Straight for Pay

When three things on the same topic collide in my life and online, it’s time for a post: this is about men who are Straight for Pay. It started with explaining to a Brit friend what BangBus is. With humor for something patently offensive and ridiculously fake, I explained BangBus thusly: it’s a half-baked, dated gem of sexist porn that is unintentionally funny. The same storyline repeats, where a group of guys so jocko they’re homo cruise around in a van and convince girls walking down the street to get in the van. Once inside, they convince her to have sex for money, in a homoerotic contest of having sex with her for each other’s entertainment, the contest being which guy can get her to do more stuff. (First homo reference: guys who love to watch other guys have sex, and this is a central theme of BangBus.) At the end, the punchline is delivered when they get her out of the van and speed off without paying her, high-fiving each other to congratulate each other for their sheer brilliance — of getting someone to pay to watch BangBus, ultimately. Perhaps the high-fives are for those who actually think BangBus is real: those being people who don’t know anything about pornography, and anti-porn pundits.

Retarded? Totally. Especially when the entire premise is undermined by its sheer existence. Don’t worry — she gets paid. She was probably paid before the scene when she was negotiating whether or not she would do anal. Being legal porn (commercial porn), Bang Bros. has all the pre-arranged contracts and documentation necessary to prove the consent, legality, payment and contract with the woman acting out the scenario. Everyone in the scene also had to get tested for STDs and bring current, valid and authentic certification of health as proof. I’m not defending BangBus. But I won’t unpack the fantasy or why it works, or what it means, because that’s not what this post is about. Last August Grant Stoddard asked me for porn watching tips when he was working on a Men’s Health piece, an article to help guys to get their ladies to watch teh pr0ns with them. Helpfully, he suggested as a “Don’t” that guys “Don’t start with BangBus.” I agreed with him.

I continued, saying that anti-porn people love BangBus (probably more than the subscribers) because it pretends to all their worst fears about porn, conveniently eschewing the legal questions, consent and sex work, and facts surrounding production. All the females are industry porn performers. And, I told my British friend, it’s even more of a fallacy especially because the BangBus company also makes a gay version that operates on the exact same premise. (Sexist? I think it’s actually bottomist, if you ask me.)

A GAY version of BangBus, my friend asked incredulously? How the hell does that work?

It’s the same thing, I explained. It’s called BaitBus. Guys in a van drive along and lure an unsuspecting straight boy into the van. For bait, they use a “hot chick” which is usually not so hot, but still biologically female and with big knockers. Vanful of guys watches and helps convince the innocent straight boy to have sex with the girl. She wants him blindfolded. It’s as laughably believable as much as any lone girl would willingly get into a van full of creepy men, except it’s kind of more believable. He is blindfolded — then lo, it is discovered the person sucking his cock with relish and expertise is one of the dudes! Scenario continues as per the BangBus script. Naive person who got fucked gets ditched and high-fives all around.

I showed my friend sample videos from both, and side-by-side, they are humorous. Then I showed him the MathBus parody (tax time, dudes!) The Brit blinked, and protested slightly saying oh-so-adorably, But those guys aren’t straight.

“WHAT!!? They’re not straight!? Holy fuck… But that would mean it’s all…” I think I actually had to dodge a flying Laughing Squid mug. We were laughing, but I remember that when I wrote my Chronicle article on Gay for Pay after a truly bizarre experience with gay-for-pay porn stars harassing me at the GAYVN’s by over-demonstrating their “straightness” — the core issues were not very funny. Gay for pay is no laughing matter most of the time.

Turns out, straight for pay isn’t all that funny either. Case in point, and circling back to the topic at hand: Straight for Pay post factor #2. The other night I found myself having cocktails in the Castro with a very sexy rentboy. He is straight, and I pelted him with millions of questions about how that works, exactly. I don’t yet have permission to write his story out, so I won’t say much, but I learned a lot. It’s not uncommon, and it’s lucrative. Aside: If I still wrote for Teh Chronic, I’d have a killer column (with my friend’s permission, of course). Anyway from his view, he sees a lot of the “straight for pay” culture in rentboy circles and in gay porn. Which brings me to Straight for Pay factor #3, which he and I discussed:

‘Straight for pay’ is defined as when gay men “play straight” in gay-for-pay and/or gay porn. Brain spinning yet? Not really, when you think about the hunger for seeing straight guys as takedown material in gay porn. According to performer Devon Hunter, the epicenter for his straight-for-pay experience was at Sean Cody’s empire. In Devon’s post Know before you go, part 1 of 3: Sean Cody he details his experiences being a contract performer for Sean Cody and explains how gay performers are groomed and edited to be “believably straight” for the viewers. It’s a fascinating look. He had a falling out with Sean Cody, not surprisingly, culminating in this quote, “It didn’t occur to me that a web site that coerces straight men to have gay sex on camera would have a sense of moral indignation.” Snips:

(…) At one point they asked me if I would play with a toy. Normally I don’t use them, but I wanted to be gracious and cooperative, since my paperwork specifically stated that difficult models would not be asked back. And do you know what they gave me? A LIMP DICK DILDO.

What the fuck?
“This is a limp dick dildo.”
“Yeah, we teach the straight guys how to suck dick with it.”
“How am I supposed to get it inside?”
“Oh, just play with it and figure it out.”

So I ended up standing in an awkward position, corkscrewing a limp dick dildo into my ass, making noises that I feared were “too gay,” and hoping that I wouldn’t look completely ridiculous in the process. Have I mentioned yet that they fucked my hair up? OMG, maybe I’m too gay afterall, but don’t fuck with a bitch’s weave! GOD! (…read more, devonhunter.info, via MeFI)

No, I have no idea how to Protect The Children (TM) from straight-for-pay-gay-for-pay exploitation. Photo of Devon Hunter via DevonHunter.info.