Photolog
|
|
Aiden Shaw
Photo courtesy of Aiden Shaw
When you think of porn stars, you don’t necessarily equate them with writers or musical composers. Enter Aiden Shaw: a gay porn superstar who found success outside of the porn industry with his fiction, poetry, screenwriting and musical compostions.
Being the second youngest from a large Irish Catholic family, the young Aiden Shaw had to fight for attention amongst his siblings. At 16 he studied performance and visual for twp years before going on to a three year degree course at Brighton university. Around this time he started to work as a prostitute to get through college. With his chiselled face, muscular body and huge penis, Aiden was destined to become a sexual legend. In the early 1990s he went to L.A. and very soon established himself as one of the most celebrated and popular sex superstars of all time. Working for Falcon, Catalina, Hothouse, and Studio 2000, Aiden has made in excess of 50 hardcore videos. Falcon, determined to immortalise him has made a dildo of his dick.
Very much an intellectual, Aiden stands alone from his porno contemporaries. In 1996 he wrote his first novel Brutal and the following year had a collection of poetry If Language At The Same Time Shapes and Distorts Our Ideas and Emotions, How do we Communicate Love? His second novel was Boundaries, was released in 1999 and his third Wasted has just been released.
When did you realize to yourself “I’ve found success” and where was this success found?
A friend told me the first time he realized that I was successful, or at least had made a mark, was when he found one of those little plastic cameras where you press a button and see different porn stars, and I was one of them. I guess that does mean something. Over the last ten or fifteen years people have shown an increasing appreciation of the things I do, but there has been no one definitive point.
Not only are you an accomplished actor in the world of gay porn, but you have come into your own as a published writer, composer, & songwriter, as well as a singer. How have fans of your movies taken to your transition?
I’m sure there are as many responses to my transition as there are people.
Do you find more support from fans than people who stumble on your work?
Both.
Since the publishing of Brutal and Boundaries, people ask if they’re semi-autobiographical due to the realism of your characters and their environment. How true-to-life are your books and how would you write your true autobiography?
So far, they are very true to life, but not autobiographical. I am editing an autobiography at the moment. It will be published in the next year and sold through my website.
Your books Brutal and Boundaries will have its counterpart, Wasted, released in September 2001. What can readers expect?
You can expect characters from Brutal and Boundaries fucking with each other’s perceptions, emotions, and assholes.
Your poetry and fiction run a similar vein of modern life and challenges, mostly man versus himself. Why not allow men to become the victor?
Are we talking about the same man who:
- Abuses babies
- Rapes old ladies
- Promotes smoking, one of the biggest killers of his fellow man
- Burn fossil fuels that erode our atmosphere
- Tears down rainforests
- Pollutes seas
- Allows animals to become extinct
- Gets children to work for pennies so we can have cheaper trainers
- Who homogenize every culture he touches, until the world is bland.
Shall I go on? The list is endless. Man does not deserve to become the victor. Neither does he deserve respect. He barely deserves pity.
Who do you credit to your influences for music and writing?
Leonard Cohen, Baudalaire, Patrick Suskind, Oscar Wilde, Debbie Harry, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Killing Joke, David Bowie, Karen Carpenter, Susan Sontag, Phillip Glass, Michael Nyman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and so on.
Unless I am mistaken, you tested positive for HIV in 1997. How has your environment changed in support since that time, and what changes has it brought to you in terms of your writing?
I’ve no idea when I got tested, but my personal environment is as supportive and anomalistic as it’s ever been. The world at large seems to have changed greatly, becoming more supportive and a less moralistic. I even think that we are beginning to put HIV in context i.e. a disease, like many others in the history of man. I don’t know how it influences my writing. It is too subtle to know for sure.
The acclaimed artist Diamanda Galás tattooed “We are all HIV+” on her hand after the death of her brother as a tribute to his life and struggle with the virus. What homage would you give to yourself as a man with HIV and what would you want people to know about your life and struggles with it?
I would give no homage to myself for either contracting or living with a virus. That seems self-obsessed and petty. It’s no biggie. This question even seems a bit dated. Things are different now.
How long have you been with your partner and what inspiration does he bring to your music and prose?
I have been with him for ten years and we don’t tend to talk about each other’s work. If he brings anything to my work, it would be the notion of permanence and love.
Looking back on your career now, how would you describe your life from an outside perspective?
Ask me in forty years, it has only just begun.