Monday, January 23, 2012

My Life in Porn

A couple of months ago I had an offer that I had no choice but to refuse. Oh, it was complimentary at the time, and slightly funny, and it gave me another story to tell at parties. Simply put, I was asked to be in porn.

“That makes twice this lifetime!” I joked with someone online. Later that day, though, I added it up in my head and realized how totally wrong I’d been. I’ve had four offers to appear naked and screwing on camera.

The first was from a handsome fellow who who wanted to make a living traveling around the country, taping random encounters of himself with all sorts of guys, and then editing them together and selling them. I saw one of his tapes and they’re just awful things, production-wise. Grainy, badly-lit, poorly shot. Sure, there’s hot sex going on somewhere in there, but when you’re too busy peering through a murky puddle of shadows to see it, or getting seasick at the hand-held camera, or staring at the guy’s luggage sitting open on the table and wondering why he stuffed his dirty socks with his neatly folded shirts, you’re not really noticing it.

Then a few years ago I was extended an invitation to appear a more professional production, but again I turned it down. Then I had two invitations this year to take roles in what I can only describe as professionally produced niche market porn, shall we say. A niche market of the sort that, were I to appear ever in a reality television show or run for office, would basically guarantee me a long-running front page spot on The Smoking Gun.

I turned them down. Yes, I turned them all down. There’s something immensely flattering about the offers. Who wouldn’t appreciate heroin for the ego like that? I seriously doubt, though, that anyone wants to see my pasty body on their television screens. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at me that I’m not the gym-obsessed, tanned, twinky boy type who usually appears in these productions, or even the hunky muscle daddy type that so many men seem to wish I were.

It’s been a long stretch between the latest offer to display my talents on film and the first time I was asked to star in porn. True story: I was seventeen and still blond. A freshman in my first semester of college. I was six feet and three inches tall and a beanpole who weighed between one hundred and one hundred and five pounds. When I stepped out even into weak sunlight, I turned a deep brown.

I was sitting on a grassy bank, studying, when a man approached me. He sported long, shaggy blond hair that would be fashionable now in some circles, but back then just looked unkempt. His shirt was open to his navel, exposing a chest so dense with hair that it resembled Velcro. When he smiled, his teeth were startlingly white. “Whatcha doing?” he asked me.

“Studying,” I said, trying not to stare down his shirt. He had squatted down in front of me so that we were at face level.

“I was hoping you’d rather be doing something else,” he said. “Like fucking.”

Of course I exerted every ounce of common sense I had at the time before deciding how I should respond to so audacious and blunt a suggestion from a total stranger who might be a psychopath, rapist, or worse.

In other words, I thought about it for about a millisecond and then said, “Okay!” and blithely hopped into his van and went back to his apartment. Hey, what can I say? I've always been a fan of the direct approach.

“Oooo, you’re so tight,” he hissed the moment the door was shut, once he’d stripped me down and jammed his fingers in me. “Have you been fucked before?”

I’d already lost my virginity several hundred times by that point. I probably could have pulled it off again, but for some reason I decided to be honest. “Oh yeah,” I told him. “Lots.”

“Mind if I take some photos, then?” he asked, pulling out a Polaroid. In answer, I just spread my legs, looked lazily at the camera, and then saw a flash and heard a whirr as the instant photo came spooling out. I let him take a lot of photographs of me that day and on the other days I’d meet him. Posed photos, photos of me in action, always nude photos. I just didn’t care. I'd let Earl and his buddies take photographs all the time. (Though I have to admit that today there’s always a certain trepidation when I’m faced with vintage porn snapshots, certain that one day I’m going to see my skinny teen ass appearing somewhere.)

A couple of weeks later, by which time I’d ascertained that the guy’s name was David, he climbed off me, huffing and puffing. “I’ve been showing your photos to a buddy of mine in L.A.,” he said. “He does porn and he’s interested in meeting you.”

I had never even seen a professional porn movie, back in 1981. “Okay,” I said.

“No seriously, look, he’s interested in you.” He opened up the porn drawer by his bed and pulled out some color promotional materials. “See? These are his. Hot guys, huh? You could be one of them.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, not really taking it seriously. I was a freshman and had a stunning career as a B student ahead of me. Besides, my parents would have absolutely killed me if they found out I dropped out of school to do porn.

“No, he’s really interested. You could just go out there for a couple of weeks, that’s all it would take.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” I kept telling him.

Once when I arrived, David immediately started dialing the phone. “He’s here,” he said to the guy on the end of the line. “Talk to him.”

“This is William Higgins,” a voice announced. “I think my friend David’s told you about me. I make adult entertainment for men.”

The only reason I remembered his name so vividly is because for a moment I thought he called himself “Henry Higgins,” and the thought of Rex Harrison as a porn director just amused me. “Oh yeah,” I said in my most blasé manner.

“He tells me you’re a great fuck.”

“Yeah?” I replied, showing off my Advanced Placement English skills.

“I'm wondering if you'd be a good fit for one of my upcoming films,” said Mr. Higgins.

“Yeah? Well, nah, I don’t think so,” I said. “Thanks though.”

To be fair, I didn't really believe a word David was telling me. I didn't believe there was such a person—and if there were, I didn't believe David knew him, living as he did in the middle of nowhere, Virginia. I thought he'd gotten one of his buddies on the phone pretending to be a director, for some nefarious purpose. For all I know, that could've been the case. But most of all, I didn't believe I was porn-worthy.

I handed the phone back to David, who seemed mightily disappointed in me. He never had me back to his place again, after that day. I used to wonder if he was some sort of porn bounty hunter who lived on commission he earned by shipping boys west.

After a couple of weeks, the only reminder I had that I’d known him was a steady itching sensation below my waist. Baby’s first case of crabs.

I finally saw my first genuine porn film in 1987, when I finally had my own apartment and my own VCR and my own credit card to order one. I forget the title. It was some two-hour extravaganza that takes place mostly in a locker room after the big football game. When the words Directed by William Higgins flashed up on the tube, though, I was impressed—David and his friend had been for real, after all. Whenever I watched the movie after the first time, I stared at all the skinny blond twinks up on the screen and thought to myself, That could’ve been you, kiddo. That could’ve been you.

But I’m awfully glad it wasn’t.

22 comments:

  1. Wow. William Higgins. His movies are so not my style. Even now that he is making more professional films in Europe I'm less than interested in most his models. Still, cool that you've had offers. And to be honest with you, I think you would have a lot more people enjoying you in porn than you realize. You're sexy in a way that isn't all tight muscle and waxed chest, and there's plenty of us who love that.

    That being said, I can understand why you don't want to appear in some of the grittier porn niches. In this era that sort of thing has trouble staying hidden. Still, the one and I suspect only ever time I was offered to be in porn I really thought about it. But I was in college and turned it down too. Though there are pictures of me from multiple people out there. Never thought about possibly stumbling on them until now.

    -Ace

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    1. His 80s movies had a lot of blond twinks, which I might've been at the time--but they're not really my type.

      Let's make a pact neither of us runs for public office.

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    2. OK. I think I can manage to avoid any kind of public office position. Pretty easily. In fact, I don't see this pact ever getting broken.

      -Ace

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  2. You could have/can be a body part model, and you know which body part I mean.

    My time living in L.A. and knowing people in the entertainment industry both mainstream and porn, body part actors are used all the time. That -A- list actor on the cover of People magazine may have ugly feet so they may hired a body part actor if a foot close up is called for.

    The same with porn, that close of a large hard cock may not belong to the muscle stud who's face and upper body the camera is showing.

    Now, where's a good place to get 8x10 glossy photos done of your cock so you can send your 'head' shots in? :-)

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  3. Rob, I watch you quite often on my computer, but those are the films that you both starred in and directed. :)

    Hey, buddy. Sorry I've been away. xxoo

    J

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  4. Rob, I watch you quite often on my computer but those are the films in which you both starred and directed. :)

    Hey. Sorry I've been away. xxoo

    J

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    1. You're welcome back here whenever you can make it, Writer. You know that.

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  5. There's also such a thing as a "stunt dick," but I doubt that's what William Higgins had in mind for you. He really liked skinny blond boys.

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    1. Yeah, he did, but I don't know if I could've pulled off any of the dialogue without snickering.

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  6. Truthfully--you should count your blessings you did not work for William Higgins, especially as a bottom, in the mid 1980's....

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    1. I agree with you. That was dodging a bullet, FP.

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  7. Gee! I've been asked to do porn as well. Just at the corner of that Starbucks near to Market Street in SF. I was waiting for a friend and a white guy approach me with an awkward smile saying 'Hi, Would you like to be on a porn?' I don't know if it was because of his disgusting teeth or his Miami Vice like shirt, but I just turn the offer down not in my most polite way... Saludos!

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    1. Jeez, Manuel. You missed the opportunity of a lifetime! (To catch scabies, I mean.)

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  8. Could the title of your first porn film have been These Bases Are Loaded? (See the cover here: http://www.tlavideo.com/gay-these-bases-are-loaded/p-118960-3 ) Looking at William Higgins' early filmography, that seems to be the only movie with a sports theme.

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    1. Matt, it very well could've been. I remember a lot of my favorite porn from those days, but that first film wasn't one of them. I don't remember a single scene from it, even though I whacked off to it enough times.

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  9. How the hell do you guys get so much action? I lived in Charlottesville in the mid 80s and never so much got asked if someone could blow me. I'm no frog (nor am I a prince). LOL - it's funny how one small college town had so much going on AROUND me!

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    1. I used to get laid in C-ville all the time in the mid-eighties. And the UVA library toilets were one of the cruisiest places in the state of Virginia.

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  10. I was a porn star briefly at 16 years old. Thankfully it was in the days of video tape and for a private collector but I still worry I might see myself on the internet one day.

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    1. There's a lot of us in similar situations, P. I think you're safe, unless you become famous. Then all bets are off.

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  11. Rob,
    You would have been one great performer in the porn industry but i prefer you as the awesome writer that you are. We wouldn't have you telling us those great posts taht you write so amazingly. It would have been a pleasure seeing you in film but i adore you as you are right now my friend. I think that we are bless to read you man.

    Yves

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    1. Yves, thanks for your kindness. You are a good man.

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