The Adventures of Jay Silver

Just another journal entry in the life of an aspiring adult performer.

Confession time... I haven’t been putting much work into this lately. Perhaps I’ve been a bit discouraged and maybe it’s just because I’ve been really busy with life. I haven’t started camming yet. I keep telling myself I will set aside the time to do it. But then I just can’t seem to get the motivation to do it by myself. Maybe the problem is that I’m not really into watching solo cam shows so the whole thing is hard to get excited about. I’ve been hoping to find other people to collaborate with and I’ve met with some nice people who are into it. But in the end nothing seems to work out. Lately I’ve just been spending my spare time going to the climbing gym or playing music. Perhaps the workout and creative outlets are better for me in the long run. Maybe I should put out an ad on fetlife or maybe I just need a life coach to keep me motivated.

I’ve joined the Bad Bunnies porn collective. I have a to-do list that includes finding a nice promotional photo. This seems like a bit of a catch 22. I’m still looking for photographers who want to work with me so I don’t really have any photo beyond selfies or snapshots. I guess everyone starting out is faced with this dilemma.

I’ve reached out to a photographer interested in starting a project capturing the male form. I’m not sure if it’s just me but this often feels like an exception to the rule. We are still trying to setup a date but I’ve been told the project is still moving forward. I haven’t really complained since I get the feeling that it will be an outdoor shoot and it’s still really cold out. But I’m hoping that whatever comes from this could be used to promote myself.

Last weekend I was hoping to meet someone who claims to create porn. The plan was to talk for a bit before a threesome with him and his partner. They also expressed interest in capturing it on film. Unfortunately the day came and went without them replying to my messages or any further contact other than the initial planning and a minimal STI/boundaries talk. It always sucks to get ghosted or stood up but hopefully it’s actually a blessing in disguise. In retrospect I may have been more into the possibility of connecting with someone who made porn than the actual threesome. Perhaps I need to be more guarded about what I volunteer for. Just because I’m having a hard time finding a path forward doesn’t mean I need to compromise or do anything I may later regret.

Other opportunities seem few and far between. I just checked sexyjobs.com and there were ten adult performer/modeling jobs listed for the local area.  Unfortunately, all of them specified female only.

I recently saw an advertisement for a class about how to take sexy and sensual selfies. I always try to take interesting and sexy selfies, but I’ll admit that I’m not the best. I thought this would be a great class for me and I couldn’t wait to sign up. As soon as I got home I visited the website and started looking into the class details when I saw “for women and femmes only”. I was super disappointed. I was seriously hoping this would help me step up my sexiness game. It also leaves me with the lingering question of what is sexy? As a straight guy I know what I find sexy in women. But what do people find sexy in men? The infamous dick pic seems pretty polarizing. The solicited ones can be hot and I’ve seen a few go viral with tons of love. But the unsolicited variety is always terrible. I’m also not a big fan of the generic ones with a dirty bathroom as the backdrop. I’m usually more interested about what’s on the counter or why the mirror is so dirty. The trend of using shaving cream or rulers for scale also seems odd. It just makes the whole thing seem so clinical.

So what is sexy? Let’s be honest, I don’t have a 10” cock or chiseled abs. I’m not tall and thanks to my family tree and cloudy, northwest climate my complexion is pretty pale.  The tall, dark, and handsome stereotype doesn’t exactly apply to me. So is it hopeless? Of all the attributes I mentioned there’s only one I can do anything about. I could probably work out more. I try to work out and I’m pretty fit but I’m also firmly in the “dad bod” zone. Which is probably to be expected for a dad in my situation. The days when I could easily fit a good workout routine into my schedule are long gone. Someday it’ll get easy again, but until then I just take what I can get. I’ve heard rumors that some people find the dad bod sexy, but I’m not so sure. So what do I do? What’s sexy?

In her “DIY Porn Handbook”, Madison Young suggests creating a vision statements before you embark down the road of creating adult content. This makes a lot of sense to me and seems like just the kind of thing to help me focus on my goals and think about my values as I begin to reach out to people. So without further ado....

I’ve decided to put myself out there. But now what? Nothing happened. My phone isn’t ringing off the hook and photographers and producers aren’t knocking on my door. The reality is that I’m starting at the bottom and it’s probably going to be a lot of hard work.

So what do I do now? I think my first step is to start making contacts. I’ve reached out to a few people but I haven’t heard much back. There was a really nice photographer from Europe that messaged saying he thought I’d do great and wished me luck, but so far that’s about it. I’ve never been very good at networking… perhaps being an introvert has something to do with that. But I have options; there are lots of groups and people on the Internet to reach out to. I’m guessing most of the time it will be dead ends but hopefully I can make a few meaningful connections and start to gain some real experience. Ultimately I’d like to be a performer. But for right now I’d just be happy to find a project that aligns with what I want to do and help out any way I can.

Eventually I’ll need to start building some kind of portfolio or content. In today’s DIY world the barrier to entry has never been lower. When I was playing in a band and we wanted to make a record we didn’t go to a studio. We bought a few nice microphones, some recording equipment and did it all on our computer. Perhaps I’ll end up doing the same thing because the punk rock DIY ethos is still pretty strong in me. I actually just ordered a webcam because that seemed like the easiest way to start. All I really need is some space, myself, and a computer.

Spoiler Alert: Jay Silver is not my real name. For me a porn name isn’t so much about hiding my real identity, it’s about adopting a new persona. I think of it like a rock star taking off street clothes and putting on their stage cloths and makeup before a show. I heard Alice Cooper talk about it once on a podcast.

So why Jay Silver? I thought about it for a while before the name came to me. I’m sure you’ve heard all the ways to pick your stripper name. I could take the name of my first pet and the first street I grew up on. That would be Eddie Adams, not bad but a little dull. I could use my birthstone. That would be Eddie Amethyst, not really what I’m going for and it sounds a little forced. Google said I could use the color of my underwear and the last thing I ate. Unfortunately, Black Smoothie sounds more like a personal problem than anything remotely sexy. I thought about coming up with something clever or funny. Like instead of Bruce Wayne I could call myself Bruce Wang and get some Batman tats or something. But that seemed a little immature.

I wanted my porn name to be something more personal. Over my life my hair color has naturally changed several times. When I was a little kid I was blond. As I grew older it became reddish and then brown by the time I was in my late twenties. Then I had kids and my hair immediately started going grey. I didn’t think that really happened, but I guess for some us it does. I wasn’t really happy about it but at least my beard is still red. Then one day at work people were talking about their hair color and I mentioned how fast my hair started turning grey. A coworker looks at me and she says “your not grey your silver.” All it took was that little nudge to take something that I had been self conscious about and turn it into a positive. Because in that moment all I thought about was how awesome silver hair sounds.