Who are you?

So far I've gotten two letters for my new project: Letters from Cheaters.

Like the site that started the Letters Project, Letters from Johns, the letters read primarily as confessions.

While the Cheaters project is open to both men and women, the first two letters I've gotten have been from women.

I'm curious to get letters from men. Why did you cheat? Tell your story anonymously HERE.

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Statue

Statue, Chicago, Illinois

I get email

Hey my name is shamika I want to maje money and I was thinking about starting a blog or something on teens with baby fever turn it into diagnosed medical problem and just a reality issue. Please email me back with idea's and how to get started thank you

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Why do you cheat? [UPDATED]

I've been working The Letters Project since 2008, when I launched Letters from Johns.

I have been a john, off and on, since that crazy year. I've paid for sex with college girls in Seattle while on my way to Japan. I spent an extra two days in Frankfurt, returning from my last tour in Iraq, just to spend some Euros in one of the various Eros Centers. I've picked up streetwalkers for a twenty dollar blow job, and I've spent as much as five hundred bucks (not including a room and dinner afterwards). I've crossed the South Texas border for weekend sex jaunts. When I was stationed in Japan, I even took a week-long trip to Thailand for the single-minded purpose of fucking, fucking, and more fucking. -- I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done

After that, I created Letters from Working Girls.

Yes, we had the foot fetishists, the slaves, the others. These guys always had to pay extra, so most of us liked doing them. One guy, in particular, we all loved. We called him "park bench." He did not get undressed, he laid face down on the table, and the girl sat on him, naked, reading a magazine, not talking to him. After about 20 minutes he'd say thank-you, and that was it. -- I Wanted Them to Leave Happy

Then I did Letters from Men Who Watch Porn.

Like a train wreck, baby: my eyes are inexorably drawn in to the center of scene, blood flow increases to the cerebral cortex, and my brain and body respond as programmed by thousands of years of evolution coursing through veins. -- I Began to Feel Abnormal

Which was followed by Letters from Men Who Go to Strip Clubs.

My fiancee is a knockout, and has a great body that I get plenty of enjoyment from, including a naturally fantastic chest on a slim figure. We have a healthy sex life. She considers herself more sexually adventurous than me, and in some ways that may be right. But of course I can't talk to her about the fake boobs thing. It's not that I would even want her to get them. And of course, that's not the type of fetish that she and I could enjoy in the privacy of our bedroom. It's an in your face kind of thing. -- I Have a Fetish for Big Fake Boobs

Now I'm looking for Letters from Men Who Cheaters.

[UPDATE: I've revised this project to include men and women who have cheated.]

Why did you cheat?

Your letters remain anonymous.

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Portrait

Check out this awesome portrait photographer Daniel Shea did of me for the Telegraph.

You can see the rest of his work here:

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Don't be a boob

Read my latest post on Forbes: "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You More Creative."

The day after my last chemo treatment, I went to a porn convention and wrote about it. What was I thinking? I had to double-check the dates just now. I must have been out of my mind. I was very tired. And bald. But I had something to prove to myself. I was angry I had cancer. If I’d run into cancer at a bar, I would’ve beaten the crap out of it.

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Quote of the day

But what really interests me ultimately is not to record the past, so much as how people live with the past and get on with it. There’s a kind of fetishization of memory in our culture. Some of it comes from the experience and the memorial culture of the Holocaust—the injunction to remember. And it also comes from the strange collision of Freud and human rights thinking—the belief that anything that is not exposed and addressed and dealt with is festering and going to come back to destroy you. This is obviously not true. Memory is not such a cure-all. On the contrary, many of the great political crimes of recent history were committed in large part in the name of memory. The difference between memory and grudge is not always clean. Memories can hold you back, they can be a terrible burden, even an illness. Yes, memory—hallowed memory—can be a kind of disease. That’s one of the reasons that in every culture we have memorial structures and memorial days, whether for personal grief or for collective historical traumas. Because you need to get on with life the rest of the time and not feel the past too badly. I’m not talking about letting memory go. The thing is to contain memory, and then, on those days, or in those places, you can turn on the tap and really touch and feel it. The idea is not oblivion or even denial of memory. It’s about not poisoning ourselves with memory.

-- Philip Gourevitch

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I get email

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT...

I am working hard and hardly working.

One time I learned from a co worker that its wrong to let pride get in the way of your pocket book...

Too me it ment many of things...

I dug. And Dug... Until something clicked...And I will only share it with you...Philosopy is a gamble because its not percise...and gambling is a philosophy in which the more you play the better your odds are...

So thanks for today yestersay nd tomorrow... 

P.S. LOOK FOR ME AT WALNUT CREEK TOYOTA AND SEND ME ALL YOUR FRIENDS FROM FORBES TO BUY...

THANKS ...

My email is real.... 

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Robot

Robot, San Diego, California

This is obscene

Please read "The Obscenity Police Are Coming," my latest on Forbes.

Basically I got tired of writing shit advice posts on my Forbes blog. How to do this. How to do that. The only reason people write advice shit is because they don't know how to do the thing. So take heed when you take advice.

I wanted to stop doing that. Which wasn't a super easy choice. Because shit posts about stupid things tend to get you a lot of traffic. Then people write you emails telling you how inspired they were by your words. And before you know it, you are a shit-turner-outer. Because it gets you paid and it gets you appreciated. So why would you stop doing that?

Only that's not good enough. So I decided I would stop writing shit, and I would start working on getting better at doing journalism again. So I did that.

I wrote about cupcakes first -- "A Cupcake ATM Dispenses Love" -- because that was easy. I felt sort of intimidated -- intimidated by cupcakes: sigh -- so I told myself it was a photo essay. And I took a bunch of photos to distract myself. Then I told myself the text was just captioning for the photos. And then it was done. So I posted that.

Of course, that was sort of silly. So I wanted to do something more serious. So I wrote: "Is Apple a Sin Stock?" That intimidated me for other reasons. Because it was about finance. And I don't know anything about finance. Or Apple, really. Other than I use their products.

So when I called up, say, the portfolio manager, I wrote the questions out beforehand, and I didn't say much other than ask the questions, because I didn't want them to realize how much I didn't know. I ended up really liking the portfolio manager. He was interested in the ideas of things rather than numbers, and I liked that. We had something in common, which I did not expect.

I also talked to a priest for that piece. I asked the priest if something bad that had happened to me was because I had sinned, because I was a sinner. He said no. He said that can't be the case because bad things happen to babies, and what have they done wrong? He said why God makes us suffer is a mystery, and when he said this I understood that he meant pondering this question, why does God make us suffer?, was maybe the thrust of his life, and if maybe I spent the rest of my days pondering this question, that would be enough. Because there is no answer. Only the question.

Then I read about how Romney would maybe launch a war on porn if elected, so I decided to write about that. "The Obscenity Police Are Coming" is what I called it. Usually, I write the title first. This time, the title came later.

I talked to an anti-pornographer, and a pornographer who went to trial and got off. I talked to a lawyer who defended a man who dealt in scat and bestiality porn, and then I talked to the man who made the scat and bestiality porn.

That man is Ira Isaacs. I talked to Ira years ago, before his first trial had started. Now it was three trials and an appeal to the Supreme Court and four years later, and Ira had been convicted and was telling me how long his sentence might be.

I like Ira. I always have. I told Ira I would visit him in prison. And I meant it.

I also told Ira that I would let you know that if you want to donate to his defense fund, you can email him here: stolencarfilms@yahoo.com.

I also talked to a porn star and budding pornographer named Sovereign Syre. I couldn't link to her blog from my Forbes post because she posts too many sexy naked photos of herself, but you can look at her naked here. 

One of my favorite parts of the piece was the fact that photographer J.M. Darling allowed me to publish a photo he took of Sovereign at the top of my post. See. I think that photo made the piece. Thank you, Mr. Darling.

At first, the post didn't get a lot of traffic, but then it did, because it blew up on Reddit. Probably by the end of today it will be the all-time-most-read piece I've done for Forbes. So far it's gotten 153,000 views. At one point, it was the #1 most read post on Forbes.com. And another post I wrote, "The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star," was #3. 

Now I want to do more in-person reporting. The Apple piece and the obscenity piece were mostly phoners.

I am best in the flesh. So that's where I am going.

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Believe

Believe, Manhattan Beach, California

Advice from me

I'm going to be speaking at the Crossroads Writers Conference in Macon, Georgia, October 5 - 7, 2012.

I'm part of the Freelancers Summit headlined by Kevin Maurer, coauthor of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden.

I'm be talking about how to thrive in the gig economy.

Here's their interview with me: "Don't Be Boring."

M: You talk a lot about ‘the hustle’ specifically that being a good marketer, traffic pusher, and editor of your own writing is increasingly important in the freelancing world.  Any specific tips and/or suggestions on how to become a kick ass and take names hustler and/or improve one’s hustling skills?

S: Your article isn’t going to read itself. You published something online, and nobody’s reading it. That’s probably because you thought writing it was enough. It isn’t. Send out the link to your piece to anybody of influence who may be interested in it. That’s networking on behalf of your prose. It’s not enough to write. You must also work to be read.

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Presented without comment

 

All Time Top Pages

1. The Business About My Breasts (157,970 views)
2. Adult director Max Hardcore released from prison (106,028 views)
3. The Hardest Thing About Being A Male Porn Star (98,264 views)

How not to ask me for advice

Hello, Susannah,

I am ready to take the next step in my life and am applying for an ultra competitive sales position at a leading IT firm. I just read your entry about selling "you" on Forbes.com. My question to you is, with my second phone interview coming up on Tuesday, is there anything I can/should do to prepare? I already know the recruiter that will be interviewing me. Should I send them something ahead of time to get them thinking about the interview coming up? (Disclaimer - I interviewed for the same position a year ago and obviously did not get the job) I really feel like I've gained the necessary skills and experience over this past year. Any advice you can give me or resources you could point me to would be great!

Thanks!

[redacted]

I have no idea.

Thanks for the great advice! I appreciate it!

Is that sarcastic? Your question was boring.

Your response was typical. You had nothing to gain by answering it, so you offered nothing. Your article was boring and offered nothing original. Why do you display your email address if you don't like to answer related emails?

Why did you ask me for advice if my article was boring and offered nothing original?

Obviously it's been a complete waste of my time, so honestly I'm not sure. Thanks for nothing. I can't imagine you're too successful with the type of attitude you have. People like you have capped potential. Good luck in life!

Guts

Anatomical Model, Chicago, Illinois

Webinar

Here's how many times I've done a webinar: never. I don't even like the word.

But I'm very excited to have signed up for Vickie Pynchon's Negotiation Webinar Series.

I want to be a better negotiator in all facets of my life -- professional and personal -- and I'm really looking forward to this taking me to the next level. Vickie is awesome. I highly recommend.

If you sign up, we can all role play together.

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Is investing in Apple a sin?

Over on my Forbes blog, I ponder the question: "Is Apple a Sin Stock?"

This piece was really interesting to research. I particularly enjoyed talking to the Vice Fund manager and the Jesuit priest.

Suffice to say, I don't spend a lot of time hanging around portfolio managers or priests.

“If you take cigarettes from a smoker, and alcohol from a drinker, and an iPhone from what we might consider an over-user of Apple products, would the withdrawal behaviors be equal?” Sullivan wonders. “I think they could be.”

Hopefully, I'll be doing more of these types of pieces moving forward.

My next one is on Republicans, porn, and the future.

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Labor Day

Labor Day, Chicago, Illinois

I get email

I want to be a male pornstar, without having to be in gay porn, I dont care what it takes except being gay

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