Girlvert: A Porno Memoir (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Performer of the Year

J
anuary
of 2004 brought me back to Las Vegas for the big porn convention and awards show. JM Productions, who’d asked me to sign autographs at their booth the year before, wanted me again. The company was run by a husband and wife team named Jeff and Sandy. I starred in several of their videos, in a series called
Girlvert
. I had a recurring role as the Girlvert character, an angry, abusive, young girl who forces other girls into rough sex. It’s the best work I have done in my porno career.

Girlvert
won for best continuing series at the awards show. Then, I won porno’s highest honor: The Female Performer of the Year Award. I did not expect it whatsoever. I always thought that if I ever won anything, it would have been a newcomer trophy. Instead, I beat all of the best girls in the business. I cried at the podium and couldn’t think of anything profound to say. Despite being rewarded for so ridiculous a thing—fucking—my emotions ran surprisingly high. At one time I’d been choked out, but now I was purely choked up. It was my moment for it all to seem worth it. I was the best girl in porn.

Afterward, Sandy, Jeff, Kris, and I rushed up to our hotel rooms at the Venetian. We toasted to my enormous achievement. Kris popped open two bottles of champagne that were waiting in our room on ice. They’d all had faith I would win something, but our expectations had been blown away. However, my bright minute in the big porno sun was soon blackened. The champagne had barely made it into my glass when two friends, Fulton and Shasta, showed up at the hotel room door. They hadn’t made it to the awards show to see my big moment. They were too cracked out. Shasta was actually one of the girls I was up against for Performer of the Year.

Here I was, trying to celebrate, and these two ghouls came haunting. Fulton always looked like he was going to die at any second. He was corpse-like, grey and clammy. The bones on his face stuck out and his eyes were sunk in. His nose ran with snot and a tint of blood. Only his unshaven stubble gave contrast to his gaunt complexion. Shasta was hanging on Fulton, barely able to stand up on her own. Black eyeliner and mascara caked her wrecked cheeks. Her nose was a bright red target in the middle of her pale white face.

“We need to get her to the hospital! She’s really sick. I’m going to take her or call the ambulance. Can we come in and call the front desk?” Fulton was stuttering as he helped Shasta into the room.

I took a drink of my champagne. “Sure. Take her to the hospital. I hope you’re okay.” Pissed off, I was flat when I spoke. My lack of sympathy was fueled by my inflated ego from winning the industry’s highest honor, and I wanted to bask in it for a while. They needed to get out of my hotel room if they weren’t going to participate in the celebration.

Shasta went into the bathroom and partially shut the door. Kris and I just looked at each other. He smiled at me and I rolled my eyes. We heard a nose honk and blow out some snot. Then Shasta’s loud and obnoxious voice shrieked, “Oh shit! Dog, I’m fuckin’ bleeding! Do you have something?”

I may have been annoyed, but I wasn’t heartless. I went into the bathroom to help her. We applied a towel to her bleeding nose. She washed her hands and I brought her a sweatshirt. It was a cherished blue Rip Curl from my cousin. Every time I put it on, I had good vibes. I wanted to send them on to Shasta so she could calm the fuck down. The night would soon be over, and all of the awards-show excitement, too.

A month before the convention, Shasta had announced her retirement. Another boyfriend of hers was a dealer, so she didn’t need porn anymore. She and Fulton had borrowed five hundred dollars from Kris only a week before driving to Vegas. Their big scheme was to buy a kilo of cocaine and sell it to all of our friends at the different parties. They came to Vegas a few days before anyone attending the convention had arrived. Shasta thought that one of her sugar daddies had booked a room for her at Mandalay Bay. It was supposed to be “a fuckin’ penthouse suite or the presidential, dog…” She must have been delusional because no one booked anything for her. She and Fulton stayed in some economy roach motel until Kris and I arrived. In the meantime, the kilo was diminishing like sand through the hourglass. For five days straight, they consumed day and night. It was nasty shit, too, really low-grade stuff that smelled like kerosene.

Turns out that Shasta blew out her nose. In non-druggie terms, it means her nose was terminally stuffed up, and her sinuses were infected. She also had a horrendously swollen throat. Fulton had to resort to blowing the stuff up Shasta’s asshole to get her high. Her asshole was the only unblocked passageway into her body.

Kris let the two stay in his room. It soon smelled like a dirty hippie’s sleeping bag. Cigarette and pot smoke coated every upholstered surface in the room. Kris had to move his clothes out just to keep them from getting a contact reek.

Upon my return to LA, I was contacted by a couple of porno columnists about my big win. One guy paid me five hundred dollars to endorse his porn star vacation package on Howard Stern. I still needed money, desperately, so I flew to New York with him. We arrived at the radio station before dawn. It was the coldest January day that New York City had seen in seventy years, and I forgot to bring a jacket. I wore lingerie under my jeans and sweatshirt. I was dead certain Howard Stern would not like my body because I wasn’t super skinny or big-busted. My figure was even on the chubby side, for me. The holidays had just passed, and I had some winter blubber to work off. What a relief it was when I didn’t get ridiculed on the air. I was quiet as possible so it wouldn’t take too long. It was being taped for the E! Channel as well. I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. I wasn’t really Howard’s guest; I was just this porno girl who was supposed to talk about some special trip. Nobody acted like I was important because of the award. It was a self-contained credential, relevant only in porno circles.

I was still broke, shot out, and uncertain about what the future held. The only difference is that I had a brand new big plastic bookend that read “Female Performer of the Year.”

Becoming a contract girl was the highest standing for a porno girl. “Contract Girl” is a title given to performers who are exclusive with one company. No one else can have you. You’re taken. That company becomes your husband or daddy, and your ass belongs to him. Contract girls are the stars of their movies. They’re on the front of the cases for all of their films and get to do all the promotional appearances. Most importantly, they don’t have to worry about where the next gig is going to come from or if there will be enough money to pay the rent. Contracted means guaranteed. You are set. Other porno girls envy you and try to emulate you in the hopes of getting a contract for themselves. Everyone in the industry admires the contract girls.

After Vegas, Jeff and Sandy asked me to be the contract girl for JM Productions. There was no actual written document, but we had a verbal agreement that I would perform in no less than one and no more than three scenes per month. Their company would pay me a $5,500 monthly salary. They also financed a new car for me, and paid the five hundred dollar monthly installments. The car was the most exciting thing for me at the time, a blue BMW, a sports car! It’s cheesy, but I felt like I had it all. My life was the best it had ever been. I lived all by myself in my Hollywood Hills apartment. I was the best performer in pornographic movies. I was driving a BMW. I was a contract girl.

I always wanted more than what was offered. My entire motivation in life was based on my incapability to be satisfied. I wanted more money, more attention, more praise, and more love. With Kris, I had a constant source of longing. Kris simply replaced Tyler. Everything in my life seemed like a shallow replacement for a sense of contentment that I had never achieved. None of it made me happy, just temporarily high. Kris fell into this category, too. My little successes made Kris bitter and jealous. Because I was young and drugged out, I blamed myself for his insecurities. Even with my newfound success, I felt worthless.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

HIV Breaks Out

A
pril
of 2004 was the beginning of a terrible panic in the porn industry. Three girls and one guy contracted HIV while doing scenes. The guy caught it first while filming in Brazil and then transmitted it to the girls back in California. His name was Daryl and I’d done one of my first scenes with him. The testing in Brazil is sketchy at best. Producers go down there to shoot because the girls will do scenes for bargain basement prices. The cost is dirt cheap because the talent pool there is dirty and cheap, but with much bigger risks.

Daryl gave HIV to the three girls unknowingly. When he’d returned from Brazil he still had a clean AIM test, good for thirty days. Because he only spent half the month shooting in Brazil, he went to work right away doing scenes back at home. There was now a hole in the system.

My contract agreement with JM Productions was finalized mere weeks before the HIV crisis. It was scary, and I felt lucky. I could have easily been one of those girls. They were infected doing the kind of hardcore sex scenes I was known for, anal and ass creampies. Just a few months earlier, two other guys had shot their loads up my ass. I’d needed the money, badly. If I hadn’t since come under contract, and someone had asked me to do one of those scenes with Daryl, I would have.

All of the producers, directors, and performers had to halt production for a few weeks while a quarantine list was put together. Some companies took the moral high ground and said that they would no longer put internal creampies in their movies. Everyone who wanted to be viewed as an important player in porno made the declaration that anyone who shot during this time was an immoral criminal. A few others announced that they would produce condom-only films from then on. In my opinion, it was quite lame the way so many voices wanted to be heard on record about their “safety.” I don’t advocate sleaziness or those who disregard the health of others by any means, but some of these people said and did things just to make themselves look better. If we all really cared about the health of porno actors, then why would we shoot in Brazil in the first place? Or be allowed more than one scene per HIV test?

My contract company wanted me to shoot regardless. Kris freaked out. He was supposed to be shooting his first movie for Vice Seraph Productions, but was postponing it because of the scare. It was important to Kris to do everything that Vice Seraph told him to. It was his equivalent of winning the Lotto. His dream job was to produce porno movies with this company. He hoped to get rich and famous with the new deal. Vice Seraph had quickly become more important to him than me.

I called Jeff and told him I was too scared to shoot any scenes.

“Look, no one in the movie is on the quarantine list. You’ve got to get this movie done by the end of the month, or it will screw things up for us. I can’t tell you what to do, but you will be fine. Trust me. We’ve dealt with this before.” He’d been in porn a lot longer than me, and it had happened before. Two girls who were popular in the 1990s caught HIV from a male performer in 1998. That incident is what prompted mandatory PCR DNA HIV testing for performers.

I could not stop thinking that it could have been me. Over the two years I’d been performing in sex scenes, I came down with chlamydia and gonorrhea six times. Not to mention the herpes and bacterial vaginitis infections I was constantly plagued with. My body was an STD cesspool, exploding at times with outbreaks. If I had kept up my usual number of scenes around the time of the HIV outbreak, there was a strong chance I would have been infected. I signed the contract in the nick of time. I felt saved by JM, in a way.

I had to face the fact that what I did for a living was dangerous. Thus far I’d chosen not to think about the risk and consequences of catching something terminal like HIV. All of the STDs I’d come down with were fixed with a dose of antibiotics. Just because we tested did not mean we were fully protected.

“Okay. I’ll shoot it next week,” I finally agreed. I talked to Sandy about it afterward. She was the kind one at JM. I could always talk to her, and she never got frustrated and pissed off like Jeff did. Sandy was also friends with, and former employer of, one of the girls who’d contracted HIV back in 1998, a hardcore anal girl. As their contract girl she was the star of many JM movies. Sandy explained to me in detail about what happened and about the business itself, and how now JM took extra precautions to make sure no one on the current quarantine list was linked to anyone I would be working with. But porno isn’t any safer than the last person you fucked.

I had to live up to my obligation if I wanted to stay on as the JM contract girl. All four scenes were shot in one day, and it was a blast. I was supposed to be the director, but I didn’t really have any responsibility. My directing consisted of being disruptive and laughing so hard during the sex that I was asked to leave the room. I didn’t take it seriously at all. Porno movies as entertainment really shouldn’t be taken seriously.

A lot of people do take them seriously.

Kris was one of those people. Ever since he became the newest director for Vice Seraph, he started taking himself most, most seriously. He insulted the movies I did for JM, calling them garbage and bottom-of-the-barrel. I tried to let it roll off, but it hurt. When he put down the work I was doing, he was putting me down. Kris certainly succeeded in making me feel like less of a person. The
Ass Cream Pies
movie I did for Anabolic back in December became a huge issue.

“You lied to me,” he said. “You never told me it was an internal pop! I have a right to know these things, since we’re together. Aren’t we?”

“Yes, of course we’re together! I’m sorry, I just didn’t think to tell you all the details. You hate hearing about them!” The internal ass cum shots became a safety issue. It was accepted as the likeliest method of contracting HIV. Nobody was concerned about this six months before, including me. None of us had any fear of ass creampies.

“Well, I just can’t stand secrets, Ori!”

I groveled to him. I knew I could spread a disease to him. It was a horrible guilt to live with everyday. He didn’t do scenes like my scenes. I was the dirty one. It would be my fault if we got sick from HIV, or any other STD.

It’s not like STDs suddenly sprung from nowhere. They had always been present, and we had elected to ignore them. And anyway, I could as easily catch them from him as he from me. Kris could be so condescending that it was almost like I had to keep reminding myself—and him—that he worked in porno, too.

Right around the time of the
Ass Cream Pies
argument, Kris had moved into my apartment for a month. He’d rented a big expensive downtown loft to live in, but it wasn’t ready. I offered my home as a temporary arrangement, and it was a temporary hell for us both. Kris was always cranky and spiteful toward me. My attitude was still immature and babyish. I was still only twenty-two. We weren’t getting along at all.

Stress brought on a massive herpes outbreak to Kris’s genital region. We went to see a doctor together. He said that he’d never had herpes before and that he must have gotten it from me. I assumed responsibility. I’d been tested, and I did have it. I apologized over and over for it. Kris accepted and allowed me to comfort and care for him. I held his hand dotingly even as the doctor took one look at the big red blisters on his private area and said, “Oh, no. This isn’t your first outbreak! You’ve had this before.”

I did love being the JM contract girl. I cannot stress it enough: That contract probably saved me from catching HIV. I was damn grateful I was one of the chosen few deemed special enough for a contract. I only had to perform in three scenes, at the most, per month. One of the reasons I wanted to be exclusive with JM was to not have to work as much. I thought it would improve my relationship with Kris. It didn’t. He refused to see what I had as something special. Though only a few each month, I was still doing scenes, and he was still insecure if I did even one. He didn’t want me to talk about my scenes, though it’s natural for couples to talk about work at the end of the day.

I wanted to talk about my JM scenes. The people I worked with were all crazy and something always went wrong. I was proud. I got used to the feeling from being with Tyler. He’d always bragged about my scenes and loved to dish about the craziness on set. Tyler encouraged me to do porn, almost too much. He only made me feel bad about it when he couldn’t perform with me.

As far as I was concerned, the only person who’d earned the right to be morally conflicted about my work was me. I couldn’t explain this to Kris. His ego was pushing so hard. He was changing from a party guy in his thirties into this electro-hip suave porno mogul. It was a sham. Kris wasn’t satisfied with being Kris anymore. He had to be
Kriss
. He started wearing AG jeans and buying tee shirts from Barney’s.
Kriss
was somebody.
Kriss
was a big-time porno producer. He was doing his best to reinvent himself, but I wouldn’t buy it. I’m all for people making money and buying nice things, but not for building up phony personas. I hated the image Kris/Kriss was creating. It was dishonest. I couldn’t stand the way he kissed the Vice Seraph people’s asses. When I called him out on his identity crisis, he would get defensive and withdrawn.

According to the new Kriss, I did the kind of porn that only low kinds of people do.
Trash
. It affected my enthusiasm for my scenes. Before Kris and I started dating, I was a confident and willing little chick. Now, I was insecure and depressed, hindered by my guilt. Kris didn’t like it when I fucked other guys, so I better not be into it. That would hurt his feelings, so I told myself I really wasn’t into it anymore.

I began to hate the sex. I dreaded the days I would have to shoot. The job that had given me such freedom to do what I wanted in life had turned ugly. I would still go to the gym, but it wasn’t for any reason but to keep my weight under control. Adding Xanax to my cocaine diet, I stayed in this debasing relationship and continued to wallow. I was miserable most of the time. I couldn’t tell what I hated more—myself or sex. These two hatreds fed one another.