I've been making and producing WAM videos on and off for the past 8 years. And in that time I've developed a love for videography and photography to the point where people outside the kink world are starting to pay me to take photos and videos for them. It's still not my "real" job, but I'm starting to be known by friends, family, and coworkers as that guy with the camera.

Inevitably--and I swear this isn't a humblebrag--some of my friends and clients will ask how I got started in photography since my "day job" has absolutely nothing to do with cameras. I usually brush it off by saying "Oh, it was a thing I thought I needed to do back when I was a freelancer and it just became a hobby." But honestly the story is much simpler: I liked seeing pretty girls get slimed and wanted to record good footage of that. Maybe one day I'll be blunt enough to say that, but right now I'm just thinking about how much of my "origin story" is tied to WAM. If I ever take video/photo content more seriously, I'm going to need to reckon with that in a more public context than just us mess-lovers.

Are any of you in the same boat? Maybe you've become known for your construction abilities because of your time building gunge tanks? Cleaning experts from all the post-session work you've done? I know sometimes we get "outed" by a stranger walking in on us or finding a bunch of messy supplies stocked away. But have you ever been outed by you own skills?

Not exactly skills, but supplies.

I was helping some family get a house ready for sale and one of the outer walls needed painting. They had the paint and the rollers but were like "oh damn, we don't have anything to cover up the ground in case it drips. Maybe we can find some paper towels or something. I popped into my car trunk and pulled out one of those cheap 99 cent plastic rolled-up painter's tarps and opened it up.

"You just happened to have a painter's tarp in your trunk?"
"Uh...yeah?"
"Why?"
"...this?"

TBH that's not such a hard one to explain, "I once had a window smashed by a stone thrown up by a truck I was passing on the motorway in a rainstorm, by the time I got to a service station where I could pull over and try and cover the hole the back seat was soaked with mucky highway spray. So now I always carry one of these in the car to use as an emergency window cover if the same thing ever happens again."

Never been outed by skills but then I've always been open with everyone about what I do anyway. I probably do know more than most people about flushing stuff down drains without blocking them.

My uncle's a bit of a language nerd. He and I were cooking one day, and we needed an egg. So my uncle said, "Eggs!" in Spanish. I responded with "eggs" in Portuguese. We went back-and-forth in a little impromptu language battle, each in turn translating "eggs" into another language, trying to one-up each other. Eventually I stopped and let him win, pretending I didn't know any other languages. I thought it would look too suspicious if I revealed I knew how to say "eggs" in about 20 different languages! lol

I was once part of a comedy show that involved slime and pies, I tarped the stage very well lol and I also had to convince the staff that if you add food coloring to batter, it wont stain.... all without showing my hand.

I think in Britain having any knowledge at all of YCDTOTV is a giveaway. Was chatting with someone about Alanis Morissette once and I mentioned she was a child actor who was on Canadian kids TV, then realised there was no way I would know that but for my knowledge of how that show has inspired WAM videos.

Fun question.

-- Definitely have received comments about my photography in other realms, particularly angles, lighting, and overall composition.

-- Have received comments regarding overall 'preparedness' in multiple examples, likely hearkening back to thinking through an entire session first such that I set up appropriately.

-- Commentary surrounding my ability to clean without too much of a trace of what happened, paradoxically, stems from the messy realm.

-- Still, not all comments point to fun or positive aspects. Although I have grown much more open with my identity in general, my younger years taught me to compartmentalize and lead a double or triple life. That mental bi-/trifurcation creates issues regarding wholeness of self.

This wouldn't be a giveaway at all to me - I'm a trivia wonk and it could be easily explained or justified by having fallen down a Wikipedia rabbithole and somehow ending up reading through Alanis' page and that being something that stuck in your memory about it. I have lots of similar completely random facts about stuff that have been acquired and stuck in my mind in the same or similar ways.

Fun topic! I think all these are easier to explain than we might think. From the inside, it feels like weird outsider knowledge. In reality, it's not that strange! For the photography, if people really dig in THAT much you can say you used to shoot stuff for eBay or something and it led you towards freelancing, and that was more profitable so you let the eBay stuff go. Like... a nice, totally boring backstory that nobody will ever even remember, let alone ask you about again. I would hope, anyway!

I think there's an analogy here to the way it can feel like a super weird fetish to have, but compared to most fetishes, it's really not that weird. We just tend to over-focus on our own things.

This hits so close to home for me

I've built a tree house as a teenager with my wam skills made a film and a bunch of other things but I was so disintegrated

Anybody with curious young children will understand that it takes precision to keep the questions from being asked in the first place. Even the indirect out of place step stool - why is it in the bathroom? BUSTED. At least they know something is strange with that picture.

You weren't just changing a lightbulb?

As a person who just spent their afternoon using a pipe snake to clear three years of accumulated gunk, mud, batter, slime, paint and whatever else out of the master bath drain? You're gonna want to bone up on your YouTube plumbing vids.

i am pretty open about what I do as well....

Before I began intensive therapy in January? As a release, I started cooking a lot and I HATE COOKBOOKS. hate them.

I always cook with an idea and some stuff. throw it together and make it work!

I TRULY think this has to do with me fiddling wiht slime recipes in wam.
right now? i have boxes of girl scout cookies. Instead of eating them? i just developed a crust last night made out of crushed "toffee crunch" cookies.....

I will be making a "poke cake" out of yellow cake with evaporated milk MIXED WITH VERY FINE pieces of the "caramel sea salt brownie" cookies.....

then? mixing.....guess what! cool whip and ICING for the top layer with crumbles of "thin mints" mixed in.

god. its gonna be goooood. ill be using a scoop from my 5 gallon bucket of whipped frosting i have in my freezer! lol!!!

but yeah. i make a lot of healthier meals too...and I really feel like my "lack of using the cookbook" style of slime and mess making? leads to how I cook!
I can honestly say? IM A DAMN GOOD COOK! last night was street tacos with my own recipe of birria sauce! my god. so good.

also? constantly wiping the cabinets, doors and walls.

people look at me like im insane. which? I am.

Not looking forward to this when my kid gets older lol

Dang. I wanna come over to your place. It's making my mouth water. Lol

I'm actually the other way around, in that my decent photography skills and past experience in videography have left me knowing that I COULD start a WAM business, but I live in a very small town in a relatively conservative part of the country, so there's no way I could get models without folks figuring out what I was doing, and I'd prefer not to mix those parts of my life.

Plus, in the age of selfie pie vids, model prices, and Onlyfans, it seems more and more like I made the right choice. There's more to running a WAM business than knowing how to run a camera and liking hot babes with pies in their faces IMHO.

Double-plus, just because I was good at something and liked something else doesn't mean I want/need to combine those two things.

Not skills related, but I've had a few conversations lately with friends and family who are interested in birds and wildlife. With the places I visit looking for mud, I have a few interesting sightings, but I don't want to have to explain exactly why it is that I'm regularly poking around off the beaten track at estuaries and marshy woodlands.

1. There's nothing illegal about WAM in itself - excluding trespassing if your wandering onto a quarry.

2. Doing WAM in your own home isn't a violation of anyone's freedom. Cleaning up your own mess or having supplies isn't a crime.

3. I used to be ashamed of my WAM fetishes because I grew in fucking TEXAS where sexuality is a crime but the more I reach into authenticity and appreciation of what we share the less I give a damn what anyone thinks.

4. Telling my closest friends about this has been fun! Sending them pics or getting excited about estuaries while traveling is now a bonding moment. They respect and love me the same. Share they wish they had my guts to go for it. Don't let your talents be wasted on others shallow opinions!

5. After the shutdown of everything, WAM community became my family. my tribe! so many strong relationships built on friendship, respect and love with the guys closest to me and afar even on here.

Never been directly faced with an awkard question, but I did feel the need to explain away why I had xanthan gum as baking for a gluten-free friend.

I've had to explain why I know several different industrial food thickening agents when I've never worked in industrial food service. I got out of that one by pointing out that I am in fact the kind of person who reads Wikipedia for fun, and since everyone who knows me knows this about me, no one doubted it.

The one that really got me, honestly, wasn't related to WAM but to BDSM. I had to explain why I own a cricket bat when I am a wheelchair-using Japanese American. I explained that I love cricket, and that I got it to get signatures on. This was accepted, but I decided that I really needed to learn cricket if I was going to use such an excuse in the future. Long story short, I am now a *massive* cricket fan, and I live and (far more often) die by the fate of my beloved Sunrisers Hyderabad....

Oh man, the closest I've ever come is when a family member died and my mother and I were taking care of the estate. First off, this was the first time I was staying in a hotel room that I wasn't getting messy in, filming in, or fucking in in the last 5 years, so sharing a hotel room with my mom was REALLY weird. I immediately commented on the shitty bathroom that likely had a drain that clogs too easily. "Why are you worried about clogging the drain? What are you making soup in there?" Uuuuhhhh, actually mom..... Then we had to bring all of our family member's paperwork to the hotel and go through all of it and throw away years worth of junk mail and other paperwork. My mom says we need to go get trash bags, "Don't worry mom I keep giant thick trash bags in my car. "You do? You're not getting rid of dead bodies or anything, right?" Uuuuuuhhhhh, "Yep, ma, you caught me, I'm a Mafia hitman" We stuffed a giant garbage bag full, and it was just too impossible to drag out of the hotel room to the dumpster. My mom was absolutely scared of leaving it and pissing off the housekeeping and getting charged a huge fee for it. "Mom it's fine, just leave a $20 or $50 on top of the bag and they won't say anything about it, I do it all the time, they're just grateful we cleaned up after ourselves and didn't leave a big mess." Her eyebrows raised at me, "The hell have you been doing in hotel rooms?" Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhh, "I live in Hollywood ma, we party in hotels so we don't destroy our own homes" not a good cover, "You really are in the mafia aren't you" Uuuuuuhhhhh, just let her believe you're in the mafia, she'll never guess the truth, "Gee mom, it's time to check out now, here, I'll take your luggage" walk promptly away and don't turn back around.

I love that you just found it easier to let your mom think that maybe, just maybe, you kill people for a living rather than simply coming out with "Sometimes I just want somebody to throw cream pies at me and make an enormous mess."

I know if it were me in your shoes, I'd probably go with option A too.

CreamMeAgain: Eh, should I give em da pies boss? How bout some pound cake shoes?

Personally, I don't know that I've done enough to develop any skillsets around WAM, let alone had to explain them.

Creamy, you are wonderful writer and story teller!

I've watched the Three's Company pie fight so many times, that when it came on at a friend's house I was able to recite the dialog word for word as it happened. I (was) known for having a great memory back then and he just chalked it up to that.

No.

Once I helped a coworker in editing art inside a MS doc. It was low level image resizing and scaling. I walked her through it, at least the way I used when I made artwork for Splatter Island, and helped her out. When she asked how I knew how to do that, I said I edit photos in my free time. It was exactly truthful. She didn't need to know what kind of photos I edited.

The other information I picked, regarding food science, is completely useless, and comes off more as trivia. I am a font a useless trivia, so it's just more random information I can through out.

Congratulations! And awesome story!

That is a REMARKABLE coincidence. Bully for you, and congratulations. I wish you and your wife many happy years together.

Now that I think about it, Creamy should have told her mom that she belonged to the Mothers and Fathers Italian Association.

I'll show myself out....