Bren Ryder

“She worked hard and was a nice person.”

The eulogy of the person I used to be:

Dear Brenda:

You have been a part of me for so long now. Prior to this moment I didn’t even know I could function without you. With an uncanny ability to wile away the time, you’ve inspired the most motivated person to sit and relax. I will take inspiration from your stick-to-it-iveness. The way you stuck with dead-end jobs and bad relationships was awe-inspiring. The hard work you did to line the pockets of unappreciative bosses was pure martyrdom. You spent more than you earned and saved nothing – living on faith alone. A faith that we could all use a healthy dose of every now and again.

Brenda, you started some really incredible projects and accumulated an impressive amount of debt doing so. Your methods were typically similar to everything you did in the past. So consistent. I will miss the way you stretched 2 hours of work into 4 hours. I’ll miss that black hole that sucked up all of your time. I’ll miss your inability to ask others for help and your penchant for working solo. You never were much of a team-player.

Most of all, I’ll miss the way you could work your ass off and still come away with an income below poverty level. The way you could make a sure-fire income generating business into a voluntary hobby was your finest work to date. We are sad that you are leaving us with the debt of the past, but confident that it will disappear nearly as quickly as it was accumulated.

You were a very important part of my adult development and now that you are gone I will never be the same again.

Love,
Bren

It’s autobiographical. It reveals the how-to. And it’s unique. Follow your own path and please feel free to tell me about it.

1. In the summer of 2006, I decided to stop trying to create a career in mainstream society and become a pornographer. After that decision was made I immediately began work on starting my first website, GoodDykePorn.com. I didn’t know anything about how to create or run a website so I thought I would teach myself.
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2. I asked a few experts to see if they could do it for me, but, since I didn’t have any money and I like to be in control of things I decided to do it myself. I spent the summer doing research on adult webmaster sites and existing independent lesbian/queer porn sites. Research and Development is a very fun phase of the business. You get to talk to a lot of interesting people and watch plenty of porn. I, of course, made sure I kept all my receipts. Right in the middle of this phase of development the movie, The Crash Pad, came to The Vancouver Queer Film Festival. I approached Shine Louise Houston at the screening and asked her if I could buy her brunch the next day to get the inside scoop. She was really nice and as helpful as she could be. The brunch ended up being with a large group so we didn’t get much time to talk shop but I appreciated her effort and felt inspired and motivated to know that I wasn’t the only one out there working to contribute to the genre of “dyke porn”.
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3. By the end of summer I’d figured out how to make one page of a website. I put a picture of myself and the words “Good Dyke Porn – looking for models to create authentic sex scenes”. I posted it on the community site, Superdyke.com and immediately got a flood of emails. At least 10 women wanting to model and nearly a hundred who wanted to encourage and congratulate me on the endeavor.
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4. It was Remembrance Day, November 11. For weeks we’d been planning our first shoot and had all the equipment rented, locations booked and experienced a few snags. We had two scenes booked. One was a “solo”. The plan was that I was going to film her masturbating and she was going to cajole me into joining her. I would be convinced, of course. The second scene was one between a couple. Done and done. A week before the shoot, we planned a martini party to allow all the cast and crew to meet each other and celebrate the beginning of Good Dyke Porn. By the end of the night the first scene was a bust. The “solo” model’s girlfriend decided she didn’t want to have an open relationship anymore. And, within a couple of days the couple had broken up.
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5. Determined, I declared the show must go on. The crew already started making other plans but I got to work scheduling last minute models. I filled in for the “couple scene”. Check out “Geneva and Bren Ryder” on the site. And, it just so happened that an interested out-of-towner was brave enough to perform the “solo scene”. “Romeo Cooley” was amazing with the toys I got for her. The very first shoot was a success!
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6. The goal for starting the site was to have enough videos available to view with the purchase of a membership. So, we continued our work in bringing together hot dykes, bis, bois, femmes, queers, transguys, couples, groups, and solos. I put together a short film with two of these scenes and a montage of these early months of shooting. It was my dream to premiere this film in Vancouver, my home, and coincide the launch of the website with the screening.
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7. In preparation for this glorious occasion, I secured funding to shoot all these scenes, I learned how to use a Content Management System for the website, I quit my day job and got a loan to get me through, I worked day and night in front of the computer, learned Final Cut Pro and bit-by-bit turn that dream into a reality. In August 2007, at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, in front of an overflowing theatre, I introduced Good Dyke Porn to my community and my dream came true. One year prior I was telling everyone who would listen that I was going to create a website called GoodDykePorn.com and there I was in front of everyone saying, “I did it! I followed through with my promise”.
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