Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 5 of “I Was an Internet Pioneer and All I Got Was This Lousy Story.” I know, it’s kind of a long title. I have struggled with finding a name for my story, whether it be a book or podcast or whatever, for years… and when this one popped up in my head, it just felt right. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but now that I have, I’ve counted and the title has one more word than one of my favorite MST3K episodes: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Oh well… what’s done is done. On with the story!

At the Tampa party, we had been invited down to Atlanta by a couple of people there. One was the guy that I posed with for the “sex” picture. His wife, “Sapphire” was a friend of O’s and also had a website of her own. She had not been at the Tampa party… I think she was sick… so it would be cool to meet.

In addition, we met another webgirl: Celeste Fox and her husband, who also lived in Atlanta.

So, just a couple of months after returning home from Tampa, we hopped back in the car to drive south, again. We never thought about the weather during these trips or we might not have planned a trip to Georgia in July but we had other things on our mind.

We planned a bar-meet, as well as meeting up with everyone individually. I can’t remember which we met first, but the meeting with Sapphire was fine if fairly uneventful. She did, however, make it clear almost immediately that she was not interested in anything “more” with us.

Admittedly, we were both kind of taken aback at the time. It just seemed so out of the blue, especially since we didn’t consider ourselves “swingers.” We always rejected that term even when we did things that could be considered swinging, but we definitely weren’t then. We had not come there with any intentions of sex with anybody whatsoever.

I get it, though. She just wanted to make sure things were clear. I respect that now.

Meeting up with Celeste, however, was a different story.

We actually first met up at Zoo Atlanta. There we took a few flashing pics, but things got really interesting when Celeste and her husband joined us at the hotel. We decided to check out the pool, and found it completely deserted... not even a lifeguard!

Again, this was 1998. Things were just a little different back then.

We had chosen a hotel that was more of a business hotel so it was busy during the week, but not so much on the weekends, which is when we were there. Still, how we got away with that, I’m not sure. We just got lucky, I guess.

Because we took quite a few pictures there. We even had a couple of waterproof disposable cameras, so we took a bunch of pictures underwater. I loved taking those kinds of photos.

Then it was time for the bar-meet, joining forces with Celeste and Sapphire. There wasn’t much of an after-party with that one. We did go back to the hotel but Celeste decided to get naked in the fountain in front of our hotel. That was a bit too much for us. I mean, the front desk was right there! Besides, we met a long-time fan on that trip and we wanted to spend some time with.

We took a few more pics in that hotel pool (it really was always deserted) and in the fan’s red jeep.

It was a great time and further cemented our plan to have parties, both at home and while traveling.

We did meet up with both Celeste and Sapphire several times at various functions, but a couple of the best friends that we made during those days were “Lacy and Stuntman.”

While Lacy had already picked her name, Stuntman and I came up with it while getting stoned at their house one night. He liked the idea of being a “stunt cock.” He was chill about it, but he was just there if anybody happened to need one!

They lived in Northern Virginia and contacted us about meeting up. After going back and forth a while, we finally planned a bar-meet/party at the Cancun Cantina in Hanover, Maryland. It wasn’t exactly halfway to their house, but it was south of Baltimore City, at least, and we had never been there before. We had just heard plenty of commercials for the place on the radio.

Simple and her boyfriend were there, too. We hung out at the bar for a little bit and a good number of people showed up.

Inside there was country line-dancing which was not really our thing, but outside there was sand and palm trees and volleyball. There was a guy grilling stuff, who would occasionally throw bits of food to the feral cats that lived on the property. I liked it a lot!

After hanging at the bar for a bit, we decided to move the party back to our place. A whole bunch of people followed us around the beltway to get back to our apartment in Cockeysville.

There, we just kind of hung out. Lacy, Simple, and I stripped down to nothing but our panties and posed for some photos on the couch. At one point we were trying to recreate the See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil monkeys but everyone had been drinking and we couldn’t seem to figure out the right order. In fact, we tried to do this every time we had three webgirls in the same room and I’m not sure we ever got it right.

Afterward, Lacy and Stuntman quickly became a couple of our very best friends. We still consider them very good friends, even though we don’t see them hardly ever, anymore… but, for a few years there, though, we were constantly driving down to visit them. We’d stay over, drink, smoke some pot, and get naked.

Over time things progressed and Lacy and I started fooling around on camera. Of course, one of the many confessions I have to make is that I am not actually sexually attracted to women.

I know everybody is on a spectrum but I am pretty firmly in the heterosexual category. I used to call myself heteroflexible which is a good term for it because I was flexible. I mean, more than one woman has given me an orgasm by going down on me and I could not even begin to count how many women I have had some kind of sexual contact with. However, it only happened on camera.

I was obviously open-minded, and in the end, when someone’s going down on you, does it really matter what gender they are? It was a bit different with women who had long nails, but other than that, I was still perfectly capable of cumming that way.

And I very much would not fake orgasms. Even if it took a long time, I’m like dammit, I gonna have one!

I do have to admit, though, that posing with the other webgirls kind of became expected. It very much did become a community. Most of the people that we hung with were heterosexual couples. Not that we would ever exclude anybody but it’s just the way that it turned out.

And women just felt safer to everybody. Nobody’s male partners were going to get jealous, and it was a great way to promote each other’s websites. I know a lot of web girls/couples came to parties for just that reason.

I understand now that, with the whole girl-girl thing, I was playing into the whole male fantasy of lesbian sex and I’m now a bit embarrassed by it. I now know that it can be offensive to actual lesbians and for that, I apologize. The nineties were a different time, but I get it.

That said, we did also start swapping partners. Stuntman was the first guy I had sex with on camera (besides Dave, of course).

They even sort of had their own “Simple” in the form of a webgirl who went by the name “Cherie.” They had been friends with Cherie for many years before this and Stuntman ran her site, as well.

Cherie lived out on a farm with her husband and we visited there a couple of times to take photos and have fun.

One time we were there, Celeste Fox and some other people had joined us there, as well. The main thing I remember from that time is that we all decided to order Subway and Celeste ordered a sub with no bread. It was the first time I was introduced to the concept that bread could be bad for you. (I may still be in a bit of denial about that.)

One great memory from that time of visiting Lacy and Stuntman was New Year’s Eve of 1998. It was me and Dave, Lacy and Stuntman, Cherie and her husband. The next morning, we started the year 1999 with everyone trying to figure out where their clothes had ended up. Now that’s a party.

Although, it was nothing compared to New Year’s Eve 1999. I indeed partied like it was 1999.

So, what were you doing on December 31, 1999 (assuming you existed then)? I was 26 years old and in Virginia at O and Lance’s house.

We thought it was so cool when they moved so relatively close to us. Not taking complete credit for it, but I do remember talking with them about moving this way after our 4th-anniversary party a couple of months prior.

We had been visiting Washington D.C. with them and another web-couple; Flashing in front of all the monuments and stuff.

Specifically, I remember trying to convince warm-weather-loving Lance that our winters had been pretty mild lately.

This was true. The fact that in the winter of 2000, we got hit with snow and ice like seldom seen here, is certainly not my fault.

Anyway, they were hosting a big party that night. Their parties never disappointed, and this was no exception. We actually attended several parties during the short time they lived there, but at this one in particular, I remember wandering around the house, completely naked but for an army helmet on my head and mardi gras beads around my neck, while drinking straight out of a bottle of champagne.

I thought to myself, “I am doing this night so right.”

Lots of photos, lots of crazy fun… less hardcore sex, more naked shenanigans. Prince’s song embodied a lot of my attitude around that time. We had no idea what the future would bring, so fuck it, let’s party while we still can.

Just before midnight, Dave asked Lance where the fuse box was. He snuck down into the basement and as the clock struck 12, he shut down the power to the house.

Now, if you were around in 1999, you might remember what it felt like as Y2K approached. For me, I was pretty sure everything was going to be fine. However, no one could know for sure until it happened. So, no matter how chill you were about it, there was still at least an undercurrent of anxiety. What WOULD happen as the calendar flipped from 1999 to 2000?

Only a few of us were in on it, in a big house filled to the brim with partiers, and at that moment, everyone gasped in unison.

You could see lights at the neighboring houses and even before Dave put the power back on a few moments later, people had figured out it was a gag. For just a moment, though…

I kind of wish I hadn’t known about it and could have experienced that myself. The absolute panic I would have felt.

Anyway, back to the website itself: As the internet grows, toplists become a thing: Lists of links automatically sorted by how much traffic that site had sent back over a certain period of time.

I hated them, especially when used as a “friends list” by other amateurs. I just found it so icky to rank your friends that way. We do this because we love it guys, right? That’s what we all say on our websites! Networking? Do you mean making friends?

Toplists became so ubiquitous, though, I eventually gave in and participated in many of them.

One site that had toplists was YNOT. The YNOT network was a big deal, at least for a while. I believe it’s still around in some form as like a webmaster resource, but of course, much has changed over the decades.

In addition to the ‘public” list anyone could participate in, there was a special list for YNOT members only. We had turned down becoming YNOT members when it first began because they required a banner link back and Dave was still rejecting anything even remotely commercial.

Now that I was running things, though, and it had become this exclusive club that only opened up for memberships periodically. The next time applications opened, I signed us right up. We were actually in Atlanta when we found out that we had been voted in by the other members.

It was great for a time, but eventually, the membership part of it faded away. I know our participation in it dwindled after the “Orlando” incident.

The porno conventions we attended were a lot like any other industry convention you might attend. It was just a different product being sold!

The first one was in Secaucus, NJ, I took that opportunity to flash in front of the Statue of Liberty and of course unbeknownst to us at the time, the ill-fated twin towers. You know, because boobies are like twin towers. It was funny at the time. Not so much now, of course.

Back to the conventions, though, we went to ones in Vegas, New Orleans, Orlando…

Orlando, Florida was perhaps the most misguided location picked by AVN for their annual convention. At one point, we heard a lady in the hotel lobby exclaim, “What is this, a whore convention?”

Overall, that was a fun trip, though. It was the one time I felt truly famous. No matter where I went in the hotel, people were stopping me to get a picture, talk to me… it was a little overwhelming but in a thrilling way.

We even met Danni Ashe on the convention floor and she knew who I was!

The incident occurred in the YNOT guest suite.

There were people coming in and out of it, but the only people there were other adult webmaster types. This was a place I actually felt comfortable taking my clothes off. We were there with Celeste and we ended up doing an impromptu photo shoot on top of the big table in there.

(Not my idea, by the way, but I just went with it, like I always did.)

It all happened very organically… everyone was just having a good time, and all the spectators were respectful. We just played around and posed. There was no actual sex, and we never imagined that it would be controversial.

When we returned from the trip, though, we found ourselves the main topic of conversation on the YNOT member board.

Apparently, it was very unprofessional for us to do this. We were confused because don’t we all make porn? This was a suite in a hotel especially for adult webmasters. It just never occurred to us that anyone would have a problem with it.

Plus, unprofessional? We’re amateurs!

I mean, it had become a business for us in many ways, too, but it was also a way of life for us. And that made all the difference… in a lot of ways.

OK, I think that’s a good place to end it for now, but thank you for joining me once again! Please like, subscribe, all that good stuff… tell me in the comments what you think or if you have any questions… and I’ll see you next time!

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