PSATSP
Porn Stars Are The Saddest People
By Peter Hardwick
Wednesday, October 30
When I’m not shooting, I’m usually at the gym or running. (not jogging, fucking running, man, six minute miles, five miles every day, rain or shine) One time I started to figure out how much weight I actually lift in a day at the gym and got totally freaked out. Take arm curls: 50 pounds each arm, 10 reps, 10 sets of reps. 100 pounds lifted 100 times. That’s 10,000 fucking pounds. That’s one station, one exercise. Two hours of this, legs, arms, glutes, pecks, traps and delts. I lift a fucking fleet of cars four times a week. No wonder I’m tired, no wonder sadness just settles over me all of a sudden at the most random times, while working, at the grocery store, going out (not that I do much of that anymore). While I’m working out, I feel great, like Dicaprio at the bow, Rocky beating Ivan Drago. But the rest of the time, there’s a vague hollowness or a disquieting stillness in me, like I’m just shuffling along, numb and dumb, blank and empty. A ghost.
(Bogus Fan theory alert: “OMG, he’s a ghost, he’s been dead the whole time.” Whatever.)
It’s like I use up all my endorphins at the gym and when when I’m away, the amount of energy it takes to summon them can’t be found in the routine of daily life. The only time I get that little frisson of electricity, that surge of excitement, is when I’m out with a woman I really like and really want to be with, when I can temporarily forget the disappointment that is about to drop when I have to tell her what I do and the inevitable look that comes to their faces—not exactly disgust, but a brief moment of being stunned followed by an immediate pulling away, a rewriting in her mind of how she sees me, what she thinks of me, a retreating from any notions she may have had about any kind of relationship with me. All of this right before she suddenly remembers she has an important meeting first thing in the morning.
Anyway, today, my gym rat buddy, Carl, asked me if I actually watched porn. I lied and said, “Naw, man. After you see the sausage being made, the last thing you want to do is eat it.” Though, to put it more more succinctly, it’s not that I watch the sausage being made, it’s that I am the sausage. I am what gets ground up and consumed, spiced with Viagra, shoved onto glowing screens, your sexual avatar, your temporary fuck boy, your guide to Never-Never Land.
The truth is, I do watch porn. But I only watch porn when I want to feel sad, when I want to be reminded that that’s me, that I’m nothing, no one, just a stick and balls, a spike of meat, a splash of come. Splash of Come, pretty sure that was a spell ingredient in the porn version of Harry Potter.
But really, though, does anything else remind you how alone you are than watching porn by yourself?