Porn Star

by Laurelin Paige

  “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.

  6

  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?

  Or worse, the guy who spurned her advances at a party?

  Fuck.

  Don’t I give great advice? I text back to Devi, still lying in bed. I can’t believe I got fired from writing fortunes for the fortune cookie factory.

  No response. Not for the first time this week, I wonder if I’m bothering her with my texts, intruding on what I imagine to be her well-ordered, healthy, beachy life. Maybe she’s just tolerating me because she doesn’t want to be rude. Maybe she actually thinks I’m pathetic—too limp-dicked to kiss her at Vida’s and now texting her like a boy in middle school.

  I let the phone drop to the comforter and groan. I should leave her alone, I should bottle up this years-long crush I’ve had on her and give her space.

  But then she texts me back and I’m diving for the phone again.

  So tell me, O Wise One. I’m thinking about maybe doing some mainstream scenes. You know—with guys instead of girls. What do you think?

  What do I think? I think I want to run over to her place now and make sure I’m the first male performer on her list! But no, I need to think like a friend and a mentor, not like a guy that jacks off to her every night.

  Hardcore? I ask. A lot of people hear hardcore and think of extreme porn—BDSM and rough sex and all that, but really all it means is explicit. In hardcore porn, you get to see all the good stuff happening, pussy-eating and ejaculation and actual fucking. A lot of Devi’s lesbian scenes could be considered hardcore, since she goes down on girls sometimes and they go down on her.

  Yes, she texts back. But nothing too intense. No kink or group-sex. I’m on the fence about anal.

  *On* the fence? No, no, no, you’re supposed to be bent over the fence. I can’t help myself. I’m only human.

  Har har har. I don’t have anything against it—but I really don’t know if I could do it with just any performer, you know? I’d want to be with someone I trust.

  I groan again, turning my face into the pillow. My dick is stirring from all this Devi-anal talk, and God, I wish I could be the performer she trusted. I would make her feel so good, I’d go slow, warm her up with all the orgasms she needed to relax, and then I’d make her feel like a glowing goddess. I’d use my fingers first, probing as I kissed and licked her cunt, and then I’d slowly work her open, sucking on her clit until her toes curled. I’d make her come with my dick inside her pussy, and while she was coming down, I would roll her onto her side, get on my knees and gently press inside. And then I’d make her come with my dick in her ass.

  You’re making me too hard to think straight, Cass.

  Very funny, Logan. But really, what should I do?

  Does she honestly think I’m joking about being hard? Does she not realize the impact she has on me?

  Of course she doesn’t, Captain Skinny-Dick. All she has to go on is how you pulled away in the pool.

  I force myself to focus on her question. You know me, my camel-riding queen. I’ll always say do more porn. But make sure that it’s stuff you feel comfortable with—stuff you feel safe and happy doing. Work with people you trust.

  This is unexpectedly serious for me, and I feel a little self-conscious pressing send. She doesn’t respond, and I hope it’s because she’s mulling over what I’ve said and not because she’s rolling her eyes at how suddenly pretentious and paternalistic I’ve gotten.

  This doesn’t solve the problem of me being hard, however. Hard and dying for a taste of Devi—her skin, her lips, her cunt. I reach down and circle my erection, using my other hand to cup my balls, which are heavy and aching for release.

  I glance at my clock—eight in the morning. Ginger will be here in a few hours to shoot a scene, and as good as it would feel to rub one out right now, it might feel even better to use Ginger’s wet pussy to get off. I squeeze my dick gently, imagining it now, Ginger tied up and helpless while I stroked in and out.

  I would give my eyeteeth for it to be Devi, though.

  With a groan of extreme restraint, I get out of the bed. I shower in some cold water to kill my boner and then brush my teeth. Once I’m all clean and minty, I trundle to my kitchen in only a pair of jeans to make a cup of coffee and wait for Tanner. He and I need to do some extensive blocking for the scene today because Ginger has decided she wants to try the harder, kinkier stuff, so we’ll have some props going on and some cues that I’ll mention in my monologue when we record it after the scene.

  While I wait for the Keurig to power up, I open up my laptop and make a new Word document. I type in Ginger’s name at the top, along with the date and the style of scene we’re filming.

  I film all sorts of scenes—sweet ones, filthy ones, public ones, scripted ones—

  and I try to make every monologue match the tone of the sex. I’ve become a bit famous for these monologues, which was a surprise to everyone when I started doing them a few years ago. Who wants to sit and listen to a guy talk for ten minutes before the fucking gets started? Who wants to wait for the penis-in-vagina, the p-in-v, just to hear the guy talk about the girl and what he loves about their sex?

  A lot of people, actually.

  A lot.

  And I enjoy doing it. Honestly. Porn can be mere visual stimulation for a quick jerk, yes. But if it’s also mental stimulation, playing into male and female fantasies alike, then that’s the porn that gets watched again and again, that’s the site that gets subscribed to. What turns me on, what turns a girl on, what makes sexy, filthy porn—I could talk about that shit all day.

  I limit myself to ten minutes though.

  I won’t draft the full monologue script until after the scene, but I go ahead and skeleton in several of the things I know I want to say. That right now, Ginger’s newness to kink inspires me to be rougher than I normally am. That her submission fantasies and my domination fantasies dovetail perfectly, and that when we’re fucking, I like to imagine dirty things, nasty things.

  I won’t say that I imagine Devi when I’m screwing Ginger, or that all of these dirty, nasty fantasies come to my mind when I’m alone in my bed with my hand under the sheets and one of Devi’s girl/girl scenes on the laptop next to me. That would dispel the fantasy that I’m trying to create with my monologues, the fantasy that I sort of sexually fall in love with every girl I film with. But still, it’s Devi I’m thinking about while I drag the bondage bed out of its usual corner in the basement and into the center of the concrete-floored playroom I had built here for filming scenes.

  It’s not nearly as elaborate as Vida’s, but it works. Bare floor (easy to clean, plus it adds to that dungeon vibe people like), racks of toys and restraints, and chains and hooks dangling from the ceiling.

  God, Devi would look good here, strapped down and waiting for me. Or maybe with those toned arms bound and stretched up toward the ceiling…

  By the time Tanner and Ginger arrive, my hard-on is back and I’m more than ready to begin fucking.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, after we verbally run through Ginger’s limits and make sure she’s cool with what Tanner and I have come up with for the scene, she’s flat on her back on the bondage bed and I’m buckling the cuffs around her wrists, subtly checking to make sure the cuffs aren’t cutting off blood flow to her hands and fingers. It’s something that I’ve done hundreds of times—many of them with her, actually—and I smile affectionately down at her. Is there anything better than a great day on a great job with an old friend? And then out of the corner of my eye, I see my phone light up on the table behind Tanner, and my heart thumps with an electric judder, knowing it could be another text from Devi.

  It really is a fantastic day.

  “We’re going to have fun now,” I tell Ginger, practically humming as I move down to cuff her ankles.

  Tanner’s filming behind us, and there are a couple other crew guys here today to help, and so Ginger is on, tilting her head so that the camera can’t miss her seductive smile as she replies, “I know. I can’t wait for you to fuck me.”

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