Death of a Gay Porn Star

“Why do gay porn stars kill themselves” offers an intimate account into Conner Habib’s experiences in gay porn, and examines the cultural misunderstandings and attitudes regarding the recent suicide of gay porn star Arpad Miklos.

Habbib says:

The theories appeared as soon as the news did.  It was immediate, like flies to a corpse.  Theories arrived before grief, before honor and love and the experience of loss.  When a gay porn star dies, instead of an outpouring of grief, we usually witness a buzzing.

All of this is to say that not even death can trump many people’s confused and hostile attitudes towards porn and porn performers. That is how deeply injured we are as a society when it comes to sex, sexuality, and love.

Habib’s essay complicates notions of how gay porn performers are perceived by themselves, the studios, their audiences, and society at large.

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Pat Johnson is currently working on his master’s in Fiction Writing at San Francisco State University, and is the owner and editor of the satirical news website The New Porker. When Pat’s not reading or writing he’s likely squeezing a lime into a Tecate and headed to the dance floor. He also creates short films, documentaries, and sketch comedies. Pat is completing his first novel, The Virgin and Marilyn Monroe, and writing a book of Creative Non-Fiction short stories.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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