faire l'amour

by Jessica Gadziala

  I sucked in a deep breath, knowing I would be just a little sick to my stomach for weeks until the tests came back. The rapid ones were good, but I wanted the others too. I might make him get tested every month until I was satisfied he was as clean as he claimed. I was within my rights. He was the one fucking up the contract.

  And putting lives at stake.

  "Hey," Coop's voice said from behind me some time later, making my head shoot over. "For what it's worth. I believe him about not sharing needles. We can't trust him, of course, but I don't think he'd do it. He does love the girls. And, keep in mind, he hasn't been doing a lot of scenes lately. The girls complained he was off his game. So we have been holding him back. And the last penetrative scene he did was almost three weeks ago."

  "Thank Christ for that," I grumbled. It was a perk to some BDSM scenes. It wasn't always about the sex, about the fucking. It was about the control. The taking of it. The giving up of it. A good third of his scenes didn't involve any sex acts at all. "At least it cuts down the potential list of girls he could have exposed."

  "You're rethinking the raw thing now, aren't you?"

  How could I not? Not insisting on actors using condoms only worked if they were all honest, straightforward, all played by the rules. And, so far, everyone had. We'd never had a test come back positive for crabs or the clap, let alone something life-altering, life-ending.

  "I dunno. It's always been an option. A choice." Though most chose to go without. Mainly because viewers didn't find condoms sexy.

  Which is exactly why you should be forcing them to use them, normalizing them, making them think of condoms as just another part of the sex act. That was what one of the consultants had told me when I had told her I was conflicted.

  In the end, though, the sex experts and their paperwork about how someone of the general population was much more likely to get all forms of STIs despite having much less sex than porn stars and the fact that condoms increased the risk of UTIs and vaginal irritation had been the advice that prevailed.

  Though, as I said, the choice was there for the actors to make. If either party wanted to use them, they were used. No questions asked.

  "If it makes you feel any better, from what I see on the schedule, only two of the girls were exposed." And since the girls into hardcore BDSM didn't do other scenes, it wasn't like everyone who worked for us had a chance of having had contact, even second or third hand with Ryker.

  "Call the doctor in anyway. Tomorrow. Mandatory retesting. Full panels. Rapid and lab."

  "Good idea. I'll send out the text for everyone to drop in tomorrow," Coop said, already typing up the text. We didn't have to consult the doctor. Someone in his office would move his or her patients around to accommodate us given how much money they made off of us each year. "Look, boss, I have to say, I'm ninety-nine percent sure everything is fine."

  "And I won't sleep until that one percent is cleared up," I told him.

  It rarely ever happened.

  The last reported case was four years before and the star had contracted it from a partner in his free time, not a co-star. Which was why most of our performers used condoms at home even if they didn't on the set. Some even got themselves on PrEP as a secondary measure.

  Aside from a gay-focused porn site that made all their stars use condoms, we were the safest company in the industry, we had the strictest standards.

  But those standards were only upheld if the actors were honest and forthcoming.

  Fucking Ryker.

  I was with Cooper as a whole. I knew the chance was low. I would have answers tomorrow from the rapid results. But it would be ten to fourteen days until this knot unraveled in my stomach.

  "If you want some outsider commentary," Coop went on, being one of the few people in the building not to be in the business, "Not a single one of my friends has been tested in the past year, despite sleeping around. Even if something did happen, you really can't blame yourself."

  "It's more about the industry as a whole. Porn already has a bad rep. It is already looked down on. The last thing we need is a scandal."

  I didn't know if there would ever be a day when workers in sexual industries - from the rather tame strippers all the way down to prostitutes in brothels - would be fully respected, would be viewed as humans instead of objects, if they could ever feel that their professions were legitimized. But the more strides we made toward safety, the more we legitimized ourselves by offering things like benefits or stocks, the chances increased that society might stop looking at a porn star and saying 'well, no good man or woman will want to marry them,' or 'who is going to want to hire them after their porn career ends?'

  In the end, despite all the strides those free-loving hippies made in the seventies, our culture remained heavily divided among the open-minded and the deeply puritanical. Never mind that the more religious parts of the country - the south and midwest - watched the most porn per day than any other states, then looked down on it.

  There was nothing that annoyed me more than hypocrites. You could watch someone's work, get off on it, then turn it off and condemn them for providing you that service?

  "How are you getting even more tense?" Coop asked, brows furrowed.

  "The industry versus the general population," I admitted. It was something that was discussed widely in our walls, in the break rooms, at lunch.

  "Sex positivity is making strides," he told me, being our ear to the streets. "Everyone has a way of reaching out now. And they are doing it. On Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and podcasts. And they're using it to talk about this shit. Hell, that dude on TV who 'ruins everything' even went off about how people need to stop being so freaked out about herpes since ninety-percent of the population has some form of it, and it is, essentially, just a rash anyway. There are shifts. They might be subtle now, but they're growing. And the word is getting out. Two forward, one back. That seems to apply to everything. Especially an industry built on something that - in some parts of our culture - is still a taboo subject."

  Cooper came to us from Utah. And while his parents had no religion to speak of, his entire family outside of them was Mormon. He knew a little about sexual taboos from witnessing it firsthand.

  "Kinda fucked that sex - something we've been doing since the beginning of time - could still be considered taboo," I said, shaking my head.

  "You had sex education in France," Coop reminded me. "They even talked about sexual pleasure. How positively shocking," he added, hand to his chest in mock horror. "How dare they not plaster black and white pictures on the wall and point out where the penis and testicles and vaginal openings are, then remind you that sex is only for marriage?"

  To that, I snorted, distinctly remembering discussions about making love before I truly understood the mechanics of it. Kind of ironic, actually. I came from a country that put a premium on making love and I made a business of fucking, but hadn't experienced anything even approaching lovemaking until the day before.

  "Feeling better?"

  "Slightly," I agreed.

  "So Ryker fucked up. Everyone else has played by the rules. It's like school. One bad kid isn't representative of the whole class. What?" he asked when a smirk pulled at my lips.

  "Coop, I was the bad kid in class. And I did my best to turn them all bad with me."

  FIVE

  Rosie$1,500

  I don't know if you could say I ever came to terms with it, that I sat and thought on it, worked through my feelings, and felt relief.

  That was, I feared, a bit too progressive for me.

  Instead, I felt myself detach from it a bit. Enough that I could go home, shower, make a quick dinner, snap a picture of the check in my online app to deposit, all without thinking about the events of the day.

  Or, maybe it was more accurate to say I was actively trying not to think about the events of the day.

  Which was, perhaps, the least healthy of all the options.

  But it was what I chose to do.
/>   Successfully, I might add, until it was the next afternoon and I needed to get myself ready to do it all over again.

  The lack of uncertainty helped, the fact that it was Preston, someone I was now familiar with, rather than some unknown man, someone whose body I didn't know, who didn't know mine.

  Because the fact of the matter was, Preston had made it possible to lose the moment, get lost in him, forget about the cameras, about the stigma of what I was doing, about the crippling debt that led me here in the first place.

  And that oblivion made it all so much easier to handle.

  Though, to be honest, it also somehow made it harder as well. The fact that there was no acting, that my body had just accepted it, responded to it, enjoyed it even.

  When this was all done, that was what was going to need to be thought through. Maybe with some sessions with a paid professional who was trained not to judge me and my choices.

  Out of sundresses, I put on a lightweight cream peasant skirt and a deep red tank top, hoping it was all light enough to ward off the heat of the day as I grabbed my bag, turned off my phone to toss it in, then make my way to my car, silently praying the air conditioning would choose to work so I didn't show up to the building dripping with sweat.

  Traffic was lighter than expected, having me walking up to the doors a full half an hour earlier than I should have been there.

  I could sit in my car worrying with the sun beating on me, or worry in the nice, cool central air conditioning. So I chose the lesser of two evils.

  "Oh, hey!" Melody, the girl who had greeted me on my interview day in her lingerie, greeted me as she pushed the door open.

  No lingerie today, just a simple, sultry black cocktail dress complete with full face makeup and fuck-me shoes.

  "Hey. Nice to see you again," I told her, giving her a smile.

  "You too. I saw you were on the schedule today. I'm jealous. You get to try out one of the rooms that none of us have seen yet. It's a small pleasure, but after doing multiple scenes in all of the rooms, you get excited about little things like that. You're early, though, right?"

  "Yeah. It was too hot to sit in the car."

  "There's no reason to sit in the car. You could hang in one of the break rooms," she said, smiling like I was being silly.

  "Oh, ah, I didn't realize there were break rooms," I admitted, wondering if that was something I should have been shown. That and where the bathrooms were, the general layout of the place so I didn't need to be escorted to the rooms like the new girl in school.

  "Of course there are! Where else are we going to sit and chit-chat or wait for our scenes? Here, let me show you the one on this floor," she invited, slipping her arm through mine like old friends, leading me down the hall, her heels clicking as we went, her arm waving out to the doors as we passed, calling them by their names, ones that clearly had meaning to them, but not to me. "And of course you know the white room," she said, waving toward the end of the hall.

  The white room.

  I guess that made sense.

  Everything in it had been white.

  Almost virginal.

  "Here we go. This is the break room," she sold me, leading me into a room about the size of my bedroom at home with a small kitchenette in gray, gray wash faux hardwood floors. There was a large white square dining table to the side with eight chairs. Six of them were occupied.

  And like some cheesy movie, the second the door closed behind us, all head turned, and all conversation halted to a stop.

  "That's not intimidating at all, asshats," Melody said, rolling her eyes at their reaction. "This is Rosie. And you can stop looking at her like an alien making first contact now."

  An uncomfortable laugh escaped me as I gave them what I hoped to be a friendly - and not frozen-in-fear-at-the-idea-of-public-speaking - smile.

  "Hey," I said, half-raising a hand in the lamest wave known to mankind."

  "Angel, that was the most awkward thing I've ever seen in my life," a smooth, warm voice called, moving to stand from the table with a catlike grace.

  Tall, fit, dark-haired, green-eyed, he was undeniably handsome. And, judging by the slight swagger as he moved toward us, he knew how good looking he was. Which wasn't necessarily an unappealing thing in a man.

  "Merrick," he told me, reaching out a wide hand to take my much smaller one, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "Mel here is showing you around?"

  "She wanted somewhere cool to sit to wait for her scene."

  "In the black room," Merrick said, something in his voice that said there was some meaning to that, but it was beyond me. "With Preston," he added, and Melody made an odd clicking noise. "Again," he concluded.

  "Is there... something I should know?" I asked, looking between us.

  "No, of course not, honey," Merrick said smoothly, giving me a warm smile. "How about I get you something to drink? Coffee? Something cold?"

  "Water is fine," I said, feeling oddly relieved when he moved away.

  "Merrick is just butt-hurt that he didn't get to break in the room," Melody told me, giving my shoulder a nudge. "You alright? You're not breathing. Are you nervous?" she asked, leading me in a few feet toward the counter where Merrick was getting water out of the fridge for me.

  "A little," I admitted.

  "Did he suck?" she asked, dropping her voice lower. "I know it was his comeback, but I find it hard to believe he lost his ability to make a woman come."

  "No, he... he didn't suck," I rushed to say, oddly feeling the need to defend him. "I'm just... new still," I improvised. "Thanks," I said as I reached for the water.

  "Doesn't help that you haven't had a chance to get to know everyone," Merrick butted in, leaning on the counter at my other side. "The community kinda helps you feel less freaked when you start out."

  "Right. Like you were freaked out," Melody said, rolling her eyes.

  "Careful, or we'll have to incorporate some spanking in our scene later," Merrick said with a smirk.

  They had a scene later?

  And they were just casually standing there, not freaking out, teasing each other about what they might or might not do?

  I couldn't imagine getting to that level of familiarity, comfort in something that still made me feel like I was half-choking on my tongue.

  "Rosie," a familiar voice called. And despite my tongue-choking, it somehow managed to make an odd - and not entirely unwelcome - shiver move through my belly.

  My head shot up, finding Preston standing in the doorway, all but swallowing up the whole space in his light gray suit, his blue eyes on me, ignoring everyone else in the room.

  "Oh, ah, hey."

  "What are you doing in here?" he asked, casting what almost seemed like an accusatory glare at Merrick.

  "Rosie decided instead of sweltering in her car, that she'd rather come into the air conditioning," Melody interjected. "I volunteered to show her to the break room. That she didn't even know existed," she added, and this time, she seemed like she was accusing Preston of something.

  And if I wasn't mistaken, Preston almost seemed a little... guilty?

  But maybe not.

  It was gone too quickly for me to know if it had really ever been there to begin with.

  "Thanks for starting her tour for me," he said, recovering quickly, moving closer to me. "But I'll take it from here," he added, moving in close enough to gently take my elbow, leading me out from between Melody and Merrick. "We have some time to do the rest of it now if you want," he added, pulling me toward the door as though I had much choice in the matter. "Sorry about that."

  "They were just being... welcoming," I defended them as we moved into the quiet hall.

  "Maybe Melody's intentions weren't impure, but parading you in there when she knows everyone is curious about you wasn't exactly fair."

  "Why is everyone curious about me?"

  Preston's gaze moved away, studying a cinderblock wall that no painting could make it look less like a school hallway wall. "They ar
e speculating about why I am shooting with you."

  "Why? Because you've been retired?"

  "Yes," he agreed, though I got the feeling he wasn't telling me everything. "You can socialize with anyone you want to, Rosie. I just didn't want you to be forced into it if you weren't ready for it. I know you're... new. Nervous," he added a little tentatively, like he didn't want to offend me.

  "You don't need to drop your voice. I am nervous," I told him, shrugging.

  "Nervous about being with me again?" he asked. But this time, when his voice dropped, it was for a different reason. To make that shiver move through me again.

  "I, um, maybe a little," I admitted, gaze dropping.

  "You don't have to," he reminded me, moving a little closer, our bodies almost touching.

  "I know."

  "Do you want to back out?"

  Did I want to?

  That was a tricky question, now, wasn't it? Because there was no denying it, not when I was standing with him so close, all but touching me. I did want him again. I did want to feel his hands on me, feel his lips moving over unexpectedly sensitive parts of me. I wanted the weight of him pressing me into the mattress. I wanted his breath in my ear. I wanted him. Like any woman wanted any man. Without paperwork and cameras and people snooping down the hallway.

  Did I want to back out of it?

  Both yes and no.

  But no matter how I felt, it was going to happen.

  Because at the end of the day, I needed to do it. I needed the money.

  "No, I don't want to back out," I told him.

  "Do you want a tour?"

  "Sure."

  I was led past closed doors where filming was going on, something that still made me feel a little uncomfortable, despite having been behind one of those doors myself, despite knowing that everyone else in this building was much more comfortable with their jobs than I presently was.

  Then we walked into a few staged, but empty rooms. An office, a kitchen, a living room.