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.

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.

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.