Writer Brontez Purnell Pens Tribute to Black ’80s Gay Porn Performer Gene Lamar for ‚Them‘

LOS ANGELES — Acclaimed cult writer Brontez Purnell penned a heartfelt tribute to legendary Black 1980s porn performer Gene Lamar.

Purnell, who is currently promoting his new book “Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt: A Memoir in Verse,” praised Lamar as a “vers” icon and highlighted his “epic rise as the classic face of 1980s porn and his complete disappearance from the porn world in 2003.”

Lamar’s IADF page shows over 100 credits, most of them from 1985 — although in interviews Lamar said 1987 — until 1998, with a smattering of titles being listed all the way up to 2005, though some could also be reissues of earlier material.

“There was one man who had lurked in the shadows of my imagination for years,” Purnell reveals, mentioning watching “Soul and Salsa 2,” featuring a spectacular Black and Latino orgy, as a formative experience.

Lamar, Purnell pointed out, also went by a host of aliases, including Gene Thomas, Gene Lamarr and Gene Ledont.

“What made him noteworthy was that he was a vers Black actor, equally bottoming and topping in most interracial scenes, defying the industry trend of predominantly showing Black men topping in such scenarios,” he explains.

Purnell contacted a friend who worked as the archivist of classic 1980s porn studio Bijou Films, and dug up an interview with Lamar conducted after the first decade of his career.

“Through the conversation, I learned that Lamar was born and raised in Los Angeles — the Watts neighborhood, specifically — and was the third oldest of five brothers and sisters,” Purnell writes. “His mother was a vocal coach; he was also a singer. In the conversation, he asserts that he started as a runway and print model when he was 18. At 22, he married a woman, with whom he had one son. Elsewhere, he shared, ‘I like guys more so than women,’ though clarifies he didn’t get into gay life until he was 32.”

So much of Lamar’s work, Purnell notes, “hasn’t made it onto a digital file (and there’s quite a lot), rendering much of his legacy in a liminal space. Nevertheless, I’m such a fan, I might actually do the work of buying a VCR and painstakingly trying to own all of his VHS tapes. A wish list of abbreviated titles: Balls To The Wall 5: A Touch Of Salsa And Coffee, Best Of Blacks, Black And Packed 5, Black Balled, Black Balls 2, Black Bullet Video Pac 12, Black Heat, Black Secret, Cream And Coffee 5, Duo 1, Hot Chocolate, Hung And Dangerous, In The Black.”

The article concludes with Purnell thanking Lamar “for the beauty you brought into the world” and offering “a sense of joy and erotic hope in a racist and homophobic world.”

To read Brontez Purnell’s “Searching for Gene Lamar, the Vers Legende of ‘80s Black Gay Porn,” visit Them.com.