The photo was sent to Max Sohl, a sometime porn actor with a theater background whom Morris had commissioned to conceive and direct what would be Sohl’s first porn film. In it, the grinning young man with a leather cap appears to have found his long lost tribe, and O’Toole looks as if he has found a seven-course meal. TIM star Jesse O’Toole was on hand and someone snapped a photograph of the two of them together (right). He liked the TIM videos, he liked them very much indeed, and he hoped to one day document a few fantasies of his own.
Then, like the legend of Lana Turner fortuitously cozying up to the counter at Schwab’s, a beautiful and achingly masculine young man approached the TIM booth. This particular specialty was the singular driving force behind his smashingly successful and relatively new company. In the middle of this rowdy bacchanalia in the fall of 2003, Paul Morris stood at the booth for Treasure Island Media (TIM), the gay porn outfit he founded that features unprotected sex (barebacking) between its actors. Even the fearless leather community that founded the event can sometimes appear tame amidst the outlandish kinks and clothing – and lack thereof – on display along the city’s tilted streets. The annual Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco is noted for its unbridled embrace of every star in our sexual constellation.
