I have been an enthusiast of porn for most of my young life. In the little English town where I grew up, a curious preteen needn't suffer the embarrassment of trying to buy a girlie mag from a newsstand. Instead, my friends and I would ride our bicycles to the nearby woods where copies of Reader's Wives,
advertisement
Shaven Ravers and Razzle were inexplicably strewn about the trees and bushes along with soda cans, cigarette butts, traffic cones, an upturned shopping cart and an old mattress. We surveyed the scattered contraband in silence, our ten-year-old minds trying to piece together the evidence of what had taken place there. What really fired our imaginations was that the scene was in a constant state of flux. The mattress and cones would change position and there would always be a new magazine or two that kept us coming back. The content of the magazines was typically vile and the magazines themselves were putrid; rain-soaked, earth-sodden and stuck together in places. We were intrigued and disgusted by them.
A few years later, I saw pornographic movies from Europe and the United States for the first time. (British laws at the time prohibited the production and sale of hardcore pornography.) I once accompanied a friend to a parking lot where he acquired these illegal movies from a man who sold them out of the trunk of his car. The glossy, explicit films were extremely arousing. My heart would beat its way out of my chest as I drew my bedroom curtains and slipped a tape into the VCR. Throughout my adolescence and early twenties, I had a recurring daydream about living in that porn world, of actually participating in the skin flicks.
And now, it seemed I was realizing my teen dream. Hooksexup's Ross Martin had negotiated a cameo role for me in a Vivid production, Vivid being the first word in American porn. Jenna Jameson herself had just defected to their ranks. I felt giddy with anticipation, having no idea what my involvement in the action would be. I had been given a plane ticket, an address and a time to show up. On the plane to Los Angeles, my heart was beating in the same way as it had in my bedroom as a young pervert.
I called up an old friend in West Hollywood and asked if I could crash at his place. He mentioned that he knew Matt Zane; rocker, pornographer and self-proclaimed pioneer of the rock/porn crossover. You may have seen rockers like Korn and Papa Roach throwing lunch meat at naked girls. Well, that was all Zane's idea. Zane and I arranged to chat the night before my debut in porn.
We met at my friend's place, a bachelor pad bungalow filled with Zane's videos. Zane is about to turn twenty-seven years old, but while he dresses like a teenage Goth kid with his hip-length hair and all-black ensemble, his face looks like it's experienced a lifetime of seediness. "After three or four years," reflected Zane as he stroked his chin, his eyes cast skyward, "one tires of the flesh." I had hoped that meeting with Zane would heighten my excitement about the upcoming Vivid shoot even further, but over the course of an hour he spoke only of his boredom with the genre, his accidental incarnation as a pornographer and how being pigeonholed as a pornographer was strangling his creativity. "If I cannot be free to realize my artistic visions outside of porn, I welcome death with open arms," he proclaimed. Zane told me he had "banged almost a thousand chicks" but then six months ago, he decided to refrain from sexual relations with girls in the categories of groupies, strippers or porn sluts. He added ruefully, "It makes it a lot harder to get laid."
12:00 p.m.
I arrive at a soundstage in an industrial park in Chatsworth, about thirty miles from Hollywood. A rotund woman in her fifties tells me that the man I'm looking for, stage manager Jay Shanahan, is downstairs. Downstairs is pitch black. I can hear voices and walk carefully towards them. A dim blue glow from a TV monitor gives me a vague clue of my orientation. My eyes are beginning to adjust from the harsh California sunshine just as I become aware that I am now standing among the voices.
"Cut, house lights!" screams director Robby D who is tattooed from arse-hole to breakfast time. All eyes are on me, as I seem to have appeared from nowhere.
"I'm looking for Jay Shanahan," I explain to him.
"I'm Shanahan," says a man stepping forward, looking like the archetypal American suburbanite: ivory crew-cut, white socks pulled halfway up his shins, shorts and a green polo shirt. "So, you're Grant Stoddard from Hooksexup," he states, shaking my hand while looking over my shoulder. "This is very exciting, very exciting." Jay leaves the room. Everyone else eyes me with suspicion. "Can you move? You're in our way," grunts a crewmember.
arousing. My heart would beat its way out of my chest as I drew my bedroom curtains and slipped a tape into the VCR. Throughout my adolescence and early twenties, I had a recurring daydream about living in that porn world, of actually participating in the skin flicks.
lifetime of seediness. "After three or four years," reflected Zane as he stroked his chin, his eyes cast skyward, "one tires of the flesh." I had hoped that meeting with Zane would heighten my excitement about the upcoming Vivid shoot even further, but over the course of an hour he spoke only of his boredom with the genre, his accidental incarnation as a pornographer and how being pigeonholed as a pornographer was strangling his creativity. "If I cannot be free to realize my artistic visions outside of porn, I welcome death with open arms," he proclaimed. Zane told me he had "banged almost a thousand chicks" but then six months ago, he decided to refrain from sexual relations with girls in the categories of groupies, strippers or porn sluts. He added ruefully, "It makes it a lot harder to get laid."
walk carefully towards them. A dim blue glow from a TV monitor gives me a vague clue of my orientation. My eyes are beginning to adjust from the harsh California sunshine just as I become aware that I am now standing among the voices.
