A little less than two years ago I embarked upon one of the most challenging and least rewarding experiments of my adult life: helping to raise a troubled teen. He and his father recently emigrated from Darklady Estates, but I will long remember their stay due to the various burn holes and carved geometric shapes worked deep into the wood of my parent’s furniture by the angst-ridden youth – and the online stalker I picked up as a result of my brief time as a member of an online home school mailing list.I was bright enough to begin saving my virtual antagonist’s emails early in his correspondence. His hostility toward me didn’t require that I work within the adult industry, but it certainly became more intense once he realized that was the case. All he needed to know in order to get his moral hackles up was that I was a woman with a child in her care – and a world view that deviated from his own. Although I later learned that he had sent bizarre and intimidating email to many women on the home school list, I was his favorite because I was unmarried, which allowed him to build fantastic fantasies about how I came to have a teenager in my house. It didn’t take me long to realize that he was nearly as happy with a one-way email conversation as he was with a two-way discussion, so I spoke with the list owner about the situation, and she soon encouraged him to explore other home school mailing list options.

But this wasn’t the end of it. My special friend was not going to go quiet into that good night. Instead, he continued to send me updates about his religious views, particularly as they related to me and my real or imagined sexual and romantic conduct. He suggested that he knew where I lived and would be traveling to my city in order to visit relatives – and make a visit to my home. I remained silent and posted his mail to my website as a “Just In Case” measure. I memorized the combination lock sequence on my gun box and forwarded his letters to the various ISP abuse departments that handled his ever changing accounts. In time, I spoke with the local police bureau and explained the situation to a doughy officer who verbally patted me on the head while explaining the dangers of the internet to me, suggesting that I block my evangelizing admirer’s email, and generally giving all the indicators that he hadn’t figured out that I was light years ahead of him in my comprehension of the situation. Perhaps it was the sight of ball gags, whips, stacks of porn, scattered bits of lingerie, and other eccentric tools of the full-time sex writer’s trade that inspired him to underestimate my intelligence. Or maybe he was just a techno-dope who figured that I was at least as clueless as he was. Whatever the case, I ultimately convinced him to file a report by mentioning that I’d run for political office. Suddenly he was on top of it.

I am sure I speak for most members of the adult industry when I say that having an officer of the law inside of one’s home/place of business is an uncomfortable experience, especially during this new wave of neo-con moral values and enforcement. However, as much as I like running along the edge of the civil liberties frontier, there are times when interacting with the authorities is necessary. This was one of those times. Officer Friendly and I both got to expand our comfort zones and I established a paper trail in case a whack job from Texas decided to show up at my door and put a hole in my head. If all went well, some nice Texan enforcer of justice made a visit to my unwanted correspondent and explained that he needed to cut it the fuck out. Or words to that affect.

The good news is that I haven’t heard from him since. I’ve also moved – and even Google hasn’t quite caught up with me yet. I’ve also renewed my carry permit. It’s been part of a package deal, in a way. Simultaneously, I’ve better developed and expanded my business, brought myself more in line with how a professional works, as opposed to a semi-pro hobbyist. That’s involved a lot of tedious and Byzantine paperwork, particularly regarding financial matters and taxes. Like occasionally interacting with law enforcement officers, dealing with this paperwork and its associated regulations has been necessary.

Now the new and improved 2257 regulations have been released and I, like countless other webfolk, have to figure out what that means for my business, because that’s how adult content websites need to be run these days – like businesses. In addition to any number of mainstream online sources that contain our addresses, the authors of 2257 have reiterated the fact that the feds want that information on any website where we provide sexually explicit imagery. No longer can we run free across the virtual planes, the cyber wind running through our hair like invisible fingers, our sexually explicit conduct exposed proudly for the world to see. We need to have a “place of business” and something laughingly called “hours of operation,” which the feds optimistically assume to be Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM through 5:00 PM. It’s so cute how they’ve figured out some of the stuff about the internet’s technical capabilities but have remained deliriously and perhaps intentionally oblivious to its denizens’ work culture. Chances are good that this will remain to be the case until one of us slips up spectacularly and winds up in front of a federal judge. Gosh, who wants to be the test case? Not me. Which is why the minute I put a 2257 related image on any of my websites, I’ll be in compliance as best I can.

In order for me and others to be in compliance there needs to be an environment of rationality so that we can figure out exactly what that means and how we can go about it. There is no question that we are an industry under assault. Everybody’s favorite new Attorney General has made it absolutely clear that he’s after our asses and our pussies and our cocks and our tits and all the fun things that we can do with them in front of a camera. The question is where the unreasonable assaults begin and the reasonable (or at least arguably defensible) requirements end. Given the nature of our business, I think keeping good records is a valid request. Not just to “protect the children,” but also to protect ourselves from MILFs who change their minds, models with STD test results that suddenly change, photographers who shoot and run, and all the other industry landmines laid within the industry. As attorney J.D. Obernberger (http://www.xxxlaw.net)reminded me during a recent pop tutorial on 2257, there are plenty of individuals inside our industry whose motives are suspect. As appealing as it is to quake in fear at the thought of some fan (or non-fan) finding out where we and our families live, chances are even better that we’ll eventually run into a psycho model who’ll rip us off or a photographer who won’t take no for an answer. Director and writer David Aaron Clark (http://www.davidaaronclark.com) can tell us about the former and several
young women whose voices were silenced last year by men wielding cameras can no longer tell us about the latter.

To the best of my understanding, although the 2257 regulations require that we place our business addresses on our websites, accessible at least via a front page link, it doesn’t require that we put our models at risk by doing likewise. Yes, we need to keep personal information about them and copies of their ID at our place of business, and yes we need to pass on that spiders’ web of information whenever we resell our content, but it’s not like we’re handing it out to every Joe Six-pack who downloads an image. I’m heartened to see the industry showing concern for the privacy and safety of the women (and men) who keep it afloat, especially given the high weirdness I’ve experienced from wandering human monsters. And my libertarian heart and post punk sensibilities completely understand wanting to keep as much personal information as possible out of the hands of the government; but given the seriousness of the fight ahead of us, it behooves us to dot our “i’s,” and cross our “t’s” just like other businesses, small and large.

The feds know that closing us down on obscenity charges is going to be an uphill battle. They also know that mavericks are easier to trip up with paperwork, because we’d rather be doing something more interesting. Let’s not make their job easier by letting our fears get the best of us. That doesn’t mean we don’t take appropriate precautions, particularly those of us who live in less than porn friendly areas, but it also doesn’t mean that we scare ourselves — and one another — with phantoms.