Vanilla Slim: An Improbable Pimp in the Empire of Lust By Bob Armstrong
Word spreads quickly among Armstrong's co-inmates: "You a pimp? This is not real! A white pimp. An old white pimp. How ya do that?" Armstrong (b. 1942), a "low-end journalist" (he reviewed porn DVDs for Exotic and freelanced for the San Francisco Chronicle) who had run Zen Escort Service for only eight months before getting busted, was nicknamed Vanilla Slim (a reference to the legendary black pimp Iceberg Slim). Actually, entrance to Pimpworld was absurdly easy: Armstrong ran a classified ad for "escorts" in SF Weekly, auditioned about 50 girls, chose six or so, charged johns $500 an hour and kept $150. The work was easy; the toughest part was getting a girl to her client on time; thereafter he'd loiter in a hotel lobby reading the New Republic and doing occasional lines of speed or cocaine until she reappeared. Aside from character studies of the girls, Armstrong passes along some nuggets: most escorts' capacity for common sense is "zero," lesbians make the best escorts "since there's no conflict of interest" and gay videos are generally more erotic and tasteful than straight ones. Armstrong offers funny, pungent lines interspersed with self-examining digressions, producing a funny read for the Imus crowd.
Bob writes: "Most of the street girls are black." He says escort services rarely employ black girls because there's little demand for them. (pg. 11)
"All escorts have boyfriends except lesbians." (pg. 20)
"All of us who work in the sex industry are cut off from normal existence. We are remote from other people except our fellow pervs." (pg. 33)
From Bob Armstrong, author of Vanilla Slim: An Improbable Pimp in the Empire of Lust:
The flap over Emily Evermoore interests me since I was a pimp. I was not Emily’s pimp, but had she called me when I was running an escort service I’m sure I would have given her a slot in my stable among the pretty ponies. Somebody called “Disgusted Performer,” hereafter, DP (how fitting!), e-mailed Luke with a rant. DP seems to think Emily should be sent to the glue factory. DP is upset that boys over at AVN would consider Emily a legitimate contender for an AVN award on the grounds she told the trade publication “that she is not a porn star, she is a ‘HO,’ and basically says that porn stars are Pre-Madonnas.”
Well, Emily is not the first girl in the biz to take a slap at her sisters. They can slap back if they choose, as DP has done. But DP is off the deep end on the larger point, that Emily is a “dirty street walker” and such behavior is a terrible affront to a fine upstanding industry that celebrates the double penetration. And should Emily be disqualified as a contender for her honesty?
I doubt many in the industry would share DP’s view on filthy harlots, but a lot of people in the porn industry are gun shy about prostitution. This is the line one can’t cross in the sex industry, the line drawn by the law. In fact, I think the line gets crossed every time an adult DVD is produced. Porn films and prostitution both involve the exchange of money for sex.
Wait. The lawyer for a porn company is quick to point out a significant difference. Emily and her wood dude are acting. It’s a performance. Let’s be honest here. Maybe acting has something to do with it, but a porn star is getting paid for having sex in front of the camera. In fact, most of the girls in the industry, other than contract stars, get paid for each individual sex act, and this is calculated on a scale, more money for a gang bang, less for a blow job. That does begin to close the acting curtain.
I’d say the biggest difference between hooking in a hotel and doing the deed on camera for money concerns the client. Porn girls get to know their wood first so they can make it hot on camera. Over time they build up relationships with the wood. And the wood is not really a client—that’s the guy who buys the DVD. The call girl and her meatball are in and out of the hotel room in an hour. (But it is not unusual for a client to find one hooker he likes and spend a bundle on her over time.)
As far as the sex act itself, porn is far more demanding than prostitution. Guys who get it on with prostitutes generally want vanilla sex—a fuck, a blow job, or half-and-half. Most escorts draw the line at anal sex. DP’s dirty streetwalkers might be more inclined if the money is right. Porn is a spectacle of anal sex. I suppose two guys could find an escort for double penetration, but that would be highly unusual. Prostitution is almost always a one-on-one deal in privacy. The gang bang? Escorts or streetwalkers would go for that, pulling in a pile of dollars on the train, but I’d say the chance of this happening is about one in a thousand. Maybe the fraternity will call for a big bash, although some years back a frat house at the University of Washington came under scrutiny when two nervous sheep were discovered in the basement on pledge night. The case never went to court, so we don’t know if the little lambs were working.
Overall, it does seem to me getting paid for sex in a porn film is prostitution. I’m not suggesting all the porn company moguls should be hauled into the dock and charged with pimping and pandering. I’m glad the law makes a clear distinction, but we should be happy the law is silly enough not to recognize the essence of the transaction by Emily the trollop walking the track in Vegas is identical to Emily’s performance in “Gang Bang on the Crap Table.”
12/21/06
Bob Armstrong Interview
He's the author of Vanilla Slim: An Improbable Pimp in the Empire of Lust.
I call him in San Francisco Thursday night.
Bob: "I'm working on a new book. A conventional memoir of drugs and alcohol in the family."
Armstrong was busted for pimping in 2000. "Even while I was doing it, I knew I would get a book out of it. I was reluctant to come out of the pimp closet, so I wrote a novel.
"I told my editor at the San Francisco Chronicle about it. Lynn Meyers said, 'That sounds like an interesting story.' It's the perfect response from an editor. I gave her a story on it and that ran in the Chronicle in December of 2002.
"Novelist Herb Gold saw the story and called my editor and said he really liked it.
"Herb and I got together. He got me an agent. He convinced to write the story as a memoir."
Gold blurbed Bob's book.
"I admit in my book that I'm a loser. I've bounced around all my life. I've had a number of jobs. I haven't been successful in any of them. I've never made a lot of money. I've never married. I'm a drifter. That feeling of failure, of being left behind when all your friends you went to college with, you're not in touch with anymore, but you hear from other people that they are successful. I've written for a lot of newspapers but always as a freelancer. A book is a lot more satisfying.
"I don't have a lot of friends. I've moved so much, I've lost touch with people. I didn't lose any friends from my book. It hasn't changed my life."
Armstrong began writing for Adult publications in 1993 with Portland's Exotic magazine. In 1998, it launched a San Francisco edition that only lasted two years because it could not garner enough advertisers.
"Girls would be coming into the office taking out ads [for escorting]... I put two and two together and decided I could do it.
"It's like the girl who goes to a strip bar and says, 'I don't mind stripping. The one thing I could never do is prostitution.'
"Now, she works a couple of years. It's grueling. She sees how much money the girls make in private booths, much more than lap dances. She decides to supplement her income with some hooking. She might sign up with an escort service.
"I've asked some escorts about stripping and they say, 'I would never do that. I would never take off my clothes and dance in front of a bunch of people.'"
Bob estimates he's slept with about 150 women in his life, paying directly for about 20 of them. "I think that's normal."
Luke: "I'm going to ask you some questions to determine if you are a sex addict.
"One. Were you sexually molested as a child or adolescent?"
Bob: "No. Not at all. My parents were very nice. They were alcoholics."
Luke: "Two. Do you regularly purchase romance novels or sexually explicit magazines?"
Bob: "No."
Luke: "Three. Have you stayed in romantic relationships after they become emotionally or physically abusive?"
Bob: "Yes. That ended in my thirties. I've never been violent with women. I've certainly been psychologically abusive to women as they have been to me."
Luke: "Five. Do you feel that your sexual behaviour is not normal?"
Bob: "Yes. After all, I've never been married. I run from women if they get too close."
Luke: "Six. Does your spouse (or significant other(s)) ever worry or complain about your sexual behavior?"
Bob: "No."
Luke: "Seven. Do you have trouble stopping your sexual behavior when you know it is inappropriate?"
Bob: "No. Except for when I was younger, I pushed too much."
Luke: "Eight. Do you ever feel bad about your sexual behavior?"
Bob: "No."
Luke: "Eleven. Have you ever worried about people finding out about your sexual activities?"
Bob: "No. Only when I was younger and cheating on some girl."
Luke: "Twelve. Has anyone been hurt emotionally because of your sexual behavior?"
Bob: "Only when I was younger and using women sexually and pretending it was more than that."
Luke: "Thirteen. Have you ever participated in sexual activity in exchange for money or gifts?"
Bob: "Yes. In the early eighties, in my early forties, that was the first time I thought about visiting a hooker. Until that time, I'd never had a problem finding a woman I wanted to be with. But the age gap kept getting greater and greater. The pool of younger women who like to be with older guys starts shrinking rapidly."
"I do have byline fever."
"If I had a bad relationship with a chick, my response was not to go out to find somebody to bang the next night. It was more to withdraw for a while, a month or so."
"I fall more into the vanilla sex category. I'm not into anal sex."
Luke: "Seventeen. Do you find yourself having multiple romantic relationships at the same time?"
Bob: "Not anymore."
"I've never understood Lord Master Damien and his deep affection for black clothes and latex and leather."
Luke: "Twenty five. Do you ever think your sexual desire is stronger than you are?"
Bob: "I hope so."
I tabulate Bob's answers and announce, "You're not an addict. You're far less of an addict than I am. You got a two and I got a twelve."
Bob: "From what I read of your stuff, you don't strike me as a sex addict at all."
"I always read complaints that you're trashing people, but you just go out with your tape recorder and tape hours and hours and put them on a website. In some ways, you are truly an old-fashioned journalist. It's just straight objectivity. It's rare that I see your opinions."
I May Be A Sex Addict
I took this test and got a twelve -- midway between addict and non-addict.
More musings on Emily Evermoore’s hootenanny from Bob Armstrong, author of Vanilla Slim: An Improbable Pimp in the Empire of Lust:
Luke e-mailed Emily: "According to this post, AVN's Mike Ramone left a message on your machine asking for some sexual favor?" She did not reply, and when Luke later ran into her at a studio in Chatsworth he didn’t bring up his e-mail, but Emily quickly button-holed him and said, "I am not going to confirm or deny." But she didn’t stop there. "Let me just say that AVN has suddenly decided to do a feature article on me next month and they're putting me in their awards show and they've hooked me up with Wicked, Vivid and Digital Playground.”
Now at this point if I were Emily’s agent/publicist/representative/flack/pimp daddy, the first thing I would do is break into Mike Ramone AKA Lord Master Damien’s dungeon, make sure the “genetically superior being” is pre-occupied with another AVN contender worshipping his editorial throbber, rip off a red rubber ball and a gag to lock down Emily.
Nevermore, Emily Evermoore, nevermore.
But it’s too late for that, the cat is out of the bag. All Emily’s agent can do now is resort to spin control. It’s so refreshing, she’s so candid, just says whatever pops into her head. It’s a heartland thing, a girl from Kansas, all sweet and young and innocent and tasty as apple pie at the hootenanny.
But as Dorothy said when she landed in Oz, ”I don’t think this is Kansas anymore.” (Tip for Wicked, Vivid, or Digital Playground: cast Emily blowing the Tin Man.) We are in Pornlandia now, and given Emily’s not confirming or denying and then seeming to confirm, it looks like AVN’s former editor did go for a quid pro quo blow, or, as Todd Hunter has said of Ramone, this has “his fingerprints all over it.”
I’m the new intruder in this circus, so I’ll give Lord Master Damien the benefit of the doubt and say innocent until proven guilty. Either way I have mixed feelings about trashing AVN on the grounds of a trade out. Isn’t it quite natural that a guy who works for the trade publication that sponsors the awards ceremony would gobble up some of the apple pie? Should we really be appalled by this? Is it wrong? Yes, but one of the delights of both porn and prostitution is that they are wrong to the core. And if Lord Master Damien is guilty, I get a kick out of the fact he expects his clients to be on their knees and assume a proper worshipful attitude before his European fashion designer latexed bod and then, as he put it, ”gag on my Divine member.” This, while he’s groveling for pussy on voice mails.
As Emily told Luke, AVN did do a nice feature article on her, written by Eddie Adams. Emily told Eddie she likes having sex in front of the camera because it “sort of immortalizes part of my soul…I love the attention.” But Eddie’s story didn’t really penetrate Emily’s soul. That was left to Luke.
This is fascinating, because I would assume Emily felt comfortable and at ease with Eddie, while initially Emily was suspect of Luke when she talked to him during one of his endless patrols through Porn Valley while armed with his tape recorder. Wary of Luke, she told him he’d “twist” her story. “You tell the dirt side,” she admonished him, ”you only write what will bring out gossip.”
Luke asked her what crowd she hung out with in high school. Her response was riveting: ”I wasn’t allowed to go to high school, baby. I grew up a ward of the state. I was in orphanages, group homes, residential treatment centers. I didn’t get to be in the public. I was (among) the forgotten children.”
Gossip? No way. That says it all. That is Emily’s story. That is her soul. Now it could be bullshit, but I strongly doubt it, for it confirms what we all know about many of the women who jump in the porn biz: they were among the children tossed by the wayside.
I do think she’s fudging on her education. Not allowed to go to high school? Emily, give us the straight scoop here. Might you have skipped many classes and dropped out? Even wards of the state are required to go to school, and the educational system encourages them to stay there. Luke ended his conversation with this:
Luke: ”Baby, you can drive my car.”
Emily: ”Really? I just wrecked mine.”
It remains to be seen what will become of this wreckage, but one key to success nowadays is networking, and Emily sure knew how to network over at AVN.
Yes, Paul, There Is A Lord Master Damien
Fred writes:
Luke, isn't it a fact that you are Lord Damien, and this is really how you earn your living? You use your hovel as a dungeon to torture and humiliate clients. (I assume that, usually, the humiliation merely results from being at the hovel.) Further, isn't lukeisback.com just a front so people won't know the real Luke? Come on. 'Fess up.
Interestingly, Lord Damien's statements urging men to betray their wives/girlfriends would be good fodder for religious right propaganda concerning what happens to Christian civilization as gays become accepted.
All things considered, Lord Damien is hilarious.
I got this email:
DEAR EDITOR:
I am 48 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Lord Master Damien.
Darren Roberts says, 'If you see it on Lukeisback.com, it's so.'
Please tell me the truth; is there a Lord Master Damien?
PAUL FISHBEIN
9414 Eton Ave, Chatsworth, CA, 91311.
PAUL, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, PAUL, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, PAUL, there is a Lord Master Damien. He exists certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Lord Master Damien! It would be as dreary as if there were no PAULS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Lord Master Damien! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Lord Master Damien, but even if they did not see Lord Master Damien coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Lord Master Damien, but that is no sign that there is no Lord Master Damien. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest man that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, PAUL, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Lord Master Damien! Thank GOD! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Lord Master Damien: 'CHEAT ON YOUR WIFE, SERVICE MY GIANT COCK'
With the departure of Editor Mike Ramone from Adult Video News, I was feeling low Thursday afternoon. In need of some discipline, I put "Lord Master Damien" into Google.
The first two links went to lukeisback. The third read: "Find Bisexual Men for Adult Phone Sex at NiteFlirt"
I clicked on the link for details and found this:
I am evil, wicked, supreme LORD MASTER DAMIEN, the only real-f---ing-deal Master on Keen (not some clown in a t-shirt and sneakers calling himself a 'Master') and you will cheat on your f---ing cunt wife or girlfriend you closet faggot by servicing My huge f---ing cock; you know you can't resist; you're tired of that fat old hag and fantasize about sucking cock all the time; betray her love and trust by worshipping Me; I don't give a f--- about you loser; I only want to use and abuse you for your money and to get off on corrupting you and making you betray everything you hold dear. doesn't that make you tiny little "thing" stand at attention? you know you can't resist My wicked power, pig, so call Me now for My greater glory! I'll laugh at you while you gag on my Divine member and blow My load all over your f---ing face, then send you home to your fat-ass bitch....And if you're ever in L.A., cum see Me for real in My private, killer, fully-eqipped dungeon and I'll force you service Me in the flesh...AND CHECK OUT MY OTHER NASTY RECORDINGS YOU CUNTS: BRAND NEW!!! COCK WORSHIP: FAG FACE f---ING (Men Home Alone >Gay); Cum Worship a REAL Master bitch, not some phony (Find Men>BDSM/Fetish>Submissive Males); Rim My Asshole Bitch (Find Men>BDSM/Fetish>Masters); Greedy Master Will Gag You on My Huge Cock (Find Men>BDSM/Fetish>Masters); I Will Impale Your Ass with My Giant Cock (Find Men>BDSM/Fetish>Leather); Extreme Verbal Abuse: Listen at Your Own Risk Fag (Find Men>Men Home Alone>Gay); Verbal Fag Bashing: I'll Break You Bitch (Find Men>Men Home Alone>Gay) Cum Worship Your Master's Sweaty Feet Slave (Find Men>BDSM/Fetish>Feet/Shoes) OR, IF YOU'RE NOT TOO MUCH OF A PUSSY, CALL ME LIVE; COPY AND PASTE MY HOMEPAGE URL - http://www.keen.com/Lord Master Damien - ONTO YOUR BROWSER TO FIND ALL MY LIVE LISTINGS WIMP. Now hop to it.
Ramone gets five stars from 16 happy customers on the Niteflirt.com website.
Nburrows writes: "Everything in the recording came as advertised...i am embarrassed to have called and i don't know if i'll be able to look at my fiancee the same way now. Very dominant, very controlling...the recording was so intimidating i hung up early, but i am scared, because i think it may have changed me..."
JHC writes: "Wow! ! ! Lord Master Damien is awesome. He really knows how to push my buttons, laughing at me as I betray my wife… cause he knows I want to suck his cock so bad."
It costs only $2:29 a minute to get a recorded call from Ramone which seemed like a bargain to me. So I filled out my credit card information and sat by the phone for Mike.
This is what I heard (.wav file).
Mike Ramone responds:
Sorry to disappoint you Luke, but I've been out of the Lord Master Damien business for a few years now, But even if I wasn't, so what? Porn is all about fantasy - fantasy that more times than not has little to do with reality. Speaking of which, let me take this opportunity to say that I always find it amusing that in the porn industry of all industries, the fact that a male who is into fetish and BDSM is still grounds for attempted ridicule by some of the industry's more conservative elements. I mean, the banking industry might be one thing - but even there, as in all segments of society, there are BDSM adherents - but the porn industry?!? Cut me a break, why don't you? The fetish scene based in downtown L.A. that I was an integral part of several years ago was a sexually highly sophisticated one composed primarily of female tops and male bottoms (but not exclusively - there were some male tops and some female bottoms) and it, well, actually, fetish in general, has had an explosive influence on porn in the last half decade (a little movie from a few years ago named The Fashionistas, for starters, up to and including this year's Fashionistas Safado, The Story of O, Corruption and many others). There's hardly a porn release these days that doesn't have some fetish content, if not a lot. Fetish has always been part of the adult video scene, going back to Femmes De Sade and probably even further. And it always will be. Only now more than ever.
Tara emails: "Congratulations, you've hit an all-time new low even for you! Get that .wav file of Lord Master Damien's off your site, it's theft, because you're not a niteflirt.com affiliate. You are f--king horrible and I hope you get punched in the gut for this soon!"
That Ho Emily Evermoore
From Bob Armstrong, author of Vanilla Slim: An Improbable Pimp in the Empire of Lust:
The flap over Emily Evermoore interests me since I was a pimp. I was not Emily’s pimp, but had she called me when I was running an escort service I’m sure I would have given her a slot in my stable among the pretty ponies. Somebody called “Disgusted Performer,” hereafter, DP (how fitting!), e-mailed Luke with a rant. DP seems to think Emily should be sent to the glue factory. DP is upset that boys over at AVN would consider Emily a legitimate contender for an AVN award on the grounds she told the trade publication “that she is not a porn star, she is a ‘HO,’ and basically says that porn stars are Pre-Madonnas.”
Well, Emily is not the first girl in the biz to take a slap at her sisters. They can slap back if they choose, as DP has done. But DP is off the deep end on the larger point, that Emily is a “dirty street walker” and such behavior is a terrible affront to a fine upstanding industry that celebrates the double penetration. And should Emily be disqualified as a contender for her honesty?
I doubt many in the industry would share DP’s view on filthy harlots, but a lot of people in the porn industry are gun shy about prostitution. This is the line one can’t cross in the sex industry, the line drawn by the law. In fact, I think the line gets crossed every time an adult DVD is produced. Porn films and prostitution both involve the exchange of money for sex.
Wait. The lawyer for a porn company is quick to point out a significant difference. Emily and her wood dude are acting. It’s a performance. Let’s be honest here. Maybe acting has something to do with it, but a porn star is getting paid for having sex in front of the camera. In fact, most of the girls in the industry, other than contract stars, get paid for each individual sex act, and this is calculated on a scale, more money for a gang bang, less for a blow job. That does begin to close the acting curtain.
I’d say the biggest difference between hooking in a hotel and doing the deed on camera for money concerns the client. Porn girls get to know their wood first so they can make it hot on camera. Over time they build up relationships with the wood. And the wood is not really a client—that’s the guy who buys the DVD. The call girl and her meatball are in and out of the hotel room in an hour. (But it is not unusual for a client to find one hooker he likes and spend a bundle on her over time.)
As far as the sex act itself, porn is far more demanding than prostitution. Guys who get it on with prostitutes generally want vanilla sex—a f---, a blow job, or half-and-half. Most escorts draw the line at anal sex. DP’s dirty streetwalkers might be more inclined if the money is right. Porn is a spectacle of anal sex. I suppose two guys could find an escort for double penetration, but that would be highly unusual. Prostitution is almost always a one-on-one deal in privacy. The gang bang? Escorts or streetwalkers would go for that, pulling in a pile of dollars on the train, but I’d say the chance of this happening is about one in a thousand. Maybe the fraternity will call for a big bash, although some years back a frat house at the University of Washington came under scrutiny when two nervous sheep were discovered in the basement on pledge night. The case never went to court, so we don’t know if the little lambs were working.
Overall, it does seem to me getting paid for sex in a porn film is prostitution. I’m not suggesting all the porn company moguls should be hauled into the dock and charged with pimping and pandering. I’m glad the law makes a clear distinction, but we should be happy the law is silly enough not to recognize the essence of the transaction by Emily the trollop walking the track in Vegas is identical to Emily’s performance in “Gang Bang on the Crap Table.”
Mike South replies to Bob Armstrong:
I read your book and your screed about Emily Evermoore. You are a pimp about like porn chicks are prostitutes..both of you are sorry excuses for the title. While I'm not one to pass judgement on your choice of livelihood you are a pitiful excuse for a pimp. A real pimp would laugh at you in the same way that a real prostitute would laugh at a porn girl being accused of turning tricks when she makes a movie. I suggest you read Donald Goines or Robert Beck, call yourself a pimp to one of those guys and they'd have laughed you out of your cell block.
Bob responds:
On your My Space page I noticed you described yourself as a "Gun Totin Libertarian Pornographer." That's cool, but I don't quite understand why you unloaded your shotgun on me. At least you were good enough to read my book before the blast.
You suggest I read Donald Goines or Robert Beck and both would have laughed me out of the cell block for calling myself a pimp. Under the law, I was convicted for being a pimp. Legally, that is what you are whether running an escort service from a house or hanging out on the street. But you have a point, and that is one reason I used the phrase IMPROBABLE PIMP in the sub-title. No doubt Goines and Robert Beck, AKA Iceberg Slim, would view me as a pretender, and I made that quite clear in my book, which includes a quote from Iceberg and a riff on his stature among young blacks. Why would you suggest I read Iceberg Slim when my book makes it clear that I have? What blew my mind in the slammer was the respect I got from black dudes in their twenties who, even if they thought I was a pretender, wanted to know all the details of my crime.
You say: "A real pimp would laugh at you in the same way that a real prostitute would laugh at a porn girl being accused of turning tricks when she makes a movie." Your use of the word "real" implies that Iceberg is a real pimp while a guy running an escort service is...what? A "pitiful excuse for a pimp" and therefore not a pimp? If not a pimp, will a facilitator for performance artists do?
As far as the "real prostitute" is concerned, I do think she would laugh at the porn girl being accused of turning tricks when she makes a movie, not because the hooker thinks the porn girl is doing something different than what she is doing, but because she is doing the same thing. And I made it clear the wood guy is not a trick. It is the exchange of money for sex that defines prostitution. Both of us agree there is a legal distinction here. The difference is, you agree with the distinction and I do not. But as I said, I'm glad there is such a distinction. I do not want porn to fall under the laws of prostitution. On this matter my position is libertarian. Your position is liberal because you agree with a twisted law. But I assume you would advocate both prostitution and porn be legal, as I do. (Well, I do have some reservations. Legal prostitution will drive the price down for pussy.)
1/17/06
Bob Armstrong: Darker Gray’s not in The New York Times
The Times’ piece on December 31, “The Graying of the Naughty,” was a triumph for porn PR. And it was a smooth fit for newspaper demographics, readers over 50. De’Bella is the featured player in the story on older women in adult films. “De’Bella’s husband, Larry Schwartz, is fully supportive,” the story notes, and their daughter, Jewell De’Nyle, “started her mother down the same path.”
The paper of record leaves its readers with the impression of a happy porn family. Only those in Pornlandia who have followed the blow-by-blow accounts of this family saga know otherwise. On ADT, two months before the Times story ran, Jewell declined an appearance on the Howard Stern show with her mother, reiterating that her mom, “riding my coat tails makes her look plain stupid.” Jewell also went after her father big time, saying “He lost his job in politics that I took the liberty of trying to cover up for him because he slept with his 16-year-old adopted daughter,” Jewell’s step-sister.
Now the Times should not be faulted for leaving out a charge of statutory rape. But it does sound credible given the background of De’Bella’s supportive husband which could have been mentioned in the story, and was detailed in the Rocky Mountain News on August 7, 2004. Schwartz served as a Republican from 1995 to 1997 in the Colorado state legislature, was then appointed by the Governor to a seat on the Colorado State Parole Board. In 2001 a therapist told the police Schwartz had molested one of her clients and said two other members of his family had been victimized. The police raided his house, carting off porn mags and video tapes, many of them with pics of Jewell, and 15 comic books alleged to depict children having sex.
No charges were ever filed against Schwartz, but he was fired from his job on the Parole Board, and needless to say, it was time for the conservative politician to bolt out of Colorado. So out of a job and sunk in a scandal, where does he go? Porn Valley to set up shop with his wife and daughter.
Jewell said she started Platinum X to give both her parents jobs, put all her life savings in the company to “get them back on their feet.” I believe she is telling the truth, but here’s what I don’t understand. Along the way did her parents get control of the company? If so, how did that happen? In effect, did they rip Jewell off? Maybe I missed details on this in trolling the adult web sites. In any case, I’d like the answers to these questions.
Aug. 1, 2007
Bob sold 2,500 copies of his memoir, which is 2385 more than I sold of XXX-Communicated.
Life is cruel that way. It doesn't always reward quality, often preferring the cheap and tawdry.
I call Bob Tuesday afternoon, desperate for content, no matter how low the quality and how irrelevant to my readers.
I wanted to get back on his good side so he'd continue to feed me free stories.
Bob's finished his second memoir. "It's on drugs and alcohol in my family."
"My father was an alcoholic. My step-father was an alcoholic and my mother was an alcoholic. I call that the triple crown.
"My father's still alive. He was married three times. He has a step-son (now about 60) and a daughter who have been heroin addicts for about thirty years."
"It's a memoir that goes to a broader audience. Vanilla Slim [about pimping] goes to a niche market."
"I'm working on another book, something like Jim Goad's Gigantic Book of Sex."
Luke: "A collection of your writings?"
Bob: "Right. I want to turn it into one long narrative, rather than a collection of discrete essays. I've stolen the title from David Aaron Clark -- Pornlandia."
A few weeks ago, Armstrong was turned down by The New Republic. He'd always wanted to publish in there so it was a bitter blow, leading him to consume massive quantities of pornography to stem the pain.
He's living on the Oregon coast, 100 miles west of Portland.