Mightier Than the Sword

It's all about the interview today. Here is one with Aiden Shaw - porn star extraordinaire. He was an amazingly sweet guy.

Aiden Shaw remains one of the biggest names in gay porn today, both literally and figuratively. When he was hit by a car, the resulting slow, painful recovery gave him time to take stock and think differently about the possibilities of his future life. Stepping out of his porn persona, Shaw became a writer of great insight and depth and proved that the pen can, indeed, be mightier than the sword.

With the release of his seventh book, the autobiographical My Undoing: Love in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography and Prostitution, he’s shown how versatile he can really be. Recounting his life within the porn industry, the book details the expected drug use, sex and club life, but what makes this memoir unique is that these themes are merely a vehicle through which he describes his search for love; from others, and ultimately himself. Already, the critical response to the book has been such that he’s signed on to write a prequel.

Luke Malone: You’ve written seven books now. Do you find the process easier as you’ve become a more experienced writer?
Aiden Shaw: I think I find it a little harder. I know more than I did. This book was tricky because I was trying to write some form of truth, which I know is an abstract term.

Do you think more is expected from you now that you’re not considered a novice?
I don’t know. I don’t take that into account. I was going to say it’s like my videos but it’s not. With videos you’d think that the more you made the easier it would be, but it’s harder. You have to live up to what you’ve done before, and I always try to push the envelope a little, try to make it better or show something else I’ve learnt. But that doesn’t come into play when I’m writing. I don’t think that far ahead. I’m writing in the moment, I lose myself.

Do you think your public persona has worked for or against you in regards to your writing?
On a practical level, I’m sure the reason I was published initially was because I had a big dick and because I did porn. The so-called enigma of Aiden Shaw certainly helped me to get my first book published.

Do you think it’s hard for people to take your writing seriously because you come from a porn background?
I kinda don’t care, you know. If they do, I don’t mind and luckily it doesn’t interfere with my creative processes or writing career. Some of the American magazines definitely have a prejudice against me in that I have been a porn star. Some people don’t like you doing more than one thing. They don’t like that you’re pretty, have a big dick and can actually string a sentence together.

Does that bug you?
I don’t mind. I accept that part of people’s interest in me lies in my sex career. But if someone is being lascivious or just downright sleazy, cheap or stupid, then yes, I very much mind. I did an interview recently, an email one, and the first question this guy asked was, “My dick’s eight-and-a-half inches, how big is yours?” And it was like, why on earth would I want to know what size the gentleman’s dick was? I didn’t give him an interview. I mean, let’s try and relate it, at least a little bit, to the book. Show some respect. It took a lot of time and a lot of work went into it.

It’s pretty disrespectful.
Yeah, my boyfriend was kind of pissed off but I told him it was no problem; I just wouldn’t do the interview. But he was disgusted by it. He’s really protective.

My Undoing deals with notions of love, plus issues of co-dependency and looking for love. Could you tell us a little bit about your partner?
He’s such a sweetheart. He’s Iranian and we’ve been together for about eight months. We’re completely monogamous. I know monogamy can mean different things to different people but we’re very strict about it. We have a lovely life and I love him. It was his birthday recently and I bought him a ring as a symbol of love. I like seeing it on him because it reminds me of our love.

That’s really nice. As you know, it can be so rare in gay culture.
There can be a kind of fluidity in gay relationships but I think we’re a bit kooky because we’re so hard-lined about it. We’re very old-fashioned in a way. My parents have been together for 40 years and his parents have been together for a long time too and they’re all still very passionate. I think we’ve both had great role models and we each met the right person. Other gay men I met laughed and made me feel like a freak for wanting a boyfriend, having plans and being devoted. Now I’ve found someone who feels the same and it’s so lovely.

It must be nice to both see the relationship from the same perspective.
It’s so nice to have boundaries. For God’s sake, I’ve had no boundaries in my life and it’s good to have them. When you know the rules, you know the situation. It’s very reassuring and I have complete faith in him because I know he believes in our rules, too. The very notion that we’ve got rules would make some gay people puke. It may seem old-fashioned and restrictive but we don’t find it restrictive because it’s something we’ve always wanted and finally got.

Sometimes, when things haven’t worked out so well for you romance-wise, when they go right it can be weird. Things are running smoothly and you’re waiting for something to go wrong.
It’s funny, isn’t it? I think it’s hard navigating a relationship as a gay man because we have no bloody role models. When I want to talk about a problem with my boyfriend, I call my mum. What’s that about? No one else I know has been in a long-term relationship.

You’ve been interviewed numerous times, why do you think it is that people want to know so much about you?
It’s a difficult question to answer without sounding like a dick. I imagine there must be some curiosity in the fact that I’ve done varied things. And some people say I’ve done them well. But even with the magazines that don’t care if I’ve got a big dick, there still must be some mystery around me because I’ve done porn movies. I imagine it’s mainly that… and because I’m such a swell guy.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. People seem curious about other aspects of your life, not solely the porn.
That’s nice to hear. I do work very, very hard and I’m very committed to it. I was up writing late last night and when I finish speaking with you I’ll be working all day and night editing a short story I’m working on. And I’m glad that people are interested because it feels like I’m finally getting payback for it all.

What are you working on next?
I don’t want to say too much now. My publisher said I can do whatever I want and I don’t know what route to go down. I don’t know whether to do something more theoretical. I’m doing an MA in Creative Writing and I have to write a thesis as part of the coursework, so I might publish that. I also talked about doing a story linking all of my movies and telling people what happened in between. People are interested in the backside, rather than the backstage, of the porn industry. But that might bore the pants off me, you know?

Do you see yourself as a brand?
I’ve always loved that idea. I got an email the other day from somebody I used to know and he wrote, “I met you at the gym years ago before you became Aiden Shaw Inc.” My friends joke about it all the time. That aside, I think I have created something that is unique to me.

Leigh Bowery was synonymous with so many things: music, fashion, art and the avant-garde. You seem to share the same sensibility; your name was originally attributed to porn and then you branched out into music and writing.
I loved Leigh. We were friends and I admired him greatly. He was very intelligent and could turn his hand to anything. He was a genius. I think, in the future, we’re going to look back and realise he was much more important than he is considered now.

It must be strange to know somebody on a personal level and see them morph into an iconic figure. Your friends must have had this experience with you.
Yeah, I know quite a lot of famous people now but they’ve been that way since I first knew them. No one like Leigh. What I think is a crime about his stature is that, as with most artists, they’re worth much more dead than alive. It’s a crime because people can talk and write about them and the artist isn’t there to say what it was really about. I’ve thought many times about faking my death, but it seems a little too sitcom to actualise. The idea is that I’d give my publisher several books to release posthumously…

What’s your biggest regret?
Oh, my God. I guess being run over.

How do you view the accident now that you’ve got some distance from it?
I actually did an interview yesterday and I was sitting with the journalist and he asked me how my friends dealt with the situation and I just started crying. I couldn’t help it. Although it’s very far away in time, it’s obviously still very painful to me. I’m not telling you this to avoid the question. It’s just that it’s still fresh, you know? I was shocked that I started crying. I was trying to describe how good my friends were at the time and I just broke up about that.

Do you feel you’ve got something positive out of it, or do you wish it had never happened?
I wish that it’d never happened. This is a really rotten metaphor, but in the same way that Hitler caused a lot of sadness in the world, the sadness that I caused to my family and my friends alone, forgetting everything that I went through, that wasn’t worth it. It breaks my heart.

What’s your greatest achievement?
It might well be my boyfriend. The bottom line is that love is my greatest achievement and I love the context of this love in particular. I have faith in it. I think faith in love is extremely important.

It’s good to have faith and not be broken by previous relationships not working out.
Totally. Thank God I can try again – dust myself off and try again. Not with any great effort, but just being open to the possibilities. The first night we met each other, it was off a sex chat line, I was high as fucking hell and he came over. For some reason, when he walked in the room we both knew it was something lovely. Within half an hour I was crouched between his legs talking in the kitchen about important stuff. And he saw that, read between the lines, even when I said I didn’t want a boyfriend. Thank God I was able to retain that openness and softness otherwise I wouldn’t have him now. That’s so slushy, huh?

No, not really. It’s nice.
The reason I don’t mind saying it is because, while in my book I talk about drugs and speak more about the come downs than come ups, I do want to pass on that information to younger people. Like, you can have all the sex and the life that I did but you can also find love. No matter how messed up my life has been, I’m really fucking happy now and I have a lovely, lovely man.

What is something that people don’t know about you?
I’m guessing they don’t know for a reason so it’s probably going to stay that way.

What is something that you wish people didn’t know about you?
Nothing. If there’s something that I wish they didn’t know I’d try to make sure I originally didn’t tell them. There’s not that much I didn’t say in the book, I didn’t leave much out.

There was a character named after you on Sex and the City, Carrie’s boyfriend, Aiden. How does it feel to attain a status where you are referenced in one of the most popular sitcoms on TV?
I didn’t know at first. I got a couple of phone calls from different newspapers in New York and I though, oh, my God, this is funny. Every time Carrie says the name in full it makes me giggle inside. It’s nice.

What’s in the future for you?
I’m doing my MA and that is a real turning point in my life. When I did the interview I used my real name and told them how I’d created this character called Aiden Shaw and lived within him. I told them who I thought he was and what I tried to achieve with him. At college, I want to be the real me again and leave him as a fictional character who writes books. I want to be the puppeteer, you know?

Like a longstanding performance art piece.
It has been, really. I don’t think people realise that. Even when I watch the first porn I made I find it hard not to laugh, it’s so mental and cheesy. In London, all my friends are very cool and my life is much more underground. To then go to LA and having these tan lines and cheesecake kind of people, it was hilarious. I always saw the joke in it and the more porn-like it looked the funnier I found it. I had no inspirations to make the porn seem arty or anything like it. My favourite porn is the cheesiest stuff. So not me. It’s seems the antithesis – it’s so far from me. All my friends who know me know that. In England they see that more and more and at college I really get to put the nails in the coffin.

Did pursuing the type of porn that was so different to you as a person make it easier to inhabit the Aiden Shaw character?
Funnily enough, when I was a teenager I was kind of punky and spotty and really effeminate. At the time, gender was all fucked up with the New Romantics and the punks. I didn’t look like a guy and people used to think I was a girl all the time. Then I started to see men I liked and I thought, ahh. I was really gender non-specific at the time. Most people, when they grow up, automatically fall into their gender but I didn’t. But when I was 18, I decided I wanted to be that and then I took it really far and I think that all the time I was constructing this image, almost objectively, and pulled it off so well. It was an exercise in a sense.

Quite a successful one it seems.
Thank you. But again, it’s only because it was so objective. I wasn’t feeling my way; I was constructing a look, a behaviour, a smile, the nod, the stance, the pose – the whole thing. But it’s what a lot of men do. Especially gay men. Because gay men, let’s face it, were skinny or pear-shaped effeminate kids, who now mask themselves with tattoos and act like soldiers. What are they trying to mask? How much muscle does it take to mask the person inside?

And the second they open their mouth it just melts away.
Even if they can pull that one off, if you listen to what they’re actually saying it’s screaming to what’s really going on.