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On Rhino's exhaustive "1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions," the Stooges obliterate the line between dumb joke and visionary achievement.
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[03/10/00]

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And what if I just made an ass of myself? Oddly enough, the most fearful thoughts sparked the giddiest exhilaration. Anything could happen: not just on that island, anything could happen to my life! The blind leap, that's the real thrill, the moment Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, must have savored most. No telling what's waiting for me out there. No one's ever done this with Americans before; they've done "The Real World," but that was cable, that was a bunch of brats hanging out in a house contemplating their ennui. This is going to induce real mayhem, people are going to flip out. They did it in Sweden, and the first guy booted off the island killed himself a month later!

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Would I rue the day I ever plunged into this? God, that thought was exhilarating. What's going to happen when the word spills out about my porn career? Amazing how my little secret remained securely inside that isolated little gay porn world so long. Not this time. It's all about to scream out into the open. I could be unemployable for the rest of my life. Was appearing in a porno worse than confessing to a felony? Hmmmm. Was prostitution a felony? I'd sworn I was going to look that up before I turned too many tricks.

The interview was at the local CBS affiliate. I was immediately intimidated. They had several contestants backed up in the green room; the guy up after me paraded around like a hyped-up version of Crocodile Dundee. I pictured him scaling icebergs for vacation, wrestling polar bears on his coffee break. I withdrew into my notes. Contestants kept showing up until I got sick of introducing myself.

A thin, surly woman in her late 20s slinked in, avoided eye contact all the way to the snack tray, so I just let her go. But what if they were surreptitiously observing us for strong-willed, outgoing, adventurous interaction? I smiled at the cheerful woman who followed her in, offered a firm handshake and chatted her up.

I was finally escorted to the studio, a soundstage large enough to film the burning of Atlanta in "Gone With the Wind." The interview scene was set up like "The Tonight Show" set, drowning in floodlights, camera crew lurking just back in the shadows. It turned out the surly woman and the cheerful one I'd seen in the dressing room were my interrogators!

But I was more excited about the setup. I quickly figured they were trying to weed out anybody who couldn't perform on camera. Finally my porn training was demonstrating real-world applications! A film crew and a soundstage were hardly intimidating after group buttsex with a camera poking into your scrotum and a drag-queen director squawking out orders through the foreplay: "Look up into his eyes. Fabulous! Now pass it over to Paris without anyone touching it. I don't want to see any hands. Dylan! Dylan! Ease up on the angle. Oh -- that's kind of hot! But let's try it again the other way. Try not to fumble the hand-off, Paris."

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So many wistful memories, all rushing back at once. I reached out for Surly's limp handshake -- Just try to forget the camera's there. Just try to forget the camera's there. That's what everyone advised me on that first scary shoot -- and then kind of chuckled to themselves for suggesting something so preposterous. That was my favorite studio. Everyone was so thoughtful and gracious on that set.

My agent had filled my head with all these horror stories -- "You better be ready to get it up on demand! They don't fuck around out in L.A., baby." But my first director turned out to be a dowdy old creative writing professor from the Midwest who me took me aside before the shoot to ease any apprehensions. "Waiting for wood is perfectly ordinary, and not unexpected," he said. "You mustn't feel any shame when the inevitable occurs. Just try to forget the camera's there."

The irony was, that's where my worst personality traits -- absentmindedness, tunnel-vision and a ludicrous level of detachment from my surroundings -- bailed me out. I may have been the first person in the history of adult cinema who really did forget the camera zooming into the insertion shot.

"OK, I can't believe I'm actually saying this," the director moaned the fifth time I swung a stray appendage right in front of the lens. "But you've got to remain a little aware of the camera."

Holding up my number card for the camera to kick off the "Survivor" interview swept me right back. I knew I had eight seconds of talking to Surly before that camera dissolved back into the shadows.

And sure enough, at the end of the interview, when she asked me to hold up my card again, it took me by complete surprise: Oh yeah, they were filming this. We've been on a soundstage.

The sunny interrogator gushed over my responses, sprinkled in tell-me-more follow-ups, but Surly was clearly in charge. She voiced her questions quite pleasantly, right through the scowl that persisted on her face like a challenge. I never felt a real connection, yet the line of questioning was quite reassuring.

"You sent me a great video," she began. "You've led quite an interesting life." Apparently she didn't mean Kuwait, the Army, five careers or backpacking across four continents. She meant gay porn. The interview focused almost exclusively on my film career, with a brief clarification of my precise sexuality.

It made perfect sense, actually. By the end of the brief interview, they had clearly outlined my persona for the series, and the two story lines charted out for my character. I would play the lascivious gay antagonist to the Bible Belt fundamentalist, with a steamy subplot offering the ultimate challenge to the female castaways: Can the gay guy be turned? Deprive him of dick for six weeks; see how desperate he grows.

They were quite open about all this. "What if you had a really hardcore Bible-thumper on your team?" Surly asked. "What if he really had a problem with it? How would you handle that? What if he were really vocal about it?" Like a moron, I tried to convince them how effectively I could neutralize every confrontation. That insidious need I have to please everybody. Halfway through my explanation, I recalled they were looking for drama. "Of course, if he were really in my face about it, I can get pretty in his face, too," I said. Didn't sound very convincing.

Sunshine said the strangest thing then: "The videos, they were softcore, right?" Softcore? No! Wow, this was better than I expected. If they thought softcore was intriguing, a hardcore case should really blow them away. Shouldn't it?

Next page | They nailed down my sexual history