Redemption

 

By Amy Lane

 

Okay—

 

I’ll be honest.

 

When John Carey first had his complete cocaine meltdown in Dex in Blue, I was far more worried about Dex and Kane and how they were going to deal with being thrown back into porn again than I was worried about Dex’s strung out, rather pathetic boss, pornographer John Carey.

 

I mean, how sympathetic could the guy be?

 

He’s an addict, one who just screwed over his best friend for drugs. He’s a pornographer, and as much fun as a lot of us have watching porn, there is just something… distasteful about that word, isn’t there?  It invokes images of unsavory, unwashed characters wanking in dark rooms to exploited barely of age adolescents who’ve been coerced into acts of perversion.  And he’d just sold his buddy into porn when his buddy had gotten out.

 

The guy was irredeemable, right?

 

Well… not really.

 

Because that’s not really the kind of setup I’d written for Johnnies—or John–was it?

 

I’d set up the kind of porn house that I wish most porn houses were (and I understand that some actually sort of are.)  I’d set up a place where sexuality was to be celebrated, and where the models were respected for being fit, and enthusiastic, and considerate, and sometimes even tender.

 

I’d set up John as a fun, sarcastic boss with a sense of humor, one who had nurtured Dex and who had been a friend or at least tried to be a friend.  His betrayal had hurt Dex, because Dex had cared about him as a person before it happened.

 

Unwittingly or not, I’d set up a character worthy of redemption.

 

And since, from my very first short story, and my very first book, I’d started writing with the idea that redemption was important, and worth being written about, and that it was in reach for most humans who were only guilty of human fallibility, there was no reason he couldn’t have it.

 

At a price.

 

John’s story in Black John is possibly the darkest of the four stories of Johnnies, but it’s also the most… circumspect.  John has a lot to atone for—but he’s also got a lot of potential.  He is funny.  He does care about his employees.  He does want his work to celebrate sexuality, and his employees to enjoy their jobs and to not feel exploited.  He even—before the cocaine “intensified” the worst parts of his personality—wanted what was best for Dex.

 

And unlike the other men in the Johnnies series, who are incredibly young (as are the porn models on our dashboards, which has always made me a little uncomfortable) John is a grown up.

 

John has had his grand tragic romance—or so he thinks.  He’s gotten over the disappointments of young adulthood—or so he claims.  He’s survived his shitty childhood with his sarcasm and his soul intact—or so he tells us.

 

What we figure out (very early on) is that we’re never too old to be hurt by our youth.  When John fell down the rabbit hole, it was only because he’d been flailing at the precipice for most of his life, and we have to admire his tenacity in not succumbing until now.

 

So when John meets Galen, who judges John for all the things we have judged John for, we’re actually a little hurt for John.  We want someone (besides Dex, who is happy with Kane now) to see the good guy finding his way out of the coke addict.  We want someone to see a very human sex worker, and not a “deviant” without morals. (John, in fact, has a very solid moral code.  I, for one, was reassured.)

 

When Galen actually sees that person, we can see Galen for all of his potential too.

 

So Black John is both a departure for my Johnnies guys, and very much par for the course.  There’s a lot of pain in this book, and a lot of redemption too.  But there’s also the very adult knowledge that, at some point in your life, not getting over your worst mistakes only leaves one alternative.

 

Fortunately, in this book, John takes the high road.  I’m so grateful for all of the readers who thought he could.

 

 

** Black John will be released on January 26^th, 2015, and is available for presale at http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com