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.

Why?

I won’t go into detail just now about my own personal reasons for getting into porn. I will save that gem for another day.
I will share with you though my no nonsense attitude to getting into it.
I was young, dumb (well compared to what I was about to learn) and yet to be filled with cum.
Id actually been thinking more of glamour modelling than porno. You know lads mags where the girls prance around in their bikinis or dare to go topless or sometimes bare all save a carefully placed hand. Sophisticated and sexy stuff. I knew I didn’t have the greatest pair of baps but I figured that the demand for girls willing to do this was huge. Hell, none of the girls I knew would strip off in public and therefore they (my soon to be employers) would most probably accept my small chest gratefully. I was oblivious to the suggestion that all girls in porn have big tits, though this isn’t completely true but more on that later. It didn’t occur to me until the first magazine editor said to me ‘don’t get a boob job’. Why on earth would I do that? I thought. It all started to make sense in the following months.
So I was going to be one of those babes in FHM.
When I got to the first modelling agency I was asked to fill out a form with all my personal info and contact details. At the bottom it had a section of boxes to be checked where applicable. It started off with words like fashion, lingerie, topless, classic nude and then went on to say open leg, insertions (fingers or toys). I thought for a minute and realised there are only so many men’s magazines on the market and if I was only going to go as far as flashing my tits I would be over and done with in this business in about a week. So I though about all the top shelf magazines. Id looked at these with my boyfriend and they were harmless and looked fun so I ticked the boxes.
As far as I was concerned if I was going to get my tits out for the lads then I might as well get it all out. I’ve always been a firm believer in the saying “If a jobs worth doing its worth doing properly”.
TBC…