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Kurt Lockwood resents his hometown's refusal to recognize his greatness. Really.

A popular proverb in Spanish says, "You cannot be a prophet in your own land." And that's how quintessential Los Angeles pornographer Kurt Lockwood feels today, as he asks aloud why he isn't more famous in his hometown.

After all, his 2006 movie "The Decline of Western Civilization, Part 60: The Porno Years has been hailed as a classic L.A. crack-up film. His less well-received "After Midnight," he believes "is unknown for the masterpiece that it is." His short scenes have won awards (Kurt Lockwood & Ashley Long won the 2004 AVN award for Best Couples Sex Scene for Compulsion) and run in numerous compilations. So why is he better known in his new home of four years, San Francisco, he asks, than in his own city of fellow fallen angels?

"I'm not just another porner. I don't think people understand my relationship with this city, and they don't understand what I've achieved," Lockwood declares, as he sits in Guelaguetza, the Oaxacan mole mecca, near his childhood haunts in Mar Vista.

He's dressed in a black flamenco-style skirt, with black-stiletto-heeled boots, and a long black coat with flame-red trim — a style the San Francisco Chronicle described as "Morticia Addams gone gypsy." His eyelids and earrings are dusted with gold.

"There is not another male porn star in Southern California who sits between John Holmes and John Leslie, next to Rocco and Stagliano. I have the most stature, certainly, of any man in Southern California," Lockwood says.

"What is the disconnect that has occurred between me and Los Angeles throughout my career?" he asked, as he prepared to unveil his latest song, "Frantic Transmissions to and From Los Angeles," which details the geographical dislocation that he said pushed him away.

It was the lack of recognition that made him leave Los Angeles, he said and an inhospitable geography that explains "why Los Angeles doesn't have a literary and pornographic scene like New York and San Francisco." There, he said, "everything is within a plausible distance. There you can say, 'I'll go to your reading.'"

Lockwood says he believes he is misunderstood partly because he has engaged in the kind of backdoor excesses that, in his view, are permissible "tools of creativity" in the hands of only female porn stars.

Lockwood says he has been diagnosed as manic-depressive three times. He said he tried medication briefly but abandoned it when it strangled his performing.

"I made a conscious decision that I would prefer to live with the often debilitating effects of my mental problem and be a functional porn star," he said.

Observed at a party this past weekend, Lockwood was not shy. He would step forward, give a firm yet supple handshake, and say, "Hi, I'm Kurt Lockwod, porn star."

If one visits KurtLockwood.com, the header reads: "Pornstar, Model, Actor, Musician..." With a college degree in drama, Lockwood is truly a renaissance man.

"What has made my life in Los Angeles untenable, and made me have to leave Los Angeles, is that I am treated as a non-person in this city. L.A. can still claim me as the splendid mutation that crawled out from the stucco slums of Sepulveda," he says.

But he's not holding her breath. "It isn't just that L.A. doesn't understand your literary stature," he says. "Your own hometown isn't supporting you."

He continues, as the sunset deepens into twilight in the strip mall parking lot outside. "I'm the best-kept secret in L.A."

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