A teacher, a professor, and a student walked up to a cesspool. The student asked, "What do we do now?" The professor proclaimed, "you will have to jump in, do your best to learn to float, and hopefully if you paid close attention to my lectures then you can make it across and get out on the other side."

The student was about to reluctantly jump in. The teacher held the student back, but for good reason. "Wait" the teacher said, "Soon the season will change and it will freeze solid, then you can walk across it easily".

The moral to the story... It is better to help others walk on water than it is to make them feel like shit.

You know you are in big trouble when your next word might be your last. There's nothing to run on, not without a single worthy verb to take action. No use planting a a period on a blank page. What's the point of a point when there is no point to point out? Time to come up with who knows what. Perhaps a chance to buy another vowel at the very least. But that's all there is... and that is a cost that can't be afforded without making a concession you regret before the ink even dries.

Just blank empty page lying before you like a vast empty wasteland, a place where no ideas will blossom and flourish. Salted earth. Parched. Barren. Devoid of potential and full of...

Nothingness

Walk this parched desert where the dry bones of imagination's greatest mythical beasts once ran free until they could go no further. Then fell, shriveled, slowly turned to dust, leaving only a skeleton of what might have been but never was to be. No Phoenix will rise from the ashes of some burned pages, those fiery ideas that burn too hot flame out too fast. No Sphinx is left to pose its riddles.

Yet you forge on. Paying zero attention to just how dehydrating this drought takes a toll, trudging that white shiftless expanse, it sucks the life out of you bit by bit. The blood, sweat, and tears evaporating so fast you don't even know it is happening until a crustiness, a salty scab forms, becomes unbearable, because the chafing to come up with something, anything, is so distracting.

Then, before you know it, you slow down. Each step forward feels like two steps back. Finally, disorientation becomes your compass, with no true north to guide you, only an arrow that points to obstacles that can't be navigated. Cliffs to fall off. Valleys of death. Places from where there is no turning back.

What do you do now?

Well, you can start spit-balling ideas. Good luck with that. No use when everything close to an original idea went and dried up into something so brittle the thought is broken before it can even take flight. Too parched to hock out a damn thing.

That is when praying seems like good idea. Down on your knees, beg for a last resort. Hold your head back, look to the skies, and pray. Just one drop.

Please. Please. I beg of you... (who knows who?) I beg...

For just one... drop.

In High School he tried

So hard to become a cool kid

part of the in crowd

Because of a girl

he hoped she would just date him

she liked someone else

Someone not worthy

Much worse than no one at all

He's telling himself

Getting in the group

Means she will see he's cool too

Worthy of dating

That's not how it works

This he found out the hard way

at the house party

He burst in the room

thinking he could still save her

A bad idea

She had just been saved

her virginity not lost

It was set aside

He looked like a fool

All of them made fun of him

so he left the group

Cliques are just like cults

Those so called cool kids all suck

he tells himself now

Lesson, the hard way

he'll never save anyone

when he's lost himself

The dreams only come some nights, but always leave a strong impression. Never the same, but always similar in nature. At first they were baffling in a benignly worrisome way. Not quite a nightmare, but certainly unsettling. The place is always different, sometimes occurring in a strange wooded forest, other times a teeming city that seems familiar by way of a recognizable landmark but not much else. In any case, the context remains constant.

So, in every version, Ralph starts in a comfortable place, a familiar place, like home perhaps. But then, for whatever obtuse reason not entirely clear, he must venture out to find someone in order to deliver a message. That is always where things get complicated. Because on the way to deliver the message, he gets increasingly farther from finding whomever he is trying to find and share it with. Getting lost to the point where sharing the message is not nearly as important as trying to find a way back.

The problem always starts with asking for directions. He has odd encounters with an ever changing cast of characters that point him in the supposedly right direction. Unfortunately, he only gets more lost, going increasingly wayward, off the beaten path.

They all seem so helpful! Obscure bit part actors from cinema whose names are hard to recall, the long dead headmaster from the academy, the new postmaster, a young girl he'd chatted with briefly at the market only yesterday, so many others. They all confidently give directions. "Just head up there and turn left, you can't miss it." That sort of thing.

Unfortunately they all direct him farther and farther from his original purpose. At some point the feeling of being too lost to continue is what will wake him. On opening his eyes, he typically takes a brief moment to realize that, no, there isn't a hole worn in the soles of his shoes.

At first Ralph assumed the dreams were about trying to find Piggy. During these nocturnal walkabouts, he routinely meets the living and those that passed. So why not wrap everything into a tidy interpretation that made sense even if it didn't offer any consolation? Ralph finally eventually decided that not knowing might be better. What would he say to Piggy anyway?

"Sorry" would not do much good for anyone at this point anyway.

Realizing that actually helped offset the feeling of being lost. Why not enjoy the journey instead of worrying about the outcome? Getting lost isn't so bad if you find an adventure and meet interesting characters along the way. So today, with that in mind, Ralph smiles as he rubs the Sandman's grit from his eyes.

He rises from the bed. It is chilly, but the sun will rise soon. There is time to sleep some more, but getting a head start on the day makes sense. From his last interview he knows the company will offer the management role. More pay for less hours. Sounds great, but after sleeping on it, Ralph has decided otherwise. He wants to stick with the union to protect his benefits. A management position doesn't offer that security. Besides, he needs to stay with his crew. They need him because he keeps the herd in line. He could always change his mind in the future.

He just hopes they will understand when he delivers the message.

(This is a prologue for a sequel to "Lord of the Flies". According to the American Library Association, "Lord of the Flies" is the eighth-most frequently banned and challenged book in the nation)

Finding the right words, never too easy. Unless you are born with the gift of gab. But what's that worth if all that spills out is just a bunch of practiced bs, charming lies, or endless pitches?

Nothing.

Worth less than a dime that wouldn't get you a cup of coffee much less a cheap cocktail in a dive bar at unhappy hour.

Right?

She approaches with a curious smile. She gets eight hours a day. That's some serious practice.

"Would you like another?" She says.

"No thank you."

It definitely was not going to be enough. Not... even... close.

Darting quickly out from a shadow's cover, pausing to assess broken terrain littered with detritus. Shards of a green bottle. Wet leaves rotting with mold. Jagged stones and fetid loam. Then, a mad scramble.

Stop. Assess. Find cover. The ant's movement, chaotic yet purposeful, as it scrambles to meet others on a path marked well with venomous pheromones. As they pass along the way, they share the news, communicating dark intentions, ravenous hungers incited along the way.

Drawing closer to the rotting corpse of the child, still undiscovered by its own kind, the ant decides to enter in the ear.

Ask any Gypsy worth her crystal ball. Seeing into the future is not all it is cracked up to be. In fact, I would take the clear 20/20 of hindsight any day.

Even though, let's face it. I mean...

RIGHT NOW.

Let's just pause for a minute to think about it.

Looking back at what happened a minute ago, yesterday, years before, even back before time was anything more than a matter of light and dark and light again, there is no clarity in it at all. Just recollections that become murkier by the minute, more faded and distant with each... and every... passing... second...

Because, like the cataract covered eyes of an old crone whose alzheimers has finally reduced memories to haunting visions, looking back means looking forward to nothing more than a good hunch about what might happen... next.

Like the dinosaurs. It might be an educated guess, but it is still just a good hunch about what sort of cataclysmic event resulted in their running out of time. They heading off into the sunset of extinction, where time is nothing but a speculation and a point of occurance, lost in the infinity of other moments gathered and tossed to eternity. But at least that is something to go on. At least speculating about it is a way to pass the time.

At least...

That might provide some insight into the future. Because anything at all would be better than knowing tomorrow, the next day, a year from now, a million generations from now. Those moments in the future will come but seeing them coming feels like being tied to a train track. There you are... tied down to the inevitable...

Because this train is always on time. Every car it pulls filled with your dreams and aspirations, with a caboose of longing and hope hitched to the back. You lie between it and the station. No way to stop it... as it rolls... closer... and closer still, where you feel the rattle of the track and hear the humdrum of death about to roll over you.

So all you can really do is look down at your watch. Guess how much time is left, if any, before everything... past... present... future... all are passed.

As time rolls on.

{Forward}

“So…”

The hesitation always lingers. A pregnant pause where everyone stands around wondering who the father might be

“… how did you end up in porn?”

If people actually still talk to me after they find out I did porn then that takes the lead as the first question to ask. However, usually the question drives the conversation more typically to an assertion.

“You don’t seem like somebody that would do porn.” I hear before I try getting a word in edgewise between strict condemnation and leering curiousity, “Well, that’s a story to tell”.

The thing is: Most people think porn is something people crash into at the end of a dead end, a crumpled heap of broken humans looking for the cheap insurance of a quick buck, making false claims of happiness for the ruin of their lives.

But me? I went into this with my eyes open, with direction and purpose. Marching to the beat of an unrecognizable drummer tapping a slick jazzy riff I went whooping and hollering over the hill and into the fray, looking for adventure, naked not only to the camera but also disrobed of the trappings of education or the cloth of experience that might equip me to the task. Instead, armed only with a keen sense of the absurd and a jagged smile on my face I charged in ready to confront my kinks and conquer my sexual insecurities.

I fought hard. And I fancy myself more a lover than a fighter so that wasn't easy.

To survive, I learned something new and useful every day kept in check and balance by what I didn’t have a clue about every other day. But making fantasies come true is not an easy business. You really have to put some foreplay into it.

So, to thrive, I learned how to perform and developed a wide range of important life skills.

I am not just talking about perfecting the perilous “Flying Anal” technique.

I grasped how to stay in a business where the product is free as rain. I managed to raise kids when everything around me bore the stamp “adults only” in red scarlet letters. I taught Princess Leia how to make porn in a galaxy far, far away. Dodged bullets both figuratively and literally. Like how to stay in business when the dude that owes a few hundred thousand decides to get a sex change, take all your cash, and live on a desert island. Of course, where would I be now if I never figured out guns and orgies never mix well?

I learned a few other things that might... ahem… come in handy…no porn pun double-entendre intended that is, when life gets weird. But weird is interesting and that was the best advice my mother ever gave, besides the bit about not letting girls tell me I have to marry if I got them pregnant, she advised “Make sure you live an interesting life.”

And doing porn has certainly been a matter of taking the scenic route, I mean, besides the obvious. Along the way, the spectacle was interesting enough that I enjoyed the great fortune of being written about by three best-selling authors. Evan Wright wrote about me before his “Generation Kill” ended up as a best seller turned HBO series; Eric Schlosser was doubling up on the success of “Fast Food Nation” when he included a bit about yours ever so truly in his “Reefer Madness” muckraker; and David Foster Wallace got a kick out my schtick in “Consider the Lobster”. But each only chipped off enough of the iceberg to make merely a sno-cone confection, sweet to the taste, but only one station in the magnificent Las Vegas epic buffet of my life.

So, rather than have the tale told through the eyes, from the squinting and judgmental, to the winking and knowing, even those staring blankly sometimes in disbelief, the time has come… again, no porn pun intended, to deliver the money shot. Shoot my wad. Tell the whole story, compete with the shootings, the groans, the sighs, the white socks, and the hot lights showing every little thing for better or worse.

Because the next thing I usually hear is “What do you tell your kids about what you do?”

So, this is what I would tell them.

“Lead an interesting life. Just remember the first step in an interesting life is the one that takes you right over a cliff. Let me tell you why from experience...”

If a rolling stone can gather no moss

then time to explain that to Brian Jones

his stone is now an emerald green cross

sitting atop what is left of his bones

now turned chartreuse by the passage of time

the rootless sphagnum gathers around them

left to their own devices and made to climb

by sending out tiny tendrils that hem

his granite round where the rain water pools

truth be told a rolling moss gathers rocks

those who say otherwise are the same fools

trying the right keys on all the wrong locks

forget trying hard to move like Jagger

for moss will always soften the swagger

I broke the bridge

when I stood on it

the rivets ripped from the beam

the roaring of cars

like the raging river below

rushing past 

trying to make it across

in time, but swept away

because current events have an undertow

that pull us all in

like the time when I asked her to dance

and she said she was waiting for somebody

some one else, anybody but me

so I didn't sweep her off her feet

only myself, because when I slipped

I broke the bridge