‘Surviving’ porn

Frankie Valenti (formerly known as pornstar Johnny Hazzard) recently wrote a piece on The Huffington Post about “surviving” porn. To be honest, I’ve never been entirely sure if “surviving” is the correct term, unless you happened to film all your stuff at Camp Crystal Lake, but now I’m just nitpicking. I highly recommend reading his work in its entirety, because Valenti’s take on his previous career is both candid and insightful, with just a touch of self-deprecating humour thrown in.

Unlike the recent spate of “surviving porn” articles churned out by every gay blog for the sake of page views, Valenti has experience to back him up, and he doesn’t try to offer any easy outs or oversimplified explanations. But even he admits that results may vary. For every guy who goes into porn with a good attitude and a lack of ego, there’s someone else who’s doing it for all the wrong reasons.

If we can encourage guys to have safer sex, can we start encouraging guys to practise safer porn? There are a lot of guys going into porn who wouldn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground — which, in porn, is pretty essential — and are operating under some pretty major misconceptions. Most people tend to think that porn still works the way it did 10 years ago, but the playing field has changed since then.

I know tons of people who’ve gone into porn thinking that they’d somehow turn that into global superstardom and overnight wealth. The truth is that, well, it’s still kind of a long shot. Don’t get me wrong: if you put your head down and treat others with courtesy and professionalism? You’ll do well. But I know plenty of porn models who think that they’ve earned the pornstar title just by showing up.

Good luck with that.

Unfortunately, plenty of guys get so blinded by this goal that they go off the rails. It’s bad enough that kids these days are already pretty friggin’ entitled as it is, but here’s the thing: you’re entitled to jackshit. You want to be a decent porn model? Keep yourself fit and healthy and carry yourself with professionalism. If you want to achieve the whole stardom thing, you’re going to need a lot of talent and even more luck. Learn how to act or sing or write. Develop your talents and make yourself the kind of person that you respect and admire, but don’t expect to show up with the minimal requirements and become a household name.

The honest to god truth about porn is that the work is a lot of fun. It takes a fair bit of talent to make sex look good on camera, but all in all, it’s still about as stressful as being a professional puppy-sitter or a cotton-candy taste tester. That being said, be smart about it. Understand what you’re getting yourself into and what you can get out of it.