The other night, I went out for dinner with two very good friends, V and Southern Belle C.
While on our way to Injera, our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, I realized we were passing Casa Magazines. Casa Magazines is my favorite place in the city for magazines: It gets every edition of Vogue from around the world, and I needed Vogue Italia’s September Issue.
Holding onto my coffee-table-sized magazine, I noticed another section of magazines: gay erotica. And there, on the cover of one of them, was Southern Belle C’s ex-boyfriend, The Porn Star.
He wasn’t a porn star when they dated, which, funny enough, was directly after Southern Belle C and I broke up. We weren’t friends yet, but I got the story retrospectively: They met on Grindr, dated for a bit, and after they broke up he started doing porn.
I picked up the magazine; Southern Belle C’s face turned a bright shade of crimson. “Put that back,” he said quickly, taking a step toward me.
“Why?” I asked loudly, thrusting the magazine in V’s direction. “So you dated a porn star. What’s to be embarrassed about? He’s very attractive.”
And he was, tattoos showing on pale skin, big eyes looking at the camera, assuming the position on his knees.
“Stop,” he hissed, snatching the magazine from my hands.
“I’m buying this and framing it for you,” I went on, picking up a second copy.
Southern Belle C liked to flaunt The Porn Star in my face, especially because we had a similar look. Both of us were brunette when we dated Southern Belle C; both of us went platinum blonde after he broke up with us.
We were both gay, pale-skinned, bluish-eyed and bleached our hair. Ryan Murphy would have cast us in “American Horror Story” in a heartbeat.
It got me thinking about porn. More so than usual, anyway. Would I ever do porn? I’ve tried breaking into modeling for a lot of my life, and nudity has never bothered me – as any of you who have ever read my column will know. Certainly, nude photography and having sex on camera is totally different – but where’s the line? Where’s my line?
I’m comfortable with my body and my sexuality. I like to have sex, a lot. So why not get paid for it? Here I am,
begging photographers to photograph me, while The Porn Star is on the cover of a magazine.
Furthermore, I’ve always been the monogamous type. How would I feel dating a porn star? How would I feel being in porn while in a relationship?
In the end, I didn’t buy the magazine, and I didn’t reach out to Helix for a contract. But for all the ways I’ve run into an ex, seeing them on the cover of an erotic magazine is not one of them – Southern Belle C has me beat.
