Archive for November 25th, 2011
Diary of a porn store clerk – Pornography – Salon.com
The short, squat man in the Dallas Cowboys windbreaker staggers out from the arcade, propping himself against the wall. Between that and the sweat beading his body, I know he’s left me a surprise in one of the booths: My first dirty needle. A minor panic fills my body. I hope he hasn’t buried it underneath a pile of semen-encrusted paper towels. No job is worth hepatitis. Especially not a job monitoring glory holes at a cruising spot across the street from a middle school in Portland, Ore.
No matter how much you think you know about the varied and nuanced spectrum of human sexuality, you realize you don’t know squat until you work in a porn store with a vibrant and active arcade. People don’t come here to buy porn. Our customers – over 90 percent same-sex-attracted men — come here to meet up for casual, semi-public sex. The arcade is a dark, damp area with about 15 small, squarish booths with video screens, chairs, trash cans and, of course, paper towels.
