Late to the party, I am, but that’s never stopped me from making an ass of myself; apparently in addition to the housing bubble and the credit bubble, the sex bubble has burst too.

You did read last year (or was it the year before) that the 818 saw it’s first decline in sales, didn’t you? (You could read more about it on BoingBoing, ‘cept Xeni deleted the article I fed her.) OMG, but didn’t you guys (by “you guys” I mean porn flacks, credulous MSM “journalists” etc.) tell me that the “adult industry” was recession proof?

Now it’s the sex writers’ turn. Apparently everyone is fired. Friends, colleagues, and even people who should have shut up 10 years ago — all swept up in corporate cost cutting and (maybe) the realization that post intertubes, merely being frank (frequently spelled O V E R S H A R I N G) about sex isn’t the precious commodity it once was.

To wit:

When yours truly first got to NYC, he made rent writing pulp smut at the rate of $10/page. That was one double-space page in the widest kerned 12 point font his old grey powerbook had to offer. It didn’t matter what I wrote, or how much I wrote, so long as it was spelled correctly. I could make rent in about a half a day of mindless hacking.

Long gone, muther fuckers, those days are long gone! Now get ready for a stomach ache, cuz Tony’s gonna give some more of his always helpful ADVICE TO YOUNG ARTISTS! (You don’t have to be a sex artist to take this advice, but it helps!)

AM I A PROFESSIONAL? (A personal assessment test)

Being a professional means getting paid, right? But in a day and age when newsstand magazines are paying less per word (or image, or what ever,) than I got to write pulp smut 15 years ago, it should be clear that merely “getting paid” as a definition of professionalism doesn’t cut it anymore. So, are you a professional? Some helpful questions:

Do you have health insurance?

Yeah, I know, health insurance is expensive, and the US is one of the few industrialized countries that doesn’t have some sort of nationalized healthcare. None the less, most people somehow manage to scrape together enough money each month to pay their premium. Maybe they manage to do this by showing up five days a week at a job they really don’t like. Maybe they manage to do this because they are a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, or a plumber. But however they manage, the point is that a professional is made financially stronger by practicing their trade/craft/art, not weaker. That’s what makes it a profession.

Are you saving money for retirement and for a rainy day?

Pretty much the same rational as above. Someday you’re going to need that money. If you’re not putting it away now as a way to make ends meet, you are borrowing from your ability to deal with (inevitable) future crisis. That’s not the way a professional does business.

Are you keeping your skill-set up to date?

Any of you have friends that are teachers? You know those dumb-ass classes they have to take every other Summer or so? It’s the same for doctors, and electricians, and a host of other professions. The world doesn’t stand still, and professionals have to keep up. You want to be a “professional”? Then you have to keep up too.

Now at this point I imagine some of my dear readers feeling personally attacked. I can see you, eyes narrowed, jaw set, lazy Sunday cup ‘o joe ruined. You’ve read down my list of questions, and the best you’ve managed so far is a weak, “Maybe..” to the continuing ed. question. All you wanted from today was a little peace and quite, and now grumpy old Tony Comstock’s gone and pissed on your corn flakes (or, if you prefer, shit on your waffle.)

—–

The big problem with being a doctor is that you have to study so long and so hard that by the time you actually are a doctor you’re completely unqualified to be anything else. Fortunately for doctors, this is a completely theoretical problem. There is zero danger that a doctor will wake up one morning to find out that there’s no market for what they do.

Not so those of us who work in the arts, and especially not for those of us who make sex the subject of our art. Any day any one of us might wake up and find there’s no market for what we do. Bitch and moan about it all you want, it’s just the way it is. (Why sexuality is a particularly volatile market places is a subject for another essay.)

In her autopsy of the great sex writer washout of 2008, Sussana Breslin offers:

Tracy Clark-Flory has penned a strong piece for Salon on the sorry state of sex writing today: “Sex Writing Goes Limp.” Lately, a bunch of people got to sounding the death knell for sex writing. My opinion, which is quoted in the piece already, is that if the emphasis was on writing rather than sex, there wouldn’t be so much caterwauling. If you can’t write to save your life, you’re fucked, right? Susie Bright and Carol Queen spawned us, but if what we wrought is Julia Allison, who uses the term “gonzo journalism” to describe sitting through New York fashion week, God help us all. I’m praying for a new generation of writers–who happen to write about sex. My money’s on Clark-Flory. She’s a reporter first, and her subject (sex) is second. You go, girl. Fuck the sexperts.

She sounds a little like me, pissing and moaning about the current state of erotic photography, going on about depth of field and contrast range, and pining for an old copy of Playboy magazine. (Side note, I wonder if Susannah still has the copy of MARIE & JACK I sent her on VHS back in 2002?)

And we both sound a little like Richard Kern, circa 2004:

RK:[The sex photography] business isn’t what it used to be.

DRE:What’s wrong with it?

RK:A lot of the point mags are going out of business. They dropped the pay tremendously and it’s all because of the internet. I used to go out once a month to LA and shoot for one week. I’d make a ton of money then come back to New York and do whatever I wanted.

Maybe if the emphasis was on the photography instead the sex, right, Susannah?

Anyway, I’m not passing the torch to anyone, not yet at least. I will pass on a little advice; to Richard, Susannah, young artists, and even myself. It’s question four of the AM I A PROFESSIONAL? self-assessment:

Can I make a living using the experience I’ve gained and skill-set I’ve built in my sexually oriented work in a non-sexual context?

For a wedding photographer with a family to be able to answer “yes” to the first three questions, she’s doing to have to charge $3K-$5K/wedding. A DP/Op needs to be able to charge about $1500/day to do stand-ups. A freelance writer needs to be able to charge about $1000/day to write promotional copy. An actor or dancer needs to make union scale. If your a writer or a photographer or a performer, this is where sex work cuts both ways:

1) Sad to say, but even if you answered the first three questions “yes” there’s every good chance that you are utterly employable in any other facet of the arts/entertainment/communications industries simply because you don’t have the first clue about what it means to work at a professional level. Simply put, sex is a crutch, and there’s a good chance you’re leaning on it.

2) Even if the work you do manifests the technical skills and professionalism to required of other subject matter, no one’s going to notice. All they’re going to notice is the sex. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, pull your portfolio together and walk it around town.

So then what’s an artist (writer or whatever) with a penchant for the erotic supposed to do? Truth is, I don’t know. Last week I was editing, thinking about every last frame; and thinking to myself, “You must be out of your ever loving mind. Of all the things in the world to devote yourself to, why this? Why not something a little more respectable? Or at least something that has a little more of a future?”

No good answer for that. No good answer for “Am I a professional?”

And maybe that’s because it’s the wrong question.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Sustainable Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.