A short story about John Holmes.
John Curtis Estes (August 8, 1944 - March 13, 1988) better known as John Holmes, John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd (after the lead character in a series of related films), was a porn star of the 1970s and 1980s that included one gay film and a handful of gay loops. Best known for his large penis (generally estimated at between 12-15 inches), his involvement in the brutal Wonderland Murders in 1981, and his death from AIDS. He starred in a large number of loops and features and is indisputably the most famous male porn star of all-time.

As well as his legacy of pornographic films, he was the subject of a long article in Rolling Stone magazine in 1989, a feature length documentary, and the inspiration for two Hollywood movies (Wonderland and Boogie Nights).

Born in Pickaway County, Ohio, as John Curtis Estes, John never knew his father, a railroad worker named Carl Estes. John's mother, a devout Southern Baptist, married Edward Holmes a few years later. She changed John's surname from Estes to Holmes. John Holmes was the youngest of five children.

At 16, with the permission of his mother, Holmes enlisted in the United States Army and spent three years in Germany in the Signal Corps. Upon his discharge, Holmes moved to Los Angeles where he worked in a variety of jobs. It was during his stint as an ambulance driver that he met a nurse named Sharon Gebenini. They married in 1965.

For the next two years, Holmes and his wife lived quiet, uneventful lives. Holmes found work as a forklift driver at a warehouse, but the rigors of driving in and out of a frozen warehouse caused severe health problems, leading a lung to collapse on three separate occasions. While recovering from his illness, Holmes frequented a club in Gardena, where he met a man in the bathroom who, amazed at what he termed Holmes' "prodigious pike," encouraged him to do pornography. Initially, Holmes did magazine work and the occasional 8mm loop, keeping his work in porn secret from his wife.

Despite his desire for anonymity, Holmes' penis was large enough that distribution houses for 8mm loops could not resist using Holmes' anatomical anomaly as a marketing gimmick. So, while the ad copy for his first few dozen loops rarely named him, those that did usually gave him a name that was nowhere near what his real first name was. In fact, one early "Swedish Erotica" brochure from 1973 has five Holmes loops listed, each of which has a different name referring to Holmes even though it is obvious from his facial features and the size of his penis that "Fred", "Dave", "Rudy", "Big Dick" and "Stan" are all the same person.

With the success of The Devil in Miss Jones (1972), Deep Throat (1972), and Behind the Green Door (1973), porn had become chic although its legality was still hotly contested. Holmes was arrested during this time for pimping and pandering, but he avoided prison time by becoming an informant for the Los Angeles Police Department.

In 1973, Holmes' career began to rise with a porn series built around a private investigator named Johnny Wadd. By 1978, Holmes was reputed to be earning as much as $3,000 a day as a porn actor. He starred at a time when an attractive personality could compensate for a lack of other aesthetic characteristics, and a certain amount of acting ability was still demanded of porn stars on a level that is not seen in today's porn films.

At the start of his cinematic career, Holmes was widely publicized as having a penis ranging from 13.5 inches to 15 inches (34 - 38 cm). Holmes's actual maximum length when erect was probably 12.5 inches (32 cm). Holmes also spread the rumour himself in 1981 that he had sex with 14,000 women. More realistic estimates, such as that of Luke Ford, put the figure at around 3,000.