We proceed to the set. Today he’s shooting for a sex education company. Part of the shoot is a pre-sex interview in which he sits down with the girls and describes the how and why of the techniques he’s going to be demonstrating. The first video, which will feature Nikki, is about orgasmic order; that is, the different types of orgasms a woman can have and the order in which to provide them so that she can experience maximum pleasure. The second video, ejaculation control with Carmen, is a series of positioning tips and distraction measures to help men keep from prematurely blowing their load.

Watching the interviews, Marcus is selling pussy tricks right into the camera with the emphatic urgency of a preacher. “The squirting orgasm is like the missing link of orgasms. It’s so powerful, it’s addictive.”

As he describes his sex tips, the veteran Nikki slouches next to him, listening, providing commentary and covering a tattoo she wishes she didn’t have. Carmen, on the other hand, is sitting ramrod straight, feigning intense listening and doing a pretty spot-on impersonation of a Good Morning TV host while eyefucking the camera. And eyefucking the crew. And eyefucking me.

The audio guy on the floor next to me is reading Twitter while making sure that no one has a fucked up mic. Nikki asks if sticking peeps in her vagina for an Easter photo shoot would be a bad idea; I mention that it sounds like a great way to get a yeast infection and she should be careful not to leave melted peep in her lady parts. She thanks me.

In between interviews, Nikki, who’s not wearing underwear, flings her legs up over her head and asks if her vagina is showing. The new girl giggles and the crew chuckles. Marcus leans over and sniffs her crotch like a dog, getting a long nose-full before rubbing her folds with his fingers and murmuring with approval. She smirks at him. He throws her a practiced, lecherous snarl. I realize that this is the first time I’ve seen Marcus act remotely sexual since I’ve met him. The interviews wrapped, we head up to the bedroom for the sex shoots.

During the lull between talking on camera and fucking on camera, I learn that Carmen uses the phrase “right meow” and is very excited to be in porn, that Nikki has her EMT certification and wants to do mainstream movies, and that Marcus is very good at making each girl feel comfortable and ready to work. That’s not a euphemism, by the way. Marcus took time with each girl to talk to her, get a feel for what she liked, who she was, to outline the scene, and get acquainted. Before each shoot, he'd kiss his scene partner on the bed while the cameras set up, a short prequel of sorts to figure out the girl’s style and loosen the tension. Just before Nikki’s scene, “orgasmic order,” she prances through the room with the baby wipes and reminds Carmen to always wipe her butt crack.

Marcus is already on the bed, pre-tearing the corner of the condom and popping open the cap on the lube. Sure enough, he’s wearing his Tommy Gunn skivvies.

The scene starts. As part of the instructional nature of the series, Marcus narrates everything. Everything. He tells the viewer exactly what he’s doing the entire time he’s on camera.

Hats off to you, dude. Not many people can live-narrate eating pussy. For the first few minutes of the scene, Nikki is just flopped on the bed, skinny legs akimbo, eyes closed, motionless. From my angle, she looks asleep. Marcus is grunting and sucking and talking between her legs, coming up for air and a description of what his mouth and tongue are doing during the “head shaking technique.” Nikki stirs.

After the first few minutes of stillness, she warms up fast and hard. Her breathing changes, coming in shorter and shallow. Her long, bony toes curl into the duvet and she’s gripping the sheets. Marcus is still talking, narrating the build-up to her first clitoral orgasm of the shoot. The muscles of her thighs start to quiver, and Marcus, simultaneously mouthfucking her and talking, announces he’s going to send her over the edge. Which of course, he does.

What follows is an absurd chain of orgasms. Off come his Tommy Gunn panties with a level of finesse that is decidedly non-civilian. He’s putting on the condom. He’s tossing her about the bed. He’s making her come over and over with his succinctly narrated, relentless chain of techniques and suggestions. His butt is incredibly tan and spherical, like a basketball split in half and glued on. He fucks like a robot, precise and fast, changing angle and pace and rhythm like a deviant symphony conductor. Do it this way and then this way and then this way and then this way and then this way from here to eternity forever and ever amen. She’s come several times and I’m still not used to the constant narration. Carmen is beside me, covering her mouth, which is comically agape with what appears to be shock and glee.

Nikki is limp and writhing on the bed, her only job to be receptive to Marcus’s work. Marcus is panting, focused, talking and explaining and sweating and moaning and talking and pounding and oh my god I finally get it. In that instant, I understand Marcus London.

He props her up on her knees, her trembling, thin body slick with sweat, her blonde hair extensions stuck to her harshly angled face. In his final moment, he curls his hand into her, fingers hooked inside her, pressing into the g-spot behind her clitoris, and with furious precision, Marcus makes her ejaculate for the very first time.

“CUT!”

He towels off, but not before making Nikki squirt once more for good measure.

“I’ve had my vagina my entire life and I had no idea it could do that!” Carmen, who’s excited like a kid on Christmas morning, is squealing.

“Did you see how many times she came?!”

When Marcus returns from washing up, he sits across from me on a giant ottoman and with a sly grin, asks me what I think. I should also note that he’s sitting on a towel because Marcus and his erection are stone cold naked.

“Honestly? The narration was fucking crazy. The entire time! You talked the entire time! Do you ever screw up and forget to talk?” “Once, I think, with Allie Haze. I just looked down and woooah kind of lost my train of thought. But really, it’s quite easy. Not sure that just anyone could do it but babe, I’ve been doing this a long time.”

Marcus is loose, relaxed. Jesus, does he look happy? He looks happy! I haven’t seen Marcus in this state since my arrival. He’s jovial, professional, completely at home with the mundane reality of selling sex for profit.

Seeing him now, shoulders extricated from his ears, naked and sweaty and smiling, the pieces of his personality begin to fall into place. His utter cockiness, his intense desire to be taken seriously, his distaste for porn, his difficulties with his wife, his unapologetic and constant stream of opinions, his wildly successful work in the adult industry, it all finally gels into this tan, muscle-bound man sitting before me, chatting up his next scene partner.

Marcus asks to see what Carmen looks like and when she obliges him, spreading her legs in an overconfident manner that belies her nerves, he purrs with delight.

“Oooh, lips! I love lips.”

Carmen bats her long, false eyelashes and tells Marcus that she likes it rough. He nods.

Marcus, with his practically unlimited access to fertile, young mates, essentially has off-thecharts reproductive success. If I was observing some male bats and one of them was constantly fucking lady bats, day in and day out, I would make a note like “Hmm, something about Bat-2395’s phenotype or behavior has done amazing things for his apparent reproductive success rates; advise continued observation and paternity testing for colony.”

Sure, this is a loose argument because of course, of course, population biology is a vastly complicated and nuanced field. But the basic underlying point remains: Marcus London successfully beds lots and lots of women, which gives him a significant biological advantage as compared to the reproductive chances open to your average American male. He is overwhelmingly sexually successful. And all of that alpha male posturing, the kind that other men wear as armor or padding or weaponry, Marcus carries as a function of his success. Frankly, it’s fascinating. Marcus pulls on a fresh pair of underwear as the crew makes the bed with a clean set of sheets. Again, he pre-tears the condom wrapper for easy opening during the shoot and pops the lid on the lube. Again, he crawls into his scene partner, holding her neck, touching the small of her back, kissing her with intent. And again, he fucks a girl on camera for money while steadfastly narrating the entire act and making sure the timing of the foreplay, each position, all instructional points and the popshot is perfect. And he continues his narrative right up until the moment of ejaculation. For the entirety of both shoots, my positioning in the corner of the room meant that Marcus’s tan, not-gay asshole was staring me in the face the entire time.

Wrapping Up

My time with Marcus ends where it began. In his office. He has one last thing to show me.

I watch as Marcus searches through his YouTube account for a video. A solo effort, it features him, standing in front of the camera, dressed like some kind of boy band auditioner, and singing his heart out. It’s a music video for the Usher song “There Goes My Baby,” featuring an earnestly lipsynching Marcus London.

And I am dying.

My laughter erupts from within with the violence of a dam bursting. I’m clutching the sides of my chair, trying to hold on to this new fragment of Marcus in the context of everything else I’ve seen from him and after everything, this is what breaks me. I’m apologizing, trying to lessen whatever egregious errors of etiquette I’m committing, but laughing nonetheless. “Marcus,” I tell him, “You are fucking insane.”

The video opens with footage of Devon talking on the phone. I’m pretty sure she’s fake talking on the phone, the way one can be pretty sure a five-year-old is lying. Next is a shot of Marcus, clad in one of his ubiquitous black T-shirts and jeans, sauntering over a giant rock in the distance, swaying side-to-side with machismo.

When the vocals start, Marcus is directly in front of the camera, wearing black sunglasses and a silver cross, still swaying, ducking and twitching his head along with his singing. After each line, he leans back and away from the camera, like a nervous performance tick. He appears to know most of the words, though he is singing through a tight, small mouth, so it’s hard to get a good handle on his enunciation. He flings his arms open, welcoming the love and adoration of his wife, letting this moment wash over him in a sweeping, glorious tidal wave of ridiculousness. There are several shots of his wife feeding carrots to horses, decorating a Christmas tree, and walking away from him, swiveling her hips in a tight pair of jeans with white topstitching. There are black-and-white scenes of the two of them, naked and embracing, her lying atop him in the bed, their mouths mashed together and gnawing at each other. There are shots of Devon in a black, diamond-encrusted fedora, wearing an exposed bra and infant-sized white button-down shirt, leaning against the wall and massaging her breasts.

Actually, there are several shots of her massaging her breasts. All of this interspersed with footage of Marcus on the rocky hillside, lip-synching passionately, yet awkwardly, into the camera. At one point he pops his top off, baring his tan, smooth, pumped up porn body.

Everything you need to know about Marcus is captured in this video. His cinematic aspirations, his willingness to put everything out there, his cocky nature so wildly impervious to failure, his utter ridiculousness. He’s an earnest, cocksure, proud, do-it-yourselfer who’s not afraid to go after what he wants. He had an idea to make a music video for his wife. He did it. It’s terrible. But it means something to him, the making of it, the sharing of it. He puts it on YouTube for all the world to see. Because of course it must be fantastic. He made it.

Thankfully, Marcus is laughing, though the thought occurs that perhaps it’s just at the sheer hysteria in which I’ve found myself drowning. He tries to mount a defense of the video, but he doesn’t have to. I get it. It’s singularly the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen in a pretty ridiculous week, but it was done with such earnest devotion and there is nothing about it that makes Marcus look like anything other than a completely delusional lovesick fool. I cannot look away. I cannot stop laughing. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Marcus shows me another, this one a short film called “Alone.” The entire film is of Marcus going about his daily routine… alone. He’s constantly reminded of his wife throughout the film, via flashbacks and pictures and moments he would have shared with her. In light of his rather vulnerable discussion of his recent tribulations with Devon, the short is genuinely sad. Some of the shots are beautiful and it’s almost enough to draw you in, but as soon as you get close, cheesy, earnest poetry scrolls across the screen in what appears to be a script version of comic sans.

I cannot help but wonder, after such a dynamic shift in personality once he was on the porn set, how much of the Marcus I saw this week was the Marcus that he wanted his wife to see. The aggressive antiporn stance, his apparent disinterest in women, his lofty, mainstream aspirations, the coldness of his demeanor, the way he scoffed at the beautiful women who came up in conversation and wandered his home in various states of undress, how much of this is classic bad boy reformation? Heavy speculation, sure. But it is in the face of the undeniable fact that Marcus on the porn set was the happiest, nicest, most professional Marcus I’d seen all week. Everyone loved him. He seemed to be taking great pride in his work. My god, there was even that cheesy “light in his eyes” people talk about when someone is flush within their true calling. On a porn set, Marcus glowed.

Several months have passed, and I’m back in Vegas, finishing the final edits for my feature on Marcus London. Curious about what he’s been up to, I call his cellphone.

He is working more, he says, currently finishing up a script for a "Mad Max" parody. Not that he’s happy about that, of course. “I love "Mad Max" but my heart’s not in it. I’m not enjoying the parody aspect.” He’s also producing a porn for a firsttime director which, to put it lightly, sounds like an absolute nightmare.

This newbie director seems to have a tenuous grasp on reality, at best, and is prone to do things like demand to change location mid-day. Even through his frustration, though, Marcus sounds excited to be busy.

After his passionate vow to leave porn for his wife, this busy schedule surprised me. Last I saw him, Devon was living away from home, but reconciliation was looming on the horizon. But little has changed. Marcus talks like a man who has had his heart broken: he hopes for a simple, lovely future with his wife but is realistic about the chances of it happening. “Work's like this: If I lose her and I’m poor versus if I lose her and I win the lottery. At least something isn’t terrible.”

He says this casually, sounding very different from the time when he gave his deeply wounded monologue about love while we were on the porn set. “I’m in a better place because other things are looking up. But you know, I got too used to getting my own way all the time.”

He has plans to see her soon, but tells me she cancelled at the last minute for their previous rendezvous, and that he doesn’t expect her to actually go through with it this time. She’d still like him to slow down on the porn work, but he tells me she understands that he can’t just quit the business. A step in the right direction, I suppose, but asking Marcus to work less feels like a cruel punishment for some past transgressions, rather than a supportive gesture.

His interest in sex outside of work has ebbed. “I’ve learned all I can learn, I’ve taught all I can teach. At some point, you wonder why you’re doing it.” He skipped a massive swingers party in Vegas last weekend.

But then he’s back to talking about work, and happy again. He talks about the new squirt watches coming soon and his AVN win. He tells me about his producing work, his directorial aspirations, his scripts, his set building, his creative ideas, a busy stream of planning and action and excitement. Even his issues with the "Mad Max" script won’t defeat him.

“I just have to get my finger up my ass and get it done.”

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