I stopped, mid-puff. My mouth hung open, and the lighter loosened from my grip, threatening to fall. A chill flashed through my body. Every hair stood on end.

Of course, I thought. My god, it was all right there in front of me.

Thousands of adult movies were produced each year. The majority of them were thoughtless garbage. And yet, they sold. They sold like crazy.

I could do that, I thought, wildly. I could do that . . . but better.

It was so beautiful – so incredibly simple – that I wanted to smack myself for not thinking of this sooner. I had no pretensions about becoming a “fine” artist. I sucked at drawing, painting, and sculpture – not to mention graphic design, photography, and acting – and I knew it. But in truth, I didn’t want to be part of the contemporary arts world at all. It felt phony and unreal to me, a playground for rich kids who were better at talking about art than they were at making it. Porn, on the other hand – that was relevant. People didn’t wax poetic about porn; they used it. And yes, maybe they often regretted doing so: maybe porn was junk food, a quick fix that left you somehow unfulfilled. But it didn’t have to be that way.

All you needed was a little ingenuity! If you were going to make an adult video, you had to include a little nudity, a little intercourse, and a few bodily fluids. That’s all. Once you took care of those totally basic requirements, the field was wide open. I mean, if you wanted to, you could make a serious courtroom drama, as long as the last ten minutes featured a dildo fuckathon between the DA and the defendant. If you did that, you were set; if you did that, you had just made a porno. And people were naturally curious about pornos. They would want to watch.

People would watch. The words rang in my head as I sat there on the porch, the sun now beginning to rise and swell in the sky. An audience! If I made a porno, I wouldn’t have to beg my friends to watch it – they’d be begging me. And strangers would pay me. I could sell my tapes on eBay. They had a Mature Audiences section, tucked away at the very bottom corner of their Category page. I’d peeked there before. Amateur porno tapes, VHS dubs with hand-printed labels, were doing serious dollars.

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