Insatiable: Porn — a Love Story (15 page)

—Cashier’s a hot guy.

13
Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving at Mark Spiegler’s is everything you’d imagine it to be. Unorganized, vulgar, and everyone referring to each other as “whores” and “sluts.” The entire meal is store-bought, of course, since none of the twelve girls there cook.

I imagine when the rest of the world envisions a “porno agent,” a picture of someone identical to Spiegler comes to mind. By no means conventionally handsome, Spiegler is short, fat, and balding. He walks with a limp since his back surgery ten years ago. With his raspy voice and a heavy Jewish accent, people often mistake him as a New Yorker, rather than the Los Angeles native that he is. He never buys his own clothes, but the girls he has represented over the past twenty years have supplied him with an endless stock of black T-shirts with crude sayings written across the chest; “Fuck you you fucking fuck.” “Sluts always welcome.” “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness forgot about prostitutes.” That kind of thing.

He is my favorite man in the world.

“Are you wearing socks today? Is your shirt collared?” I called Spiegler before I headed over for the festivities. I’m pretty sure I call him more than any other girl he represents. At least three times a day, I call him to either gossip, whine, or get advice. If for none of those reasons, I’ll call just to hear his voice. If something were to happen to Spiegler, I’d just give up right then and there and hold my breath until I died. I would never say it out loud, but he’s my best friend.

“You shittin’ me? I’m wearing a shirt that says ‘Ride the Bangbus.’ I’m not wearin’ socks, this ain’t that fancy.”

I can always count on Spiegler’s outfit to tell me what the dress code will be. He owns one pair of socks, and he only wears them once a year, to the AVN Awards show. This past year, he attended his cousin’s funeral, so he had the opportunity to wear them twice. If Spiegler wears a collared shirt, it means I should probably wear a dress, or at least jeans with a nice top. A T-shirt and no socks, I can wear whatever I want.

I decided on wearing gray leggings with a white baseball shirt to my first Thanksgiving with my pimp. I use the term endearingly; he’s not technically my pimp. He only takes 10 percent of my earnings, instead of all of it. Even then, when I go to pay him at the end of each month, he always shaves a few hundred dollars off the total. Spiegler’s not in this for the money; he was already a self-made millionaire at the age of twenty. Representing us is more of a hobby, one that he takes very seriously and, oh, by the way, it happens to make him a ton of cash.

Spiegler’s house resembles what a hoarder’s home might look like if they had a housekeeper. Seemingly useless trinkets, papers, and boxes of unknown contents everywhere, but everything conveniently seems to have its place. I once asked him if there was any order to the mountain of loose papers on the floor of his bedroom.

“Yah,” he answered. “The old ones are at the bottom, the new ones are at the top.”

It’s hard to talk about the Spiegler Girls without sounding like a cult. There’s twenty-five of us in total, and we are the most hardcore girls in the industry. Ask anyone. Most porn agencies represent 100–150 girls each, but not Spiegler. He never exceeds his limit of twenty-five, and there’s always a waiting list. Often referred to as the “Ari Emanuel of Porn,” he only takes the cream of the crop. We aren’t the blond girls with all-fake-everything who don’t kiss on the mouth. You need a girl who does
everything
, and does it well, you call Spiegler.

Toni and I arrived just in time to overhear Spiegler yelling something about “Miscarriage Soup” in the living room.

“Are you guys talking about Vicky again?” I guessed as I walked in.

“Yah, Donna didn’t know she had another abortion,” Spiegler said, laughing from across the room. There is no limit to what is appropriate for conversation with him. Once information is sent out into the universe, anything is fair game.

I eagerly joined. “You’d think the girl would learn to stop letting dudes nut in her!”

Toni shook his head. The long afternoon of shit talking had begun. At home, Toni was the boss. But here, with the rest of the Spiegler Girls, this was my world.

Once we sat down to eat, the conversation didn’t get any more holiday-friendly.

“Is the stuffing vegan?” Pamela asked.

“Only if being in a turkey’s vagina for three hours is considered vegan,” Kelly smiled.

“Try this creamed corn,” Courtney said as she passed me a paper plate.

“Ahhh, I never get to eat corn.” It was true. Corn doesn’t digest in an aesthetically pleasing way. “Good thing none of us are shooting anal tomorrow,” I joked.

“Jasmine is!” Four girls chimed in unison, and everyone pointed at Jasmine and laughed.

Jasmine had just started shooting anal scenes two months ago. For a Spiegler Girl, she had waited an awfully long time. Starting anal is a very specific tactic in porn. It’s a weapon, and you need to pull it out at the exact right moment. You don’t want to start off doing anal right out the gate; being new, if you’re a good performer, everyone’s going to take notice of you anyway. You don’t want to wait too long, either, though—once you are off the “hot list,” you’re off of it for good. It won’t matter if you start getting fucked in the ass by elephants; no one is going to care.

The magic moment is when you are at the height of your career. You’ve probably been in the industry about a year or two, and the buzz around you is going strong. You were nominated for Best New Starlet last year for all the awards shows. All the big companies have already shot you a few times, but no one is sick of you yet.

That’s
when you play the anal card.

You’re already at the top, and starting anal scenes will extend your time there. After a year or so of that, you start DP (double penetration). And then gangbangs.

I swear, I could be a manager. I owe it all to Spiegler. He taught me everything I know about business.

In previous years, I had always gone home to New York City to spend the holiday with my parents, but this year I had a shoot the day before, and it wouldn’t have been worth it to fly back for just one day. My parents and I are close, but they, being traditionally Japanese, couldn’t care less about the actual meaning of Thanksgiving. It’s not fair to label them typical Japanese parents, though; relatively liberal, my father is a photographer, and my mom used to run a not-for-profit organization. They would rather me do something else with my life, something they could brag to their friends about, but in the end, they are happy I’m happy, and they accept what I choose to do for a living. Not going home for the holiday wasn’t a big deal.

Plus, I had that weird incident last year. Perhaps subconsciously, I was holding a grudge against Thanksgiving itself.

Spiegler loves telling my Thanksgiving molestation story, and this day was no exception.

“She’s talking about rape this and rape that all the time, and when it finally happens, she drops the ball!” No topic was off-limits when it came to a Spiegler joke.

“She like-a-da rape,” Jess added.

It’s a running joke that I have a rape fantasy. Don’t get me wrong, I love rough sex. I love a guy who can dominate me, make me push my comfort zones, and give me a light beating as I orgasm. But rape? No. I don’t even like sitting next to strangers on the subway.

“I don’t
have
a rape fantasy! It’s not a fucking rape fantasy if the rapist is a hot dude who cuddles with me after! You have so much to learn, Baby Jessie.” I threw a piece of cornbread at her as she laughed.

At nineteen, Jessie was the youngest of all of us, hence the nickname. I try not to think too much about the fact that I sometimes get paid to have sex with girls born in the nineties. It never really occurs to me as strange, until she questions my casual
My Girl
reference, and in response to my obvious answer, “You know, the Macaulay Culkin movie,” she looks even more puzzled.

On the other side of the spectrum, at thirty-six, Dana was the oldest of us. She’s also been with Spiegler the longest. I like to think she is the head of our sorority, and she is in an eternal state of hazing everyone around her. After a certain amount of time in porn, you earn the right to be a self-righteous, egotistical bitch. By default, there’s an ironic humor to it; we are shunned by pretty much every group of society. Without the self-deprecating-yet-condescending attitude, you’ll never make it. We’re a lot like she-males in that way.

We had finished our turkey and somehow went from a debate about rape fantasies to Spiegler retelling the story of how he trained his cat to flush the toilet, when Chris decided to announce he invited his girlfriend over. Chris is a photographer, who’s been in the business even longer than Spiegler. Living in the same building as each other, it only made sense he would stop by our orphans’ feast.

“Who’s your girlfriend?” Dana demanded.

“You guys are gonna love her. She’s bringing a few of her stripper friends over.” Chris took out his phone to find a picture of this supposed girlfriend.

“
Strippers?
” Laila exclaimed. “Ew.”

“Why is she bringing
strippers
?” I asked.

“She’s a dancer. So are her friends.” Chris was getting annoyed at our obvious judgment. “Watch this, she’s always goofin’ around her house.” He started to show us a video on his phone.

“Strippers are gross,” Veronica stated, ignoring the video with the rest of us.

“What, are they all gonna come dance for us?” Laila sneered, stink-face in full effect.

“Yah. Just like you’re all gonna gape your fuckin’ assholes. For them.” No one could get us off our high horses quite like Spiegler. I’d call him a pessimist, but he’d probably just turn around and tell me he’s a realist.

We couldn’t stop laughing. We were talking about strippers like they were Nazis or serial killers. They took their clothes off for a living. From the point of view of pretty much anyone on earth, we ourselves did much, much worse.

“I just hope they’re not intimidated by me,” Dana sighed.

Spiegler smiled as he watched us laugh. “Who wants pie? Let’s eat it before the
strippers
get here.”

Haiku

Rub-bing on my clit

Right when I’m about to cum;

Huge cramp in my leg.

14
Craigslist

It was seven years since we dated. At four years, he was my longest relationship.

“Kevin’s DEAD!” Dee screamed into the phone. A few years after we had broken up, the two of them had started dating. Dee was my best friend since we were thirteen, and honestly, the two of them were more compatible than Kevin and I had been.

“What?”

“He’s fucking dead!” Dee hysterically screamed again, and hung up. I was in my towel, my hair dripping water all over the floor of my apartment in L.A. Rushing as usual, I was scheduled to shoot an anal scene with Mandingo that day. I called her back but her phone went to voice mail. I dialed Jules’s number, one of the few numbers I knew by memory from back before cellphones.

“Is it true?”

I immediately knew it was when I heard Jules crying. In the eleven years I had known him, I had never heard him cry.

“Yo, Asa,” was all he could get out.

I sat down on my sofa. Everything felt far away, like I was in an underwater bubble and the rest of the ocean was spinning around me in fast-forward. It couldn’t be true. Kevin was the one who was supposed to make it, out of all of us. He was the only one who had actually given any consideration to his future, attending business school instead of going to art school or a party school in Miami, or even skipping college altogether, like the rest of us. When everyone else was fighting, Kevin was the one who kept us together. He was the heart of the group.

“They found him in a hotel room this morning. He OD’d.” Jules was the closest to him. They had known each other years before Kevin and I had started dating.

“On what?” As I said the words, I realized I didn’t want to hear it. “I’ll call you back,” I said as I was already hanging up.

It’s weird what the mind does when you’re in shock. Mine took me back to a sunny afternoon in highschool.

“I have an idea. Just go to the living room until I call you back in.” Kevin and I had played hooky from school as usual. We were lucky this particular day, as no one was home; meaning we didn’t have to find somewhere outside to waste time until 3 p.m., the time we were supposed to get out of school.

I left the room and waited. Kevin’s apartment was weird. I didn’t know the term back then, but I now realize his dad was a hoarder. He had old shit covering the entire place. I’d call them antiques, but I doubt they were the kind of old things that held any value. Old clocks, toys, and random mechanical parts hung on every square inch of the wall. Even the ceiling fan was old. Walking from point A to point B in a straight line was an impossibility; every foot or so you’d have to turn your body sideways to squeeze in between two or more random items, be it an ancient pinball machine, or an inconveniently placed overflowing bookshelf. The only room in the apartment looking relatively normal was Kevin’s room.