Gram’s Pro Tips: Keys to living a virtuous porn life

As you are doubtless aware, I am an internationally known porn journalist, photographer, and director. But since that will get me Jack Shit (and Jack left) off my next purchase at Trader Joe’s, I ask you: What is this near-decade of adult industry experience worth?

(Hint: The answer is in the first paragraph, and its initials are JS.)

Today I begin a very random and infrequent listing of Pro Tips to ensure success and satisfaction in the porn industry, clergy, U.S. Senate, Webelos, Taliban, the Supertramp cover band The Bloody Well Righteous Brothers, or your family (and thanks to Ashli Orion, who so generously sat in her suitcase for this photo).

Pro Porn Tip 216: There are better safewords than “Miscarriage!”

It’s true. Try “Bunny” or even “Stop!”

Pro Porn Tip No. 57: Don’t let your publicist tell people you’re 21 if you’ve been sending out nude pix for five years.

The other day I got a message from a publicist—and I was considering adding this person to “Best of Inbox Nudes”—who claimed her client was 21 years old and (incidentally) “who now did anal.”

I know that the turnover in porn is high, but there are enough of us who keep our emails to know that this person has been in the porn business for five years and did anal from the get-go, after which she got a boyfriend, switched to girls-only for a while, dropped off the map, went to rehab, and came back. But you can’t turn back a porn girl’s odometer the way my friend the LAPD cop did his Camaro.

Pro Porn Tip 7: If name-bombed on PornWikileaks, don’t turn around and name-bomb others. Faced with an attention whore? IGNORE.

The recently-decommissioned Porn Wikileaks (PWL) was a great example of the cruelty one can inflict when one believes he is anonymous. An adult industry STD testing database was hacked and/or otherwise appropriated and published to share with the public the real names of porn stars. Then the public was encouraged to log in and comment and in some cases publish extra details about these porn stars in a blatant invasion of privacy.

After Porn Wikileaks was forced down due to the efforts of several (Mike South, Sean Tompkins, Michael Whiteacre, et al) and its sponsors and contributors exposed (Donny Long, Tara Akinlose, Michael Tierney, to name a few), the database, still in cache form on the Internet, was used to further feuds between other porn performers, some of whom had seen their own privacy stripped in the first go-round.

Why would one victim turn around and victimize another? Says Whiteacre, “Porn attracts the lowest common denominator.”

My friends, I’ve seen some weird shit, and in the darkest moments I’d tend to agree that porn attracts the lowest common denominator, but just as Twitter and other forms of social networking have exponentially increased our urge to “share,” it’s apparent that this sort of behavior isn’t limited to porn. Look at any comment thread following a Youtube video or TMZ article and you’ll see that porn is just one of many potential stops for the type of personality that is uncomfortable in its own skin.

I’ve found that the best way to enrage and disarm hateful, vain people is to pointedly ignore them (though that isn’t always effective and requires a great deal of willpower. Because sometimes you just want to crush them.)

Pro Porn Tip 112: Male talent is mad at you because you said two hours ago the scene would start in 30 minutes, and he medicated accordingly

I made this mistake in the first porn scene I directed several years ago. Why was the male performer pestering me about when the scene would begin? What else did he have to do that day? (That was my thinking at the time, and it was wrong.)

If your male talent needs a little blue or yellow pill, or if he requires an injection, you definitely do not want him waiting around. Time management is important in all things.

Stay tuned for more Pro Porn Tips. In the meantime, incorporate these into your life—especially not shouting “Miscarriage!”—and see immediate results.