“The bondage section starts on page sixteen,” Jessica says, motioning for me to flip to the page. The girls must have the catalog on their iPads, because they all swipe until they arrive there.
Inside are photos of various items and mock-ups of the James Langdon Collection packaging for each. I like the look they’ve come up with, very sleek and classy. It kind of reminds me of those sexy-billionaire-who-likes-to-get-his-freak-on books that Lola reads.
“The leather cuffs we have in here now are pink, which we thought was a little cheesy, but they said they could get us a purple that would totally match the Electric Lady logo, so we’d love to go with that,” Nikki says as I flip through. “Naturally, we could also offer them in plain black or maybe a red.”
“I love the style,” I say, admiring both the pictured cuffs and all the work that must have gone into planning this whole booklet out. “My only concern is that they’re leather. I don’t mind it, but I would bet money that Lola’s going to have something to say about a cow dying so that people can get kinky.”
The ladies all laugh, and Shawnna shakes her head playfully.
“Let me just come out and say it now,” I interrupt when she starts to open her mouth. “Yes, I am totally whipped.”
That makes them laugh harder, and Veronica gives me a side hug. “You’re too sweet, James!”
“So now that my whipped-ness has been established, everyone’s on the same page,” I joke.
“So cute!” Nikki remarks to Jessica.
“You guys haven’t seen his wife, have you?” Shawnna asks, taking out her phone when they shake their heads. “Take a look at this and you’ll see why he’s happy to admit he’s whipped.”
They take her phone, and I can see that Shawnna’s selected a pic of her and Lola from the convention a few months back. Lola’s eyes look huge and sparkly. Her lips have an Angelina Jolie thing going on. And her body? Forget about it! She’s standing next to a woman who was one of the biggest porn stars of all time, but she puts Shawnna Hendrix to shame.
Yeah, I pretty much have the hottest wife ever.
“Wow!” both Nikki and Jessica say in unison.
“Sharp as a tack, too,” Shawnna praises as they hand her phone back.
“She’s an Ivy League girl, totally smart.” I smile proudly and give a cocky shrug before kicking back in my chair, which makes them all laugh.
Shawnna snickers and motions for me to turn the page as we continue to go through the booklet. The next section is metal cuffs, then spreader bars, nipple clamps, various gags, floggers, whips, canes, plugs and more—all high quality stuff that we can sell at a premium. There’s big money to be made here.
“So you’d like me to think about which ones I’d like to sell and come up with names and stuff?” I ask when we’ve finished looking at the products.
“Right.” Shawnna nods. “We’re thinking we can launch five new items and see how they do in the last quarter before we decide where we want to expand the selection. The whole BDSM thing is so big right now, and this would get us in that lucrative market, then we can weigh demand and see what else we’d like to include.”
“Great. I love that idea.” These ladies have all kinds of strategies, and I know they’re going to market the shit out of this stuff.
“So we thought maybe you could take the book home, see if anything jumps off the page at you, and then give us a list of seven products you like,” Veronica proposes. “If you have sexy names for them, that would be great too, but we can come up with a list of ideas for you to look over.”
“Awesome!” I nod. “This is going to be fuckin’ sweet.”
We all chat for a little while longer before Nikki, Veronica, and Jessica all have to run to other meetings, leaving just me and Shawnna in the room, snacking and talking.
“You know people are sending me offers for you, right?” She grins and I nod for her to go on. “Apparently, since you no longer have representation, people are going to me like I’m your agent.”
“I can’t fuckin’ wait to hear what kind of offers you’re getting,” I say, eating a chip.
“I had a new strip club that wants you to be seen at their opening night,” she says, starting to list things off on her fingers. “I had two people call me to ask if you’d do gay-for-pay—”
“Really?” I laugh loudly. I’m known for straight porn, so I guess the theory was that getting me to do gay porn would be so controversial it would make millions. But I’m just not that dude, so even if I was working, I don’t think I’d ever be able to do gay porn. Chicks have always been my thing.
“Yes!” Shawnna says with wide eyes. “I thought it was crazy! I was like, ‘You want to hire James Langdon, but you don’t want him to have sex with a woman? Have you seen his work?’ I mean, Christ, you’re like the Michael Jordan of getting girls off.”
I burst into loud laughter, and she winks at me.
“That wasn’t even the craziest thing that came across my desk,” she continues. “Do you watch High Maintenance on VH1?”
“I think I’ve heard either Lola or Chad talk about that one. That’s the one with the rich socialites who have sex and fight with each other?”
“It’s the one with the rich socialites who have sex and fight with each other in Miami,” she clarifies, much to my amusement. “Well, the ‘bad girl’ on that show is trying to get into porn, and she came to us because her baby’s daddy told her we make classy stuff.”
I cringe with disgust.
“Her manager—who is also her mother, mind you—called us and said that she wants to do a sex tape with James Langdon so she can pretend it leaked and get more publicity for her upcoming album.”
“Shut up!” I throw my head back, my booming laughter filling the boardroom.
“God’s honest,” she says, holding up her hand. “I had to put them on hold just so I could try to process how many ways I was going to say no to that shit.”
I’m grabbing my stomach as I gasp between laughs.
“I tried the polite route and told them I wasn’t your agent, but that as far as I knew you were retired,” she says. “They were convinced that you would come out of retirement for the opportunity to have sex with the Courtney Cyprus.”
“I don’t even know which one that is,” I say through laughter.
“She’s the one with the bad boob job who sticks her tongue out a lot,” Shawnna clarifies.
“With the really long fake nails?” I ask. She nods. “No way! Lola and Chad talk so much shit about that girl. Chad calls her The Burning Bush because I guess she has flames tattooed on her pussy.”
“She does!” Shawnna says, her own laughter overwhelming her. “They sent photos. It was horrible! I was like, ‘Okay, that vagina is not going anywhere near any of my shoots.’”
“Jesus Christ!” I say, shaking my head. “What a wreck that girl must be.”
“It was definitely the craziest phone call I’ve had in a while. I debated just putting something on my outgoing voice mail that said I was not your agent and that you were not appearing in films anymore.”
“Maybe we should get a billboard,” I joke.
“One more crazy reality star calls me and I’m doing it!”
We mellow out again when I sit down with my second sandwich.
“So, how’s life for you, darling?” she asks warmly. “Are you going stir crazy without all the shoots or are you digging it?”
“I’m really digging it,” I say with a smile. “I have time to pause, you know? Time to just relax and not have to worry about anything.”
“I hear you,” she says, nodding in agreement. “When I retired, there was about a week where I did nothing but bake.”
I laugh with surprise. “Really?”
“Yes!” she replies. “I never really had a chance to do it, learn recipes, bake cookies and all that mother shit I should have done years ago.”
When I worked with Shawnna, she played a hot MILF, but she actually was a hot
MILF. She had her son, Cameron, when she was a teenager, just before she started porn. Right around the time she hit her peak, she married a rich older dude named Bill, and I guess they’re all one big, happy family now.
“The sad part of it all was that, by the time I had enough free time to do that stuff, Cam was old enough to not want me at bake sales and school events,” she volunteers with a hint of sadness.
“Why not?” I ask, my voice softening when I see the shift in her body language.
“He’d get picked on,” she says with a shrug. “I remember one time I picked him and his friends up from a tennis match his freshman year and he got real upset after I dropped everyone off at home. I asked him why and he said that they had all been teasing him about his mom doing porn. I felt horrible.”
Wow! That’s fucked up. “That sucks, Shawnna. But those kids were the assholes, not you.”
“It was hard for him growing up,” she says. “When he was in fifth grade, I got a call from the principal saying he’d been in a fight. I came to the school and he had a bloody nose—it was just awful! Turns out some kid found his dad’s porno mag and was showing everybody pictures of me. Cam got upset and they got into a fistfight in the bathroom. They threatened to suspend him.”
I can tell these memories are painful for her, no matter how hard she’s trying to act casual about it, so I rub her back as she continues.
“That was when he told me he didn’t want me to come to his soccer games anymore. When he got older, it was book drives, tennis matches, bake sales, even parent-teacher conferences,” she says. “I didn’t want to be a disruptive force in his life, so I said okay. Thankfully, he had Bill, and Bill could have practically made a documentary with all the footage he recorded for me.”
I give her an understanding smile, and she smiles back, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“He knew he’d never want for money or love, but it’s hard enough to go through those middle school years without your friends seeing gangbang videos of your mom,” she says, looking down at her food.
Boy, that hits home. The whole concept of family being embarrassed by your job is a sore spot for me, too.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad for you,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “Do you and Lola plan on having kids?”
“Someday,” I say with a nod. “When I picture my future, I see me and Lola having lots of babies and just livin’ life. I want to have, like, five kids, but I know she’s probably not going to co-sign that plan, so maybe two or three.”
She smiles and pats my shoulder. “I hope that happens for you, darling. You just have to know going in that it can be tough for us, for people in our line of work, but maybe things have changed by now. And you’re a man. Maybe it won’t be so hard for a dad to be a retired porn star. You won’t get those endless MILF jokes,” she adds with a slight chuckle.
“I bet you rue the fuckin’ day that term was ever created,” I tease.
“It’s so ridiculous, isn’t it?” She laughs and shakes her head. “Who hates it a million times more than me is Cam. If he had a dollar for every time someone said that to him growing up, he’d be richer than me and his dad.”
“Kids are assholes to each other. I remember when Lola was growing up and the popular kids were so mean to her, but she had me there to keep their snotty asses in line. Did Cam have someone there to have his back?”
“Oh, yeah.” She nods. “Once he hit high school, he had a lot of friends. I think people just matured a little more by then. He’s old enough now to handle it, and he’s going to be up at Stanford next year, so he’ll make new friends and learn a lot in class, and with all that school work his mom’s job will be the least of his concerns.”
“That’s going to be great for him. Pretty sweet that he got in. That’s a good school.” As you might have guessed, I’m not a big education guy, but I know Lola was pretty interested in applying to Stanford before the old Ivy League came calling.
“It’ll be great,” she says. “He’s gonna be great. It’ll be great.”
I snicker and put my arm around her. “Classic mom stuff,” I joke. “You’re freaked out about him leaving the nest.”
“I’m terrified!” She laughs and puts her hands to her cheeks. “But do you think I’m pulling off the ‘no big deal, go do your own thing’ act?”
“Sure,” I say before snickering.
“See? This is what children do to you,” she jokes. “They turn you into a basket case.”
“But it’s worth it, I bet,” I say, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
“It is.” She nods to me. “You’ll see when you have kids.”
I pause for a second and it hits me that the whole dream of marrying Lola and starting a family is becoming a reality. We’re already married and we’ve got the cool house, now we just need the baby—a few years down the road, of course.
“You’re lucky, though,” she says. “A lot of people in our profession don’t find someone who can look past that. I had a string of men in my life before I met Bill, and I just never expected that a handsome, wealthy, older businessman would want a porn star with a five-year-old kid…but Bill did. You’ve got that with Lola. It’s unconditional. You can see it when she looks at you.”
It sinks in, and it’s only further evidence that Lola is the love of my fuckin’ life, which puts a big smile on my face.
“I think you’ve got a real bright future ahead of you,” she says approvingly. “The toy line is going to do great, and I’d love to have you produce or direct something for me.”
“Nice,” I respond with a nod.
“The girls and I were talking about maybe a ‘James Langdon Presents’ series. You could call the shots completely. You’d pick the performers, you could approve scripts, we’d give you a budget that would be very comfortable. It’d be like a mainstream movie. You have such an eye for it, James. You know how to make high quality stuff.”
I smile at the compliment. “That might be pretty rad, actually.” As I think about it, the opportunity to produce something, to have total control over a project, would be pretty fuckin’ awesome.
“Did you ever think about that? Producing or directing?” she asks.
“A little bit, yeah. I figured that I’d move in that direction when I quit the on-camera shit.”
“Oh, you absolutely should!” she says excitedly. “Darling, you have no idea how thrilled we would be if you’d do a project like that for us. It can be anything you want.”
“I was thinking maybe some softer stuff, more erotica than straight-up porn,” I volunteer.
“That would be fantastic! Like I said, the couples market is huge and you’re such a hit with women anyway that something glossy and polished would probably be a smash. If anybody knows what women want, James, it’s you.”
I laugh loudly, and she gives me a big smile.
“I’d love to go forward with it,” she says. “I know you’re probably very preoccupied with wedding stuff right now, but let’s have a meeting once things have calmed down.”
“Fantastic!”
We start telling stories about past shoots, and I consider what I might want to do for the proposed future project. Total control. From casting to scripts to everything—and with a real budget. Man, that would be so sweet. I’ll have to run it by Boss Lady when I get home, but I think it could be a cool new avenue to explore.
Shawnna gives me a big hug when things wrap up, and she says she’ll be in touch with me about everything we discussed. I hop in my car and head back home.
Lola’s back from yoga, and she’s sitting in the living room, reading something on her iPad mini.
“Are you reading porn?” I tease as I lean over the couch and kiss her.
“Literary porn, yes,” she says with a giggle.
“Please tell me it’s not another one of those kinky billionaire ones,” I groan.
“No.” She shakes her head. “This is a nice one—no whips and chains. This is just
your average insatiably horny couple who fuck in all kinds of interesting locations.”
“Good. Maybe it’ll inspire you to demonstrate some scenes on me.”
“I have accrued quite a wealth of knowledge,” she says with a sexy smile.
I toss the binder onto the couch beside her and hop over so I’m lying with my head in her lap. She leans forward and kisses me, but it’s sweet and romantic instead of sexy.
“How was yoga?” I ask her, enjoying the way her hair falls forward and tents our faces.
“Good. How was your meeting with Shawnna?”
“Great!” I excitedly answer. “She wants to add a whole bunch of new stuff to the product line. That’s what’s in the binder.”
She sits back and picks up the binder, balancing it on my chest so both of us can see it. The first few pages are massage oils and lube, nothing too risqué. Then she gets to the start of the BDSM section. She tenses up, and I can tell right away that this might not go well.
“Shawnna wants you to endorse this stuff?” she asks when she sees the page of paddles.
“Well, I mean, I’d get to pick the stuff,” I reply, trying to mellow this situation. “She just wants me to go through the book and pick a few things I like that I’d want to add to the line.”
“BDSM stuff,” she sighs.
“Not necessarily.”
The next page is full of riding crops and floggers, and she seems none too pleased with that. She continues to flip through, passing collars and leashes, spreader bars, ring gags, weighted nipple clamps, and even Wartenberg wheels.
She closes the binder with a big sigh and then nudges me off her. I watch as she wordlessly gets up and starts off to the bedroom. She’s upset. Naturally, I want to fix it, so I get up and go after her.
I’m kind of relieved when she turns to me and says, “I don’t like this idea, James,” in an angry tone. If she gets mad, it’s a good sign because it means she’s not keeping it bottled up. The worst is when she’s so mad that she won’t open up to me.
“Why don’t you like it, baby?” I ask her softly as I step closer.
Vice, Virtue & Video: Devoted Page 15
