Pink Fishnets
I took this photograph of a porn star on the set of an adult movie in Woodland Hills, CA, in the spring of 2009.
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I took this photograph of a porn star on the set of an adult movie in Woodland Hills, CA, in the spring of 2009.
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Awhile back, I started this mini-project called 30 Days of Smut. The idea was that I would write a short piece of smut-themed flash fiction every day for 30 days and post it on my website. That specific goal didn’t work out because I got busy, so I crossed out the 30 and the project is now Days of Smut. I’ll probably keep going until I have 30 stories and then stop. Basically, the purpose of the project is just to exercise my creative muscle. So far, I’ve introduced a dominatrix, a porn addict, an auto-cannibalist, a woodsman, and a mannequin.
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I took this photograph near the red carpet at the AVN Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada, in, I believe, 2013.
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I took this photo at a porn convention in, I believe, Las Vegas, although it’s possible it was Chicago, but I’m pretty sure it was Vegas, in, say, 2013, or 2014, or something like that. I can’t remember if I spoke to the woman, although maybe I did, or maybe I didn’t. In any case, it’s one of my favorite shots I’ve taken.
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Ahead of The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend, where I’ll be a panelist—see: “Women and Bodies: Science Meets Sociology”—The L.A. Times shared “The 50 Best Hollywood Books of All Time” and asked readers for their suggestions on the best Hollywood books not on that list. My suggestion made it to “19 Great Hollywood Books We Missed, According to Our Readers.” Find out my suggestion here.
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The above image is a panel from “My, My American Bukkake Too,” a comic that I made in 2003 or 2004. I made the comic using photos I shot on a bukkake movie set, running the images through Microsoft Paint, and editing the results. This comic was a sequel to “My, My American Bukkake,” a comic that I made using the same process in 2002. There was some controversy around MMABT, which you can read about here. I believe MMAB was first published in Headpress 23. Later that same year, MMAB was published again, in Dirty Stories Volume 3, which was edited by Eric Reynolds and published by Fantagraphics, alongside comics by Joe Sacco, Bob Fingerman, and Carol Swain, among others. MMAB was republished again or MMABT was published (I can’t remember which one) in Best Erotic Comics 2008, which was edited by Greta Christina and published by Last Gasp, alongside comics by Daniel Clowes, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Toshio Saeki, among others. In a review of Dirty Stories Volume 3, “A Fresh Look at Porn Comix,” TIME called MMAB a “non-fiction standout.” In 2004, MMABT was published on Artbomb (a comics website created by Warren Ellis that no longer exists), where it was described as “a deeply moving account of personal loss set amidst the tapestry of sexual taboo.”
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For the month of April, I’m undertaking a new project: 30 Days of Smut. Every day this month I’ll be writing and posting an approximately 200-word flash fiction that is in some way related to sex. If you know my work, you know this isn’t porn, or, let’s face it, smut, and it certainly isn’t (*gags*) erotica, but, well, IYKYK. In any case, I partly got inspired to do this because I had been reviewing some of the work I’ve written over the years on my blog as part of my Fuck You, Pay Me series on writing, editing, and publishing. As I wrote Fuck You, Pay Me #7: Some of My Favorite Things I've Ever Written (Journalism Edition), and then Fuck You, Pay Me #8: Some of My Favorite Things I've Ever Written (Fiction Edition), I noticed a few things. Some of my best work was written outside of any institution and self-published. That meant that my creativity was best served when I had control over the process, I could do what I wanted, and no one else was involved. So this morning, as I sat in the underground parking lot of the Burbank Whole Foods, I had this idea of a guy who was a porn addict, who was sitting there, trying to figure out how he had gotten there and what he was going to do next. So I thought it would be good to write this as a flash fiction, to share it, and to do that every day for a month. And there you have it. I guess it was also informed by the fact that I spent a lot of time Sunday night looking at tentacle porn for an upcoming newsletter, but you’ll have to wait to hear more about that. Anyway, go read The Porn Addict and then tell me what you think happens to him next. Does redemption await him?
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This is part 8 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing. Read the rest of the series: Part 1: How To Become a Writer in 12 Easy Steps, Part 2: The Pros and Cons of Traditional vs. Indie Publishing, Part 3: Scenes From My Life Writing a Porn Novel, Part 4: Why I Hate Memoirs (but Wrote One Anyway), Part 5: 19 Ways to Make Money as a Writer, Part 6: Letters From Johns Revisited, Part 7: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Journalism Edition), Part 8: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Fiction Edition), Part 9: How to Promote Your Book Without Going Crazy.
I thought I’d list some of my favorite things I’ve ever written in terms of fiction. Obviously, I’ve excluded my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. But I’ve included my short story collection, You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You?, and my novel-in-progress, (which I’ll refer to here as) Untitled Porn Novel-in-Progress.
You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You? In 2003, I published my short story collection through Future Tense Books. The collection is comprised of fourteen stories, among them: “Apartment,” “He Was Probably in Jail,” and “Hey Doll.” These stories were written when I was in graduate school, after I graduated, and during the course of my writing career. The subject matter is nuts and often about weird sex fetishes, dysfunctional relationships, and things that happen when you find yourself working in Porn Valley. You can buy it on Amazon for $80.
Standout quote: “You could call him nullified, or orchidectomized, or emasculated, or a eunuch, but he was simply the possessor of a penectomy, a person who no longer bore his own penis, a man undeniably lacking in what he had previously carried in his lower basket.”
Year published and publisher: 2003, Future Tense Books
Untitled Porn Novel-in-Progress Currently, I’m working on a novel that’s set in the adult film industry. It focuses on a single character and is a real pleasure to write. As I have shared in interviews, writing my memoir was a slog, and I really wanted to undo that experience and create something that was amusing and exciting and fresh. I’ve written nearly 25% of this novel so far, and every time I re-read it I laugh out loud. It’s a delight.
Standout quote: “Of course, there were freaks of nature that worked the adult business like sideshow acts, men preternaturally gifted with eye-popping appendages who had carved out a niche for themselves by starring in movies with titles that trumpeted their larger-than-life anatomies, but those guys were outliers.”
Year published and publisher: TBD, TBD
“The Tumor“ In 2015, I self-published this short story. It’s about an anthropomorphic tumor, a troubled marriage, and a bad man. I had the cover designed, the layout designed, and the formats designed. I really enjoyed this process, as it gave me the ability to control the process from soup to nuts. You can buy it on Gumroad for $1. To date, I’ve earned a total of $884.50 selling this product through Gumroad, using the Pay What You Want option.
Standout quote: “My original idea was that we take her out in the yard, and that I, an expert marksman, shoot her in the breast at the site to which she had pointed, thereby destroying the tumor.”
Year published and publisher: 2015, self-published
“Spike” In 2020, Bending Genres published this short story of mine which is about a male porn star who is struggling with performance anxiety. I wrote this story some years earlier, and I submitted it many times to many literary journals, and no one wanted to publish it until Bending Genres came along. I love this story and think it’s hilarious.
Standout quote: “Then he’d seen an ad for a cattle call in the San Fernando Valley, and when the guy in the wood paneled room in the second-story office asked him to drop his pants so they could take a Polaroid that would crop out his head entirely and feature his cock prominently, he did what the man said.”
Year published and publisher: 2020, Bending Genres
“Necking Team Button” In 2009, Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker asked me to write a short story for their Significant Objects project, which was a literary experiment that involved pairing writers with found objects. The experiment prompted the interrogation of how narratives shape the perceived value of objects and culminated in an auction. (You can read how the project worked here.) The writers of these stories included Jonathan Lethem, Sheila Heti, and Colson Whitehead. Eventually, the project became an anthology, which you can buy on Amazon. My story combines fiction and nonfiction.
Standout quote: “Looking down at the pin staring up at me like a Cyclops, looking through this portal into a time wherein I was nothing but a flickering flash in one of my father’s constellation of neurons, I wondered who this all-star necker was: my father, a young man not unlike myself, or something else altogether—a man beyond my understanding now relegated to a past that lay on the other side of a bridge where the land was so dark that I could no longer see him.”
Year published and publisher: 2009, Significant Objects; 2012, Fantagraphics
“She Is a Girl” I wrote this story in 2005, when I was living in New Orleans. It was published in the very cool Maisonneuve. Like a lot of my fiction, this story interweaves fact and fiction, and in some ways it exists as a very early draft of my memoir. Also like a lot of my fiction, and some of my nonfiction, including my memoir, it has surrealist elements. The story is about what it’s like to be a girl and what it’s like to be a woman and the stuff that happens in between. I think this story is kind of sweet.
Standout quote: “The tectonic plates of her ribs lying protectively over her heart can hardly contain whatever it is thumping inside her.”
Year published and publisher: 2005, Maisonneuve
“The Flesh Eaters” This story was published in 2018 on Construction, which was a literary magazine, but maybe that publication no longer exists. Anyway, you can read the story by clicking the title, thanks to the Wayback Machine. This story is one of a series of short stories I’ve been doing over the years that take place in Porn Valley. In case you haven’t noticed, Porn Valley is my Yoknapatawpha County. The tale features Dolores, who works for a company in the San Fernando Valley that makes silicone vaginas. I think the idea came to me after I visited an adult toy manufacturer in North Hollywood and also because I used to own a silicone vagina, although I lost it.
Standout quote: “Dolores didn’t expect to spend the last year sewing pubic hair into a disembodied silicone vagina, but that’s the way it happened.”
Year published and publisher: 2018, Construction
“Hey Doll” If you’re looking for Susannah Breslin brand fiction, this is it. It was published by Nerve in 2002, if you’re old enough to remember that site. Thanks again to the Wayback Machine for providing a link to it in archived form. I don’t want to say too much about this story other than to say it was inspired by real events, and dating in Los Angeles is crazy, and in Hollywood truth and fiction are one and the same.
Standout quote: “All of a sudden, before she knew it, he was naked down on the floor, and the bottom of her boot was across the back of his neck, and his tongue was on the top of her other boot, licking it, and she was shouting at him, You're licking my boot because that's the only thing that you're good enough to do!”
Year published and publisher: 2002, Nerve
“The Boy Who Wore His Heart on His Sleeve“ This is a charming bit of flash fiction that appeared on A Shaded View on Fashion Fiction. It dates back to 2010. A Shaded View on Fashion is the brainchild of Diane Pernet, who is the coolest. I was really delighted to have anything of mine associated with anything of hers.
Standout quote: “The boy had no idea if he could singlehandedly un-pin his heart, stuff it back into his chest, and darn up the sweater in such a way that no one would ever know that he had stood in his kitchen in the fading light and removed his heart from his chest with a serrated steak knife, all for a woman whom he had yet to meet, a glowing collection of pixels that was her smiling out at him from the computer screen.”
Year published and publisher: 2010, A Shaded View on Fashion Fiction
“Revenge of the Cum Dumpster” It’s hard to believe that a story I wrote with this title has struggled to find a publisher. The story itself focuses on a pornographer who is not a very nice guy, who says something mean about the young woman who finds herself the subject of his current film project, and the swift consequences of karma on a porn movie set. I think it has yet to find a publisher because it has cum dumpster in the title and because people are so afraid of being cancelled these days for who knows what reason. Anyway, if you’re interested in publishing this seminal work, let me know.
Standout quote: “The men had surrounded her in a half-circle, their penises a forest of trees in which she was lost.”
Year published and publisher: TBD, TBD
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This article was originally published on Forbes.com on August 7, 2018.
It's a pity that I can't share photos here of the best part of Pornhub Nation, an art installation created by artists Maggie West and Ryder Ripps and underwritten by Pornhub, a massive adult video streaming site. The immersive experience sprawls across a series of dark rooms in Union, a nightclub in central Los Angeles, but the most interesting portion can be found in a small and intimate room at the top of a flight of stairs. There, a visitor can wander around and peer through the glass at a series of what look like plants from some oversexed nature of the future. From the leaves grow large adult toys in the shapes of phalluses. The effect is terrarium like, and the mood, to use West's word, is "ethereal." The pieces are artfully painted and luminous in the blacklight. Who knew that something so lovely could be found on a Wednesday morning in a near-empty club where the art has been funded not by the National Endowment for the Arts, but by a company devoted to profits and which delivers graphic content to the masses?
The 3,000-square-foot, tongue-in-cheek conceit of the art show is that you have been transported to the year 2069. Apparently, a group has fled the ... country? the planet? for somewhere else, maybe an island, maybe something that looks like the moon, in order to live a more sexually free existence, one that is controlled by an adult company. In the press materials for the show, Pornhub claims "90 million daily visitors," and its vice president, Corey Price, ventures: "Considering the exponential rate at which we are growing, maybe it wouldn't be totally out of the question to see a Pornhub-themed utopian society formed by the year 2069." I am dubious. But I'm not in the porn business. So maybe he has a point.
In total, Pornhub Nation is a clever send up of what a pornified utopia might look like and a gentle smack to the face of our joyless bureaucracies of the present. The first room — the "National Gallery” — features West's photos of this X-rated nation's presidents, and they're all porn stars: Asa Akira, Riley Reid, and Abella Danger among them. In the next room, the "Domination Masochistic Vroomvroom," which is lit red with neon and boasts a stage upon which stand mannequins clad in fetish garb, we are greeted with a challenging proposition: What would a sexy Department of Motor Vehicles look like? Whips and paddles are affixed to the walls, and one driver safety sign reminds: "Don't whip your whip or you'll be whipped." Apparently, when the club is open, visitors have been trying to remove the fetish tools from the walls, despite the fact that they're firmly anchored there. After all, this is art, not a sex dungeon.
My favorite part of the show was the ball pit — or the "National Silicon [sic?] Reserve." It was filled with flesh-colored balls that reminded one of breast implants. A sign on the wall cautioned against diving or removing one's pants. West instructed me to remove my shoes. Once in the pit, I found myself sinking into the balls. Momentarily, I lost my balance and wondered if I would drown in the porn pit. After extracting myself, I realized that in my disorientation I had put my shoes on the wrong feet.
The next room — "This is our space program," West said — offered a send up of NASA, and while their new acronym is not suitable for publication here, it's not difficult to guess. Overhead, two astronaut suits copulated in space. Their nearby spaceship was phallic in shape. From there, we went upstairs to the dildo plants room, which West described as a "sanctuary." It connoted the surreal beauty of Matthew Barney's work and the wacky futurism of the Orgasmatron from Woody Allen's 1973 movie, "Sleeper."
The show's conclusion was an homage to money and a sexual redux of the Internal Revenue Service. Large neon dollar signs glowed against one wall. In a far corner, visitors could don virtual reality glasses and throw virtual sex toys at a virtual Harvey Weinstein. Outside, there was a place where minglers could sit amidst more plants blooming sex toys, but there was a problem. "People just like stealing them out of the garden," West shared. In this porn world, you can look, but you can't take it home with you.
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This is part 7 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing. Read the rest of the series: Part 1: How To Become a Writer in 12 Easy Steps, Part 2: The Pros and Cons of Traditional vs. Indie Publishing, Part 3: Scenes From My Life Writing a Porn Novel, Part 4: Why I Hate Memoirs (but Wrote One Anyway), Part 5: 19 Ways to Make Money as a Writer, Part 6: Letters From Johns Revisited, Part 7: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Journalism Edition), Part 8: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Fiction Edition), Part 9: How to Promote Your Book Without Going Crazy.
I thought I’d list some of my favorite things I’ve ever written in terms of journalism. In this list, I’ve excluded my books—my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment; my short story collection, You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You?; and my novel-in-progress, (which I’ll refer to here as) Untitled Porn Novel.
“They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?” This is my 2009 long-form investigation of the Great Recession’s impact on the adult movie industry. Originally it was written for Slate’s Double X, when they were trying to turn Double X into a full-blown magazine that I think was described as something like the original Esquire but written by women. The editor wanted me to change my story in ways that I didn’t, I shopped it around and was unable to place it anywhere else because print magazines were nervous about running adult-themed content (some of it quite graphic) next to advertising that paid their bills, and I ended up self-publishing it (initially it lived on its own website, but I later moved it to my website). See also: “The Numbers on Self-Publishing Long-form Journalism.” I’m so glad I went this route instead of letting some editor trash it.
Standout quote: “As for the ‘sperm omelet,’ as everyone referred to it in awestruck tones, that was Jim’s idea, she told me.”
Year published and publisher: 2009, self-published
“How to Romance the Taller Woman.” I’m not saying this was my finest hour as a journalist, but this was the first story of mine that appeared in a glossy magazine. This story about how to date tall chicks (I’m six-foot-one) appeared in the December 1997 issue of Details. My editor was Duane Swierczynski, who is now a famous crime writer. The story was illustrated with the poster for the 1958 film The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, which is maybe my all-time favorite movie poster. This story doesn’t exist online, but I bought the print version of the issue on eBay to replace the one that I lost somewhere along the way.
Standout quote: “Just because we’re tall doesn’t mean our genitals are as big as the Holland Tunnel.”
Year published and publisher: 1997, Details
“I Spent My Childhood as a Guinea Pig for Science. It Was … Great?” Speaking of Slate, last November this piece I wrote in conjunction with the release of my memoir appeared on the website. I wrote this story on spec, which is something I hate to do because I think it’s beneath me at this point in my career, but doing so gave me the opportunity to write my story how I wanted to write it. The editor was excellent. She had a light touch and came up with the title, which I think is brilliant and hilarious. This piece didn’t take me long to write; four days, I think. The only thing I don’t love is the image used with it, which is a stock image, that kid is maybe a boy, and I think those aren’t M&M’s but Skittles.
Standout quote: “Even when I was in a dangerous place, I could feel a connection between the study and me, like a gossamer thread spun from inside of it and wrapped around me.”
Year published and publisher: 2023, Slate
“Extreme Porn Crackdown.” Over two decades ago, I wrote this story for Salon about a series of LAPD busts in Porn Valley. I think this was the first time I wrote a big piece tackling an issue going on in the adult movie business. At the time, I was living in a one-bedroom apartment on the east side of Los Angeles. For some reason, various porn companies kept sending me VHS tapes (how one watched porn in those days), and my place was overflowing with them. Also I had a silicone vagina molded off a real porn star’s vagina that I kept in a hallway cupboard. As part of my research, I interviewed Seymore Butts at his home, and it just so happened that I had been on the set of an “American Bukkake” movie that was of interest to the LAPD. I remember seeing the story after the editor went through it and thinking what the fuck did he do, as he had changed it quite a bit, and then realizing he had made it quite a bit better.
Standout quote: “These days, it seems like the Los Angeles Police Department has got a thing for porn.”
Year published and publisher: 2001, Salon
“To the Max.” I find a lot of people who work in the porn industry pretty interesting, even people who do things other people would think are indefensible, but Max Hardcore was a pornographer I did not like. I use past tense here because he died last year. Back in 2008, I wrote a post about him on a blog I had at the time. That post, which I reposted here because people kept asking me about it, was entitled “To the Max,” and I wrote it a few days after Hardcore was sentenced to 46 months in prison after being found guilty of various obscenity charges brought by the Department of Justice’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. In the wake of the sentencing, the liberal and libertarian and independent-minded people of the internet were bellyaching about Hardcore’s sentence, wailing about their First Amendment rights being threatened. Glenn Greenwald was one of the loudest complainers, so I wrote him an email asking him if he had bothered to watch any of the Hardcore-created porn he was so busy defending (spoiler: he hadn’t), and then I wrote about why if you’re going to defend various types of extreme porn you might want to bother watching it first. I wish I could recall why years prior to this Hardcore had gotten pissed at me at some party in downtown Los Angeles or what he said to trash me to some reporter who visited him in prison, but I can’t. Anyway, my passion made the piece sing.
Standout quote: “Because if you're going to talk about how far we've come when it comes to porn, if you're going to posit Paul ‘Max Hardcore’ Little as the latest victim of the Bush administration, if you're going to lament one more strike against your First Amendment rights, you should bear witness as to what a porn star drenched in vomit looks like.”
Year published and publisher: 2008, my blog
“How the Biggest Strip Club in American Grinds.” For some time now I’ve been covering the business of sex on the Forbes website. In 2015, I was living in Southwest Florida and drove to the other side of the state to go to Tootsie’s Cabaret, which bills itself as the biggest strip club in America. Holy shit! I have been to a lot of strip clubs in my life, but I had never and have not since seen a place like this. I guess in Miami they just strip different. It’s 74,000 square feet! It has a 30-foot stripper pole! In a 24-hour period it might entertain 1,500 customers! On a weekend night, there may be 150 dancers working there! Anyway, it was fucking nuts, and I really enjoyed it, and I would like to go back someday.
Standout quote: “‘I like dancing a lot,’ she says. ‘I'm not shy. I have a lot of spunk.’”
Year published and publisher: 2015, Forbes.com
“Blood Sacrifice.” Around the same time, I wrote a story for the now defunct website The Billfold about how I flew from where I was living, Naples, Florida, to Chicago, Illinois, to have a $350 dinner. My friend had invited me, and the restaurant was Grant Achatz’s Next, and what was I going to do, say no? (I was not.) The tale involves the consumption of canard à la presse and getting over breast cancer and fantasies about meeting your heroes. This took place during a period in my life that feels so far away now. I was married, and now I am divorced. I was living in Florida, and now I live in California. I was fresh out of having survived breast cancer, and now I am a decade-plus survivor. Sometimes it’s good to write about things that are complicated because you can see how far you’ve come later.
Standout quote: “He would smile knowingly at me, and I would smile knowingly at him, and then he would disappear into the kitchen, and he would emerge with a plate of something that looked like a tumor splattered across porcelain, and I would eat it, and whatever it was made of (rhubarb? venison? something else entirely?), it would be delicious, and I would have eaten the tumor that had tried to eat me, metaphorically, of course, and the cycle of life would close upon itself, completing itself, like Ouroboros with his tail in his mouth rolling down a street like a wheel.”
Year published and publisher: 2015, The Billfold
“Porn’s Uncanny Valley.” How has tech transformed porn? I’m sure I seemed like the perfect writer to write this story which is why an editor at The Atlantic reached out to me to write it. I can’t recall what was asked of me, but it was something about like the landscape of (Virtual?) Porn Valley? Anyway, I ended up experiencing virtual reality porn for the first time, and, man, was that weird. I don’t mention it in the story, but when I was at the VR porn guy’s office, and I was watching the VR porn with the VR headset, I had this weird, visceral urge to punch the VR porn performer in the virtual world in the face. After I took off the headset, I related this to the VR porn guy, and he said something to the effect of, yeah, a lot of people have that experience. I have no fucking idea why, but there you go.
Standout quote: “‘It’s a phantom-limb penis syndrome,’ said a tall, British man who goes by the name Adam Sutra.”
Year published and publisher: 2017, The Atlantic
“Everyone Has a Pervert Hidden Inside of Them.” A few years ago, I started going to estate sales. My maternal grandmother was a very successful antiques dealer, so maybe that is part of why I do this. Pretty quickly I noticed that when you’re pawing through the things the dead have left behind, you get a very intimate view of them. Sometimes you get to see what they kept hidden from the rest of the world. Occasionally, those secrets are sexual in nature. In this edition of my newsletter, The Reverse Cowgirl, I wrote about what that’s like and some of the things I’ve found, among them: small handmade penis sculptures, binders of autographed porn star photos, forgotten sex toys. It’s like nostalgia, but X-rated.
Standout quote: “A woman had spent her days painting these penises, sculpting these phalluses, drawing these nudes.”
Year published and publisher: 2022, The Reverse Cowgirl
“The Graduate of Porn Star High.” This was such a fascinating story to write, back in 2001. An editor at Arena magazine in the UK had heard about this Staten Island high schooler who had gotten a famous porn star to go to his prom with him (thanks to Howard Stern), and then the high schooler and the porn star had started dating, and the editor wanted me to write a profile of them and their relationship. For some reason, I wrote this piece in a more experimental way, using the second person and also interweaving block quotes and the text of the story itself. The editor was so enthusiastic about what I had written; it was such a delightful experience. I believe I sold the story to other markets that approached me, as well, in Europe, I think, and maybe Australia or Asia or something.
Standout quote: “It was like he was in the porn star twilight zone.”
Year published and publisher: 2001, Arena
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A performer on the set of a bukkake shoot, early 2000s. Follow me on Instagram for more of my photographs.
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This article was originally published on Forbes.com on January 22, 2023.
Iggy Azalea is the latest celebrity to join OnlyFans. Once dominated by sex workers seeking to boost their brands and monetize their relationships to their fans, the subscription-based content service has seen a rise in mainstream stars joining its ranks, including Bella Thorne, Denise Richards, and DJ Khaled. Amber Rose, another celebrity on OnlyFans and a former stripper, has described the platform as “a digital strip club.” So it only makes sense that Azalea, an Australian rapper who has proclaimed that she is, in fact, the strip club, would sign up, too.
But Azalea’s OnlyFans isn’t just any old OnlyFans. It is a year-long, collaborative multimedia project entitled Hotter Than Hell that will feature music, photography, video, art, and, according to a press release, content from “her upcoming fourth studio album.” For $25 a month, subscribers will get a front-row seat to the project as it drops, before the rest of the world sees it. The concept was inspired by Pamela Anderson, 90s supermodels, and Madonna’s controversial book Sex and culminates with a coffee table book to be released in December 2023.
Curious to check out Azalea’s project, I signed up for OnlyFans and paid $25 to subscribe to her content stream. At the top of her feed, a small green circle appeared next to her avatar (which was an image of Azalea licking a cherry); next to her OnlyFans handle, it read: “Available now.” Was Azalea actually live on the site? Was I more proximate to her than I had been before handing over my money? It seemed possible.
The first post was the aforementioned cherry-licking photo and the words: “The sweetest angel”; below that, it noted how many likes the post had and the dollar amount of tips it had garnered from her fans. (Tips are another way OnlyFans creators can generate revenue.) At the time of this writing, that post had 2,501 likes and $233.20 in tips. There were more images to come: Azalea in green lingerie, Azalea getting her makeup done, Azalea posing seemingly nude next to a swimming pool while eating a cherry with her nipple discreetly hidden from view. One post featured a nine-second audio clip of Azalea — “Hey, babe,” she purred to me? us? her anonymous fans? — offering an enticement to be “a part of my VIP for a year by tipping $250 and receive a one-year link subscription and a free photo that’s just for my VIPS.” That post had 685 likes and a staggering $15,690 in tips. (OnlyFans takes a 20% cut of its creators’ revenues.) Maybe I should be on OnlyFans, I mused.
So it went over the days that followed. There were more images. There were more audio clips. There was a video clip of a scantily-clad Azalea that had been filmed through a window as if the viewer (me) was spying on her; the text with it read: “Working my angles [butterfly emoji, fire emoji].” When I didn’t check Azalea’s content stream, I got emails from OnlyFans telling me that I had unread messages from her, as if I had left her on read. When I logged back into OnlyFans, I discovered those messages contained locked content, another way the site’s creators can make money. With the Pay Per View feature, members must pay more to access locked content. One was $40. Another was $28. Yet another was $35. Each message had a come-hither note, but the visual content was behind an image of a padlock.
I thought about unlocking the rest of Azalea’s content, but I didn’t. By that point I had read that she had “sold her master recording and publishing catalog to Domain Capital for an eight-figure sum” late last year. She didn’t need the money, I figured.
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This article was originally published on Forbes.com on April 23, 2012.
You might think being a male porn star is easy. Have sex for a living? That's a piece of cake.
So, what can some of the biggest woodsmen in the porn business teach us about work?
As it turns out, guys who get it up for a paycheck have something to offer when it comes to career advice.
I heard from seven of Porn Valley's biggest studs via email and got the secrets to becoming a successful working stiff.
TIP #1: Get your coworkers to like you.
In the porn business, it's doubly important your coworkers like you.
According to Brandon Iron, star of "Perverted Planet 7" and director of "Sex Crazed," getting along with your costars is the key to getting ahead in porn.
"The hardest thing about being a male porn star is convincing your female co-workers that you are an interesting, well-rounded, fun guy who they might consider dating in a parallel universe after a few drinks," Iron says.
TIP #2: Don't confuse the professional with the personal.
For male porn stars, the line between professional and personal can get blurry. If you think keeping the professional professional and the personal personal is tricky in your line of work, you should talk to a male porn star, who may have a wife waiting at home for him to finish his latest scene with another woman.
Jeremy Steele, star of "Naughty Neighbors" and "M.I.L.F. Money," says the hardest thing is what happens when he's not working.
"[The hardest thing is] having a relationship with a significant other," Steele says. "The first time I told a girl I was in porn she disconnected her phone number the same night, and I never saw or heard from her again."
Not only that, changing career tracks can be tricky, especially if you leave the adult business and try to reinvent yourself.
"The second hardest thing is having a post-porn career that doesn't make you 'infamous' if or when it is discovered that you were a sex worker on film/video," Steele reports. "You can lose a job or not find one if you're too well known for having been a whore on camera, in spite of it being legal."
TIP #3: Be cognizant of how others perceive you.
Whether you're a twentysomething or fiftysomething, your age can impact how management perceives your abilities. Are you too young to be getting the salary you're negotiating for? Or are you perceived as too old to be promotable?
Dave Cummings may be the oldest working porn star on the planet. At 72, he's appeared in "The Sopornos 2" and directs his own series, "Sugar Daddy."
On the one hand, Cummings owns a niche market. On the other hand, his age can be an impediment.
Sometimes, Cumming says, he worries his coworkers would "prefer working with a younger guy than me."
TIP #4: Rise to the occasion.
Seymore Butts has had in his own Showtime reality series, "Family Business," and he's directed and starred in adult movies for years.
According to Butts, it's not the porn starlet, the director, the producer, the cameraman, or the production assistant who has the toughest job in porn. It's the guy who has to get wood -- or else.
Butts opines:
The most difficult part about being a male porn star is the hard-on. They have to get it up and off on cue essentially and all the while in between maintain [it] for two to three hours. This must be done under the most difficult of circumstances, including not being attracted to their female co-star, having sex in the most uncomfortable settings, i.e. on hard surfaces, cold/hot weather, etc., and/or having to stop frequently for direction or shot setups. They have to be in great shape in order to perform. It all adds up to being the most difficult job in porn, in my opinion.
TIP #5: Successful negotiations are key.
You may have seen Richard Mann in "Freaknic 2" and "Big Mann on Campus," but Mann says he and his brethren are getting stiffed when it comes to getting paid what they should.
"I'd say dealing with the fact that you don't get any royalties" is the hardest thing about his job, Mann says. "When you shoot, they pay you once, and that's it."
Will male porn stars unionize? Unlikely.
TIP #6: It's all about confidence.
Zak Smith is an artist, author, and male porn star. With his unique resume, he's found porn is a tricky industry because it breeds insecurity.
"Everything that happens [on a porn set] affects whether people will want to sleep with you," Smith says. "The stakes could not possibly be higher. Every other thing -- including things that might lead to losing the job -- are just subthings of that thing."
TIP #7: Perspective, perspective, perspective.
Arguably the most famous male porn star of the moment, James Deen's work can be seen in "This Ain't Ghostbusters XXX," "Simpsons: The XXX Parody," and "Batman XXX: A Porn Parody."
Deen's secret to success: a positive attitude.
"I guess the hardest thing about being a male performer is ... um ... I don't know," Deen says. "My job is pretty easy."
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“Two of the [male porn stars] I interviewed have since died.” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter: “The Hard Thing About Being a Male Porn Star.” Subscribe to get it Sundays in your inbox.
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A porn star on the set of an adult movie in 2009. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.
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This is part 6 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing. Read the rest of the series: Part 1: How To Become a Writer in 12 Easy Steps, Part 2: The Pros and Cons of Traditional vs. Indie Publishing, Part 3: Scenes From My Life Writing a Porn Novel, Part 4: Why I Hate Memoirs (but Wrote One Anyway), Part 5: 19 Ways to Make Money as a Writer, Part 6: Letters From Johns Revisited, Part 7: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Journalism Edition), Part 8: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Fiction Edition), Part 9: How to Promote Your Book Without Going Crazy.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about Letters From Johns, a 2008 project in which, over the course of a year, I shared emails that men sent me about their experiences paying for sex. (As you can see on the project’s website, by submitting their letters, the letter writers were granting me permission to share their letters, anonymously, of course.) This letters project was part of what would become a five-year project I called The Letters Project, and which included Letters From Working Girls, Letters From Men Who Watch Pornography, Letters From Men Who Go To Strip Clubs, and Letters From Cheaters. The Letters Project as a whole got a fair amount of media attention, including coverage by Salon, CBC Radio, and Newsweek. In a weird coincidence, I launched Letters From Johns on January 3, 2008, and then New York governor Eliot Spitzer was entangled in a prostitution scandal a little over two months later, the latter bringing some attention to the former. (That’s timing for you, I guess?)
In August of 2013, as The Letters Project was winding down, I published an essay about the project: “You Were My Studs.” I wrote about how the whole project had started with a shot in the dark: I had put out a call on my blog, asking readers why they had paid for sex. Within a few hours, I had my first answer: “The Night I Drove a Call Girl to Her Next Stop”; it begins: “I am writing because I can’t tell this story to anyone I know and retain my dignity, but since your soliciting I figured I can get it off my chest.” There were more letters to come. As I wrote in my essay: “Over the following year, I heard from over 50 johns. Their letters came at all hours of the day and night. They were from young guys and old guys, white guys and black guys, military grunts and corporate drones. The letters were poignant, exhilarated, nostalgic, terrifying, revelatory. They were all confessions.”
One letter in particular, “I’m a State Investigator,” struck me:
“I keep a coded diary, in case it's discovered. 1 dot is oral, 2 dots is vaginal sex, and 2 connected dots is anal sex. In the event that someone questions the dots, they are associated with good/bad days: no dots are normal days, 1 dot is a good day, 2 dots is a great day, and 2 connected dots is the best day for that week."
As I wrote: “Of course, the letters weren't about sex, or prostitution, or johns. They were about love and loneliness, from guys who just wanted to be touched and men who had gotten dumped, stories in which call girls really had hearts of gold and mercenaries cruised foreign streets in search of bodhisattvas-for-hire.” After a year, each letters project was closed to submissions, and while I received many letters, I rarely responded: “I surmised the letters were not for me; they were for their authors.” But, as I recounted, I did reach out to one john: “I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done.” In an email, I asked him why he had written a letter to me (a woman).
His response, in part:
“By that, I mean I never considered that I was writing my letter to a woman. You're Ms. Breslin, with a blog about john experiences. Like my several john experiences, I was reaching out to no one in particular; I was, in hindsight, trying to find some elusive unidentifiable emotion. Although I gave you 'a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that information at its sole discretion, including incorporating it in other works in any media now known or later developed including without limitation published books,' you cannot take from me the liberating experience you elucidated from three simple questions. Thank you. And again, thank you, if only for a few brief moments of experiencing ... .... ..."
Looking over the letters now, I remembered a lot of them, and how I got a kind of thrill whenever I received a new one. It was fascinating to revisit them today.
Like Letters From Johns’ “I Am a Gentleman”:
“There are many who would maintain that my philandering disqualifies me from claiming to be a good person, and definitely from being a good husband. Frankly, I don't care what they believe. I have a hobby that is infinitely more interesting to me than travel or theme parks. The ladies I prefer can hold conversations and appreciate the occasional session just to stroke their bodies. They do not judge. They do not become angry at requests. They treat the experience as an encounter between equals. There is no power struggle. There is no drama. There is privacy, and usually conviviality. What we do behind closed doors remains there.”
Or Letters From Working Girls’ “I Am Just An Ordinary Woman With The Knack Of Making People Love And Trust Me”:
“I am just an ordinary woman with the knack of making people love and trust me. These were just men who needed to love somebody who would let them. It's all so simple. Not complicated in the least. There were no perversions too perverse to get in the way of the trusting bond that was needed. Women suffer out loud, and men suffer in silence. Until we allow men to suffer out loud, many a wife will wonder where her husband is during his lunch hour, and in my opinion, a lot of those wives deserve it. (Not all of those wives.)”
Or Letters From Men Who Watch Pornography’s “I Was a Geek”:
“I've come to accept pornography as my surrogate sexual lifestyle: devoid of complication, disease, and odoriferous unpleasantness, and heavily populated with a wide range of women to satisfy every craving, it is a hollow yet adequate solution to my otherwise celibate bachelor existence. And while I am still aware of the inherent pathetic quality of being a man alone at my age, I would much rather be the connoisseur of an under-appreciated form of entertainment continuing to transcend the aesthetic limits hitherto placed upon it by forces of official history than a harried everyman, harangued by the burdens of emotional turmoil, personality conflict, atrophying sexual energy, and ludicrously inexcusable asinine conversations and circular arguments.”
Or Letters From Men Who Go to Strip Clubs’ “I Am Gay”:
“All of that is uncomfortable to witness, because none of it can be commented on nor helped without becoming far too intimate far too fast. The club creates the illusion of heterosexual intimacy, a coy game of it, but it refuses to actually allow or engage the real thing. So long as everyone involved simply enjoys the game, all is well; but the moment someone needs more than the game, they absolutely cannot have it, and so they stand there, open and raw and unable to share. Most of the other dudes are too engaged to notice, but the detached strippers and the detached gay man notice.”
Or Letters From Cheaters’ “I Have Always Been a Cheater”:
“Eventually, this split life I was living took a toll on my relationship. One day I pulled the plug. I tried to reform myself. I took up a daily meditation practice. I tried my best to avoid massage parlours, prostitutes and gangbangs. About eighteen months ago I met another wonderful woman. We’re talking about building a house outside the city, starting a business and, of course, having a child. I’m happy. But… I still can’t stop myself from looking at the online ads; I’m still not quite there, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I worry that everything is really just work and performance.”
Sometimes when people ask me what I write about I say sex or porn or the business of sex. The real answer is probably closer to intimacy. That’s what these letters, the best of them, anyway, the most real and raw and revealing, are about. Every so often, I think of one of the Letters from Johns that’s stayed with me: “I Have a Physical Disability.”
Here’s his letter in full:
“I have a physical disability known as Cerebral Palsy and am in an electric wheelchair. I have always struggled in my own existence, largely because I rely on a lot of people to assist me with the most basic tasks, such as dressing, showering, getting in and out of bed, and other basic things that many people take for granted. Although I am verbal, and highly intelligent, having acquired two university degrees at the age of 24, people do tend to judge a book by its cover when it comes to things such as dating and sex.
My entire life I have been trapped inside a body that I hate. It never does what I want it to. It always conspires against me. Although I am confident in my intellectual ability, I do not have a very strong self-image. This is largely because every girl I have asked out on a date has rejected me. Some were even cruel enough to say, ‘Why would I ever go out with a cripple like you?’ Even now, I still have not yet had a girlfriend.
A few years back, I was hanging out with a few other disabled guys who were less physically able than I was. They mentioned that they regularly used a pro because it was the only way they could get the release they craved the most. Most of these guys couldn’t lift their heads up on their own, let alone have the ability to please a woman the way they wanted to. They would go to a brothel and get a hand-job once every few weeks. One of them described his first time with a pro in a way that will stick with me for the rest of my life; he said that ‘It was the first time I felt like a real man.’
Sometime later, I fell in love for the first time. After pursuing her for several months, I was rejected once more, but this time was much harder to swallow than the others that came before her. After several weeks of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to do something about it. Remembering the words of my friends, I decided I would visit a brothel. However, unlike my friends, I knew I wanted more than a hand-job. I wanted to lose my virginity.
I searched through the phone book, found a brothel I wanted and asked about the processes involved. I soon discovered that like most things in my life, this could not be a total secret. If I wanted to have sex, I would need somebody to help me shower before and after, as well as to lift me onto the bed. This would put most of my other disabled friends off immediately, but it did not deter me in the slightest. Without a moment's hesitation, I asked my older brother if he could help me. Although he was initially stunned, he reluctantly agreed.
On the night we turned up at the brothel, we were two completely different men. I was excited, nervously anticipating what would await me. My brother, in contrast, was absolutely petrified, afraid that someone he might know would walk in. After a short while, some girls made their way out and introduced themselves. I picked one and we followed her into the room. She stepped out while my brother helped me get organized. I told him to go for a walk, and I’d give him a call when I was ready.
The whole experience was everything I hoped it would be. She started by giving me a massage, which eased my muscles that are normally tight and non-compliant. As she completed the massage, my body felt like it could do anything I wanted, something I had never felt before. She went down on me, and we had sex. She made me feel safe and confident in myself. For that portion of time, having sex with her (even if I had to pay for it) made up for a lifetime of rejection.
It was the most enjoyable experience I have ever had in my life. I would put it down to two things. For once I had gained control over my body, and it felt like I was in control of my life. The worst thing about having a physical disability is the lack of control I have in life. Everything is very clinical, get up at this time, eat at this time, have a shower at this time, and go to bed at this time. I have no control over these things. This time, I got to do things on my own terms. Second, it was the first time I felt like I was being treated like a sexual being with desires and needs that were important. All my life I have been viewed as an asexual being whose desires should be avoided or neglected. The trip to the brothel taught me not to be afraid of my sexuality and not to push it into the background.
I am now a regular customer, although not as regular as I’d like to be. This is mostly because my brother has moved overseas, and it is hard to find people who will willingly accompany me. However, each time I go, I no longer feel like a cripple. I feel whole.”
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A poster for “Breaker Beauties” at a sidewalk sale. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.
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“Where do porn stars go when they die? I don’t know, but I hope it’s heaven—or something like it.” Read the rest of my latest Reverse Cowgirl newsletter and subscribe: “They (Still) Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?”
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This is part 3 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing. Read the rest of the series: Part 1: How To Become a Writer in 12 Easy Steps, Part 2: The Pros and Cons of Traditional vs. Indie Publishing, Part 3: Scenes From My Life Writing a Porn Novel, Part 4: Why I Hate Memoirs (but Wrote One Anyway), Part 5: 19 Ways to Make Money as a Writer, Part 6: Letters From Johns Revisited, Part 7: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Journalism Edition), Part 8: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Fiction Edition), Part 9: How to Promote Your Book Without Going Crazy.
I’ve been working on what I refer to as my porn novel, and it’s been going pretty well. I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned so far. If the novel keeps moving forward, there will be more posts like this to come. By the way, my novel isn’t porn, or smut, or romance. It’s literary. I call it my porn novel for the sake of shorthand.
Do the math. There is nothing more daunting than writing a novel, so sometimes when I get overwhelmed, or stuck, or unsure, I quantify something that seems unquantifiable. You know, like a novel. So pretty early, I converted the project into numbers. The novel would be approximately 60,000 words long. It would consist of 12 chapters. Each chapter would be approximately 5,000 words long. Each chapter would consist of 10 sections. Each section would be approximately 500 words long. In this way, when I sit down to write, I’m writing another 500-word section of my novel, not attempting to write a novel that is 60,000-words long. Capiche?
Do it your way. Last year, I went to an estate sale at a Hollywood art gallery. Some of what was being sold was vintage adult movie posters. I bought a poster for a porn movie called “She Did It Her Way.” In case you can’t read between the lines, I did not feel while writing a memoir while under contract to a major publisher that I was doing it my way, so in a way the writing of this novel is an effort to go back to what I used to do, which is to write what I want to write how I want to write it, not write what I think someone else wants me to write because that is what I feel I am contractually obligated to do. This novel is all about doing it my way. The other way is bullshit.
Do weird shit. This novel is weird. I mean it’s written in English, but it certainly is very different. I don’t think it has any obvious comparisons in the world of novels, so I guess you could say it is quite original. Also, it has really weird stuff in it, like weird dreams, and a weird main character, and a weird kind of relentless focus on the life of a person in extreme detail to the point of being a little “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles”-esque. Do you know how many new books are published every year? I don’t either. But a lot. Secret: Most of them are garbage. Garbage or not, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to be weird.
Don’t overthink it. One thing I’m having a fair amount of success with in regards to this novel is not overthinking it. In fact, I don’t even think about it that much when I’m not working on it. I bang out these 500-word sections in about an hour, and I try not to do more than one of them a day. I allowed myself to create a draft of the first chapter that was a little messy but not overly so, and I paid a lot of attention to not dwelling on it, not sitting at the computer for a long period of time, and not spending hours of my life wondering whether or not it’s any good. I mean, it’s about the porn industry. How bad could it be? Ha-ha.
Don’t over revise. When I was done drafting the first chapter, which, I don’t know was done over the course of maybe a couple of weeks or a month or something, who knows, I can’t remember anymore, but not super long, I set it aside for a little bit. Then I decided I would go back and revise the first chapter. Revising my memoir was a bit of a nightmare, for reasons you may or may not be able to intuit, and I wasn’t sure when I went to revise this first chapter of my porn novel if that would be a nightmare, too. Thankfully, it wasn’t. I identified the issues pretty quickly and resolved them relatively easily. There are some things that need to be figured out and tweaked that have to do with the overall unspooling of the book, but I don’t think it will be some massive reinvention of the text. The only part I struggled a bit with was the last section of the first chapter. I’m not sure why. I’ll figure it out later.
Don’t stop trying. Awhile back, I wrote this post about the story of my life as a writer, and I realized as I was writing it how impactful certain events had been. Not obvious life shit, but writer shit. Like the writing residency I did in upstate New York, and the fellowship I did at U.C. Berkeley, and the seminar I did in a Philip Johnson building in Manhattan. And as I was writing the post, I recalled very clearly that for every single one of those things I applied for I was very cognizant of the fact that I didn’t think I was going to get it. But then I did. So I thought, you know, I should apply for some writing residencies for my porn novel. And then I thought, Oh, no, they’ll never pick me because this novel is literary but it is also about porn, and sometimes porn makes people twitchy. Anyway, I applied to one and more to come. Because you gotta try.
Decide to be transparent. If you have any awareness of me and my writing, you’ll know that I’ve tried to write this porn novel many times before, although always in different ways. This way feels different. I debated whether or not to share how it’s going at all, seeing as maybe I’ll just fail at it again, like all those other times. But then I thought, Fuck it. Who cares. One great thing about blogging is no one ever reads blogs anyway. This will be me, writing for me, about me. It will stand as a record of the point where I was now, and maybe at some point in the not-so-distant future I’ll look back on this and think: You go, girl.
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I really loved doing this interview with Brad Listi for his Otherppl podcast. What sets Brad apart is that he goes beyond interviewing the author about their book and really dives into the meat of their life, what made them who they are, what their story is. A lot of times, interviewers recite pre-written questions, or sort of follow the traditional format of interviewing a writer, or fall prey to the superficial premise of the author interview which is promoting the book. But Brad breaks the mold of what an author interview “should” be, and because of that, his author interviews are more like a conversation, one that ends up having kind of an alchemical effect. While my book, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, is a lot about a lot of things in my life, this interview also dove deeper into how I got started writing about sex and porn as an investigative journalist. One question caught me off guard, or rather caused me to hesitate considerably. At one point, Brad asked me what was the craziest thing I had seen while writing about sex, and the first thing that came to mind, was, well, pretty out there. Anyway, check out the interview to find out my answer, and make sure to check out Brad’s other Otherppl author interviews with authors who are a lot more famous than me, including Karl Ove Knausgård, Jonathan Franzen, Hilton Als, Maggie Nelson, Tim O’Brien, George Saunders, Melissa Febos, and Andres Dubus III.
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