Opening Doors

Peter picked me up at my flat one morning after our first successful shoot and drove me to his little studio in the Summerset countryside.

On the way he said he needed to pop into PC World for some techy stuff for his kit. I milled around the store aimlessly trying not to get in Peters way. He picked up what he needed and we went and stood in the queue to pay. As we did he pointed out some printers on special offer. He asked if I had a printer for my little laptop. I had an old black and white one that had seen better days and cost more than its own value to keep in fresh ink. Peter picked up a printer from the top of the pile and stated that he would buy it for me. I tried to argue that he didn’t need to and what the heck for but he was very persistent and clinched the deal with “you can owe me ok!” so I agreed. I kind of felt uncomfortable that some guy id only really just met was buying me £100 printers for no apparent reason but I figured he wouldn’t have put up such a fight if he didn’t want me to have it.

When we got to his studio he showed me around. It was small and grubby round the edges but fit its purpose and its environment was quaint. He quickly set up using a pale back drop. He told me to strip off and explained what poses I was to get into. We did some standing, some lying down and some sitting up. All tasteful but simple.

It felt like only ten minutes had gone by when he said “All done. Give us a hug and get dressed”. I got up and put my arms around his neck and planted a sisterly kiss on his cheek accompanied by a thank you. We went down stairs to his office and he played the images back to me on his computer. He said he’d give them all to me on a disk but he taught me how to delete images and rotate them and how to change them into black and white. How to make my teeth and eyes whiter and how to print the pictures out on glossy paper with a fancy border round them on my new printer ready to place in my book. I was awe struck. Wow. Now I could edit my own pictures and play with them to make them look more appealing for my portfolio.

My first proper portfolio images. Now I felt like a real model not just someone being paid to have sex.

I emailed my new images out to people and got defensive when I got unflattering comments back about how black and white images meant they couldn’t tell my skin tone or how this image or that didn’t really show my body off very well. What were these people going on about? Couldn’t they see how great these pictures were?

Peter chatted to me on the way back telling me all about his adventures in porn and life in general. Who he knew and who he had fallen out with. I didn’t notice at the time as he seemed so nice and generous but in retrospect he did have alot of enemies. I decided it must be these other people who were the baddies. Peter was too nice.

Peter started telling me about a guy he was working with to build a website and how they were looking for some girls to build sites for too. He had another model he was good friends with – they had similar tastes and she had agreed to do a site with them and now that offer was extended to me. It wasn’t quite ready to go just yet but that meant id have time to build up some content ready for my new site. I’d get 50% of the profits made from people signing up to the site to see pictures of me doing... well doing everything and anything really. Sounded easy peasy. Peter even said he’d take the photos to help me out.

A website sounded like a good way to earn money for not doing very much but it also sounded very permanent. Although I was taking the business seriously I still had no ideas about how long term my new career would be. I was still prepared in the back of my head for the work to just stop one day soon and to realise that that was my lot, time to go back to the rat race. A website gave me some dept in my new role. It was something that wouldn’t just go away one day.

All Work and No Play

I’ve already discussed all the time we performers spend at the GU clinic too. Going for tests, picking up certificates. Team that with the fact your local clinic, as I well found out, might not be sufficient to provide you with the relevant paperwork so more travel is involved. The two main clinics for the business are both in London. I’ve know people who had to travel down from oop north just to get tested once a month then pick up results 7 days later.

Then comes the part that no one thinks about. The admin and back end. The time I spend checking my emails, scouring for work, networking, and marketing myself.

In those early days there were no such thing as Facespace and MyBook. Now managing my office time is an even more impossible, never ending job in itself. I often think I should employ a secretary. Many girls do have secretaries in the form of there pimpy, lecherous partners. These guys act as managers, sometimes calling themselves chaperones. They do all the organising and communication, often pretending to be Sally Ann on email and over the internet and you will find them feeding Sally Ann lines when she speaks on the phone to producers etc. Sally merely has to turn up to the job and do the business, for which her fella will have driven her there and will more often than not enjoy perving in the back ground at his girlfriend or wife getting fucked by other people. He will of course enjoy the money she has just made him.

But more about these sometimes unbelievable arrangements later.

This admin side of my job is time consuming but very necessary. Without it I simply don’t work. Yes I have several agents but I only remain at the forefront of their minds in my early days. Once I’ve been around the block and some fresh meat has waltzed into town I can pretty much wave goodbye to any help I see from my agents unless I’m specifically cast in a part which is rare. Or that I’m called in last minute to fill in for someone who’s no showed.

I’ve made quite a good business for myself just by being flexible enough to cover these flaky girls. I’m centrally located and can always be relied upon. Yeah it’s not so soothing on the ego knowing a large percentage of my work only happens by accident but it is a business and the aim of the game is to earn money.

I get emails from my ads on the modelling websites daily. In fact the volume they come in I found it quite a quick process to learn to sort the wheat from the chaff. I categorise emails into three sections.

Genuine interest. These people are known to me and often professional companies who write helpful, detailed and informative emails supplying links to work often through a website of their own.

Then there are the idiots who I have already discussed. They are fantasists and time wasters. They will write mails like “how much to fuck you?” Yes really that’s it. No please or thank you or even a hello. Or they will make up elaborate stories about running professional companies but not be able to back these claims up. The emails will be so detailed you fall asleep half way through. They describe things so obvious such as “then you will insert a well oiled dildo I have that is 12 inches long and 5 inches wide slowly into you soaking wet shaved pussy” rather than simply state “you’ll do insertion with larger toys”. Yawn – delete!

The last category is in between. They could be genuine but not so good at articulating. Maybe shy or just new to this and not know the lingo or how things work in the business. These people I will entertain until they prove to be examples of the second group. Its these people who eat your time. You waste precious minutes and even hours with email correspondence asking questions to establish how valid they really are, giving them the benefit of the doubt but also getting excited that potentially this is another job. Then it all goes south and you’ll have put off a real job in the vain hope this prat is serious.

Sometimes you don’t get so lucky and you go all the way only for the guy not to show up on the day. I said I worked out quickly how to identify most time wasters but I’m not an enigma machine.

I also have to learn to master the art of self promotion, setting up and maintaining all my adverts and profiles. Tweaking the text so that I sound as appealing as a pair of Jimmy Choos to Paris Hilton. I have to update my images regularly. It’s like having an online portfolio and only the best five or six images will do. You have to keep your images fresh as many people will look at your profile one day and not feel drawn to you but maybe three months later they see a different image and forget they ever saw that dodgy old snap of you or just feel that maybe you are worth booking after all.

I spend time mailing people who advertise for work on message boards. I scour the World Wide Web looking for more and more modelling profile sites to join in the desperate attempt not to be missed by any potential employers.

Then after all that I have to be my own PR agent. I have to create a successful fan base and market myself to them. This will ensure I remain popular enough to stay in demand with professional companies and studios. This as you might imagine means replying to fan mail, sending out signed pictures and DVDs. Uploading images and movie clips on the net and setting up my own official fan pay site where I can promote myself to the world letting them know all my latest movies and movements. Creating my own hype and making people love me.

Time of my Life

A lot of people aren’t aware of all the energy and hard work that goes into being a porn actress or model. I’ll admit I didn’t either to begin with. Even I thought it was as simple as turning up to a job, doing the job and then coming home to enjoy spending the money id just made. Think about traditional models and the rep they get as clueless, talentless beings. How many people have you heard utter the words ‘Modelling...how hard can it be?’

I had this little vision when I started out and it went something like this. I could make as much money doing one single shoot as it took me a week to earn in my old job. Instead of working 40 hours a week I now only needed to work between 2 and 4 hrs. The rest of the week was mine to do as I wished. I could study to do something interesting or be a lazy couch potato eating crisps and watching Trisha on TV. If I did more than one shoot a week id be on even more money so I could spend my time shopping for nice things. Bliss!

Ah life would have been so simple if that fantasy had been true. I’m not the type to sit around being passive and since so much work was being offered to me I simply accepted it and found myself working most days.

The logistics of being a porn star are very different to how one outside the business might believe they are. I get fan mail from people who genuinely think I sit around eating bon bons all day. Either that or being a nymphomaniac (in their minds anyway) I’m constantly having sex in some way shape or form. This fool’s paradise always makes me chuckle. I wish.

Obviously there is a lot of travelling involved in this line of work. Most of my shoots do take place in London which is where I call home but the rest, which still makes up a large volume, can be based all over the rest of the UK and indeed the world. Ok so spending hours on a train isn’t so stressful especially the way technology is today but it can mean very early starts and stupidly late finishes. Just see my last blog to see how long some days can be. In fact some producers have a call time for the day before or for full cast first thing in the morning. That way they can ensure that if anyone isn’t going to show up they have time to call in a replacement and limit the damage that can be created by a no show. They might ask you to travel down the evening before and put you up for the night or tell you to get to the set for 8am only for you to find yours is the last scene of the day at 10pm.

People get anxious and board hanging around so it’s no wonder drink and drugs are found on sets so often to alleviate both symptoms. I started smoking because of this. It would give me an excuse to pop outside and get some fresh air (yeah I know, ironic huh!?) and a change of scenery. It was a bonding mechanism too. A common ground I could share with people and made me feel I belonged.

Then as I mentioned in an earlier blog there is shopping for wardrobe. Ok, it’s still shopping but it’s kind of like shopping for work clothes. It’s not as much fun if any fun at all. It’s not really indulging the real you.

And also maintaining your look as a glamour girl. Fake tans and sunbeds, nails, hair. All this takes time and money. Staying fit and in shape is a must so going to the gym regularly is important. In all honesty more of the girls who just model at a more soft core range rather than the ones who act in movies will do this and take the up keep of their bodies seriously. Girls who mainly do films tend to spend more time boozing and getting high than working out. The latter tends to keep the weight off anyway but these two opposite ends of the wellbeing spectrum don’t mix well as you can probably imagine although I do know one girl who often went to the gym after a session in the bar. Personally I couldn’t have stayed upright on a tread mill for very long if I was wankered.

But all this maintenance is very time consuming. Most women enjoy going to the salon or nail bar. I just found it a damn inconvenience and an encroachment on my time.

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.