Devon Hunter

Hey everybody! I hope you’re having a good week so far. An interview I gave about 10 days ago has gone live. If you would like to read it, you can click to follow this link. For the most part it’s what I’ve said before about gay-for-pay, my path entering into adult entrainment, and chocolate (HA!); however, in addition to that, we do discuss pretty shirts, porn models with whom I would like to work and why, my choice not to do scenes with women in videos, the media company I would like to start, professionalism within escorting and some nuances about why I like Janet Jackson so much. If you want to read it, it’s there. Gay Porn Fanatic has a very involved blog, and you might enjoy visiting his site for its breadth of coverage. I am including a link to his site, because although this blog here focuses on me, Gay Porn Fanatic does a very good job of providing a type of interactive directory to all topics/people gay porn related. The link to this interview will also be under the Interviews tab.

Okay, so I just realized something after winding down from this 5-day-funk: I am happiest when I am organized. I excel at making lists and accomplishing whatever is on them. I was valedictorian with two majors and a minor, I finished my MFA at UCLA in record time for my department, I handled a big debt very quickly, and I have accomplished everything else only because of one tool: Organization.

I really believe in speaking/thinking what I want into being. I have been saying for far too long that there’s simply not enough time anymore to get everything done. BULLSHIT!

Unfortunately, I thought that untruth into being… I used to get so much more done in far less time, so this “there’s not enough time” nonsense is outright false. There’s no more or less time now than there was before: I’ve simply allowed myself to get too disorganized/distracted/lax.

How many hours that pile up into months have I done something as ridiculous as sit idly on the internet (even sat there thinking, “I should get up and do something else”)? Twitter is fun, but only in small doses. That’s true of any other internet activity that has been gobbling up my precious time for far too long. I’m an internet addict. No, a connectivity addict. My technology has taken over my life: I have been assimilated like a Borg!

It is time to disconnect… I’m getting excited just thinking about it! OMG, there are some talents and skills I lack utterly; however, getting organized is one my fortes! I already know how I’m going to consolidate this time budget into practice: Rather than try to schedule every moment of every day (which is how I got through school and being an educator, but which absolutely does NOT work in a quotidian context), I will have checklists of hours spent on a daily/weekly/ monthly basis for tackling everything that has been piling up for the last eight months while I’ve been distracted over stuff that doesn’t matter. True: I need to manage my online presence.. but it’s time to stop being so tempted by every stupid headline that leads to a story about something I don’t need to waste time reading! I don’t give a damn that someone caught an 8-foot gar in Alabama that weighs 400 pounds! GOD! Why do I know this???

Oh, I feel so much better already… I’m not over-structuring like I would have in my teens and 20′s. I’m simply setting parameters and quotas for various priorities. And that is the keystone that was slipping loose from my arch: I was making too many trivialities into quests. Child, stop! I’ve got five languages to learn, twelve novels to write, 500 dances to choreograph, next week’s grocery shopping to buy, two Yoga practices per week to transcend (on top of the gym workouts I’ve barely made a priority each week), and about 86,937 other ways of being fucking fabulous to incorporate into reality, and I need to make a list…

Where’s that sticky note? The Honey Badger is back, baby, and I need to brush up on my French… Move, Tweeps! I’ll hollar at y’all briefly, but SuperDevon gotta get this Chinese learnt STAT. Oh hell, lemme take the recycling out (and hand me those unfinished poems, please…).

Two flakes here in Philly have reminded me of a class of time waster I’d overlooked when I wrote “Red Flags: Time Wasters & No-Shows,” but I remember them now…

The young and the beautiful: Clients under 30 years old, students of any age, and self-professed hot guys are extraordinarily likely to flake. Although a few will follow through, most of these are looking to get their egos stroked by getting a discount or freebie. If you agree, you have lost money; however, if you don’t relent, you are likely to get stood up. Beware of any client who tells you in some way that you will be lucky/glad/turned on by how young or beautiful he is. I take it with a grain of salt when “hot” people try to work me for their egos’ sakes. I am lucky/glad/turned on to have respectful, reliable clients. You would be best doing what I do: Schedule the young and the beautiful only if your itinerary is already full, and you can afford it when they flake out (which is why I am more amused than angry right now).

I haven’t written a practical blog for career advice in quite a while, so it’s time to do that. In light of two of my interactions here in San Francisco, I am reminded that I have meant to discuss this in the past: Timewasters.

In escorting, as with many other professions, time is money. And so people who waste time are particular problematic, especially in cities where overhead is naturally high (e.g. New York City, San Francisco, Miami, etc.). Time Wasters and No-Shows can completely undermine your trip, and you won’t know it’s happened in many cases until you are either en route or already at your destination. It is very important to identify red flags, so that you can minimize this problem.

As I said in “Street walkers, walking into Darkness” in April, 2010, you must be very organized. One way to do this is to screen clients via email, not phone calls and texts. By communicating through an on-going, written conversation, you can look for the following red flags:

• Fragments: A client is more likely to flake if he does not communicate in full sentences via email.
• Extreme delays: If it takes a client more than 2 days to reply every time you exchange email he is more likely to flake.
• Sudden, urgent messages: If a client (particularly one you do not yet know) is eager to meet NOW, then he is just as likely to masturbate and flake, or to contact several escorts at once and go with the one who replies first. You should generally avoid last minutes, especially if they write in fragments. These often commit the following faux pas as well:
• Haggling: Your fee is your fee. If it is fair, then do not come down off of it, or you crack the door open on desperation, and that is a slippery slope into degrading compromises. Even if someone relents and agrees to your fee, what will you do when he shows up and has only that amount he originally offered you? If he can’t afford you, you can’t afford him. Also, he may agree, set up the appointment, and then flake because he didn’t have the money in the first place.
• Waffling: If someone needs to adjust the date and time once, that’s fairly common. Even twice doesn’t seem so bad; however, if someone keeps messing with the time, or in some way seems to question coming, he is much more likely to flake.
• Excessive communication and Psychic Vampires: The opposite problem of Fragments and Extreme Delays. There is a difference between hearing regularly from an established client (who is also a friend) and getting more updates than are needed from an unknown/new client (especially when the correspondences don’t add any new or pertinent information to the ensuing appointment). There is a fairly good chance these men will not show up, because they’ve already gotten everything from you they needed for free. If the person in question is a good, reliable client/friend, then obviously this does not apply.
• Disappearance: If the communication feels good, the appointment is scheduled and confirmed by all parties, but then the client no longer replies to messages in any form (e.g. voicemail, texts, email), he is likely to have changed his mind and simply doesn’t want to deal with canceling. This is extremely problematic, because you can’t know how to proceed. I suggest getting ready in case the appointment happens, but not to be too surprised if it doesn’t.
• ADDED 1/28/11: The young and the beautiful: Clients under 30 years old, students of any age, and self-professed hot guys are extraordinarily likely to flake. Although a few will follow through, most of these are looking to get their egos stroked by getting a discount or freebie. If you agree, you have lost money; however, if you don’t relent, you are likely to get stood up. Beware of any client who tells you in some way that you will be lucky/glad/turned on by how young or beautiful he is. I take it with a grain of salt when “hot” people try to work me for their egos’ sakes. I am lucky/glad/turned on to have respectful, reliable clients. You would be best doing what I do: Schedule the young and the beautiful only if your itinerary is already full, and you can afford it when they flake out (which is why I am more amused than angry right now).

All of this works both ways. Clients can look at the above and decide whether or not an escort is unreliable as well. In addition to this, clients will often fare better when selecting escorts who have multiple affirming reviews. If you are particularly interested in an unreviewed escort consider that he is more likely to flake under the following conditions:

• Hometown player: He’s not on the road, and doesn’t have to cover the overhead of travel.
• Youth: The young… Need we say more?
• Underpriced: There are a couple issues here. Is he willing to provide full escorting services at a price that seems too low? Why? Is he not the person in the pics (but hopes you’ll let him stay, since it’s easier than searching again – his fee is low after all)? Is he going to do add-ons unexpectedly? His base fee is the low fee, but this is $x and that is $y? Attaching a fee to a sexual activity is prostitution, and that is illegal in most places. Another consideration: If his fee is low he has less to lose by not showing up, so the incentive to keep the appointment is reduced.
• Porn Stars: Just because someone is a brilliant video model, it doesn’t guarantee he is a good companion. Look for reviews.
• Short term ads: Take your time. Watch the ads. The guys with faceless pics who advertise only a few days aren’t likely to be professional. Professionals maintain a web presence through ads, blogs, and other forms of consistent interactivity with the public. Traveling escorts will often have multiple ads, and one of them may be permanent, or the escort will make it easy to find himself in a consistent manner. Three-day hustlers often have an array of complications attached to them, and are very likely to flake.

(In the spirit of providing useful information and a place for intelligent dialogue, www.DevonHunter.info accepts well written blog entries about topics of concern to adult entertainment. The views expressed in the following article are not necessarily shared by the operators of the hosting site. Archived guest writers’ articles will be listed under Interviews & Essays.)

The best way to alienate your fans

In my previous post, I talked about a few ways to draw people to your work and connect with them in order to promote loyalty and increase visibility. For my last post with Devon, I want to share a story with you to illustrate a great way to lose not only fans, but subscribers for your various studios.

I am an erotic author.  As part of that discipline, it’s my job to imagine wicked, sexy scenes for my novels.  Last week I had a thought for one of my favorite adult models on a scene for a specific studio which with he is affiliated.  The idea was simply a role reversal with another model (an idea that was not unique to that site); however, for this particular model, I hadn’t ever heard of him doing any kind of switch like this, despite seeing countless comments wishing that he would do so.  I wrote out a quick sketch of my idea and emailed it to the model.  We’d emailed a few times previously, so I figured there would be no harm in doing so.

I was mistaken.

To say that he was not receptive to the idea would be a grave understatement.  As someone who also receives emails from fans, I saw that there were two ways he could have dealt with my email.  The first would have been to simply say that he didn’t think the idea would work.  This I would have understood and accepted.  Instead, I received a rage-filled, hateful email (with a cruel follow up message just for good measure).  I was shocked by the sheer aggressiveness and almost violence of his response, as were the friends I shared it with.
The results of that email included me pulling my subscriptions from the sites he is affiliated with, informing those studios of his interactions with their subscribers, and the withdrawal of my friends’ subscriptions.  I realize that to an industry such as gay adult films that this is merely a drop in their bucket against a bankable model’s lure, but I just could not justify paying hard-earned money to someone who would treat a fan so harshly for merely trying help increase his fan base.

My advice to you, from one professional to another, is this: If you receive an email, tweet, Facebook post, blog comment, etc. that angers or upsets you, do not respond while you are angry.  Once you hit that send button, you cannot take it back, and you have absolutely no control over what happens to the email. Have someone else look over your reply to see if there is the possibility that what you say may come back to haunt you. Think about the possible repercussions of your email.  Would you say the same comments in a blog post or on Twitter?  You just might, because there is nothing to stop the recipient from posting your email anywhere they choose.

I did not name the model or re-post the conversation publicly, because I’m not a vengeful person.    My email obviously upset him, and I’m honestly sorry that it did.  It was never my intention.  This post serves merely to remind you that once you post something on the internet (either via email, or sites such as Twitter), you can’t ever get it back.  There are thousands of bots monitoring Twitter to re-post tweets.  Even if you delete the original post, it’s still out there forever.  So, take a deep breath, or even a walk before you respond to someone in anger, because your reputation could depend on it.

Wishing you a wonderful and productive 2011,

- J. P. Barnaby
www.jpbarnaby.com
Twitter: @JPBarnaby

Erotic fiction is more than just moans, grunts, and physical pleasure. To J. P. Barnaby, erotic fiction consists not only of the mechanics of physical love, but the complex characters and relationships that lead to those all-encompassing feelings of need and longing. Sex without context is merely sex – but sex coupled with attraction, with explosive repercussions – that is good erotic fiction.