Dirty Words: Interview with “Master of O” Author Ernest Greene

Ernest Greene is on a mission. The fetish pornographer loves the erotic classic The Story of O, but felt there was a hole in the center of it. The dominant male characters were dead and needed his hot breath to bring them lustfully to life. And so is born The Master of O, a retelling of the kink masterpiece from the male point of view, relocated to Los Angeles, but without losing a degree of heat. Greene was good enough to take some time to speak about his new book, his pornographic work and his enriching marriage to porn icon Nina Hartley.

Master of O is a rewriting of The Story of O from the male point of view. Why did you think this classic piece of erotic literature needed a different perspective?

The Story of O is still the most influential novel about BDSM and D/s relationships yet written. Reread today, even in a much more kink-friendly environment, it's still shocking and compelling. The author, however, admitted writing it very much from an outsider's POV. I think it was easier for her to identify with the female protagonist than any of the men who seemed to come and go, as it were, throughout the narrative. Her constructions of dominant men are cardboard cutouts affording us little insight into what they're about. The author set an unfortunate precedent that lives on in kink-lit today. Most BDSM fiction is still presented from the submissive perspective and that's only half the story. I thought it was time to hear from the other side.

When you're writing a kink scene do you get sexually aroused or is it just a mechanical arrangement of this into that?

If the sexual episodes in the book, most of which are taken pretty much directly from my own experience, didn't turn me on I would have neither a very interesting book nor a very interesting life. My kink-sex scenes most definitely turn me on as I'm writing them. If they didn't work for me, how could they work for any other reader? Unfortunately, it takes two hands to work a keyboard.

Did any of the sex scenes you wrote surprise you, like, "Where did that come from?"

I've been at this a long time. There isn't anything in Master of O I haven't done, don't do now and won't do in the future. Writing it wasn't a therapeutic exercise and nothing bubbled up from some stygian depth that shocked my sensibilities. I know where all of it came from and it did resurrect some rather pleasant memories. The only thing in the narrative of which I'd have no part—something that follows the original template—is the situation in which O asks Steven to whip her as brutally as possible, use her in every imaginable way and then display her to a silly young suitor who seeks to rescue her from a situation of her own choosing. I once whipped a particularly hardy and beautiful masochistic partner for an entire day with every kind of whip and certainly engaged in every form of usage she or I could dream up, but I would never do that in the service of humiliating a non-consenting third party. I never do anything sexual to prove a point. That's not a bad rule for anyone to adopt, regardless of personal tastes.

There's a humor to the BDSM lifestyle inherent in the absurdity of the situations and paraphernalia used to manipulate genitalia and secondary sex characteristics, there is something clownish about the whole procedure, especially from an outsider looking in, and yet laughter is rare in the scene. Is this because it breaks the illusion of the fantasy, which is serious to the participants, or is the assumption that it's a humorless scene misrepresentative?

Is that a question or a random snippet of social criticism based on limited observation? For the sake of argument I'll treat it as the former. First of all, sex of any kind has inherent comic potential, which wasn't news to Aristophanes, Shakespeare or Kurt Weill and it certainly isn't unique to BDSM. BDSM play itself is serious. It needs to be done conscientiously and with all involved entirely present in the moment. As you push human bodies ever closer to their design limits the situation grows increasingly zero-critical. We seldom approach that verge and in lighter, more playful situations you'll find plenty of wisenheimer badinage among the participants. That would be in keeping with something we do for fun.

Now, are there people who treat kink as a religion and go around making a big deal about the rigidity of their protocol? Sure. I find that most frequently attempts and fails to conceal a lack of confidence and it's funny in its own way. But most of the more experienced kinksters I know are pretty zany characters in general—many of them active in other geekish pursuits like the SCA or cosplay. To enjoy these things a sense of humor about oneself is essential, as it is to the enjoyment of life in general. Laughter in the dungeon is inappropriate to the setting. Laughter in the hotel room later is apt to be loud and raucous. I would reject the characterization of kinksters as grimly serious overall. Quite the opposite. People who consider it sane to wear latex in July need a bit of absurdist sensibility. Maybe you need to get out more.

Is this your first novel? And what are some of your favorite dirty books?

No. I've written several others that haven't been published, luckily for me and for my readers. I have written a lot of short fiction that's seen the light of day and it's not all cringe-worthy, but it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to assume that what the world needs now is a 900 page novel written by me. At my age that level of hubris is more easily attained, rightly or wrongly.

As for the works of others, I still favor Catherine Robbe-Grillet's L'Image, which captures some of the abrasive reality of a certain kind of BDSM relationship. I thought Nine and a Half Weeks was pretty steamy as a book but failed dismally as a movie – no small achievement with Kim Basinger as the female lead. I liked Secretary better on film than in Mary Gaitskil's original story, but there was some heat on the page despite the flat, contemporary writing style because the characters were plausible. In terms of trash fiction, I'd say Harold Robbins is still hard to best. His stuff was truly dark and sordid in a very slick way.

What do you think of the new, popular interest in the kink lifestyle, specifically I'm thinking of 50 Shades of Gray, do you embrace this or is it a disingenuous portrait of the scene?

I wouldn't embrace those books with tongs. They've definitely made kink into a punch-line for late-night TV hosts but that's faint praise. As a portrait of "the scene," whatever that is, their inauthenticity pours off every page like crude oil from the Blue Water Horizon. I think anyone with a high enough pain tolerance to get through them all might have some masochistic inclinations but more of the emotional sort than the carnal variety. A few genuine seekers may find them sufficiently frustrating to inspire further research but overall I don't think their impact will last much longer than that of a cheap, sex-shop riding crop. They're not disingenuous. They're perfectly honest in their abysmal ignorance. I rarely bother to get indignant about fictional portrayals of people I happen to know, but really the notion that dominant men are working out mommy-abuse issues and need the love of a good vanilla woman to make them normal is the kind of vile cliché that would be instantly recognizable in all its offensiveness if it portrayed gay men in a similar light.

You set your version of O in Los Angeles. Is the city as sexually adventuresome as you portray?

Hell yeah. You should only know the full range of possibilities here. Eat your hearts out. It's even better than you imagine.

You have over a dozen screenwriting credits, mostly fetish films. What is it about this genre that inspires you, and which of the films are you proudest of and why?

You're off by a few hundred and they're mostly directing credits. When Voltaire was asked if he thought god could forgive him all his sins he asked why not, since that is god's métier. Kink is my métier. It's what gets me hot and that heat powers my career as a pornographer. Of all the pictures I've made, I think my O pictures—O: The Power of Submission, Surrender of O  and The Truth About O—are the most watchable. The production values are lavish. The fetish detail is spot-on. The players are beautiful. Most also had prior kink experience in their private lives they brought to the set and really enjoyed their scenes, which the camera can only capture if the heat is there. And for once I had enough time and money to make things look good. Just watching Bree Olson sashay around in her latex slave-girl outfit is more bonerific than most video hardcore.

How did you get introduced into adult?

I introduced myself. Watching the first porn movie I ever saw I kept wondering who these people were and why I hadn't met them? I came out here for the ostensible purpose of becoming a mainstream screenwriter and even had a little success at it, but that was just a cover. I was really looking to join the demimonde and the competition was slower back then.

More importantly, tell us how you got introduced to your wife, Nina Hartley?

On the job. I was A.D. for Sharon Kane on a really weak VCA feature in which Nina, who was Sharon's close friend, had been cast as the lead. Nina was the first person I encountered in the business whose agenda was more about sex than money, which gave us something in common right away. She hated the way her big scene was written so I gave her a different spin to put on it that she liked and we became friends. Then we became lovers. Then we went back to being friends for a while. Now we've been married over a decade and it's still fresh and fun.

Is it sexy when the two of you work together in front of the camera or is it simply all business?

Really, if it were all business we'd have picked more profitable occupations. No, we have a great time playing around with pretty young women, who are a common interest of ours. We worked together on camera as recently as a couple of years ago for Intersec up in Oakland with a really lovely girl named Sister Dee. We all had a terrific time and I still like that footage. The age difference makes it all the more perverse.

The two of you have a polyamory relationship, or open marriage, so is it like Grand Central Station in your bedroom?

A distinction needs to be made here. We're not polyamorous. Our emotional commitment to each other is total. We're non-monogamous which is a different thing. We do everything we can to enable one another's adventures, whether shared or individual, but we do so safe in the knowledge that we always come home to each other. We're still in love and between orgiastic debaucheries our private lives are pretty quiet.

What's next?

I've already got a sequel to Master of O in the works but it's a ways off. I'm still Executive Editor of Hustler's Taboo and Taboo Illustrated, quite possibly the two edgiest sex magazines you can buy in this country. After 15 years of running them I expect I'll still be doing print porn for as long as there's still a demand, which hasn't been erased by the Internet despite what has become the conventional wisdom. I might make more movies but only if that market recovers sufficiently to provide the necessary resources to do them right. One thing I can tell you is that sex is my subject and I don't foresee a time when I won't find some way to express myself about it.

Buy Master of O here and here