I said it twice. You know why, right?
I’m too excited to even bother with a guess. No. Why?
Because that’s how many times I thought about humping while I typed out that message.
I choke on a giggle. His response is juvenile and ridiculous, but what does it mean? Does it mean he was thinking about humping in general or thinking about humping me?
Then I come to my senses. Of course he wasn’t thinking about humping me. If he’d had any interest, he would have made a move last night. And because I’m so certain he didn’t really intend any innuendo, I type back: It’s because there are two humps on the constellation that Cassiopeia rides on. You thought about it once for each hump.
There’s a delay before he responds, and I bite my lip while I wait, my legs still jelly from the orgasm I’d had fantasizing about him just a few minutes before. I grow hot again thinking about it and when my phone buzzes with his latest message, my heart is hammering in my chest before I even read the first word.
Yes. That’s right. Though, if there was a camel last night, I don’t remember it. I only saw Cassiopeia.
For half a second I consider letting my fantasies bloom, letting the things I wish twist into things that are, and I imagine that he means I’m as beautiful as the mythological Cassiopeia, and that he only had eyes for me.
But of course he means he only saw the stars, and he’s as far away from me as the Persian Queen on her two-humped camel in the sky.
* * *
The text he sends that night takes a much different tone.
After Stanley Tucci gives Captain America that shot of power and he gets all muscley and even more Captain America than before, do you think he could still have sex with a regular person? Or is his dick too powerful for mere mortals?
I’m already in bed because it’s late. A glance at the time says it’s just after one. It’s the middle of the night and he’s thinking of me.
Nope. Stop. I have to remind myself not to get giddy. He’s probably drunk texting all the girls on his contact list. I should shut my phone off and banish him from my mind like I did all day long.
Except I didn’t banish him from my mind at all.
I’d refrained from responding after his final confusing text that morning, and threw myself wholeheartedly into trying not to think about him. Which meant I thought about him quite a lot. While I scrubbed my bathtub. During my rollerblading workout on Santa Monica Pier. Through my photo shoot for Tommy’s Toys, an erotic image website I pose for on a regular basis.
“You’re on tonight, Devi, baby,” Tommy had said as he’d clicked shot after shot. “Radiant and fuck-hot. Are you knocked up or something?”
“Uh, no. It’s probably my new face cleanser.” I wasn't using a new cleanser, but I’d spouted the lie anyway, not wanting to put voice to the real reason I was glowing: Logan O’Toole.
Later, in the shower, I’d rubbed myself to orgasm thinking about him again. Then spent the next twenty minutes promising myself that tomorrow I wouldn’t think about him at all.
Now I’m tired and vulnerable, and when his Captain America text arrives, I surrender to his game, whatever it may be. Can a dick really be TOO hard? It’s his stamina I’d be more concerned about. The power behind his thrusts. He’d need to restrain himself if he were going to indulge in sexual activity.
But what about when he blows his load? See, I think he’d come too hard for her to take it. His sperm would shoot through her like a bullet.
Smiling from ear-to-ear, I roll over to my stomach to type my reply. Nah. You men always think that your cum is more impressive than it is. It’s really just a tiny little splurt. Even with increased force, that’s not hurting anyone.
We aren’t talking about my cum—which IS impressive, by the way. We’re talking about Captain Fucking America.
I grow warm all over at the mention of his cum, and I have to take a series of deep breaths before responding. Does the idea of that turn you on? Coming inside a woman so hard that it kills her?
Well. Sort of. Yeah.
I laugh out loud. You’re sick.
Guilty. Another text immediately follows. Goodnight, Cass.
And for the second night in a row, I go to bed with an ache between my thighs because of Logan O’Toole.
* * *
For the next several days, Logan continues to send random texts. I’ve given up trying to interpret his motivations and instead have just enjoyed the banter. The fun conversation has put me in a surprisingly good mood, despite my money woes, and on Wednesday morning, I even get the nerve to open up the UCLA website for the first time in months.
“You can do this,” I say to out loud to myself. “Just go through the list and pick something. Anything. One thing that interests you.” There are so many things that appeal to me. This shouldn’t be that hard.
But after only a couple of clicks around the site, I end up on a page that shows the five colleges on campus: The College of Letters and Science, The School of the Arts and Architecture, School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Nursing, School of Theater, Film, and Television.
And then I freeze because I’m equally drawn to each of the schools listed. Science? Love it. Architecture? I’m game. Nursing? My parents are doulas—I’ve been raised to be a caretaker. Film? That’s totally what I’m working in now, if porn counts, that is, and it does in my book. So how the hell am I supposed to pick just one career path when I can’t even narrow it down to a single college of study?
I shut my laptop in a panic, but perk up when I hear my phone buzzing on the kitchen counter where I left it after dinner. Hoping the message is from Logan, I hurry over to check and respond.
But it’s not Logan, and it’s not a text. It’s a phone call and the caller ID says it’s one of the producers I’d met at Vida’s party—LaRue Hagen.
LaRue Hagen isn’t someone I’d usually take a call from. He works for Sinner’s Playpen, a hardcore heterosexual porn site, not my scene. Since my parents’ Tarot reading suggested I be more open to new opportunities, however, I gave him my number.
As I answer, I pray that I’m not wasting my time.
“Devi Dare. I’m so glad to finally get you on the phone,” LaRue says, as though he’s been trying to reach me for days and not for just three rings. “Got a minute to talk?”
“I have exactly that,” I say, though I have no plans for the evening. “So I hope you have your pitch prepared.”
“Damn. A woman who plays hardball. I like it.” LaRue hasn’t been around as long as some of the old-school producers, but he’s not a newbie either. He’s an astute businessman who has also managed to stay innovative and politically correct. If I did decide to venture further into the world of porn, he’s one of the few producers I’d trust.
“Fortunately,” he says smoothly, “I do have my pitch prepared because it’s not a pitch, but fact. We at Sinner’s Playpen have watched your career in girl-girl porn take off over the last several months. If you think no one was noticing, you’re wrong. We sincerely believe that if you crossed over into traditional heterosexual porn, ‘P in V’ so to speak, you’d take the world by storm.”
I stifle a stunned laugh. I’d been pleased with my rise in the industry over the last year, but this guy was blowing things out of proportion. My paychecks certainly don’t reflect someone whose career has “taken off.”
Though models and lesbian porn stars don’t make much money even when they are successful.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other. “That’s awfully presumptuous, don’t you think, Mr. Hagen?”
“It’s LaRue. And not presumptuous—perceptive. I’ve been in this biz for a decade, Devi. I’ve watched many a star rise and fall, and, trust me, I know what kind of trajectory your career is going to take from here.”
I lean against the doorframe of my galley kitchen. “I’m flattered, LaRue. I’ve also got to be honest with you—though I’m currently entertaining the possibility of doin
g some light heterosexual porn, I’d still like the majority of my work to be girl-on-girl. I’m definitely not looking to be a star.”
“No one’s ever looking to be a star.”
The image of The Star from my parents’ Tarot deck flashes in my mind then disappears. It renders me momentarily speechless.
LaRue steps into the silence. “Tell you what—our site is limited on the femme porn, but I think I can line up a few jobs for you.”
I’m skeptical. “Why would you do that?” I don’t want to be obliged to work for him in the future just because he’s hooking me up now.
“Because, Devi Dare, whether you’re ready or not, you’re going to cross over into harder scenes. We want to be there when you do.”
What if it’s true? What if I am destined to be the next Jenna Jameson or Tori Black? Is that the direction the wheel of fortune is taking me?
Not wanting to rule out any path that might take me to a better life, I give LaRue my agent’s information and agree to do a femme shoot with Sinner’s Playpen in the next few weeks.
It buys me time to think about his other offer—the one that could be the solution to all my money problems if I just made that final step. I’m not even sure what’s holding me back. My parents would support me, and I don’t really have anything against fucking for strangers.
Just.
If I decide to really commit to this career, the chances of ever going back to school diminish significantly. And though I still don’t have any idea what to major in, I’m not ready to decide I’ll never finish.
But with bills looming I may have to decide something soon.
I desperately long to talk to someone about my options, someone else in the industry. Another actor or actress maybe. The only person I can think of to reach out to is Logan.
I unlock the screen that has gone dark in the last several seconds and type out a text: Need advice. Are you free?
Just as I’m about to send it, though, I have second thoughts. We really aren’t close enough to delve into career discussions, certainly not over text.
Regardless, he’s the only one I want to talk to, period.
I delete the words and instead send: Do you believe that God/a higher power/the universe answers prayers/bequests/needs through porn/smut/erotic modeling?
It’s the first time I’ve initiated the conversation, and my heart flutters when his response is nearly immediate. Devi, the answer is always porn.
I laugh, and though nothing is solved or decided, I feel better. I don’t have to make any firm plans right now anyway. LaRue will throw me some light work, and if that doesn’t bring in enough money, I have options.
And even if the universe isn’t really trying to guide me, I can still recognize the turn my fortune is taking. Maybe it’s LaRue’s confidence that’s contagious, but it feels like people and situations are lining up for me. Perhaps even Logan’s appearance in my life is fortuitous since his friendship could lead to a surer footing in the industry.
I don’t expect that fate has other ideas for us. But, still, there’s that star card—so I hope it does.
Six
By now, you might be wondering, how does a sweet guy like Logan O’Toole end up in the porn industry?
To which I say three things:
Firstly, I wasn’t always a guy named Logan O’Toole.
Secondly, why not?
Thirdly, I get why you wonder. I mean, my parents are both pharmaceutical scientists. I grew up in the “right” school district, in a house with a big pool and a remodeled kitchen, with cable but not HBO, with family dinners almost every night and family vacations a few times a year. We went to a blandly pleasant Episcopal church on a semi-regular basis, we volunteered twice a month at a food bank in the city. I never touched drugs, I only slept with two girls in high school, the only trouble I ever had with the law was a speeding ticket one morning when I was late for class.
No, I was never destined to do porn. After high school, I was destined for an undergrad in film studies and the same sort of life my parents had before me and their parents had before them, except I planned to be wielding a camera instead of a microscope.
It was a series of accidents that altered my trajectory, that sent me spinning out of orbit and into the uniquely heavy gravity of the porn world.
It started with my theater teacher approaching me after school in the spring of my senior year. He had a friend who was filming a commercial for a local community college, and would I like to give him a call? It would be easy work and the first non-retail line on my flimsy resume, and even though I wanted to be a director or a cinematographer, it never hurt to explore acting too, right?
I did the commercial. And then I did another, this time for a dating website aimed at college kids, which led to a commercial for a “companionship” phone-line, a dying service in 2005, but apparently still strong enough to pay for a television ad. I never lied to my parents about what I was doing, and to their credit, they never tried to dissuade me from it, even though it must have been awkward for them to see my phone sex commercials while they were trying to watch CSI reruns.
And that’s how I accidentally got into the commercial business.
This lasted about three months, and the day after graduation, while I was squinting at my computer screen, trying to parse my UCLA orientation email, I got a call from the director of the hotline ad.
“Hey kid, I’ve got a friend who likes your face, and he’s short an extra for a little movie he’s filming next week. You’d get fifty bucks a day, plus lunch. You in?”
The only thing I had planned for my summer was my part-time job at Best Buy, and honestly, getting paid to stand around on a film set sounded like a much better opportunity. I quit my Best Buy job and drove up to the set that next week, assuming a “little movie” meant an indie film or maybe a made-for-cable shlock-fest.
I was wrong on both counts. After meeting with the casting director—who was also the script supervisor—I was led back to the pool, where a woman lay on her back moaning, her hand buried inside of her lace panties. I remember watching, mesmerized, as the director occasionally called out instructions—more about the mechanics of her masturbation than about her acting.
“Spread your legs a little wider, Tara, we have a shadow.”
“Okay, now use both hands.”
“Rub your chest a little, please. Good.”
I glanced back over the thin script I’d been handed. I hadn’t read it over yet, because I knew I didn’t have a speaking role, but now I read the lines with avid fascination. Lonely housewife. Seductive gardener. And me, “Pool Party Guest #2,” who was scheduled to linger in the background with a red Solo cup and a veneer of partygoer merriment.
And that’s how I accidentally got into the soft-core porn business.
From there on out, it was a series of gradual steps onward—or downward, depending on your point of view. The director liked me, and I came back the next week for a film about a naughty college cheerleader who falls for her professor. I played her jilted boyfriend—a role that required a scene where I received a blowjob, something that I initially had mixed feelings about. On one hand, no eighteen-year-old male has ever felt despair at the prospect of a blowjob, but on the other hand, it felt strange to be sucked off and then handed a check.
Not wrong, necessarily. But strange.
I don’t remember much about that scene—my very first—but I do remember the actress, Traci Aliss, who’s now married to a podiatrist and lives somewhere in Arizona. She was Asian-American, with glossy-smooth hair and flawless skin, and even with all the unnecessary makeup, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. I’d never been touched in front of an audience, and so I’d been worried about staying hard with all those eyes on me. But when Traci trained her eyes on my face, licking her lips as she unzipped my pants, all of my apprehension vanished. I felt something I’d never felt before in my life, something deeper than lust, something essential, something akin
to what I felt when I watched my favorite movies.
I suppose Devi would call it bigness. For a moment, I felt the entire expansive bigness of the world, of Traci’s glowing skin, of the sunlight coming in harsh and bright through the window, of the subtle dynamic of power that coursed between us. I didn’t feel like a boy who didn’t have his future figured out, a boy who felt already limited by a path he’d barely stepped on.
I felt like a man. And I threaded my hands through Traci’s hair and I murmured everything I felt to her, I told her what I wanted her to do to me and what I wanted to do to her, and for a moment, I could tell that she was as lost in the scene as I was. That despite the cameras—or maybe because of them—these sensations were galvanized into something exhilarating and intoxicating, and we both ended the scene filled with a sense of happy magic.
The director was so pleased with my performance that he asked to do another film, and another, and another, and by the end of the summer, I’d made five thousand dollars by having sex on camera, with the promise that I could make more if I was willing to segue into hardcore pornography.
I was.
After signing with a talent agency, I cancelled my UCLA classes, told my shocked but accepting parents, and rented an apartment in Burbank.
And that’s how I accidentally became a porn star.
* * *
You’re right. Porn is always the answer. No wonder those people keep losing on Family Feud.
That’s the first thing waiting on my screen when I wake up. It’s crazy what falling asleep without half a bottle of whiskey will do for a man’s energy, and during the past week, the urge to go whiskey-numb has slowly diminished. Part of it is Vida’s offer, an offer that I’m still trying to think of something for.
And part of it is Devi, my personal Cassiopeia, my Persian Queen.
But even thinking those words sends weird shivers down my spine, hot and cold flashes of lust and excitement, and also fear. Because what if she doesn’t feel the same way I do? What if I’m just that friendly guy she did a scene with once?
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