The Hole Thing

Why Scott McLeod left the world of cuisine and his own restaurant for a life of porn.

by Alex Richmond

When Fresca Superior quietly closed down in September with just one day's notice for its staff, the casual observer might have been surprised to learn that owner/chef Scott McLeod was jumping out of the kitchen for another one of his passions: the seamy world of Internet porn.

But McLeod, who worked for Pasion!, Pod and Denim before opening Fresca, has always been something of an anomaly in the world of high cuisine. In 2000 he arrived in Philadelphia on a bus from the Dirty South because he loved the extreme metal label Relapse Records and bands like The Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza. His friends already knew about the tattoo of a dancing vagina with the chorus-girl legs on his chest, and the letters P O R N tattooed across his flat stomach.

HOT DISH: "I lost my love of cooking," says chef-turned- pornographer Scott McLeod. "It had really been beaten out of me."

"I lost my love of cooking," says McLeod on the phone. "It had really been beaten out of me. I have a good reputation as a chef. Say two years down the road I reconnect with the love of cooking, I want to be able to go back into that."

To some, that McLeod left his own restaurant like a thief in the night to start HoleAndAHeartbeat.com makes perfect sense. Many of his friends in the hardcore rock and roll world have helped contribute to his Web site and give it its own niche in the already crammed-full world of online sex. The niche, says McLeod, is guys that "look like rock stars, and fuck like porn stars."

The male stars of HoleAndAHeartbeat.com are not yet porn stars — the site started accepting credit cards just one month ago. They're just tatted up, far edgier and less mustachioed than the typical porn guy. You're as likely to spot these guys at many of Philly's tattoo and piercing places as you are MySpace or Xpeeps (the hornier, pornier, mostly nude version of MySpace).

And the women? Just "holes." McLeod explains his site thusly: "Because men are the stars. I'm not saying every girl is attracted to tattooed bad boys, but every type of girl is. Business women, college girls, women of the finest caliber. All these different types of people are attracted to these tattooed, in-shape guys. There's a whole world of tattooed women in porn, definitely more than you need, and there's nothing with these guys. In a world that's the most oversaturated market on earth, tell me if you find another site like mine. It's extremely male-focused heterosexual porn. I've been on the net long enough and I've never found anything like it."

McLeod will even go so far as to say women are now ready to be significant purchasers of porn. The stats for his site underline his point; 40 percent of its paying subscribers are women. "We have so many female fans," he says. "Guys that aren't tattooed or in shape hate us. I don't think I've gotten one negative response from a woman."

One of those female fans is also McLeod's right-hand woman. Lexie LaVey does PR for HoleAndAHeartbeat.com, promoting the site and recruiting via the Web. She's also been filmed a few times, and chooses to preserve her anonymity to help keep her day job. "Girls who do porn are considered whores. And Philadelphia is just so small," says LaVey. "Stuff like this sticks. I was gonna try and hide it for a while. It wasn't too long before everyone knew I was involved. If there wasn't that stigma attached, I really wouldn't care."

MEMEBERS ONLY: "Men are the stars," says McLeod of his roster of "tattooed bad boys."

The men — the real "stars" — enjoy a slightly different experience. Or at least they say they do.

Marcello Acuns, 20, from Philly, took on the porn name Rusty Guns and has embraced the lifestyle with a vengeance, though his heart-with-keyhole tattoo seems more emo than hardcore.

"Porn was something I wanted to do since I was 6 years old. It was an aspiration of mine," says Acuns. "Before H&H, I was just acting, but now I get paid for what I do." He found out about the site when the H&H staff came into his job at Warrior Body Piercing on South Street and dropped off some fliers. How much does he get paid, exactly? "Let's just say well enough," he says. He still keeps his day job. But just one film and two photo shoots later, the star quality is undeniable. "The shoot was cake, I'm not gonna lie," he brags. "I'm a cocky guy, it was a walk in the park for me." And the feedback has been good. On Xpeeps, he received 150 messages after his shoot, and gets 20 new friend requests every day.

The other element that sets the site apart is its music, McLeod's other love. Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza, Necktie, Dead Meat, and other Philly bands all have their music on H&H. Scareho wrote an original song for the site.

"It's not like they're doing me a huge favor," says McLeod. "They're business people too. They're being promoted. There's a broad array of different people that visit the site. I'm sure a lot of the people would never be exposed to Scareho, or Bad Luck 13, and these are bands that I really fucking love. It'd only be natural that if I'm gonna do this that I would include them."

There has been some backlash in the hardcore community. People say HoleAndAHeartbeat.com is selling out the music. "We don't make a dime off the music," contends McLeod. "When people download the music, it's eating up our bandwidth, but I love it, and have for years. My mom drove me across state lines to see the Meatmen when I was 14."

Old City Tattoo's annual Halloween party is a long-standing tradition at the Khyber, but the party in 2006 was also H&H's inaugural bash. The upstairs had free kegs, T-shirts, and for those who craned their necks just right, a glimpse into an H&H photo shoot: two men licking a willing woman. The pictures from the Halloween party are featured online.

Even though the site is still in its infancy, documentary filmmaker Josh Goldbloom, who made the award-winning Heroin Town, has started work on a movie about HoleAndAHeartbeat.com. And there has been no backlash in the porn community — perhaps because of McLeod's business partner, Gunner (who, like many porn stars, has trademarked his name). Though the two grew up in neighboring towns in Louisiana, it was Sue Golden, owner of Stiletto boutique, who introduced them. Gunner, a male model who went into porn, has been running his own "big cock" porn site, Gunnerworld.com, since 1998. Gunner is the seasoned professional, McLeod, the new-school visionary. But the two care about the authenticity of their product more than you'd think pornographers might.

"I have my own rules before getting involved with anyone, in business or otherwise," said Gunner. "I brought my whole credo, which was that I only knew how to work with men. I didn't know anything about porn before I started [Gunnerworld]; now I handle about 150 guys. When I got together with Scott, I found he was very comfortable with his own sexuality. He knew he wanted [H&H] to be really male-focused, and it was music to my ears. I told him that the only way I wanted to work with him was if I could run with the ball."

Gunner also says the number of women purchasing site memberships is staggering, and makes the distinction about the remaining 60 percent of their customers. "One may say males are the biggest consumers of porn, this is true. But not all the males buying it are straight! This is why our site works so well. It's a guy gang bang, so the guys can fantasize about the women, the women can look at the men, and the gay men can put themselves in the woman's place."

(a_richmond@citypaper.net)