A Peace of Love: How Good, Clean Hippie-Style Sex Can Save Your Soul

Sam Benjamin begins to bare all about his journey to save his sex life. In the beginning there was hippie porn…

Porn and hippies don’t exactly mix. Porn is the absence of hair. Hippies are nothing but hair. Porn is good meth, and bad coke; hippies are ganja goo balls and dank homebrews. Porn is deep house. Hippies are Phil and Friends. Porn is distressingly solitary. Hippies are annoyingly communal. Yet there exists a nexus between these two seemingly discordant worlds, and that’s sex.

Santa Cruz is an admittedly weird place to launch a porno career. But I made it happen. When I was twenty-three years old, I moved out to the West Coast, mostly for the sunshine. I’d suffered from mild seasonal affective disorder all through college. My school was situated in the dreary Northeast, and I’d spent the greater portion of my waking hours at the campus library, poring myopically over abstruse texts written by French philosophers whom I wished to understand. I never did. So I left.

The California Central Coast welcomed me. My first job in Santa Cruz was on a communally-owned tomato farm. The farm was located about six miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, tucked away into a corner of the world so idyllic and tranquil that it felt to me vaguely disquieting. The rich dirt was soothing to my hands, but I wanted more stimulation — a little more contact with the hoi polloi. So I moved onto a juice bar, where for $6.50 an hour I had the pleasure of squeezing ginger shots and dosing drinks with powdery spirulina. Every day, soulful, clear-eyed hippies would jangle their way up to the counter covered in jade amulets. They even wore hemp headbands and clutched beat-up library books on herbalism or sacred geometry.

“Got any organic sunflower sprouts today?” they’d ask, hopeful as children.

“Oh, yes,” I said with a smile. I always delighted in being able to fulfill their innocent desires.

The juice bar was healthy, and it was bright, and healthy-bright will always be a good combination. But I was young, and horny, and young-horny is a state that necessitates movement. Craving adventure, and more to the point, weirdness, I began to hatch a plan. I would put my degree to use by shooting and producing independent sex movies. Drawing from the local talent pool, I would direct sophisticated, feminist-style fuck flicks. I’d make a million bucks by crafting new age pornos – third-eye manna, sent from the heavens, to astound and delight your soul.

My goal, in short, was to make hippie Porn – porn that was not necessarily about hippies, but porn that hippies would approve of. I wanted to make eco-porn. Porn that used dildos made from recycled toothbrushes. Porn from the redwoods. Porn from Burning Man. Psychedelic porn. Yogic porn. Astrological porn. Pranayama porn. Fun porn. Dumb porn. Playful porn. Spiritual porn.

What actually occurred was slightly less inspiring. I borrowed a couple grand, bought a three-chip video camera, and over the course of a year, bumbled my way through producing eight heartfelt but rather crude sex films. Some of the flicks were indeed inspired to some degree by the holistic ethos that surrounded me, and those felt satisfying; others fell far short of my expectations and were abject failures. I sold the films on eBay for tiny profits. Eventually, I had to move down to Los Angeles where the real porn industry resided, and where (I hoped) I could make some actual money.

Porno was different down south. It was real: real bald, real harsh, real bleak. Real weird. Yet the sick starkness of that universe captivated me. Quickly, I established a career for myself, shooting humdrum scenes and making piles of money. Granted, the sex looked horrible; it was unimaginative to the extreme. But I managed to enjoy myself nonetheless. I sucked up the oddness like a sweet fake milkshake through a bendy straw. I still identified as a hippie, though — or at least a hippie-sympathizer. I was a guy who loved nature, music, positivity, and irie vibes! But the mainstream world of slick hetero porn constituted such an attractively bizarre milieu that not only did it hold my attention for nearly half a decade, it nearly sucked me up into its grasp for good.

Luckily I got out while the getting was good, and it’s only now, some eight years later, that I realize I missed my true calling. As a neophyte, I’d hoped to blend the hairy, good-natured lessons of hippiedom with videotaped sexuality. I missed the boat, however, succumbing instead to the Southern California status quo. But now, there’s a second chance. In subsquent articles, I will explore the sacred, sometimes silly, sometimes magical, always beautiful universe of the bendy, sage-smelling, tea-drinking, crystal-holding, yoga-chanting, earth-loving, Rasta-digging set, focusing on how a holisitc point of view can greatly enhance your own sex life. I invite you to come with me.

Does hippie-style sex mix well with porn?