The Legend Lives On

My friend Gretchen was having dinner at a restaurant in Greensboro, NC, where I went to college. Her waiter said he recognized her.

“I think we met at a party.”

“Um. I don’t really go to parties.”

“Yeah, it was one of John Russell’s parties.”

“Oooooooh. Oh yeah.”

A week later I found this on her boyfriend’s blog:

Funny story. I had a friend who worked at a local Adam & Eve for about a year before moving to NYC, where he now works in a sex shop and is a sex writer.

He said that whenever married men came into the store alone the conversation went something like this:

"Hey...I need a giant dildo/vibrator."

"Um...okay."

"It's not for me! It's for my wife. She's...well, I think she's frigid."

"Really? Well...um...maybe I could interest you in a book..."

"No, no ...just show me your biggest toy."

At which point my friend's head would nearly explode. As he wrapped up the 14'' sex toy and handed it to the guy with a smile he'd think: "She's not frigid, pal. She just doesn't want to do it with you..."

It's nice to know the legend lives on.

North Carolina

Tonight I am sober, sunburnt, and half crazed. I don’t think I’ve been this horny since I was 14 years old, and the only words I can find are hacked-up, tired clichés. Desire frustrated is a mean, nasty thing; a shaking, violent, cage-rattling ape, rabid and beautiful and angry.

But I don’t really feel angry or violent. Actually, I feel pretty elated. It’s like there’s a live bird in my chest, not an ape, light and fluttering, flapping it’s wings, making gusts of air that catch in my throat.

Being in North Carolina always does this to me. It’s Pavlovian; I was 14 here, this is where sex exploded into my mind – taut, wiry muscled marines; guys with sunburns, shaved heads, driving around shirtless in outdated cars that smell like roses and cigarettes; smell of sand, salt, sea, heat; bushy, unkempt pubic hair – so whenever I’m here, it’s like I am 14. My cock stirs and it’s like the first time, like it’s never been touched. Every inch of my body is awake, my skin crawling, grasping. It’s heavy and light at the same time, alive all around me, surrounding me, swallowing me, gliding over my skin, licking me like flames (see what I mean about clichés?), heavy between my legs. A soft, thick ache, a pulling in the center of me. And I’m out of breath and anxious, itching, squirming. After hours in the sun, I’m warmed, ignited, ready. I loosen, eyes roll, heart jumps...

Bathroom Interview: Tommy Hottpants

Tommy Hottpants is one of my favorite NYC DJs, partly because of his penchant for playing Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cure and Romeo Void, and partly because I really really really want to make out with him. Seriously. I think I had a boner during this whole interview.

John: So Tommy Hottpants, where are your hot pants?
Tommy Hottpants: My hot pants…well, I’m not wearing anything under my jeans, so they’re not there, but they may be in my suitcase which is packed up and ready to go to San Francisco in like 2 hours.

J: So these aren’t you’re hot pants?
TH: No. No these are not my hot pants.

J: If you had to DJ a porno, what would your porno soundtrack be?
TH: Probably something along the lines of a remix of this Faint song, a little bit of Manson, a little bit of Mötley Crüe. And perhaps…Def Leopard? It’s all about the metal stripper thing, you know? For me at least. You’ve gotta be wild and sexy in bed or else it’s not gonna happen, you know? Nothing pussy like Björk.

J: You think Björk is a pussy?
TH: She’s great. I want to meet her. I totally would like to hang out with Björk. But, for sex music…No. You know, none of that lovey dovey, like tweeky, creeky coo coo coo…none of that.

J: So if you’re going to be having sex tonight, what song will you be having sex too?
TH: Well, I will be having sex in an airplane. High above the skies.

J: Where are you going?
TH: San Francisco. My flight’s at six o’clock in the morning. And there will most definitely be sex in the Mile High Club. Already a member. Yeah, it’s gonna be hot. And in San Francisco it’s just gonna continue.

J: Umm…I think I’m out of questions. What would you ask me if you were doing this interview?
TH: Top or bottom?

J: Oooh. Both, definitely.
TH: Versitile! Oh that’s nice. Um, if you were locked in a bathroom and you could be with anyone, name four people.

J: I don’t know.
TH: I’ll answer my own question. It’s gonna be Pierre Fitch. Look him up online. He’s the hottest porn star ever. You’re gonna fall in love with him. It’s gonna be Pierre Fitch, Nikki Six, Henry Rollins, maybe, because you need one muscle guy. And probably Heath Ledger, but a la Ten Things I Hate About You, but without the hair. So that’s the bathroom party.

10:45

10:45 Sunday night, I call Dave.

Me: Should I go out?

Dave: I’m in. At home I mean.

Me: Why?

Dave: Do you want to go to Hiro?

Me: I don’t know. Maybe.

Dave: I can be ready in 20 minutes.

Me: Twenty minutes?

Dave: Oh, come on! Like we don’t go out this late on Tuesday nights!

Me: No. I should stay in.

Dave: Why?

Me: I’m behind on, like, two writing assignments.

Dave: Do you really think you’ll get any work done tonight?

Me: I’m feeling restless.

[silence]

Dave: You still there?

Me: I’m looking at myself in the mirror to see if I feel sexy.

Dave: Yeah?

Me: I feel sexy.

Dave: Ok?

Me: Ok. Lets go.

Dave: Really?

Me: I’m committed.

Meeting of the Minds

I was almost an hour late to meet Chuck and Musto at B Bar Tuesday night.

“You just missed Debbie Harry,” Chuck said. I guess that’s what I get.

In the cab on the way to Happy Valley Chuck was talking about how he wants to find a new place for him and Musto to go on Wednesday nights.

“You and Musto?”

“Yeah, he’s my new partner in crime.”

I kinda thought I was Chuck’s partner in crime.

“Fine, you can take Musto back to your hotel tonight.”

We got to Happy Valley just in time to grab a drink and squirm our way through the crowd, up to the balcony to watch Dita Von Teese do her boom-boom champagne glass burlesque strip tease thing. I don’t know what’s up with Happy Valley and all the burlesque acts they hire – Dita, Dirty Martini, Amanda – but I think I kinda like it.

I finally got to meet Rob Roth, the video artist who’s been emailing me ever since he read something I wrote on my MySpace page about Matthew Barney and gay porn.

“I love this song,” he said. “It’s perfect for seducing someone.” Then he tried to demonstrate his seduction method – sort of dancing close and putting his thigh between my legs like he was going to knee me in the groin – and was not entirely unsuccessful.

Upstairs, we were joined by an effusive drunken older gentleman who turned out to be Patrick McMullan. He kept asking if Chuck and the boy Chuck was flirting with and I were boyfriends. Then he grabbed me and shoved my face into Rob’s and took pictures while we made out.

“I kinda thought this would be a meeting of the minds,” I said.

“Well, there’s mind and body and spirit…” Rob said. I gave him my number.

Of course, I went home with Chuck and had blurry, four o’clock in the morning sex, which is a pattern neither of us seems capable of breaking.

Career Porn Stars

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The Heart is Deceitful

Asia Argento’s film adaptation of JT LeRoy’s The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things opened in New York last weekend. I saw it last night. It wasn’t bad. Actually, it was better than I expected. The only glaringly awful aspect of the film were all the celebrity cameos. It’s not that the actors themselves (all friends of LeRoy, all of whom now look like fools) did a bad job. It’s just that their presence in the film is incredibly distracting. People actually laughed at Marilyn Manson, Wynona Ryder, and Michael Pitt. Laughed at a film based on one of the most gut-wrenchingly depressing books of the past decade. Still, I’m actually pretty eager to see Argento’s other film, the semi-autobiographical Scarlet Diva. But that’s not what I was thinking about as I left the theater.

It’s only been a few months since articles in New York Magazine and The New York Times exposed LeRoy as a fraud. People have reacted in various ways, but the general consensus, as far as I can tell, is that the books should stand for themselves. I found this quote from the London Guardian on LeRoy’s own blog:

“But nothing has been taken from us. The books remain: as startling and disturbingly beautiful as they ever were. There is nothing that has sullied the New York Times's assertion that 'his language is always fresh, his soul never corrupt'. And what strikes me more than anything is that in this age of overblown celebrity, where people such as Paris Hilton can be famous purely for being Paris Hilton, mightn't JT LeRoy represent the precise inversion of this? The work is all. The identity is irrelevant.”

I disagree. The fact that JT LeRoy doesn’t exist actually does affect the work.

As a memoir, The Heart is Deceitful made sense. It was about catharsis, bloodletting. As a work of fiction, it’s just grotesque and more than a little absurd.

“JT LeRoy” was never a survivor’s story in the Oprah sense. It wasn’t about raising awareness or preventing the sort of abuses depicted in the stories. LeRoy never founded an organization or crisis hotline. He was more concerned with telling his story – over and over again – as a way to come to terms with the events of his past. It was about getting the poison out, examining it, dealing with it, and creating something beautiful and raw and honest out of it.

But now that we know it was all made up, that none of it ever happened, that JT LeRoy is a fiction, a mere character in these stories rather than someone who actually experienced the horrors they describe, it all just feels dirty. You have to wonder what kind of person imagines these sort of things. It’s not that I don’t realize that horrible things happen to children in this world. I’m not so naïve that I think there aren’t supremely fucked up people out there who torture their own kids. It happens. It’s awful, but it happens. What bothers me is that whoever has been writing as JT LeRoy – it’s now generally accepted that the real author is a 40-something woman named Laura Albert – has been exploiting these sort of tragedies in the name of fame, wealth, and the most obscene star-fucking in recent memory.

What’s worse is that we, the reading public, just lapped it up. It’s like Albert tapped into a sick voyeurism in all of us. Something in us wants to hear these kinds of stories. It’s the same thing that makes us salivate over the sensationalist evening news, the same thing that makes us lick our chops watching Judge Judy and Jerry Springer...only much, much worse.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to read JT LeRoy the same way I used to. The stories are still beautifully, disturbingly written. But what used to be so emotionally searing now seems callous and perverse.

PRÉF: Other People's Sex Lives

My piece from the March/April issue of PRÉF. Names have been changed, 'cause I learned my lesson ages ago.

Other People's Sex Lives

Lately I’ve been irrationally afraid that everyone in the world is having better sex than me. The last few times I’ve done it have been amusing at best; the kind of sex I imagine people twice my age have when they’ve been married for 20 years and have run out of ideas. I’m not having bad sex, but I just cannot help feeling that it could be better, that I must be getting lazy or uninspired. Especially when compared with my friends’ tales of their sexual exploits.

I. James’s Thumb-Fuck
James and I dated in college. We had a terrible breakup, thought we’d never speak to each other again, and then, a few years later, became really good friends. I guess there’s the tiniest bit of sexual tension left between us, but that’s normal.

James, like every other gay guy in New York, likes to talk about sex over cocktails in the middle of the week. It was a Tuesday night, we were at Therapy in Hell’s Kitchen, and James was telling a bunch of friends about the date he’d been on the previous weekend.

The guy – Tom or Jack or Sam or something…we’ll just call him Fernando – was apparently loaded. He had an enormous ground floor apartment that opened onto a garden somewhere in Greenwich Village. He was also gorgeous, according to James. Washboard abs, great arms, tight butt. I don’t remember what they did on their date; that wasn’t the interesting part. Maybe they went to a movie or dinner or just took a romantic walk around the Village. Who cares, really? The part James wanted to tell us about, and the part we all wanted to hear, was what happened once they got back to Fernando’s fabulous apartment.

The way James described it, the sex was like something out of a steamy gay romance novel. He threw Fernando onto the bed and ripped off his shirt. Then they kissed, hard, and James began working his way down to Fernando’s chest, kissing his smooth tan skin as he went. He licked and suckled Fernando’s nipples, teasing them with his tongue and lightly biting them. He unbuckled Fernando’s belt and pulled off his jeans. Then he rolled him over onto his stomach and started fingering his ass.

Fernando was on his knees, his face buried in fluffy down pillows as James slipped his thumb into his ass. He let out a long, deep moan. James slid his thumb in and out slowly, working the muscles between Fernando’s ass and balls with his other fingers. Fernando started to rock back and forth on James’s thumb, moaning and stroking his cock. James pressed in deep and pulled out over and over. He spat in his free hand and grabbed Fernando’s cock and started stroking it. Fernando was gasping and moaning through clenched teeth, moving his ass around on James’s thumb.

“He came right in my hand,” James said. “He was so loud I had to cover his mouth with my hand. I got his own cum all over his face.”

“So, you just fucked him with your thumb?” I asked

“It was like I was holding his whole pelvis in my hand,” he said. “It was so hot.”

As we were finishing our drinks, James got a text message from Fernando. “If you’re that good with just your thumb, I can’t wait to see what your dick feels like.”

II. Neil’s Threesome
I’m not fond of Neil. He’s a sweetheart. He’s boyish and optimistic and completely guileless. Everyone loves him. But I can’t stand him. He annoys me for reasons even I don’t really understand. Maybe it’s the bully in me, but whenever he’s around, I tend to pick on him like you’d pick on a younger brother or the geeky kid in high school.

Neil looks like the geeky kid in a teen movie and he is possibly the world’s worst dancer. But somehow, he always manages to hook up with really hot guys. Maybe it’s because he’s so damned nice; maybe it’s his complete lack of self-consciousness. Whatever it is, it drives me crazy with jealousy. Guys like Neil are not supposed to get the hot guys. They’re not supposed to be having hot sex. They’re supposed to look on longingly as cuter, meaner, wilder guys do things they’re too scared to do.

Recently, I heard, from mutual friends, that Neil had had a threesome. It came as quite a shock to all of us. Neil is 22 and only started having sex a few months ago. He’s afraid of his own butt hole. How can such a person have had a threesome? Here I am trying to be the hard, sexy, cynical guy hanging out with DJs and porn stars, and this sugary sweet little twerp is showing me up. If my life were an 18th century French novel, I’d probably come up with some sort of twisted scheme to bring about Neil’s ruin. Alas, I am not the Vicomte de Valmont. I’m just a selfish, sexually frustrated boy who is far too concerned with other people’s sex lives.

III. My Own Business
I know I should mind my own business. I shouldn’t care so much what other people are doing. I shouldn’t try to compare their sex lives to mine. There are times, however, when the dirty stories my friends tell me about themselves and their lovers keep me up at night. It could be that they are exaggerating; that they really aren’t having better sex than me, or anyone else. That’s beside the point, really. Because once I’ve heard what they’ve done, or what they think they should have done, it takes on a life of its own. There’s a constant porno loop in my head at any given time. Lying in bed at night; at work; on the subway. I have a very dirty mind and quite often my friends and their stories are just fodder for it. When I slip my hands down my pants and grab my cock, I’m just as likely thinking of someone I know as some random porn star.

I think my friends secretly want me – and anyone else they talk to about sex – to fantasize about them. Maybe they get off on the idea that people are thinking about them, embellishing the scenarios they’ve discussed and creating new ones. It’s kind of like a perverted form of celebrity or even immortality. That amazing sex they had last month lives on in the dirty minds of others. Or maybe just my dirty mind.

Bathroom Interview: Tristan Taormino

Tristan Taormino should be the patron saint of anal sex. Seriously, someone call the pope. She’s built her own little empire – including her Village Voice sex column, several books, and two pornos – on the premise that more people should be taking it up the ass. She just released the newly revised second edition of her first book, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, and has returned to the world of porn with her new DVD, Tristan Taormino’s House of Ass. I found Taormino in the bathroom of Crash Mansion where we were celebrating the release of both the book and DVD.

John: It's been five years since The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women 2. Why so long between DVDs?
Tristan Taormino: The thing is, truthfully, there’s so much that I do. Things just come into focus. There are some years where the focus is on teaching and some years where the focus is on writing. And I just felt this year, in 2005, newly inspired to make cool porn. I’m not a fulltime pornographer and I don’t want to just do it to do it, or do it to cash the check. I only want to do it when I feel really jazzed about it.

J: How is House of Ass different from every other porno out there?
TT: Well, my whole thing is that I want to see a different kind of gonzo. Gonzo is porn without a plot, where the camera is acknowledged. Like cinema verite, sort of. I want to see gonzo where there isn’t stupid degradation, of both women and men. And I want to see porn where there’s no circus stunts. Cause that’s the thing. There are great things about gonzo, but then a lot of the stuff in gonzo is crappy. So, can you capture the spirit of gonzo, which is spontaneity and just raw hot sex? But can you take out some of these things that sort of dominate the genre?

J: Did you get to sample any of the talent before filming?
TT: (laughs) No.

J: During filming?
TT: Yes. In the video, you’ll see, Justine [Jolie] played with my boobs a little bit and pinched my nipples. There may be some lost footage, not on the DVD, of me with Mr. Marcus’s cock in my mouth. Enough said!

J: What is the best soundtrack for anal sex?
TT: The best soundtrack for anal sex…See that’s the thing. There is no one soundtrack. People make these assumptions, like it has to be rough and down and dirty. You can have anal sex to “fuck me like and animal” or you can have anal sex to, like, Everything But the Girl. It can be sweet and tender and intimate and really nice, or it can be rough and dirty and nasty and raunchy, and everything in between.

J: So what’s your favorite song to have anal sex to?
TT: I’m gonna go with anything on “Disintegration” by the Cure.

J: Who do you think is having anal sex tonight?
TT: I think that Rachel Kramer Bussel is gonna have anal sex tonight. I think that Bridget Everett is gonna have anal sex tonight. There were just so many couples who I don’t even really know, but who came up to me and were like, “You changed our sex life.” Which, you know, is my favorite thing in the whole world. So all those people, whose names I probably can’t even remember now, all those people are gonna have anal sex.

Aaron's Dream

Last night Aaron called to tell me that he’d had a sex dream about me the night before. We were in a house, but it wasn’t his house and it wasn’t my apartment. I was lying on my stomach and he was on top of me, with his hand wrapped around me, gripping my cock, which, according to him, was “really, really wide.”

That made me smile and I felt all warm and glowy, like there were Christmas lights all curled up in my stomach.

I like being dreamed about in the same way that I like it when I find out people have been talking about me behind my back. It makes me feel important, like the fact that someone has taken the time to actually discuss me means that I matter, that my legend is beginning to spread. It feels a little like immortality. The fact that Aaron had a dream about me means that I have entered his subconscious, and once you’re there you’re permanent. You’re with them forever, even if you have a falling out and you never speak to or see each other again. Someone can’t kick you out of their subconscious.

Years from now, Aaron might dream about something, a bank robbery, and someone will be telling him that he can’t set his watch at a time like this. And he’ll know that there’s someone out in the getaway car with video tapes that need to be returned, and that he loves this person very much, but he has no idea who it is, and that will be me. He’ll wake up feeling sort of embarassed and hopeful, like he has a crush on someone, and wondering who it was waiting out in the car.

I feel like a virus. I’m inside, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever been before. I’m in there, in Aaron, and I’m gestating.

Love Letters

Last year the Village Voice printed love letters for their annual “Sex in the First Person” Valentine’s Day issue. I found myself absolutely in love with Valentine’s Day, for the first time in my life. It seemed like something more than just a greeting card capitalist holiday. It seemed like a celebration of love, a day when just about everyone in New York stopped to appreciate how simple and precious and rare love really is. It seemed like a day of solemn respect. I didn’t feel cynical at all. When the waitress at an Italian coffee shop gave me a long stemmed red rose with my spiked hot chocolate, the words “Viva l’amore,” sprang to mind, and that became my mantra for the rest of the day.

This year, I find that I have several love letters to write, and I’m unsure of all of them. Each one sort of blends into the next and I’m not even sure who I’m writing to. These sentiments are like deep water colors that bleed into fuzzy shapes with indistinct borders. I’m not sure where they begin and where they end, but they are undeniably, frustratingly present.
_______________

Dear J.,

What I feel for you is a mystery to me. Initially, indifference, but muddled with something like kinship or the recognition of something in you that harmonized quietly with something in me. Then later, attraction. Unexpected, but undeniable attraction. Every physical part of you is perfect: your sweet guileless face; your surprisingly beautiful body. Your sexiness snuck up behind me and pounced when I wasn't even looking.

Now, what I feel for you is a sort of playful, mischievous interest. I’m curious. I want to run around with you and explore. I want to creep inside and push buttons and pull strings. I want to take you away from everyone you know and wander the streets with you at 4 a.m. I want to stop in a porn shop and see how you react. I want to hold your hand when we leave.

There’s a look in your eyes sometimes like something is waking up. Inside you, certain things are starting to move again that maybe haven’t moved in a long time. I think they’ve been waiting to move. I think they’re sorry they slept in so late.

John
_______________

Dear A.,

That mix CD I sent you for Christmas was somewhat restrained, I know. At the time, what I felt was so big, so intense, I thought it might freak you out. It sort of freaked me out. Our time together – those two weekends bashing around New York, that amazing night in your hotel – was still so fresh in my mind. It filled me, bolstered me, inflated my heart so much. For the first time in a long time I had a sense of the future, not as a dark empty corridor you stumble through blindly, but as an open terrain filled with possibility. And the thought came, unbidden, into my head: “I’d have kids with him.”

It was strange and shocking and unsettling.

I have been so imprudent with such feelings in the past, stupidly declaring my adoration for the most fleeting of suitors and calling it love. I don’t offer my heart; I throw it, wet and beating, at men, and when it hits them and falls to the dusty ground, or misses them altogether, I am devastated. These are the actions of a child, a silly boy who doesn’t really know what he wants and so hurls himself, full speed, towards what doesn’t want him.

And so when I see in you the possibility of reciprocation, of something real, it chills me to my core. I’m afraid that the nasty, rotten bits of me will eat you alive. I’m afraid that my misanthropy, my dissatisfaction, my temper tantrums, my willingness to indulge in my worst possible impulses, will drive you away. And it’s not even that I’m afraid of losing you. I’m afraid of doing to you what I’ve done to others. I can’t stand the thought of exposing you to the muck and mire in my soul, of shoving you face first into it, and then seeing it reflected back every time you look at me.

So I didn’t put the sweet, sad songs on your CD. I left off the songs about love and longing, the ones so bitterly beautiful they make heartbreak seem sweet. And I kept my heart to myself.

John
_______________

Image: Cupid by Chuck Jones.

Bathroom Interview: Buck Angel

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Heatherette

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GayVN Awards

It’s awards show season, even in gay porn land. Last week the nominations were announced for the 8th Annual GayVN Awards. For those of you who don’t know, the GayVN Awards are like the Oscars of gay porn. Let someone else speculate about Brokeback Mountain’s Academy Award nods, I’m more concerned with the fuck flicks.

It looks like the two front runners this year are Michael Lucas’s Dangerous Liaisons (yup, a gay porn version of Choderlos de Laclos’s 18th century novel) and Chi Chi LaRue’s Wrong Side of the Tracks. No big surprise there. These are two crazy ambitious DVDs from two damn fine pornographers. One of these two is going to take home the award for Best Picture, but I can’t even begin to speculate which. I’m thinking Chi Chi will get Best Director over Lucas.

As for best actor, it’s another tough call. I’d narrow it down to Rascal Video’s golden boy Johnny Hazzard and critical darling Brad Benton. Hazzard is up for a ton of awards – all for Wrong Side of the Tracks – and he’s bound to get a lot of them. A hot guy in a hot film is a tough combo to beat. Benton’s big staring vehicle this year, Spunk’d (Strand Releasing), is nominated for Best Alternative Release, and I’m thinking that’s where he’ll get the recognition.

Two of my favorite releases this year, Cirque Noir (Titan Media) and Owen Hawk’s Unleashed (Dark Alley Media), are up for Best All-Sex Video. Both are up against Raging Stallion Studios’ Arabesque (Raging Stallion Studios), which poses some stiff competition. I want Cirque Noir to get this one, though. It features a ground breaking performance by transsexual male performer Buck Angel, who was totally snubbed by not receiving a single GayVN nomination. Unleashed is my pick for Best Leather Video.

I’m sort of shocked that Remy Delaine wasn’t nominated for Best Newcomer. The strapping Aussie stud would have been my pick. Of the actual nominees, I’d like to see the award go to either Tober Brandt or Andy Kirra, though Huessein stands a good chance of winning. Ken Mack and Damon DeMarco have my vote for Best Oral Scene. Mack has this whole hot-gay-uncle thing going on, and NYC boy DeMaro is just one of nicest boys in porn right now. Best Duo Sex Scene is anyone’s guess. Some of my personal favs (Benton, Hazzard) are nominated for this one, but I’m not sure about their partners. It could go to Hazzard and Tyler Riggz in Wrong Side of the Tracks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it went to either Huessein and François Sagat in Arabesque or Wilfried Knight and Arpad Miklos in Manhattan Heat (Lucas Entertainment). I’d like Brad Benton to walk away with Best Supporting Actor, but I have a feeling that one’s going to Kent Larson for Dangerous Liaisons.

Which brings us to Performer of the Year. While I’d love to be the filling in a Brad Benton-Owen Hawk sandwich, I don’t think either of them is getting this award. The same goes for Pete Ross, Jacob Slader, and Gus Mattox. No, I’d put my money on Johnny Hazzard. He’s in one of the most nominated pornos of the year (Wrong Side of the Tracks), directed by an industry favorite (Chi Chi LaRue), and he’s actually not a bad actor. If he gets no other award this year, he’ll get this one.

The complete list of nominees is here. The GAYVN Awards show is on March 9 at Rage Nightclub in West Hollywood, CA. Let me know who you’re betting on.

No Condoms, No Chi Chi

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Formika

I'm having a bit of a Last Night's Party moment. Here's some pictures from Mistress Formika's birthday at Opaline:

Bathroom Interveiw: Ashton Ryan

Ashton Ryan has been in gay porn for most of his adult life. After an extremely successful stint with Junior Studios, he took a hiatus from the adult biz. Now he's back, at the helm of Eon Films - a.k.a. Twinks R Us - producing, directing, starring, and breakin' hearts.

Bathroom: penthouse suite at the Venetian, Las Vegas.


John: So, you have a boyfriend?

Ashton Ryan: I do.

J: Is he in the industry too?

AR: Hell no! No more of that. Tried that and it doesn’t work.

J: Why not?

AR: It just doesn’t. There are press issues.

J: Your last few films have been movie parodies. What’s that all about?

AR: That was my idea. You know, you grow up watching them…I did anyway. I come up with these twisted porn ideas all the time. They’ve all been my idea. I come up with the name, but I don’t write the stories.

J: And you actually have a lot of pull at your production company, Eon Films.

AR: Yes. Technically, right now I am one third owner [of Eon Films].

J: What’s your favorite porno right now?

AR: My new one, Ashton’s Eleven.

J: If you had your own line of sex toys, would you fuck yourself with a dildo molded from your own penis?

AR: Oooh. Well, I’ve been told it’s really nice, so yes. Just to see if it actually was really nice. And actually, that’s coming.

J: The Ashton Ryan dildo?

AR: Under a different name. It’s a long story involving another movie parody.

Vegas: Day Four!

Our last day at the GayVN Expo (Sunday was a travel day) was another day of filming. Feeling shockingly non-hungover from the previous night’s HustlaBall, I snapped still photos of the cute boys from Factory Video, Flavamen, and Eon Films as Mikey interviewed them.

We scurried upstairs to catch the last hour of the Internext Expo, which ended at 3:00. Apparently, it is tradition to close the show by tossing thousands of small foam breasts (some Internet company’s promotional item) around the show floor. The scene was bizarrely apocalyptic. Boobs rained down from the heavens; they shot from one side of the floor to the other with shocking speed; they bounced and rolled and even caused the MaleFlixxx.com booth to fall apart.

After we wrapped up filming, I had some time to kill before meeting up with Buck Angel for an interview, so I decided to wander around the AVN section of the expo. There I encountered a car full of creepy Real Dolls, Big Gay Apple’s ol’ pal Ron Jeremy (he signed our “I Heart Gay Porn” t-shirts back in August), and a hot trio of Burlesque performers. I also discovered Rob Rotten and almost came in my pants when I saw him. What can I say? Dirty, mean lookin’ tattooed boys who would probably beat me up are just my thing. I even heard that Verne Troyer was making an appearance somewhere.

That night’s cocktail party in one of the Venetian’s penthouse suites was only slightly more subdued than on previous nights. Once again, I found myself in a bathroom with Ashton Ryan for a significant portion of the evening. Only this time his boyfriend and Tyler Mason joined us. All three of them were flirting with me, and I would have liked nothing more than for all of us to get naked. Instead, Tyler and I just watched Ashton’s boyfriend suck his cock and then tried to make the bidet work with disastrous results.

As I was leaving, I snapped a photo of the sexiest damn thing I had seen all weekend: Rod Barry in a furry hat with wolf ears. The only way it could be sexier is if that was all he was wearing.

Vegas: Day Three!

The first day of the expo was industry only, so the floor was relatively calm. The mobs of fans clambering for a porn star’s (or anyone they perceive to be a porn star’s) autograph showed up on day two.

The madness started at noon, when the expo opened its doors to fans. Big Gay Apple was up and filming at 10 a.m., however, which gave us time to interview guys from Titan Media, Hot House Entertainment, Adonis Pictures, and of course Chi Chi Larue’s Rascal Video. I was there to see Mikey chat with Andy Kirra and Trevor Knight (a.k.a. my new secret crush), but I missed superstar Johnny Hazzard as I was busy with another superstar, the lovely Tristan Taormino.

I bumped into Miss Triss at the Adam and Eve booth, where she was taking a break from covering the AVN Expo for the Village Voice and promoting her new DVD, Tristan’s House of Ass. We chatted about the expo, how exhausted we both were, and the silicone tackiness at a neighboring booth. Eon Films super tiny super twink Tyler Mason (pictured) passed by and I introduced him to Tristan.

Tristan: “Oh my god, are you like 12?”
Tyler: “No.”
Tristan: “Are you a porn star?”
Tyler: “Yes.”
Tristan: “Are you a top?”
Tyler: “No.”
Tristan: “It would be so cool if you were a top and fucked really big guys.”

That is why I love this woman and cannot wait until she produces some gay porn.

Bathroom Interview: Michael Brandon

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