Porn from Warhol to X-Tube: The History of Gay Porn With Lots of Images and Fascinating Facts

A history of gay porn! A coffee table book! A coffee table book that offers both history and lots and lots of photos of porn stars, magazine layouts, vintage ads and even "ancillary products" (like dildos)!

Wow! History was never this much fun in school. Actually, these days, maybe it is. According to author Kevin Clarke, porn is regularly taught these days and is a legitimate subject for scholars. Sometimes, I just think I was born too early.

The author provides a comprehensive tour of everyone's favorite medium. He quotes approvingly more than once the lyrics from Broadway's Avenue Q song, "The Internet Is for Porn": "Grab your dick and double click."

Actually, the song is doubly ironic here, because this book is not only a valuable resource but a tribute to a near-art form that is in danger of becoming extinct. There is a melancholic tone, with nearly every contemporary personality in the industry noting --�or, more accurately, complaining --�that the immediate and often free access to computer porn has made making films nearly impossible.

Clarke intersperses his history with interviews of survivors of porn's golden years as well as a few contemporary players, notably Chi Chi Larue and Mr. Pam. The former is notable as a drag queen who is one of the top directors today; the latter, Michael Lucas' videographer, is the only woman filming gay porn. (She sounds like a lot of fun and really knows the subject, but I was surprised there was no other mention of Lucas in the book.)

As with any rich text, I found myself as a reader in a conversation. I disagree, for instance, with the author's contention that the increasingly buff porn stars influenced gay men to work out. It's a chicken-and-egg argument, but I see it as the audience becoming so buff the bar is continually getting higher for porn actors.

I also disagree with the German director who contrasts the "real" actors there with the "artificial" American and Eastern European actors. I don't believe most people want to see "real men" in porn anymore than we want mainstream Hollywood stars to be real people: Porn is fantasy --�a point that comes across especially hard in the ongoing debate about barebacking.

The German interview is the one concession to the book's German publisher. The text is in English with German alongside.

In the Beginning

What ends up as a sad, nostalgic, elegiac reflection of porn begins with optimism in the face of societal and especially governmental suppression.

The first pornographers had to battle the U.S. Postal Service, the FBI and local police. Despite that, porn flourished for the same reason why it has been around since at least the Greeks: People want it.

Clarke doesn't go into the history before the early '60s much, although there's a delightful naughty ancient German postcard of a man about to poke another guy.

The first modern gay pornographer worked out of Times Square in the '50s. But it was Bruce Mixner, whose Athletic Model Guild in L.A. who really got the ball(s) rolling.

That said, the man who first brought gay porn into the mainstream is Andy Warhol, the protean genius who was pretty much responsible for every underground art movement in the latter half of the 20th century.

Although Warhol's films seem pretty tame now (and boring; try sitting through My Hustler or Blow Job), they were highly controversial in the early and mid-'60s. Warhol, of course, was a living middle finger at the heart of America's hypocritical prudery. He courted controversy the way evangelist preachers wrangle hustlers.

The ’60s

If you remember the '60s, you probably weren't there, as they say. Drugs, free love, anti-war protests were all part of the freedom movement that encouraged men to start expressing their inner 'hos on film.

The big impetus for gay porn before Stonewall, however, was Scandinavia and the Netherlands, which decriminalized homosexual acts in the early 19th century. Denmark and Sweden became the world centers for porn, including a burgeoning gay scene.

it didn't take long for Americans' entrepreneurial spirit to gaze at the money flowing into Northern Europe. Soon enough, magazines and 8mm films began cropping up. Even though "adult" theaters sprang up in New York, it was San Francisco where they really took off, with dozens by the end of the decade.

Still, most of the films were done in crummy-looking settings like San Fernando rec rooms, with street hustlers and ex-cons slumming for a few bucks. That was all about to change.

The ’70s: The Golden Age of Promiscuity

Clarke quotes approvingly author Brad Gooch's moniker for the neutron-bomb of sexual release in the years following Stonewall. The '70s were the formative years for porn, beginning with the seminal (!) film, Wakefield Poole's Boys in the Sand. Reviewed in publications like Variety, advertised in the New York Times, this Fire Island fantasia became a topic of conversation, and straight couples were sitting through explicit gay sex scenes so they wouldn't seem out of it at the next cocktail party.

Boys in the Sand is also notable because of its dreamy quality. There's plenty of sex, but it's done in an arty way in an ultra-glamorous beach resort. Its production values (despite being filmed on a shoestring) continue to influence directors today, especially at studios like Colt, where gorgeous, ethereally muscled demigods make out amidst Palm Springs lush pool gardens.

There was another, contrasting element to gay porn that began at the same time, this one centered on all-out, no-limits sex in nasty, ultra-masculine locations like garages, locker rooms, military barracks and jail cells. The biggest star of these flesh fests was Al Parker, who helped popularize the clone look: lean muscles, facial hair, tight jeans, boots.

Other performers emerged during this era as stars as well, such as buffed blond Casey Donovan and blond he-man Jack Wrangler. Magazines like Honcho and Blue Boy put these alternate stars in an alternate universe of fandom.

Unfortunately, in the next decade the world of gay sex turned upside down. Ironically, it also marked the high point for gay porn.

The ’80s: The Boom Years

If AIDS was catastrophic to gay men in general and porn performers in particular (few '70s actors survived the disease), it also ironically marked the most profitable years.

In his play about the early years of the epidemic, The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer has a female doctor enjoin men to rent porn and jack off rather than infect each other. It was advice taken by millions of men, as the VCR quickly supplanted theaters, and porn became as convenient as the local video rental store or adult bookstore.

As video supplanted film, so did a new breed of actor supplant the first wave. The biggest star of the decade embodies what happened to porn. Jeff Stryker was beautiful, had a chiseled-muscle physique --�and he didn't bottom or go down on anyone.

Stryker began the exodus of the best-looking adult male performers from straight porn, where they were always also-rans to the female stars, to gay porn, where their pay increased exponentially. They could supplement their income with lucrative personal appearances at bars and, if they were willing, ultra-personal appearances before an audience of one (very wealthy) man.

Not all stars were gay-for-pay, of course. But it started a trend that continues today, especially in Eastern Europe and Brazil, where men who take extra care of their bodies are making money far beyond anything they'd get in regular jobs.

With the money rolling in from video sales, porn studios like Colt, Falcon, Mustang and All Worlds spent lavishly on sets, costumes and exotic location shooting. Gay porn became epic in scale, often with elaborate plots, the reasoning being that anyone could fast-forward to the sex.

The ’90s & ’00s: The Beginning of the End?

Video killed the radio stars, but the Internet is killing the porn stars. Gay porn was riding high in the '80s -- so high that maybe it was gunning for a fall.

That fall came with the widespread use of the World Wide Web. How a communications device invented for the U.S. Defense Department crept up on music, print media and now movies is a story well told. Its effect on gay porn is still unfolding, but, according to everyone interviewed for this book, it's not good.

Why, they all ask, should men pay for porn when they can download guys --�most average, a few above average and a very few gorgeous -- doing it for free on sites like Xtube? The Internet has fulfilled the promise of the daddy of gay porn, Andy Warhol himself, who promised everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Andy probably didn't realize it would be for playing with their dicks, but the dictum still holds.

It should also be noted that something as revolutionary to porn as the videocassette came around in 1998. Pfizer's diamond-shaped purple pill, the magical Viagra, enabled anyone to become a "performer."

As porn has become universally available, gay porn stars have become more and more known to the general public. Francois Sagan is a major personality in his native France, and one of Pierre et Gilles' most famous works is a fantasia of Jeff Stryker. Luca DiCorso was a Chi Chi Larue star whom Tom Ford made the face of his ad campaign for his sunglasses line.

The mainstreaming of gay porn and its widespread dissemination on the Internet shows where we've come from the days when it was only available in plain brown envelopes or behind the counter in magazine shops. Where we're going remains to be seen.