By: Adam Baran
Every morning, on his way to the bathroom just after waking, Peter Berlin stops to feed his two cats, Scary and Insane. Though Peter calls both felines “Kitty Cat,” the 71-year-old former gay porn icon has no problem remembering which is which. Scary is the male, so named because when he was first brought to Peter’s apartment he was jittery and nervous. He’s too thin, so Peter feeds him soft food three times a day by hand. Insane, the girl cat, prefers dry food. His two best friends enjoy a good life. As Peter and I talk on the phone, “Scary is sleeping upside down with his feet in the air, completely relaxed,” he tells me.
Peter likes that I asked about his cats. Most of the people who occasionally interview him only want to talk about his porn past — and “porn” is an ugly word to Peter.
“I would ban that word,” he says, “People should have to say ‘the p-word.’” The person I am talking to is not really Peter Berlin, he insists. “Peter Berlin was this image I created. I am the very ordinary, down-to-earth, boring person who was behind it.”
It’s hard to imagine that Peter’s sexually outrageous life could ever be ordinary. His biography includes starring in two world famous gay porn films (1973′s Nights In Black Leather and the 1974 follow-up That Boy), taking thousands of self-portraits in various stages of arousal, along with sexual escapades and copious amounts of drug use during the height of the seventies in San Francisco.
But Peter insists his days have been filled with quiet routine and frustration for a long time. After feeding the cats he drinks tea (never coffee), takes a shower, and turns on his 50-inch flatscreen TV, switching between Fox News, MSNBC, and Charlie Rose. Just as they are meant to, these channels get Peter upset about the state of the world.
“There is something very sort of inhuman happening,” he says. “Some people think the world has gotten better and that I’m too negative. Of course I don’t believe that. I think my perception is right. Even with all the drug taking in my life, my brain is still working, you know?”
If he weren’t so computer illiterate, Peter would like to figure out a way to create a viral video or platform where he could have the attention of the whole world on him for five minutes to address the problems he’s most concerned about: global warming, fracking, religion, and the anti-gay laws in Russia.
But he doubts it would do much good. “I think the whole world is like a big bird that puts its head in the sand and doesn’t want to see.” Peter prophesies, “We will have a big plague, or we will poison ourselves until we can’t breathe the air anymore and we will cease to be,” he says calmly, then adds an optimistic footnote. “Then 5 or 10 million years later this planet will grow without us. And it will be beautiful.”
Most of Peter’s friends died in the 80’s and 90’s of AIDS or other illnesses, and only a few people look in on him. His mother calls him from overseas every Sunday. He’ll meet his friend Eric and split a salad with him because “Eric’s always trying to lose weight.”
He has a sometime-roommate and semi-boyfriend named Reggie; “a black guy” he clarifies. They fight often, even though, or perhaps because Peter shelters Reggie, pays for an additional room for him in nearby Oakland, and washes his clothes every afternoon.
“It’s a very interesting situation, which would be good in a reality show,” Peter explains. “My sex life is still happening, usually with him, and it’s the best time I have still. Then we have a lot of fights and I lock him out and for him I’m the drama queen and the most awful person. Yesterday for the first time he sort of apologized.”
Another stressful situation: Peter’s sole john, a wealthy businessman whose patronage has allowed him to “live comfortably” for the past 31 years, may not be able to continue doing so due to unspecified personal problems. Peter doesn’t sound too worried, though. He sometimes thinks his patron’s support has made him, “not lazy, but complacent.”
What’s more, Peter is sitting on a gold mine in the form of hundreds of hours of proto-X-Tube films and videos he made of himself jerking off and having sex, edited in-camera. Again, his lack of computer skills presents an obstacle to wealth and comfort. If someone he trusted were to come along and help him figure out how to create a site where he could charge people to watch these “very personal and beautiful” videos, he would be set for the next 20 years at least.
Peter would also like to write his memoirs and sell them to Hollywood, if he could just get motivated. There are currently two separate biopics of his late friend Tom of Finland being made, though both are independent films from Scandinavia. Still, imagine: Bradley Cooper, Matthew McConaughey or even Justin Bieber strutting through the Castro with Dutchboy bowl-cut hairdo and hand-sewn pants designed to call attention to a massive cock bulge.
Bieber, incidentally, is one of the only celebrities Peter thinks has that “Peter Berlin thing.” He clarifies, “It is not really this hairy masculine thing. It’s more, I’m not woman, I’m not man, I’m sort of in between. Even though I’m distinctly a man. I never went in that other direction where I felt like putting on a dress. But Justin Bieber, what a beautiful guy. If he puts on makeup he could go out as a woman and nobody would know the difference.”
Peter loves other young people besides the Biebs. The sexting, dick-and-tit-pic sending kids who most scandalize most adults are just following in his footsteps, he thinks.
“These young people are doing exactly what I did with the old technology. Why are they doing it?” he asks, already knowing the answer: “Because it’s the natural thing to do. That’s what young people feel like doing. That’s what I did. I was the first one who actually did it. And I did it a little bit better. For most people sex happened in the dark. I turned the lights on and put a spotlight on it for others to see.”
People close to him insist he’s an artist, not a pornographer, and he agrees. “I know my stupid photographs will one day hang in the museums. I only have to be dead for a while.”
Peter spends a lot of time thinking about things like this. His legacy; why people like me are still interested in him; what he will leave behind if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow. Should he work harder? Or just relax?
“That’s the beauty of it. Every day I wake up and think, okay, I’m still there,” he says, “Is there a good reason? No, we all wake up and there it is. The process of most people’s decision making is that they get up and say I have to go to work or do something — and I have the luxury where I don’t have to. But I feel guilty that I waste my time. Now I’m wasting my time with you.”
Note: This article does not necessarily represent the opinions of Paul Morris or Treasure Island Media. We felt it right to post, allowing each of you to digest, and form your own opinion. We look forward to hearing what you think.
