Shades of Gray

Hey, Can You Help Me Out?

I’ve been coughing my lungs out for the past 24 hours. I left the air-conditioner on in my room on Fire Island, when I woke up it was the middle of February. Now I’m loaded on NyQuil and something else I can’t pronounce.

I‘ve been getting explicit e-mails from some of the boys I met on the set. Their numbers are burning holes in my wallet, but the way I’m feeling right now, even Colin Farrell couldn’t get me out of bed. Just as well. After the week I’ve had I could probably use a little rest.

The last day of shooting, one of the kids was having trouble getting hard. He was posing for naked photographs for the box-cover and his dick wasn’t cooperating, more broken than the Ten Commandments. The photographer was doing his best trying to make him feel comfortable, kept telling him over and over, “no worries, no pressure,” but you could tell he was getting frustrated.

The boy (couldn’t have been more than 25 years-old) was jacked up on Viagra and Cialis, even took an injection to his dick but nothing worked. For more than 30 minutes he stood there, stroking his flaccid 10-inch cock flipping through dirty magazines, his face wrinkled with concentration. He’d get semi-hard for a minute, and then it’d go down again, like a punctured tire.

He finally looked up and said, “Hey, can you help me out?”

I swear it was straight out of one of those badly written letters in Honcho:

“Dear editor,
Last summer, as I was filming a documentary about sex, one of the actors asked me to fluff him. I quickly got on my knees and sucked his big fat cock until he was rock hard. The boy was so grateful, he spent the next day fucking my brains out.”

I couldn’t. I’m not a prude. Had it been any other scenario I’d be sucking on that dick like an all-day lollipop. But at the moment all I could think of was, “My mother would kill me.” No kidding, that’s what came out of my mouth, “My mother would kill me…”

I told the story to a friend of mine over the phone. He laughed. “I don’t understand you.” He said. “You have no problem blowing some stranger at a bar, but a cute kid asks you, begs you, to help him out and you say no? What’s wrong with you?”

“My mother,” I said. “She’s Jewish.”

Cut, Print, It's a Wrap Everyone

It’s the last day of production. The crew is busy with last minute takes: cum shots that need to be redone, one more dialogue scene with badly delivered lines:
“Hey Parker, have you seen Andy?”
“Why no, Erik, I haven’t. Maybe he went to the store?”
Awkward pause.
The two exit the room with calculated steps, as though the floor is about to collapse.

The house I’m staying in is pretty much empty, everyone is packed up to leave. It feels like the last day of summer when you have to go back to school. Quiet after a crazy week of 15 grown men fucking like rabbits on steroids. Big cocks, shaved assholes, rimming, threeways, fisting, big round asses, six packs, perfectly groomed happy trails -- sex pollution.

I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, but I know I came here loaded with judgment. I thought porn stars were laziness incarnate, people who could have struggled through life like the rest of us, but took the easiest way out: on their back. No nine-to-five, no boss breathing down their neck, no fluorescent lights over a gray cubicle. Just sex and fame and a big fat dick. In my mind, they all arrived late on the set, pulled some dumb-ass diva fit before finally getting on a bed, fucked for a few of hours in front of a couple of cameras, then collected a hefty check spent mostly on drugs. I was convinced they’d all be arrogant, and shallow, people who never read a book, who thought Pol Pot is something you bought at Home Depot. I thought they were whores.

The only part I had right was the big dicks.

I met some really cool people who yes, sell sex, but were professional and political and smart. Brandon spent the whole weekend reading Tolstoy. Kent couldn’t find a bad word to say about anyone, not even Bush. Owen, an enigma: cool, reserved, so sexy. Chad carries a dick so frighteningly big, power bottoms ran away from him like their tail was on fire, but in reality couldn’t be more of a mench. One kid was so nervous, he couldn’t stop talking. And then there was one who, if single, I’d take to a small town in Indiana, quit my job and bake brownies all day.

I’m not sure I’d ever be able to date someone who makes a living selling sex. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t. I don’t know. In the back of my mind I'm still hoping I’ll find that guy who believes monogamy is an eight-letter word, not four, who’d quiver at my touch, only mine.

Where Is That Goddamn Fluffer?

There’s something particularly exhilarating about getting hit on by a porn star. I guess the thought that someone who has sex for a living would want to sleep with you on his time off can have your ego doing summersaults, or perhaps the simpler explanation: they’re hot.

Since I got here, one burly hunk of a guy (see picture) showed me his bed and told me he’d be waiting for me there naked that night, one confessed he had a little crush, and a cute 24 year-old kid asked half-jokingly if I would fuck him. I suspect the reason for all the attention has something to do with the fact that I’m the only one who hasn’t taken his clothes off on the set, but the effect is rather intoxicating nonetheless.

For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve been a good boy. Maybe it’s just that things here are little too crazy even for me, maybe I’m getting old.

My libido aside, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what it’s really like around here. It’s hard to explain. At times it seems like any other production I’ve been on, with scheduling conflicts, equipment problems, figuring out sleeping arrangements, but then there are moments that are so incredible, it’s as though you’ve just stepped into a dirty version of the Twilight Zone, where normal rules of physics cease to apply.

Things you’d expect: lube everywhere, dirty condoms, little blue pills, badly delivered lines, and always, always one boy or another walking naked around the house.

Things you wouldn’t expect: a lot of fisting scenes (am I the only one who thinks it’s weird?), no fluffers (it’s called Viagra), most models don’t really enjoy the sex, even when they’re attracted to their scene partner. Every once in a while one of the actors can’t orgasm, that’s when they bring out the fake cum. The best way to sustain an erection is something called Caverject, an injection that goes straight into your dick (insert cringe here). Even the biggest stars don’t make more than $3,000 per scene. Oh and at dinner they talk about politics.

The Chocolate Factory

When I was a kid my father took my brothers and me to a chocolate factory. He pointed at the never-ending display of sweets and said, “today is your day, have whatever you want.”

Three little boys started running through a sea of cocoa and sugar, pointing their tiny fingers every which way: “two of these, five of those,” and my father smiled, and bought.

We managed to fill ten boxes of candy before reaching the register, but by the time it came to eating them, we couldn’t. Perhaps it was the powerful smell, or maybe it was the visual overload, either way, we were full without having tasted one bite.

This was my father’s way of teaching his kids a lesson: too much of anything is never good.

Two days on the set of a porn film, it seems there is such a thing as too much dick. I’m surrounded by beautiful men with huge cocks, who flirt the way other people breathe… And nothing. I’m at the register but I can’t eat.

It’s 9:00 p.m. and I’ve already seen three people get fucked, another boy popping Viagras as if they were Tic-Tacs, and hands where no hands should be. As fascinating as it is (and it is), there’s no desire, no cravings, not even in the form of an involuntary erection. After two hours watching an ass being pounded like Chicken Paillard, even the horniest of men starts to check his wristwatch.

There are fun conversations though. One actor told me he doesn’t watch porn anymore because he’s worked with almost every model in the business, and hates most of them. Another one showed up in my bed butt-naked (I found a blowup bed and slept on the living room floor).

An acquaintance-turned-porn-star looked at me yesterday and told me something about me was different. “I don’t know what it is," he said, "but you seem happier.”

Double-0-69

I’m on Fire Island but I might as well be in another universe. Been hired to produce a documentary on the making of a porn flick. I feel like 00-69, license to shoot. I have a camera and a VIP pass, a front-row look at the behind-the-scenes.

For the past 24 hours I’ve been watching life through lenses fogged by body heat and sexual energy. Sounds like a dream job, but the funny thing is, I’ve never really been that crazy about adult movies. It’s okay, nothing against it, just not really a porn addict. I guess I rather just do it myself. My dad has this saying: “God gives nuts to people who have no teeth.” I’m walking toothless in a land full of cashews.

It’s been fascinating though, how could it not be? This is like a naughty summer camp, only the kids have pubic hair and bigger dicks, much, much bigger. One of them is so big that when he woke up today, his morning boner looked like something straight out of Aliens.

The people are nice, nicer than I imagined. Some of them are even smart. One kid, as soon as he finished getting fisted, a whole hand up his butt (looked like he was giving birth to an arm) opened his book and proceeded to read Anna Karenina by Tolstoy.

And I’m there, in the middle of it all, a camera in my hand and a hard-on in my pants (there was a moment when I honestly thought I was going to pitch a tent in front of everyone). Weird.

Have to run, they’re starting another scene in 20 minutes. Two naked boys are getting a full-body makeover, and the bed is being made with fresh sheets.

I feel like Dirk Diggler is about to walk through the door.