Last week Charlie Spats and I had our last business meeting as collaborative partners (aka Boss Lady and Intern Boy) for Good Dyke Porn. We had a good run. Spats was acting as an Intern for GDP for about a year and half. A significant amount of time, to be sure.

Right from the beginning I knew it was a great fit. Spats approached me about potentially getting involved as a model and offered up his services as a camera operator. His first gig was to shoot the Makeout scene that I starred in with Lucy Loose. He did a great job and we were off to the races.

I wasn’t able to pay him directly for work completed so right away my biggest challenge as the Boss Lady became asking him to do work. It’s hard to ask someone to do work for me when I’m not compensating them. This whole process has been a lesson in leadership for myself. I feel pretty comfortable in the role of director and I feel good about my methods for porn directing such as keeping people at ease, encouraging them to take control of what happens in the scene, communicating what I want from them if they’re looking for some guidance, etc. And, when directing my intern to help me out with my business I took a similar approach, which may not have been the most effective method, looking back. Spats and I talked about him doing some editing, maybe compiling statistics, updating the website, possibly make banners, recruit models… Recruiting models did happen, but the other stuff, not so much. But, he was busy, what could I expect? How could I get someone who works, volunteers and other stuff that 20 year olds do to use all the rest of their available time to do work on my business, for no money. It was challenging. I couldn’t think of how to do it.

Then I had a brilliant idea: Get Spats to blog once a week on a new queer porn blog that I’ll create, called GoodQueerPorn.com. That way there’s a tangible source of income (from affiliates) and it’s beneficial to refer people to GoodDykePorn.com and it’ll be a cool little side project. Well, pretty much as soon as I made it I regretted it. I thought, “Now how am I going to get him to do anything. Now he’s even busier. Duh!” And that was true. Similar to the other business tasks, Spats was having his own challenges with keeping up to date on his weekly updates. The evidence of which you can still see from such titles as, “Sporatic Update” and “Monthly Update!” So, that pretty much sealed the deal on getting any assistance with some of my other business tasks. But the best part of the whole deal is that now there exists this totally awesome blog & review site with pages and pages of some of my favourite queer porn performers and creators, favourite DVDs and membership websites. The work he did on there is truly fantastic and I now DO NOT regret having him run that blog one little bit. Now that Spats is moving onto his own thing I’ve decided to maintain the site myself. But Spats said that he will still contribute as a reviewer and I would also love to have other writers join me in contributing to this blog to help people get to know what’s out there in the world of queer porn.

Alright so the helping out of back-end business tasks didn’t work out as well as we’d both hoped. But, we did have a number of very helpful business meetings. I bought dinner, we discussed porn. It was great to have someone to talk to about various ideas, or thoughts on the direction to take. And it was nice to not be just me running the business. I could say, “we, at Good Dyke Porn™” and mean it. We really were a we!

One of the ways that I was able to pay him was by being the first one to call when a super awesome porn opportunity came up. And this worked out well because production was really Charlie Spats’ greatest strength. His second scene was to shoot second camera with me for a scene starring O Rae and Drew Deveaux. We had an opportunity to shoot Drew because she was visiting Vancouver and boy, am I ever glad that we made that happen. Drew is the consummate performer and the scene turned out fantastically. The next awesome porn opportunity that Spats and I did together was to drive to Seattle, spend the night and shoot Sophia St. James and Dylan Ryan in a hot hotel scene. On this same trip I shot Spats’ first scene as a performer (with Montgomery). (Actually I mixed up the order of those scenes, but you get the gist.)

Additionally, I was able to pay his way to Seattle to shoot Courtney Trouble and Maya Mayhem, which I know really made a difference in his journey to becoming a porn producer of his own. His relationship with Courtney Trouble and other San Francisco queers fit perfectly with his own ambitions and aesthetics.

Spats also performed at Little Sister’s Bookstore with Miss Pussy Liquor, coordinated the scene of himself and Chance Armstrong and, most recently, filmed Arabelle Raphael and Nikki Hearts while in Toronto for the Feminist Porn Awards.

Looking back, Charlie Spats made a very significant contribution to Good Dyke Porn. His visual eye, his naked body and his crate of condoms donated from safe sex workshops will live on forever as the Good™ in Good Dyke Porn™.

Now he is moving onto projects of his own creation, namely “Porn For Everyone” and I am happy to support him in all his future endeavors. Good™ luck Charlie Spats!

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I wasn’t able to attend the awards this year due to lack of funds and a new job, but I was able to watch most of the show on my computer before going in to work. From what I could tell, they screened the end of the film when one of the co-stars has a beautifully long satisfying orgasm while the other co-star injects her with semen using a syringe. The crowd seemed to really like it. It was so cool being able to see all that from home. I was tweeting my delight and my heart was racing. And to top it all off Elvira Kurt accepted my award for me. Such a good friend. (I’m a fan.)

The show was live streamed by Girlz Porn. Which was great and not great.

+ Great because I was downright giddy with delight to see the action happening live.

- Not great, because it made me feel a deep ache in my heart for missing out on all the fun.

+ Great because of the miraculous fortune to hear my name announced on stage and witness the reaction of the audience viewing my work, all while sitting in my living room.

- Not great because I couldn’t hear or see much else. I’m sure they’ll learn from their first streaming experience and make improvements on the quality next time around.

+ Great because all of us home viewers got to see Buck Angel do a strip-tease.

- Not great because as soon as the shorts came off so went the live feed – banned for violating terms of  contract. Oops! Like I said on Twitter, “Buck’s pussy blew up the live-feed!”

Unfortunately, GoodDykePorn.com didn’t win for one of the “Honoured Websites” (just because Good For Her is using American spelling doesn’t mean I have to, geez). But, CrashPadSeries.com did, and JizLee.com, and LilyCade.com – all awesome websites and another one that I know nothing about, sorry.

It looked like an amazing night and from what I could see on Twitter the porn-stars, producers and fans alike where having a mind-blowingly good time.

Check out Good For Her for the complete list of winners.

One thing I am very excited about is the successfully executed porn shoot between Arabelle Raphael and Nikki Hearts. There were about a dozen wrenches thrown into the plan and Charlie Spats, with the help of James Darling (I’m pretty sure he thought he was just accompanying Arabelle, not stepping into crew-role), managed to pull it off. I haven’t gotten the whole story from Spats yet, but I am anxiously awaiting those tapes for editing and posting as soon as possible. Just look at this cast and crew. How hot!?!

From left to right: Arabelle Raphael, James Darling, Charlie Spats and Nikki Hearts.

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This weekend marks the 7th annual Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. There are events happening all week long starting yesterday, actually: Wednesday – “Sexing The Transman With Buck Angel” (which I heard had a great turnout), Thursday – “Public.Provocative.Porn: The Year’s Best in Feminist Film”, Friday – “7th Annual Good For Her Feminist Porn Awards Gala” and Saturday – “Making Open Relationships Work with Tristan Taormino”.

Check out the Good For Her website for all the info.

If you’re a Twitter user, follow or tweet #fpa2012 to keep up with all the hot action (you can view the tweets even if you don’t use twitter). And, get this! GirlzPorn.com will be live-streaming the awards ceremony beginning with interviews at 8pm ET (5pm PT), followed by the ceremony itself at 9pm. For more information see their post about it HERE.

I’m really excited to be able to watch and participate in live chat of the events. Following along on Twitter just doesn’t cut it. Especially since the event is full of foreigners who cannot afford the high cost of using their phone Internet in Canada.

My website, Good Dyke Porn (www.gooddykeporn.com) has been included in the website nominations for the 3rd year in a row. I would love to receive an award and public acknowledgement as a token of achievement from the people who view all that’s out there in term of who considers themselves to be creating feminist porn. (For a complete list of the nominees, go HERE.) But, if I don’t, that’s okay too. I get a lot of acknowledgement from fans and customers who email me and tell me how much they enjoy the website, the scenes, the stars and, truly, that is enough for me. But, a little sex toy trophy would be awesome.

I’m also nominated for my film “Seminal” which screened at Vancouver Queer Film Festival last summer and will be going to a few (hopefully a bunch) more festivals this year and next year. This film is a 10 minute sex documentary about a couple who is trying to get pregnant by artificial insemination. It combines interviews and sex and insemination all on the same screen. I’m really proud of this film. Right from when I first started doing porn it was my dream to film an actual insemination sex scene. Members of Good Dyke Porn can see the 30 minute sex-only scene of the insemination. But for the artsy, documentary film version you need to watch for it at a film festival near you.

Unfortunately for me, I’m not able to attend this year. I used the money it would’ve cost to go there to fund a porn scene that’s going to be shot the afternoon before the awards ceremony and I compensated Charlie Spats’ to represent Good Dyke Porn and shoot the scene. I am definitely missing out. But, I’m proud to be providing income to 3 different people and small honourariums to a couple more.

And I’m very excited to see the scene that Arabelle Raphael and Nikki Hearts create together for members on Good Dyke Porn.

Good luck everyone and have fun! I’ll be watching.

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This week’s member update was a really cool scene between two trans guys: Charlie Spats and Chance Armstrong. Charlie Spats has been an intern at Good Dyke Porn for over a year now and besides updating the blog “Good Queer Porn”, he does some production work for me as well. He was charged with the task: “Find models, book a scene, shoot it and deliver the footage.” And for that he got paid. I’m usually quite uncomfortable getting people to do things for me for free. He’s been working on a few things and we have regular meetings but mostly I feel like there needs to be a payoff before I can really “enforce” work by an “intern”.

So Spats was going to Seattle to visit friends and decided to be the co-star of his production and hook up with newcomer Chance Armstrong. He arranged the scene to take place in a really awesome space that had a swing and a couch to fuck on and everything!

The crew he assembled took control of the two cameras, set up some lights, took photos and did a great job of capturing this scene. I really like being able to delegate the work.  It takes some practice to be able to be good with a camera (hold it still, know how to move it in a visually pleasing way), but I don’t think it’s that hard to capture authentic sex. Just roll the cameras and let them do their thing. That’s my method, anyway. And it’s not something that only I can do. It’s something anyone can do. And thankfully more and more people are doing it. I edited the hour long sequence down to a 30 minute scene. Which is definitely work, but I enjoy doing it. Editing really seems to be my “forte” when it comes to the various aspects of running this business.

This scene is really great because we don’t have much transguy-on-transguy action on the site. Besides the James Darling and Deluxx Dash scene I think this is it, so far. I love having trans guys on the site. Some people wonder why we include trans guys when we refer to the site as Good Dyke Porn. And that question has been answered by a few people in interviews (who identify as trans) and also by James Darling himself in this interview I did with him. Basically, I like to include anyone who has an F in their equation. MTF, FTM or F. At this time we’re drawing the line at the M’s. We do have one scene with an M and it’s awesome. But we’ve current got a freeze on M fucking.

Dyke Porn can be so many things. I suppose it’s slightly different than “queer porn” in that the San Francisco variety of queer porn has all genders. But I see “queer porn” as being the umbrella and under it you’ll find gay-male porn, dyke porn, and who know what else. Solo scenes can be queer porn as far as I’m concerned. And dyke porn is the female queer. And you may have noticed that more and more of your female queers are no longer identifying as female anymore. That’s okay! We know that you are still you. And if you identify with the work we do at Good Dyke Porn™ and feel like your sexuality fits what Good Dyke Porn stands for then of course we’ll include you!

In the interview after the sex, Chance addresses the Dyke Porn title. He says that he appreciates that we’re called that and that he grew up and was socialized as female and now that he passes as male his dyke identity is basically invisible. He acknowledges that they were clearly a couple of guys have gay sex, but also dykes.

I really appreciated hearing this perspective. I’m not trans so I don’t always know how to say things in a way that matches my intention for respect of one’s choices and gender expressions. It’s great to hear one person’s perspective of what it means to them to be on Good Dyke Porn. For me, it’s always up to the person who’s choosing to be filmed fucking. If they feel they fit into this space, then that’s good enough for me. And I’m delighted that we can include such amazing and sexy dykes of all genders.

Check out the photos Spats got from that day at his site, CharlieSpats.com.

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If you’ve watched “Seinfeld”, then you can probably hear the above title in the same way that I can hear it in my head. It’s like when George Costanza’s dad would yell, “Serenity Now!” The context doesn’t really match up but I just think it’s funny.

Even though I’m still in my 30s I’ve been thinking about retirement a lot over the last few years. A lot of people do. Most people do because they’re working and planning for it. Once, I was doing some work (the window cleaning job) in a government tax office and one of the employees had a countdown sign that said, “276 months to retirement”. Yikes! Seeing that made me feel sad to think about pining for a time so far away that may or may not even happen. You know, because of that whole possibility of dying at any moment thing.

The way I like to think about retirement is…Retirement Now!

I don’t feel comfortable with the concept of doing something that I would rather not be doing in the future. Besides, artists never retire. I imagine retirement as being simply living life as per normal: cleaning, eating, recreational activities, creative work, and this and that. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “we are here on Earth to fart around.” So why wait? Why not retire right now.

I have a new job and I run a business so it might be hard to imagine how I could live a retired lifestyle, but I do. It’s a lifestyle where everyday counts and I never look to the future and hope it comes faster or hope it will one day be better. That’s basically retirement isn’t it?

Alright, so it’s my goal to live my life like I’m retired. My new job is part of that strategy. When I was looking for a job to supplement my income and potentially provide employment for decades to come I was doing a lot of thinking about what I could do that I would be satisfied doing until I died – if I had to. I thought about various trades, I considered work trends. I wanted freedom to move from full-time to part-time and vice-versa whenever necessary. I wanted physical activity but nothing harmful over the longterm. I didn’t want to get up early in the morning and I wanted it as quiet and stressfree as possible. Money was less of a concern. As long as it paid my bills it qualified.

Then, voila, my dream job materialized: night guard at a nursing home. And now I have retired. I get my biweekly retirement income. Five days a week I have 4 hours per day of enforced walks around the facility. I interact with people occasionally and deal with security issues as they come up. But, mostly it’s quiet. I have three hours of downtime in the middle of my shift to do things like write this blog, catch up on my creative work or simply contemplate ways to enjoy my retirement more. When I’m not “working” I run a small but popular porn website, create personal film projects for fun, go sailing, go on dates, and my favourite, eat breakfast in various restaurants – yes, it’s true, I really am an old man at heart.

Also, as it turns out, mornings are beautiful. It’s nice being up to experience the sunrise and watching everyone else get their day going as I am winding mine down. This isn’t a lifestyle for everyone but I love it. Now all I have to do is keep enjoying going for walks, keep creating art, continue sailing the seas and remain open to even better ways to enjoy retirement. Retirement Now!!

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I’m a bit of a personal development junky. Always have been. I used to read Anthony Robbins books when I was in high school and personal finance books like The Wealthy Barber in my early twenties. Since then, I’ve purchased and checked out of the library a ton of reading material on self improvement. The result of this kind of obsessive research hasn’t actually materialized a measurable level of success. At least none that society conventionally views as successful. But, my whole life, no matter what’s going on for me, I’ve always been happy. I think that comes from the striving to be better. Only, for me, ”better” is “happier”.

Recently, I came up with a few key factors in my ongoing happiness quest. Over the years I’ve made categories like body, health, creativity, money, career, love, etc. My current strategy is to have positive affirmations of what is (or maybe what I want if it’s not currently an “is”). Here they are:

I love what I do.

I do what I love.

I am healthy and strong.

I have a beautiful home.

I have enough money.

I am blessed with abundant love.

Basically, I figure that as long as all of these things are true – or, I believe them to be true – then I’m happy. End of story. So, I gear all my tasks and goals towards maintaining this reality.

Which leads me to the point of this article. Due to the fact that my porn business wasn’t bringing in enough money to cover the expenses of running the business and paying my own personal expenses, I decided to get a job. Once I made this choice I created the two affirmations: (1) I love what I do. (Job) (2) I do what I love (Creative – Biz). It’s not easy to love what you do when what you do interferes with doing what you love, but I wrote these phrases down because I want it to be true. There’s really no point in doing anything if you can’t somehow find joy in it. And from my perspective that joy comes from within.

Initally, I considered keeping my “day” job a secret and continuing running the biz as per usual. I was worried that by telling people it’d affect my own pride in the work I do and potentially inflict doubt on myself about being a competent business owner. But, screw that! My work is all about erradicating shame. There is no shame in fucking on camera and posting it for the world to see. And, there is no shame in doing a basic job to make ends meet. And, oh my god, does it ever feel good to make those ends meet. Actually, you know what? I like my little “day” job. So far, so good. I like the routine. I like getting out of the house/office. I like the regular paycheque. And gosh darn it, I love what I do. (More on what that is exactly, coming soon.)

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In my last blog post (a long long time ago), I nominated myself for an AVN and asked others to nominate me, as well. And, it worked! Good Dyke Porn™ has been nominated for Best Alternative Website. Which is pretty frickin’ cool, I suppose. I love it because it’s a great platform for letting more people know that we exist and that there are “alternatives” to the mainstream lesbian porn films that saturate the Internet. I less-than love it because I have never put our work into any category that resembles what the AVN Awards recognizes as good. It’s porn, yes, but it’s very different. For the past 2 or 3 years the AVNs have been throwing the queer porn community a bone with nominations, but so far, no awards. But, I see this as a natural evolution of the porn industry in general. The more we make, the more people will learn about these alternatives. As a genre we don’t fit into the mainstream industry in it’s current incarnation, but that’s changing, I think.

The type of porn that the queer porn genre tends to create is very DIY and amateur style. And that’s because we are representing real people and real sex. And because we’re DIY directors we don’t have the kind of money that straight or gay-male porn studios have. But, I’m happy with that too. My personal ambitions do not include running a million dollar studio. I like the amateur-style. I like the freedom to create for the product, not for the market. It is quite difficult to run a business in a market for queers. We are not what anyone would consider “high-consumers”.

So, I make my movies. I pay the performers. I do what I can. And I love it.

And, I’m very excited about this nomination. I’m probably the worst marketing director and any attention we can get we need. Our aim is to keep going. I hope this helps us do that.

AND, the awesome Charlie Spats, my Porn Intern at Good Dyke Porn™ and the primary blogger at GoodQueerPorn.com will be walking the red carpet on behalf of Good Dyke Porn™ with Sophia St. James, who has appeared on Good Dyke Porn a couple of times! Charlie Spats has also appeared on QueerPorn.TV, which is nominated in the same category.  So I imagine he’ll be having quite the gay ol’ time. All the queers are sticking together and even though we are in competition with each other we’re really one big happy family and I don’t think anyone would be upset to see the other win. In fact, I know that we’ll all be very happy to see any queer nomination take home an award.

Watch for upcoming deals, features and clips from Good Dyke Porn™ in celebration of this opportunity.
Good luck everyone!
Wish I could be there.

Support the indy sexy artists and buy a membership on GoodDykePorn or download clips of our work for as little as $6 each.

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Pre-nominations are now open for the 2012 AVN Awards. I decided to nominate…myself! Yay me!

I’ve never nominated myself or asked anyone else to nominate me. The criteria for submitting seemed a little out of my element.

“VOD download and/or physically stocked with either 10 wholesale distributors or 100 retail outlets;”

That’s definitely not me. But, then I noticed my queer porn colleagues were submitting and I hope they have that kind of distribution, but, I don’t think so. I certainly don’t. But, I’m somewhat uniquely independent. Either way, after all the figuring of qualifications I realized, “I have a website!” (I know, brilliant, right?) “I fit into the Website categories.”

Well, I don’t know if “fit in” is the right way to phrase it. The AVN Awards aren’t known for their queer content. But, there have been a few queer trailblazers who’ve been nominated, like Courtney Trouble, Crash Pad Series, Jiz Lee and others.

It’s the Oscars of porn and it would be an honour to be nominated, but really, I just want people to know that we exist. I have a business to run and I have amazing queer women to pay. A nomination would be awesome. (Just because I nominated myself doesn’t mean I’m in. They decide “in-house”, as they put it.)

So, now I’m wondering. How would you like to help me get nominated? If you would like to help then you can!

Here’s the article explaining everything that you need to know about it.

They ask that “producers, manufacturers and retailers” submit their nominations. If you are one of these, great, if you’re not, you can still put in a nomination. They’ll ask you who you are and if they let you submit a nomination then voilà, nomination time. They told me this: “Technically, anybody to whom we’ve granted access to the pre-nom site may pre-nom you for any category they like, but ultimately, we decide the final nominations in-house.” So, it doesn’t hurt to try.

You just need to register HERE: https://secure.avn.com/account/register/
Request a pre-nom form HERE: http://www.avn.com/prenom-request-form/

And then nominate GoodDykePorn.com for “Best Alternative Website” (it doesn’t get more alternative then real lesbian having real sex) and/or “Best Membership Website”.

If you do this for me, I will love you forever. Okay, okay, it’s true, I was going to love you forever anyway.

I nominate myself as….The Best!!!

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Last week at the Indie Erotic Film Festival, I had the opportunity to attending the Pink & White Delight night with Shine Louise Houston. I love hearing her speak because I feel like her answers to questions are very similar to how I would answer them. One thing that stood out to me, as a fellow business operator, was her description of The Crash Pad Series as a machine. I can see how that would be because it has frequent updates, excellent publicity, and a solid customer base. And in order to maintain that one would need to have systems in place and keep the machine running so the ready-and-willing performers are connecting with the creators of images and the customers who love it are receiving the content that they pay for month after month.

This has always been my goal with my own business. Anyone who’s read the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber knows that to make a business successful you need to have systems in place so that you’re not simply doing the work but working the business. Since I’ve been 100% independent from the beginning I  haven’t had the financial backing to hire staff, distribute DVDs or other such promotional opportunities. I’m still working on creating my own financial backing but that takes time. As it is I am a one-man-band and my machine is not yet assembled (magical mixed-metaphors). I run from one instrument to another and in time it will come together cohesively. In time…

So, like any good artist, I live comfortably in the world of chaos. As a result, my work lacks a certain element of consistency. I have eager exhibitionists who would love to be filmed and featured on the website. Oh, but I don’t have any money for the next 3 weeks. I have two hours of footage of a sexy couple that the customers are expecting to see today. Oh, but my creative vision is taking two weeks to edit it all together. I have 4 years worth of really unique sexual content featuring queer women, trans guys, trans women, butches and femmes, in bedrooms, the woods, a bookstore, a train-yard, hotels, various cities, with amateur models, famous queer pornstars and myself. Oh, but I’m too busy editing those 2 hours of footage to set up promotional systems to let the world know about our work.

All this is to say that I’m doing the best I can. I appreciate every member who signs up, every clip that is sold and every kind word of encouragement. If you have any concerns about certain inconsistencies or unmet expectations, please feel free to send me an email and I would be happy to work out a solution. I love to hear from the people who do pay for the work and have questions about what’s to come. And if you can’t pay for the work I’m also happy to receive your praise and compliments (sorry, complaints by non-customers will likely be ignored – unless it’s really important, but I can’t imagine what that would be).

Bren Ryder, over and out. Working hard to turn you on and get you off. New update for GoodDykePorn.com coming soon!

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I am in San Francisco this week and selling memberships to GoodDykePorn.com for super cheap. This is part survival strategy and part social strategy. I definitely need the cash, so I’m happy to give anyone a great deal for your loving support in the form of cash. But, it’s also a social strategy because I’m a bit shy when it comes to public gatherings and if I can entice people with porn to come over and say hi, all the better. Sadly, I’m not giving it away. But it’s still ahellofa deal.

$20 will get you a 2 month membership of unlimited watching and downloading (value of $50).
$40 will get you 6 long sexy months (value of $100) with all the hot queer sexy people who have proudly joined the Good Dyke Porn collection.

All you have to do is find me in San Francisco, come say hi and voila, cash deals abound.

I will be at Good Vibration’s Independent Erotic Film Festival starting with Pink & White Delight on Wednesday night. That’s right!

Check out the rest of the festival events and come find me before I fly out again on Saturday. Especially, go to Thursday night’s short film program, please. They are screening “Horsey”, the film I made with Amber Dawn (aka Trala La), who will also be in attendance.

Looking forward to meeting you all. See you soon!

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