“It certainly makes it a lot harder to get laid,” he added ruefully.
I have been an enthusiast of porn for most of my young life. In Corringham a curious preteen needn’t suffer the embarrassment of trying to buy a girlie mag from a newsstand. Instead, my friends and I would ride our bicycles to the nearby woods, where copies of Readers’ Wives, Shaven Ravers, and Razzle were inexplicably strewn about the trees and bushes along with soda cans, cigarette butts, traffic cones, an upturned shopping cart, and an old mattress. We surveyed the scattered contraband in silence, our ten-year-old minds trying to piece together the evidence of what had taken place there. What really fired our imaginations was that the scene was in a constant state of flux. The mattress and cones would change position and there would always be a new magazine or two that kept us coming back. The content of the magazines was typically vile and the magazines themselves were putrid: rain-soaked, earth-sodden, and stuck together in places. We were both intrigued and disgusted by them.
With Daryl bemoaning the affront to his fair-weather religiosity the whole way, we arrived at a soundstage in an industrial park in Chatsworth, about thirty miles from Hollywood. I entered a large hangar-type structure, where a rotund woman in her fifties told me that the man I was looking for, stage manager Jay Shanahan, was downstairs. I’d sort of imagined that there would be some sort of security detail at the entrance of the lot, but I took a few steps along a dark corridor and practically stumbled into the middle of the action.
I heard voices and walked carefully toward them. A dim blue glow from a TV monitor gave me a vague clue to my orientation as my eyes were beginning to adjust from the harsh California sunshine. The voices were now surrounding me.
“Cut, house lights!” screamed director Robby D., who wore his head shaved, sleeves of tattoos, and a tuft of wiry red whiskers jutting out from his chin. Half soccer hooligan, half King Tutankhamen.
The cast and crew of about ten people spun around to look at me. I had arrived, silently under cover of darkness, and I seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
“Hello, I’m looking for Jay Shanahan,” I said to no one in particular.
“I’m Shanahan,” said a man, stepping forward. Thick ivory hair in a crew cut, white socks pulled halfway up his shins, shorts, and a green polo shirt.
“So, you must be Grant Stoddard from Nerve,” he said.
He shook my hand while making sure not to make direct eye contact with me.
“I must be!” I said.
“What?”
“I said, yes, I must be Grant Stoddard.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
Shanahan looked confused as he made a hand gesture to the wardrobe assistant.
“I am.”
Nuance and wit, the cornerstone of my interpersonal skills, are largely wasted in Los Angeles, or any place where people seem to never really be listening.
“Okay, well, this is all very exciting, very exciting.”
Shanahan left the room as everyone else eyed me with suspicion. “Can you please move? You’re in our way,” grunted a crew member.
I’d imagined the topsy-turvy world of hard-core pornography to be many things, but not quite this brusque and unwelcoming.
Shanahan returned to the set in a beige suit and orange faux-fur hat. He had a cameo as a sort of psychedelic pimp in the next scene.
The male talent, Kyle, was dressed in a ridiculous superhero outfit, pacing and reciting his lines in a varied array of styles for the amusement of himself and the twenty-year-old runner. Kyle is about five feet seven inches tall, and in his early forties. Not an ugly man, but not a person you’d characterize as classically handsome.
Shanahan was visibly frustrated by the late arrival of the girl in the first sex scene of the day.
“Where’s the goddamn girl?” he shouted at no one in particular.
Chelsea Sinclaire (née Ebony Sinclaire) arrived on set at that very moment dressed in a glittery rainbow tube top and miniskirt. Aside from the huge breasts squeezed into her top, Chelsea didn’t look like a porn star. She was petite, naturally pretty with flawless dark brown skin. With her broad north England accent, she didn’t sound like a porn star either.
All the porn I’d seen growing up had come from the United States, Germany, or the Netherlands and featured American, German, and Dutch performers. Though the country’s most popular paper, the Sun, featured topless “page three” girls daily, legislature from 1968 made it illegal to produce, buy, or sell images that depicted XXX material in Britain. An older friend of mine used to buy this contraband that a gentleman called Bazza would drive in from London. He would buy a copy of Backdoor Madchens from the trunk of Bazza’s car in the parking lot of a large home-improvement chain, risking prosecution. He would then run off copies for me.
Consequently, I had no idea that there were English girls in porn. Hearing that thick Yorkshire accent come out of a porn starlet was both arousing and thought-provoking. What was her story? I had to find out.
“Oh, beautiful tits, Chels!” said Robby D.
She took her place on set. “You just get those done?”
“Yeah, seven weeks old,” she called from the other end of the set.
This was the first time they were captured on tape.
“They look real good, like real natural black titties,” Robby shouted back before turning to the crew. “I’m thirsty for chocolate milk!”
Someone in the crew muttered the name of a prominent surgeon.
“Gordo do those for ya?” Robby asked Chelsea.
“Gordo,” she reported back.
The crew members nodded their heads in unison. They’d seen his work before and held it in high regard.
In this scene, Shanahan, as the pimp, is physically disciplining his ho, played by Chelsea, when Harry P (Kyle) comes to the rescue, beats up the pimp, and is rewarded by Chelsea with sex.
Shanahan left the set to change back into his suburbanite attire.
“Okay, suck his dick, Chels,” said Robby D. “Look grateful, he just flew in to save your life. Get nasty with it. Spit on it, Chels, don’t be shy. Great, now say something real nasty.”
Chelsea took Kyle’s penis out of her mouth, and in that heavy accent breathed, “I love your cock.”
Robby rolled his eyes and looked at the crew.
“‘I love your cock,’” he said, mocking her. “Jesus.”
“Okay, let’s see some soft shots,” said Robby, clapping his hands together. In order for a film to increase its revenue, all of the scenes in a movie are shot twice, with the second version not showing any penetration or erect penises. That way it can be sold to a soft-core market that includes cable stations like Spice and the Playboy channels.
Kyle and Chelsea dry-humped in a few positions before Robby asked for an FIP, which is their shorthand for Fake Internal Pop. Kyle banged his flaccid cock against Chelsea’s behind and finished with a theatrical bellow.
“Okay, let’s fuck!” shouted Robby as Ross the runner handed him Chelsea’s discarded thong. He held it to his nose and sniffed.
“Mmmm, want some?” he asked, offering the scrap of material to the morbidly obese boom mic operator.
“No, thanks, man,” he said. “I’m trying to cut down.”
Jay appeared briefly to complain about how slowly things were moving and walked out swearing under his breath. Kyle and Chelsea sat across from each other, making small talk while she applied lube to her vagina and he slapped and vainly tried to rub some life into his penis.
Kyle said something to Chelsea that I couldn’t hear, but her answer was “Sure.”
Chelsea got on all fours with her head down and bulbous derrière thrust skyward. Kyle drilled his tongue into Chelsea’s ass, which garnered an instantaneous erection.
“Well, whatever works, man!” Robby called out to Kyle.
Kyle put on a condom, their use now mandatory on most porn sets.
“Let’s have a nice slow insertion,” called the
thuggish and strangely likeable D.
The actors churned out a carbon copy of the pretend scene, which was somehow no more convincing despite everything slotting into its natural place. The “pop shot” was conducted on Chelsea’s breasts. Still photos were taken and the crew took a lunch break.
A woman everyone on the set referred to as Mom was cooking catfish in the kitchen-hospitality area upstairs. An enormous buffet was laid out on the counter as she buzzed around and took orders. A couple of scantily clad girls talked about makeup and shopping.
“I got these jeans at the mall that make my ass look totally fucking amazing,” said April Flowers, who has since become a notable star in the adult industry.
The men talked about their recent purchases of gas masks, water filters, and automatic weapons in response to the September 11th attacks.
“I was there,” I offered as a point of interest. The room fell silent.
They were all very intrigued at Nerve’s proximity to the site of the World Trade Center.
“Aren’t people freaked out there?” asked one crew member.
“Kind of,” I said. “Everyone’s wearing flags.”
They swapped glances and chuckled.
“You’ll need more than that!”
Two of them revealed that they had bought biochemical suits.
“Maybe we should videotape girls’ ankles and sell it to those Afghan fuckers!” said a potbellied cameraman. “Seriously, that’s porn to them!”
I caught Chelsea’s eye and asked if I could talk to her.
“Be with you in a minute!” she said, wiping Kyle’s semen from her chest with a towel.
“You know that we’re next, right,” said the boom mic operator. “The porn industry…biochem attack in Van Nuys, man. You can bet on it. They hate freedom, bro.”
Everyone nodded their heads.
I sat down with Chelsea on an empty set. Chelsea was twenty-two and had recently graduated from Bradford University with a degree in management. She told me that her sister got her into the porn industry by putting her in touch with an adult film agent in England. An American affiliate then invited Chelsea to come work in the United States.
“Porn’s a lot different here,” she said, dressed in track pants and a baggy white T-shirt. “A lot more professional. In England, there will be a couple of guys and a video camera. A lot of money goes into films over here, and the people are…well, they’re just really nice.”
Chelsea had just become a Vivid girl, a handful of elite women who are the de facto superstars of the adult entertainment world. Vivid girls only have to make seven movies and seven special appearances per year for their decent salary. Typically, noncontract girls earn money per scene and per activity. Facial come shots, anal scenes, and D.P. (double penetration, anal and vaginal) all carry a higher price tag.
“What’s it like to have no choice over who you get to have sex with?”
“If I don’t find him or her attractive, it really puts me in a bad mood, but once we get down to it, it’s fine.”
Chelsea said her boyfriend was from Louisiana and that she met him on Venice Beach. They planned to get married.
“How does he feel about what you do?” I said. I couldn’t imagine that this demure little English girl was studying business just a year ago.
“It hurts him…here,” she said, dramatically placing both hands on her heart. “He hates the industry, but he loves and respects me enough to get past it. I was doing this before we met. It’s me job, d’ya know what I mean?”
I saw Shanahan and asked him about my scene.
“You’ll be playing a convict,” he said over his shoulder while striding away.
“Well, did Ross Martin at Nerve tell you what I wanted to—”
“Ross Martin didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.”
Shanahan walked into a room and closed the door behind him.
I walked up to the kitchen area, where I found Kyle reading a book.
“If you’re gonna be in porn, you’d better like reading novels,” he said.
I had already made up my mind that I was not going to be in porn.
“I’ve done this for about fifteen years, but lately the calls have been getting fewer and farther between,” he said.
He explained that, up until two years ago, when Viagra came on the market, only a handful of men could maintain a successful career in hard-core pornography. Kyle was relatively short, positively nerdy, and his penis was within the normal size range. His real value lay in his ability to keep his penis hard for extended periods of time. “It’s harder than you’d think!” he said. “Pun intended.”
Kyle refused to use Viagra or penis injections, a physical crutch many other porn stars rely upon.
“I’m pretty convinced that those guys are going to have serious health problems in the years to come,” he said. “But in the meantime, they’re making a living and I’m not doing so well—but we’ll see. People ask me why I don’t use pills or shoot up to keep wood and I say, ‘Hey, I’m old-fashioned. I like girls!’”
Kyle told me that he has never had a serious relationship with a woman.
“It’s really too much to ask of anyone,” he said. Yet conversely, all of the female actors seem to be attached.
I began asking around if anyone was headed back to the city after the shoot, but it transpired that everyone lived nearby and talked about LA as if it were light-years away. This was the Essex to LA’s London.
A quick comedy vignette in a jail cell was taking place downstairs. Shanahan had another brief walk-on as a prison guard. The nonsex scenes are wrapped up quickly, and the dialogue sounds like it was written in an equally rapid fashion. The scene involved the three young male protagonists commiserating after being brutally sodomized by a fellow inmate.
On the next set, Robby was shooting a girl-girl scene starring April Flowers and Krystal. The set was all black, giving the actors the appearance of floating around in space. Despite looking like the archetypal porn star with her massive breasts, heavy makeup, and permed, bleached mane, Krystal was a newcomer to porn and was still a little coy.
April is a pro and was going through the motions with a bored look on her face. It was insinuated that April and Robby D. have more than just a working relationship.
“Okay, fucker,” April said under her breath as D. gave stage direction.
The girls flashed lusty pouts at the camera while they made out and fingered each other. The highlight of the scene was when both girls wrapped their lips around a fifteen-inch double dong and slipped it farther and farther down their throats until their lips met. Robby went crazy.
“This is fucking amazing!” he said.
April gagged and her eyes teared, ruining her makeup. She was not pleased, not least because Robby kept getting her name wrong. No one was looking forward to shooting the next scene. I heard the crew discussing it: “It’s a boy-boy-boy-girl. Three cocks to get hard, three pop shots, and the kicker is that the guys in the scene are going to be passing around a handheld camera. The shadows are going to be murder.”
The three guys in the scene were short, ugly, and bereft of any body hair. They looked like shaved carnies. The woman in the scene, Kelsey, looked a little older than the other girls. Before the scene, she ran outside to smoke some weed with one of the crew.
Jay was the most seasoned member of the entourage aside from “Mom,” so during quieter moments he was often quizzed by the crew about the old days. “Ahh, the good ol’ days,” he said, “when pornography was our friend. It looked better and felt better. Maybe that was just the coke!”
After a quick shower, the three guys took their places on the set, made to look like a college frat house, and ran through their dialogue. A bit later, Kelsey undressed while the guys attempted to get their dicks hard off-camera. This girl was the only one I’d seen who looked as though she was enjoying shooting a scene. She was also the only one who got high beforehand.
When she had a penis in
each hand and one in her “cookie,” Robby commanded the girl to commit to the moment.
“Come on, babe, get real fuckin’ nasty with it!” he shouted.
“If we really wanna get nasty, why aren’t we doing anal?” inquired Kelsey.
Laughter erupted throughout the crew.
“’Cause we can’t fucking afford it, that’s why!” yelled Jay from another room. Anal sex is an extra two to four hundred dollars; this figure is then multiplied by the number of men in the scene. The guys estimated that going anal would put the production over budget to the tune of a thousand dollars. “We’ll do it if you want to do it for free,” shouted an optimistic Robby.
Kelsey started laughing. It was getting late; I had dinner reservations in Hollywood at eight with Daryl and had no idea how I was going to be getting there. There were no busses. I started to get that nightmarish feeling of being trapped in the wilderness, penniless, miles from civilization.
My scene, of course, was the last one to be shot.
“What’s this movie called, anyway?” I asked the PA, Sam, as we got into orange jumpsuits.
“Hard Evidence,” he said. “No, wait, Hard Evidence Two. I think.”
Sam had a busy day: he fetched water and lube when the girls asked for it, removed discarded clothing from the set with the speed and skill of a ball boy at Wimbledon, and had driven to the local pharmacy on several occasions to buy douche kits, home enema sets, and condoms. Sam couldn’t believe that I’d flown in from New York. “You came all this way for this?” he said. “You must be disappointed.”
Jay is a friend of Sam’s family and offered him some work on his movies while he looks for PA work in mainstream pictures.
“I thought I was going to get laid,” he said. “My friends are all jealous of me. In fact, Jay had me round up a bunch of them to be extras in a scene tomorrow. Then they’ll see.”
We took our places on a set made to look like a prison rec room.
“I’ve spent half my fucking life in prison and it looks just like this!” said Robby.
Kyle sat at a table with Sam as they shuffled through a pack of Vivid playing cards, each featuring a porn starlet.
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