Robert Rosen

I launched this blog three years ago, on February 10, 2010, with the announcement that my John Lennon biography, Nowhere Man, was going to be published in Italy. Since then, there's been a lot of water under the bridge--the publication of three editions of Beaver Street, a UK and a US promotional tour, various battles with mega-conglomerates, and an assortment of earthquakes, hurricanes, and blizzards. As this past week has brought an influx of new readers to the Daily Beaver, I thought this might be a good time to look back on the 10 most popular blog postings--my greatest hits--which I'll run in two parts, beginning today with 10 through 6. And by "popular," I mean the individual posts that have gotten the most total hits over the years.

10. New York Calling to the Riot Zone (Aug. 11, 2011)
A meditation on the London riots from the comfort of my New York living room.

9. The Tea Party Congressman and the Porn King (Feb. 14, 2012)
An investigative report detailing Swank publisher Lou Perretta’s campaign contributions to ultra-conservative congressman Scott Garrett.

8. Fat Sex (Sept. 28, 2011)
An essay on some of the problems I had editing magazines like Plump & Pink and Buf.

7. The Unfinished Life of John Lennon (Jan. 3, 2011)
A piece I wrote for the Mexican newsweekly Proceso, on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, in its original English.

6. Memoirs of a Pornographer (May 13, 2011)
Editor Jamie Maclean’s rave review of Beaver Street for the British sex journal Erotic Review.

Tomorrow, Volume II

These three photos ran with my interview in the print edition of StorErotica (December 2012). They do a nice job of encapsulating the final years of my career as an editor of adult magazines. I've come to call this my "Prisoner of Porn" phase--the post-modern sweatshop chapter of my X-rated odyssey, when I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to make it out of the business alive.

The photo on the left was taken in California, in 1998, where I'd gone to direct a series of shoots for Plump & Pink magazine. The model, whose name escapes me, was a P&P covergirl. Fittingly, I seem to look like a cross between Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Allen Ginsberg.

The middle shot, taken in the same California studio, is the photo that I used on page one of Beaver Street, and which I explain in detail in the Prologue. If you’d like to know why I’m wearing a headband and heart-shaped sunglasses and sitting between two models who are about to pose for a shoot for Shaved magazine, please click here.

The photo on the right was taken in my office in Paramus, NJ. The model, who appears to be sitting in my lap, is none other than Traci Topps as you’ve probably never seen her before--in her street clothes.

The complete interview will soon be available online.

In the twilight of my career as a porn editor, when the market for print magazines was collapsing in the face of free Internet smut, my esteemed publisher told me to produce two fetish magazines that were the antithesis of what turned me on personally.

As a porno professional, I’d learned to take such assignments in stride. After all, I’d just spent a dozen years editing mags like D-Cup, Stacked, and Bra Busters, which, as the names imply, are devoted to gargantuan breasts. Though my preference is for a slim, well-toned female body, I had no trouble with this assignment. I dare say I even learned to appreciate such oversize appendages, especially when they were beautifully photographed and attached to a gorgeous woman.

This was not the case with Plump & Pink and Buf. Though the former, whose models tended towards more-than-a-little chubby, was tolerable, the latter took me into a world I barely knew existed. Buf models were often 500-700 pounds, were photographed in a purposely amateurish way that tended to exaggerate their least attractive qualities, and they participated in a fetish in which their partners grew sexually aroused by feeding them things like fried chicken and chocolate cake, and watching them grow fatter.

Though the magazine sold well, putting it together made me physically ill.

I mention this now because of a recently published book called Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them), by Hanne Blank. Though I’ve not read it and have no intention of doing so, the book sounds like a pep talk for fat people and people who enjoy having sex with them. And Blank, apparently, explores the line between fat admiration and fat fetishism, which sounds like the same line that divided Plump & Pink from Buf.

This is all well and good, as there are a lot of people out there, fat and skinny, who are deeply interested in having sex with the overweight. Some of them might be reading this blog. So, if you’re one of them, here’s a link to an interview with Ms. Blank.

Enjoy! Just don’t ask me to edit your favorite magazine.