Here is a list of the porn performers who have come before us and have since shuffled off this mortal coil. It's kinda sad, but we all gotta go sometime. If the performer has a filmography in the Internet Adult Film Database their name will be hotlinked. Special Thanks to Tim Evanson for most of the earlys and before gay porn citations and to the readers of alt. Alexandra Stein.

Did you know that the average life expectancy of a pornstar is around 31 years? The number was closer to 38 just a decade earlier. So, what happened?

We've been talking about her son, Michael Cohen, and if you ever want to feel like an intrusive, horrible person, try asking a grieving mother about her deceased child's career in gay porn. For most of the interview, we've been talking about what Cohen was like as a kid. Shari tells me he was a sweet and inventive toddler. In their San Diego neighborhood, he'd hung a little sign that read "go" next to a stop sign so that cars would understand it was also, you know, OK to go. One time, Shari came home from her own birthday party and found Cohen had wrapped all the lamps, books, chairs and tables in the living room with kite string and was sitting in the center of the room, like the king of an elaborate spiderweb.