The Industry : Exotic Magazine Online : March 2002

I am not a consumer of pornography. I've never bought a porn

magazine, and except when I'm reviewing them, I never watch porn movies. I've never paid for sex. On the few occasions when I find myself in strip clubs, I'm unable to ogle the girls--it all seems so artificial and silly. If I ain't gonna get the pussy that night, I don't want to stand around looking at the pussy. I believe that the sex industry, despite what the activists would have you believe, is far more degrading to men than to women. It is far more damaging to the human soul to shell out cash in exchange for physical intimacy than it is to receive cash for it.

I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that I've been masturbating a lot lately, and my mental imagery never involves the airbrushed porn confections you find in Exotic's pages; it's always some broad I've either nailed in the past or have a likely chance of nailing now...the scenarios are realistic, raw, and human. Bodies are never as important as psychological situations, and her tits are never as important as the way her hair smells.

Sometimes, I just don't know about you guys and your porno.

EXOTIC EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
He started life as a small, greasy peasant child somewhere in the Italian Alps, and through a series of machinations, some of them questionably legal, he was able to climb his way to the top of P-Town's porn industry and become entrenched as Exotic's ruthless, much-feared general manager. I speak of Bryan "Don't Call Me 'Rico'" Bybee, who, along with Bobby Baldwin, has the most alliterative name in all the Exotic family. Bryan Bybee. Bryan Bybee brought his bouncin' black baby a burnt biscuit in a big brown box.

The most fascinating component of Bybee's psychology, judging by his modes of dress and vocal inflections, is his apparent conviction that he is a black American male. This is especially pronounced when an actual black American wanders into the office. Bybee, whose speech might be somewhat comprehensible ordinarily, is suddenly all hizzit in the shiznay and bang-bang boogie said up-jump da boogie to the rhythm of the boogie-da-beat. It's quite a startling transformation. He greases his hair with something called African Pride, a typically gooey, coconutty, tree-bark-spackled urban hair-care product. His CD collection is composed almost entirely of urban mating songs and tropical canary music. He's always "dissing," as they say in the "hood," everything white--white people, white skin, and everything else non-Negroidal, seemingly unaware of his own obviously Caucasoid ancestry.

And just like the stereotype of his would-be African brethren, Bybee has recently taken to acting all uppity. Whereas we once had come to know (and mildly care for) a genial and cooperative (though still-greasy) general manager, we have lately been confronted with a power-hungry, porno-peddling, two-legged shark who has lost all semblance of his former humanity. Whereas he'd once tolerate rampant drug abuse, chronic absences, refusal to fulfill one's duties, spendthrift behavior, and defiant displays of verbal and physical aggression among the Exotic staff, Bybee has switched to more oppressive managerial tactics in a self-aggrandizing effort to whip our motley crew into obedient, efficient servility. Whereas our staff once enjoyed lavish restaurant meals and an open drink tab during our weekly Monday-afternoon meetings, we now--if we're lucky--face two lukewarm pizzas and maybe a cold beverage. This is simply intolerable, and if conditions continue, it won't be too long before the staff explodes. For now, Bybee has earned an unsavory nickname among the underlings he seeks to squash--to us, he is The Man Who Took Our Meals Away.

EXOTIC EX-EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH

After a celebrated stint of something like thirty years writing for Exotic, Darklady, the world-renowned, internationally published, Queen of the Sex-Positive Literary Netherworld has been given her walking papers by yours truly. I'd say a recent contributor summarized my decision with the statement that "the two of you don't seem like you should exist in the same universe, much less the same publication."

Having heard horror stories that the girl had an ego to match her girth, I initially dreaded giving her the axe. At first she responded to the news with a terse e-mail inquiring what had brought me to such a "monumental decision," and for a moment I thought she was being sarcastic...but then, mulling over whatever thought processes are laid bare in her writing, I realized that she might actually consider her dismissal from Exotic to be an event of monumental importance, not just for her and her alleged legions of sex-positive naked mole rats, but for perhaps Western Civilization itself. I wrote back stating that it was a matter of simple aesthetics, and when you're trying to form a punk-rock band that plays well together, a classical musician is out of place. I was trying to be diplomatic. She fired back a hostile, I-was-never-asked-to-the-Prom-flavored, well-I-guess-you're-just-too-cool-for-your-britches-Mr.-Goad e-mailing. Although the anticipated flood of outraged letters from irate Darklady fans (read: friends) never came, there's always next month.

We hope that Darklady continues writing about her life, her loves, her self...um, her self, and whatever else it is she writes about.

EXOTIC ALLEGED MULLETHEAD OF THE MONTH
Frank Flatch is a cool cucumber indeed, a man who keeps his head screwed-on straight even when it's swirling amid the scabby dysfunction of our totally mental industry, but his feathers were recently visibly ruffled at the allegation that he sports the oft-maligned-among-hipsters "mullet" hairdo. I've never seen him quite so upset. I've seen him handle death threats better than this new accusation of mulletheadedness.

But the accusation is hardly new. "Frank's such a hip, good-looking guy," I've heard one chick after the next say, "so why the FUCK does he have to wear a mullet?" In the days which passed after being initially confronted with the accusation, Flatch wove an elaborate defense for himself, citing a mullet-themed website's "10/90" standard, meaning that an ideal mullet should have about ten percent of the hair in the front and ninety percent in the back. Flatch passionately argued that his front-to-back ratio was nowhere close to 10/90. Strangely, his hair also began getting shorter and shorter in the back before we were able to bring in an expert hairdresser to determine his exact front-to-back ratio. Flatch argued that his hairdo was not a mullet at all, but rather a bob. "It's a bob," he'd say over and over. "It's a bob." If you see Frank, and you don't think he has a mullet, it would mean a lot to me if you went up to him and consoled him.

WHILE SURFING FOR LESBIANS

on the Internet at around 3AM alone in the Exotic office, I came across the thoroughly unsettling photo you see at right. The dark-haired lesbian, the one licking the floppy-and-tattooed-breasted other lesbian from behind, bears an undeniable resemblance to gravel-voiced, puglike Dante's soundman Stevie. The resemblance is so striking that many are whispering that "Stevie" is actually a lesbian performance artist who masks her gender identity in order to sidestep sexism in the local sound industry.

SPEAKING OF LESBIANS,
it appears that several Portland-area Daughters of Sappho were outraged by last month's "What's With All the Lesbians?" feature. One woman identifying herself as a sex-industry worker left a vituperative voicemail message at the Exotic office stating that the article was "fucked-up, dude," that we needed to fire the editor, that half of Portland's strippers are bisexual, and that she wasn't going to buy [?!?!] the magazine anymore. And the funny thing is, she didn't really sound like a subliterate walking garbage bag who's snorted so much crank over the years that it rotted her teeth out straight from the roots, slurring her speech but making her blow jobs that much better. Another woman identifying herself as bisexual e-mailed Exotic with a stern "I had no idea that lesbian-bashing was the in thing to do at your so-called publication....What does it say about your publication when you allow Mr. Shrimpstien [sic] to write anti-lesbian statements such as this, encouraging straight men everywhere to make lesbians feel ashamed of themselves and to get down on their knees in front of him with their mouths open, as he put it. After reading this article, my husband (who is supportive of my bisexuality) and I will not be buying [?!?!?!] your publication anymore." At least one advertiser, allegedly a lesbian-owned store, dropped us. And over at dyke paradise The Egyptian Room, word is that the gals were none too happy. [I would love to do a spoken-word thing over there.] A representative for the Egyptian stated that the article would encourage people to bash lesbians and commit hate crimes against them, but this is untrue. That topic will be addressed in our upcoming article, "I Think It'd Be Really Cool if We Bashed Lesbians and Committed Lots of Hate Crimes Against Them." *