Several years ago, a buddy had this idea that we should make pornography. In hindsight, the idea was doomed to fail. First of all, neither of  us had a camcorder or camera, for that matter. We also lacked the basic editing software (I didn’t even have a computer at the time). There were so many things wrong with the idea, but we were young and stupid and willing to believe that the impossible would happen. He started choosing his porn director’s name before we even had anything ready. That’s like already planning the title of your album when you buddies agreed to join your band.

Four-finger John – the buddy – was an old high school buddy. I’d gained so much weight by the time of our reunion at some hot dog joint that was run by another high school chum. He didn’t even recognize me, even though we were speaking for a long time. “Fucking Willie,” he finally said. “Dude, I didn’t recognize you.”

“It’s the weight,” I said. “I get that a lot.”

He approached me with the idea of making porn with  a story – influenced by the golden age of the adult industry when sex happened during a story. The story didn’t have to be all that great, it just had to have some more substance than “I’m here to clean your pipes,” or “You don’t have money to pay for this pizza?” Because I was going by the title of would-be writer at the time, he wanted to me to pen a script that would be our pornographic opus. To be honest, I didn’t have a single clue what went into a porno script. Does a pornographic writer have to include the “oohs,” “ahhs,” “oh gods,” and “I’m cummings?” Did we have to describe the sex acts? When the players would remove their clothes and in what fashion? It became so hard (no pun) to figure this shit out, that I just called it quits. Not worth it, mostly because the only thing I had penned was some Amish porn that I’m sure was going to be twisted into some sick depravity that I wasn’t even willing to partake in. Thus the porno dream was over. Good timing, too. With the advantage of the internet on the fingertips of several pirates, I’ve heard the adult industry had taken the same spill the mainstream film market took.

A couple of years ago, I took this freelance writing gig from some Canadian porn blog. I got paid $5 a post of a 100 words. All I had to do was watch a clip and then write something dealing with it. My subjects ran from wanting to be a cuckold to the ordinary girl-next-door wanting to explore the depths of bondage. All in all, it was boring work and by the end of my contract I wanted to be so far from it that I took a vacation to the local hospital to get my appendix removed (I’m told this is totally unrelated).

It seems that it always returns to pornography. Ever since I was introduced to it, I’ve been intrigued by what gets people off. What turns them on, what makes their skin crawl and what pulls them out of their comfort zone. Maybe not just pornography, but human sexuality. Both vanilla and the decadent (not to be confused with depravity). In college, I’ve wrote several essays on pornography and pornographic related topics – mostly literature based pornography like William S. Burroughs’ (in)famous novel, Naked Lunch, and the Kinsey Report.

But I think back to Four Finger John’s idea. Porn for a reason sounds like something worthwhile. Blurring the line between the art world and that mainstream media ignores. It’s just a shame that I didn’t think of this earlier; it seems that others have beaten me to the punch.