When I was a young whippersnapper I was part of a porn-making collective. Like about half of the people in that group, I eventually began to make porn years after the last meeting I attended. Decades later, as I contemplate joining another, similar group, I'm wondering about the difference between groups that exist primarily because it's socially rewarding to belong to them and groups that exist primarily to get things done.

How does one distinguish between such groups? Is it about choosing members based on shared interest, compatibility & trust rather than just shared interest? Is it about foregrounding product over process? Might it be about how clearly the planned group actions are delineated, or about how much personal hunger individual members have to accomplish the stated shared goals? Can a group become more action-oriented through the efforts of a few members? Can that change survive a shift of membership?

Curious smutsters are standing bi to take your calls...

We interrupt your regular smutty flow to bring you this <cough> public health message.

The flu is a sexually transmissible infection. Just saying. Not specifically swine flu, just the ordinary flu that leaves you miserable-for-a-week, gotta cancel yer work & dates cause you're feverish and snotular & feeling like warmed-over tapir vomit. I don't mean it takes intimate sexual congress to share it, but that intimate (and even not-so-intimate) contact will give the flu a good chance to spread.

I put it in this context because in the crowd of sluts I hang with, it's obvious even to the casual observer that we take extraordinary pains to try to protect each other from being exposed to the known, sexually-specific-and-therefore-scary bugs. What the neophyte sluts and less observant casual observers may be missing is that we take similar pains around the more mundane health issues; the obvious stuff that seems just like basic good manners until you notice the newbie at a play party not doing it, or until you're seriously inconvenienced by a date you presumed had more care or common sense:

-washing your hands between scenes, between partners, between orifices, whether or not you've used gloves.
-covering your fricking mouth when you cough.
-canceling that date and staying home until your fever's gone, your sore throat is passed and your cough has subsided.
-(in this land of socialized and occasionally functional medicine) seeing the doctor regularly, getting regularly tested, having bloodwork done for as many of the possible bugs as one can, getting inoculated where possible.
-replacing denial and wishful thinking with current information, communication and all that good stuff.


I was reading an article in [someone else's] Globe & Mail today about the recently imposed legal penalties for knowingly exposing someone to HIV. For all the lip service that the writer was giving to voicing two differing perspectives on that multifaceted issue, from what I recall the 2-page article seemed to mention using barrier protection once, indirectly. Seems pretty obvious just from this omission that there is still a public dream afoot in which the law and science somehow save the day. Somehow they'll come up with the right combination of sticks, carrots and magic bullets to allow most people to stay untested and keep having un-discussed, inebriated, unprotected sex while the unfortunate few who actually take the time to know their health status are magically locked away, made to wear beacons, forced to disclose their status, etc..

Public discussion about life & death health issues brings this attitude to the foreground, while also showing how disproportionately we obsess over the uncommon whilst ignoring the commonplace. What if there were criminal charges for knowingly exposing co-workers to your flu by coming to work sick, or not covering your mouth when you cough on public transportation? What if it were your legal responsibility to tell a new lover "I have Herpes type 2" or "I don't know what those bumps near my bum are"? Would we be so eager to jump on board in support of these (arguably far more statistically relevant, far more potentially cost-saving) legal interventions as health measures?

To be clear, I'm not advocating that these further restrictions become law. I'm just cranky that 30 years after AIDS hit the media, it's still so taboo and unusual to promote personal responsibility in the ordinary, everyday, inconvenient & unsexy ways that it's necessary. Condoms, gloves, testing, communication, education and common sense can't be replaced by any amount of punitive law, or by any amount of finger-pointing & obfustication.


Thank you. <cough>.

I'm gonna bet I had a nastier night than you did. Goodness gracious, these Torontonians have stamina!

I have a hot second date in a couple hours with someone ridiculously cute & potentially very compatible. I'm uncharacteristically anxious, probably 'cause this also involves getting lost in the suburbs en route, meeting her boyfriend, getting back home in time to get some work done tonight, etc.

Trying to remember a time when hooking up wasn't so fraught with other stuff...

I'm giggling today, and not in a nice way. I'm laughing at the suckers made brave by anonymity who posted hurtful, petty, snide, creepy tags on sets throughout this site. SG is actually one of the places where I first noticed how vicious people can get on the net when they think they're nameless, and I have to say that no matter how odd the change of policy may be, I celebrate the lesson that some folks will learn.

(PS. --- If there's a lewd,inappropriate & lecherous tag here & there that leads back to me, please note that I'd happily & publicly say the same things to your face.)

In Jamaica for another couple days. Mosquito-devoured and saddened by what's happened to the currency ($650 for a six pack of Guinnes?) but having an amazing time. Working on web stuff, attending my sweetie's workshops and being my usual insomniac self. There's a disturbing similarity to our experience of the last 4 or 5 countries, given how different the actual environments have been. Time to shake that up a bit.

By way of explanation: Things got rough in Toronto. Really rough. Hard to say where the intersection of health issues, finances, etc. became unmanageable, but eventually it did. We sold the house, paid our debts and took our show on the road. ['We' is my main squeeze and I.] We spent a couple months in Vancouver, some time in Oakland, and 2 months here, and our next stop is in Jamaica before we refuel in Toronto and take off again. Possible next stops include ireland, Turkey, and Tasmania, with likely visits along the way to her sweetheart in Oakland, my sweethearts in Haiti, Vancouver, LA & elsewhere. We're averaging 2.5 months per stop, and I'd be happiest extending that a bit. So far, people don't usually seem to realize we're in town until the last two weeks, at which point we get drowned in opportunities and overwhelmed with invitations.

On that note, if you've been sitting on some plan or idea that requires my presence here in London, now would be a good time to let me know.

Hubris. Hmm.
Last night I was bitching to my brilliant London host bout SG. My membership had been lapsed for about a year, and I brought the site up in the context of discussing his phd thesis about comic book politics. The discussion had turned into a discussion of the Moore/Gebbie collaboration "Lost Girls", which turned into a discussion of pornography.

My ranting and bitching wasn't just about SG, but about "alt porn". My irritation stems from my position as a producer of porn: I find generally that attaching the alt tag to smut leads to unrealistic expectations on the part of performers & models.

I don't really, entirely believe that alt porn is indistinguishable from mainstream porn but for better marketing and less criticality on the part of the consumer, which is close to what I said when the whiskey put me on my high horse last night. I DO get cranky that people who know punk lives at a slightly different place on the same commercial continuum as MOR am radio can't recognize that all porn also lives on an ever-shifting commercial continuum within which yesterday's edge is tomorrow's cliche while the market and the meaning remains very, very similar.

My crankiness arises when a prospective model/performer comes to me blinded by countercultural associations, thinking that because I'm located in a similar set of political circles as they inhabit, the smut we produce together is somehow going to be consumed by different people with a different understanding of what that model's sexualized nekkidness on screen means.

Particularly if you are female-bodied, no matter the venue of your porn performance, some of your school friends will still judge you and snicker behind your back- or to your face. Some of your family members will still see you as failed and sullied. Many, many straight men with their dicks in one hand and their credit cards in the other will still be looking at your images and thinking about you in ways you cannot control, that are NOT about your elevated politics, your fabulous fashion sense, your great taste in music or your fantastic score in online games.

I personally don't think these predictable consequences are as extreme or as universal a set of responses as they were even a decade ago. I don't think these reactions need be catastrophic or even very important in one's life (or I wouldn't be in this racket), and I'm certain they are often outweighed by the very real social/economic gains and personally liberatory experiences one can have by spreading on tha interwebs.

I still blame the insular bubbles of alt-porn communities in part for the wacky romanticization of what it means to be a porn performer, and for sidestepping most critiques of the function of porn as a loneliness industry. (yes, that's my term, and yes, you're welcome to use it.)

So I bitched and scoffed about SG for an hour last night. (In our conversation I didn't even mention what they did to Mr. Warner, and I'll try to put that thought aside for a moment.) This morning somebody renewed my membership and here I am, happily eating crow, looking at old friends and embracing the contradiction.

Glad to be back, and thanks to whomever my anonymous benefactor might be, both for the gift and for the reminder of how easily I am swayed by 'free' and 'boobies'.

If you're in London UK right now, dear benefactor, look me up and I'll buy you a pint. I promise not to rant too much.