About

Welcome to a labor of love and a lifestyle that turned into a full-time job. Active Duty was born before it was ever even the website that you are visiting now. It all started with my love for military men and my random nights of chasing (and usually catching) them in the straight strip clubs, shady dive bars and Wal-Mart.

Being raised in the adjacent city to one of the largest Army bases in the world, my love for men in (and out of) uniform was a natural one, I suppose. Some of my first memories as a child are of the hulking figures in camouflage that surrounded us when we ventured out on trips to "town" where they stood tall like a forest of strong trees that protected us. We felt safe in our town because of their presence. It was like having your own Army of bodyguards at your side and we were proud to have them.

In later years when my hormones started kicking into high gear and I realized that I had a soft spot for hard dick, my attention would turn to these fit, strong, beautiful men in uniform. Country boys who had left home with not much more than the cowboy boots on their feet, a few pairs of faded jeans, a toothbrush and the desire to be part of something larger than themselves. Corn-fed boys from Nebraska, Dutch descendants from Pennsylvania, high school wrestlers from Iowa, city boys with tough-guy attitudes from Jersey and NY, Southern boys who loved their trucks and mamas just about equally and who would kill you over either would all come together for the shared purpose of protecting our liberty. Over 80,000 perfect examples of American pride, beauty, bravado and youthful indiscretion.

All of this testosterone and machismo gathered together in tight quarters equaled a lot of horny young men out for adventure when the workday came to an end and the night called them out to mischief. And there I was, right along side them, more than willing to lend a hand in their search for excitement. I would quickly find that many of them were more than willing to explore beyond their normal boundaries. In fact, under the right circumstances, you could manage to unleash all the pent up hormones that raged inside them and have the night of your life.

These were the days when adult bookstores and arcades were still in fashion before the Internet practically removed the need for such meeting places and on any given Friday or Saturday night you might find yourself holding up the walls, waiting for the next hot GI to walk through the door and make his way to the backroom where he'd casually find a booth to beat off in that had a glory hole adjoining to the booth beside him. Often I found myself the lucky occupant of the booth next door to some of the finest specimens of military man meat the armed forces had to offer. There were nights when the bars closed and the GI's piled into the local adult arcade as a last resort because they knew that some hot, willing mouth awaited their cocks on the other side of those walls. Often times that lucky mouth was mine and I cherished those jackpot moments when I was able to provide the relief they needed.

But, the bookstores left much to be desired for a young guy like me who wanted nothing more than to be close to these men, be friends with them and cultivate relationships with them. It was this desire that would lead me to the straight strip clubs and dive bars they frequented and spend my hard-earned money on countless drinks and lap dances for them. It would end up paying off in some very big ways at the end of so many nights when the strippers snuck out the back door and left the boys horny with few other options. On dozens of occasions I would manage to bring them home and after a few more beers and some good pussy porn have my way with them. As a result some of the best friendships and fuck buddies I would ever have formed. Trust was a big factor in building these relationships and my code of silence was both understood and accepted readily on my part. All I wanted was to be close to them.

After several years of honing my skills, I'd built myself a pretty plentiful roster of buddies who were down to play. It suddenly dawned on me that I might not always have as much fun as I was having in my twenties and I wanted more than just the images in my head to remind me of such great times. I wanted to freeze these moments in time somehow. Sometime in 1995 or 1996 I decided to buy myself a camcorder and see how many of my buddies would let me capture their youthful beauty to keep for myself for years to come. The response I got was much more positive than I had at first imagined. Many of them were down to let me film them jacking off and many of them loved showing off. I'd suddenly found my new love in life and it would eventually bring me here.

Over the course of the next year or so I was having as much luck getting guys to let me film them jerking and showing off as I was getting them back to my place. I got addicted to my camera and often times decided that getting the moment on video was more important than getting their cocks in my mouth. Although the two often went hand-in-hand, I let more than a few guys get away with giving me nothing more than a hot tape to watch time and time again. I cherished these tapes and kept them locked away. It was only with one close, trusted friend that I would share my secret treasures with and he was sworn to silence. This friend would later talk me into turning my hobby into a business and would later become known and loved here at Active Duty as our very own SSGT. Beau. So, if you're ever in the Active Duty LIVE Chat room and see SSGT. Beau in the room, you might say thank you because he had a large role in helping me find the courage and confidence in my work to bring it here to you.

It would be his constant urging and encouragement that would convince me to take the first step into the world of porn. As I shared my treasures with him he would constantly tell me of a man he knew of in San Diego that filmed Marines and sold them on VHS. He even brought me copies of these tapes to watch and told me how much better he thought my work was. Having never been a fan of porn or an avid watcher I was inclined to believe him, but I wasn't ready to dive into a world that seemed so far removed from my deep Southern roots. Porn was made in California and faraway places that I'd only dreamed of visiting, not in the tobacco fields of North Carolina.

After repeatedly putting him off, SSGT. Beau finally got me to call the toll-free phone number at the end of one of those Marines tapes one day. It was mainly just to quiet him down and show that I'd at least made an effort. I had no plans or expectations that anything would come of it. I'll never forget the call as a soft-spoken voice came over the phone I began explaining to him that I had been shooting some military guys on video in NC. He asked me to please hold, patched me through and another voice came on that I immediately recognized as the voice on those Marine tapes that interviewed the guys before they got naked. He quizzed me for a few minutes and then asked me if I could send him a sample tape, gave me a mailing address and his Fed Ex account number to use for shipping.

I hung up feeling a little overwhelmed. Suddenly the door was open if I wanted to take the next step. So, I decided I would run it by the guys and tell them that we had a California porn producer interested in the tapes if they wanted to pursue the possibilities. Over the next week I started asking several guys if they wanted me to send in their tapes and see what the verdict might be. To my surprise many of them jumped at the chance and said go for it. I spent another week putting together a sample tape that featured two-minute segments of 15 different guys without cum shots. I may have been a young country boy, but I was not naïve enough to send the full versions to a porn producer that I knew nothing about and had no way of knowing what his intentions were.

Two days after I sent the sample tape I returned home to an answering machine (yes, we still had answering machines then) that was blinking full of messages. I hit the play button and listened to three messages from the California porn producer asking me to please call him and not to speak to anyone else about my tapes. It was obvious from the tone of the messages that he liked what he'd seen and was eager to see more. I decided to make him wait another day and when I returned from work the following day the answering machine was blinking with more messages.

That day a call that would change the course of my life for the next 15 years and counting would take place. As the California porn producer walked me through the process of what he expected and what he was offering in return, I listened carefully. I knew he was defining the deal to get exactly what he wanted but I also knew that his interest meant that what I was doing was enough to catch his attention and that fascinated me. Rather than negotiate (that would come later) I took it all in and told him I'd get back to him.

Meanwhile I rallied the guys one-by-one and told them the deal. All of the guys that had been sent on the first sample tape agreed to the terms and we sold the California porn producer his first batch of what would become many tapes. From conservative country boy to backwoods producer I transformed in a matter of weeks. By the height of my relationship with the California porn producer I would be sending him 30 solos per month with no shortage of willing guys to follow. Everything went great for about a year and then I fell in love and took about four months off to nurture that relationship. You can read about it in the book by Alex Buchman (edited by my good friend Steve Zeeland), "Barracks Bad Boys: My Mormon Bad boy". It was a short-lived but intense love affair that still touches my heart today. But, my heart longed all the while to get back behind the camera. Sometimes we can give up even love to follow our dreams. Sometimes those dreams, like love, become our passion. It was that passion that would take me to the next step and on my way to building a company that would rule my life for many years to follow.

Company Overview

No sooner than the love of my life was on his one-way flight back to Utah I had my camera fully charged and ready to go again. I kicked things into high gear to sooth the pain of letting go. In a few weeks I was running full throttle once again and burying the California porn producer balls deep in hot new guys. But things were about to take a major turn that I never could have expected. As I sent in more and more tapes with hotter and hotter guys, the California porn producer put a halt to my production flow. Something was up in California and it wasn't good news.

The Fed Ex checks from California suddenly stopped and our little circus was in serious financial trouble. The excuses were "I can't put this stuff out fast enough, can you slow down? Can you hold tapes and let me pay you a little later for them?" As much as I wished at the time that I had the funds to do so, it just wasn't possible. I was running a tight ship as it was on the meager returns from California and barely able to pay my bills, keep plenty of beer in the fridge and pizza on the table to keep the talent happy. At times it got so bad that I'd have to give a model my class ring to hold until I could pay him. But it was those types of dealings and that kind of trust that would pay off as we headed for the next phase and the beginnings of ActiveDuty.com.

The gig was up. But I had another idea. I called the guys together and told them that California was all but over. The beer and pizza money and the occasional insurance or car payment that they were able to garner was no more. I had no other immediate options, but I did have a great idea thanks to a used computer I was able to buy from a pawn shop and the Internet. I laid my great idea out for a group of them one night as we played Spades and drank beer as usual. I'd been surfing around on the Internet and had come across MenOnTheNet.com. Here I saw so many gay cookie cutter sites with stolen pictures of "military actors" in phony military uniforms and terrible photo sets that left much to be desired. It was then that the vision for ActiveDuty.com was born. The plan was simple: build an gay Internet site dedicated to the men I loved and show up all the fakers with something REAL.

As the night went on I shared my idea with the guys, we brainstormed together, got excited and went round and round about how it would all work. The guys loved the idea and so did I. The only problem was I didn’t have the money to pay the guys to model for this new venture and I certainly knew nothing about building a web site. We were back at square one and out of beer. The night faded and by morning I realized that the dream might never come true. I decided it was time to make other plans.

As I went about deciding what I would do with my life next and being somewhat depressed something was brewing behind the scenes (and without my knowledge) with the guys. One night as I sat at home alone the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anyone. When I opened the door twelve of my best guys stood outside with big smiles on their faces. I was confused to say the least but opened up and invited them in of course.

Once inside they could hardly wait to tell me the news, but they’d all decided beforehand to appoint Jordan Sage to be the “spokesman”. Jordan put his NY street smart accent to good use and began to tell me that they’d all been thinking about the plan for the new Internet gig and had decided that they wanted to help make sure it happened. They had all decided that they would help me get the content together for the new venture and I could pay them all once it launched. I cried.

Once the tears dried and the excitement set in, we began that night shooting solos of everyone and photo sets. Over the next week I would have all the content needed to start ActiveDuty.com, which would be 12 photo sets and 12 solos that would eventually become our first three VHS releases, First Platoon, Second Platoon and Third Platoon. Now the hardest part would begin. I had to find someone to build the web site.

A soldier that I’d been sucking off for awhile knew of a chick that he’d been fucking on the side that worked for a local Internet Service Provider. She built companies web sites as part of her day job for the ISP. He said she was going through a divorce and needed the extra money. He put the two of us in touch and for the next three months she and I would work side-by-side each night building what would become ActiveDuty.com. She did all the work, I basically sat in to guide the design and keep her glass full of wine.

On August 23, 1998, ActiveDuty.com would open its doors to the World Wide Web and soon become an instant success. Those early days of marketing were renegade days when AOL was still the “place” for anything Internet. Everyone had an AOL account. The M4M chat rooms were overloaded with horny fellows who were finding their way around the Internet and hooking up with one another, going to porn sites and discovering a world that would change the way they socialized and fed their secret desires over the next decade and beyond.

AOL was our first marketing tool. I had four AOL accounts and we set up different profiles and screen names for all the guys and would enter the M4M chat rooms sharing links to ActiveDuty.com. Copy and pasting the URL into IM’s became our saving grace and the way we got many of our very first members. Later, Power Tools would come along and help us automate this process so that we were sending links via IM’s instantly 24/7. It wouldn’t be long before many other porn companies would start to use this method and eventually it would die out. People became privy to these types of ads and would just ignore them.

Luckily for us, we’d gotten in on the ground floor (in fact we may have been one of the first to use it) of this method and it had really worked well for us. By the time we ditched AOL and bought our first ads on MenOnTheNet.com we’d already become successful enough and well-known enough to move forward without looking back.

The next thing that would define the future of Active Duty and give us an even larger place on the map of online gay porn was AMVC.com and my friendship with David MacKenzie. It was here that our videos would find an outlet and an audience larger than what we’d been able to gain on our own. David and I became fast friends and his vision for providing one place for both producers and fans of amateur porn videos was unmatched by any other. He was brilliant and together we flourished for many years to come.

I remember when we released our first hardcore title, Basic Training with Haus Weston. David was still working a day job and running AMVC.com out of his house at night. The Basic Training series and its success would change all of that. After the first month, I got the sales reports from David along with an email regarding the tremendous success of Basic Training that said something to this effect: “I would never expect the stellar events of September 1999 to happen again.” Basically he was saying we’d gotten lucky, but I disagreed. I wrote back these few words in my reply, “Oh yeah? You just wait and see.” We both laughed over the phone when I told him that we were obviously onto something and that if he didn’t believe we could repeat the success that he should just hide and watch.

Not long after that we would release Basic Training 2 and it would follow in the footsteps of Basic Training. Soon, Basic Training 3 would follow and the success of the series would lead to David quitting his day job to devote all of his time to AMVC.com and the new run of “luck” we were experiencing. My gut was telling me that we had hit a nerve with gay porn consumers and I never looked back.

The years ahead would bring so many memorable titles and beloved Active Duty stars along with them. Names like Haus Weston, Jordan Sage, Zane and Zack would become synonymous with the Active Duty brand and define its beginnings and give it a foundation to continuing building upon.

Later we would meet unforgettable troops like Cole, Dean, Kody, Damien, Sam and Lorenzo, Granger, and so many more that would define the “golden years” of Active Duty and set us apart from any other amateur porn site on the planet. These guys were among what I call the Active Duty Legends and their contributions to the Active Duty catalog will forever live on. They were arguably the group that really put Active Duty on the radar and it would later come to manifest itself in some not so pleasant ways. Active Duty may have been a homegrown porn company with straight military guys fucking in a living room or bedroom, but eventually it would become Internationally known and appear on the nightly news in living rooms across the World.

After the “scandal” my world changed as much as the lives of those involved and it would prove to be a tremendous challenge to move forward. There were days when I was sure that Active Duty was all but over and times when I thought the battle had been lost. It would take me at least a year to rebound and begin producing what I considered “worthy” content again and that would come after a move across the country.

Many great things were ahead for the little company that could and many challenges as well. I owe a huge thanks to all the fans of Active Duty who have stuck by us all these years and most importantly to the men who have stripped off their clothes, left caution to the wind and given us all something that they can never take back. It takes a special kind of person to take off their clothes for the world and I’ve been blessed to meet some of the most special of those people in my journey here at Active Duty. They are, in their own right, the unsung heroes to all of us homos who have come to know and love them so well. I salute them!

I never had a son or any children for that matter but I’ve tried to run Active Duty like a family instead of a porn company and as a result I’ve managed to build some of the most important and long-lasting relationships of my life through my work. There is one person who I can honestly say I feel as though fate brought us together and with whom my relationship has been one of the most important and endearing, heartbreaking and satisfying of my life.

Cole would come into my life at a stop light in a Podunk military town and when I yelled at him at a that stop light to pull over, he looked at me like I was some kind of crazy person. He still gives me that look sometimes today, but more importantly he has given me a sense of accomplishment that I reckon most parents feel about their children. I have watched that young, wild Marine grow into a fine young man who has accomplished so much and become one of the most well-rounded individuals I’ve ever known. He has amazed me with his brilliant mind, embraced me and all of my craziness with his loving heart and given me a sense of being part of watching someone grow from child to man that I will hold near and dear to my heart for the rest of my life. He truly is the son I never had.

There are many other unsung heroes behind the scenes at Active Duty that never get the praise they deserve and without them Active Duty would not be what it is today. I am blessed with some of the most dedicated and loyal folks that any company owner could ever ask for and I am thankful for each of them.

Behind the scenes there is one young man who has been by my side, putting up with my shit, listening to me rant and rave for the last 10 years. He quietly listens, lets me vent and goes about doing a job that I could never do myself. He is my right hand man and without him nothing would get done. He wants no praise, has no huge demands and has dedicated himself to helping me build a company that has stood the test of time. I will forever be in debt to him for his loyalty and friendship.

And then there is his wife who joined us later on this journey and threw herself into the company making an indispensable asset of herself from the very first day. She is dedicated to making sure our fans, members and affiliates are well taken care of and puts Active Duty first in her day-to-day life. Without her this company would not be the same.

John in our shipping department was an angel sent to me in a trying time who has never left my side. He continues to make sure all of our DVD customers are happy and that they receive their porn in a timely manner. His dedication is also a blessing to this company and we are damn lucky to have him.

And last, but certainly not least, our webmaster who came to me as a reporter looking for an interview for Nightcharm.com way back in 1999. After the interview we kept in touch and I expressed to him my frustration of not being able to find a dependable webmaster. He had no experience in the field, but was a smart cookie. He offered to help and I accepted. The countless Sunday’s (and in recent years Wednesday’s) we’ve spent together online have been some of my most memorable online chats. He is not only the best, most dedicated webmaster of any porn site, he’s also a dear friend.

Together we form a very functional dysfunctional family of folks who make this thing go. I am truly blessed to have them all. My hat is off to them.

Awards

2006 Cybersocket Web Award for "Best Webcam Site"
2007 GAYVN Award for Best Amateur Video for "Rear Gunners 2"
2007 AEBN VOD Awards for "Studio Of The Year"
2008 Cybersocket Web Award for "Best Live XXX Show"
2009 Cybersocket Web Award for "Best Original Theme Site"
2009 GAYVN Hall Of Fame induction for Dink Flamingo (director of Active Duty)
2010 Grabby Awards Wall Of Fame induction for Dink Flamingo
2010 Grabby Award For Best Pro/Am Release for "Summer Recruits"
2010 GAYVN Award for Best Web-to-DVD Release for "Summer Recruits"
2010 JRL Charts Award for Best Military Genre Film for "Pullin' Rank 2"
2011 Cybersocket Web Award for "Best Fetish Site"
2011 Grabby Award for Best Pro/Am Release for "Deep In The Foxhole"
2011 Grabby Award for "Best Fetish Site"
2012 Cybersocket Web Award for "Best Fetish Site"

A Word About Piracy

Piracy is a huge issue for porn companies today and we take the illegal pirating of our content seriously. Luckily, most people are honest consumers and understand the cost that goes into producing quality content with hot guys. Unfortunately there is still a very small segment of users who disregard our rights and the cost that went into producing a scene who find it perfectly fine to steal our content and share it with the masses. These folks are systematically ruining the future of porn at a serious cost to the rest of us. The more our content is stolen and shared, the less revenue we generate to continuing producing quality content in the future.

Luckily, we’ve joined forces with one of the top anti-piracy companies on the planet and are now protected by PornGuardian.com who has created some very powerful tools for our battle against piracy and the illegal sharing of our content. All Active Duty scenes are now secretly watermarked so that when they are downloaded they are tracked by a watermark that is unique to the username and password that downloaded them. This allows us to quickly identify the infringing party and delete their account, place them in a fraud database that will prevent them from joining other websites and give us the information we need to pursue legal recourse.

Porn Guardian estimates that a site like Active Duty generally tends to have only 5-10 active pirates in its membership base. The rest are honest consumers like you who pay for what they get and do not steal or share our content. Together we can stop piracy dead in its tracks by all working together to indentify these dishonest users and delete their accounts, input them into a fraud database and go after them legally for the damage they cause our beloved brands and the threat their actions put on the future of porn production.

Now that we are offering full downloads of all our content it is more important than ever that we identify these thieves and bring them to justice so that the rest of us can continue enjoying the benefits that come with honesty and the great content we all help produce as a collective effort.

Now you can help in our battle against piracy and our mission to continue bringing you the hottest content possible by reporting pirates and illegal files placed on other websites other than Active Duty so we can identify these freeloaders and get rid of them once and for all.

Please email any illegal files that you are aware of to our support department:

ActiveDuty@redapplemedia.com

And thanks for being honest.

Dink Flamingo