Over the past few days, I have been thinking a lot about dead gay porn star Joey Stefano, my short meeting with him, and the whole period in my life around the early-1990s. Imbedded inside a huge part of that time was Madonna (the singer.) I worshiped her. Going to one of her concerts was a religious experience; an orgiastic ceremony around the ancient godless Cybele. Ever since I first saw her: in the video for “Borderline,” she seemed to justify many of my naive and immature concepts about sexuality: that I could do and be anything I wanted. And, in the 1980s, the music-video really replaced the reality of the song. It was the song come to life, that mesmerized the viewer. It was like the threshold between the dirty magazine and the porn film. Once you saw an X-rated movie, you couldn’t go back to the static Playboy. The high-point of my sick teenage maturation took place when “Like a Virgin” came out, with her expert fusion of sex, music, and Catholic religious imagery, I knew that I found my teacher.
When the soft-core porn book “Sex” was released in 1992, I was already steeped in the life philosophy of Madonna. Up until then, my favorite videos were: “Open Your Heart,” “Like a Prayer,” and “Express Yourself.” All were future blue-prints for my career in porn: the false beauty of pornography, the marriage of religion and sex, the idea of sado-masochsim as sexual perfection. The publication of “Sex” marked a strange turning point in my life: I had been in the gay world for a few years, and had done some lowly and degrading hard-core porn films that I considered high-art; worthy of a Madonna video. “Sex” seemed to crystallize all my divergent and confused ideas about sexuality, religion, and art into one big and heavy pornographic tome. After I bought the book, I treated it as a sacred relic. It was my new Bible. All that Madonna had done, within the pages of the book, I had already taken part in. She was confirming and sanctifying my choices and my life.
Fast forward 20 years, and there is a new slew of women whom Madonna gave birth: Kesha, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga, all credit Madonna as a major musical and style influence. Now, they are bewitching another generation of future libertines, occultists and porn-stars. All these years later, I am finally able to come to terms with the silly mistakes I made, and the complete insanity of treating a singer as some sort of intellectual guru. But, it continues. Children follow their pop-idols, and cherish every move they make and every word spoken; like a harlot dripping honey from her mouth.