“Mike South: An Addendum”
by Tim Case Walker
The answer is no, he does not have a rebel flag bumper sticker on the
back of his truck. He does, however, sport a sticker that says “Guns
Cause Crime Like Spoons Cause Rosie To Be Fat and Stupid”.
He likes to read, and he’s insufferably smart... Smarter than 90% of
the people you’ll ever meet, except when he’s in the company of a
beautiful young lady, at which time his considerable intellect fails
him completely. He does like to fish, and conveniently, he also likes
to eat sushi. He likes to ride his scooter. He likes to piss people
off, to stir up the soup, to be, as Gunter Eich once wrote, “Sand, not
oil, in the machinery of the world”.
Porn gadfly Mike South, my best friend, was 42 years old when I met
him in Tampa, Florida. I’d talked to him on the phone once, briefly --
being from West Virginia myself, his good ole boy drawl put me at ease
immediately. “Sure,” I said to the aspiring porn actress who would
eventually become my wife. “Let’s go meet this Mike South character.
Let’s find out what he’s all about.”
(It’s 13 years later, and I’m still working on that one).
Later that night, after we’d spent the evening together and he’d shot
a XXX scene with the aspiring porn actress who would eventually become
my wife, it occurred to me that “good ole boy” didn’t quite describe
the whole of this person who had suddenly entered my wife. Er, life.
We have had adventures together -- lord, the stories we could regale
you with over a Mason jar of Jager bombs or two. The time we were
shooting a nude layout out in a protected area of desert outside of
Las Vegas and were accosted (and subsequently ticketed) by a Federal
Park Ranger. The time he was slapped at the Tampa Show by an
overweight woman who then nearly got her ass kicked by my wife. The
time he ordered room service, having it delivered to our table at the
AVN Awards Show because he was pissed off that they didn’t feed us,
then charged it all to Farrell Timlake’s room. Endless bukkake
stories. The Georgia Limo. The kitchen at Flamingo. Gidget. Kayden.
A-dell and the iced tea. Finberg. Jolie. Flower. Fifi. Maynard.
He snores. He insists that he doesn’t, but he does. Trust me on this.
He was the best man at my wedding. His “best man toast”, which should
go down in history, is on YouTube and you owe it to yourself to check
it out.
He is a trusting soul, and this has gotten him into a spot of trouble
from time to time. My wife says he’s gotten meaner as he’s gotten
older, but I don’t necessarily agree with that -- what I see is that
the years have distilled him, like a mean shot of whiskey. Every
battle, every injury or surgery, every time a person he trusted or
helped has fucked him over has stripped a piece of his hide away, and
left us with what we have now: a leaner, honest, angry, more brutal
version of the Mike South that I met all those years ago.
There are people who we say do not suffer fools gladly.
These days, Mike does not suffer fools at all.
We talk on the phone as much as we can. He’ll complain to you, if you
ever bring it up, that I never answer the phone, but that’s bullshit.
I know that if I ever needed him, he would be there in a heartbeat. He
knows that if he ever needs me, I’ll get back to him eventually.
He has asked me to write for him again. To take an occasional turn
stirring up the soup.
“It’ll be fun,” he told me. I wrote for his website years ago, when
it was better, before he was famous, when I was much more involved in
XXX than I am now, in my current role as a DJ in a Dayton, Ohio strip
club. I still have things to say, however... and perhaps you’ll enjoy
hearing about them on MikeSouth.com from time to time.
If you don’t, blame me, not him. God knows he has enough trouble.
Talk to you soon.
