2009 October | Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer

Archive for October, 2009

October 29th, 2009

Streetwise

I’m very excited. I just found my favorite movie of all time, Streetwise, on Youtube.

I can’t believe I didn’t think to look it up before! I haven’t seen the movie in several years, since I gave my VHS collection away (Streetwise is unavailable on DVD).

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Streetwise is a 1984 documentary about homeless youth in Seattle. It’s simply one of the best non-fiction films ever made. Aside from maybe Chickenhawk. Which, now that I think about it - just may be up on ol’ Youtube, too.

Sometimes it’s a great modern world we live in.

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October 29th, 2009

The Economics of Porn, Part Three: High-Priced Hooking

I had a very enlightening conversation last night with Mark Spiegler, long-time agent in the skin business, where we talked about the declining revenues for performers and producers.

Spiegler hipped me to the fact that many adult performers - both current and retired, but by the looks of it, mostly retired, or at least much more well-known for their past work - have chosen to take their talents to the general public.

The best-known site for porn star escorts is bodymiracle.com, where stars like Devon, Chasey Lain, Nikita Denise, Savannah Stern, and Nina Hartley list their prices for pleasure time.

“Porn’s not paying as much as it once did,” said Spielger. “Companies are shooting less. And while the women I represent generally don’t escort, because I advise them not to, many do. In fact, I think some women get into porn to build their name up, so they can make more as an escort.”

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October 25th, 2009

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

The feminist knock on Karl Marx is that his theory of labor and production is a masculinist notion, due to the fact that in his writings, the home - until recently, the domain of women - is referred to as a place of leisure.

The post-structuralist take on film theory is that psychoanalysis and cinema are inextricably linked, due to the fact that both were born in the same era (the early 1900’s), and that, especially in the hands of a prototypically deliberate auteur like Alfred Hitchcock, cinema becomes a privileged conveyor of psychoanalytic theory.

Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema” (1973) posits that the gaze of cinema is inherently oriented to a male point of view. Women are the objects of the look; men are the observer. Female film spectators are presented with two choices: one masochistic, in which they identify with the male gaze, indulging in a kind of self-violence; the other narcissistic, in which they identify themselves with the “looked-at,” willing self-objectification. Both choices (implies Mulvey) sort of suck balls.

She called for the need to create a new language of desire.

Althusser tried to marry Freud and Marx. His writings on Ideology attempted to delineate the convergence of economy, sexuality and the superego. People listened to him less when he strangled his wife, in 1980.

Pornography is the logical complex synthesis of labor, sexuality, unconscious workings, psychology, and film theory. It is so richly laden with possibility, for the man who loves to explore. Why, then, is it so often a miserable breeding ground of discontent? Why, for so many, is it an unhappy log of shit?

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October 23rd, 2009

The Economics of Porn, Part Two

We are in one horrible recession, granted. And porn is being gutted by the Tubes, granted, part two.

Can we look into a crystal ball and see what’s going to happen to our fine, feathered friends? What is the future of recession-porn? Let’s address the question: should you make it a career choice?

1. Like the airline pilots, actors and actresses are in the process of taking a major pay cut. The guys with caps and wings got a 50 % pay cut: seems like it’s headed that way for porn, too. It’d mean a boy-girl scene is coming in at around $500, instead of an even grand. And a dude, instead of getting his $500 or so, is going to be available for schlong duty at $250.

What does that mean for you, as a rising producer? It means it’s time to start cracking! Your money can go twice as far, so make twice as many! Make that porn. You’ll be keeping bread on the table for people with names like Mr. Pete and Kacey Jordan. But at the same time, you’ll have to figure out how to make money at all with your porn. Because with all these dang Tubes out there - Cliphunter, Pornhub, TeenTube, you name it - I don’t see how or why any rational person would pay money to watch porno. It simply doesn’t make any sense at all. You’re going to have to learn to think outside the box.

Kacey Jordan and Scarlett Pain

2. Basically, making porn isn’t just about being a scumbag anymore. It’s about becoming an abstract thinker. That changes the game. No longer can Larry from Fresno make a giant dent in the game simply because he has a lot of arm and underarm hair, naturally calls women “baby” and “honey” and doesn’t much mind the scent of anal lubricant. No; he’s no longer a big fish in a feces-infested pool. I remember a person named Al Borda who just made the worst porn in the world. He was literally like a taxi driver turned pornographer. He made millions. Now guys like Eric Holder, Michelle Obama, and yeah, Al Greenspan are going to have to step up to the plate and take a whack at porno. Dershowitz would be a pretty good pornographer. So would Ben Bernake. Joe Torre would be an okay pornographer; Joe Girardi might be a better one. The game is changing. Stay with me.

Al Borda: Typical

3. Why isn’t anyone suing the tubes people? Obama was a laywer; let’s put this on his to-do list. Want to right the struggling economy? Hel-lo! Sue the tubes people, Barry. It seems like it’s a pretty easy case: pirated content appears on your site: we want money, because you’re using our content. How hard is that? Seems like instead of becoming a pornographer, you should become a pornographer’s lawyer. So let’s move Dershowitz from pornographer back to lawyer. He wasn’t a good pornographer, anyway. And you need to enroll at Wash Law, if you know what’s good for you.

“No more Tubes. They distract me, anyway.”

4. And Goddamn, does Obama take a little break now and then and watch the Tubes? My God, I see a conflict of interest. How is he going to sue a behemoth he actually succors warmth, comfort, and jizz from? The truth is, he won’t and I shouldn’t expect him to. The really disturbing thing, of course, is how right I am, in imagining that at some point in time, Barack Obama, not to mention Rahm Emmanuel and Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney and even Sandra Day O’Connor are on the interwebs, whacking away. That’s sort of the saving grace of porno: how many people use it. That’s what’s kept me following this bouncing ball for so damn long now: because it’s used. Not because it’s produced (only a few people do that) but because it’s consumed. It’s kind of horrid to think about, actually: you don’t want to imagine the best and the brightest on Pornhub. You just don’t want to. I mean, it’s a great thing to know that Mark Twain never was on Pornhub. The most disgusting onanistic thing he ever did, probably, was look at some French postcards. We’re such a shitty lonely generation. We just are.

He did not have access to the Tubes.

5. Will this thing turn around, for porno? Well, one question is, do we care? I mean, are you worried about the people who comprise the porn industry? Are you sad that a guy is just being paid $250 to have sex with a beautiful woman? I mean, I’m so sexually frustrated, I’m considering paying for it. Not to a hooker or anybody like that; literally, I’m so on edge I might just go up to the girl who’s selling lattes and offer her thirty dollars. See where things go. See, that’s my problem. Even when I’m being profligate, I’m being cheap. Thirty dollars? Now that’s recessionary, dude.

Maybe we’re seeing the end of porno’s crazy prices: $49.99 for a DVD never made sense, anyway. I wouldn’t pay that much to watch the restored Godfather. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe we’ll shave down the number of smut companies in San Fernando. Maybe the LA-League will just go under, like the USFL, and we’ll have to start all over. Maybe they’ll need a new commissioner. Maybe that man will be me. Maybe that man will be me.

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October 16th, 2009

Playboy Playmates 1953-2008

This is a find from my man Shane Mahoney, who referred to this gem as “Quite Possibly the Single Greatest Webpage of All Time.”

They are all there. In exhaustive order. As the little boy in Animal House says when that girl flies through his window, “Thank you, God!”

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October 15th, 2009

Review of “Foreplay Music: Music to Make Love To”

My gig as reviewer at Edenfantasys caught me a wee bit off guard last week. Basically the guys over there, who are super cool, were like, “Sam, whatever you want to review is fine with us.”

“Whatever I want to review?”

“Yes,” they repeated. “Whatever.”

They have a pretty enormous catalog at EF, which includes not only movies, but toys and book and CDs and everything that you could think of that’s sex-related. My last review was of a movie, so I figured I’d get sort of “creative” and review one of their audio materials. I have a long-standing interest in audio; and also, I like fucking; so I thought I’d be well-prepared for a li’l CD coming straight-of-out-Georgia in 2005, called “Music To Make Love To.”

Oh, how I was wrong. I was assaulted from the jump, beginning with the cover art of the CD. Now, not to be niggling or whatever, ’cause some cover art represents the music contained therein a bit over-accurately, and some cover art talks down to its viewers, and essentially in the end it shouldn’t much matter. But this bad boy takes it to a new level. Basically it’s just walloping you over the head with a petal-flavored clitoris. Georgia O’Keefe would blush if she saw that erect little mama coming towards her.

Now for the music. You are probably going to want to put some headphones on before getting into this baby:

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That was called “Waves of Ecstasy.” Pretty embarrassing, huh? I want to know all about Suzie Johnson (co-writer) and Danny Jones (arranger, producer, recorder) and the way they get down. (Number one, are they “making love” to one other? Did “sparks fly” in the studio?) Now, either they are very cynical, and they think they can put one over on some unsuspecting customers by creating the latest in new age nut-cheese and labeling it “audio erotica,” or they actually do think that madness is sexy, which makes me believe that they want to create some mental picture of a Hawaiian Luau Orgy with tons of sex-positive anal lubricant and then a frank, open discussion afterwards about the virtues of taking a bath with your cat watching you.

Look: I know music is subjective, and everybody likes something different. My old girlfriend liked to fuck to Nirvana. I thought that was sort of strange. A little too agressive for me. So what? I indulged her. And I’m glad I did. This is my main point: sex-positivity and new age music (not collapsing those two things; they are separate and distinct categories, I know) have awful reputations already. Both are well-meaning genres; and this well-meaningness often comes across as a kind of mental sogginess, a sputtering goo that hardy Republican shitheads characterize as “bleeding-heart” and smart cynics just sneer at. We must not give these people further ammunition to laugh at us.

I’m a sex-positive man through and through - or at least, I’m trying to be. There’s evil in me; but there’s evil in everyone, and that’s the thing. Sex-positivity is going to have to acknowledge the blackness and the foulness if it’s going to get to the next level. It must come to terms with the regular, crass, boring, workaday rigid boner that’s carried around by the most-well-meaning and the friendliest dudes among us.

The enemy is not aggression or hostility. The enemy is fake positivity: fake happiness, fake laughter, fake sensuality, and fake compassion. There’s simply nothing worse out there. I’d rather hang out with Bill O’Reilly and get an earful of his backwards dogma, because at least he’s not trying to snow me. This whole Jamaican Beach Luau with steel drums pulsating and coconut oil smeared on a seventeen-year old teen pig in “Waves of Ecstasy” is a lie, and that gets me angry. It gets me angry because it’s co-opting something rather special. Sex is special. Sex with someone you love is sacred. Waves of actual ecstasy are rare and wondrous things. True sadness, real emotion and challenging thoughtfulness is actually the kind of music I’d like to make love to.

But it’s all relative. What music IS great music to make love to? Barry White?

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It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s worked for millions.

product picture

$15.99Foreplay Music. Music to Make Love to

CD by Tantra audio

Genre: Erotic music
Perfomance style: Instrumental

Buy from EdenFantasys

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October 14th, 2009

Jews in Arkansas, Organizing Unions and Sticking their Noses Where they Don’t Belong, Part Two

The second installment of my cousin Sam’s story of a summer spent in Arkansas, where he was basically hanging with the hippies and organizing unions. Go, Sammy. PS, when I was living in Portland, Sam was my only friend. Apart from our other cousin, Steve (also a Jew). Portland was not so good.

Hey Sam,

Tried to resume my letter earlier today at the Central Library but had difficulty finding a place to sit comfortably that didn’t put me in direct eye-line with a masturbating miscreant. Also attempted to go to the bathroom only two encounter two folks with very large backpacks copulating in the stall. My presence did not interrupt them, but theirs prevented me from urinating and ultimately writing.

Anyway, back to where I left off:

Spangles was the bane and delight of my time in Fayetteville. For the first few weeks every twelve to fifteen minutes she would find a way to mention her fiancé Chad. Alex, my buddy who brought me down to Arkansas, and I questioned the mental capacity of this Chad, as well as the validity of his existence. Spangles was in the process of converting to Judaism to marry Chad who had only recently discovered through an evening course in genealogy that he was really Jewish. Spangles took great joy in telling Alex and I, actual Jews, a wide array nonsensical half truths about Judaism. She met once a month with a Rabbi who traveled to Fayetteville from Tulsa to preach to Spangles, Chad, and 8 other Northwest Arkansas Jews. We immediately questioned this roving Rabbi’s teachings when Spangles corrected our pronunciation of the knotted bread served on the Sabbath (“No, no, no. It’s pronounced CH-allah,”).

Spangles, besides being an aspiring Jew and volunteer patriotic themed hospice clown was also compulsive chain smoker and Diet Coke drinker. She would waddle into the office in the morning, either in a denim skirt that regrettably came to where her knees presumably were (though no visual evidence could confirm there exact placement) or cargo capri pants and a shirt whose seem rested just below her belly button and a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke wedged in each of her moist underarms. She would need to replenish by lunch. She smoked the American Spirits in a black box, which smelled terrible. But that wasn’t enough, because at some point going outside the office to smoke 20 to 40 times a work day became too much and so she purchased an electronic cigarette from the internet.

She would puff on this piece of plastic with an orange LED light at its tip maybe every two minutes and then exhale this white vapor. It was supposedly odorless, but alas it reeked of compulsive desperation, which smells faintly of sulfur and belly button lint.

I suppose that is enough about Spangles, for now. I shall conclude in my direct discussion of her by saying that I will always remember her as flatulent and racist. She didn’t dislike black people, she just didn’t want any near her cigarettes or purse. And just because she didn’t want Mexicans talking to her, or breathing the same air she weezed, didn’t mean she didn’t respect their proud cultural heritage. Oh, oh, oh, and she was the fattest vegetarian I had ever scene, one who I never saw eat a green vegetable. She was also an ardent Hillary Clinton supporter.

Alright, so what exactly was I doing working for the union in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where there are barely any organized labors (and zero SEIU members)? Well, it would seem I was initially part of a vanity project for the union to show Senator Blanche Lincoln (A Democrat who might as well be a Strom Thurmon Dixiecrat) that she should toe the party line a little more closely. The way the union was going to do that was to organize a grass roots campaign to get Arkansas (whose membership in organized labor is again, miniscule) to call her to support something called the Employee Free Choice Act. EFCA basically makes it easier for worksites to vote on the decision to unionize by allowing for something called a card check vote, which is like a absentee vote. It allows workers to vote from home. It also stiffens penalties for employers who fire employees for vocally supporting unionization or for voting to unionize ( a common practice). Word from the SEIU folks in DC was that the Senate would vote on this bill as soon as Al Franken was seated, which happened the first week I arrive in Arkansas.

With a 60 seat majority, EFCA was supposed to be a slam dunk. Alas, it soon became clear that it would have to follow health care, which no one really thought would take too long.

Unfortunately this is how the opposition explained the bill:

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So Alex, Spangles, the guy who sucked, and I spent our days cold calling democrats, knocking on Obama supporters’ doors, and brining together a coalition of Fayetteville’s crackpot leftist fringe groups to get their weirdoes out supporting social justice for organized labor. What sort of “progressive” organizations did we work with on a daily basis? The Omni center, which was made of thirty octogenarians who believed world peace could be achieved with positive thinking right there in Fayetteville. These were the sorts who still had trouble understanding why they could not lift the Pentagon off the ground in the 1960s.

The other groups we worked with were Green Party of Northwest Arkansas, which was lead by an eccentric university staffer who took lunch every day at Pizza Hut, and had for 12 years. His group had considerable crossover with the city’s chapter of NORML, who would eventually become members of the Omni Center upon receiving their AARP cards. Spangles was in charge of campus outreach to the University, and all of its progressive organizations were pretty creaped out by her wide set eyes, flat nose, and thunderous smokers cough that set off a tsunami of jiggling flesh. Have I mentioned she smelled?

The weirdoes who worked with us were weird, but not half as weird as the groups that we encountered at the Fayetteville Market. A brief digression: why must we equate dirty with organic? Anyway, amongst the mumbo-jumbo peddlers who set up booths next to ours at the farmers market were the Scientologist of Arkansas, the guy who wants everyone to give him American currency in exchange for Fayetteville Bucks which are now redeemable at 17 local businesses, the Humane Society which has 15 year old junior varsity cheerleaders in uniform lead shelter dogs through the market collecting donations, a husband-wife reiki team, and an old hillbilly with a drawn-on sharpie mustache and two foot wide sombrero selling the world’s worst breakfast burritos. Nobody at the farmers’ market wore closed toed footwear but Alex and I. It was a parade of foot funguses and ingrown maladies. Dirty feet, smelly feet, diseased feet, all loose.

As for our office, old 66 Sunbridge, it had belonged to a family of Scandinavian chiropractors the month before. According to the guy who sucked, who had rented the office, the Chiroprators, had fled the country in the middle of night after a visit from the IRS. Their names Katinka, Rolf, and Belinda Vanhouvelle were still on the door, as was the marquee that read “We Sell Health.” The place was half painted a bland sand color by the leasing agency and an festive lime left by the Chiropractors. One could see where they had ripped the the x-ray machine right off the floor in one of the offices. My office had its own bathroom, but no windows. This seemed like a boon at the time, but proved to be a regrettable choice. That maxim about shitting were you eat holds true…

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October 13th, 2009

Jews in Arkansas, Organizing Unions and Sticking their Noses Where they Don’t Belong

Time for some guest writing. My cousin, who is also named Sam, just spent the summer as a union organizer in fucking Arkansas. Jews in Arkansas? Yeah, it had me scared, too. I begged him to tell me what he was up to, and the bastard totally ignores me for the whole summer. Then he sends me this genius treatise . . .

Sam Sam Sam,

Things this summer were a rodeo of ridiculousness: dangerous, smelling of animal feces and spat tobacco juice, and there was a general feeling that the people involved were less evolved than the animals. A buddy of mine from college gotta job working for SEIU, the largest union in America, with their political action committee called Change That Works. He had his choice of states between Indiana and Arkansas. He had suffered during the presidential election working for Obama in Indiana, and Arkansas paid better, so he chose the Natural State. After three weeks he quit, and then told he could hire who ever he wanted if he stayed, so after calling several of our more qualified friends he called me. I jumped at the chance to get out of portland, go to a place without hipsters and bacon maple donuts and young men with tattoos on thier necks bringing their skateboards and infants to the park on sunny afternoons. I wanted real conversation. I wanted authentic experience. I wanted America warts and all.

At first, me and my buddy were in Fayetteville. Our team consisted of a blow hard who claimed to have had sex with several state elected officials, he sucked, and an obese female who smoked three packs a day and who on weekends volunteered as a patriot themed clown named Spangles. Where did she volunteer you ask? Hospices. She was a hospice clown, and told of the great satisfaction of bringing a smile to the face of some one as they were expiring…

Ok sam, sorry for the intermission, but I am at the public library and a dude just produced a fog horn fart that has made this floor a biohazard…this guy must eat raccoons pickled in urine…i will continue my arkanstory soon.

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October 13th, 2009

The Shake Weight for Men

From the desk of Whutsiznaim at Cool Married Guy:

I….I don’t quite know what to say about this video, I mean….. I just don’t know if it’s funny because the creators legitimately didn’t realize what this looks like, or maybe they did know and they’re trying to pull one off on everyone…..or if I’m horrified….or if it’s real, or if this video reached me because it’s just….I mean, you know…(sigh) man. I….I’m just so uncomfortable, I’m…..I’m just really trying…I’m like trying to (sigh)….like am I laughing like “haha” laughing, or is it more of an uncomfortable laugh, like….like I just don’t know how else to react….or…..(sigh)……

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October 11th, 2009

Sunday Night, October 11th, Ten Years After

It’s all good, it’s all new . . .

I got an actual job over this way, which is very exciting. I’ve spent the last two months just writing, putting in the time literally six days a week, and in the process I’ve generated an insane number of words. In my decaffeinated stupor, words come easy. But it’s hard to say if they’re the right ones. Anyway. It’s difficult to justify the writer’s life when you’re not necessarily doing it for the promise of incoming money. And when you’re flat broke, things can get wretched and lonely fast. So I worked this weekend, in my new job, and felt considerably more grown up and more emotionally stable than I have in the past while, basically ever since I got back to the United States from South American. I have the next two days ahead of me, and the first drops are beginning to spill in the wide, vast, and nearly empty bucket that is my bank account..

I’m mildly considering the Bay Area for my future home . . . LA’s on the list, too, but I just don’t know about that place. First of all, I’d need a car. Same with Miami which I guess is number three. I suppose an honorary fourth would be any place outside of the United States. Costa Rica, Berlin, Barcelona, Rome, Malta, and so on. Pipe dreams, some might say . . . I’m trying to establish some sort of real career for myself, be it writing, be it writing-and (that’s like a coffee-and), and that’s hard to do when you’re not living in your home country. I could barely keep afloat when I was over in Peru - which was cool for the present but it does not take into account at all the future. And that’s where I’m trying to be.

Listened a Randy Newman album from 1974 on the way to work today . . . felt almost normal . . . god, I must have been walking around in a total swirl for the past several weeks . . . I get into such an alien, introverted, loserish state when I’m wrapped up in writing . . . it seems an awful way to live . . . why do I even want to go pro, if that’s what this life is like? I wonder what Pynchon is like as a father . . . or Vollman as a lover . . . William T. Vollman is probably frightening to sleep next to . . . he’s like a lizard . . .

I’m thinking Oakland, instead of San Francisco . . . San Francisco’s got the best girls - smart, big tits, glasses - but bad weather. I’m thinking Oakland’s cheaper, better weather, and hopefully they’ve got some girls over there, if not, I can come over the bridge.

California’s in such awful shape, I wonder why I even want to move there. But then, even in bad shape, it’s probably the best state we’ve got . . . it’s much better than the American South . . . which is where I am now . . .

It’s funny . . . I graduated from college ten years ago . . . in the fall of ‘99, I set out to drive cross-country to Santa Cruz. I had nothing but an ‘80 Volvo. No friends out there, no job. I wasn’t scared at all. I didn’t give a fuck. The week I got there, I got a job on a farm and found this funky-ass roommate who turned out to be one of the closest friends I’ve made in ten years. I wonder sometimes, did I have the luck around me then? Was it because I was young and open-hearted? Everything seemed to work out well for me then. The hippies called it “manifesting” . . . I would take ecstasy and go to an all-night dance party and, well, “manifest” a beautiful girl. I do think it had something to do with my age - it must have. I can take ecstasy and go to a club nowadays and I ain’t manifesting a thing. I’m really not. . .

Or maybe it was just luck. I had it rolling. Somehow I fell into producing porn when I was 23 years old. How was that even possible? The stars had to line up just right. I mean, certainly, I had the desire to do it - but then the actress in my first film got in touch with this guy Lew in Palo Alto who by chance knew Mike Horner in LA and then I meet Horner and he introduces me to Kelly Holland who tries to get me work with Max Hardcore and then eventually introduces me to a . . . well, who cares. Maybe it’s luck, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just a couple of good breaks, and maybe I still have some breaks to come.

Life moves on, and it’s good that it does it. It keeps things interesting. . . What in hell was I doing ten years ago, on October 11th? If it was a Sunday? I have my journal from that fall somewhere . . . let’s see if I can find it, maybe . . .

I have this incredible stack of black notebooks. They all look identical. Here’s some first pages:

Monday, October 17th, 2005.

“I did it all for a reason. And that reason is long gone, belongs to another person.”

March 3rd, 2007

“In a coffeeshop called Grendel’s Coffee on NE 8th Ave and Burnside, in Portland, OR, at almost 1 PM. It’s not raining today, and the coffeeshop has a good vibe. I have a glass of water in front of me and a mug of coffee (”My Worst Day on the Golf Course Still Beats My Best Day at the Office”). My thumb hurts, most likely due to the beating it took over the last 4 days at Computer Technology Link, Inc, located in the Northwest Industrial District. My job there nets me $53 a day of take home pay . . . ”

August 15th, 2003

Murfreesboro, TN (Brad’s house)

“The home of the chain - Murfreesboro that is. Captain D’s Seafood, El Mexicano, Verizon Wireless Chick Fil-A, Dollar General, Sonic, Steak-and-Shake, Kroger Foods, Walgreen Drugs, They line the highways in an endless life-sucking monolithic skyline, dwarfing the humans, run by invisible robots.”

November 28th, 2003

“Today’s got a horrible feel to it. I feel ashamed of myself. I am making a vow never to ‘get rid’ of any pot that I might have by smoking it. It’s just so, so stupid. I felt like the most pathetic addict yesterday. I prove myself that I still have an active problem. I couldn’t say a word. All day. And I left MY GODDAMN PHONE in Santa Barbara”

9/8/04

“Porno is not tragic - it’s the people who are inside it who are tragic.

My God - two days ago, I was dropping acid onto my tongue. Lord God almighty. It’s so much . . . drier here. And so am I, so am I. It’s sad how it fades so fast. What do I have left besides a smattering of bizarre memories, a tobacco issue, and a tingling in my left hand?”

January 5th, 2005

“Silke

(323) 202-0606

Maybe I’ll move to Venice. I don’t think so but maybe it would work - reason why is it would be new . . . I don’t like Venice so that’s sort of dumb. It’s just near my therapist, that’s all.”

Okay, finally found it. Lessee . . . the best I can do is find 11/12/99.

“Last night was another one, they keep getting stranger. This weekend was a set unto itself. I took Ecstasy on Friday night and had a bit of a trip . . . yes, I did . . . it was emotional as usual. In a way it was not as intense but in this odd, long-lasting way it was different than all other trips that I’ve had. It is a strange thing, ecstasy, but I felt I made some breakthroughs in terms of opening my heart. The odd thing is that the breakthroughs didn’t come when I was really in the throes of rolling, but rather they were in the aftermath, in the next day even. The next day (I am skipping ahead in my story - I am not a good storyteller, never have plot lines mapped out, plotted, but there’s no way to get better without DOIN’ it) I was a little kitty, I did hardly a thing but stay in my bedroom watch (so happily!) the end of Zelig and then Game 1 of the Lakers-Celtics series from 1987. What a beautiful game. That was my team, you’ll remember. Why does it make me so so happy to see James Worthy score 35 points? It is a thing of extreme beauty, basketball is - and that Lakers 87 team especially. The Celtics were amazing too - Bird completely awesome, though not the MVP that he’d been the previous three seasons. Magic. Kareem. Robert Parrish. And even Pat Riley and K.C. Jones, it was neat to see them in an earlier stage of their lives. The interesting thing is that I’ve seen that game before - in 1987. But never mind. I wrote the letter I’m going to send to the Weiss’s, and Woodwyn said “I love you” when she was getting off the phone and I said back “I love you, too.” And it felt so great to say that, it made me so happy I felt like crying, or sighing, or something . . . and right after she said that I called Jemini . . who is completely another story unto herself . . . what is it with women and me? God is dropping them into my life left and right, right and left . . . I’m being a good boy and not having sex with any of them. This not-fucking on the first date rule is a good policy, no question about it. But yes, I’ve been very lucky with women since I moved here - three women have approached me, that was the way that it happened . . . and all had something to do with dancing. Many, many of the women that I’ve been with in the last three years have had something to do with meeting on a dance floor. Mina, of course . . . Deborah . . that girl from Prato, Guya . . . you could even say (excised) and still be accurate to the truth. God, I need to get better at my writing. I’m for shit right now. The only way to do it, though, I feel, is to write and write and get all that shit out of my system - the only way I’m going to shit out the shit, is going to put it down on paper . . . I’ve got a little bit of fear that the porno isn’t going to be well-written. Perhaps a comedy-mystery? I’d like to see some drawing in it (drawings by me, of course . . . in later films we can feature artists like K. Reid, A. Flesher). I’d also like to see some dancing . . . I can’t wait until I make my porno. That’s going to be so incredible. I’ve got to remember that this is totally going to be a the learning experience, this movie that we’re making with LuAnn and Aaron. It’s a gift from God, another one (I hope I don’t look back on this journal in ten years and think all these “gift from God” phrases were serious . . they ain’t . . . meant to be taken in the jocular . . . jugular . . vernacular.) Santa Cruz, too, a gift from God . . Jemini, too, also a gift from God . . I gotta take a picture of her before she leaves . . she’s here, y’see . . . just took a bath. I slept at her house last night . . . how magic . . she’s my first goddess. A goddess is a term that must be defined, I suppose. A goddess is often dreadlocked - she is spiritual . . . more often than not she is a vegan . . if not a vegan, a vegetarian . . if not a vegetarian, a very conscious meat eater. She does not eat at Burger King, let’s say. A goddess shops at the Farmer’s Market, Whole Foods, etc. Goddesses are frequently tall, or at least they appear tall. They cast a certain aura of confidence and sensuality as they saunter through streets. Goddesses rarely smoke tobacco. If they do smoke tobacco, you will not find them smoking Marlboro Lights, or Newports. No. Rollies, or American Spirits, are more their style. Goddesses often do smoke, however, marijuana. Godesses love to dance. They have underarm hair and toned arms. . ”

My that became quite the excercise in embarrassment, transcribing that! Who cares. The beauty of youth. The stupidity of beauty. And so on and so on. What was private becomes public. What was public becomes pubic. It’s all good. It’s all new.

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