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Archival Abby
Abby's Bio
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Pornographer for Hire
Will Write Smut for Food!
In my
long and not-so-illustrious career as a female smutmeister, I’ve been
subjected to some real crap. Probably not so surprising, you might say.
Well it isn’t quite what you’d expect. My story here makes me sound
like a malcontent. Or at the very least terminally unemployable. Hell,
maybe I am. Grab a cocktail and help me drown my sorrows, won’t you?
I was definitely spoiled by my initial foray into the adult
entertainment industry; working for a woman—an ex-pro domme, at that—at
Penthouse Forum was about as pleasant an employment situation as one
can expect, most especially in this business. It was a wonderful office
atmosphere and the company was decidedly pro female, on many levels.
When I was laid off, I began a slow and depressing slide.
My first job post-Penthouse was for a gentleman who was actually
friends with my recently-ex-boss. In fact, he and I had met and got
along quite well. He’d even published the virgin issue of my fanzine,
Porn Free, in his monthly newsletter. Before I left Forum he took me to
lunch and made promises of being his editor, of both his newsletter and
the numerous books he published every month. I was going to be helping
develop authors, special projects, all sorts of exciting things. It
sounded fabulous! I actually left Forum before my two weeks notice was
up to get started as soon as possible.
Not two days into my new job as “editor” the writing was on the wall. I
was this guy’s secretary. His assistant. I sat, stuck in my
six-foot-by-six-foot office and wept. This wasn’t what I wanted. Or
what I’d been promised. I swore I’d give it a month and see what
transpired. Exactly one month later, after cleaning file drawers,
answering phones and performing all sorts of other clerical crap, I sat
down to speak with my boss. “This is not the job you offered me,” I
told him. “I don’t have any interest in being a secretary. And you
haven’t given me any other responsibilities.” He apologized profusely
and promised me things would change, manuscripts were mine, I wouldn’t
have to do any more clerical work. None of that ever happened. And a
month later he fired me. Hmmph.
I then ventured out to Hoboken for an interview with a man who’d been
in the business forever; ex-Leg Show editor Dian Hanson worked for the
guy years ago and has hilarious tales to tell of painting panty
crotches with canned tuna fish oil. Anyway, he showed me around his
office, which included a private bedroom and bath, with a shower. Nice.
He then took me to dinner. I felt more like a hooker than a prospective
employee, but unemployment makes us all prostitutes, I suppose. He
blathered on about how he wanted to “get back into the girlie mags” and
promised me the editor job on his new title, provided I also manage his
biker magazines. Sure, yeah, whatever it took to get a paycheck. Well,
surprise, surprise, two months later I was “Big Red,” the editor of his
biker rags and there was still no new girlie book. I complained or,
more accurately, asked if there would ever be the promised girlie
magazine. He hemmed and hawed and basically lied. I continued to feed
the fantasies of bikers in prison and develop an adult magazine that
never went to press. Eventually I was fired. Not even by the boss man
himself. He sent a note via the editor of his tattoo magazine. Chicken
shit.
From there I was hired by a man who’d made piles of money in phone sex.
He’d bought a million 800 numbers and had ridden the wave, and now that
the Internet was all the rage, he had purchased just as many URLs. I
was to be the editor of his main web site, which included web cams of
girls rolling around on mattresses in tiny rooms off of my office. My
job was to contribute magazine and zine reviews, write about events and
other cool web sites, basically put new content up every day to keep
things fresh. Keep in mind, this was years ago, before Dreamweaver and
other easy-to-use interfaces. It was also back in the days of dial-up;
no cable modems or instantaneous updates. It was cumbersome and I’d
never done it before. But I was a fast learner and, frankly, thought I
added immeasurably to the excitement of the site. Unfortunately, there
was a woman who’d been doing my job before I got there who didn’t take
so well to being replaced, even though she had, ostensibly, been
promoted. Not a month later she informed me that I wouldn’t be needed
and she continued on, fulfilling her promoted-to position and
performing my job as well.
As it happened, right next door to the web cam world there was another
adult business, all the B magazines of a larger porn publishing
company. I wound up freelancing there for a woman who’d been in the biz
for decades. Everyone thought she was crazy, but we got along great.
We’re both Geminis and rabid multitaskers. She’d have me writing
catalog copy—another facet of her company that wasn’t
adult-oriented—one minute, proofreading incest mags another, writing
girl copy for the granny books one day and returning slides to
photographers the next. There was never a dull moment and I worked for
next to nothing. But at least it was income. And it got me out of the
house. Last I heard she was working out of her apartment, having been
downsized to the point where she was sharing her bedroom with a Xerox
machine.
Last month I suffered the latest blow to my ego and my dignity. I’d
interviewed with this company a few times, always for their men’s
magazines, and was never hired. I was imminently qualified—often more
so than the men they ultimately hired. For one opening, I sent in my
resume and never got a call. So I mailed them the exact same resume,
but with a man’s name instead of mine. They called to schedule an
interview within days. I actually considered going to the interview.
Wouldn’t they be surprised? Of course, there was no way to prove sexual
discrimination. And why bother? The industry is so small it would’ve
just worked against me in the end. Recently I went up there to
interview for a job on their only women’s magazine and, if you can
believe it, they hired a man! A staff of four and they decide to hire a
man. Well, they had been receiving a bit of unpleasant press for firing
their editor. She’d accused them of firing her for being a Republican.
About as prove-able as sexual discrimination. They said they wanted to
take the magazine in a different direction. And hiring a man to manage
a women’s porn magazine is definitely what you’d call a different
direction.
At present, I am incredibly grateful for this freelance gig. This
shtick, in addition to a monthly column for Penthouse Forum and a
quarterly column in a leg fetish publication, are the only steady
income I have. Hmm, maybe that guy they hired instead of me to
manage the women’s porn magazine might be interested in having me
contribute a column. But I ain’t holdin’ my breath!
[Written April 2005]
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