Girlvert: A Porno Memoir (10 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Ass Herpes

T
yler
and I had to start grooming like professionals. Every couple of days, we would take turns shaving each other’s ass. He would take a shower and soap up between his legs and butt cheeks and bend over. I would help him spread it open and glide a razor up and down the area. Everybody in porno shaved their pubic and butt hair and we wanted to fit in. Everyone said it was much cleaner to be hairless. It must have been helpful to some degree because we’d never heard of anyone having a case of crabs on set.

I shaved my vagina a little at first, but not much. The stubble on my twat was much more disgusting than any amount of hair could be. So, I let mine stay, but I trimmed it with a pair of eyebrow scissors to keep it nice and short. Guys I fucked told me I had nice hair. Their opinions meant everything to me. My self worth has always depended on what men have or have
not
said to me—determining how attractive I feel.

Tyler became really self-conscious about his body hair as soon as he’d done a few scenes. Some girl called him Sasquatch during one shoot. He bought an electric trimmer for his legs because he thought it was too effeminate for him to completely shave those. Many men in porno had shaved arms and legs. It scared Tyler to trust me with the razor. I am a little rough with sharp objects, such as knives and scissors. My moves are more abrupt than delicate or careful. Twice, when Tyler was bent over with cheeks spread, I accidentally nicked his hole. He screamed and snapped straight upright, swinging the shower curtain in my face.

“Aaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh!! You cut me! I can’t believe you cut me! Get away from me.”

I would laugh at him. Not for the fact he was bleeding from his butthole, but because he was scared of me. “Ooops! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that, I swear!” I’d cover my face with my hand so he wouldn’t see my amusement.

“You think this is funny? You’re sick!” he would shriek at me from within the pink-tiled shower. I peeked inside and laughed even more at the sight of him huddling in fear under the stream of hot water.

I cut his balls, too. On a different occasion. He wanted to try my way of grooming. Instead of shaving his ball sack, Tyler wanted to just snip the longer hairs, so it would be more natural looking. I was flattered because he wanted his pubes to mirror my style, and also because he was going to trust me with a sharp utensil again. I’d ruined my shot with the razor on his ass for the last time when I went over a little red bump and skinned it off. There was blood.

In our purple and pink bathroom, Tyler stood naked with his legs apart and his fingers lifting his balls. This would be no problem. “I do it all the time to myself, it’s easy,” I reassured him. The eyebrow trimmers were in my firm grip and I began to snip the blonde pubic hair. He let out whimpers of cowardice every time I got too close to the skin. I scoffed at him. He had to put one of his legs up on the toilet for me to get in between his ass and sack. In porn, this position is called standing doggy. This was the trickiest part of all, the taint. It was dark under there and I couldn’t really see. I didn’t think it was all that important, so I just cut without looking. I did it all the time to myself, and I was fine.

“Ooooooowwwwww, not again! Psycho! Get the hell away from me with those!” Tyler jumped away. I’d been kneeling on the floor to get a good angle. One of his hands gripped what was left of his genitalia, the other swatted at me.

I looked at what I’d done. The skin on his ball sack had a half-inch long cut on the left side. It was near the bottom and dripping blood. My eyebrow scissors had blood on them. From then on, Tyler shaved his own ass and balls, without my help whatsoever. It’s actually quite easy to do yourself. I managed to shave my butt solo just fine by feeling for the stubble and going slow. I imagine that’s what every person (who has ever shaved their own butt crack) already knows.

One afternoon, Tyler called me into the bathroom. Maybe he had forgiven me for my clumsiness and was going to give me another try with the blades. Something about grooming him got me off. I liked it, similar to how monkeys care for each other. The intimacy was primal.

“Ori, what’s this?” He bent over and spread his butt cheeks wide with both hands. “It hurts. I don’t know, I think it just started. What does it look like?”

I lowered my face down, really close to his asshole. Nothing struck me as being odd. “I don’t know, Tyler. What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. I just want to know what it looks like right there. Is there something? Like a rash or something? Do you think we caught something again? Is it herpes?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t see any bumps, but it is kind of red.” I was concerned, but not in a fret like him. His butt just looked like he’d wiped it too hard too much. “Don’t worry. If you have something, then I probably have it, too. It’s okay.” A rare moment of equanimity on my part.

“I hope not! Do you feel anything? It probably came from you, because you’ve done more scenes than me! You’ve been with way more guys than I have girls.”

So much for composure. I started crying. Now I was the one who brought herpes into our lives. First it was gonorrhea and chlamydia, and now herpes. Tyler was convinced of it, and the guilt felt heavy enough to bury me underground. Then Tyler leaned down to where I knelt on the bathroom floor. It was a tiny space, but he squeezed his tall body around me and put his arms around my sobbing shoulders.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s not all your fault. I could have gotten it from one of those nasty chicks I’ve fucked. Don’t cry. It doesn’t matter who gave it to whom. Please, baby, don’t be sad.”

I stripped down and he checked my ass for anything unusual. There was some redness around my butthole. That was normal though. My asshole got pounded a few times a week by large cocks. It was bound to have a fair amount of tenderness. There wasn’t enough irritation to tell what was going on in my butt. We did do cocaine every night, so the bathroom was frequently used, too.

Tyler would not be pacified by just having me look at his problem. We did the right thing and went back to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation clinic. For a medical facility, it was filthy. The floor was always dirty and sometimes there were junkies there getting clean needles. It smelled sour. Other medical offices smelled like pressed linen and the air had a cold crispness, like the carnation cooler in a florist’s shop. Our adult clinic was dusty and warm. A giant birdcage with a green macaw was a fixture in the waiting room. The workers were visibly flustered and held back nothing when it came to expressing how tired they were or how annoyed they felt. As untidy as the place was, we were all very lucky to have it. The people who ran it did so because they cared. If it weren’t for AIM, who knows how many more cases of HIV would have infected the adult community? They even helped drug addicts with rehabilitation resources, in addition to giving out clean rigs. You can go in crying, bleeding, yelling, high, dripping in green stuff, and they will help you. No matter how ornery they can sometimes be, the people at AIM truly care about the talent and all of their fucked-up drama. The poor staff is flawed and criticized, abused and taken for granted every day. They are not superheroes, just superb human beings when all is said and done. They were heroes to us. They do a job that I never fucking want to do. Listening to so many problems and flaky people, trying to heal them and send them back to the industry, prepped to get their next infection. It’s a thankless toil. Damn it, we needed AIM.

The alternatives to risky porno sex are not promising. The Los Angeles county bureaucracy wants to enforce safer sex, but people won’t want to watch it, download it, or buy it. Condom requirements? I don’t think anyone will shoot in Los Angeles anymore if condoms become mandatory. No swallowing? The SoCal adult film industry would collapse. The dream will be over. The Truffula Trees will all be gone, and the Lorax will disappear, too. Fly off one day by the seat of his pants.

Aside from the previous STDs, we regularly tested for HIV and hepatitis. Last time we’d gone to get tested for HIV, we were hassled by a wife of the late, legendary porn star John Holmes, who died of AIDS in the eighties. She worked drawing blood at AIM. A good handful of aging, retired porn stars worked at the clinic. She could see that Tyler and I were high on coke when we came in. We also would take turns doing bumps of it in the bathroom when we had to piss in a cup.

This woman did not like addicts coming in high to AIM. “YOU KNOW, COCAINE IS A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE DRUG.” She squeezed my arm hard, tied it off with a strip of rubber, and slammed the needle into my vein. The blood filled up the plastic vial. The woman snatched a nearby cotton ball from a jar. Her skinny fingers grabbed me around the elbow, and she pressed the cotton ball firmly over the blood spot from the needle. She sharply threw the needle into the biohazard trashcan. I got up as fast as I could from the seat. Tyler looked at me with a nervous smile. He had a way of puffing his lips out bigger than normal when he got uneasy. He flopped down in the plastic chair, like a big kid would.

“COCAINE IS HIGHLY ADDICTIVE. IT RUINS PEOPLE’S LIVES. IT’S DANGEROUS. YOU CAN CATCH DISEASES AND SPREAD THEM IN THE INDUSTRY AND TO PARTNERS OUTSIDE OF THE BUSINESS. I HAVE KNOWN SOME HORRIBLE COCAINE ADDICTS IN ALL MY YEARS IN THE BUSINESS.” The woman’s bedside manner only grew worse. She pinched Tyler with those bony fingers, using both hands to squeeze his arm. She found a vein without a problem. That should have made her relax. At least we weren’t shooting anything up. She had seen it all with drug addicts, albums of bad memories. Her own dead husband had prostituted himself for drugs and had contracted HIV. Before he died, John Holmes knowingly had sex with other porno performers and could have spread it to many scene partners.

The woman got this faraway look in her eyes and stabbed Tyler with the needle. I saw it jam in, poking the skin hard. Tyler looked at me and took a deep breath. He was still skittish about needles at the time. This was his worst nightmare. When the blood container had filled up, she yanked the needle out. A cotton ball and a large piece of masking tape were wrapped around the blood spot. Tyler jumped up and stormed out the door. He needed a cigarette.

When we returned to AIM to get Tyler’s ass rash checked, we saw the main lady, a very wonderful woman named Sharon who was an ex-porn star turned doctor and who devoted her medical career to keeping the porno industry workers free of AIDS.

Sharon showed Tyler and me to the examination room. It was an eight-by-six-foot space with a gynecological table covered in butcher paper. There were posters on the wall of syphilis and genital warts. Tyler pulled his pants off and climbed up on the table. He got on all fours in a receiving doggy position and looked down at his hands.

“Do I have herpes?” he gulped.

Sharon pulled a light over to his rear and looked closely at the affected area. She had a flashlight, too, to be thorough. “Well, I don’t see anything that looks like herpes. You just have some sort of a rash. It is red and irritated. But I don’t think it’s a breakout.” She snapped off the light and put her flashlight down. She was so calm, a breath of fresh air.

Tyler stood up. “You don’t think it’s herpes? Then what could it be? Why is my ass sore?”

We both looked at her as if she were a great oracle about to speak. Like she was a Greek goddess. Goddess Sharon: patron protector of our private parts. “It could be a few things. Have you changed your soap or laundry detergent in the last few days? Or it could be an allergy to a fabric—how about new clothes? What about food? Maybe you ate something you had a reaction to.” She was so nonchalant; it was exactly what we needed, her soothing tones to rid us of the hypochondria.

I piped up, “What about toilet paper? Could it be from that?” I had just remembered that Tyler had recently insisted we buy the environmental “green” toilet paper from Whole Foods. We’d had it for about a week. It was rough and coarse, unlike the usual pink and fragranced kind we bought. I hated it. The stuff rubbed my ass raw after anal shoots.

“Definitely. We’ll test you both for herpes today anyway. But I don’t think that’s what’s on your butt. I’m pretty sure of it. Okay?” She left us in the room to soak it all in. What was on his ass wasn’t a case of herpes, but a wiping rash from recycled toilet paper. If we weren’t such cokeheads we probably wouldn’t have gotten a rash. Less coke equals less shitting equals less wiping. Tyler pulled up his pants and let out a sigh of relief.

Our tests came back a few days later. The rash was indeed due to the toilet paper, but we weren’t spared. We both were negative for herpes simplex two; both of us were positive for herpes simplex one. By the book, it meant we had the kind spread by mouth, not by genitals. None of that simplex stuff means anything in real life. We had the virus and that was that. Just because it originated in the mouth on someone doesn’t mean it can’t be spread elsewhere. A person can have simplex one in the genitals and the mouth. It just depends on where you breakout. Herpes is everywhere.

Chapter Sixteen

A Night with Max Hardcore

M
ax
Hardcore movies were the first porno that Tyler and I ever watched together. The night after we first walked out of World Modeling as Trent and Ashley, Tyler gave me a crash course in his favorite porn stars. He found Max Hardcore’s website and bought a three-day membership for $7.95. An investment for our future. I had to learn how to do porn the right way, like the girls in Max Hardcore’s movies.

For three days, I sat on Tyler’s lap at our computer and we watched the girls on the site get ass-fucked and ass-fisted. Their heads were upside down, they were throat-fucked until they vomited. Max Hardcore girls wore little schoolgirls’ outfits with hooker heels. They wore their hair in pigtails and baby barrettes. Max pounded each one in the ass, hard, and made the holes gape when he pulled his dick out. Max pissed on their faces and into their mouths. Each girl gulped down his pee. These “little girls,” these women, all had exaggerated amounts of makeup and lipstick on. They looked like clowns.

Tyler said, “Look, these girls are hot! You’ve got to be nasty. It’s fucking sexy.”

Tyler was totally turned on by the extremity of the sex. He also showed me movies starring Belladonna and Gauge, his top two favorite porn stars. Gauge
was
a little girl, quite petite (under five feet tall), with big, innocent blue eyes. Tyler showed me a tape of her sucking a big cock and gagging on it. She threw up during the blow job, then kept going, right back to sucking it. Belladonna took on four guys in her movie. She smiled as she got her ass fucked and eagerly went after each cock. The guys were mean and rough with her, but she seemed to love it. Both girls were quite pretty.

With Tyler’s guidance, my pornographic style would be influenced by the grand masters: Belladonna, Gauge, and Max Hardcore. Each performer stood out not only because of the sex, but because they all looked good. They weren’t fake. The girls didn’t have Tijuana boob jobs. Belladonna, Gauge, and Max Hardcore were actually attractive
and
doing really dirty things. When I saw them, I thought,
If I could look half as hot as these chicks fucking, that would be great!
Max was a blue-eyed and blonde-haired cowboy with an even tan. He was a little older, but he had a strong body and an incredibly animated persona. He smiled at the girls as they were being defiled. He praised them for being whores that liked to throw up. Max was the most memorable man to watch in a porno.

Max had an office right next door to World Modeling. He wasn’t in it when Tyler and I signed up to do porn. Otherwise, I think I would have been booked to do a scene with him on my first day. Tyler really wanted me to work with Max. I did scenes for a lot of different people. Several of them told me not to work with Max.

“Don’t do a scene for him. He’s dangerous.”

“He once had a girl come to his house to do a ‘test shoot.’ Do you know what he did? He fucked her in the ass for three hours and then said it wasn’t part of the scene. And he didn’t pay her!”

“Stay away from that guy Max Hardcore. It’s bad for your career. Once you’re a ‘Max girl,’ people just won’t hire you as much.”

“You’ll never be in a Vivid movie once you’ve worked for Max.”

Tyler and I were impressionable, so we heeded the advice. I didn’t pursue doing a scene for Max Hardcore. Max remained one of Tyler’s idols, and we both continued to admire his scenes, but I was afraid to work with him after hearing so much about what a horrible person he was.

All of what we had heard about Max Hardcore could not be further from the truth. Tyler and I ended up meeting Max at his house. He was letting some other director shoot some scenes there, and Tyler and I happened to be the talent. Max was hospitable. He smiled and invited us into his office to watch some movies of him pissing all over some European girls. We really hit it off. Max became our friend that day. I still wasn’t going to shoot for him, but we wanted to hang out socially. The fact that I didn’t want to be in one of his videos never got in the way of our friendship.

It’s an experience unlike any other to go out with Max Hardcore. First of all, Max Hardcore doesn’t break character when he’s not in his movies, like the rest of us porn stars do. Though it’s not his real name, he lives his life as Max. He wears a big yellow cowboy hat at all times. His jacket is a big denim and leather bomber that says
“TEAM MAX”
on the back in huge letters. Tyler and I accompanied him to Universal City Walk, Sky Bar, and the Hollywood Hustler store. Max brought a few skanky whores with him at all times, his “Max Girls.” He toted them around in public, and they also were in character. They were skeleton skinny and wore tiny schoolgirl outfits, ankle socks with ruffles, and platform hooker heels. It was a spectacle each time we went out with him. Men scrambled to get Max’s autograph and to worship him. Little children would just stare at the whores and wonder who Max was. He looked like a superhero.

Tyler of course loved it and wanted me to dress like a schoolgirl prostitute when we went out. It didn’t look as charming on me as the Max Girls. Max Girls were all size 00. I couldn’t get down to below a three, even on the heaviest amounts of cocaine and bulimia. Max Girls smoked crystal meth and threw up their food all the time. When it comes to bingeing and purging, I’m only a part-timer. I could never be as skinny as the Max girls. It would kill me.

Max invited us to spend a night at his love shack. We were all going to continue partying after leaving the Sky Bar one night. I just wanted to go home. Tyler wanted to go back to Max’s place so we could have a threesome with him. It was a dream of Tyler’s to fuck me with Max Hardcore. He couldn’t believe I was being so selfish by refusing. I got my way, despite Tyler’s pouting. I was sick of being so porno and hanging around with Max’s whores. It can be a tiresome act. I don’t like to be in character, so to speak, twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t want my entire social life to revolve around sex. Tyler thought differently.

Thinking we were going to settle in for the night, I turned our little CD player on at a low volume. I put on Radiohead’s
The Bends
and tended to a huge mess of clothes on the floor. Tyler went on the computer in the kitchen and shut the door. I thought maybe he was doing his dick exercises. He had joined one of those websites for penis enlargement, and would shut himself in the kitchen from time to time. He forbade me to watch. The exercises involved many humiliating movements. Pelvic thrusting and fondling, mostly. I had no idea that Tyler had gone off to the kitchen because he was still mad at me for not wanting to go to Max’s. When he opened the door again, I could see that he was pissed.

“Why can’t we just go over to Max’s? I just want to go party with him and get a little crazy. Why don’t you want to? Do you only like to do it for the money now?” That old line. The color of his eyes had darkened, and I prepared myself for more mean things to come.

We had an entire eight ball of coke and half of it was dumped out on a dinner plate. This is how we always did coke at home. We never ate our dinner on plates. Dinner served in our home was typically in white powder form. Using a credit card, Tyler cut small, thin lines and sniffed them up with a cut-up drinking straw from Jack in the Box. You could always tell whose lines they were by the size. Mine were always thick and long.

Tyler knew he could get to me. He knew I was confused about what I was doing with my body. I was at odds with myself over the sex for money. Was it wrong? Was it more wrong than other things we do for money? Was I a whore? Was I no good? I asked him all these things daily, and I asked them of myself as well. The answers remained elusive. I wanted to be a good person, inside. I wasn’t sure if I could be a good person anymore because of the porn and drugs that consumed my life, even though I enjoyed them.

“You never want to do anything crazy anymore with anyone else, Ori! The only time you like it is when you’re getting paid. Admit it! You’ve got the whole hooker mentality, don’t you?”

“No I don’t! I do get crazy! I do like sex and not just when someone’s paying me!” We were going into another full-fledged argument about whether or not I still liked off-camera sex with other people, and I wanted to outsmart Tyler. If I lost the argument, I would have to give in to what he wanted: I would have to have sex with whomever Tyler wanted me to. It was all a game. This was the reality of my relationship, and Tyler always won.

“Well, then how come you never want to do anything anymore? We hardly ever go over to Colby’s house to have fun, now that we’re in porn. All you do is scenes! You don’t have as much anal at home. You just do it when you get paid. Porn is changing you, Ori! You’re not the same person as when we started.” He shook his head at me, like it was hard to look at who I’d become.

“We do still party! I thought you wanted me to make money for us, right? Don’t call me a hooker! I’m not! I still want to do crazy things, and I do want to do anal at home! I just get worn out and I’m tired after the scenes. What am I supposed to do? Just want to fuck all the time?” It was all so frustrating because the only explanation I had for why we didn’t fuck our friends as much had to do with the fact that porn was hard work. Tyler used my “excuse” to call me a hooker. Only hookers thought of sex as work. I must be one.

“See! You just think of sex as a job now! You should still want to come home and fuck after work. It shouldn’t matter! Now I know you’re only doing this for the money. You’re not really into sex, are you? I can’t believe you’re so fake, Ori! We shouldn’t be in this business if you’re in it for all the wrong reasons.” Tyler cut out a few more lines, threatening to quit porn because I was turning into a prostitute.

I was too coked out and confused to argue anymore. I couldn’t figure out my feelings, and the drugs made me unable to articulate what I wanted to say.

“Okay, Ori, if you’re not a hooker and you still like fucking for fun, then
prove
it to me.” Checkmate. “Let’s go to Max’s. Tonight. I’ll call him right now and we’ll drive over and party with him.”

We forgot all about the risk of getting DUIs and headed to Alta Dena. All of the fighting and the drugs made us like caged rats. Tyler wanted to take a drink in the car. I freaked out and made him put all the booze in the trunk. Tyler did bump after bump of cocaine in the passenger seat as I drove us to Max’s house, and, to rub it all in, he even smoked inside the car. It was near 3:00 a.m., and we had a thirty-minute drive ahead of us. I could no longer drive on coke the way I used to. My pupils were huge. Every streetlight and road reflector was a bright white blur. There was no way my eyes could focus correctly. There were trails of white light everywhere slicing the darkness. Then, it was pitch black out on the 210 east except for the headlights on my little Toyota Corolla and the cherry on Tyler’s burning cigarette hitting the asphalt. We were the only ones on the big, desolate freeway. The rest of the eight ball lay tucked safely inside of Tyler’s pocket. The partially consumed bottle of Absolut rolled around in the trunk.

Max Hardcore lives at the top of Alta Dena, a charming and picturesque neighborhood in scenic Pasadena—one of the top ten cities to raise your children in. Close enough to metropolitan Los Angeles to take advantage of city life without any of the grime, Alta Dena is nice and safe. The most extreme pornography I have ever watched is filmed in this lovely little town. Max’s house stands out like a magnificent fluorescent piss stain, a multi-million dollar, bright yellow three-story home with Miami-inspired architecture among streets full of mock Tudor-style mansions.

The streets in Max’s neighborhood are terribly winding and woodsy. I could hardly maneuver the car around each dark corner. Tyler kept calling Max, over and over. No one answered. It was past three o’clock. Was everyone in bed? We finally found the monster of a house and parked on the street in front of it. We sat in the car feeling like fools. Tears of “I didn’t want to come in the first place” started welling up in my eyes, but I didn’t dare speak. Marching up the steps of the quarter-mile-long driveway, we both continued to call Max’s phone numbers.

“Let’s just ring the doorbell until he answers,” Tyler demanded, refusing to give up on his dream. “We are not turning around and going home.”

We got up to the door and ferociously rang the bell. We switched places for ten minutes straight, just poking the button over and over. I knocked and pounded on the front door, and Tyler yelled, “Max! Max! Let us in! You told us to come over! Max! Max! Hello!”

Then, it opened. Max appeared, just like that. There was a sudden burst of light and energy when we saw him. He was standing in front of us, smiling and happy. “Come on in, guys! You finally made it,” he boomed. Max wasn’t a big fellow, but his personality was huge. He’s actually a little bit shorter than Tyler and has a normal-sized cock. I guess it just goes to show that a huge cock isn’t necessary to do quite a bit of damage. Normal is all you need.

The party was always happening at Max’s house. He was up drinking, and all the lights were on. Since the place was so big, it’s hard to really say if anyone else was there. There could have been a family of four living on one of the several stories. Tyler and I were led to the bar on the patio. Max whipped out his guitar and began strumming along to the music blasting on the stereo. Tyler mixed a couple of strong cocktails with the vodka we brought. Max pulled out a bottle of champagne. He kept a special fridge stocked full of champagne for the whores. I sipped on my glass before Tyler handed me the bag of coke. I was dying for some. I needed to relax and do some lines. I had to get much, much higher in order to prepare myself for the night to come. Almost a whole gram dumped out of the bag and onto the counter. Fuck it. I sucked it all up, from a pile. Why even bother cutting lines anymore? It was all going to the same place.

I did an enema, too. I had packed a small enema bottle in my purse. This is what we came for. Tyler wanted us to party with Max. So did I. I had to get crazy and prove to my boyfriend that the porn scenes didn’t come before our real sex lives. I still wanted to fuck for free and take it in the ass for fun.