"It's like walking around with an exclamation point in your pants."

So says David K., the loquacious progenitor and master of Nightcharm (www.nightcharm.com), a premier hardcore-gay-porn website based in the Seattle area.

The issue of penis having has rarely been so aptly and vividly summed up. But this is hardly surprising: David K. is a consummate authority on the subject of penises. He knows cock, all right—top to bottom, inside and out, up and down, etc.

"I keep hands and mouths off of the models we work with," David K. tells me. "But there was that tall, lanky, megahung redhead that I was photographing a couple of years ago... the shoot wasn't 'flowing'... so I 'fluffed' a little. The photos turned out fabulous. Everyone was happy. Especially my members."

He knows cock, all right. But he knows plenty of other things, too.

David K.'s background is in television and corporate advertising. He went live with Nightcharm in 1998. His goal—besides "never working for anyone else again, ever, even if it means starving"—was to create a haven for horny, gay intelligentsia, a juicy hardcore-porn site for the thinking fag. Through a deliberate and delicious mixture of hardcore smut ("Swallow that come, cocksucker!"), clever and topical essays ("Do You Sodomize Your Wife, Justice Scalia?"), and a "sex-positive attitude" ("Swallow that come, cocksucker!"), David K. has carefully fashioned the ultimate antidote to the glut of "soulless" and "embarrassing" corporate internet porn.

"Porn is always treated so dirty, and all of the websites I was visiting back in the early '90s were the equivalent of a brown-paper-wrapper approach to porn. I wanted to do something classy AND nasty—create an experience that would leave a visitor feeling refreshed and not all creeped out when they logged on. I thought, "Why not create a website where you could read a great article after you jerked off?"

And indeed, there is plenty of good reading at Nightcharm, erotic and otherwise. Peppered throughout enough ass poundings and throat fuckings can be found some surprisingly compelling, fresh, and deftly worded musings on porn, pop culture, and politics. A smattering of these essays were penned by guest writers (including Susie Bright, Matthew Stradling, Guy Kettelhack), but most are written by David K. himself, pieces like "The Top Ten Worst Guys That We'd Fuck Anyway" and "The George Orwell Guide to Bushspeak."

Like a nasty, come-soaked dream, David K. lives in a misty and undisclosed local location, and he insists that I keep it this way. It might seem strange for a successful local net pornographer that often features locals to be so cagey, but David K. explains, "I usually travel to work with photographers in other cities. And of courseCraigslist.com is everywhere I go. They're even broadcasting their listings into outer space now."

An all-access membership to Nightcharm costs $23.95 per month, and gives you "a smorgasbord of spurting, squirting fun." If this seems a little spendy for a wank site, well, it is. But there are plenty of people out there who appreciate the unique aesthetic David K. has created—without volunteering an actual dollar amount, David K. assures us that Nightcharm has been "crazy successful."

As a thinking fag with an exclamation point in my pants, I, for one, hope it stays that way.