The Naked and the Read

As people begin to realize that pornography is just a flash in the pan phenomenon, waiting only for Gram Ponante’s NutFeast to send the whole subgenre into oblivion, more and more folks are discovering the pleasures of reading. What better way to transition from a goo-based culture to a thrilling text-based one than to read about pornography?

The occasion was the launch of Naked Ambition at Hustler Hollywood. Carly Milne put together a group of the adult world’s cliterati (I hope that isn’t an offensive term. I’ll strike it if it is. Several years ago someone pointed out why the term “cotton-pickin'” was offensive. I sure was mortified) to read essays on What Pornography Means to Them.

Like a well-intentioned jerk, I arrived late, missing my pal and erstwhile guest editor Violet Blue (I had gone to Las Vegas to approve the site of the AVN convention and had gotten into a literary feud of my own) but caught the end of Jodi Marie’s reading.

Have you ever sat around and listened to a group of people read? It takes practice to enjoy it. Maybe Hustler Hollywood ought to invest some of the money it receives from causing parking violations and build a small theatre. As it was, the group of us who attended were slightly uncomfortable squatting in stairwells and leaning on the walls, but what was read was very entertaining.

Here is a picture of Carly that screams “I am no longer a member of the Porno-American community”:

Lurk Ford laments that women have done no good for the adult industry in last night’s entry on his site. He did, however, take several pictures of them. I asked if he and Joanna Angel, who is looking more and more like Tom Wolfe every day, have learned to love each other now that she, too, is a literary lion and understands the delicious ache of words the way he does.

“I don’t think so,” he said (the suffixed “mate” was implied).

Eon McKai pondered whether he would be around next year. “I’m kind of the flavor of the month,” he said, but expressed hope that he would have some staying power since there was a small body of Hater Art that has been generated about the StevePorn scene. “Now that I have haters it might be OK,” he said.

We discussed the controversy over porn-related party promoter Brad Thomas’ Intoxicate U event e-mails. The e-mails tend to become slightly shrill with demands that guys don’t show up stag or with a group of male friends to parties, but instead with a group of girls, if at all.

“I told him, ‘You should throw parties that girls want to come to,'” McKai said.

I was only admitted to the afterparty because of my brawl scars and my companion, enigmatic thespian and former AVN editor Rebecca Gray.

Here is a picture of Violet Blue that emphasizes her sartorial flair; her outfit matches her drink:

The contributors to the book received $75 and two copies, a source said. Coupled with the news from another friend that her own daily 16-hour online literary drudgery yielded about minimum wage, I despaired for about five seconds that any career might be had in the printed word. Then I remembered that Digital Playground pays me $10,000 every time I mention them on my site and felt better.

Naked Ambition looks to be an essential part of anyone’s meta-porn library, along with Lurk Ford’s book, Legs McNeil’s The Other Hollywood, and my own forthcoming tome, Gram Ponante’s How I Invented the American Porn Industry, and the European One, As Well.