Gary Lee, king of Paso Robles’ porn world

September 24, 2012

By DANIEL BLACKBURN

PART ONE: Naughty girls next door

Gary Lee knows there are a lot of wild women in north San Luis Obispo County, and he’s got the pictures to prove it. Thousands of photographs. High-definition video. Many of the women are nude. And most are doing a lot more than just posing.

Lee is the proprietor of 33 websites, most of them pornographic, and one — slobabes.com — features the girls next door. Literally.

It’s one of Lee’s favorite sites, he said, because he uses “all local girls.” For the Reagan-era Paso Robles High School graduate, it’s like giving a little back to your old home town.

His slobabes.com site “has had girls from pretty much every bar and restaurant around, and cashiers, gas station attendants, girls who do labor-type jobs to local real estate agents, nurses from Twin Cities Hospital, tellers at local banks, the daughter of one of our police chiefs, regular wives, girlfriends… you name it,” said Lee.

Lee is his screen name, and it’s the handle by which he is known to those in the porn industry, where his has been a very familiar, ah, face for the past 20 years. Born and raised in Paso Robles, his real last name is recognizable locally, and he prefers, he said, to try to keep separate his online businesses and his local life.

Always a thrill-seeker, Lee was a Navy Seal after high school, returning to the North County to teach skydiving and scuba diving. But after a while, it all became just a job.

“Twenty years ago I just did this stuff (porn) in Los Angeles, and nobody around here knew I did, including family and friends. I’d go down there, make some money, and come back. Now, after bringing slobabes here, everybody kinda knows, especially since we specialize in using local girls.”

Here’s an excerpt from slobabes’ site: “Hot local women getting naked from right here in the San Luis Obispo County area doing porn for all of us to enjoy. These are real girls that you might know from high school. We have Bearcats, Greyhounds, Pirates, Tigers, and Eagles. They might be the girl next door to you, in towns like Paso Robles, San Simeon, Atascadero, Arroyo Grande, Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay, Los Osos, San Miguel, or Cayucos. They might even be from little hick towns like Shandon or Creston.”

Fast approaching fifty, Lee’s longish grey hair is thinning and his body, as he admits, is that of “an ordinary middle-aged Joe.” But what isn’t ordinary is his line of work: “There’s a pretty good chance that I’ll get laid at the office tomorrow.”

He admits there are “lots of guys younger, better-looking, more desirable than me.” But that little reality doesn’t stop this guy. He’s not just a porn producer; he still takes his turn in the trenches.

“I’ve put in my time. I done my share. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of movies. I’ve been with actresses that if I told you, you probably wouldn’t believe me. I’ve slept with dozens of Playmate models, well-known actresses, rock-n-roll people, who tend to gravitate toward porn people.”

So what is the motivation for women taking off their clothes in front of a camera, and doing the things most people reserve for the privacy of their bedrooms?

“Some girls do it for the money,” Lee said. He pays $50 an hour for models who don’t want to disrobe; $200 an hour for nude shots; and $500 an hour for a sex video. “And some do it for the thrill. There are lots of reasons, really.”

Not everybody on on his websites performs in sex videos, Lee said. “Some have never once even taken their clothes off. I’ve never seen them topless. They pose for car shows, photo shoots and other events. And I treat them all like princesses, because they pay my bills.”

Lee got started in the porn business quite by accident.

“About twenty years ago I was dating a woman in the Los Angeles area who did porn, and one day they let me on the set (which is unheard of today) and I was sitting around reading a magazine and waiting for her to get done.” Here, Lee paused and observes, “I have no jealousy issues whatsoever.” It turned out that the male actor that day “couldn’t perform, so my girlfriend suggested the producers use me, that I wouldn’t have a problem. I didn’t.”

Lee said the producers were impressed: “Wow, they told me, you didn’t get nervous at all. Why be nervous when I was just doing what I was going to be doing that night for free! And that’s kind of how things started. It was just an accident.”

That would never happen today, Lee pointed out, because health rules and laws require that porn industry actors and actresses be checked for sexually transmitted diseases before performing.

“But I started getting call-backs, and then after a while you get to know the people in the other studios.”

Men are both prized and scorned as porn participants, said Lee.

“Men really are just props. Women are the stars, and it’s easy for a woman to be a porn star. If you go to my sites, you don’t go there to see me. You go to see the hot girls. I try to get the girls to bring in their boyfriends, husbands, whomever… someone they are comfortable enough with to do a movie, particularly on their first one.”

And of course, it is the male actor that is the unknown quantity.

“With a man, if he’s nervous and not into it, then things don’t work. It is said that 95 percent of men out there can’t do porn. I hear it all the time: ‘Hey, I’m a good-looking guy, look like a model’… but when the camera rolls…. That’s why in so many of the old (porn) movies there are relatively few male stars, but lots of well-known female actresses.”

One of those male stars is Lee himself. Google his name with “XXX” and more than 600,000 sites featuring him will pop up.

But Lee doesn’t consider himself a star, just a businessman whose work is sex.

(TOMORROW: Inside the porn business)