PUBLIC MARKS from sbrothier with tags gay & porn

Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning opened the first Babeland store in 1993 in response to the lack of women-friendly sex shops in Seattle. The store offered top quality products, a pleasant place to shop, and most of all information and encouragement to women who wanted to explore their sexuality. The store's popularity with both women and men eventually led to two more stores in New York and one in Los Angeles, as well as a thriving website.

I've written for Details, Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, Radar, Salon, Variety, Slate, Wired News, The New York Post, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Vancouver Sun, The San Francisco Examiner Magazine, Playboy.com, Nerve, Arena (UK), and Max (France). I've appeared on CNN, FOX News, Playboy TV, "Politically Incorrect," and the UK's Channel 4. I'm writing a novel that's based on my experiences in Porn Valley. I'm represented by Endeavor. And, I'm 6'2".

Love, lust, like—it really doesn't matter. We are men, and we hunger for the same thing: a connection, a score, a win. Some are short and sweet; others are tough and bitter. Either way, we walk the long road home, collecting many stories, but not enough advice, or friends, to dispel the myths, or dilute the boundaries, of the "game." We wake up, maybe decades later, telling someone younger the ways of things—with a grin that impresses, but really conceals a wish we knew then what we do now. Sure we have wives, or girlfriends, or boyfriends—or husbands. All told, there's a bastard in all of us, but managing the vice of manhood is the goal we offer, the manifesto we push.

Many, many years ago, the 5 of us lamented the death of the smut rag. We had grown up under the legandary mantle of Playboy and its innocence, Penthouse and its penetrative expostions, and (for the lucky ones among us with cool older brothers or pervy dads), the no-holes barred Jugs and Hustler. But then the Internet came along, and suddenly all the Vaseline™ on the lens couldn’t justify paying for porn when there was so much of it for free. And yet, we remained unsatisfied. Sure, there was sometimes amazing porn to be found online, but it lacked the polish, the sheen. Plus, all joking aside, we missed the prose aspect of the smut magazine. As they say, the brain IS the largest sex organ (except on Chris, because DAMN. We’ve seen him in the shower.)