ROME, Italy – Some people are just too easily impressed and/or enraged.
Take Argentinian play-by-play announcers working soccer matches, for example. It doesn’t matter how mundane a scoring play may be, those excitable motherfuckers are going to scream GOOOOAAAAALLLL!!! for all they’re worth every time.
It’s the same way with the mainstream media every time they discover a teacher or professor is, or even just used to be, a porn performer. From Resa Woodward to Old Nick, the media acts as if there’s some kind of law saying if you’ve ever sucked a dick on camera, or had your dick sucked on camera, it means you either couldn’t possibly be qualified to teach or we should all be amazed you’re qualified to do so.
The latest porno-educational outrage du jour is the story of Ruggero Freddi (which somehow doesn’t translate to “Rugged Fred,” I’m told), a former gay porn performer who now teaches engineering at La Sapienza University in Rome.
“I found out this morning,” one student said in an interview with Repubblica. “He was not only a porn star, he also has two degrees.”
Honestly, I should hope a guy teaching engineering at the university level has at least one degree, so I’m not sure why anyone would be shocked or impressed to hear he has two.
I suppose what people find so amazing about this is a porn performer has the wherewithal to learn more than just simple dialogue and performance cues. You’d think Italy is the last country where people would be surprised to hear it, though. It has been two years since Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi started his own damn university, after all.
Beyond that, I’m not sure we should so easily accept the claims of Prof. Freddi’s prior experience, either. I mean, there isn’t a single title in which he performed as “Carlo Masi” on his curriculum vitae. Hell, he doesn’t even list “lifting weights” or “butt sex” under his research interests. (To be fair, he does list “fully nonlinear elliptic PDE,” which could be some sort of gay sex act, I suppose.)
Say what you will about Rocco’s qualifications to serve as a college administrator. I’ll bet he didn’t omit “porn star” from his resume – although I wouldn’t be surprised if he did omit Jenna Loves Rocco, because that was some boring-ass porn.
To Freddi’s credit, he’s not running away from his past or allowing anybody to make him feel bad about it. In fact, it sounds like he did just about nothing to hide his porn career in the first place.
Evidently, Freddi posted a bare-chested photo of himself on Facebook as part of announcing he was ready to start work at La Sapienza as an engineering professor, and the post subsequently went viral.
“Some students reposted the photo in a few sites and from there my former life as a porn actor emerged,” Freddi said. “To be honest, it wasn’t exactly a secret.”
Freddi was an active performer until 2013, when he quit to dedicate time to work on his doctoral thesis. He says his original plan had been to pursue a job in engineering years ago, but that plan was put on hold by the limited opportunity and relatively low wages paid to engineers in Italy.
“Then I was offered to do a film in the U.S.A.,” Freddi said. “I thought, ‘Why not?’ A job that helps me earn more and is a more entertaining career.”
Why not, indeed.
The good news for Freddi is that he’s not teaching engineering in Dallas, Texas –- or in Manchester, England, for that matter. From what I hear about Italy, a former porn performer there is less likely to lose his or her “straight” job than to wind up getting elected to parliament.
Image via Facebook.
