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Sleeping Under the Stars
by Geoffrey Karen Dior
Bedside Press
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Here's a bit of info that may surprise readers: when porn star/diva Geoffrey Karen Dior met 1980s porn legend Al Parker in a San Francisco leather bar, things just clicked. They leave, and, as Dior relates in this eroto-memoir, "When we got back to his place, he took out some penis pumps and started pumping up his dick. It got really huge, but looked a little like a Mr. Potato Head." Now the late Al Parker has been many things to many people, but it takes a storyteller like Dior to pinpoint the Mr. Potato Head detail.

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This memoir-- really a collection of short pieces detailing Dior's sexual adventures with most everyone in the porn industry-- careers between sounding schoolgirl naive and silly ("As often happens, I haven't seen Chris [Stone] since. But I haven't forgotten him") and being genuinely moving, particularly when Dior touches on the ravages of AIDS within the industry. What makes the book work-- aside from the great gossip and the endless sex-- is its author's genuine affection for his co-workers and the goodwill and plain-old niceness that shines through page after page.

Certainly Dior (also known as Rick Van and Geoff Gann) has had an unusual career. He has starred in over 100 videos and directed as many. He's not only appeared in drag in many films (as Karen Dior) and been perhaps the most nominated performer and director in gay porn history, but Dior is generally credited with inventing the notion of transsexual porn. Stepping beyond porn, Dior has appeared on TV and in feature films and has cut several records. Oh, and he has a Ph.D., is an ordained minister and a trained "rebirther": a regular renaissance man.

In his chapter on Ryan Black, the big, beefy, and new-to-the-industry Black is supposed to fuck Dior, but is intimidated by the author's fame, so Dior fucks Black (giving us all the explicit details) and the film is wrapped. But Dior-the-raconteur goes one step further and talks about how he was later involved in a group sex scene with Block (again many explicit details) who was cheating on his partner, Crystal Crawford. Black makes Dior promise not to rat. But, it turns out, Crawford is also cheating. In the end, Dior makes an impassioned plea: "For God's sake! If everyone is fucking everybody else, why can't we all just say so?"

This is, in the end, the refreshing message of Sleeping Under the Stars (a title that's not quite accurate, as Dior seems to spend a great deal of time above, over, and behind the stars, as well): just grow up, enjoy sex, get laid, and stop being such fucking hypocrites. It's a simple message but apt for our times.

But the fun-- and truthfulness-- of reading Dior's book is that his plans for uncomplicated sex always go wrong. After meeting and fucking Brad Morgan at a party ("He was incredible. His face always looked like he was in pain when I fucked him, but when I asked if I were hurting him, he always said no.") they decide to move in together, but Dior now realizes that he was "having self-esteem problems." After that Dior finds out that he is HIV-positive. Brad holds him as Dior cries. Brad says "I'm never going to leave you." But, as is the way of romance in Hollywood, Morgan is gone by the end of the month. Now, as is the case with almost all of Dior's flings they are still friends.

Dior's roster of bedmates constitutes a Who's Who of contemporary porn: John Holmes, Joey Stefano, Cory Nixon, Cal Jammer, Christopher Rage, Tanner Reeves, Kris Lord, Ryan Idol. Randy Storm, and more and more. Each chapter-- a page-and-a-half or so-- manages to be as entertaining as the next, and Dior is a great storyteller, with an eye for the emotional, as well the physical, detail.

But for all the sex-- which feels real, because Dior happy to tell you what went wrong as well as what went where-- there's an ennobling sense of sadness that raises the book to a new level. Dior comes across as a real person-- not a media-invented porn star-- making this probably a first in the genre of porn autobiography. Nowhere is this better seen than when he writes: "I was devastated a few years ago when Chi Chi LaRue told me [Tony Bravo] had died. I never get used to people dying; it doesn't seem right or natural. It keeps happening, though."

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com