Table of Contents
To William Michael McPadden for his insistence and aid, to John Rechy for whatever clarity of expression is here, to the wife, and to A.P. for taking a chance.
PROLOGUE
What Kind of Creep Runs Hustler?
IT TAKES A special person to work at Hustler magazine for 20 years and not crack up. From the dawn of the Reagan Administration well into Bush II, I was bombarded daily by sharply focused images of naked women and bare-assed men locked in the most primal and private activity human beings engage in other than defecation, and Id been shown that too. I viewed these images, literally 1,000 every day, through powerful magnifying lenses ground in Germany. I evaluated each photograph for its prurient appeal, and selected the most effective among them to be presented to a drooling audience, a large portion of which would have paid a month of their salaries to spend a week on my job.
As a writer, I cranked out service pieces on how to dump a girlfriend before she dumps you, on romancing welfare mothers, on capturing for a moment the erotic affections of rich women, crazy women, gorgeous women, angry women, new age women, promiscuous women, aging women, and women with severe eating disorders. I clarified at least one mystery of the universe in a feature titled Creeps: Why Women Love Us.
Id been airlifted to a remote Nevada highway and embedded at a house of prostitution there. Id infiltrated a convention of soldier-of-fortune mercenaries, and penetrated San Quentin Prisons death row to interview a man convicted of murdering two consecutive wives. Id tagged along to the south of France with a planeload of porn starlets who plied their trade to private fans at up to $5,000 per scene. Id spent three hours in a cell with a tape recorder and one of Californias most notorious serial killers. Id hopped a redeye to Atlanta, Georgia, where I delivered a staggering cashiers check to the second ex-wife of family-values congressman Bob Barr.
I entered the strange and titillating environment of Larry Flynt Publications as a married 27-year-old clinging to the shreds of a Roman Catholic education. Tentative at first, jumpy around all the sexual triggers, I quickly adopted a jaded sensualism which was put to the test once my wife had split. Acclimating well, I assumed a supervisory position within the hotbed of anarchy and depravity at LFP. I hired and indoctrinated others to the Hustler way. I directed talented underlings in the creation of aberrant literature and curiously lewd photographic scenarios. I trained attractive young women to compose debauched sexual memoirs, and then I made suggestions for improving their grammar. Hustler was not the vilest magazine on the market, but we tried.
Private sex videos never intended for public consumption crossed my desk, souvenirs that purported to show Ted Turner in a manic kinky mood with Jane Fonda, young Pam Anderson satisfying the singer from Poison, Chuck Berry despoiling a string of anonymous partners, some of whom treated Chuck (if indeed that was Chuck) to a bite of poo, Anna Nicole Smith playing the nude, inebriated seductress in a hotel bathtub, Mick Jagger captured by a crafty, spread-eagle stripper barely one-third his age, and Courtney Love cavorting with Scott Weiland of the Stone Temple Pilots. I came away with the opinion that all of these tapes were probably authentic, but I had learned to mistrust reality at large.
In 1998, I was plunged into the chamber pot of national politics. Suddenly, at the height of the frenzy surrounding the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, my actions were creating headlines in the Washington Post and being cited in New York Times and Wall Street Journal Op-Ed columns. There I was on prime-time TV, arguing public morality with big-haired news-channel blowhards. Functioning as equal parts reporter and vandal, I hounded down adulterous Congressional hypocrites wherever Larry Flynts lure of a million-dollar reward could flush them out. Before the smoke and mirrors had cleared, the Speaker-elect had resigned from the United States House of Representatives in the face of my insinuation that Hustler had uncovered proof of his extramarital follies.
After having saved Bill Clintons pasty ass, if not his legacy, I continued to guide staffs of writers and artists in producing the sarcasm, muckraking, celebrity bashing and go-for-the-throat eroticism of Americas most iconoclastic stroke book, as well as being overlord on a half-dozen ancillary publicationsTaboo, Barely Legal, Chic, Asian Fever, Busty Beauties, Honey Buns. At 46, a seasoned veteran of hardcore anti-journalism, I reigned over a fiefdom of quick-witted geeks with graduate degrees and no concept of a career path. Then I made one crucial blunder in my relationship with Larry Flynt, a faux pas so colossal that I must have committed it deliberately. Soon after, I was fired.
From my first day as an axed employee, casual acquaintances, relatives and former co-workers told me I should write the book on Hustler. To everyone who didnt have to write it, the book was a nobrainer, but I had to wonder: What is the specific idea? Do I intend to produce an expos of Larry Flynt? How do you pitch a tell-all of a man who is on record as having had sex with a chicken?
Oprah tosses up her hands: The man admits to raping a fowl. Are you telling me there is more?
In fact, there is plenty more, but this book racket is turning out to be more work than I am accustomed to. Trying to make things easy on myself, I reached out to several former Hustler co-workers. Many of these are decent, conflicted men and women. A few are porno scumbags. I asked everybody the same questions: What had working in the peculiar biosphere of LFP been like for you? What memories typified or evoked the experience?
Most everyone agreed that their Hustler tenure had been weird and less than entirely pleasant. All the former employees I contacted shared one common thing that separated them from me: theyd come to Larry Flynt Publications, and then they continued on their way, having outgrown the Hustler environment. Maybe it wasnt a question of growth for all of them. Perhaps a few had simply burnt out on the beaver shots, the institutionalized paranoia and the unrelenting satire. The point is, these burnouts had moved on. My growth, if thats what I chose to call it, had all been confined within the structure of LFP.
Id come in as an assistant nobody and risen to the top, like scum on a cup of hot chocolate. If this progression had occurred at Cond Nast, Id be pushing my publicist for a five-page profile in Forbes. When we met during the filming of The People vs. Larry Flynt, actor Woody Harrelson, who portrayed Larry in the movie, said, Youre the guy whos got the best job in the world. If so, why did I start my car every morning, then sit behind the wheel for 10 minutes debating whether or not to open the garage door?
A tougher question might be: how did I thrive so long in a bizarro world of bodyguards, cracker-rich hillbillies and high-gloss cumshots? Now here is an interesting question of character: what the fuck was wrong with me?
