Craigslist Porn Star

The night I spent with a craigslist porn star

I don’t want to get a real job. I can't go on as a 9-5 wage slave any more.

Browsing through the craigslist “gigs” section and I see a fun listing: xxx cameraman needed for amateur shoot. no experience necessary. $80 an hour. email for more details.

Great, I’ve always wanted to sit in the Cuck Chair. Just kidding. But this does sound like easy money. And potentially interesting. I’m no prude, I can stand there and hold the camera just fine. I’m terribly bored of life anyways.

I send an email describing myself as an enthusiastic applicant with an open mind. I hope he doesn’t take this to mean: fuck me in the ass. My mind is not that open.

Anyways. I send the email and forget about it. These ads probably get a ton of responses.

He gets back to me the next day. He asks me to text him a picture. That’s not good. This is feeling gay. Maybe he just needs me to be white. Ah, what the heck.

I text him a picture. Immediate response. He says can you start tonight.

I don’t know... It’s 8 PM on a Tuesday, I’m in the bookstore wasting away on social media, I’m a little high… “sure” I respond. Why not. I haven’t been shaken in a while.

“10:30” he responds. Already I’m doubting this. My girlfriend will be suspicious if I’m out so late. She’ll say she’s scared but really she’ll think I’m cheating. Really I’m just filming some strangers fucking. Which is probably worse.

Should I go? I tell him yes. 9:45 comes. Decision time. I’m walking to my car. Fuck it. I like money. What’s the worst that could happen. I’m really hoping it’s just some mild white guy in his 40s who wants a human-shot video of himself banging his girlfriend so he can look back on it one day when she’s no longer so young and beautiful.

Please don’t be gay. Don’t be gay. Please don’t be two huge bearish gays clamoring for a new hole. This is what I’m thinking as I speed down the highway feeling increasingly affected by the marijuana and fear.

---

I get there. He texts “Yo…”

Fuck — it’s going to be a huge black guy. I’m not racist but still. He says let’s push it back to 10:45. I say okay… I’m outside his place, on time.

25 minutes later, no response. So I just sit there in Oakland, street-parked in some decent neighborhood, nervously scrolling through social media, about to turn around and drive home, until he texts:

“Ok, you can come in
Sorry it’s a mess— I’m about to move”

Okay, whatever man, I don’t care. I don’t judge.

It’s cold outside. Let me in. I worry I’m about to be raped and killed. Just a little bit. I write a note to my future self, recording this thought.

Door’s open. Dingy sad apartment that reminds me of Los Angeles. Looks like a drug addict of some kind lives here. I don’t inspect the place too closely. He calls me from upstairs: “Hey man,”

Hey… I make my way up the creaky stairs and say hello.

Fuck, he really is a huge black man. And he’s all alone. Externally I'm keeping my shit together but inside: I’m about to get raped.

He’s huge. He’s fit. He’s sitting alone on a shallow gray sofa that reminds me of college, in front of a big TV screen playing painfully generic porn. The kind of human-on-human fucking porn that idiots watch.

This is what I signed up for, I guess. For some reason I thought it would be a couple. I thought it might be a normal straight heterosexual couple who just wants somebody to film something they think is beautiful but they can’t ask anyone they know because it’s too weird. Nope, it’s just one huge gay shirtless black man.

Despite all this I smile. Because that’s how I deal with people. I look him in the eyes with curiosity and patience and give him the benefit of the doubt and I smile and I ask him: so what do you want me to do.

I get to know him a little bit, he’s a grown adult, maybe in his mid 30s, he knows how to get to know somebody. He keeps stroking his hair, which he doesn’t have much of— it’s kind of a Mr. T Afro, down the middle of his skull. He keeps stroking it like he’s tweaking on meth but from the tone of his voice I can detect some humanity, so I’m thinking maybe I’m okay. He might not rape me after all.

---

He introduces me to this thing he does; jerking off in front of a camera for money, which apparently people pay him for. He says he pays the bills this way and strangely I believe him. He’s got a huge semi-hard penis poking through his briefs. I notice but do not comment. Suddenly it dawns on me that I’m more comfortable in this room than he is. He’s the subject, not me. He's the one with his cock out. It’s unclear who is the alpha male in this situation.

I don’t dislike him. I find him a little sad but I can work with anyone. He says there are old ladies online who pay good money for videos of him stroking his penis. Interesting. He says there are gay guys too, but he doesn’t communicate much with them. Besides just giving an honest genuine “thank you” when they compliment him on his stuff.

He often live streams himself sitting around stroking and that’s his main source of income. Kind of similar to what I do as a writer. Some days are more lucrative than others. I get it. I can see all this being real. I’m feeling a bit less afraid and more hopeful, even intrigued.

He mentions he has a friend who “just got out of jail” who may be coming by tonight. Oh boy, sounds like a party. I can handle anyone. He says it’s hard to trust guys who say they just wanna be your friend, they always turn out gay. Yeah, well, maybe that’s because you’re a professional male pornstar. And what straight guy is trying to be friends with a guy who is that. I don’t say this, I don’t even think it, until I’m reflecting on it now.

Maybe 20 minutes into our conversation, which is starting to feel like a very special episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, he feels comfortable enough to get to work. He gives me his second phone and strips down naked. He dons a black fedora and dark shades and he says ok you can start recording now. And you can keep talking if you want, I always mute the audio and play music over it, that’s what they like.

I say okay. Fully aware that he may be lying about this, that he may keep the audio and post it on some weird forum where they get off on inviting straight twinks to their house for unlikely nights like these which I’m sure have happened before, in some way, in some other corner of the world, I acknowledge maybe that’s what’s happening here and delve into an honest conversation with him on-record anyway.

---

Our main point of connection: Females. He actually refers to them as Females. I love it.

“When a Female is going down on you, you gotta make sure she knows what's up. She has a lot more control over her mouth than her pussy, so she can create some really incredible sensations if she knows what she’s doing. I just stand there in a trance, I give her complete control, and she loves it. She’ll go for hours and get upset if I make her stop.”

He says this less elegantly than I type it, but this is what he means. Again I sort of believe him. He’s a decent looking, physically imposing, sex-addicted porn star with a huge cock. He may be an authority on the subject.

He actually reveals his origin story: “When I was 17, this white lady in her 40s picked me up from my mom’s house and sucked my dick and showed me everything."

I’m listening with morbid curiosity.

"We met on the internet, I was a horny motherfucker, she taught me how to please a woman.”

I’m like wow, man. I don’t know what to say. The therapist inside wants to ask if he thinks that this experience with this woman sent him down this path. If he regrets it. If he's trying to, like, explain himself to me by divulging this disturbing personal anecdote.

---

He’s playing porn on the big TV and I’m mostly watching the porn. I hope he’s not offended. He asked for a straight guy and that I am. When questioned I actually say that I don’t “believe in gay or straight, I think people make choices, and I make the choice to not have sex with men.” he gets it, I think.

He asks what “kind of bitches” I’m into. Finally for once in my life I can be honest. Asian. My preference is Asian girls. It’s not a fetish— just a preference. I grew up in Taiwan and that’s who lives there. I look at white girls and just see my sisters. I’m over-explaining this, because I’m insecure.

He says Damn, I’ve never been with an Asian chick.

I say Man you’re missing out.

Silently I confirm: Asian girls don’t fuck black guys. They’re even more racist than white people, just more covert.

Anyways, he’s a good host so he puts an Asian girl on the TV. I like her. She looks like Brenda Song from that Disney show. I have been clean of masturbating to porn for about a month now and this is just a little triggering. We kind of enjoy it together. He’s stroking his cock, I’m pointing a camera phone at him while my body faces away at the huge raised screen, playing some porn I would never watch on my own.

I’ve never really been into watching people fucking, I tell him. I don’t like how vaginas look, aesthetically. And I don’t want to see a guy in it at all, I say, as I’m here in his apartment, pointing a camera at his cock.

I watch kind of weird stuff where it’s just a solo girl, just the top half of her body actually, just talking to the camera and being seductive or coy. She has to be hot obviously but it’s what she says and how she says it that really gets me. That makes me remember her.

He replies: “Damn.” I’m kind of shitting on his whole art form right now, with this unsolicited gooner monologue. We change the subject.

He asks if I’m comfortable around drugs. He really is a decent host.

I say “I’ve done every drug in the book, except anything you have to inject. You can do whatever you want around me, man.” I mean it. He feels the same way.

At some point it dawns on me that this is the most honest IRL conversation I’ve had with another human being in months. This random drug addict naked muscular black man who I’m filming in his terrible apartment and I are sharing an exceptionally honest moment here tonight. I guess when someone exposes themself to you it makes you feel like you can tell them anything.

He loads some white powder into a pipe and smokes it. You done meth? He asks. I take Adderall every day, I reply. He laughs. I am truly desensitized. I tell him I’ve done too many psychedelic substances to care. To be offended by anything that doesn’t physically hurt me. As long as you don’t kill me, I’m okay.

We said many more things to pass the time until suddenly it was past midnight and my girlfriend was aggressively blowing up my phone. I never stay out this late alone on a week-night without saying anything. It’s a Tuesday. She calls me. I don’t pick up. Mentally I sigh, I’m going to have to deal with this soon.

He starts talking about payment and how this could be a regular thing if you’re willing to come down here and I’m thinking I really might, it’s decent money but what I say is my girlfriend is blowing up my phone right now, I need to go.

He asks for my PayPal, I show him my phone so he can copy the email address, but also so he can see that my girlfriend really is blowing up my phone, and that I’m not just blowing him off.

He PayPals me $80 dollars for the hour and half I spent with him and off I go.

---

I sprint out from his door back to my car. fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. I’m 40 minutes from home, if I drive as fast as I can. I hop in and get on the highway in a dangerous way. She’s got my friends calling me, like that would make a difference. I don’t pick up for anyone, I check to make sure my read receipts are off, and thank god, they are.

Okay here’s my story. My phone was in my bag. For hours. I do this so I can write without distraction. I was at Pegasus, yes, the bar, the only place that’s open late enough for me to do this for several hours at a time. And they don’t ask you to buy anything. So you can just sit there at the bar and type and type and I got so into it I lost track of time and I forgot where I was.

I’m driving 90 miles an hour on the highway back from Oakland to San Jose on a Tuesday night praying to god I don’t fly by a cop cause I don’t have insurance and I’m plotting this story and the girl’s still calling and I’m doing some breathing exercises reminding myself that it’s all going to be okay. I’m not going to get much sleep tonight but it’s okay. I’ve got a story, I was at the bar writing, it all makes sense, except for one thing.

One thing: I’m in my car. She may see my car pulling into the parking lot outside. She will ask why did you drive to Pegasus, it’s right across the street. I won’t have an answer. There are no other bars open this late, in this area, I have no other story. I make up a shitty one just in case she asks. I’ll say I was running errands. Or I fell asleep in my car. Or my phone died. I don’t know.

Probably she won’t see the car pull in, probably she’s not staring out the window insanely, like a cat. Probably.

1:05 AM. I walk into Pegasus, the excessively gay bar. They’re still open. I sit down alone at a booth, no one’s there, I call my girlfriend. Oh my god I’m so sorry my phone was off. I’m alive, I’m fine, I’m in Pegasus.

Music screams over the speakers, proving that I really am at Pegasus. She sounds incredulous, I think, I can barely hear her.

I say “I’m sorry” but try not to sound sorry, like I don’t really mean it, like I’m not really guilty of anything. I try to act like, over the phone, like I really did just turn my phone off and throw it in my bag for two hours at 1 AM on a week night and that I wasn’t out cheating with some other girl, which is what she must think I must be doing right now.

I say I’m fine, I’ll be home in a few minutes, you should go to bed. We hang up. I drive from the bar to the apartment complex, 40 seconds away. I pray she doesn’t see me pulling in. I’m praying she doesn’t ask “Did you drive?” and we spend the next several hours in a high-stakes interrogation.  

I head up the elevator with a mind of steel. Nothing happened tonight. I got some writing done. Writing is always my excuse.

I enter the apartment. Thankfully she’s just laying in bed. Oh thank god, the window curtains are shut. She didn’t see me drive in. Won’t have to deal with that.

I tell her I’m sorry, I was typing at Pegasus. I look her in the eyes and kiss her on the face. She pretty much believes me. I touch her some more and she believes me some more. Everything is okay. I didn’t die. I’ll be more mindful next time about shutting my phone off when you don’t know where I am.

I delete that guy’s number from my phone. If I want it again I’ll find it. I’m exhausted but can’t sleep. Thinking about that Asian girl he put on the screen earlier. I take it out on my girlfriend, who always wants sex. We have sex. It’s 6/10. Good night.