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.

Women Trouble

As much as I enjoyed having Cindy as a friend it soon became apparent she wasn’t cut from the same cloth as me and cracks in our friendship started to show.
Initially shed been so keen to help me get work and vice versa and to do jobs together with me especially.

I started getting agents, photographers and producers calling me up asking questions about Cindy. At first I didn’t twig but one agent explained that she had cried off a shoot declaring she had gotten her period at the last minute.

Let me explain about porn and periods. Unless someone is producing a film or set of pictures to cater for the niche of period play or blood sports then sticking things like cocks or toys inside your bleeding vagina can be tricky aesthetically.

Some girls ask their family planning association to put them on contraception that ensures they never bleed. Some girls just don’t work when they are on. And some girls use a sponge.
Using toys or fucking with a hard long tampon inside u is rather dangerous so girls buy specially made sponges produced to allow women to continue to enjoy sex whilst they are menstruating. These sponges aren’t widely available so most girls buy cosmetic sponge from a chemist and cut it up. It’s not ideal and can cause thrush and bacterial vaginosis so some girls don’t like to use sponges. Plus not having a string like a tampon they can get lost.

The first time I used a sponge I specifically asked the girl I was working with not to insert the toys to far however in the height of passion things, instructions got forgotten. I ended up on the bathroom floor panicking id have to go to A&E to get the sponge removed but the girl responsible for pushing the sponge so deep calmed me down, told me to lay down, coated her fingers in lube and after a few seconds withdrew with the sponge between her fingers.

The next time wasn’t quite so graceful. I wasn’t as worried as I knew it would come out this time but I ended up on the floor with my legs in the air and a guy who I nick named dad using his speculum and two fork ends as giant tweezers to reach the sponge. Bloke’s fingers aren’t as slim and long as women’s.

So for the girls who just don’t work when they are on, they just don’t book any work for these weeks. Sounds easy right. Wrong. Any ladies out there reading this will know that probably 50% of women have irregular periods that just pop up when they feel like it so planning anything let alone this type of work around your period can be impossible.

Therefore when a girl like Cindy says she suddenly got her period it is completely plausible and is still one of the biggest excuses used for not going to work.
So was Cindy telling the truth or not.

Well since she claimed to me she had just come on the week before I though she must be telling porky pies. Maybe she had another good reason for not seeing the shoot through.
I asked her how the shoot went the next time I saw her. I was annoyed that id put her in touch with this agent and that agent was annoyed enough with Cindy’s unreliability to call me and ask me what I thought. It didn’t look good on me so I decided tricking Cindy wasn’t completely un justifiable in the circumstances.
Id got her the work and she in return threw it in my face.

She looked abit sheepish at first and then said that she’d had to go in and do some office temping that morning last minute. That how she paid her bills, office temping. The modelling was just a bonus to top up the wages.
I was livid that she was lying. I didn’t know if it was to me or my agent but she was lying.

I thought twice before putting her in contact with people from then on but Cindy got worse.

Porn Genres

It appears everyone makes porn in their spare time these days. With digital this and digital that and the internet meaning booking a girl to perform or model for you is so simple.

The gonzo/amateur fashion set by icons such as Ben Dover where by making his professionally shot porn look like he was just some guy who went out and with the luck of the devil was able to pick up non professional models off the street who amazingly agreed to shoot a porno with this ugly old bastard that they have “never” met before. Reading that back if I was that girl id run to the nearest police station and report the pervert, so how comes so many of you guys believed it?

Do you really think ALL women are nymphos and throw that much caution to the wind with regard to our personal safety???

I remember shooting with a couple of hobbyists a long while ago and despite my attempts to let them in on the inside story, that it was all an elaborate set up, there was no changing their minds. One guy saying “well maybe some of them are but there was one that was real”. Idiot. It’s actually quite scary how some people believe porn and especially porn of this gonzo nature to be real.
Now the distinction between feature porn, or professional porn and gonzo/amateur porn.

In the UK we don’t shoot features. This is a very US thing and basically is a film shot the same way a typical mainstream movie is. With a start a middle and an end. Not to mention a plot and characters.

We tend to shoot vinyets here in the UK. A film made up of four or five separate little stories. Sometimes they all tie in together in a theme but we don’t do features.

Both these styles are shot with high quality production values and in a 3rd person perspective so the end result is the viewer is observing the film from an outside point of view.

These types of films are expensive to make and you’re more likely to find some twat claiming “it’s not porn its art.” Arty porn is known as erotica.

Now what we do well and in abundance here in the UK is gonzo and amateur porn. More modernly known as reality porn or POV (point of view).

Much like the Ben Dover synopsis I gave earlier amateur porn is about real life. No makeup artists, no dressed sets, no acting and no gloss. Except it’s not really real because no porn is real. Its fake real. We like making amateur reality porn here because it’s cheap to do and being British we do the camp, tongue in cheek thing well. The Europeans are to kinky for this and the Americans are too serious.

Gonzo is not a character in the Muppets, well he is but in adult films it’s a style of shooting. Rather than shooting the action in flat 3rd person perspective the cameraman is a part of the action too. This gives an interactive feel or a 1st person perspective. It’s a genius idea really. It works on so many levels from giving the film a grittier more real yet slightly unbelievable feel, to one that encompasses the viewer to feel he is part of the film as well.
These days gonzo has been re branded as POV.

It’s this amateur and gonzo work that has gotten so many guys thinking “I can do that. I can pick up my little consumer camcorder and book a porn star and fuck her and then I’ve made my own porn film”. Why watch it when you can make it yourself. Everything is interactive these days so why not porn.

It’s this appeal that is starting to jump up and bite the professional film world in the ass as people would rather watch something genuinely amateur or DIY. The makers of porn are dying as people realise they don’t need them anymore.
Porn will never die out completely but there isn’t such a need for an industry to provide consumer demand. It’s meant the industry here in the UK is on very rocky road at the moment.

It Costs 20K To Be Me

You know being a porn star isn’t easy.

Yeah its fun having sex all day long – cos that’s exactly what we do! Oh sorry that’s escorts and prostitutes. We spend half the day hanging around on set or at the GU clinic.

I remember when I first started thinking seriously about quitting my normal job to become a full time slut. I did some math and predicted if I could do one gig a week that would give me the same money as my rat race job so the rest of the week was mine. I could study or be a lady of leisure or I could make even more money and do two jobs a week! Considering a shoot could be done and dusted in a matter of hours depending on the required result and how together the people in production were, that meant alot of free time. It also meant that if I worked my normal working week at the rate I was now being paid Id be making a six figure sum a year. Time is a blessing and these days it’s the only thing I ever ever ask for in life but back then I saw the opportunity to make some serious money so I pushed myself hard to get bookings and work. Why sit around learning stuff when I could probably pay someone to do it all for me in years to come. At the time I didn’t have any hobbies or real interests so why not put all my time into this. It’s not like it was physically that hard and it certainly wasn’t tedious. Well not then it wasn’t. Those moments came years down the road.

What to do? Sit around getting fat and watching Trisha on daytime TV or work my butt of and ensure a better future for myself? It was a no brainer. I’ve always been driven and lazy is not a term that anyone would ever use to describe me.
So I started earning all this money and really believed I was on my way to making millions. You’d be surprised how much it costs to be me though.

Trades people need tools and my tools were pretty much what every living breathing girl usually buys par for the course.
Make up, hair, sun beds, gym membership, clothes - yes I need clothes (before I strip them off that is).
Yes I also needed sex toys, stupidly high heels and monthly STD checkups sometimes at £200 a pop.
I also had to pay for marketing myself since I was on my money making mission. Work wasn’t just going to fall in my lap. I’m a creative person so I enjoy the marketing element of my job but it surprises people that models and porn girls do it at all. They obviously think we lay on our backs all day and that work does actually just fall in our laps but the reality is now I have to turn down jobs because they are an interruption to me updating my website or MySpace or online modelling profiles. Promotion probably counts for half of my time and actually making the money for the other half.

It costs me over 20K a year to be me. When I say me, I mean to be able to do my job. It’s kinda cool I get things like make up and shoes tax deductable but being a porn star doesn’t come cheaply so it’s a good job I planned to work hard at this.

Here’s a snippet of what it costs to be me each year. This is not an exhaustible list.
Telephone - £2073.
Clothing - £2933.
Hair- £1200.
Gym membership - £900.
Advertising - £853.