David Aaron Clark (September 5, 1960 – November 28, 2009) was an American author, musician, pornographic actor, and pornographic video director. His career ran from campus journalism awards through Al Goldstein’s Screw magazine to Los Angeles feature porn, Evil Angel–adjacent extremity, and BDSM-flavored erotic novels with literary ambition. For readers who track kink literature and hardcore directing as overlapping trades, Clark is a bridge figure: Greenery-era erotic fiction energy married to AVN-level screenwriting, with a personal life that repeatedly spilled into tabloid and industry gossip.
Journalism path: Rutgers, Dow Jones, Genesis, Screw
After switching majors he graduated with a degree in journalism in 1986. He served as editor-in-chief of The Daily Targum, Rutgers’ student newspaper, winning multiple Columbia Scholastic Press Association College Gold Circle Awards. He then worked as a stringer at The Bergen Record and the New Brunswick Home News Tribune before becoming an online editor at Dow Jones News Service. He left after two years to accept an editorial position at Genesis magazine, followed by a five-year tenure at Al Goldstein’s Screw magazine. In a Luke Ford interview Clark sketched the arc himself: Rutgers double major in journalism and art; once he found he could not paint or draw well enough, he decided to become a serious journalist; two years of Dow Jones covering planning commissions and human-interest stories on missing children and gun shows left him bored and hunting something else to write about; a college roommate who edited Genesis opened that door; from there he went on to Screw. He also edited the fanzine Chrome on Fire and performed in the band False Virgins, produced by Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo. The band released two albums around the turn of the decade: the 1990 album Skin Job, engineered by Brooklyn producer Martin Bisi, and Infernal Doll (1991, Enemy Records). When the lead singer died by suicide, Clark broke up the band and retired from playing music.
Erotic fiction, Spectator, and a tabloid engagement
Clark wrote several works of erotic fiction, including The Wet Forever (1991; Rhinoceros reissue 1995, ISBN 1-56333-117-9), about the relationship between a hedonistic man (Janus) and a dominatrix (Mädchen)—straight D/s fiction with literary ambition rather than pure stroke-book padding. Other novels include Sister Radiance (1992; Rhinoceros reissue 1994, ISBN 1-56333-215-9), The Marquis de Sade’s Juliette: Vengeance On The Lord (1993; Masquerade 1996, ISBN 1-56333-240-X), and Into The Black (Titan Books, London, 1995, ISBN 1-85286-679-9). Collaborations include co-editing Ritual Sex with Tristan Taormino (Masquerade Books, 1995, ISBN 1-56333-391-0); True Blood (text with Charles Gatewood photography, Last Gasp Books, 1997, ISBN 0-86719-447-2); and the graphic novels The Fallen: The Pale Door (illustrated by Miran Kim, NBM, 1999, ISBN 1-56163-233-3) and The Fallen: Cold Religion (illustrated by David Rankin, 2000/2004, ISBN 1-56163-406-9). Anthology appearances include Gahan Wilson’s the Ultimate Haunted House, World’s Best Erotica, and Best Of Gauntlet Magazine.
In 1995 he moved to San Francisco and was hired for an editorial position at the now-defunct The Spectator. He described a flamboyant personal lifestyle that meshed with the work. In New York he had been seeing and eventually got engaged to a teenage dominatrix who slashed him with a knife when angry; the story hit tabloids including the New York Post, under a headline about a porn editor cut up by a "kinky cutie," with his picture. They moved to San Francisco to get out of the news, and he was with her until October 1995. That episode is part of why Clark’s biography keeps turning up in both literary kink histories and porn-industry oral history: the life and the product were not carefully separated.
Directing: Cream Studios, Euphoria, Extreme to Vivid, PURE
In 1998 Clark moved to Los Angeles to accept a position directing porn videos for John T. Bone’s Cream Studios. His screenplay for Brad Armstrong’s Euphoria won an AVN Award for Best Screenplay in 2000. He directed features for companies ranging from Extreme Associates to Vivid Video. His later film PURE, for Evil Angel, received multiple AVN nominations, including Best Actor (Keni Styles), Best Actress (Asa Akira), Best Supporting Actor (Jake Malone), Best Couples Sex Scene, Best Music Soundtrack, Best Special Effects, Best Screenplay, Best Director – Feature, and Best Video Feature. That nomination slate shows how far the former Screw editor had moved into full industrial feature porn without dropping the literary credit trail that began with dominatrix novels and Taormino collaboration.
Death and lasting industry footprint
Clark died suddenly on November 28, 2009, reportedly as the result of a pulmonary embolism. Mid-2000s profiles and interviews—Spectator-era writing about S&M dates, RogReviews coverage, Peter Landau’s "Sex Wrecks" profile, Gram Ponante’s "I am not Phil Collins" interview—document a man who treated pornography, sadomasochistic relationships, and prose as one continuous project. Music releases remain listed as False Virgins Skin Job (1990) and Infernal Doll (1991). For BDSMWild readers, David Aaron Clark is the rare résumé that stacks Gold Circle student journalism, Goldstein’s Screw, dominatrix-centered novels, Taormino co-editing, AVN screenplay gold, and Evil Angel nominations before a sudden end—proof that American adult culture’s literary and video wings sometimes share the same body, and that kink writing and hardcore directing can be the same career rather than parallel hobbies.
