Prague is famous for many reasons. One that has made this city famous in the last 20 years is the gay porn industry. It has been said that Prague makes more gay porn per-capita than anywhere else in the world – perhaps due to lower production costs, the Czech people’s casual attitude towards sex, or the fact that you can get people to do a lot in front of the camera for relatively low rewards.

The role of a celebrity is a strange one in our society. You see someone often enough, regardless of the context, and your mind gives them this celebrity role. Often I have been walking along some street or standing in line at a supermarket when I see one of the actors from the porn movies. For a moment I rack my brain, trying to figure out where I have seen them before. Are they a famous singer, actor or television personality? No, I don’t own a T.V. and couldn’t name one famous contemporary Czech singer. Is he some guy I met at the club or bar some weeks previous? It can’t be, he looks too well dressed and the places I usually frequent are somewhat lacking in dress code. Then I realize that his face is only part of a quivering memory, that if stripped down to his bare essentials in front of all these happy shoppers or pedestrians, then I would surely recognize him, looking as he did when we met, wanking away in front of the camera’s lens, making a sexy face and earning his keep as a gay porn actor.

Now, I am not gay, neither is my immediate boss nor most of the editors or webmasters. The same applies for these actors. Whether it is a role assumed to fulfill a niche market of “straight guys, gone gay” or if they are actually heterosexual and looking for excitement, cash or a chance to meet new people, who knows. I do however see these actors arm in arm with girlfriends, bickering playfully and doing all the things someone would do when in love.

In front of the camera however, things can go any way. Some actors relish the straight-guy persona, showing their discomfort and wincing through sets. While others transform, changing their mannerisms their smile and a whole host of other small details allowing them to play the part of a gay lover, if only for 40 minutes.

Porn is a strange and complex world. There are fetishes out there that I didn’t even know existed. I mean, I know rule 34 of the internet says: If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions. And we have all heard of the strange shit lurking behind every pop-up advertisement or blinking banner ad, but some of the things I have been told to write about, never even entered into consideration as mildly sexual. One evening while creating bizarre made up fantasies my friend named K. came up with “rape ghost” a man under a sheet who comes into a dimly lit room to find and fondle a sleeping man like an incubus. The next week I came to the office to see “Ambush Massage” not a man in a sheet going “oooooooooh” but a masseuse who convinces his client to receive a whole manner of things between his bottom during a massage. One fetish I can never seem to get my head around is foot porn. Feet are things purely utilitarian and void of sex to me, yet to others become the object of desire. The foot guy at my work occasionally gives me tips on what to write about in the text for his site. While I am struggling trying to describe the high arches or button like toes, he comes in and asks me to mention the crusty toenails or the whispy hair sprouting from beneath each one, things which I would usually find unsexy. But as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, successful porn lies in giving the people what they want and so I write of stinking, grotty feet, so close you can almost taste them.

Some aspects of the porn industry can get surreal. One time I was invited to a barbeque in the courtyard behind the studio. There amongst the producers and various other guests were some Slovak cameramen; former actors who still used their stage names when dealing with any part of their job. Today their role was waiter, stripped to the waist with stick on bow ties fastened to their oiled up chests, they served hors’d'oeuvres and had their bums pinched by these guests. Yet, come the next Monday were fully dressed and back to their position behind the camera. Nothing was said of this character they played that day and none was thought less of them for doing it. It seems that in an ever changing industry all you can do is keep up or fuck off, and these two were just doing what was asked. Occasionally when I think about that day I wonder how people can change their personality without hesitation. It may be empowering, a beating of fear or something else completely. Like an improve comedian battling against stage fright or a motorcross rider swallowing his fear being squashed under the growling motor of his bike as he flips around to land, these actors / cameramen must find some liberation in the shedding of old masks day in and day out.

And so, as I sit at my desk writing the conclusion to this diary I think about all the things I have seen and done during my time here. I don’t regret a thing, though I still won’t tell my mum what I do. There is something to be said about an industry that is resilient, wide spread and accepted into culture, but still lurks along its fringes, misunderstood by most and ignored by some.

author: Mailmen Itched


Mailmen Itched has been working at a locally based gay porn company for the last 2 years. In that time he has had many jobs, from hours spent researching internet, search trends and inventing stage names for models, to writing the lines and creating plots for films.