Porn-NO!

There are times in your life when you cannot possibly say no.

As a teenage girl, my mother oft encouraged me to say no in the event any male not related to me and under the age of 50 came within a 10 foot radius of me. So saying no was ingrained in me at a very early age and stuck around for quite a while. (Until I joined the Columbia record and tape club and it went straight to hell from there.)

You have to know what I mean…the shopping trip at the end of the month with a really good clearance sale and $50 in the bank, crème brulee when you are stuffed to the gils but it’s wheeled out right in front of you, and when former gay porn star asks you out to lunch. I defy anyone to turn down THAT invite!

Now, let me tell you that I had no prior firsthand knowledge of his work, and his porn days were almost a decade behind him during that fateful August afternoon. Nonetheless, I made Bruce’s acquaintance and was subsequently invited to lunch. Bruce was, on first impressions, a very nice person. He grew up on the Kansas Side, moved out west for a while, and had recently moved back to the area.

The day before our lunch date, he contacted me and told me I needed to know something about him, and he gave me a name to search on with instructions to wait until I returned home to search for it, and that it would not be wise for me to attempt this ‘on my work computer.’ The anticipation was way more than my impatient nature would allow, but was eclipsed by my desire for maintaining gainful employment. So I waited.

Breaking the sound barrier to get home, I logged onto my favorite search engine and did a search on Brock Hard. The first thing that popped up was ‘Butt Pirates of Penzance’ starring Brock Hard. Following that was a litany of the worst Gay Porn titles you can possibly imagine. I was absolutely astounded. Why would Bruce, this seemingly intelligent, kind and soft-spoken man have me search for gay porn?

In order to quell the swirling confusion, I called my friend Greg, who for unnecessary-to-mention lifestyle reasons would naturally know about Gay Porn. ‘Dude…have you ever heard of a guy named Brock Hard?’

‘Honey, of course I have. My question is why have you,’ Greg asked me with bewilderment his normally jaded nature would have contained.

I explained that it was a distinct possibility that my lunch date the next day and this master of the gluts (and not in a work-out kinda way) were indeed one in the same. We did the only thing we could think would clear up the mystery: We watched one of the tapes in Greg’s library.

5 minutes and the box cover photos were all I needed. Mainly because ‘Brock’ had a very large, distinctive tattoo on his chest…one that was similar to the description Bruce had given me as well. He had gained some weight in his post-porn years and cut his mullet to a respectable length, but there was no mistaking that I would be lunching with the former Brock Hard in a mere 14 hours.

As freakish as I found this other life of his, it was a date I HAD to go on. I mean..,come ON people…you KNOW you would’ve gone too. I had just had a date with a physics professor a few nights before, and was meeting a real estate developer for drinks over the weekend. Oh, MAN would this be a week for the books!

So I called Bruce and said that lunch was still on. We agreed on time and place…but unfortunately, I didn’t pay much attention to the ensuing conversation, because the only sound in my head was the steady beat of porn music: Bomb chick -a-wow-wow, a chicka wow WOW.

That whole morning, work was so difficult to concentrate on. I realize there are things in my past that I’m not particularly proud of, perhaps capped by that pathetic period 20 years ago where I insisted on wearing FlashDance-inspired ripped sweatshirts with a body that resembled a Stay-Puft Marshmallow (Wo) Man. (While most teenage girls aspire for a pair of great boobs, I longed for a waist.) We all have a few skeletons in our closet that may be held against us in the future, ya know. But the anticipation was still at a fever pitch and I kept an open mind.

Zero hour had come. I arrived at the restaurant, and there was Bruce. Not too shabby, but a far cry from his buff porn days. It appeared as though he had fully embraced the magic of pie since baring it all. He informed me we would need to sit away from people as his hearing aids (that’s right…plural) weren’t working very well and he would need to keep away from distractions to have a conversation.

A former gay porn star with a double hearing impairment. At least I was confident in the knowledge that the ‘Bomb chick -a-wow-wow, a chicka wow WOW,’ that seemed to boom in my head probably wouldn’t be noticed by him, because it felt like a KISS concert was being performed in my skull it was so deafening.

Bomb chick -a-wow-wow, a chicka wow WOW

Bruce started off the conversation with ‘I’m really surprised you had lunch with me. Most women freak out when they know what I’ve done.’ I’m thinking that, if ya kept that little secret to yourself, it wouldn’t be a problem, since I know of no single women who maintain a fresh rotation of gay porn in their video library. Nonetheless, he had shed his blue past and wanted to make sure it didn’t come up later to bite him in the ass. (Much as I believe Gluteus Maximus had in the snippets of ‘Manhandlers IV’ that I had seen at Greg’s the night before.)

He then proceeded to tell me of a particularly troubled teenage hood, and some uncertainty as to sexual preferences combined with a lack of high school diploma, which led him to Gay Porn. For someone who wasn’t particularly proud of his past, he made me feel like Barbara Walters on Oscar night. All I was missing was my own speech impediment and soft lighting.

‘So Bruce, how did you end up working at XYZ Corporation?’ I said in my fervent attempt to disengage him from telling me more than I ever needed to know about the porn industry.

‘A friend of my mom’s who didn’t mind that I was in porn and got me the job.’ I began to wonder if there was a way I could collect $1 for every time he said porn, because it was becoming abundantly clear that he wanted to purge his soul as much as possible on his brief career in the adult film industry.

Bomb chick -a-wow-wow, a chicka wow WOW

Our salads came, which was good, because by this time I was really, really hoping this date would end. I was growing quickly tired of his continual attempts to steer every part of the conversation towards porn.

‘Did you see the Chiefs in pre-season, Bruce?’ ‘Yeah…they wear red jersey’s, don’t they? I wore a red thong in ‘Halloween-ie 5’

‘Are you going to watch the Survivor finale?’ ‘Yeah, probably, since I’m a survivor of the porn industry, I can relate.’

‘Bruce, can you talk about anything other than porn?’ ‘Well, I could, but I was in porn, and I know a lot about porn.’

Aside from the continual attempts to make sure I knew he was being honest about his past, I couldn’t enjoy my salad because they had put the wrong dressing on it. Frankly, the wrong dressing was quickly becoming the hi-light of the meal. Bruce asked why I wasn’t eating my salad, and I just mentioned that I didn’t particularly care for the dressing, but it wasn’t a big deal. The truth was, I wanted to get the Sam Hill outta Dodge before I found out about the between-take shenanigans of the porn industry., which I was perilously close to being the passenger to in this train-wreck of a conversation.

The remainder of the hour can best be summed up by the following: Ya know, they feed us on porn sets. I invested my porn money wisely. Porn, porn, porn, and more porn.

The waiter came by and asked how everything was. I was so grateful to have a sentence uttered NOT containing the word ‘porn,‘ I think I appeared overeager in my simple response ‘Yes, fine.’ I know I must have had the pleading eyes of a baby robin as it looks to the mother for a bit of nourishing worm as a waiter only known as Tom gave me the one bit of viable verbal sustenance I received in that excruciating hour. Looking back, listening to Bruce drone on and on made me long for the sweet comfort of a dentist’s chair and a mouth full of sharp metal instruments: far less painful and often accompanied by drugs.

I can’t decide if it was my small little white lie about the quality of the salad or just my final attempt to utter a sentence not conducive to talk of porn, but Bruce grew decidedly agitated after my Lie of the Salad.

Already firm in the knowledge that there would be no second date with Bruce, I prepared my standard ‘Thanks for lunch, I appreciated meeting you and wish you luck in finding someone special,’ exit line, when Bruce beat me to the punch: ‘You know, honesty is too important for me, and I just really can’t get myself involved with someone who would willingly lie like that.’

I know I made that ‘Dog-hearing-a-high-pitched-noise’ face we all do when confronted with just butt-stupid statements. ‘Excuse me?’

He launched into a rather heated tirade about the merits of honesty and seeing me lie so blatantly about my salad made him wonder what else I would be willing to lie about. I’m standing there increasingly dumbfounded that Bruce was giving me the what for about honesty and forthrightness. Yeah, well, buddy, I can guaran-dam-tee you no one can ever find me performing sex acts banned in 40 states on VHS, ya freaky Ass Clown!

I was fuming on my way back to the office. Who in the HELL was this wisenheimer to tell ME I was of lower caliber than he was? Dammit, I give to charity! I always buy candy from those people on the traffic islands who are trying to stay off drugs! Don’t even get me STARTED on all the shitty looking bridesmaids dresses I’ve worn in my lifetime as I’ve watched my dearest friends ride off into the sunset of marital bliss: I’m a veritable Milk Maid of freakin Human Kindness!

Although he was right, I hadn’t been honest, even if he was fairly anal in his pursuit of an honest partner. (Oh, please: I’m not allowed to use one rear-ended pun in this story?) It dawned on me what his point really was: He needed an opportunity to reject me before I could reject him. He was obviously very used to it by those not genetically predestined to sport a penis, and his defensive measures were already primed for what he was sure was inevitable rejection.

It got me to thinking about the defenses I have used in my attempts to stave off the same. In the pursuit of coupledom, you learn rather quickly that not everyone you cross paths with is the yin to your yang, the sun to your moon, the porn to your -ography. The worst part is, there are more times than you care to admit that you want that more than the other person probably does. Rejection hurts most when it’s found in pursuit of someone you just want to eventually love.

But then, once in a while, you don’t get rejected. Someone learns about your past and present flaws, and still aches to learn more. You’re defenses come down, and all the risks pay off when you find that you’ve fallen in love. And that relationship, whether it lasts a lifetime or sometime decidedly shorter, makes every rejection you’ve ever experienced seem as insignificant as bad dressing on an otherwise good salad. Because the risks paid off in the emotional gamble you took and you found acceptance for who you are, who you were, and who you will be.

Rejection is what you have to acknowledge as part of the process of finding a partner. You can accept it like an unappetizing salad, or deflect it like a ‘money shot’ gone astray. How you choose to handle romantic rebuff just gets incorporated into your eventual self that someone will find devastatingly irresistible.

I never saw Bruce again…in real or in celluloid. I have never in my life cherished such swift rebuke of my charms.

Honestly.