Dave Cummings is turning 72 years old in a few weeks, and he’ll probably celebrate by banging a bunch of 20-year-old nymphos. They might be fellow porn stars, or they might be what Cummings calls his “groupie girls” – coeds from the nearby University of San Diego who call him up to “blow off some steam.” After appearing in over 500 adult films, Cummings is still charging hard, heh-heh, doing what he loves in semi-retirement.
We had a long and rambling chat about the porn industry, long walks and the delicious qualities of acai.
Me: Hey Dave, I hear it’s your birthday soon. Happy B-Day.
Dave: Thanks, Bryan. I’m going to be 72 years old in a week. I try not to make a big deal on my birthdays. A birthday is just another day.
Me: You wrote an article on how to access the porn industry and it’s rumored people are always seeking your advice. Is it mostly guys asking you about how to get in on the action?
Dave: Yeah, but not exclusively. There are some couples too and there’s an awful lot of women now who seem to be demanding their right to access porn and to be able to enjoy porn like a God-given gift that’s natural, normal and healthy and all that stuff that I preach all the time. But women, I think with the economy, are looking at ‘How can I become a webcam model? And how much money do they make? And can you recommend somebody for me that you trust? And some of them ask, ‘How can I be a wife in Screw My Wife Please, or a Kneepad Nympho?’
Me: How much do cam models make?
Dave: They were pulling in pretty good money until it got glutted with more and more people doing it. Things like MyFreeCams has kind of hurt the income too because they’re relying on people to watch them, go into a private room and to tip them. Nowadays with the economy, people are thinking twice about giving $50 tips as opposed to a $25 tip.
Me: Especially with how accessible porn is for free anyways…
Dave: Ohhh yeah, and that’s the thing that’s killed it. The illegal tube sites and copyright infringement and all the thievery. And that’s what it is, is thievery. It’s not only a civil offense, it’s a criminal offense. People think ‘Hey, porn’s free.’ They just don’t realize they’re committing a crime.
Me: I had no idea…
Dave: Yeah. So be careful Bryan! You know what they’re doing right now? They’re getting the IP addresses of people who are downloading their movies and going to court and saying, “We’ll probably be taking you to court, which will make all of this public. We hope you didn’t use your work computer or that your wife will be upset that you’re watching gay midget porn movies,” or whatever it might be. Which sounds to me like coercion, but that’s what they’re doing. From what I’m told, they’re getting a lot of people settling for $2900 just to drop the case. I’m not sure I agree with that, but that’s what’s happening.
Me: Yikes. Noted. So Dave, what’s a day in the life for you?
Dave: Well, I’ll tell you about today. I got up at about 7:00 this morning. Well, didn’t really get up… I masturbated. Then I check for important e-mails. I read the news. Then I go on GoFuckYourself.com and read the postings there, any new developments in the adult arena. You should check it, and you should also check adultfyi.com. Have you ever tried Acai Bryan?
Me: Yeah, it’s delicious.
Dave: Yeah! I try and have a bowl of it every week.
Me: It’s great stuff.
Dave: Talk about anti-oxidants. The only disappointment I have with it is that I haven’t grown any hair from it. I check all three pieces everyday, believe me. Anyways, then I’ll go down to the beach. I did four miles this morning of brisk walking. Sunday I did nine miles, Monday I did seven, and today I did four. At my age, you just have to keep moving.
Tonight I have a call coming in from a service I provide where people can call me and ask me questions about swinging, porn – anything about porn. This guy is calling, asking questions. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s also going to be masturbating. But that’s okay because I’m netting $5 a minute for the phone call.
Me: Is that some kind of fetish for people?
Dave: No, but it seems to be getting pretty popular. I recently joined a similar company that only has porn stars on it. They charge the people $5.99 and minute and I get $5 of it, and I’m a guy. These people are going to be after the girls a lot more than the guys. You know, if I talk to somebody for an hour I’ll make $300 on it.
Me: That’s incredible.
Dave: Well, it’s not that great but… I’m also expecting a check for being in Screw My Wife Please last Wednesday, and that check’ll be for over $600.
Me: Damn. Yet more proof that I’m in the wrong business.
Dave: Well, if some producer wasn’t paying those girls a lot of money to put up with me I wouldn’t be having all the sex I’m having and getting paid for it!
Me: Have you run into problems with girls not wanting to do older guys? You know, like you?
Dave: You know, it’s only happened one time, Bryan. I always make certain that the girls know for sure. I don’t want girls being reminded of something that happened to them back when they were younger. I don’t want them to have nightmares tonight from working with me. And that’s the term: ‘working with.’ It’s not ‘fucking.’
When I shoot here at my condo for the Sugar Daddy series or the Sex Fun series or the Kneepad Nympho series, I don’t need to recruit the girls, they recruit themselves to me. I give them a spick and span private bathroom, I give them a check made out to cash at the end of the day. I make sure they’ve got some 20s, 10s, and 5s so on their way back to LA if they want to stop at a McDonalds – and you’d be surprised with how may girls that’s their place of choice to eat – they don’t have to bring a $100 bill in and maybe get robbed or be told they can’t accept it. So they say nice things about me.
Me: What’s the story with your groupies? Is that still going on?
Dave: [Laughs] Yeah still going on. Sometimes it gets a little lighter during Spring Break and during the summertime for the co-ed groupies. I’ve got swinging groupies. You know the husband will let the wife come on by, we have sex for a while and then she goes home and he gets laid. I got two couples that particularly like to have the speakerphone put on while she and I are going at it, and the husband listens in, she goes home and he definitely gets laid. In fact he pushes her to come on over.
Now the groupie girls are mainly co-eds. Their deal is, they study hard. It’s absolutely necessary that the girls be 18, and – and this is absolutely important – that they be breathing.
Me: Breathing? Shit I hope so. What do you mean?
Dave: [Laughs] It means I don’t have too many requirements. If they’re breathing and they’re of age, I’ll have sex with them. But they’re studying hard, they’re stressed out, they’ve had a lot of tense time or whatever and they just need to have some time for themselves.
Sometimes they’ll have chocolate chip cookies and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes when they do bring them, they’re the kind they buy in the supermarket and pop them in the microwave while they’re taking a shower and douching before they come on over, and say, “I made these just for you Dave!” And I know they’re not homemade!
Me: So do they have a thing for old dudes?
Dave: Some do. In fact a lot of them do. But also some just want to see what it’s like to be with a porn star and see if they would have been able to be a porn star. They want my opinion, they want me to validate for them that if they had chosen to be a porn star, they could have been.
Me: Speaking of being a porn star, why is it so difficult for people to be able to perform the money shot?
Dave: Well, I’ll give you my opinion, and I don’t have any factual basis to say this but a lot of experience. There’s a thing called performance anxiety. An awful lot of them that are taking Viagra. Back in the old days, before the piracy, a guy could work in the morning and he could do another performing job in the afternoon. So he might take Viagra in the morning and in the afternoon, and particularly in the afternoon when it comes time to do the money shot – which you can call it the money shot, the cum shot, or the pop shot – and he’s masturbating masturbating masturbating and can’t get off the cum shot – a lot of us guys think it’s something to do with Viagra. We have no facts for that, but a lot of times the guys that are doing Viagra have a hard time getting off the money shot.
You also have to be careful you don’t cum too soon. It’s all about functionality, Bryan. It’s not about dick size, it’s not about muscles or good looks, it’s about getting hard quickly, don’t cum before you’re supposed to cum, and do cum within a reasonable amount of the director saying, ‘okay let’s bring it home.’
Me: You’ve said that you won’t use Viagra except for very demanding directors. What are the traits of a demanding director in porn?
Dave: Instead of just saying, ‘Okay I need 30 – 40 minutes of footage, and young lady, just follow Dave’s lead,’ but in this case a director might want 20 minutes in each position, he might then want to get single shots of the girl. He may also be shooting a cable version after or before you do the hardcore instead of having a separate camera there to do that. He may want a lot of dialogue or a lot of photographic stills – you know, pussy eating from five different angles.
Me: So it’s a matter of time more than anything.
Dave: It’s more time and demanding stamina. You’re learning a lot about what goes on on sets here, Bryan!
Me: Yeah.
Dave: It’s work sometimes, not all pleasure. But at my age, I’ll put up with the work for the pleasure of being able to have sex with that 19 year old.
Me: Do you ever see a new vagina and be like, ‘God, I’m just kind of sick of these things?’
Dave: [Laughs] No. But if I smell a vagina… I remember one time this girl was so bad. This guy named John Strong and myself were both doing her in a Screw My Wife Please scene, and it was having an affect on his wood. So I leaned down and said, ‘You know honey, as nice as this is for us, would you please go douche one more time for us?’ And she went in and did. When she came back out John was psychologically thinking she wasn’t going to be perfect, so I did a lot of the work.
Me: It’s a tough job.
Dave: But somebody’s gotta do it, right Bryan?
Me: That’s right, Dave.