Soon, Rikki found himself jetting off to the Caribbean to shoot box covers and image galleries for porn websites. Falcon loved his photos of Thailand’s masochistic vegetarian festival, where people spear their faces with hooks, and they brought Rikki on full-time. He submitted his resume and when he returned to San Francisco, he found an interview request waiting for him. While perusing Craigslist, he spotted an ad for a stills photographer at Falcon, one of the largest and oldest gay porn production companies. Shortly after Rikki returned to San Francisco, he visited his mother in Philadelphia. He told me that there were more pictures like these, stored in crates at his mother’s house. I was astonished to see punk icons Sid Vicious, Andy Warhol, Divine, The Clash and The Misfits peering out of these never-before-published photos. Once, he showed me a collection of photos he’d taken of the late-70s punk scene in New York. We met while working for a city listings magazine where Rikki eked out a living, barely able to afford food on his meager staff photographer salary. The year was 2003, and Rikki had recently returned to America after living in Bangkok for over a decade. It was the first day of Rikki’s gay porn career. As Rikki snapped pictures, the vegetable shot across the room with a loud POP. The model was dressed in leather bondage gear with an eggplant stuffed up his butt. And with it, some of the city’s liberal identity.
