Mom and Pop Porn, How Suburban America Nearly Took Over The Adult Industry!

By Andrew Davidson

Looking back, it seemed like the Old West. Andrew Davidson and a handful of other bootstrapping entrepreneurs were the pioneers of an entirely new era of porn. Mind you, this was not just some new genre of porn. This was a whole new paradigm, top to bottom – concept, content, production, sales and delivery. And it could have been big, really big. Or at least a whole lot bigger than it ultimately became.

These visionaries worked from kitchen tables and spare bedrooms to create a revolutionary “grass roots” type of porn operation. They were taking control away from the mobsters, sleazy perverts, and smoky backrooms of the “mainstream” porn business of the time, and bringing it right into their homes – and yours.

This was The People’s Porn! No big companies. No studios. No insipid, contrived plots. No coked-out bleach blonds with fake tits faking orgasms with guys who were pretending to be straight. Ok, so maybe there were a few coked-out bleach blonds. But I digress. Mind you, many of these innovators pursued their passion at their own peril. Andy’s book will tell you about a few of our mutual acquaintances who ran afoul of the “pleasure police” in their local communities. At least one did time in jail for a conviction that was later reversed. Where does she go to get that time back?

Was this an era of incredible video? Is everything on YouTube incredible video? No. Truth be told, most of it was garbage. And some of it, like that from Yucky Videos, was being purveyed by some genuine dickheads. But the concept was so different than anything anyone had ever conceived, that a few of us just could not resist jumping on board to see where this train would take us. Few went further than Andrew Davidson, who did not just ride this train. He steered it!

If you’ve done all the right things in your life – a claim that neither Andy nor I can make – then you are going to find this intriguing tale of “Mom & Pop Porn” absolutely captivating! Could this shit really have happened? Really? Even at its most unbelievable, it did! And Andrew Davidson’s ability to tell this story, with all its bumps and blemishes and bruises and warts – is incomparable!

Get ready to gasp. Get ready to laugh – a lot! Get ready to shake your head in disgust and disbelief. And get ready to hear a masterfully authored story about a revolution you never even knew took place!

- Hal Maroon

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Davidson
• Release date: Apr 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301386659

Andrew Davidson

Andrew Davidson is an award-winning journalist and author of the Sunday Times business interview page from 2003 to 2012. His previous books include Bloodlines, an anatomy of daily life at St Thomas’ Hospital, and Smart Luck, an anthology of his interviews with well-known entrepreneurs.

Book preview

Introduction

The story in this book is merely claimed to be the facts as I saw and experienced them, from my perspective at the time events were unfolding. My perspective may not be the whole story, nor may it be the complete accounting of actual events or facts. My perspective may well differ from other perspectives of the same events, actions, facts, and descriptions. My experiences make up the way I saw certain events, people, actions, facts, and companies. My experiences may be different from other people’s experiences, and hence, their point of view would differ surrounding the very same events and or facts.

Some of the names, places, and companies have been changed to protect the innocent, guilty, and/or the author. None of the accounts herein should be considered completely factual, as the accounts in this book are as the author saw them only. Any likeness or similarity to any company, persons, or places that are not specifically named in this book, is coincidental. Any events, actions, depictions, accounts, or statements made about any company, person, events, accounts, facts, opinions, or places that are named in this book, is merely done so through the author’s own perspective and are personal accounts and details of events that happened to him, and should not be considered factual.

Be forewarned, I am neither Democrat nor Republican. So this book does not push the agenda of either party. I believe in Liberty and live in New Hampshire, so I guess that would make me a Libertarian. This book merely tells what happened in the political arena at the time, it does not choose sides, it just tells the truth as it related to me, my company, and the industry. I am not advancing a Democratic or Republican agenda in this book. If it seems that I am too harsh to any political party, it is likely that they deserve it for the actions they took, not for which party they belong to.

From the Author

As I sat here preparing to write my story, the one thought that kept popping into my mind was: Boy am I going to make some enemies if I actually tell the truth about what happened! I had to literally decide, before writing this book, if I ever wanted to work in the adult industry again. The reason for this is that once I tell the truth about what I saw working in the both the online and real world adult industry, there is no going back to it.

There are a lot of things in this book that the industry, by and large, do not want the public to know. There are things in this book that the U.S. government does not want the American people to know, or come to realize. There are some secrets in this book that I will expose, that many of the bigger companies in the adult industry do not want anyone knowing… even other adult companies that they compete with.

After a bit of soul searching, I have decided to go ahead and write my story. I have accepted the fact that this means that nobody will ever work with me in the adult industry again. I have also accepted the fact that I will likely get hate mail from some of the people mentioned in this book that figure out who I really am. I know that this book will get certain people very upset with me. If telling the truth, as I saw it, is enough to get people mad at me, maybe they should change what they do, and how they act, instead of blaming me for telling my story. I should not have to fear telling the truth.

This is my story, how I saw it, and what was happening around me at the time. It is completely true as I recall it. I have always taken notes the entire time that I was in the adult industry when important things happened. I did this because I did not want to forget exactly what happened, or inadvertently offer up bad information upon reflection. I have gone back through my personal notes, my emails, spoken with people that were there, and reread news articles from the past twenty years while writing this book. I did this just to ensure that what I was writing was as close to the truth as I could humanly get it.

I invite you to join me as I take a journey through a large chunk of my adult life. Experience the things that I experienced, through my eyes, with me. I have not put everything that happened in this book… for good reasons. First, there is not enough time or pages to cover every single event. Second, some things were just not relevant to my story. Last, some of the things I could have written about would serve no other purpose than to humiliate some of the people that did them. That is not my goal with this book.

My goal is simply to let the average American into a section of our economy, and our world, that most do not realize exists. Or, if they do realize that it is out there, they are so misinformed about it that this book will shock them with reality. The adult industry has never been the same since the Internet has come along. The Internet threw out many of the old stereotypes that surround the people that are in the adult industry. You will notice I said "some"!

My story allows you to go through most of the major events that I went through, over the past fifteen years, as I made my way through the labyrinth that is the adult industry. Please keep in mind that I am allowing you to see my life, the things that happened, and my reactions to events over time. This can easily get lost if the perspective of time is not kept. Just because something was done to me by a particular person in chapter six and I share my reactions with you, then that same person does something to me in chapter eight, does not mean that if I share the event and my reaction to it with you that I am repeating myself. Remember, a year, maybe two could have passed between those two chapters. Hopefully, by the end, you will have a different view about your government, the adult industry, and what could have been. That being said… Let’s go burn some bridges!!!!

Dedication

I am dedicating this book to the memory of Den Recob. Wherever you are Denny, I hope this book makes you smile just a little!

Forward

Looking back, it seemed like the Old West. Andrew Davidson and a handful of other bootstrapping entrepreneurs were the pioneers of an entirely new era of porn. Mind you, this was not just some new genre of porn. This was a whole new paradigm, top to bottom – concept, content, production, sales and delivery. And it could have been big, really big. Or at least a whole lot bigger than it ultimately became.

These visionaries worked from kitchen tables and spare bedrooms to create a revolutionary grass roots type of porn operation. They were taking control away from the mobsters, sleazy perverts, and smoky backrooms of the mainstream porn business of the time, and bringing it right into their homes – and yours.

This was The People’s Porn! No big companies. No studios. No insipid, contrived plots. No coked-out bleach blonds with fake tits faking orgasms with guys who were pretending to be straight. Ok, so maybe there were a few coked-out bleach blonds. But I digress. Mind you, many of these innovators pursued their passion at their own peril. Andy’s book will tell you about a few of our mutual acquaintances who ran afoul of the pleasure police in their local communities. At least one did time in jail for a conviction that was later reversed. Where does she go to get that time back?

Was this an era of incredible video? Is everything on YouTube incredible video? No. Truth be told, most of it was garbage. And some of it, like that from Yucky Videos, was being purveyed by some genuine dickheads. But the concept was so different than anything anyone had ever conceived, that a few of us just could not resist jumping on board to see where this train would take us. Few went further than Andrew Davidson, who did not just ride this train. He steered it!

If you’ve done all the right things in your life – a claim that neither Andy nor I can make – then you are going to find this intriguing tale of Mom & Pop Porn absolutely captivating! Could this shit really have happened? Really? Even at its most unbelievable, it did! And Andrew Davidson’s ability to tell this story, with all its bumps and blemishes and bruises and warts – is incomparable!

Get ready to gasp. Get ready to laugh – a lot! Get ready to shake your head in disgust and disbelief. And get ready to hear a masterfully authored story about a revolution you never even knew took place!

Hal Maroon

HomeSexTapes.com

Mom & Pop Porn

How Suburban America Nearly Took Over The Adult Industry!

By Andrew Davidson

CHAPTER 1: In The Beginning

If I was not there to see it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it myself. I am talking about how close we actually came to having suburban America completely and utterly take over the adult industry in this country. This is not a joke or an exaggeration. In fact, the greatest misconception of the adult industry today is that it is comprised of a bunch of guys with handlebar mustaches, in trench coats, waiting at bus stops for Midwest girls with stars in their eyes to take advantage of after doping them up on cocaine. These days we are actually talking about people who live in cul-de-sacs, apartment complexes, and single-family houses. These range from trailers, to five thousand square-foot homes. This even includes people who do not have their own homes and still live with their parents or in a dorm. Your neighbors, your coworkers, your family members… AND you did not even know it! This is my story, which really happened in two phases, my education (my first attempt at an adult site/company), and my coming of age in the online adult industry (my second and much more successful adult site/company). I am getting a little ahead of myself here. To be able to tell you exactly what happened, I have to tell you how it all started… so that I can then tell you how it all ended, at least for me.

The year was 1996. Personal computers were just beginning to become personal computers. It was not long after that, when almost every red-blooded American male over the age of eighteen, that could afford a computer, went out looking for naked women on the Internet. I understand the Internet started long before this, with bulletin boards and USENET news groups, however, I am talking about Middle America moving into cyberspace. Once this happened, the call for porn went out across the globe, and there were plenty of people that answered that call. At this stage of the game you really only had two choices for porn. You could either go to the big studios to get it on VHS and in magazine form, or you could go out and download pictures of wives and girlfriends that were posted in these obscure corners of the Internet. However, if you did not know where to find these, you did not know they even existed, and you were stuck with platinum blonde, fake boob, faked orgasm, pro-porn. This was actually a great time for Internet nudity! It was a discovery stage where things were really just beginning and coming into their own. There was barely any spam or corporate hacks, and you were seeing real people posting nude pictures of themselves – FOR FREE! At this time all this really required was either a Polaroid camera, or someone who would develop nude pictures for you, and a scanner. The worst part about all of this was that sometimes you had to download multiple attachments in binary, then use third-party software to combine them just to see the picture that you downloaded. This could take nearly an hour at times. All this effort and time just to see a single picture of some guy's naked wife in Louisiana!

At this point in time, there were maybe a handful of sites that were selling adult videos. The major porn companies (and even mainstream legitimate companies) had not even gotten online yet, not really. There was no McDonalds.com, Xbox.com, or Netflix. Try to imagine, if you can, an Internet without eBay or Amazon, and really not a single major brick-and-mortar company. There were not any huge corporate websites, it was an unadulterated thing of beauty, truly for the people and by the people. All that was on the Internet at this time were bulletin boards, personal pages, the USENET, and a few small sites that were selling things. More than half of those small sites were selling pornography in some form. This was a time on the Internet where real homemade videos were selling around $50 for thirty minutes of shitty VHS footage. I understand this will be hard for a lot of people reading this book to believe, but I assure you, this was long before you could watch porn videos on the Internet for free and way before the over saturation of the adult industry on the Internet. I must admit that I ordered a few of these VHS videos at the time. The draw to see another real couple in their own home, using their own camcorder, filming themselves having sex, was just too strong to resist. I ordered a couple of fifteen minute videos to sample from different couples. These seemed to be hit or miss. You would get some really good ones, and then you would get some really bad ones. The problem with this is that when you are spending $50 a pop… they really all need to be good ones!

It was not long before small companies started to pop up selling a variety of these videos. Some were illegally selling them without consent, and others were trying to capitalize on an overpriced, under saturated market. I remember, in particular, three sites that started selling so called amateur videos. Keep in mind this was before the word amateur was annexed by the professional adult industry and ground into powder, then pissed on. When amateur really meant amateur! Once the mainstream adult market got a hold of that word, they just obliterated its meaning. I mean they destroyed it to the point that whenever anybody sees or hears the word Amateur these days, they roll their eyes and think "Here we go again". There are several different top level genres in porn; pro, amateur, and homemade. Pro is simply anything that a company shoots with professional equipment and with professional models. This is usually done on a set or on location with a pre-determined script and a director. This type of film is normally released by any well-known studio. Amateur is supposed to be a model that has never been paid to do an adult video before. The industry still counts a woman as amateur until she does something close to twenty paid videos. In reality, an amateur video should have people in it that have never done porn for pay before. This as well is shot with professional equipment, has a script, and is on a set or on location. This is the category that Gonzo porn falls into, however, sometimes Gonzo can be pro porn as well. Homemade is simply that. A couple, in their own home or on location, making a video with their own camcorder. No scripts, no special equipment, no assigned outfits, no director… nothing but regular people having sex on their own with their own camcorder. Pure unadulterated self-made adult videos. This is what I did. Normal every day couples filming themselves at home, or in public, having sex. Then they shop that video to sites like mine before making any money on it. This is what I thought I was buying back then.

Every time I went to these sites and ordered a small handful of videos, at about a dollar a minute, what I got back from every single one of them was horrible and not worth the money. At an average cost of $35 per video, I expected a lot more. Amateur does not have to mean obese, old, hairy, boring, and ugly. It also did not have to mean crap quality, out and out lying about content, or having no customer service. When you would contact these sites and try to get your money back because the video was not what they said it was in their little three line description, you never got a response. This pissed me off more than anything. I swore off purchasing adult videos online. If I wanted to watch an adult video, I had to go back to buying professional videos, realizing that there was no real alternative... yet.

I could not help, however, to continue to keep going back and thinking about how this market was exploiting its customers. This is really not a new concept to the adult industry as they build mansions through exploitation, and not of their models as most people assume, but of their customers. I also felt that if an homemade porn site was done correctly, it could really give mainstream porn a run for its money. I really had no idea how right I was! The funny thing is, as I look back on it now, the conservatives and politicians in this country actually had their chance to remove power from the HUGE porn companies and spread it out among many regular citizens and small businesses. They also would have been able to regulate the industry on an unparalleled level by just not getting involved in events and letting the market work itself out. Both sides (Democrats & Republicans) actually had a way in which they could wash their hands from straddling the fence as to whether porn should be legal or not. It would have been much easier to regulate, and it would have kept the lion’s share of porn money inside our borders. Unfortunately, none of them wanted to stand up and be the one that essentially made pornography 100% legal everywhere in the United States as that does not get votes. This would have been a great tax base, as this money turns over about six times in the economy when a normal person, instead of a big corporation, is actually the one that earns it. This is called the velocity of money. Velocity of money is very high when it comes to small business or personal earnings. The government also had their chance to dislodge the majority of pornography from the central power base in the Valley (the San Fernando Valley in California), but instead of doing this, they actually helped mainstream porn reestablished its power base. They also forced most Internet porn overseas, where it cannot be regulated or taxed. This was how all that money left our shores and helped to contribute to the worst economy since the Great Depression. Sometimes you get what you ask for! will be a recurring theme from here forward. However, I have gotten ahead of myself again already! The point here is that this was the little seed in the back of my brain, the pea under my mattress that kept eating at the back of my mind. It hung out for months like a relative with no job, eating my food, using my utilities, and refusing to go home. The funny thing is that I ended up answering this call on a bet that was made in a strip mall parking lot one night while on break from school! Believe it or not.

CHAPTER 2: Starting My First Failure!

It was October 1996 and I had just gotten married. I decided to take a certificate course at a local school. This was in a strip mall, because colleges were still VERY far behind the times when it came to the Internet. During one of the many class breaks we got, we were outside smoking cigarettes and a classmate and I got into a disagreement about the fastest way to generate Internet traffic (yes we had those discussions even in 1996). My answer was simple: PORN!. He thought otherwise for some strange reason. So, being unable to come to an agreement, and being red blooded American men, we solved this in the time tested manner that has withstood the ages... we made a bet! We collected our content, designed our web pages complete with counters, and launched them. Within a week I had twelve times the visitors he had. Porn had won the day!

Now, understand that this was a cheesy three page site with nothing but stolen images of women from the1970’s doing porn things. They had bad dye jobs and their pubic area looked like a jungle in the middle of Vietnam. I often wondered if any veterans ever woke up in the middle of the night soaked with sweat from having flashbacks in their sleep after looking at those pictures. I also had nice condom wallpaper set up on my site as the background. It was my PSA for the masses reminding them to have safe sex while masturbating on the Internet. This little page and bet started everything for me, and unknowingly, would consume the next fifteen years of my life. I could not believe how easy it was to get people to a site with naked women on it. This started me thinking about how I could use this information/lesson learned to make some money. I went out and started to cruise the Usenet newsgroups. I was finding thread after thread of men posting pictures of their girlfriends and wives. First, I could not believe that people were taking nude pictures of their wives and girlfriends, scanning them, then placing them online for everyone to see, faces and all. I had a hard time understanding this as I had led a very sheltered life up until that point.

Growing up, we always went to church. I was raised Episcopalian, then Born Again Christian. My mother had me when she was sixteen years old, and my biological father was driven away by my grandmother (with a tire iron!) for being abusive to my mother. At five years old, my mother moved us from New Hampshire to a slum town in northern Massachusetts. We were on welfare until my mother met my stepfather. Like most stepfathers (it would seem), mine had a drug problem and was a violent alcoholic. He never gave me the sex talk, so what I learned, I learned from friends. Living in a poor neighborhood, I was one of the only white kids in my neighborhood, and being in the slums, there were not a lot of fathers around... so you can imagine the kind of information I received on this subject. I did not tongue kiss a girl until I was thirteen. I felt my first breast at age fourteen, and I was seventeen before I had sex for the first time. Only eight years had passed between my first time having sex, and this venture. I am telling you this, so that you can see that I did not understand exhibitionism, partner swapping, or group sex. I had not even really heard of it at this point. So, people posting pictures of their wives on the Internet, was just downright strange to me. I was still trying to wrap my mind around lesbianism and homosexuality, let alone allowing some other dude to hammer your wife and leave his DNA inside of her.

After several weeks of watching the newsgroups (alt) every day, I started to notice the regulars. They were the ones that got the most responses, and the ones that seemed to have new material all the time. I had also spent a fair amount of time looking around for videos to sample. I visited a few VHS adult sites, ordered what was supposed to be amateur pornography, and shelled out way too much money for a bunch of videos that were more miss than hit.

At this time, in order to even find non-mainstream porn videos, you would have to cruise the newsgroups, and download a bunch of images (often putting them together yourself from the code). You would find the women that you liked to look at, and if you were very lucky they would sell you a video, or at least direct you to their site where you could buy a video via mail order. I made a list of the people that I liked, and that seemed to be the ones most others liked as well. I then went out to try to get their videos. I was heartbroken when the best ones did not have any videos available anywhere. This was also a key factor contributing to the formulation of my first web site. I started to think that if there was a central affordable place that people could come, buy quality REAL amateur videos of their favorite newsgroup girls and couples, it would make a million dollars! Sounds easy right? Wrong, so very wrong.

I moved forward with my idea. I bought the domain, and spent days thinking of how I would do this business. I figured that I would buy all of the editing and duplicating equipment, establish the site, pull the pictures from video, get the videos up for sale, fill all the orders, take all of the risk, and the couples/women could just supply the videos to me. We would do a fifty-fifty split of the profits, and everyone would be happier than a married man on his birthday waiting for his annual blow job! I began to do my due diligence. I designed a logo (which was a lot harder in those days), and then I started looking for a host. This is when I realized how puritanical New England still was. I, unbelievably, could not find a company to host my website. All of the major national hosts, and most local hosts, did not do adult sites. I, however, did not let this deter me. I finally found a startup hosting company in Andover, MA called Netway. This was started by a couple of guys that were about my age (twenty five), and they were willing to talk about things, so I drove over to meet with them. We discussed everything, and they decided after hearing the idea that they would host the site! Now all that I needed was the videos and the cash would come rolling in! Expectations are easy when you are ignorant!

It was early December and Christmas was coming. I began looking at equipment and trying to track down some women to supply videos. VHS duplicators at this time were $5,000 and up. This was per deck! That idea was out, as I only had about $200.00, and that was supposed to be Christmas money. I did some research and realized that I was going to need about $2,000.00 to start my company. Even then, this would have to be done using substandard equipment. I did not have that kind of money. I was out of work, and I could not exactly go to my family and ask them to front me some cash so that I could get into the porn industry. Religious people tend not to fund smut companies if they can help it! I ended up going to my friend David's father, Aaron. Aaron was a golfing buddy of mine, they both were actually, and I explained my idea to him. I told Aaron what I needed for money, and offered him a full partnership if he would seed it. He was a great guy, and cut me a check that day for $2,000.00. I could not believe it. I was off to Circuit City to buy some two head VCRs and some audio-video cables. These would have to be some cheap knock off brand… but I did not care at this point!

Try to remember, two head VCRs at this time were around $300.00. I had intended to get the four head stereo models, but they were another $100-$200 each and that just was not in my budget. I bought five VHS decks, and six audio-video cable sets. This came to about $1,750.00! So my entire budget had been almost eaten up just by purchasing crappy consumer set-top equipment. I found a place that could supply VHS tapes at seventy five minutes each for a decent price (90-120 minutes were much more expensive). I got some cardboard white sleeves with a side window and VHS window blank labels that would work in an ink-jet printer. Fifty tapes cost me $150.00, the sleeves and labels cost me another $50.00 and shipping was $50.00. This put my total at exactly $2,000.00. I was ready to go! Actually, I still needed something to sell, but that was the easy part… right?

As you have probably inferred, getting videos ended up being a bigger issue than I had originally thought. I spent countless hours sending emails and talking on the phone with people. There was one woman, in particular, that I wanted to get on the site. I will withhold her real name for privacy purposes. Turns out her husband (now ex) had taken tons of video of her and thousands of pictures. People went crazy for her in the newsgroups. She was not your typical porn star. She had small B-cups, brown hair, was a little wall eyed, very pale skin, and was very short. She did, however, look like everyone’s girl next door. She was very pretty, and as it turned out, extremely kinky. This one couple really summed up everything that the large adult companies just did not understand about what their customers wanted. Seeing a woman that one would never expect to be anything but an upstanding member of society get behind closed doors and turn into a sex animal. It is just too much for a red-blooded American male to resist. The thought that some bank teller, store clerk, or teacher could get behind closed doors and do things so kinky that you barely saw them done in mainstream porn… you could just sense all the male pant cuffs in this country getting several inches shorter at the mere thought! Throw in the fact that this woman held a legitimate job and really was the girl next door... gone bad! I just knew it was money in the bank. I knew if I could get their videos, not only would I make some serious money, but it would put my yet to be launched site on the map! I decided to focus on getting quality first, so I turned my attention to this one couple. I talked with the male for hours on the phone and exchanged emails over several days with him. We finally reached an agreement at around midnight just several days before Christmas. I was so excited that I woke my wife up to tell her the great news! She did not understand, or care, all she knew was that I was $2,000.00 in the hole and she had to get up for work the next day. She really did not understand how I planned to make money from this little plastic box in the living room. She only knew that I was excited about it, so she encouraged me to go forward and do what I wanted... as long as it did not involve waking her up again. I did not sleep at all that night as this meant I was going to be able to launch my site by New Year's!

Over the next couple of days, I was able to sign several more couples to the site, and began to design the pages and upload them. At this time there was no high speed Internet available to normal people. There was, but it would have cost me almost $1,000 per month. So this site was designed to load quickly under dial-up conditions. Keep in mind we are talking about 9600 bps! That is no joke. These were the speeds we were looking at back in the day, and I was