I Used To Work In Porn - Part Two

This post is a continuation of the post from yesterday. Before reading, you may want to visit this post to get caught up.

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As explained in yesterday's post, I had accidentally fallen into a way to make money and had started looking for ways to make more. Suddenly, finding myself surrounded by hard-core pornography, I had an idea.

Kids didn't have access to this kind of stuff. Other than sneaking looks at the Playboy's in their dad's closets, this was unavailable to people our age. However, I had access to a lot of it and I was just positive they would be willing to pay.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I found any excuse I could to ride my bike into town. This town was in the city limits and I lived a few miles out. I would go into the abandoned house, load up my backpack and ride back home to put the magazines in boxes under my bed. It took me a few dozen trips to get them all. Occasionally, my friend who found them was available to help me, but most of the time, I was on my own.

The second floor of our house consisted of only the bedrooms of my brothers and myself, so my parents didn't come up there very often. I used this fortunately convenient privacy as an opportunity to start sorting through these adult publications to get them in some sort of reasonable order. Once I felt that I had a decent grasp on my inventory and was familiar with what I had, it was time to find buyers.

I never got caught with anything at school, but there were a few close calls. A bunch of students standing and giggling in the middle of the hallway while crowded around something had a tendency to attract the attention of school faculty. I quickly decided that was too risky. I needed another tactic.

On the weekends, I would load up my backpack and make house calls. I went to kids' houses and showed them what I had. Since, I had paid nothing for any of it, every sale was pure profit. I sold most magazines for five dollars, but I quickly discovered that junior high kids really had no grasp on what stuff was worth and could sometimes sell a magazine for as much as twenty. I could really pull a lot of money by cutting one up and selling individual pictures for a dollar or two a piece.

I know these prices sound outrageous, but a sixth grader would give me anything he could get his hands on in order to have his own picture of a naked woman.

I would go with my parents to a wedding and gather several kids to go outside and see what I had brought. Soon the money would start changing hands. I sold porn to kids from my school, kids from other schools at basketball games, kids I had never met at weddings and anyplace else that I could. Looking back on it, I have no idea how I never got ratted out by any of them.

Eventually, my friend who had originally found all the magazines, decided he wanted a bigger cut of the money I was making. I had been paying him 10% since he was the one who had found them, but did not feel that he was entitled to any more since he wasn't doing any of the work and was incurring none of the risk. However, he did not agree. Finally, he demanded that I give him half of the magazines that I still had or he would inform my parents of what I had been doing. I stood firm and decided to call his bluff.

He wasn't bluffing.

He showed up at our house the very next day and told my mother. Now, he either didn't tell her the entire story or she missed some of the details during the shock of what she was hearing, but when she came to talk to me, she didn't know about the porn ring I was running out of my bedroom. All she knew was that I had pornography in my possession.

When she told me to retrieve the magazines out of my room, I will never forget the look on her face as her jaw dropped when I came down the stairs carrying two large paper grocery bags filled to the top. When I turned around to go back to my room, she said, "Where are you going? We aren't done here."

I sheepishly answered, "There's more. I'm going to get the rest."

My poor mother spent the next couple of hours trying not to look at the dirty pictures as she cried over a burn barrel while ripping them up to toss in the fire. I sat in the house wondering what would happen when dad got home and found out.

I know NOTHING!

When she asked my little brothers if they had seen my magazines, thankfully, they both covered for me. They claimed they didn't know anything about them. They may have just been covering their own butts, but had Mom known that my little brothers had been subjected to that filth as well, I would have been in much more trouble.

I didn't get into as much trouble as I thought I would. In fact, I never heard a word about it from my dad, but my future as a porn empire magnate was over. Being so young, the money I made was not spent on anything substantial. I have no idea how much passed through my hands since it was being spent as I made it. I remember that I always had a soda when I wanted one and I could buy a book or video game for myself if my parents said no. Soon it was all gone and I had nothing to show for it.

I ended up back where I started and had to go back to selling lunch room tickets, but I was smarter than before. However, it would be many years before I would be able to use my new knowledge. Turns out that real life was not like those magazines.

I Used To Work In Porn - Part One

This post inspired by the writing prompt at Can I Get Another Bottle of Whine With My Morning Quiet Time?.  Writing prompt: When I was younger I tried...

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When I was younger I tried to manage a pornography ring.

I know that is a heavy statement. Let me back up and explain.

When I graduated from elementary school and entered high school, I was scared out of my mind. I just knew I would get stabbed the first day. If for some reason I did survive, I would have to spend all my energy dodging junkies, avoiding getting sucked into a gang and practicing to "Just say NO!"

When I actually got there and lived through my first day, I concluded that it wasn't that bad. I was a puny nerd and it was still a bit intimidating, but I was more comfortable than when I first entered that morning. After a couple of weeks, I began to get a feel for the place.

I very quickly began to notice some of the differences from the years before. In junior high, we paid for our school lunches well ahead of time. Our parents could pay for the entire year up front or cover a month at a time. If they were behind, they would get billed and catch up, but high school did it differently.

The high school sold lunch tickets to be presented in the cafeteria in exchange for a meal. These tickets could only be purchased before school or during lunch period from the guidance counselor.

One ticket = one cafeteria meal = $1.

One week's lunch. It all started with this.

Every Monday, my parents gave me five dollars to buy a week's worth of tickets for my lunch. I bought them as soon as I got to school and put them in my wallet. However, not everyone had the foresight that I did. Many students never thought about their lunch until the lunch bell rang. Then they would have to go stand in line at the guidance counselor's office to get a ticket before crossing the parking lot to the cafeteria to stand in line again to get their food. By then, all the best stuff might be gone and they had already lost almost half of the already short 30 minute lunch period.

One day in class, I pulled the tickets out of my wallet to rip one off and stick in my pocket. The bell was about to ring and I didn't want to waste any time. It was pizza day and I wanted to be ready to bolt as soon as I heard that bell. 

A guy in the next row saw my tickets and asked if he could buy one. He had forgotten to get his earlier and didn't want to stand in line and miss the best pizza. So, I sold him one. That caught another guy's attention and I ended up selling all I had, except the one for me. All that meant was that I would have to buy more tickets the next morning. It was no big deal.

The next day, I was asked again if I had extras. I said I did and sold them, but griped that they should plan ahead and buy their own. Once again, I had to stand in line the next day to replace them. I hated standing in that line and vowed that I would not sell any more tickets. It just wasn't worth it. It's not like I was getting anything out of this......WHOA! Wait a minute! What if I could get something out of it? If I made a little bit of money, it would be worth it.

When I was asked for my extra tickets right before lunch the next day, I held my head up and demanded $1.50.

DUMB JOCK: "What? Tickets only cost a dollar."

ME: "Wrong. The guidance counselor charges a dollar, but she doesn't sell tickets in this room. This room is my market and here they cost $1.50. If you don't want to pay it, then go stand in her line."

While he thought about it, the guy behind me decided it was worth it to be able to avoid the delay and lose all that time. He paid me what I asked for, which prompted others to do the same. I only sold four tickets, but that meant I had made a two dollar profit. I used all that money to buy more tickets and keep doing the same. Within a couple of weeks, I was buying 10 to 20 lunch tickets every morning before school. I sold them at a 50% mark up selling out almost every day. I averaged $25 to $40 a week in profits. Not bad for a 14 year old kid.

Like most people, I got a little greedy and wanted to make more money. I tried jumping the price to $1.75, but no one would buy at that price. It hurt my sales which killed my profits and I quickly dropped the price back again. Since I always had extra money, I tried loaning some occasionally. I would buy someone a soda or candy bar if they agreed to pay me back within a week plus a little extra. I even carried a pocket notebook around to keep track of my transactions. However, being a little nerdy guy, I really had no way to enforce collections if someone stiffed me. It never occurred to me to hire a bruiser, so the loan shark game was short lived. I went back to all money up front.

Soon, I lucked upon the knowledge that there was a way to get two sodas from the soda machine when only one was purchased. After school, I stood beside the machine and would offer to get students an extra soda if they paid for one and a half. Sodas were $1. If they put a dollar in the machine and then gave me fifty cents, I would get them two sodas. They got more than they paid for and I made fifty cents per transaction. That added a few extra dollars each day to my profits, but it was too slow. I needed something bigger.

It wasn't long before bigger happened. A friend of mine was wandering around town and decided to go into an abandoned house one weekend. This house had sat empty for well over a year and he just wanted to see what was inside. He discovered a closet full of pornographic magazines. He told me about it at school the next day.

As a 14 year old boy, I was very interested in seeing these magazines and accompanied him to the house the following weekend. I was amazed. There were literally a few hundred magazines of all types. Up to that time, I had only seen a couple of Playboys at a friend's house, but these were different. They were not standard publications. They were not just full of naked women. They were hard-core porn and a lot of them. I had never seen anything like what was in these pages and it occurred to me that most other kids hadn't seen this stuff before either. Remember - this was years before the internet.

Then, the idea hit me like a thunderbolt. Other kids hadn't seen this stuff. I was sitting on a goldmine.

Everything about my little business was about to change, but this post has gotten long enough. I will wrap it up in the next post. I know it seems unfair since I just now finally got to the porn part, but there was a lot of back story.

For those of you who are overly excited and are unsure if you can wait for the porn, I hear that there are plenty of other sites that can accommodate you until then.

Awards Fairy Detox

I got a surprise this morning after answering my front door. When I saw who was on the other side, I immediately slammed it shut again.  The last time I saw this guy, he was dragged off my property by the police. I haven't heard from him since. It was the Awards Fairy.

Since it was a nice day, I had my windows open and he just walked to one of those windows and pleaded with me to put down my phone and listen. He said that after he spent the night in jail, he was sent to rehab. He claimed he was clean now and had to return to my house to make amends as part of his recovery program.

Wanting to be supportive, but still not entirely trusting this fairy who had run up my cell phone bill, ate my pizza lunch, urinated on my couch and holed up in my home for several days, I stepped outside. Before stepping out, I grabbed the restraining order I had against him to remind him why he couldn't stay after he made his peace with me.

He did apologize for his past behavior. He then said before he went any further, he had something for me. He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and handed it to me.

The front of the envelope said it was from Rusty at Swinging Like a Rusty Gate and it was dated March 15. I pointed out that this was from 6 weeks ago. Why am I just getting it now? He reminded me that he had been in jail and rehab for the last couple of months because I kept having him arrested. I had to agree that he had a point.

I opened the envelope to see what Rusty had sent me. It was the Kreative Blogger award.

Thank you, Rusty for this award. I am sorry it took so long for me to respond, but I guess it couldn't be helped since the fairy had it the entire time.

The award rules are pretty simple. Award recipients are to list 10 random things about themselves and then pass it on to other deserving bloggers. The number of bloggers to pass it on to is not listed.

10 random facts about me:

1. When my son Christian was 6 years old and had lost his third pair of shoes in one week, I grounded him from shoes for a month. He had to go everywhere barefoot (church, grocery store, etc.) Restaurants won't allow people without shoes to come in, so he had to eat outside while we finished our meal inside. He never lost another pair of shoes.
2. We had a baby deer for a pet named Bird. He was named after the first word spoken by the deer in Bambi. Our dogs didn't like to play with him, because he would butt them in the head.
3. I am close to hotting the "100 blog posts" mark. I have something special planned for number 100.



I WANNA ROCK!!!

4. In junior high, I founded a Twisted Sister fan club.
5. I do not own a bed.
6. I can't throw away bubble wrap until I know that every bubble has been popped.
7. The most money I have ever made in my life was as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.
8. When I was still a white belt in Tae Kwon Do, I defeated a guy who was a brown belt in judo and black belt in karate during a sparring match. I enjoyed my victory from the couch for the next week since he injured me badly enough I couldn't walk. I still won.
9. I still own over 300 cassette tapes. Mostly music from the 80's (when I was in high school). I haven't owned a cassette player for several years, but can't bring myself to get rid of them.
10. When my daughter was being potty trained, she started potty training her Barbies. When they made a mess, she would punish them by throwing them in the freezer. We still don't know why.

Bloggers I want to pass this on to:

• Super Earthling - I only discovered this blog about a month ago and spent the next few weeks digging through her archives to read it all. You never know which of the author's multiple personalities (each with her own name) will be writing that day, but it is always worth it.

• 

  Click picture to learn more.

  Pish-Posh - I have been reading Pish for a long time and have been a fan since the first time I found her. She writes on a variety of topics from very serious and touching to the bizarre (ex. drunk zombies trying to ride bikes). She recently started the Pish Posh Get Fit! Challenge and several people have linked up with her to try to improve their lives.
• The Incoherent Ramblings of a Moose - Lily writes about various topics, but my favorites are when she talks about her heathen son that she refers to as Spawn. If Lily's predictions are correct, one day Spawn will rule the world and it will not be pleasant.

After taking care of the requirements of the award, I thanked the fairy and wished him well. I even shook his hand and told him that I was glad he got the help he needed. As he turned to leave, a truck pulled up and the driver said, "Let's go." The truck bed was loaded down with a TV, some furniture and assorted other things. The fairy jumped in and they sped off.

I returned to my house and immediately noticed that my living room was empty and the back door was open. He had gotten me again while he kept me busy in the front yard. I didn't even think to get the license plate number.

Grand Theft Auto - Kindergarten Style

Not actual car, but closest I could find.

My brother Kyle drove a 1974 AMC Javelin when he was a teenager. He loved that car.

One night, as he was driving home, the car broke down. He pulled over to the side of the road and discovered he would need a few tools to get it running again. Since it was well after dark, it would have to sit until morning. We lived out in the country and knew the car would be safe until then.

The next morning the trip to get the car was a little delayed because we had family come in from out of town. After visiting with them for a few hours, he enlisted me to drive him out there.

We took Kyle's second vehicle. It was a large flatbed truck used to haul water. Kyle had a water hauling business. At the time, we lived in an area that did not have water lines. Everyone in the area got their water from a well. Using a well for your water supply means that you have a limited amount of water and it is possible to run out. If someone went empty they would pay Kyle to come out and refill their well.

Our visiting family members included our 6 year old cousin, Fred. He was fascinated by the large truck, so we asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. He was thrilled to get to climb up in the cab with us. We were soon on our way.

After driving a few miles, Kyle points at his car and says, "Look at that. Someone left a car on the side of the road."

Fred had never asked us where we were going and had never seen this car before. He didn't know it belonged to Kyle. He looked up over the dashboard and commented on how cool it was. I suggested we pull over to get a better look at it.

Kyle pulled his truck up in front of the Javelin and we all get out. Kyle and I watch Fred admiring the car. As Fred is looking in one of the windows, I open the side door. "Hey, look. It's unlocked."

Fred's eyes opened wide. "You can't do that."

Kyle told him, "Relax. There's no one around."

No one for miles.

We lived in a farming community and this was one of those areas where a house could not be seen in any direction. It was all fields, but Fred stood his ground.

As Kyle climbed into the car, Fred protested again, "Get out of there. The cops will get you."

I open the hood and yell, "Hey, Kyle, I think I see the problem."

Fred yells at both of us, "I want to go back. Let's leave."

Ignoring Fred's pleas, Kyle joins me at the front of the car and says, "I think I can fix this. Hey, Fred, grab those tools under the driver's seat."

Fred: "No."

Me: "Fred, the quicker we get this car going, the faster we can get out of here. Now hurry."

Fred hangs his head and slowly walks to the truck. He retrieves the tools and comes back to stand beside us. He stood there looking at the tools in his hands, contemplating whether he should be an accomplice in this crime he did not want to commit.

Kyle: "Give me the tools and go behind the truck and watch for cars."

Fred: "What?"

Me: "We need you to keep watch in case someone comes."

Fred: "I don't want to. I'll wait in the truck."

Kyle: "Fred, at this point, if someone comes, we will all get busted. Now, help us out and go watch for cars."

Fred, moving slower than ever, shuffled over to the other side of the truck so he could get a clear view of the road. Kyle begins working under the hood. I assist with my limited mechanical abilities (which usually means turning the key when Kyle says to). We soon forgot about Fred out there keeping us safe.

After a few minutes, we hear Fred scream. I look up and see him come running around the corner of the truck yelling, "CAR! CAR! There's a car coming!"

Fred runs by us and dives into the ditch. Kyle and I quickly take our places hiding behind the car as well. Trying not to laugh, I start to say something to Fred, but he cuts me off and puts his finger to his lips, "SHHHHHH!"

Once the car got by us, Kyle and I stood up. Fred yelled, "Not yet, they could still see us. Get down!"

Once he felt it was safe, he stood up, gave us a dirty look and went back to his place behind the truck without any of us saying a word.

Kyle soon had the car started and we yelled for Fred. I hopped in the Javelin to drive it back and told Fred to get in. He said he was not getting anywhere near the car and climbed in with Kyle in the truck.

On the way back to the house, Kyle was explaining to Fred that he couldn't tell anyone about this. He had to keep his mouth shut until he repainted the car. Fred just sat there with his arms crossed and did not talk all the way back.

Back at the house, I parked the Javelin in the garage and closed the door. Kyle parked behind the house and I helped Fred out of the truck. Before going inside, we reminded him once again that he could not tell about what we had just done. He nodded his head.

We walked to the house and as soon as I opened the door, Fred bolted inside. He ran up to his mother and the little narc spilled out the whole story in one breath.

"MOM, I DIDN'T WANT TO, BUT THEY MADE ME. I GOT SCRATCHED AND WET HIDING IN A DITCH AND THE COPS ARE COMING, BUT I DIDN'T DO IT. IT WAS THEM. THEY TOLD ME NOT TO TELL AND THEN PUT IT IN THE GARAGE. I GAVE HIM A WRENCH BUT IT WASN'T MY FAULT. I DIDN'T WANT TO."

When he paused to take a breath, his mother, alarmed by the excited state of her son said, "Wait, what happened?"

Fred hung his head and cried, "We stole a car."

She looked up at us. Kyle and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and went back outside.