Coming Out Like a Porn Star

by Jiz Lee

  Everyone in My life calls Me Bella, or My nicknames Bumble or Bee. A select few call me Mistress. Out loud, in public in restaurants, clubs, at vet visits with My dogs, everywhere. There’s only a small handful of people who know what I refer to as My government name, and an even smaller percentage whom I allow to actually use it. It boils down to My sister, My father, and My grandmother. It isn’t too difficult for people to look Me up and find out My legal name, but I ask people not to use it out of respect for Me. “Bella” is how I prefer to be addressed. I came leaping out of the closet as Bella Vendetta so long ago. I do not want to go running and hiding back again.

  I have been out as a sex worker for so long that I didn’t actually remember how I had told My father about it. I didn’t recall some big, huge conversation with tears or hugs or throwing things or anything. So I called My dad to ask him. Since then, it’s become a favorite story for him to tell.

  My father and I ran a restaurant in upstate New York for a few years, which was nearby the world’s oldest BDSM training chateau, La Domaine Esemar. Master R and Madame Sang, who both ran the chateau at the time, came into the restaurant. The food was so mind-blowing that they came into the kitchen and asked to be introduced to the chef, My father. Master R, who doesn’t always tell people right off the bat that he runs a lifestyle dungeon household, immediately felt comfortable and told My father what he did and that they had this dungeon so close by.

  Apparently, as the story goes, during their conversation I blew in through the kitchen, yelling at My father about something, slamming stuff around and barking orders. After I came and went like a storm, My father looked at Master R and said, “Please, train my daughter.” And that’s pretty much what ended up happening. I got to know the leather family at La D, and it wasn’t long before I asked Myself if I could go and train to become a professional dominatrix. I told My father I was going over and was excited about it. I never hid it. I was pretty matter-of-fact about it when I would tell him I couldn’t work at the restaurant because I was making more money as a pro-domme. I was having so much fun and such a positive experience. I felt like I had finally found My people. I didn’t really give a fuck what My friends thought or what My family thought, and didn’t listen to shit-talkers and haters. For Me, it was clear that sex work wasn’t just a passing phase or for survival or to get Me through until the next thing. It was what I wanted to do. So, quite simply, I need to have people around Me who support Me and don’t judge Me because I am a pornographer.

  I’ve been coming out for fourteen years and it has not gotten any easier. I think I just have less and less fucks to give each year that goes by.

  It does not always go My way. When My grandmother found out I was doing porn, she stopped talking to Me. I grew apart from most of My extended family. I had to rebuild Myself a new family. Thankfully, the adult industry is filled with open, loving folks who also want a chosen family, and that is what I have. I went almost ten years without speaking to My grandmother. So after I started writing this, I wrote her a letter. Enough time had passed, and I miss her and love her and want her in My life, so I told her as much and hoped that her love for Me was stronger than her opposition to something she didn’t agree with or didn’t understand. Well, guess what? It worked. I went and spent a day with her. She asked if I was still doing porn and the conversation lasted all of five minutes. In true Italian style, we just didn’t talk about it after that, dropped it and moved on.

  Sex work does not have to be your defining feature. You get to decide how much or how little information about your job to disclose to family and friends. But you should always have a plan and worst-case scenario of what will happen if, say, your grandma finds out you do porn.

  EVEN SOMEONE LIKE ME: HOW I CAME OUT AS A SMUT STARLET

  Betty Blac

  Writer, artist, porn performer, and lovable weirdo, Betty Blac is a Bay Area native. She is passionate about social justice, positive sexuality, art, and shiny things. Despite being known for her onscreen jigglegasms, Blac has a slightly nerdy side. She boasts both a BA in media studies from Mills and an MA in creative writing from the University of Sydney. She writes about everything from pop culture, art, sex toys, and porn, to oppression and injustice.

  I thought the moment my first porn scene premiered that skywriters automatically would splash the news across the sky, that an old-timey newsboy would run through the streets shouting the news, and doves would be released, each bearing the message, “Betty’s naked ass is on the Internet!” Okay, not really.

  It’s not like I thought that the moment I did a porn scene a gold limo would pull up at my apartment and sweep me away to a Boogie Nights fantasy world. However, I can’t pretend I wasn’t at least a little delusional about what kind of exposure the scenes would have. To be honest, I was a little delusional about what the porn world would be like in general.

  I have long been a connoisseur of Bay Area–based indie and queer porn. I remember when I first saw the website No Fauxxx, now called Indie Porn Revolution. It was almost a little startling to see porn stars that weren’t airbrushed to unattainable perfection. I saw brown folks, fat folks, queer folks—and it was refreshing. The motley crew of queers sucking and fucking with wild abandon were all from “around the way,” and many even run in the same circles. Seeing indie stars who were relatable and having real orgasms intrigued me. I too wanted to express myself on film and explore the erotic world. I realized I didn’t have to be white or skinny or any of the stereotypes I had of what a porn star was in order to be in adult films. After a few false starts in previous years, I finally decided in 2012, at age thirty, to give performing in porn a try.

  I didn’t want to go into the porn world uninformed so I met with Jiz Lee, a porn star I knew whose perspective I trusted. I was feeling lucky they were willing to meet up with me and share their experiences in porn and their coming-out story. It wasn’t without challenges, but their overall experience in porn seemed positive.

  That same night I also met Shar Rednour, and it was all sort of surreal. Shar had been my femme idol when I was coming out as a baby queer, and the first porn I ever owned was Sugar High Glitter City, which starred Shar and her wife, Jackie Strano. They were local folks, but I was still star struck. That night with Jiz and Shar made me feel excited about becoming part of the world of the grown and sexy.

  Because of my introduction to porn, I saw performing in porn as being revolutionary. Here was an opportunity for me to step outside of my shell, express myself sexually, be a bit of an exhibitionist. I knew porn could be feminist and creative, but that few people have been exposed to that kind of porn. In mainstream porn, I didn’t see a lot of people like me. Not just women of color or fat women, but also nerdy, quirky types. I wasn’t seeing a lot of people with my uniqueness. The black women I saw in porn often were boxed into tired stereotypes of black womanhood. Black women weren’t portrayed as beautiful, sexy goddesses the way their white counterparts were.

  Unfortunately, a lot of mainstream porn relies on stereotypes for all people of color. I wasn’t sure whom I’d tell about being a performer. I definitely didn’t want to tell them that I worked for the type of site that would refer to me as a ghetto gagger or, even worse, end up on one of those sites where the black section of the site was called something like “the watermelon patch.” I definitely didn’t want my career to be about reinforcing negative stereotypes. I guess, in a way, I wanted to be a porn role model, as peculiar as that sounds.

  I would love to say I performed exclusively in the überprogressive world of Bay Area queer porn, but that wasn’t practical. Performing in porn that aligns with my politics, although emotionally satisfying, isn’t exactly lucrative. The majority of the mainstream companies I shot for didn’t regurgitate tired racist themes, but that isn’t to say they weren’t racist to some degree. It is still a reality that women of color will have less opportunity and will be paid less in a lot of contexts, especially big beautiful women (BBW). Our scenes will get
less exposure and be promoted less, and more often than not, if a black woman is on the cover, it’s an all-black DVD intended only for a black audience. We often don’t get crossover exposure; rather, we are boxed into genres and subgenres.

  I didn’t plan to tell my parents. My family is ridiculously crazy. I know everyone says this about their family, but it’s actually true in my case. I grew up with an overeducated, pretentious and proper Trinidadian father and a hot-tempered Greek stepmother. I lived full time with my stepsiblings, and my half-sister would visit during the summers.

  Both my parents, being immigrants, were peculiar in a way that is hard for me to explain to people who don’t have foreign parents. Their way of processing the world and their expressions for things were always so comically odd. My mom had recovered from a Greek Orthodox upbringing and my dad is a recovered Catholic. We weren’t religious per se, just an ambiguous form of hippy spiritual. They were whatever you call people who read the Celestine Prophecy and refer to God as “the Universe,” with a dash of old-world Paganism thrown in.

  Because of this, I wasn’t raised with religious guilt or shame. My dad, being in the medical field, had informed us kids all about the ins and outs of sex and reproduction in the most clinical way possible, mostly as a means to tell me and my sister to never, ever, ever get pregnant; his biggest fear was us becoming teenage mothers. My sister was the rebellious one who did what she wanted, and I was the irritating goody two-shoes. I never dated in high school, and I didn’t have sex until I was in college at twenty-one. I didn’t have sex with a man until I was twenty-eight and in grad school. Maybe because it was taboo for so long, I was a late bloomer. But once I became active, I really loved sex. Part of what is great about porn is getting paid to do something I love.

  I was really close to my family growing up, but grew estranged from both my parents in my later adulthood (see previous explanation about them being crazy). So when it came time to come out about being a porn star, I didn’t feel the need to tell them because I wasn’t speaking to them, anyway.

  Later, my dad tried to start speaking to me again and I was having none of it. In my distancing email, I let it slip that I was a fat porn star. I knew it would burn him that not only was I in porn (oh, the West Indian shame he must have felt) but also that I was fat. My dad hates fat people. He was the type of man who would sidle up to me any time that I was making a sandwich with “too much mayo” on it and tell me that it would make me fat, before confiscating it and taking the type of bite that looked like he must have had to unhinge his jaw to get that much sandwich in his mouth. Being comfortable in my body has been a process, but I liked that women would tell me they felt more confident because they saw plus-sized women like me being portrayed as proud and sexy.

  I didn’t come out to my stepmother. We lived together when I was going to grad school in Australia, and that is when I learned it is a mistake to live with parents as an adult. I am lucky I escaped Sydney without there being a murder-suicide. I’m not really sure how she would respond if she knew.

  In recent years, I have come to know my biological mother. I was separated from her when I was three, when my dad one day packed up all our stuff and kidnapped me. We drove cross-country from Virginia to California and she never saw me again. Even now, although we talk on the phone, I have not met her in person. When I told her I was in porn, she thought it was cool. She was like, “at one point I considered doing it myself.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I think she’s so happy I am in her life that she doesn’t care what I do. When I sent her a picture of me on the cover of the local weekly, The East Bay Express, she was so proud she shared it with all my cousins, much to my embarrassment.

  I came out to everyone else on Facebook, a nonchalant status update casually alerting a hodgepodge of my friends, family, and former lovers. I didn’t care who knew. I figured I could just unfriend anyone who had negative things to say. None of the responses were negative, thankfully. Many of the people in my life are sex positive and progressive. My closest friends already knew, and the family I get along with, my siblings and uncle, were cool with it. Some of my exes tried to put the sexy moves on me, but other than that, my coming out was a ripple more than a wave. My bestie was a little awkward about it at first, but has been overwhelmingly supportive of me throughout my career.

  Coming out to people I’m interested in dating is a lot harder than coming out to people I have known for years. For a while, I announced it on my OkCupid.com profile, thinking that it would be a good filter, but then I just got a bunch of sexual energy coming my way. My inbox was filled with badly written amateur porn. People wanted to date me as a conquest or add me to a harem. I had many short relationships where I felt more like a Fleshlight than a romantic interest. Then there were the other brand of dates, people completely freaked out and scared off by “porn me.” One guy, upon finding out through Google stalking that I did porn, cancelled our date five minutes before it was meant to happen. This type of person tends to worry that I am an amoral, insatiable nymphomaniac, riddled with disease. Of course, this isn’t everyone, but the amorous world has felt challenging to navigate and be open about being a sex worker.

  In recent years, I have removed the porn part from my dating profile. I don’t wait until weeks in to come out about it, but it is not something that people will know before meeting me. I want people to have the opportunity to meet me so I can shatter all their stereotypes first.

  Things are a little different now because I am leaving the porn world. I wish I could say porn has always been rewarding and that I feel better for being in it, but that is not the case. My career was short, just three years. I had dreams of starting my own porn company, but there were so many false starts and setbacks that it became impossible to get things off the ground. I was sad to have to finally give up on that dream, or at least put it on extended pause.

  I was inspired to be a different type of porn star than people were used to. Nothing really prepared me for being a pseudo celebrity. Nothing prepared me for both the adoration and the judgment of strangers. Putting your body on display on film leaves you up for scrutiny. I got weight loss emails and posts on my social networks critiquing my appearance. Sometimes I would feel on top of the world with all the admiration, and at other times discouraged by my critics. My Facebook was a shitstorm of unsolicited dick pics and sleazy come-ons from strangers.

  I felt pressure to lose weight to gain more access to roles, but I also felt pressure to stay fat because I didn’t want to let my progressive, fat-positive fans down. I wanted to be there for all the fat and brown girls who felt sexier and more confident because they saw someone like me. When I finally made the decision to lose weight recently, I stopped performing entirely.

  I was the first fat girl who cammed for Kink.com, I was in the first BBW release by Evil Angel, and I was the only black talent nominated for BBW of the Year two years in a row for AVN. In my short career, I have made some strides I am proud of. I enjoyed performing. Sometimes it was awkward, but often it was fun and really hot.

  There were parts of my career that involved hustling and strife, and I am not that great a hustler. It was challenging for me to try to be a porn star, a cam model, and work my demanding customer service job at a bougie adult boutique. Something had to give, so I decided to give up sex work.

  I don’t regret being in porn. I learned a lot about myself, the porn world, and about racism, to be honest. I was a little naïve about racism. I have been in the progressive Bay Area so long that it takes me by surprise sometimes.

  Fans love to ask me if I had a child who wanted to enter sex work, would I let them. The short answer is yes, I would let them. With me as their mother, they would have a ton of support, and I would also be able to share some of my experiences in the industry. However, allowing it is not the same as encouraging it. I wouldn’t encourage it, not because of any shame around sex or sexuality. I think there are many happy, healthy porn stars, and I am not anxious to po
rtray the seedy side of porn that people are so fascinated with. Not every porn director is unscrupulous and not every porn starlet is a drug-addicted partier, or whatever the popular stereotypes are now.

  My concerns for my child would be about them dealing with the stigma around porn and sex work in general. My child, like me, would come into the world already part of an oppressed group. Depending on their gender and ability, they might experience multiple oppressions. And while adding diversity to representation is a positive thing, it’s not easy being that representation. It is not easy being the token or the different one. I wouldn’t want the way the world sees them to have any negative impact on their self-esteem or self-worth, the way it has on mine. I would want them to have each and every opportunity to shine. I would want them to pursue their passion rather than enter sex work. I would want them to be able to be public with their brilliance and have their exploration of sex be private.

  You never know how something will go for you until you do it. When I started out, I thought I was totally ready to be a porn star. I thought it would be a nonstop joy ride, and it wasn’t. That doesn’t mean it was all bad. I have cherished my opportunities to connect with fans. And admittedly, it’s nice to have fans.

  When I did webcam shows, I often was putting on my “sex educator” hat. It felt good that people would come to my cam shows thinking that they would just get off, and instead left learning better ways to please themselves and their partners. That is the direction I see my life heading, helping people to have better sex and better relationships.