Before terrifying audiences worldwide with his ultra-violent Hostel films, before winning rave reviews for his scene-stealing performance as “The Bear Jew” in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, director/writer/actor Eli Roth was helping lonely, socially-awkward men jack-off.

Roth admits to The New York Post:

… when I was in college I used to work as an online operator for Penthouse, posing as a woman. That’s how I paid for my student films. They hired guys because guys know what other guys want to hear. So I was on an 800-speed modem in my dorm room with three other guys and, dude, I could type like 120 words a minute!

The creepy thing was, because this was in 1991, we only got doctors and scientists because they were the ones using the Internet. One guy told a customer he was a stripper and he started FedExing him cash — I never took it to that level, but guys were paying $1 a minute to talk with us. There were ads for me in magazines too!

Roth tells The Post that one of his feminine alter-egos was a heavy metal groupie named Tami. He adds:

She was a dirty whore who lived in the East Village. Tami was a heavy metal chick who had a gang bang with Guns & Roses and Poison in one night!

The funny thing, the last night my friend and I outed ourselves. We wrote, “We are men! we have penises! We’ve been f***ing with you the whole time!” We debated over hitting the send button, it was like launching World War III — but we hit it and the guys were like, “Oh shut up Tami, tell me about your t***.” But we kept insisting, “No, we’re really guys” and the guys kept ignoring it, “Oh Tami, you’re so funny.”

No matter what you tell them, guys will believe whatever they want. But that paid for my student films. I feel like I was giving back to the community.

Yea, the gay community. BURN!

I’m kidding. There’s no judgement here at Clatto. In fact, the Hostel films are so fucking awesome, I wouldn’t care if Roth blew dudes at truck stops to get his start.

Meet Tami from the East Village

Note: An internet chatroom masturbator historian points out in the Post’s comments section that Penthouse did not launch its online sex rooms until 1994, suggesting that Roth has either got his dates wrong or is just yanking our chain.