AN EPIGRAPH TO A BOOK NOT YET WRITTEN.

"The Porn Business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- Billy Watson

There’s a quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson floating around the internet that goes something like, “The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”

There’s also a similar quote he said about “the music business”. If you’ve read his work, you’d know it’s not out totally of the question that HST would utter those words.

If you do a little Googling, you’ll find he may have said it…and he may have not. Doesn’t matter to me. I’m stealing it anyway. I’m not really sure what exactly I’m stealing or who I’m stealing it from, but I’m stealing and tweeking things a bit to go with what ended up being my career — The Adult Entertainment Industry. And I wanted to use my stolen HST quote as an epigraph to kick of my memoir. A memoir I think I’m going to title “How To Make A Porno.”

But enough of that for now. I gotta start whatever this is going to end up being, so I’ll start here: I got into the Porno Biz was to write a book. That’s the truth.

I also got into the Porno Biz because I didn’t get tenure. That’s the truth, too.

Finally, I got into the Porno Biz to make money. Lots and lots of it. Because, after all, porn’s a billion-dollar-a-year industry and everyone in the industry makes lots and lots of money.

I got out of USF’s MA program in the winter of 1998, and even though I had a sold screenplay, and finished a novel, and wrote a handful of short stories (a few of which got published in some really little “littles” (the term “littles” or “little mags” predated “‘zines”…so maybe I should say my short fiction was published in ‘zines you’ve never heard of)), I never really considered myself a “writer”.

I mean what kind of writer writes a sentence using double parenthesis, anyways?

After grad school I taught people how to write — and I did consider myself a teacher.

I worked for tenure. Worked my ass off. I wanted so badly to be a community college professor! So when that didn’t happen, I didn’t “start over” at a different community college or go back to teaching high school. And middle school? I’d been in those trenches, too. Out of the question.

I’ll tell you how that happened soon, because one of the most-frequently asked questions I get asked is “how do I get in?!”

Let’s get back to my family. Breaking the news to anyone in your family about working in porno is difficult. For some, impossible. For others, it means excommunication from family and friends.

Breaking the news to my family went something like this: hey, um…mom, so, um, dad, um well, since I didn’t get tenure, I, um, anyways, great news! I found a job. Pays well, too! Anyways, here goes. I’m gonna go ahead and start shooting smut. Internet smut. But don’t worry, I’m only gonna do it for a year — MAX — and then I’ll write a book all about it, and it’ll get published, and that book will make us all very proud.

Something like that. Anyways, that dialogue dates to the fall of 2002, and no one was really too happy about it.

I’m gonna attempt a memoir. But memoirs are like podcasts, right? Everyone’s got one. Memoirs and podcasts and actors and politicians and musicians and even other smut peddlers. (Read Ashley Blue’s Girlvert when you get a chance).

A book means work, and work means time, and the older I get the more I realize the Value of Time. Whether it’s my time or your time, there’s never enough of it left.

I like to make pictures and read and look at art and listen to music and travel and make books on my ancient printing press and make little collages and paint pictures and scour flea markets looking for all sorts of weird shit (I used to look for records, too, but they’re too expensive now).

All of these things are easier and more fun than attempting a memoir.

What I’m really trying to say is there’s parts of my story that are very hard to tell. Really difficult. From directing movies featuring “race play” to how making porno movies has affected my personal sex life to society’s perceptions of pornographers and pornography make for difficult conversations.

Some people really hate pornography and consider anyone involved a trafficker or a rapist or very creepy or severely damaged and worthy of nothing but a long prison sentence. And after 20+ years in this industry, I’ve worked with all of the above. But there’s terrific people, too.

Whenever I’m creating stuff, I tend to think of the process in a linear fashion. Specifically chronological. Especially when I’m writing. My brain says there’s a beginning and a middle and an end — in that specific order. So that’s what I do. I start with my beginning, work through the middle stuff, and finish it all off with an ending.

You’d be shocked how many times I’ve sat down to create something, gotten through most of it — but couldn’t finish the thing off. Self-esteem’s a bitch. Stir in a little Imposter Syndrome and there you have it.

A memoir means lots of time — with no guarantees about anything other than a tiny slice of hard drive space on my laptop no longer available for my pictures or music.

Did I mention some of my stories aren’t easy to tell? Or that I have all sorts of self-esteem issues?

I’ve even got an idea for my book’s epigraph, which is where authors start their books. And if you know anything about Austin Kleon, you know he’s all about about artists stealing from other artists.

The porno business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

What’s the difference between mainstream movies and porn? Bigger budgets and more people on set is all I can really come up with.

So I’m gonna run with my epigraph. I just wanted to let you know where it came from.