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.

Trouble In Paradise

My best friend was lying to me about not turning up to jobs and making me look like a fool in the process so we were on rocky ground to begin with.

I was fast coming to the conclusion that Cindy was a fantasist. She didn’t need to do porn to pay her bills. She had a normal job to do that so porn was just abit of fun and play to her. I’d met her on a job so I knew she would turn up for bookings when it suited her but the more I thought about it the more I realised she just liked the idea of being naughty and being made to feel sexy. Of being idolised by men and women the world over. Of getting to have sex with lots of good looking random strangers who were there for the same reasons as her. For being deemed as one of the glamorous elite.

Being a fantasist though sometimes shed lose her nerve and back out. She didn’t treat this as a job just a joke. A way to get her own kicks.
Each to their own and I guess she wasn’t physically hurting anyone but that soon changed.

I needed to go for my health check up and Cindy decided she should come along to and get herself tested. In those days tests weren’t mandatory for models only working to the levels Cindy worked too. Cindy said she should have one though to be on the safe side which I was pleasantly surprised to hear from her since she obviously wasn’t taking the business seriously.

We went back a week later for the results and Cindy was told she had a NSU. Non Specific Urethras. It wasn’t serious but they would treat her. She had most likely caught it sharing toys and these weren’t uncommon. Not an actual disease but the Drs found something there they didn’t deem serious enough to give its own name but wisely chose to treat anyway.
The clinic asked Cindy to take some treatment home for her boyfriend too as he would more than likely have it too.

We went back to her flat where she lived with her mum and boyfriend and she told me how she hated taking medicine especially pills. Rather strange since I later witnessed her downing ecstasy and fat lines of cocaine. I told her to crush up the pill and mix it in some yogurt. She did this and then pulled a disgusted face with the first mouthful. I told her she’d have to eat it now or she would have wasted the pill. The clinic only gave her one pill.
She made every excuse under the sun and in the end promised to eat it later. I left about 30 minutes later and I know that yogurt ended up in the bin.

How dare she do that to herself and to the people including me that she was going to work with. She knew she had something, however small and unthreatening, that could be passed on to her man or me or any other model but she wimped out of taking the medication and left everyone else at fates hand.
She didn’t see the harm in what she was doing as she couldn’t see further than herself in this business. There was only her having fun and nothing else occurred or mattered to her.

My mind was racing now that something was not right with this girl who I so much liked.

The icing on the cake came on the New Years Eve night I told you about earlier.
When Cindy, her man and myself all went back to the hotel in the early hours of the morning shed told me to get into bed with them both as she didn’t want me sleeping on the uncomfy sofa. The bed was a massive queen size affair so I agreed. Cindy and her fella started getting it on and kept looking over at me. People having sex in front of me was nothing new and I knew I wasn’t in their way as they had asked me to be in the bed with them. I just ignored them.

It wasn’t until the next day that the penny dropped. Cindy called me and said she was actually bi sexual. Not like most girls in the business that were gay for pay. She really was and she had convinced her fella to let her have a bisexual relationship with me as well as him. A love triangle. She had wanted me to join in with them in that bed that morning. I was told that I wasn’t allowed to engage in any action with her boyfriend though. He was off limits to me and we had to share Cindy but not each other.

I told her I liked her very much as a girl friend but that I didn’t think I was actually bi. I just enjoyed sex with men and woman. I certainly didn’t want that sort of relationship with a girl. And especially not a girl who was already with another guy. That just sounded unfair and like hard work to me. Not my cup of tea at all.

This girl was deluded. I’m sure she thought both of us would be falling at her feet for the opportunity. The fact shed gone around arranging our lives for us. Her boyfriend was besotted enough with her to allow her to do the porn and then naively to agree to let me share her with him. Well he was totally taken in by her but I wasn’t so I decided to cut all ties. This girl was psycho. All id wanted was her friendship but the way things were going it just wasn’t worth my sanity or effort.

Years later Cindy’s guy emailed me saying he’d split up with her. I don’t remember the reason he gave. I did my best not to pay any attention and in all honesty I didn’t trust it wasn’t her pretending to be him and see if id maybe run off with him or something equally as weird. She was the type to mess with people like that. If it wasn’t her all I could say was good for him.

I still see Cindys model ads up on modeling websites from time to time and wonder what other freeky shit she has dreamed up.