

•

One of my regulars agreed to a blow job.

“This is an unusual surprise,” he said as I walked through his door.

“I missed you,” I said, and my words sounded like a question.

“That’s sweet of you.” The regular took my hand and led me toward his bedroom. He’d made up his bed with freshly washed sheets.

The regular slid from his bathrobe and laid his back to the mattress. “Here,” he said, and pulled his scrotum up so that I’d have access to his hole.

I brought my face close and saw a streak of hair that he’d missed while shaving. The strands grew long and curled about near where he wanted me to lick him.

He grabbed me by the back of the head so that my lips would touch his ass. And he let out a deep sigh. “There, there,” he said. “That’s a good boy.”

I held my hand to his cock so that I could feel it thicken. Once his skin grew taut, I stroked him as fast as I could.

“Slower,” he said, and then, “Ow,” as he spurted semen across his navel.

“Your ass tastes amazing,” I said, with a coo near the end.

“That was…different.” He looked me over and snorted.

“Do you think I could have a glass of water?”

The regular stood and disappeared into his kitchen. When he returned, he held a ceramic mug and several small bills. “I have less cash than I thought,” he said. “But next time…”

•

I ate several tacos from a street vendor and then returned to my apartment to spend time with my synthesizer. The patch I chose to play with sounded like a whale. When I closed my eyes, a vision of the ocean came calling. I was swallowed up by the dark and stayed there for a while.

I held my weight against the keys and wondered what advice the red-haired man would have for me at such a juncture in my life. Perhaps if I watched a tape at random, he’d be there. He might even sing me off to sleep.

The tape I picked out from my suitcase had a red sticker on the front. It seemed almost like a sign. But I watched for several minutes and saw only my brother playing soccer amongst his friends. They wore blue-and-gold jerseys, like the ones from his childhood recreational league.

I began to miss my brother and wondered how his wedding had gone on without me. Who else might have been there? Probably my mother, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. I’d forgotten what some of them looked like and wondered if they still cared about me, or if they’d have me back at all.

I could make a few calls, I thought, but decided against it. My path was still uncertain, and I had barely changed its course.

•

My landlord served me an eviction notice because my rent was three days past due. “It’s just a formality,” he said. “Pay up soon and you’ll be fine.”

“How soon?” I asked.

“I assume the money’s coming,” he said, to which I shrugged. “Am I wrong?”

“Should be,” I said.

“Good.”

I closed the door on him and returned to my synthesizer. The day’s composition hadn’t helped me much at all. I’d installed Pro Tools on my iMac, set a track to record, and even played a pass. The audio file loomed before me, rich with my mistakes.

One thought rang true in my head. I need more time.

•

An old editing client returned my call. He said that he’d have work for me if I could wait a few weeks.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But thank you.”

I hung up and searched my email. There were several requests for masturbation videos. None of them mentioned money.

My phone was full of contacts; middle-class johns—the kind who’d once paid me for an hour. I skipped over their names, on one excuse or another. Finally, I looked at my voicemails. Alexander’s was there, at the top. I remembered his call, late at night, and how he’d offered for me to live in his home. It seemed worth the time to hear him out.

•

“Hello?”

“Alexander?”

“Who’s this?”

I felt suddenly discouraged. He’d been so eager, and just weeks ago. From the sound of his voice, I could only assume that he’d deleted my number.

“It’s Chris. I used to work at The Room.”

“Christopher,” he said, with more familiarity. “Sorry, but we’ve hired someone else.”

“That’s not why I’m calling.”

“I see. Well, how are you?”

“All right,” I said. “You?”

“Busy, actually. I’m about to step into a meeting.”

“I could call back later,” I said.

“Is there something I can help you with?”

“You left me a voicemail. About a situation. An extra room in your house.”

There was a noise on the line, and I assumed he’d dropped his phone.

“Alexander?”

His voice returned, but softer than before. “Sometimes I take a lot of Adderall.”

“That’s cool,” I said.

“Could we not have this conversation on the phone?”

•

Alexander gave me the address for a coffee shop down the street from his house. We met there, and he explained to me that he’d been on a lot of drugs when he’d left his voicemail. He also said that he found me interesting, in a sexual way, and that despite our age discrepancy, he could see us being friends.

“So, if you want to stay in my house, I’m not against it,” said Alexander.

“For free?” I asked, to be sure.

“I think so,” said Alexander. He looked off into the sky, as if to consider his options. “I like the idea of enabling your passions.”

“I’ve been writing songs,” I said, hoping to bolster his faith in me.

“You know that music’s a dead industry?” He swirled his coffee cup in hand. “Well, my niece works a bit as a DJ.”

•

Alexander sent two men to my apartment. They brought along a small U-Haul and said that they’d been instructed to move only my most treasured belongings.

“I want my clothes, iMac, and synthesizer,” I said. “Maybe some cables.”

One of them grabbed my computer and the other carried several trash bags full of my clothing. I held tight to my synthesizer and joined them in the truck.

“Wait,” I said as we pulled out of the apartment lot. “I forgot something.”

The driver turned on the U-Haul’s hazard lights.

I ran back to my apartment to fetch the suitcase full of VHS tapes. On the way out, I encountered my landlord.

“The rent?” he said, plaintively.

“I won’t be coming back,” I said, and rushed on by him.

•

Alexander showed me to my room, which looked like it had been cleaned of dust and clutter, though he refused to rid it of the items he considered sentimental, like the framed portrait of an ex-lover who’d died of AIDS in the 1980s on the nightstand. I learned that my room held the largest closet, and that Alexander would need to use it every morning before work, because his dress shirts hung better there than anywhere else. “In every other way,” said Alexander, the room would be mine.

“Do you want to grab a bite?” he asked once I’d put my items in some temporary place.

I walked with Alexander to a sushi restaurant. He ordered for me; more than I could eat. Then he asked about my life and where I saw myself in five or ten years.

“I’ve been writing electronic music,” I said, as if I’d repeated myself.

“The arts are hard for anyone,” said Alexander. “But they need our support. Maybe now more than ever.”

I nodded to show that I agreed.

“We could work out a situation.”

“You mentioned that before.”

“You need time to figure out your music. Or maybe something else you’re into. Free room and board is the best way for you to do so.”

Again, I nodded.

“And I need to feel good about it,” said Alexander. “Not that I don’t already.”

“Okay.”

“See, I don’t like the idea of paying for sex. There’s something about it that hurts the soul. Yet here I am, growing older…” Alexander ate a piece of sashimi and moved his hands back and forth. It was something I’d seen in movies—when men meant to work out a speech in their head.

“The food is good,” I said, to bide the time.

“What I mean to say is that there’s a lot of ageism in the gay community. I’ve come to feel a bit like spoiled meat.”

“Right.”

“So, for example, if we go home tonight and I ask if you’d like a blow job, you could say, ‘Yes.’ It would be good for both of us.”

I agreed to his terms, no matter how ill defined they were. Alexander glowed and reached across the table to touch my hand.

“I feel like one of the Medici,” he said. “A patron of the highest order.”

Alexander raised his glass—a toast to the two of us. Then he hurried to pay the check so that we could move on to better things.

•

I accomplished little during my first week at Alexander’s house. He worked during the day, and I slept or lay about. It was strange to experience my life without urgency.

Alexander would come home in the evenings and shower. Once clean, he’d suggest that we have sex—the slow kind, where I could close my eyes and picture anything.

He’d cuddle me after and lay his head to my chest. Sometimes he’d say that he loved me.

•

Alexander asked about my music one night. He wanted to hear a song.

“It’s a work in progress,” I said. “I don’t know how we’ll both listen. I usually play through headphones.”

He showed me how to hook up my instrument to his entertainment center speakers. I played for him. Louder than I’d ever played before. The sounds startled me in their new state of amplification, and I nearly ruined my performance.

“Wonderful,” he said. “But have you ever thought about working with produced music? It might speed up the process of, I don’t know… What’s the word? Professionalization? Like I said before, my niece is a DJ. I could ask her about the proper equipment.”

Several days later, I received a package in the mail. It contained a small mixer and some professional DJ software.

Alexander watched me unbox the products and put them to use. I stood before him with my headphones on, and bobbed my head as if I were mixing together two of my favorite tracks. The sensation was familiar, like how I’d moaned beside every moneyed man’s flesh. No sound reached my ears. I stared awhile at my iMac’s desktop screen.

•

“Do you have a VCR?” I asked Alexander.

He was damp with my sweat. I’d just come in his mouth. It was the time of day in which he seemed most receptive to ideas.

“No,” he said.

“Could we buy one? I left mine at my old apartment.”

“Why do you need a VCR?” he asked.

I thought about explaining my father’s tapes, and then reconsidered. Because I’d told Alexander how perfect I found our arrangement, and that I couldn’t imagine myself happier.

In truth, I’d become restless. The more I listened to music, the less I felt in my stomach, chest, or heart. When I attempted to play, it was worse. I needed inspiration and knew of only one place to find it.

“My friend said that I should borrow one of his VHS tapes,” I lied. “It’s a horror movie. A rare one.”

“What friend?” said Alexander. “I’d like to meet him.”

“Okay,” I said, and never mentioned the VCR again.

•

I dreamt about my family, and about the red-haired man. We were somewhere like a garden—the kind that existed only in fantasy novels and video games. My mother hugged me, and my brother asked about my travels, as if I’d just returned from a long journey.

There was a fire pit near the center of a clearing. Its flames rose high, even though the sun was out and the garden kept us warm. The red-haired man sat several feet from the pit and played his drum. A sound came forth, like a calming thunder, and everyone looked right in their place.

My father was there too, smiling at the edge of a garden, or just beyond where the earth was lined with trees. He opened his mouth.

•

I awoke to my cell phone ringing. Alexander was on the other line.

“Listen,” he said. “The Room is hosting a party. A fund-raiser for some worthwhile cause. I thought it would be a great idea for you to DJ the event.”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” I said.

“It’s a month away. I’ve already told them you’ll do it.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“You sound tired, Christopher. Did you just wake up?”

“No.”

“It’s almost noon. You should be… Well, I won’t tell you how to spend your time.”

“I should get back to work,” I said.

“I’ll be home late tonight,” said Alexander. “There’s some cash in my sock drawer if you need to order a pizza.”

Sex with Alexander had become the only regular part of my schedule. His absence made me feel unlike myself, as if a looming chaos touched me fully.

I wanted to call him. To remind myself he was there. But Alexander’s comfort was of a superficial kind. He could sway me, late at night, with the words of a cum-drunk sailor. But I needed more, in my loneliness, than I knew how to ask for.

My past bubbled up in me, and I saw the things I’d given up and the people I’d lost and hadn’t thought mattered. Not until a silence brought them home.

I held my phone and found my mother’s information buried in the contacts. It felt impossible to call her. At least if I were to speak. So I sent a text instead.

J

•

“That must be nice,” said Alexander.

It was near midnight. He stood near my bedroom door. I wa’n’t sure how long he’d been there.

“What?” I asked.

“To have young men send you pictures like that.”

I glanced back at my iMac screen and the email’I’d opened up. There were several cock pics and a full-body shot with the face blurred out. The accompanying text suggested a foreign admirer. It read, Your dicks is shot a little in my ass.

“They don’t know that I’ve quit porn,” I said.

“Does it matter?” asked Alexander. “They still love you.”

“I could forward them to you. The pictures, I mean.”

He laughed. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay.”

“Goodnight.”

“Did you want to do something?” I asked.

He walked toward me and kissed me on the mouth. ’I’m sorry, beautiful, but I’m very tired.”

•

I awoke to two voicemails from my mother. They were long and silent. She’d said nothing. I called her back and heard the same.

A moment later, a text appeared from her number.

Christopher?

Yeah, I texted back.

The phone vibrated in my hand; an incoming call from MOM.

I answered.

“It’s you?” Her voice was still familiar. It found its way in and began to wreck me deep.

“Uh huh.”

“Say it again.” I could hear my mother start to fall apart. “Let me hear your voice?”

’I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” she said, fearful.

“What?”

“If you could just stay on the line.”

She was most likely crying. I might have been, too. We were noise and breath, separated by some long distance.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Los Angeles,” I said, and felt proud for having done so much. “I live in a house with a man. He’s okay.”

“That’s good,” she said.

We shrank back into our noises. I felt so in tune with hers. She was my blood, after all. The way she’d learned to process pain was somehow passed on to me. I was sure of it, because I felt a kind of masochistic ache from the sound of her sucking snot back through her nose.

“I’m at work and could be pulled away at any moment,” said my mother, after ten minutes of listening to each other hurt.

“Can I ask you something before you go?”

“We could talk again,” she said. “Tonight, even.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I love you.”

I tried to repeat the words back to her, but failed by the time she’d hung up.

•

Alexander lay on me tired but without his usual grin. “I need to tell you something,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Last night, I fucked someone else. I don’t feel bad about it. Because this thing between us isn’t monogamy. It’s not even a relationship. I’m just helping you out, right?”

I didn’t answer, because I wasn’t sure.

“I just thought that you should know,” said Alexander. “If it makes you feel better, he was horrible at sex. Detached almost, and more than with most boys I’ve fucked on Ketamine. He made me feel old.”

“Did you pay him?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’m most committed to you. And to your art.”

“I’ve been making progress on my DJ set,” I said.

“It feels so much better when we’re honest,” said Alexander.

I made a sound, like I agreed. But it meant nothing at all.

•

There were several new voicemails from my mother. She must have called when I was having sex with Alexander.

I called her back without listening to her voicemails, and even though it was late. She answered immediately.

“Christopher?”

“I’m here.”

“I was scared I’d done something wrong.” She paused. “Again.”

“You didn’t.”

“That’s a relief,” she said. “I’ve been worried. For a long time. But I don’t want to grill you. I don’t want any pressure on us to have a certain kind of conversation. We can talk about anything you want.”

“I’m not sure what I want,” I said.

“Me neither,” she said. “Other than for us to keep talking.”

“I’d like that, too.”

Her voice lightened. It was as if we’d moved on to something casual. “Do you want to ask me anything? Yesterday, you mentioned a question.”

“Oh,” I said. “It doesn’t have much to do with you. Papa left me some videotapes.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“I’m not sure what I can say about him now. But if it’s a question I can answer, I will.”

“There was a man I saw in one of the videos. He was probably Papa’s friend, or something. Um, he had red hair. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

She took a while to answer but said, “That’s not much to go on.”

“He was, like, playing a bongo drum. I was there, too. As a little kid.”

My mother’s silence held longer than before.

“Are you still there?” I asked.

“What is this?” she said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Asking about Rusty,” she said.

“That’s his name?”

She gave me her breath, like she’d done the day before.

“Mom.” I raised my voice to be sure that she heard me.

“Yes, I’m here.” She sounded tired. “Is there anything else?”

“Yeah. The guy, Rusty… Like, is he still around?”

“He’s in prison,” said my mother. “As far as I know.”

“Why?”

“Because of what he did to you.”

•

Alexander found me awake in the morning. It was unusual for us to greet each other so early. He offered me Adderall and said that it was better than coffee.

“It will help you to work on your music.”

I swallowed two pills, like he suggested, and accomplished more than I had in the week prior. The drug focused me. I browsed SoundCloud profiles for songs with download links and discerned within seconds of listening as to which songs I would steal.

Midafternoon, I stumbled across a three-hour mix of minimal techno. I skipped around the MP3 file in iTunes and heard nothing obtrusive. The tracks were tasteful and slick in their production. They evoked no emotional response. I decided that I would claim the mix as my own and play it—with no alteration—at the event Alexander had booked me for.

He’ll be proud, I thought.

Suddenly, my headphones fell from my ears. I must have leaned back in my chair; pulled myself away from the computer.

The quiet of the room, and my iMac screen, which had turned black from my idleness, put me in a state of anti-fixation. I was pulled into my own head through no fault of my own. The world around seemed dull and I had nowhere else to travel.

A memory played behind my eyes, like it had when I’d hung up on my mother. I couldn’t place the physical experience anywhere in my past, but the video clip was real. My little hands and feet tied up, and that man’s ass with the red hair peeking out from the crack.

It was hard to think of myself as an inspiration. But my body, once young, had been worth going to prison for.

•

I spent the weeks leading up to the party in bed. Either by myself or with Alexander. He talked to me often about the hustlers he slept with on our nights apart. They never came close to what I offered, even though they had their youthful qualities and I could no longer be referred to as a boy.

“What do I offer?” I asked, when his head was to my chest.

“It’s not worth describing. It would be too difficult.”

“Try?”

He closed his eyes and squinted them narrow. “Just the feeling I have right before I come.”

“That’s all?” I asked.

“Trust me, Christopher. It’s plenty.”

•

Alexander posted a digital flyer for The Room’s fund-raiser on Facebook. He tagged my profile near the logo for DJ WyldeFire.

“It’s perfect, right?” said Alexander. “My friend designed the font.”

DJ WyldeFire was the artist name he’d come up with, and what I’d agreed to by saying nothing. I suppose he’d meant it to attract the fans of my old porn scenes.

“It looks clean,” I said, and meant it as a compliment.

“You should post the flyer around, so more people show up,” said Alexander. “Remember, it’s a fund-raiser. Invite your friends with money.”

•

My mother left another voicemail—her twenty-seventh since the time we last talked. Her recorded voice said that she was sorry, though she didn’t know what for. She had seen some mention of my musicianship on Facebook. “I’d love to hear your songs…if you ever want to share them with me.”

I wanted to call her back.

Instead, I Googled the name Rusty, along with my hometown and the words molestation, pedophile, and rapist. There were several million hits. I clicked at five of them and found nothing I was looking for.

It was easy to give up. I’d done it many times. The act gave me pleasure, like any small catharsis. I borrowed a hammer from Alexander’s toolbox and swung at my Roland synthesizer until my arm turned sore.

•

The Room’s fund-raiser looked like a success. The venue was packed, and each of the tables—lined with highly priced fund-raiser plates—was full.

I stood behind a platform, set up with a laptop that Alexander had borrowed from his niece. It was equipped with the same DJ software I had installed on my iMac.

I connected my mixer, via USB, and saw a light turn on near the front of it. It looked like it was working, but I couldn’t be sure. I hadn’t actually used the device before.

Alexander approached and said, “I like what you’re doing. It’s very European. Very Ibiza.” He tried to look at the laptop screen, so I opened the Serato software and minimized the iTunes window. “The owner has a request, though. Could you play some rock ’n’ roll? Maybe Steely Dan?”

I shook my head, No.

“He’s the owner,” said Alexander. “This is his event.”

“I don’t know the band,” I said, and played with my mixer as if it had some effect on the music.

Alexander frowned. “I’ll tell him that you’re younger than you look.”

•

The event neared its third hour, which meant the end of my stolen minimal techno mix. I wondered if anyone would notice when I started the track over again.

There was some rustling near the venue’s entrance, which worried me at first. But the security guards couldn’t have been concerned with my DJ set. In fact, the shouting from their corner likely distracted from my repetition.

I saw Alexander approach the point of conflict. His hands flew up and into the air. He looked to be arguing with a man beyond the door. Then he pointed toward me and began walking. I turned away, toward the laptop, as if I hadn’t noticed him. But Alexander came closer, until his face was near my ear.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Alexander. “The police are on their way. There’s someone outside. He’s probably homeless. The thing is, he’s demanding to see you.”

“Me?”

“He says that he’s your father.”

I took him to be joking and said the obvious. “My father’s dead.”

“Of course. The man’s in need of psychiatric care. Likely a library Internet porn fiend… But he referred to you by your birth name.”

“Okay,” I said. “I mean, my name’s easy to find online.”

“But when the police arrive, maybe you can take a look,” said Alexander. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“You might be able to identify him.”

•

I waited for Alexander to leave the building, and to return. The police were with him, though I hadn’t heard sirens or anything like that.

We walked outside together. A man sat on the curb, about twenty feet from the venue’s entrance. He faced away from me, but I could see the back of his hair, which looked greasy and home to small twigs, and that his hands were cuffed to a metal bench.

“What exactly is going on here?” asked one of the police officers.

The cuffed man turned to me, and I saw that he’d been beaten. Then I hid behind Alexander, because I feared the man a ghost.

•

“What would you like me to do?” asked Alexander.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You’re sure it’s him, then?”

I peeked around Alexander and the corner we’d retreated to. My father was there, skinnier than I remembered, but alive. Or something like it.

“Sometimes it’s hard to take you seriously,” said Alexander. “In regards to the truth.”

One of the police officers interrupted. “Just asked Mr. Segelman, the bouncer, if he’d like to press charges.”

“Charges for what?”

“Your old man took a few swings,” said the officer. “Even he admits to it.”

“So arrest him,” said Alexander.

“Mr. Segelman wants a word with you first. Says he’s not sure whether this whole thing’s been a misunderstanding.” The officer put a hand to his belt. “I’d say he’s not the only one.”

“Well, fuck, Christopher,” said Alexander. “Are we hiding because there’s a crazy man around the corner? Or are we hiding because your dad’s come back from the dead?”

I felt mocked and shrunk into my shell; maybe shrugged a bit, too.

“What am I supposed to say now that the DJ’s run off from the party?” asked Alexander.

“If you have a problem with your father, or there’s something else going on, now would be the time to speak up,” said the officer. “Otherwise, we might be wasting each other’s time.”

“I guess I haven’t seen him in a while,” I said.

“I gathered that much,” said the officer. “Let me put it this way. Do you have cause to believe he’ll hurt you or anyone else?”

“Not really.”

The officer puffed his chest out and said, “I’ll talk to Mr. Segelman. But I think we’re done here.”

•

I gestured to my father, with a wave, as the police removed his handcuffs.

“He’s coming toward us,” said Alexander, and his words were like a secret.

“Yeah.”

My father’s gait was slow, though he lacked all hesitation. It was like he’d set his sights on some small treasure, and meant to savor the moments leading up to its possession. He stopped several feet from where I stood and opened his mouth in silence. I did the same; perhaps a sign of our genetic bond.

Alexander was the only one to break form. He said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” and his voice wavered slightly. “Would you like to…I have a shower at my house. Christopher lives there, with me.”

It seemed that Alexander was pained to speak. So I helped him. I asked my father if he’d like to see my new home.

“My son,” said my father, and he opened his arms.

I fell forward, slightly, until he could wrap himself around me. His embrace felt like any other.

“I’d love to go,” he said. “Wherever you’ll take me.”

•

Alexander drove us to his house. Along the way, he asked my father the most pertinent questions, like where he’d been for the past several months.

“Walking, mostly,” said my father. “I’ve been traveling south.”

“Did you know that people think you’re dead?” asked Alexander.

“Yes, I’ve heard,” said my father. “But I can’t be concerned with everyone’s opinion.”

“It looks like you’ve got a shiner,” said Alexander.

“Feels like it,” said my father.

“Sometimes an opinion can turn into something like that.”

I saw my father smile, and suddenly, I laughed.

•

My father and I bathed, separately. Alexander laid out an inflatable mattress next to my bed. He asked me—in private—whether I felt safe. Then he left me alone with my father.

“Which one do you want?” I asked my father.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be gone before you wake up.”

“I’ll take the bed,” I said.

“If you remember,” said my father, “I hate Los Angeles.”

“Thank you for coming, anyway,” I said, as if I’d planned the visit for him, and he’d made a great compromise.

My father took three long breaths and closed his eyes. I could almost see an energy build up in him. By the time he spoke, his eyes were wide and staring through me, and I felt held in place by a force unseen.

“Christopher, I’m not some little boy you need to placate. I remember the day we stopped talking. ‘What did I do?’ I asked myself. It was like when you were twelve years old and would no longer live in my house. I thought, ‘I’m a bad father. I’ve already proved myself a bad husband. Maybe I’m just a bad man.’ All these voices played out in my head. ‘Blah, blah, blah.’

“A friend of mine found me at the bar. I don’t remember having drunk much at all. But from where he stood, I looked to be teetering off the edge of sanity. My friend recommended meditation, as it was the only thing that had helped him live his life in… Not peace, but something close.

“I’d practiced a form of meditation long ago, in my men’s group. Back when you were a small boy. I’d stopped, because it hadn’t done much for me. Maybe I’d learned to focus my breath. But what a useless talent, given the time it took to master.

“Besides, everyone in that group was a hypocrite. At night, around the fire, they all claimed some great knowledge. I claimed it, too. But we were horrible people, and so lost. I’m sure you remember how much of an asshole I could be. I was not the worst of them.

“So, why reattempt a failed tactic? I don’t know, exactly. My friend talked to me, as if he understood what it meant to feel such pain, and as if he knew a way to soothe it. I suppose that gave me hope at the time. Or it was just nice to be around him.

“He invited me to San Francisco to listen to a talk by the Buddhist teacher, Adyashanti. ‘Why not go?’ I asked myself. Nothing in my life was right. Nothing was working. My wife was having an affair, probably in response to how I’d cheated on her when we were first married. My business was tanking. You wouldn’t speak to me. In a way, I felt desperate.

“Then I heard this man speak. This Adyashanti. He had a certain air of serenity. But that was common among the gurus I’d seen before. There was something else. Enough to make me listen.

“Adyashanti talked about an aloneness. A silence. An ultimate truth. He asked us, for five seconds, to be quiet; to try not to think. He said that everything that disappeared in those five seconds, for us, was not real. The thoughts that we were someone’s father or son. The thought that I was a man. All of it disappeared when my thinking mind stopped. Everything else—ninety-nine percent of my whole life—was a sort of virtual reality; a garden-variety illusion produced by the mind. It shocked me, because I’d never seen it before. I’d never known what it meant to be without my thoughts. How freeing it was. How vital to my existence.

“And then the five seconds were over.

“Suddenly, I pictured you. In a flash, I understood. Your silence wasn’t about me. In fact, I was irrelevant to what you needed. I’d heard from your brother that you’d stopped talking to the rest of the family. Finally, I had a hint as to why.

“Christopher, you were my inspiration. You gave me the courage to be alone. Over the past six months, I’ve discovered more truth than in all the time before. I’ve sat at the peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and listened to the vibrations of my soul. I’ve stood neck-deep in the Pacific and felt the language of the universe flow through my bones. Of course, my thoughts are still with me. But I’ve had hours where they’ve left altogether. God, it compares to nothing. It’s, I’m sure you know, beyond description.

“I struggled with whether or not to bother you on your journey. Perhaps my lower self has won over; my memories of you; my love for you, my son. If it helps, I can say that I’ll be brief and leave tonight.

“Can I ask, though, why you chose this man to be alone with? Not your friends or family? Or the trees somewhere in the woods?”

I looked at my father long enough for him to believe I’d considered what to say. But I’d simply found his demeanor sad and strange. The energy I’d seen in him was all but depleted. Perhaps it had never been there at all. If he were anyone else, I’d have offered him sex—as a habit, and nothing else. Though even I had boundaries for what acts of perversion I’d fall into. As it stood, I paused for a time and shrugged.

“Beyond description,” said my father. “I should stop talking, so that we can enjoy each other. Truly.”

He closed his eyes once more and sat, as if deep in meditation. At the end of it, he crawled toward my window and made his way out. Though not before pausing beside my stack of VHS tapes.

“How did you find me?” I asked, before he was gone.

“Sometimes I sit, alone, in Internet cafes,” said my father. “When my thoughts are strong and tempting, I often stalk your Facebook page.”

“That makes sense.”

“I love you,” said my father.

He waited awhile, as if I might respond.

“One more thing,” I said. “Did you ever have a friend named Rusty?”

He smiled large. The mention of the name appeared to bring him great joy. “I’m sorry,” he said, and disappeared into the night.

•

Alexander stayed home from work the next morning. We had sex, and then he made us breakfast. When we were finished eating, he called me a liar.

“I don’t know that I can trust you,” he said. “Your father’s alive, and your synthesizer’s smashed to pieces in the trash. Do I know anything about you at all? Anything real, I mean.”

I tried to explain, but couldn’t be heard over the sound of Alexander’s anger.

He gave me thirty days’ notice to vacate his home, but rescinded every night when we were sweaty and covered in each other’s cum.

After several months of uncertainty, I returned to my computer and opened the Serato DJ software. I found a dozen video tutorials on YouTube and watched them all in an afternoon.

Alexander walked in on me that night, when I was deep into my first mix. He asked how my music was going.

“This is fun,” I said but meant that it was only okay, and no worse than anything else.

On the Moral Imperative to Commodify
Our Sexual Suffering

2006–2015

I was first fucked for money at the age of nineteen. Someone tied me up and shoved a silicone cock in my ass. A digital camera captured the entire process. I was paid $300. It was fun, I guess.

“He just liked the money and thought of doing something ‘wrong.’ Passive anal sex is not his thing.” —The assistant narrator.

I allowed flesh cocks to replace silicone cocks. My ass was sold for well below market value. Then, at last, my cock was allowed the chance to fuck. For money. Also below market value.

At the age of twenty-one, I attended a Southern California university to pursue an education in film production. Pornography was the obvious choice for part-time work. I signed a contract with a now-defunct adult film studio to sell my sexual labor for $600 a scene. The studio required that I perform in six scenes a month. An average scene required two to six hours of labor. It was low-production-value, gonzo content for the end of the Internet porn bubble; the easiest job I’d had in my life.

By XXX standards, I still earned terrible money. Colleagues of mine were pulling in $30,000 a month. But they were full-timers. I was just trying to pay my rent while in school.

Whatever. I had a good time.

Then I graduated from university and made a professionally catastrophic decision: I continued to perform in porn.

“You’ve heard of the website, PornHub.com? It’s owned by an international corporation called MindGeek. They used to be called Manwin when they were developing a strategy to make free-mostly-pirated porn sites the new normal. Employers were paid to rip DVDs and upload pirated content faster than any porn studio could send out their DMCA notices. MindGeek singlehandedly caused the collapse of the pay-for-porn model of business. Kind of like how Napster killed the music industry. Except Napster did its damage and then disappeared. MindGeek went on to buy out every financially gutted porn studio until it resembled a production/distribution monopoly. MindGeek is Brazzers. MindGeek is Elegant Angel. MindGeek is Men.com. MindGeek is PornHub. You get the point.”
—The assistant narrator.

•

If I’d left school and gone on to the sensible career path of Hollywood production assistant → low-level producer → other decent-paying job that I’d probably hate, I would have escaped the privileged knowledge of what it’s like to be a full-time sex worker before the full-on collapse of (pornographic) sex work.

But I didn’t. I fucked for money. And in my free time, I engaged in literary whining over the state of my hooker community.

I complained because I missed that golden-era money (never earned a six-figure salary). I complained because government agencies began to crack down on barrier protection (i.e., condom) safety violations that could, in theory, detract from whatever porno-profits still remained to be had. I complained about the resurgence of anti-porn feminism in both media and academia. I complained about right-wing, anti-porn moralism. I complained about the amount of performance-enhancing, erectile dysfunction pharmaceuticals I was either swallowing or injecting into the side of my penis. But I was missing the point.

Producers were willing to pay me $500 to $700 a day so that I could stick my dick in someone. Even on nightmare productions (i.e., getting hard for a sixty-five-year-old woman who hated me), my paycheck hinged on the reality of my orgasm. There was a direct correlation between cash flow and the release of endorphins/serotonin/phenyl ethylamine. My job was objectively great even when it wasn’t. It seemed important to share the reasons why.

Through sex work advocacy and pro-porn, feminist propaganda, I did my part to normalize a profession that should have remained in the shadows. MindGeek was dumping enough free porn on to the web to desensitize the world to every explicit, sexual circus act. And I was among the crowd championing the personal empowerment of getting fucked in the ass for money.

Eighteen-year-old girls started showing up on set, comfortable in their conventionally unattractive bodies, and claiming an innate love for pornography. They’d accept embarrassingly low-ball offers, working nearly for free, because their performance was a self-proclaimed “political act.” It didn’t matter that their sex work career was over in a month, or that they’d just closed the door on several dozen other professional options, or that they’d pissed off their parents enough to cause a two-year lapse in familial communication.

“You know how every urban, twenty-something community is made up of broke-ass DJs, models, photographers, musicians, filmmakers, and writers? Add ‘porn star’ to that list. It’s become just as boring and pointless. And you’re always a stone’s throw away from someone unremarkable who will do the job for nothing.” —The assistant narrator.

•

I quit performing in porn, though not by my own choice.

I’d dug myself a mildly sustainable niche in the middle-class, fucking-for-money sector. Then I ended up in the hospital for priapism. All the ED drugs had caught up with me. I’d become psychologically addicted to Cialis, and I ingested enough of the stuff to keep my cock hard for more than twelve hours. My penis had to be bled out with a monster-sized needle.

To save the future of my non-medicated erections, I had to quit medicating my dick for porn. But without the drugs, I was horrible at the job. So I had to quit (performing in) porn altogether.

“He was very much into the identity of Danny Wylde, even though he hated the name. His disposable level of celebrity made him feel like a sex symbol. At least to the teenage, tube-site-addicted crowd. What would he do without all the fan email?” —The assistant narrator.

I entered a period of severe depression, which may have never waned. My search for employment landed me a number of low-level production jobs in the adult industry. I settled on a full-time gig in which I filmed, edited, and carried on with a variety of content management tasks for the most popular/successful male porn star on the planet.

“He thought to himself, ‘How lucky I am to have completed my degree in cinematic arts. Now I work forty-to-sixty-hour weeks for the same monthly salary I earned while in college.’” —The assistant narrator.

•

I could say with some certainty—after staring at several hundred hours of content in the absence of arousal—that porn had become boring.

There was flesh and it was fucked. Everyone over the age of twelve could list the ways in which a cock could fill a hole. Pornography was the equivalent of pop music; culturally omnipotent and void of all significance. It was visual mediocrity compounded by such widespread financial collapse that there might never again exist the capitalist incentive for novelty or spectacle.

The shift in my labor had robbed me of the neurological reactions that once facilitated my sex-positive rants. I went on to exist among the sedentary cogs of middle-class America. And I indulged in their ritualized acts of self-hatred.

There was no physical struggle; no political cause of which to lend my hand. There was only carpal tunnel, debt, stagnation, self-mutilation, and my boss’s penis at the center of an Apple Cinema Display (purchased on credit), thrusting back and forth at a rate of a thousand-plus strokes per hour.

“That’s called first-world problems. That’s called, ‘You’re mad you never made it.’” —The assistant narrator.

•

“There had to be a way out,” I thought. And so I flirted with the idea of conventional prostitution (an act I’d initially given up in my early twenties). For boys, it was just called hustling.

I posted a sort of joke on social media; offered a hand job in exchange for a date to an art house movie.

The first response came from a man I’d met at Nordstrom. He worked in the fragrance department and often gave me free samples of cologne and grooming products. It was obvious he wanted to fuck me.

We began our date in his Prius, parked in the movie theatre lot. Both of us were nervous and unable to achieve an erection. “Can we watch the movie first?” he asked. “Then head back to my place?”

I nodded.

“First, I’d like to say that I received a promotion. I’m now a store manager. That means I make a lot more money. Let me take care of you.”

He shoved his tongue inside my mouth and I thought, Yes.

For the night, I fell in love with him. We went back to his West Hollywood apartment and sucked each other’s cocks.

I made the mistake of leaving without any discussion of money. And I made the mistake of answering his texts. When I finally asked him what he would pay to swallow my semen, he replied, “I don’t know. Fifty dollars?”

“The author is fucking horrible at setting boundaries. But he wants me to note that this was not an isolated incident. Many potential clients approached him for the legally precarious act of prostitution. They swooned at the emotional vulnerability he displayed in all things related to pumping them full of cock. And they balked at the suggestion that such an exchange might cost them more than a tank of gas.” —The assistant narrator.

•

As my friend and I strolled down the east side of Hollywood Boulevard, we were approached by a homeless boy who asked us for money.

The boy was cute. If he were to shower and cut his hair, he might have looked like one of those BelAmi porn star types. I suggested he take up sucking cock to save himself from poverty.

“It’s not so easy anymore,” said my friend. “Think of sexual liberation; the gay rights movement. Fags can marry each other. There’s Grindr. What’s the incentive to pay a young hustler for a blow job?”

“The author knew his friend was right. David Geffen used to offer three grand for a ‘massage.’ Now he’s likely on PrEP and getting top-shelf twinks to swallow his loads for free.” —The assistant narrator.

“A wise observation,” I said. “Women have been suffering for years. The best markets for prostitution are now in the Middle East. Each of my porn star ex-girlfriends were flown to Dubai to fuck the prince. I think they pay about fifteen thousand dollars a girl.”

“See, that doesn’t happen in America,” said my friend.

“Why?”

“Wealth is one thing, but it’s not the only factor. Cultural conservatism breeds shame. At least in terms of sexuality. And what else do johns need in order to part with so much of their money?”

“Hmm…You heard that RentBoy.com was shut down by the feds, right?” I asked.

“Yes. I heard.”

“Progressives have been complaining about it on social media. But perhaps the explicit government assault on sex work is good business for hustlers?”

•

It seemed obvious to me that “normal” sex would never again be of value in the United States. But what about all those government officials, celebrities, and Wall Street bankers? If history were of any merit, one could only assume that libertines still thrived among the wealthy.

I had grown old and could no longer pass as an underage piece of meat. The obvious connoisseurs of child pornography were out of my reach. Besides, children rarely dictated the financial terms of their sexual violation. Exploiting the upper class with some age-play scenario wouldn’t do much for me at all.

But I knew there was money to be had, and that I was the perfect candidate to steal it. Post-sex-work adulthood had left me miserable and willing to debase myself in nearly any manner. I only sought the proper price.

•

As if by the power of Rhonda Byrne’s manifestation, I received an email from a wealthy libertine. He offered $1,000 for a condom full of my semen. The price was above average, but the product seemed typical. Until I discovered the reason for its acquisition.

The libertine wished to consume my semen for the purposes of necromancy. He explained very little of the ritual but said that my seed would contribute to his power over the spirits of the dead.

I’d yet to participate in anything useful during the course of my life, so I was intrigued at the prospect of aiding in the libertine’s dark magick. I offered up my fluids when he asked, and he paid me in return. He wanted blood, piss, saliva, and cum. My holes opened for him; my DNA flowed freely.

“The author had always been an atheist, but the libertine piqued his spiritual curiosity. He began to study ancient grimoires, such as The Key of Solomon and Grimorium Verum. Confused about how to obtain many of the ceremonial elements depicted in such books, he refrained from all magical practice. But he did often dream of a better life; perhaps one enabled by demons.” —The assistant narrator.

•

Dear [redacted],

I know you are better than I am. At almost everything. I am a merely a cow who dispenses milk.

But I may have more to offer than what comes shooting out the end of my dick. At least, my inherent loss of value has forced me to think outside the box.

What is the purpose of sex work but to bypass the horrors of poverty, professional mundanity, and capitalist personal-time theft? Now that a good fuck has dropped below the price of corporate office labor, a hustler must rub his genitals for at least forty hours a week, or else compensate with the sort of dreariness he sought to escape.

It’s true. There may no longer be financial incentive for sex work at all, though many hookers have yet to come to terms with this reality. And many—like myself—are equipped with no other practical skill.

Note: The editing of pornographic video content is something I am capable of, and even good at. It’s also a career on the verge of extinction.

Yes, there is the service industry, retail, and holding up a stop sign at the edge of a highway construction site. Sex workers are no different than peasants in their access to poverty.

But I want no such thing. My goals are as follows:

To earn an extraordinary amount of money.

To kill myself.

Prior to meeting you (in the digital sense), I had no plan to enact my first goal. But I’ve dedicated at least two hours a day—since my porn star retirement—to meditation on suicide. Compounded with other acts of self-abuse, I feel that I am highly qualified for the ordeals of my second goal.

At last, I may have figured out a way to combine the two. With your permission, of course.

Is it true—in your dealings with necromancy—that you have discovered how to bring the dead back to life? I read through a resurrection spell in the Grimoire of Honorius, but I understood none of it. Like I said before, you are better than I am. At almost everything.

I expect nothing out of the goodness of your heart. You deal in capital. What I propose is a plan to make us both a lot of money.

Often, I close my eyes and imagine the pornography I’d like to see in the attics of ultra-wealthy purveyors of excellent taste. One such image can be described like this:

I am on the floor. My ass has been opened with a speculum and now resembles a bleeding crater. A masked man kneels beside me and holds a lit match near the edge of my hole. There is a canister of lighter fluid or gasoline nearby. I have not yet burst into flame.

My face has been impaled by a jagged, but otherwise cylindrical, piece of scrap metal. My eyes are wide and looking toward the camera—full of the knowledge of impending death. A man fucks my slack mouth with his cock.

A subsequent image might exist in which I appear like a blackened log at the bottom of a fire pit. There might also exist video evidence of the moment I expire.

Thousands of variations are possible, but only with your help.

I could surely find someone to fuck and then murder me. But what good is it if I’m not brought back to life? Why should I give freely to those who’ve already taken everything?

You’re friends with Jeffrey Bezos, yes? The founder and CEO of Amazon.com? How many other tyrants do you know? The whole lot of you must find some great satisfaction in the unending violence you wage on the world. I wish only to contribute to your entertainment. And, of course, to charge a craftsman’s price for what I guarantee to be an exceptional product.

Of course, there is some sort of minor competition. An excess of militant Islamic snuff films currently float around the web. But the closeted faggots in Boko Haram don’t dare pump their soon-to-be corpses full of cock. At least, not on camera.

And what about the Kazaa-era, lo-fi breed of sexual violence? Grainy, unlit, and inferior by all possible standards.

I’ve worked in mainstream pornography for years. I know how to light an orifice, to position my body for maximum visibility, and to capture moments of sexual terror with amazing clarity.

So, I offer you open-ended access to high-production-value, documented, sexual murder in which I am the star/victim.

My only requests are that you bring me back from the dead with your magick, and that you spread the word among your upper-class colleagues (i.e., potential clients). In return, I will negotiate with you a healthy percentage from each sale.

Together, we can dominate the market of unregulated, high-end, snuff pornography.

Sincerely,

Christopher Zeischegg

aka Danny Wylde

•

I waited two whole weeks for the libertine’s response. He would only talk to me once I’d been electrocuted, blindfolded, and thrown into the back of an unmarked van.

“My name is [redacted],” said the libertine. “I’ve been swallowing your blood, piss, and cum for several months now. Thanks for being such a sport.

“I was impressed by your letter. At how you seem to have caught on to your lot in life. You fucking cum rag. You fucking dumb piece of shit.

“The fact that you want to die is not surprising. It’s as funny as watching any animal tear its fur out at the zoo. Though, maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought.

“To not attempt the trivial journey of turning your life around, but to indulge in your role as a sliced-open and fucked piece of meat… That’s exciting.

“Let me say this. I don’t actually know if I can bring you back to life. Magick is a hobby of mine. It appears to bring me great fortune, though it’s hard to verify a direct correlation between ceremonial practice and wealth. What I mean to say is that I’ve always come from money.

“Anyway, I’m going to kill you in about thirty minutes. I imagine it’s going to be a whole lot of fun. Especially for me. And maybe in some fucked-up way, for you. After, we’ll see if there’s anything to this resurrection spell.

“Don’t think that I’m trying to rob you of your profits. This is simply a product test phase before we bring your smut to market. If it doesn’t work out, don’t be disappointed. I mean, it won’t matter. You’ll be dead. But know that I’m just carrying out the inevitable. You were born to have your face beaten in with a rock.”

“The van stopped and the author was dragged into an abandoned warehouse. There, he was made to endure an excruciating amount of pain before having his head lopped off and fed into a wood chipper.” —The assistant narrator.

•

“There’s been only one mention of the author’s snuff collection on the Dark Web. I say ‘collection’ because two separate art prints were mentioned in which the author was depicted in the throes of both orgasm and death. Due to the varying locations and forms of execution, a question was posed as to the authenticity of violence. Nonetheless, the prints were described as ‘excellent jerk-off material’ and ‘worth the exorbitant price.

“An unrelated post appeared the same day on a subreddit forum:

“I am a former porn star and current life-hacker. Thanks to all of you who’ve stolen the content I helped create for Naughty America, Vivid, Hustler, Evil Angel, and Kink.com. I once tried to appeal to your ethical sensibilities; to convince you that my labor was worth your hard-earned cash. I now know that it’s not.

“Tomorrow I’m going to be fucked by twelve men and then cut into three hundred pieces. A ritual will be performed, mid-act, with the intent to hex each and every one of you. The whole thing will be videotaped. None of you peasants will ever be able to afford to watch it.

“It will be among the best days of my life.” —The assistant narrator.