LOS ANGELES — Tim Lutz, the beloved adult industry executive who co-founded Cybersocket more than 25 years ago, has passed away after a battle with cancer.
Lutz died on Aug. 20 at his home in Palm Springs. He was 58.
“Tim was at peace with what was happening to him and he was ready to go,” said Morgan Sommer, who co-founded Cybersocket with Lutz and also was his former life partner. “He had spent considerable time in the past few weeks talking with me and other people in his life about this inevitable process.
“He fought to win, until it was clear that no treatment or positive attitude was going to change the outcome of this kind of cancer. He was not afraid of death, just as he was not afraid of life.”
Lutz was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, in late November of 2020.
Sommer, now the senior vice president of sales and traffic at Docler Holding, continued, “He and I shared a lot of life over the past 25 years as friends and business partners, and as life partners for 14 of those years, and as co-parents to Billy for 14 years.
“We started a successful business together and sold it when it was clear it was time for us both to let it go. After we changed our personal relationship we were both married to other people and continued to support each other’s evolution and happiness.
“As business partners we were a good balance to each other and could often be contentious but we always agreed that until we agreed we took no action. That worked for us, but it did lead to some very heated and impassioned discussions. We were both alphas.”
Sommer told AVN that as Tim’s condition began to deteriorate rapidly during the past eight weeks, “he put his life in order, talked to people he needed to connect with, and prepared himself.”
“He is now free of pain and suffering and onto his soul’s next adventure,” Sommer added. “His lifelong friend Tina Fiori and her mother were there for him extensively over the past nine months taking care of him to the end.”
Lutz shared his battle with the disease openly with posts on social media and occasional journal entries on CaringBridge.org in recent months.
In one particularly poignant journal update about his radiation and chemotherapy treatment on January 21st, Lutz reiterated, “I repeat, fear has never entered my mind.”
“I’m surrounded by Love and will manifest my destiny,” Tim wrote. “My life purpose serves me and the people around me best when I exist in a place of Love. To ‘Be Love’ is the reason I'm here. It allows for my immortality, my eternal life, my ultimate joy, my happiness.”
AVN Media Network CEO Tony Rios remarked, “Tim’s mantra was always, ‘You exist in the world that you create.’ I can say that the world was a better place for having Tim in it. He was a dear friend and one of the most loving people I’ve ever come to know.
“Timi, you will always be in our hearts and thoughts. May you rest in peace.”
Harmik Gharapetian, VP of sales and marketing at Epoch, remembers meeting Lutz about 16 years ago at a bar.
“And we just connected and became friends since then—he was one of the most genuine souls I ever met in my life. He had a heart of gold,” Gharapetian told AVN Tuesday. “He cared for people. He was truly a genuinely nice person.
“I will remember all the good times with him and cherish them and try to forget the suffering he went through the last few months.”
Gharapetian said Lutz sometimes came over for Thanksgiving dinner.
“When he couldn’t get together with his family there were a couple years where he came over to our house,” Gharapetian continued. “We had regular dinners together where we didn’t talk business at all. We had a friendship outside of the industry. There was a period of time in the middle where life happened and we couldn’t get together as much, but we reconnected in the last couple of years.
“And when I got the bad news it was just more and more on a daily basis, cherishing the time we had together.
“He was so easy going, so welcoming of new people in the group. I could tell you Tim became a regular friend of my close friends from high school, grade school and college.
“He developed relationships with them just through our friendship. … He was just a special, special person and he’ll never be forgotten.”
Born in Ohio and raised in Orion, Ill., Lutz moved to L.A. in the late ’80s after graduating from Northern Illinois University with a degree in Biology and a minor in Chemistry.
“Right after college he packed his car and drove to California,” Morgan Sommer said. “He sold cable for a little while, then he got into graphic design, and at one time started another magazine with somebody else called Bang magazine.
“Then he was doing lots of freelance graphic design and he and I met at the GV Guide Awards in Fall of ’96, when I moved to LA.
“We met again later at the after-party. We hit it off and started dating and a week or two later we came up with an idea for a business and we started Cybersocket.”
Sommer told AVN that Lutz had a passion for design—he applied his talents in that area to all of Cybersocket’s marketing campaigns and artistic endeavors.
“He loved design, that was his thing. He was a designer through and through,” Sommer said. “All the things we did over the years he was always creative director and art director. When he was at home or in the yard or whatever, he was all about design.
“And he loved to travel. He was very interested in the world around him. I traveled extensively with him when we were still together.
“I know he loved Barcelona. He also really loved Vienna. We have a really good friend that’s in Vienna that he went to visit more than a few times. He loved traveling to Thailand also.”
Under Lutz and Sommer’s leadership, Cybersocket became an iconic brand known worldwide in the LGBTQ community. The 21st annual Cybersocket Awards will be held in January 2022. Sommer and Lutz sold the company in May.
“It just kind of all happened that the opportunity came along and it turns out it was for the best,” Sommer said. “It would be really hard to be running that business now.”
Lutz is survived by his mother, sister and younger brother.
“We knew it was coming,” Sommer said. “He was truly well prepared for this. He embraced this with all of the certainly of someone who believes that in some way he will exist forever.”
Sommer explained that he was visiting Florence, Italy, with his husband last week when he received the news.
“Tim loved the ideals represented by Da Vinci and Michelangelo,” Morgan wrote on Facebook. “At one of the first meetings I had with Tim 25 years ago he pointed to an image of Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ on a shelf in his living room, with the Latin phrase Omnia Vincit Amor, and asked me if I knew what it meant. I translated it correctly.”
The phrase means “love conquers all.”
Photo 1: Morgan Sommer & Tim Lutz in West Hollywood, Calif.
Photo 2: Tina Fiori & Tim in Las Vegas
Photo 3: Tim in Maldives
