X-Video
In the early 1980s, after I moved to New York City, I had a wide variety of jobs in Manhattan while I took college courses and lived in different types of housing situations. I was a temporary worker with assignments in banks, public relations and advertising agencies, a broadcast company, market researchers, educational exam companies, jewelry and furniture sellers, an oil and gas company, law offices and even a major art museum. I also followed up ads for work in local newspapers and the Village Voice (an alternative weekly newspaper) which led to a part-time job at night selling children’s books over the phone. There was probably no better way than temporary jobs to learn about opportunities and to adapt to different kinds of work, but I was also focused on just surviving and staying employed.
I gained experience rapidly but sometimes I took a job that did not really pose a challenge. Instead, I worked at some places, especially in the evenings, just for the extra money as long as they were convenient and I could still hold down a more important job during the day and go to school on free evenings and weekends. One of the most memorable jobs, which I worked for only about three months, involved taking orders for X-rated videotapes over the phone.
The company was run out of a penthouse apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. The product was sex movies that were sold on VHS cassette tapes (the technology of those days). The movies were advertised on the back of men’s magazines that were not as upscale or high quality as the most well known men’s magazine, Playboy, but the magazines nevertheless sold well. People around the country would call a toll-free number in the ad and indicate which VHS tape they wanted to buy. I took credit card numbers from customers and otherwise handled the orders. One of the rooms in the apartment had been converted into a sort of mini-warehouse, with metal shelves holding cassette tapes organized for easy retrieval, packing and mailing.
The owner of the business, a white guy in his forties with a shaved head, was kind of sleazy but not because of the type of product that was involved. He would have been the same way if he was selling flowers or breakfast cereal. All that mattered to him was the money he made, the women he had around him and the lifestyle (including casual use of drugs like cocaine) that he could buy. He was more than smart enough to run his business but not above screwing people in all senses of the word.
I didn’t have any problem whatsoever with X-rated movies — after all, I was a young man and just like every other American male, I watched those movies when they were available to me. The owner also never cheated me or was unfair in hours or pay. He simply needed someone reliable to do the work and I was a good worker. We got along well enough and never had a problem. But I still didn’t really like him although I kept my opinions to myself. It was his ego and general attitude toward life that I didn’t really respect.
There were a couple of other guys who also worked for the owner. One was perhaps 21 years old and the other was around 35 years old (I was in the middle of that age range). We worked different shifts that occasionally overlapped. They were responsible for shipping VHS tapes to customers.
When I wasn’t taking phone orders, my other task involved looking at tapes that were returned by customers with complaints. This meant that I had to put tapes in a VHS cassette player and watch movies to check for damage or find out if the tapes did not function properly. Was the tape clear but the sound bad? Was the tape broken? If so, I had to mark the tape as one that should be replaced with a new one that would be sent to the customer.
Late in the evening when I was speaking with customers on the phone, at times they would ask questions that were unforgettable. One night I was taking an order from a guy in Texas when he asked in a Southern accent if I was one of the guys who performed in the X-rated movie. I politely told him that I wasn’t a performer. He wanted to talk more about the actual movies and I knew he would have preferred it if I had been one of the actors. I thought his questions were funny although I tried not to sound like I was laughing too much.
The owner apparently liked me because he knew that I did a good job. I was always on time and I worked my required hours. I was willing to work overtime if needed. So one evening after I had completed my work and it was time for me to leave, he invited me to stay a while longer and hang out with him and a white woman on the terrace of the apartment. I had the impression that she hung around him for his money and I imagined that she might even have been one of the women in the movies. Regardless, it was an entry to a world I usually didn’t get to see close up: a white guy businessman, low class but thinking of himself as high class based on his money, in the sex industry with one of his women, all in his personal environment. It was their version of a Manhattan lifestyle and material comfort even if his apartment was not furnished in a particularly expensive manner.
The owner and his female guest talked to each other and sometimes to me but I didn’t really feel that I was part of the conversation. I was more of an observer, someone he wanted only to impress. Nevertheless, he offered me wine and cheese. I might have had a sip of wine but not much at all. The somewhat expensive, gourmet cheese smelled awful, worse than anything I knew, and I declined. It looked like it had mold on it but it was apparently supposed to be that way. To them, it was the food of rich people. I wondered how they could find stuff like that appealing. I would never eat it or anything like it just because someone else thought it was the thing to do. But I didn’t tell him my true thoughts. I understood that he liked me more than I liked him. He was just trying to be nice and inclusive. I didn’t stay long, not more than half an hour, but I had to give him credit for his effort to be a cool guy.
In the end, the job became embedded in my memory because it was very different from all my other jobs in New York City. It meant that I would always be able to say that (at least technically) I worked in the porn industry, even though I didn’t get to have any of the fun.
NUAT1601