Nicki Minaj would like to buy you a drink

I interviewed Nicki Minaj for Forbes:

“I kind of think of myself almost like a man,” Minaj explains. “I’m not going to fall back from something because it’s never been done before by a woman. It’s time for a female Jay, a female Puffy.”

Repent, Sinners

Porn Awards, Las Vegas, Nevada
I renamed my Forbes blog.

Now it's SIN INC.

There I will be working the vice beat.

Booze, broads, bozos.

It's the most interesting thing I've done in at least decade.

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Baller

My all-time most popular Forbes post just topped 500,000 views.

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Irish

Irish, Las Vegas, Nevada

Husband

Husband, Boca Raton, Florida

Gigolo

Gigolo, Las Vegas, Nevada

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Without a doubt, the blockbuster post of my Forbes blog this year was: "The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star."

Because I've worked previously in helping entertainment sites generate more traffic, I tend to have a sense of what will get a lot of clicks and what won't. But I really had no idea this post would become my most popular post of the year and the third most popular post in the section where my blog resides on Forbes.com.

I was surprised and continue to be surprised by the amount of traffic the post gets. So far, it has over 300,000 views, and it's the all-time most popular post on my blog.

Originally, the post was simply a series of quotes from the male porn stars I'd interviewed, but my smart editor pushed me to expand it and present it as a series of work tips.

I'm sure my failure to fully understand the popularity of the post has to do with the fact that I'm not a man. I think the subject matter appeals in a way that I simply cannot comprehend. But I wrote a post pondering that question: "Why Men Want to Be Porn Stars."

In an era in which “The End of Men” is being heralded, you can imagine the appeal of the male porn star fantasy to the Average Joe. The job of the Male Porn Star is unequivocally, undeniably male — so literally, one depends on one’s manhood to do it. This is what you are paid for as a male porn star: to be a man.

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Why men pay for it

Yesterday, I posted that I was reading Chester Brown's Paying for It. Basically, it's an autobiographical graphic novel about how Brown paid prostitutes for sex.

I think I got it yesterday in the mail and finished it last night. Generally speaking, I didn't really like it.

Mostly, it's depressing. Which isn't to say it's not accurate. I got the sense it was very accurate. Brown kept a diary of when he did who, and that's the structure that guides the narrative.

But Brown is a nerd/robot, and because of that, you don't get -- well, I was going to say, much in the way of feeling, but really you don't get any feeling at all.

Brown feels kind of dead.

Dead to me. To him, I think he feels like himself. He's very mechanical. Logical. Thorough.

But it's sort of like watching someone fuck a hole in the wall.

You get glimpses of the women, who are mostly disguised -- by speech bubbles over their faces or the absence of specific details -- but not a lot.

Mostly, I felt like the book read like a polemic that was pretending to be a diary. Brown is a fan of the legalization of prostitution. Which is fine. I don't have a problem with that.

There's a lot about his troubles with love, but in the end, it's like his real issue is a lack of ... passion.

Which left me feeling like I ate a sandwich with nothing in it. 

Aesthetically, I loved it. It's all tiny boxes, and little opaque people, and the sex scenes are like a sperm trying to penetrate an egg. I liked the way it looked the best.

I get email

I want to be a male pornstar, without having to be in gay porn, I dont care what it takes except being gay

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Men

Lately, I've been dating. Dating, dating, dating. So ... strange. For a long time, a really long time, I didn't date anybody. Broken heart and all that. But, hey, I'm a "Soldier of Love," and it's the Wild, Wild West, right? ("I'm still alive ...")

It's been sort of strange. Because I'm not a kid anymore. And the men aren't boys anymore. So the game is different. And it's not entirely clear how to play it. If it weren't for Wendy and Lydia, I'd probably never do it, but they regularly deliver swift kicks to my ass, and so it goes.

Mostly, in this illustrious career of mine, I have long avoided writing about my personal life. In part, that's because I was spending my professional time around pornographers, pimps, and sometimes rapists, and you kind of want to desexualize when you're in that situation. You don't want to be the target. You want to blend into the wallpaper. Disappear.

Dating, though, is nerve-wracking. As I informed one poor soul who had the misfortune of taking me out, I feel way more comfortable in a random apartment with a pimp who's showing me his AK-47 than I do on a date. Oh, the vulnerability! The wretched misreadability. It's all so unfuckingclear. I don't know if I speak the language.

One thing I know for sure: I love men. Women are my BFFs, and I love them, too, but I would rather chop off my head than date one. Way too fucking complicated. I love men. Everything about them. Their enigmatic-ness, and their strangeness, and their foreign-ness.

For a long time, after some shit happened, and everything got kind of wiped out, I felt sort of dead. Mostly, men make me feel more alive. So, I'm a soldier of love, right?