WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - Jason Sechrest is the first to admit he's nauseatingly upbeat and annoyingly energetic. As the indefatigable poster boy for what's good about the adult industry, he considers those traits strengths.
Sechrest, 29, is one of the most visible personalities in adult, particularly on the gay side of the industry. He hosts weekly events at gay watering holes several nights a week and interviews porn stars for his popular website, Jason Curious, as well as on his Rude TV show, Bottoms Up. However, his entrée to the wonderful world of porn was almost accidental.
"I lived in a small town called Columbus, Ind., until I was 13," he told GAYVN.com. "Then I moved to Sarasota, Fla., for my middle and high school years. And then the day after I graduated high school, I got on a plane and came to Los Angeles and lived on the streets, actually, for a couple months. Total story of boy with dreams willing to do whatever it took to make it in the big city."
Looking back on the experience, it's "funny how, when you're 18 [and] living in a small town on the East Coast, you think that's so unique and different and special," he said.
Eventually a kindly celebrity took him in.
"A B-movie actress by the name of Kim Dawson let me live in her shed," he said. "But it was kind of infested with rats. I would order a pizza on Monday and make it last a whole week."
Armed with his irrepressible personality and a few contacts, he set about becoming a big-S someone in the land of what he refused to consider anything but opportunity.
"I had been interviewing people for magazines since I was 15," he recalled. "I started as a cub reporter for a magazine called Femme Fatales and went on to do some cub reporting and little blurb writing for Entertainment Weekly, A&E's Biography and all sorts of magazines. So when I got to L.A., I called literally every person I ever interviewed.
"I mean, I'm literally calling Linda Blair from The Exorcist, saying ‘Hey, remember when I interviewed you two years ago on the phone? Well, I'm in L.A. now and [have] no place to stay and I want to be an actor like you. Can you help me out?"
He paused for effect.
"As you can imagine, Linda didn't call back."
Not everyone was immune to Sechrest's charm, though. Surprisingly, he thought at the time, adult entertainers seemed eager to welcome him into their world.
"Becky LeBeau from the soft-core porn company Softbodies and Fantasy One [called me back]," he said. "And so did Kira Reed from Playboy TV. And Penthouse Pets Sam Phillips and Sara St. James. The adult industry really embraced me and took me under their wing. People bought me dinner and gave me odd jobs as a [production assistant]."
Thus began a 10-year odyssey that continues to this day.
"Eventually, after a couple of those odd jobs, I met Danni Ashe on a shoot from Danni's Hard Drive," Sechrest said. "Danni comes in for that shoot like freaking Madonna with her laptops and her cell phones and her assistants - and I am mesmerized."
According to Sechrest, his big break came that very day when Ashe's head writer quit unexpectedly.
"Becky says ‘You should hire Jason. He's a writer,'" Sechrest recalled. "And my eyes got huge and she looks at me and says ‘Yeah, but can you write smut?'
"You can bet your ass I went out that night and bought every Penthouse magazine I could get my hands on," he continued, laughing. "I read all the letters, wrote tons of samples, went in the next day and got the job on a trial basis. Next thing I know, I have my own office with a window in Culver City. I was 18. I couldn't believe I had [a telephone] extension, much less a window!"
Sechrest worked for Ashe for more than two years, writing for Hustler, Club, Jock, Inches and other magazines on the side. His specialty was a new kind of feature for many of them: a gossip column that revealed what porn stars were like behind the scenes. When he left Danni's Hard Drive in 2001, it was to launch his own website based on the success of those columns.
"At the time, there was no site that covered both straight and gay adult news, and in the gay world there was no daily blog or gossip column at all," he said. "I was the only reporter on the red carpet at a lot of the gay porn events. [Jason Curious] really became the first place online to de-objectify these stars and talk about who they are instead of what they're doing."
Admittedly, the site wasn't an instant success.
"The gay thing took time to cultivate," Sechrest revealed. "There was a lot of separation and ugliness behind the scenes in adult between the straight and gay genres that I wanted to end. I wanted to bridge the gap that was there at the time. That was more my goal than to ‘de-objectify,' really."
In the early days, Sechrest played his own sexuality close to his vest in order to be able to gain the trust of both gay and straight adult entertainers. Nowadays, though, he's very open about where he stands.
"I've always been bi," he told GAYVN.com, "and I wanted the site to be a reflection of me. It was supposed to be a way to live vicariously through me, this guy who knows every porn star you've ever wanted to sleep with - male, female, straight, gay."
Did he sleep with any of them?
"Tons," Sechrest said. "I dated a lot [of porn stars], even before I moved out here. I lost my virginity to Sara St. James, so...."
Today, Sechrest said he spends most of his time hosting live gigs.
"Isn't it crazy?" he asked. "I'm actually paid to take all my porn-star friends to a huge party where we drink free and get adored by people. It's ridiculous. I get up on a microphone and give out porn to the crowd and they scream and it's really amazing. I'm having the time of my life right now."
Although Sechrest said he gets along well with most people, his infectious good cheer doesn't always infect his interview subjects.
"You know, the more of a legend they are, the more likely they are to be bitter," he said. "You can't joke with them. They all want the Inside the Actor's Studio interview. They take it all very, very seriously. I don't blame them, but they are difficult interviews for me to do for that reason. I can't put myself in their shoes. I don't know what it must be like to have had sex on camera for so many years and have not made as much as people made off of you and to not get hired as much as you did before. I haven't walked in those shoes. I don't know what it feels like. I might be a little bitter and take it all very seriously too [if I were them]."
Does he think there ever may come a day when he gets an object lesson in bitterness - a day the industry tires of him and doesn't want him anymore?
"I think there are a lot of people in the industry who don't want me now!" he quipped. "I don't know. I'm proud of what I've done and how I'm parlaying it into the nightclub thing right now. Someday someone new will come along and do something I never thought of; find some new way of doing it. As long as it's good for the industry, I'm happy with that."
He's also happy with the way his "small-town-boy-makes-good" story has turned out so far - so happy, in fact, that he wouldn't change a thing about the journey.
"I made some mistakes but I grew from them, and really, I grew up here. Online. In front of everyone," he said. "The crazy thing is, the site kind of takes care of itself with my Web team now. These days, I'm doing all of these hosting gigs, interviewing porn stars live at nightclubs several times a week and throwing big porn parties in West Hollywood. But I'm still doing what I was doing before, just in a different outlet. I'm still getting the fans of adult entertainment closer to the porn stars than they've ever been. Now they just get to meet them in person at my events. It's really something.
"It's good to have dreams and goals, but not at the cost of living in the present and making the most out of what you're doing today," he added. "I think if you do that, the future will kind of take care of itself.
"When Hillary Clinton was asked recently if she would consider running for president again, she said she didn't think she would. She said ‘There's an old saying: You blossom where you're planted.' That really stuck with me: ‘You blossom where you're planted.'"
Sechrest hopes to be blossoming for a long time to come.
GayVN
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