Let’s get something straight.
I do not, for one minute, regret working in porn.
(I do, however, find it highly entertaining that I decided to follow up a post about Disneyland with a post about the smut industry. I’m nothing if not versatile. Needless to say, this entry is most likely NSFW.)
read more ↓It’s been nearly three years since I left. And it’s taken me about that long to be able to say the above statement with meaning and conviction without a trace of shame. But you know, it’s interesting… the shame didn’t come from where you think it comes from.
I’ve had a number of conversations with Adam about my decision to split and refocus on where I ultimately wanted my career to go, and he’d often made comment about “the way [I] was when [I] left.” I don’t remember his exact explanation of what that meant… but it was something along the lines of how it appeared to him that I just woke up one morning and decided I was done, then promptly quit everything and took off so fast that I left burn marks in the pavement. I’d explain to him repeatedly that it was a decision that I’d agonized over for at least three months by the time I finally got off the pot, but I realize now that what he was getting at was that he thought I had suddenly decided I was too good for the industry and had to get out.
That’s not what happened. What happened was I was burnt out, confused, exhausted, drained and completely out of ideas on how to publicize my clients. And I needed to start figuring a lot of stuff out for myself, like why I wasn’t writing the book I had intended on writing. And why I insisted on setting myself up for failure. Or why I was so hard on myself when I made mistakes. Why I was constantly getting myself embroiled in emotionally unavailable relationships, both with friends and lovers. Why I was so angry. Why I was so depressed. Why I was so anxious. Why I hated my life when on the surface, it seemed like I had everything: the car, the money, the boyfriend, the connections, the designer labels in my closet… just pretty packaging to cover up the fact that I was a really big mess. So in other words, my leaving the industry had little to do with the industry itself and a lot to do with me, me, me.
So no, I didn’t make that clear when I left, mainly because it was my personal business and mostly because I had no clue how to articulate that. And in a strange way I kind of looked to a lot of the people I knew there for support when I was going, and most of them told me that I would be back. That nobody would dare hire me with That History on my resume no matter what had come before it. And that warning wound up making me do this odd dance where I would both accept and deny that history, acknowledge it and ignore it because I was constantly terrified that They would be right. Understand that nobody I encountered in The Real World ever said this or acted this way toward me. It was all from industry people.
Granted, I never performed on camera, and I don’t say that because I want to make sure I differentiate myself from porn stars. I say that so you won’t ask me if I have any good head techniques (my advice: practice on a banana or a popsicle like Laura taught me in 9th grade.) Okay, that’s not it. It’s because I realize on-cam girls probably have a different career stigma than publicists do, but regardless, the fear of God was drilled into me and I worried I’d be branded with a scarlet "P" all my life. It’s why I flipped out on Leah when she put it on my blog-reader bio that day, and why I'd lower my voice when saying the word "porn" when I'd talk about the old times in public places with friends. And it’s why I did dumb, jerky things like avoiding adding a lot of people I knew to things like my Linked In connections – because I worried that other less-accepting connections would give me hassle about it or be offended.
A couple days ago I had an epiphany and decided that’s fucking ridiculous.
Because the thing of it is this: say what you will about the porn industry, but for three or four years it was a home for me – one with a big, fabulously dysfunctional family. I met some truly incredible and inspiring people there, some of whom I still stay in contact with to this day, others who influence my work in a way that they probably don’t even know about. I both lost and found love there. I met both life-long friends and flash-in-the-pan pals that totally colored my world in unexpected ways. I worked out a lot of issues. I screwed up. I learned a lot of valuable lessons. I made a good living. I lost myself. And in leaving, I found myself again.
But even more than that, it was a treasure trove of entertainment and stories. Like how Ron Jeremy taught me how to waltz in the old Metro Warehouse. Or the time I took a blow-up doll to the AVN Awards as my date. How I had to learn to overcome my squeamishness to be able to have a discussion about anal sex in a business meeting at nine o’clock in the morning. And how I had to write “cock” in a press release a minimum of 150 times and figure out a way to make it sound professional and compliant with AP Style. Then there’s the sets… oh, the sets. One of my personal favorite stories comes courtesy of a male performer who was engaged in a… well, I’ll use the technical term for it. He was engaged in a DP with a girl and another guy (surely you can do the math.) After the scene was finished shooting he grumbled to anyone who would listen that the other guy was, you know, looking at him funny and was clearly gay in some way, and that made him feel uncomfortable.
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” I said to him. “You’re uncomfortable because a man you just shared a woman with was making eyes at you, and that makes him kind of gay?”
“Yes,” he said.
“But you were just rubbing nuts with him in a scene.”
He digested the information for a moment as others standing nearby started to chuckle, then he broke into a smile and turned red as a tomato as he bellowed, ”I DID NOT JUST RUB NUTS WITH SOME GUY!
Yes, I’ve seen more hairy man-crack than you can shake a stick at, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Because in order to become the person that is writing this now, I had to go through all the blood, sweat and spilled semen that makes up that industry. So if you have an issue with that part of my history, I’m sorry to hear that. But it also means I probably wouldn’t want to hang out or do business with you anyway.
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