Being Recognised

Many people assume porn stars walk around with transvestite style war paint makeup and big hair all the time. If you don’t look like a trashy Essex girl out on the tiles of a Saturday night you can’t possibly be a porn star!

I’ve said before that I fit into the girl next door category very well and I’m glad of this for one thing alone. I don’t get recognised and no one would readily believe I am a porn star without good evidence. I look too normal for that and in fact when on the odd occasion I have told people what I do half of them laugh at and attempt to humour me.

I hate wearing makeup when I’m not working and the only time I even venture near a mirror to fix up is if I’m going out for a fancy night out that requires abit of polishing. If I’m simply going local I don’t worry about my face or looks.

I dress down too. A lot of girls go for the off duty glamour girl look in tight jeans and skimpy cleavage promoting tops finished off with a pair of Ugg boots. I wear my sloppy stuff and Ugg boots too but I really do look like I’ve made no effort when I do it. Those girls still look polished and styled.

This is just me. I don’t attempt to go out in disguise. It seems to work though.

Not that I haven’t been recognised. The most embarrassing time was when I was out for the night with my boyfriend and his family. Luckily they know what I do or it could have been very awkward but I think they were as shocked as me when some guy had his girlfriend take a picture on his camera phone of me and him together. I was more worried about his partner decking me in a jealous rage than what the rellies thought but she was all smiles. Luckily I had dressed up that night! I may not be a glamour puss but I have a vain streak and wouldn’t want a porno fan having his picture taken with me looking like a tramp.

I also got spotted outside the GU clinic once after getting my sexual health test. I strongly suspect this guy had worked out where all the porn stars went for their tests and was loitering with intent. This wasn’t exactly confidential information and abit of Googling would easily give you access to that information. I rushed out the main entrance and ran up the street to grab the tube and dash off for my next job when some guy ran after me and asked for my telephone no. so he could book me. He said he was a fan and wanted to do the amateur thing – fair enough but I’m not giving any stranger on the street my phone no. I told him the name of a website where he could find my model advert and to book me through that. He kept trying to find reason to stand and chat to me but when I told him I was in a rush to get to a shoot he went all drooley at the thought of me getting yet another good stuffing from some well endowed stud and sent me on my way.

The first time someone I actually knew found out what I was doing was when I was rudely awoken from a Sunday morning lie in by an old friend and work colleague from back in my home town and old life. She was a few years younger than me and I always thought of her as quite sweet and innocent. We had drifted apart abit but still kept in touch - just about. You can imagine my surprise then when she comes straight out and says ‘was that you I saw on Television X last night with some other girl?’ For a split second I was concerned about what she thought of me. Not that I cared that she knew or not. I wasn’t trying to hide it or anything but then I was overcome with concern for her. What the hell was she doing watching Television X?

Apparently her man liked to watch it from time to time. I was definitely more shocked about her being exposed to adult material than she was about me staring in it. She thought it was funny and gave me encouragement. I think she thought it was cool that she now personally knew a porn star. Not that I was a star in those days more a mere debutant.

She assured me that she was grown up enough to watch porn and not to worry about her but was abit confused as she had viewed me in a lesbian scene. Did this mean I was a lesbian? It was now my turn to assure her that although id wondered for abit if I maybe was that I actually wasn’t. ‘Oh, that’s ok then’ she said. I think that admittance would have shocked her even more than seeing her old friend and boss taking it up the bum on late night adult satellite television.

How the other half live

You know it’s kind of weird when you think about it.

It’s deemed cool to be a porn star these days. People wear T shirts saying Porn Star across them. They film themselves having sex and upload it onto YouTube. People who only ever did one dodgy amateur movie years ago call themselves porn stars. Everyone wants to be someone whether it’s a model or musician or sports personality or film star or just an “it” girl. A celebrity of some sort. We all have our own little MySpace pages cos it makes us feel abit famous being where everyone in the world can view us.

I can’t speak for the other industries I mention but I can’t help thinking they are probably as unforgiving as porn too. Its just there jobs aren’t such a head fuck in the first place. It’s simply the baggage that goes with the job that is the down side for them.

Just look at Britney. What the fuck is that all about. She’s an extreme case but I’m sure others just manage to hide it better.
Britney is the reality of how many porn stars will end up though.

Who wants that??? We all think these people we put on pedestals have it all. Money, hot chicks or guys, fame, bling, cars. Then we feel sorry for them when the press hounds them and makes there life a living hell. These supposedly glamorous jobs all have flip sides. It’s all blown out of proportion. Even when we do witness the flip side we still want to be that person. We still think all the money and fame must be worth it.

It’s not. Were just glutton for punishment (the idolized). Were as taken in by it all as you “normal” people are. In fact we believe it even more.
This is why Britney freaked out. I really think most of these people that “normal” people aspire to deal with their fame in damaging ways. Tom cruise has his weird faith. Some people turn to drugs and a party lifestyle. Just look at Whako Jacko.

I was sitting in a bar yesterday and watching the waitress. I aspire to her. She’s so cool. She has a good life probably. Not all the dramas and brain damage that go with these fake and fantasy jobs and personalities. She is truly deserving and worthy.
And all the other people in “normal” life. The postman, the check out girl, the bank clerk. I’d like to be one of them. I really admire the people who do the stuff that counts and makes a difference. It’s the real people who should be celebrated not the celebrities.

Imagine Heat magazine picking flaws in the average girl’s wardrobe of choice or Hello being filled with articles and pictures about how big Dave down the road got married to Sue from the pub.

Like Alice through the looking glass. Life is twisted.

Workwear - Yes we do wear clothes...sometimes!

As I mentioned to you earlier it costs alot of money for me to be (insert porn name).

And there was you thinking porn stars were born looking like that. Nope....as in keeping with the fantasy of pornutopia underneath all that silicone, acrylic and bleach we are nothing like our porn personas.

Believe it or not, one of the most important tools for any glamour model or adult actress (I hate using that term. I find it really cheapens the meaning for the talented real actresses) is her wardrobe. Yes we spend our time predominantly naked but we have our own style for this job. Slut wear is what you find topless models, club dancers, strippers and porn stars wearing. 6inch glass stilettos and tiny Lycra hot pants. If you’re still not sure what I’m talking about have a look at http://www.forplaycatalog.com/

Since I wasn’t in the habit of dressing up like a slag in my normal life I had to scrimp together what revealing outfits I did have for work. Short skirts and skimpy tops. I really didn’t have that many that were sexy and I knew I couldn’t be seen wearing the same top and skirt for every job so I had to go shopping. I had to buy a whole new wardrobe which wasn’t going to be cheap and I still wasn’t exactly rich in those early days.

My plan of action was this. I’d go shopping with what limited funds I did have and then make sure I was ever so careful with these outfits when I wore them on set. I made sure not to get any make up or bodily fluids on them and when doing my sexy little strip id peel it off so carefully so it didn’t rip or snag. Id then return them to the shop and swap them for something different I could wear the next time I was booked. This meant I had to do my shopping all over the place. I couldn’t keep going into Top Shop in my home town or id have been caught out returning and swapping stuff each week so I had to travel great distances to make my little scam work.

This way I could afford the nice outfits and look really good on set. I was loaning the clothes from the high street chains. The only thing I did have to invest in was sexy lingerie and stockings. Oh and my tranny porn shoes. To this day I have a draws full of beautiful lingerie from all over the world and in every colour you can imagine. I plan to auction it all off for charity one day. I really dread the day when I have no real reason to be buying gorgeous undies anymore. It is one of life’s simple and harmless pleasures.

Eventually I realised the other girls didn’t bother taking any pride in their wardrobes and the producers weren’t even that concerned either. You’d turn up on set with your big suitcase bursting full of new shiny clothes and ask the producer what you should wear to be told “Oh you pick something”. They didn’t want to be bored with menial tasks like picking wardrobe. They had important things to do like making unimaginative generic porn that looks like every other scene ever filmed.

Or they’d tell you to bring four or five different outfits. An outfit means lingerie plus outerwear, like a dress or skirt and top and shoes. No one ever asks you to accessorise and rarely to wear stockings or be imaginative with your make up. Then when you get there having lugged your biggest suitcase across the capital and not been able to squeeze your way onto three different packed commuter trains, sweating your bollocks off and looking less than attractive right now they say “oh just wear that teeny weeny g string. No shoes”. You wanker! I could have fit that in my pocket and left all this shit at home.

Dragging my case from A to B became the worst aspect of my work for a long time. How silly does that sound?

I also started earning enough money to stop my little scam after a while. I could have kept it up but it became time consuming and what else was I going to do with all this money. I learnt to buy afew nice things that would keep me going and then if I found something I really liked I treated myself.

I don’t leave my appearance in the hands of uncouth producers nowadays. I take the initiative and dress myself deciding on the little details like which accessories to stylise with, how heavy or natural to do my make up or what style to do my hair in today and I more often than not wear stockings if only hold ups and not the whole suspender she-bang. If I left it to the uncreative idiots who produce this tack id look exactly the same as I did in the last five films I shot.

I became obsessed with shoes though as I said in an earlier post. Even now I always try and streamline my suitcase and take a capsule wardrobe whenever possible but each outfit needs a different pair of shoes. Afew bangles and necklaces don’t take up much room but 7 pairs of shoes do!

I will never get away from that loathsome suitcase.

Sixth Sense

Michael wasn’t the first or last chancer I encountered.
As I mentioned earlier, you learn to identify the sinister characters and time wasters fast. You learnt to evoke a sixth sense but unfortunately sometimes it’s not always spot on.

So, the time wasters and no shows would be the guys who write one line emails or would constantly call or email asking questions about the shoot. I was dumb enough to freely give my mobile phone number out then in a vain attempt to not miss out on any work opportunities.

Guys who simply write ‘How much?’ or ‘I want to book you for a shoot’ without even so much as a ‘Hello’ will never show up or usually get round to arranging anything concrete with you. If they can’t supply even the most basic of information or show an ounce of courtesy then even if they did show up would you want to work with someone like that? Seriously you can’t have high expectations of these kinds of people.

Then you get the ones who constantly email or call with questions in the time between arranging the booking and the actual event itself. Like ‘What will actually happen at the shoot?’ For fucks sake! You’re the flippin boss, you tell me what’s going to happen. I do what you ask me to as your employee. Within reason of course!

These guys are hoping you will write them some free erotic literature or do a free sex chat on the phone describing what will happen in pornographic detail.
‘Well first I will dress up in some sexy lace undies then I will rub my firm round breasts and tweak my hard nipples.....’ Go away and ask the ladies who are paid to do this.

You can usually pin point after afew emails if someone’s a time waster asking too many strange, obvious or long winded questions. They may want to simply have your attention.
Or they might start adding things to the list of content they originally booked you for. It might have started out as quite a simple tame shoot but before you know it your being analy gang banged by 12 strangers in a warehouse in Dagenham. This is usually just to see how far you will go. How much you can be pushed or how desperate you might be. Again it’s all a free wank for them though.

You also get the ones with the elaborate stories. The list of these elaborate claims is endless. ‘We’re a big American porn company’, ‘We want to put you in our mainstream movie’, ‘We’ll pay you £20,000 for a fashion shoot’, ‘We want you to be the next Britney – you don’t even need to be able to sing, we have computers for that’. That last ones no lie!

Now I actually like winding these people up if I get the time. I like bombarding them with security questions and seeing what silly answers they concoct in panic as they realise they have found another one with a brain. I’ll say ‘Where’s your website to prove who you are?’ or ‘Which other models have you worked with?’, ‘Why is your email a webmail and not a company one?’ It’s a good way of ensuring they take you off whatever list they use to scam girls.

I’ve even had people claiming to be established production studios or photographers. One guy emailed me claiming to be an ex Daily Sport photographer that unbeknownst to him I had become good friends with. I called said photographer and told him, both of us laughing at the twit’s bad choice of victim. I politely wrote back and told him that I was good friends with the guy he was impersonating and he sharply disappeared without trace.

Luckily most guys have no intentions of coming out from behind their PC monitors so it’s all relatively harmless but there are bad people out there.

There are of course all the bizarre non work related emails too.
‘Can I date/marry you?’ – This is a model site not a dating site sweetie. I’m looking for work, not a boyfriend.
‘Do your parents know what you do?’ or ‘Does your boyfriend know you’re a slut?’ Who do you damn well think you are trying to intimidate me?
‘Can I be your slave?’ I’m an adult model not a mistress. OK I might have to act like a real mistress from time to time but that’s it and this isn’t an S&M site.

I’ve had hate mail too. One charming guy claimed I had bi polar disorder and that it was down to him to bring this fact to my attention. I’ve had two obsessive fans both deluded that they were having some sort of relationship with me. One still try’s to add me as a friend on a social network as if everything’s hunky dory and were long lost pals. I’ve even almost had a stalker until I nipped it in the bud before things started getting out of hand but that’s another tale.

The Lies They Tell Us

The first email from that model site that materialised into a shoot was with a guy called Michael. He said he owned a movie company called Blue something or other. I didn’t pay too much attention but id not heard of them. He said he shot in Spain alot but wanted to do a shoot with me in a hotel at Heathrow airport.

I can hear you laughing already – those of you with an ounce of savvy.

I was eager to please and make a good impression for my début into porn. I wanted to push myself to make sure id made the right decision sacking real life for this amazingly different career. I didn’t want to leave my failure to fate so I gave all my focus and determination to my new job.

Michael met me outside arrivals in his swanky blue convertible Merc. He was dressed like a total tosser in a tight white T, jeans plus bear feet in brown loafers. Eugh! He was good looking but you could see he was the other side of young now and trying desperately to still be that cool 80s yuppie he was 15 years ago.

Anyway we drove to a nearby hotel with him spouting bullshit about him and his so called adult movie business. It would have been believable if a) he hadn’t made it sound so Hollywood and b) he hadn’t just turned up on his lonesome.
Once we got inside the hotel room he said he didn’t need cameras for this but if I was good he’d book me to go to Spain for a week’s shoot. How dumb was I?

I knew something wasn’t right but I also knew nothing about this business so rather than go with my gut I went with the logical reasoning that this must be how things were done in porno.

He fucked me for an hour without even so much as a disposable camera in sight and convinced me to do anal with him after id told him I had never properly done it with a guy before and would really rather save it for the camera. I couldn’t tell at the time but he probably found it hard to stop himself exploding there and then. Isn’t that every guys dream to sodomise a young girl who’s an anal virgin?
He did show some compassion though and suggested we try the anal in the shower so he could lather up my tight virgin ass hole with lots of soap and slip his well endowed cock in a little easier. Being new to all this I also didn’t realise that all that soap would give me Bacterial Vaginosis or Thrush. A few weeks later I sat at the dining room table fully clothed wondering what that fishy smell was. I certainly wasn’t eating fish!

Strangely I managed the anal without too much discomfort and felt a sense of pride that I had managed to do it and please and hopefully impress this guy. My anger about him not being concerned about what I did or didn’t want to do had vanished.

At the end after id showered up and was getting dressed we were chatting and he asked for my HIV certificate to see. I produced this. It was normal to show your producer and co performers this paperwork although it made more sense to do it pre shoot. Sometimes it was a ritual that was done simply to say it had been done. The reason for doing it not important to some people so they just went through the motions even if this meant remembering or being prompted into doing it at the end when it was too late. You might have AIDS by then but this is how things were then.

I expected Michael to produce his certificate too but he didn’t. He said he had one but since I was the young, naive newbie I didn’t press him to physically show me. I didn’t want to ruin all the good work id done. He might decide not to book me for Spain although I knew there was no Spain. This guy was making things up just to shag a porn star. Not that I was a star in those early days. I was a wanna be. Later id become a real porn star myself and Id discover how to make money out of people who want to screw porn stars properly.

I think Michael enjoyed the bull shitting as much as he enjoyed the sex. He wanted to be living the fantasy he was spewing out to me but really he was as much a wanna be as me. The bullshit just helped to get him to the resulting fuck with me but some guys would get as much enjoyment out of this pretending to not even go through with meeting me. They were no shows or time wasters. I quickly learnt to work these time wasters out.

Going it Alone

The glamour of doing professional shoots soon got thrown straight back at me in my sheer determination to succeed in this new career of mine.

Jody had given me the name of a couple of online modelling websites I could join free of charge. All I had to do was send them some pictures of me and fill in the form with all my contact details, stats and modelling info and voila! I was out there for all the world and his dog to see and book.

Proper agents took a commission for booking you. Some took it out of your fee and some took from the producer on top of your fee which was always a bonus. Producers and photographers usually preferred to book you away from agents for this reason. If anyone ever shot you they usually took your contact no. on the model release form anyway but if a model release wasn’t required they made sure they took it anyway. That way they could call you direct next time they wanted to book you or get you to fill in for some other girl who hadn’t shown up.

Agents knew it happened so they always tried to milk new girls for all they were worth as fast as they could. This is why you can be shot to death in this business within a matter of weeks. Some producers and photographers are chummy and share the details of new girls between them thus losing the need for an agent even more so.
An agent will push you to as many contacts as he can as quickly as he can before your no. starts getting out there on its own.

As I say the agents knew this practice went on but they never did anything about it. Bad business sense and laziness I guess. There saving graces were that they had a large catalogue of girls on their books so should a girl no show for a shoot, which was a regular occurrence, the agent could easily replace her. These were the times the producer was more than willing to pay a commission.

These online sites were like virtual agencies without the agent. The customer, the producer or photographer emailed the model directly and negotiated rates or whatever. There was no physical agent to pay a commission to.
However with no physical agent at hand to vet people claiming to be photographers or movie producers and production companies it was down to the model to ensure her own safety and that’s not as simple as it looks.
Its very easy for a guy to email saying he is Hugh Heffner and give a link to the playboy site. He just makes up an email like hugh_playboy @ hotmail.com and he’s away.
The sad thing is alot of girls are thick. Thick and lazy and ignorant to their own welfare and safety.

I found that most professional companies would call me direct either through an agent or by having been given my no. by another industry insider.
Emails were nine times out of ten from amateurs and wannabes and dodgy blokes trying their luck.

When my profile initially went up on the first modelling site I was delighted and excited to see a list of emails as long as my arm after just half a day. I read them all with gusto and thought about how popular I was and how much money I was going to make. I had no reason to distrust these people. So far id had a good and honest ride in porn.

I learnt to “read” peoples emails pretty damn quickly though. There are tell tale signs as well as switching on your common sense which as I say so many girls in porn lack.

Psychology lesson from a porn star

I often ponder why I ended up being in porn amongst other things. I over analyse situations involving myself and when my life is boring I try to work other people and their situations out. Sometimes that’s easier than working out myself. I think I figure if I can answer the questions of “why” in my life and have some sort of clarity I will suddenly become eternally happy.
I’m a narcissistic borderline personality with a tendency for hypochondria and am happy to spend time with councillors, reading self help books or partaking in self help groups.

I was just reading through some old notes from one group I attended and it suddenly struck me that people in porn are all similar in a handful of characteristics. I worked out a long time ago all porn performers, glamour models and even porn producers are simply seeking attention. Yes they are probably looking for it in the wrong place but plenty of other human beings do equally as silly things in order to meet the same need.

Sigmund Freud noted the act of reaction formation. This is where people in short do the opposite of what they feel. So if for example I believed I didn’t need to be loved by anyone I might go out of my way to try and make myself as loved by as many people as possible. Maybe by becoming a porn star.

Displacement is another noted defence mechanism in human beings. If say the same person as I discussed above who feels they don’t need to be loved decided to sub consciously make people love them by simply going out each weekend to the local night club or bar and picking up a different sexual partner each time they might fear being labelled a gigolo or its female counterpart, a slag. If they became a porn star that would mean it was their job to be that way and the immorality of the situation ceases.

Of course you do sometimes get people who simply can’t get enough sex. They are sexually frustrated in real life and so use sublimination and take on the role of someone who can get as much sex as they want or need.
Or on the other hand people who are emotionally retarded or too scared to get emotionally intimate with another person might choose to intellectualise the situation. This involves removing oneself from the stressful situation (in this case of getting intimate or emotionally attached) and using rationality (hey, I’m a porn star I don’t have to love this person to fuck them – it’s my job) to avoid a distressing situation.

That’s enough psycho babble for today.