I never consciously set out to work for a porn magazine—that is, until, unemployed, with no other job prospects in sight and an MA in history to pay off to Uncle Sam, I found myself being offered the chance to land an editorial position in the New York publishing world. I could claim, I suppose, that I was forced into a life of sordid sin by sheer financial necessity—but then, I'd be lying. Though the money was a hell of a lot better than the usual entry-slave wage, to be honest, the job also sounded like a lot of fun. Like most twenty-something, overeducated, pretentious pseudo-intellectual bastards in New York City, I have a fairly liberal, positive attitude towards sex. And, after all, isn't it the dream job of every merrily perverted American male to get paid to look at pictures of naked women all day? I felt like Norm from Cheers in the episode when he was offered the quality-tasting job at the brewery. Hell, I felt like G. Gordon Liddy would have felt if he had beenoffered the directorship of the CIA.

I'll have to admit, though, that I was a wee bit disappointed at first when I showed up at the office for my interview. I guess I expected shag carpeting, disco balls, and a '70s funk soundtrack, heavy on the wah-wah pedal. Instead, it was a relatively standard-issue New York modular cubicle maze—or at least it seemed that way until I noticed that the cubes were filled with stacks and stacks of porno magazines. The effect was a bit surreal, as if an accounting office had been taken over by demented, sex-crazed periodical librarians. The distractions also made it difficult to maneuver, since I kept walking into things.

My boss-to-be revealed himself to be a burly, jovial, red-faced guy in his early forties. He wore blue jeans and a ponytail, which somehow surprised me, despite that fact that, in retrospect, it seems a bit ludicrous to have expected a dress code in an office that produced nudie magazines. With his thick Brooklyn accent, he reminded me of someone from my old neighborhood. I liked him instantly. Since his office was decorated in a shark motif I dubbed "early Spieldbergian," to protect the not-so-innocent, we'll call him "Quint."

On Quint's desk were a framed picture of his three tousle-headed kids and a vast cornucopia of filth. He had Polaroids of aspiring porn stars, signed 8x10 glossies, gang-bang commemorative calendars, greeting cards-you name it. To say that it was the most bizarre interview I'd ever been on would be an understatement. No college job fair had ever prepared me for this.

"So, it says here you're a writer?" Quint asked me.

"Yes, sir," I said, tearing my eyes from a pair of 36 DDs long enough to hand over a folder of clips.

Nonchalantly, he flipped through the collection of history-lite pieces that I had managed to get published over the past few years. They sported titles such as, "So, You Want to be a Swordsman?" and "An Introduction to the Society for Creative Anachronism." I was immensely proud of them.

"And you got editing experience?"

"Yes, sir." I shuddered at horror at the memory of the vanity press where I had previously spent eight hours a day for six months reading born-again Christian biker epics, World War II memoirs, and the liquor-inspired ramblings of grandmothers from Nebraska who spent their children's inheritances to publish 300-page warnings about the coming Apocalypse.

"That's great!" he said. "Listen, we're going to set you up with a little writing test, probably next week or somethin'. Nothing too big-we'll just sit you down at a computer and have you write some copy. But not just right now. We're a little crazy here with the issue coming up now. Here, meanwhile, why dontcha take some magazines and look 'em over, so you know what we do. I'll give you a call, probably, like, tomorrow. Okay?"

"Great!" I said, shoving the magazines out of sight into my bag.

I started worrying exactly what I had sold my soul to when I got home. The magazines Quint had given me weren't erotica, or softcore late-night cable euro-fluff. They were raw, hardcore porn. As I looked at cum shot after cum shot, wondering exactly how this meshed with my university-issued feminist values, the phone rang. It was Quint. It turned out they didn't even need a writing test-they wanted me to start as soon as possible.

Well, I thought to myself, it's a creative job. Maybe I can bring some class and imagination to this thing.

Next: Tristan Expresses Himself