Myers and Alms. Photos via their Tumblr
It all started with Tumblr (because that’s how things start these days).
Look At This Fucking Oogle: Pornography For Homeless People is a Tumblr devoted to throwing up photos of crust punk kids, train-hopping vagrants in ripped fish nets—sometimes naked and sporting butt plugs—white people with dreads, and so, so many street dogs. Spawned as a face-tatted, studded denim-vested version of that popular website Look at This Fucking Hipster, some people viewed it with noses turned up, others were looking for their friends, and a few squares got secretly turned on.
Videos by VICE
Byron Myers, a crust punk welder living in Philadelphia, decided with his friends that it would be fun to make a sexy calendar devoted to the same thing, and to raise money to start an independent porn website featuring porn they’d want to watch. They enlisted the help of an old New York punk named Slug (who famously gave G.G. Allin his last dose of heroin before he died) and let him put the thing together, and it was a success.
A few miles away, Ashley Alms, 24, met Myers through Tumblr and he told her about his plan to start making shitty punk traveler porn. Alms had been putting nudes of herself on the internet since she was 15 years old, had worked for alt-porn site God’s Girls, and, moreover, was sick of living in Portland. Alms traveled out to Philadelphia to meet Myers and Fringe Fuckers was born.
Since then, the couple have made a bunch of movies for their site with their friends, other train hoppers, and random people. Unlike your average alternative porn shoot—which usually means a white girl in latex replicating Emily Strange, and a slightly slim blonde dude sporting early-2000s tattoo sleeves—the Fringe Fuckers aesthetic is pure grime. They fuck in their bedrooms or outside in the bushes, and have orgies in basements most would consider a health violation, because, as the original New York paparazzi photographer Ron Galella once said, when you are broke and poor “the world is your studio.” Myers, Alms, and their friends have no interest in the so-called “alternative porn” provided by sites like Burning Angel and ALT POP. (Plus, Myers and Alms burned their bridges with Burning Angel long ago when Myers dressed up like a girl to apply for the website. They did not think his attempt was funny.)
You know those crust punks you see sitting on the curb downtown with scrawled Sharpie-on-cardboard signs asking for change? That’s who fucks for Fringe Fuckers. And unlike many porn performers working today, Myers and Alms do it for chump change.
“There’s nothing wrong with people pretending to be stuff if they’re getting paid. Porn acting is definitely a skill set and an admirable trade, but a lot of [alternative porn] just seems kind of fake,” Myers told VICE over Skype. “We actually live the lifestyle that we’re portraying. It’s not like us dressing up or putting on costumes or anything. It’s basically just documenting our lifestyle, and that’s it. We aren’t even paid to do this.”
The lack of pay means that people who do this are just really into it, and they are fine with the compensation of a mouth full of semen, a box of wine, and half a Klonopin. Fringe Fuckers stream their videos to the public through Clipvia and charge about $4.99 for an 11-minute video. The pair have people messaging them over Tumblr asking for new videos, but they can not always afford to make more or find new people to participate (punks say they are down to film and then often chicken out at the last minute). Without getting into details Alms and Myers say they use the money they make from Clipvia to buy supplies for shoots (drugs, booze and props) and as extra cash. It’s by no means a main source of income.
Alms and Myers have found a lot of people on Tumblr who want to fuck, as well as friends who volunteer for a bottle of whiskey. But no matter who’s involved, it’s important for the couple that everything remain open and consensual. “We let everyone choose who they have sex with. It’s important that people have ultimate control,” says Myers.
Alms grew up in Illinois where she was adopted as a newborn. “My biological dad signed away his rights to me while I was being adopted, he signed them away on the back of a cop car on his way to prison. He died in a car accident years later,” she says.
The family who raised her were “typical Midwest drunks” and she dropped out of school at 17 years old to be alone, earning her GED and eventually packing up to ride freight trains and travel. She ended up in Portland on the dime of a suitor, but eventually returned home to her small town and couldn’t find a job.
“I drove my van out to Philly and never left,” she says, laughing. She also never had any worries about having sex on camera and admits that she just likes people to see her naked, to the point where she walks around the couple’s shared house nude half the day.
Myers grew up in Northern Virginia, obsessed with punk and metal, but tied down to baseball which he had been playing since he was a kid. He eventually landed a scholarship to play college ball. However, he blew his arm out during his final year but still finished his degree. He then enrolled in trade school to get his welding certificate, while earning money for class by stripping at DC’s last all-nude gay strip club Secrets.
Myers started working at Secrets when he and his friends went there for a night that gave men free drinks if they remained shirtless all night. They offered his friend a job, but he declined and Myers, drunk and excited, said he would take the job. He had no idea what he was doing when he started and the weekends brought in packed crowds of 600-plus horny gay dudes. “Luckily, all you gotta do when you’re dancing for gay men is be naked and spread your butt cheeks and move to the music,” he laughs. Myers would often bend over and spread his ass with two hands but the club eventually told him to cut it out—he made too many tips and the other dancers complained.
“A lot of dudes there said that they had too much self-respect to [spread with two hands],” he says. “I would just laugh in their face. ‘We’re gay strippers, dude.’”
Since Alms and Myers got together, they’ve bonded over their love for one another and fucking. They’ve both been extremely sexual freaks since a young age—Myers even made a home brew Fleshlight when he was in the sixth grade out of Sculpey and a toilet paper roll. And they both say G.G. Allin ruined rock ‘n’ roll for them in the best way possible. Following his scumfuck mantra, they just want to live the way they want to live, no matter what anyone thinks.
Follow Mish Way on Twitter.
