[Edited for clarity on 5/3, 1:50 AM]

“And you say,/ ‘Hey I don’t understand/ you and your big city secret,/ big city secret.’ ”    

-Joseph Arthur

At first I thought it was an optical illusion. For over half an hour the only light out the window had been the bulb on the wingtip; I figured the scattering of gold was the bulb blinking, refracting through the mist, and landing back on the metal surface of the plane. It took a few seconds to register that the glittering was thousands of feet below. Were we in California yet? Maybe Nevada? I pulled the magazine out of the seat pocket in front of me and flipped to the map in the back. Surely we were no longer above Idaho or Wyoming. We’d passed over the Dakotas hours ago, and I’d struggled to catch a glimpse of the parts of my country I never expected to even approach.

The flight had been exceedingly dull. I’d hoped to sit next to someone interesting, but my seat mates were like everyone else on the plane: dressed in stuffy suits and sitting silently. The last person who had approached me had done so several hours and several thousand miles ago, in Penn Station. Despite the fact that I was stuffing my face with a bagel and wearing earbuds, the man (also in a suit) had felt it imperative to tell me that I had beautiful hair. I gave him a dead look and watched him hurry off. Three minutes prior another man had come up to bother me, asking for directions in a heavy accent and waiting for his daughter to better explain them in what I think was Russian. That man I didn’t mind. But the one after and before— another business man, this one intent on telling me about my face— made me want to spit cream cheese like a camel… if camels ate bagels. So I’d resolved not to even approximate That Guy on the airplane and instead went from book to book, playlist to playlist, eventually putting everything away to search for the lights. When I saw them I knew we had to be close.

Would some of those lights be the Golden Gate? I was suddenly very intent on seeing it, on proving to myself that I was where I wasn’t supposed to be. I mean, Lori was certainly expected to be in San Francisco, but me? No, I wasn’t supposed to be on a plane to anywhere, and as far as almost everyone knew, I wasn’t. I’d left my cell phone at home to make sure it stayed this way, because, being in college, my parents still pay my bills. What would I say if they saw a call from California on the next month’s phone bill?

“What in the fuck were you doing out there? How did— how did you afford that? What were you doing? Was this some modeling thing? What were you doing?”

“Something like what you were doing, Dad,” I’d reply, and with that the imaginary conversation ended. In real life, of course, my Dad could never be blindsided, could never be shut up. It was true, though, that San Francisco had always been his secret, his city. A print of the skyline had hung on our living room wall when I was growing up: black and white, before and after– 1906 and 1986. My father had talked about the earthquake like he talked about Kennedy, as if both national tragedies were early traumatic memories of his. I couldn’t explain his fascination with the place, and so I assumed it had something to do with its warm locale and exotic architecture. He likes those things– tropical places, nice buildings. That’s the fascination.

The real fascination became clear when he left, when he took San Francisco and a bunch of the furniture and moved to a shitty condo twenty minutes away. The whole time he lived there the city sat in the corner; it had no rightful place in that apartment. Nothing did. I resented its impassivity about this, about everything. Each time my father yelled the photograph remained still, glazed over, frozen in time. It looked coolly back out at me as if to taunt, “He loves me too, but he can’t hurt me. He loves me too, but I don’t even care.” I wanted to affect it, to break it, as a matter of fact— break it again. 1906, 1986, 2000. 

A few months later, at the end of the summer, my father left again, this time for San Francisco itself. I don’t think I ever would have known if it hadn’t been for the post card that my mother bitterly tossed at my brother and me. “Our twentieth anniversary,” she whispered. “And where is my husband? Off in California f— ooling around with men.” The postcard was a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge, stretched out to its full, red length. It didn’t answer her; it didn’t have anything to say. I, of course, had a lot to say, but I wasn’t allowed to. My father’s coming out of the closet was a semi-secret: I could talk about it, but only with my brother and my mom, and only sometimes. Now didn’t seem like one of those times. Strangely, this silence about who my father was never bothered me. Or, not-so-strangely, really, when you consider his other secret, this one also shared amongst the four of us but never, ever spoken about: my father was becoming unpredictably violent.

When I looked out the airplane window on Monday night, I decided that this was no longer in any way related to the scattered shimmering below. San Francisco was mine now, my secret— my broken, beautiful, perverted city. And I had somehow made it there.  I pulled out my book on ecofeminism (had I brought it because I really want to read it, or because I wanted to assure myself I wasn’t betraying my ideals?) and settled in to wait for the flight to land. My powers of concentration were surprisingly strong. I wasn’t really anxious anymore.

________

This thought really settled in when I stood in the airport bathroom fixing my make-up. I’d worn the blue concert t-shirt to reassure myself and everyone else, but in the dim light of my destination and growing resolve, it seemed stupid: “Be kind to me/ or treat me mean,/ I’ll make the most of it,/ I’m an extraordinary machine (Fiona Apple, 2005.)” Real subtle, I thought. And the cartoon snail is a nice touch. I reassured myself that I looked hipster-chic and not childishly silly, though of course there’s a fine line between the two. But at least my make-up and hair looked good. This had struck me as important, because I’d decided that being picked up from the airport by Kink was kind of like being picked up for a date with a guy from OK Cupid: I had to make sure my first meatspace impression was a good one. I also had to make sure not to get killed.

First, though, I had to make sure that my ride was even coming. Since I had no cell phone with which to do this, I had to find a pay phone. I made my way quickly through the quiet terminal, not letting myself stand still on the moving walkways while still making sure to look carefully for any telephones that might be lurking in corners. I’d figured that, of any places left in the United States that should still have pay phones, airports had to be among the most likely, and yet I reached the escalator to the baggage claim without seeing anything besides a courtesy phone. I hadn’t checked any bags, having decided that it would be cheaper than $50 to purchase more toiletries, but I decided to go down to the baggage carousel anyway. There had to be a pay phone near there.

There’s one! Yes! I am awesome. I mentally patted myself on the back for— for the airport having a phone? and removed my notebook from my tote bag. As if to confirm any observer’s suspicion that I was a luddite, I proceeded to read from my hand-written itinerary (my printer is broken, I swear), scanning for the right phone number. I fumbled the area code the first time and pulled out more quarters, unreasonably embarrassed with myself given how desolate the place was. The second time, I succeeded.

“Uh, hi.” I cleared my throat (my head cold from Sunday wasn’t completely gone) and introduced myself as, simply, “Lori.” My embarrassment was bad enough, so I neglected to mention that I was the Adorable Lori; I figured I was probably the only one with that first name waiting for a Kink driver at SFO at 10:30 that night anyway.

“Oh good!” the man exclaimed. “I was afraid you’d bailed. I waited there for two hours and—”

“I’m— I’m sorry. My flight just got in.” It was an hour late.

“No problem! I’ll be there in, like, five minutes. Where are you?” he asked.

“I, uh…” I looked around. “I’m down by the baggage claim?” Stupid, stupid. “For United?” Not helpful.

“Okay, well go outside and tell me what number you see.”

“Outside? I— I can’t— just, uh, let me know what number to meet you at.”

“Well what number are you near?” he repeated.

I gritted my teeth. “I’m on a pay phone, actually. My cell…. died.” It was easier to explain than the truth was.

“Okay, well what are you wearing?”

“A blue t-shirt, and…jeans, and… Oh! I’m carrying a bright green bag. Like, very green. Electric lime. It’s obnoxious.” Thanks for that Christmas present, Mom.

“Green bag. Okay, I’ll find you. I’m in a white pick-up truck.” He hung up.

White pick-up truck…where do I— I realized that my first serious boyfriend had driven a white pick-up truck. I smiled, wondering what Rick would think now. Would he be pissed? Worried? This was incredibly shady: waiting for a man in a truck to take me to the headquarters/models’ quarters of the porn company I was going to be shooting for the following day. But then, I’d met Rick in a chatroom when I was 16  and he was 23, and we got together for the first time at a nearby mall, where I’d waited for him to pick me up in his white truck. The more things change, I thought, the more they still end with me wandering around looking for creepy guy in a white pick-up truck.

I decided to walk down to the first exit door near the highway off-ramp. That way I would be sure to catch my chauffeur as soon as he pulled in. After waiting for ten minutes minutes, however, I figured that he might have already arrived. I started cursing myself and turned around to head back to the pay phone when I heard a voice from behind me. “Lori?” It was coming from a black pick-up truck, but there was no reason for me to doubt that it was him. The initials on my day-glow gym bag wouldn’t have led a stranger to guess my name was Lori. “Hi!” He got out and opened my door, and I didn’t hesitate to climb in. Be kind to me, or treat me mean…

_________

To be continued….

Update:         Part 2,        Part 3,         Part 4

[Disclaimer: As is the case with almost everything I write, all of the conversations in this piece are recreated from memory. The tone and content are similar to what I remember hearing and saying, but the actual words are far from exact.]

Part 1 is right here.

_________

“When I get back, when I get back home,/ when I get back, when I get back home/ when I get back, when I get back home,/ I won’t be the same no more”- Handsome Furs

I had decided that this experience was already transformative: just being across the country, secretly, was a life-changing fact. It affirmed my independence, and I was determined to get as much out of my stay in San Francisco as possible. I wanted to know everything about my driver, for starters. Unfortunately I had already forgotten his name.

“So, uh,” I paused, struggling to remember if he had even introduced himself,” you— how did you get into this?”

A smile spread across his broad face. “Oh, you know— a friend of a friend of a friend. I was out of work, and, you know, surfin’ all day…” A surfer! How perfect! He had the accent of a California surfer bro, but he certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of the young, shaggy-blonde-haired dude. He was probably in his late thirties, solidly built, and appeared to be of Mestizo descent. “…and so she was like, listen, there’s this opportunity for drivers here, you know, and you can work your way up.” He turned to me. “I’m doing some video editing now.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that like?”

“It’s pretty complicated, but I’m getting the hang of it.”

“And the porn part? Is that weird for you, or..” I trailed off, mostly to let him finish my question for me, but partly because I was distracted. In the darkness, it was the trees and not the landscapes that struck me as the most obviously different. Were they various species of palms? Certainly not all of them…

“Eh, not really. It’s sex, you know?”

I nodded. “Yeah, kinky sex, but sex. I assume most of the people involved are into that kind of stuff anyway. I mean, definitely the models, and—” I hadn’t really expected him to reveal his own preferences, but he did. Of course, that’s none of your business, dear reader. “Oh, yeah. Okay. And the models especially, I meant…”  We had already talked about me, about this being my first time on the west coast, about how I’d gotten into porn. I thought maybe it was time to ask about the other models, the ones he’d mentioned when I’d first gotten in the truck. “I’m surprised that they don’t totally know what they’re getting into. You said a lot of them end up bailing and not even calling to let you know?”

“Well… not a lot. Let’s put it this way: out of the dozens of shoots we do each week, maybe one model will flake, like, every other week. But yeah, a lot of ‘um have barely looked at the site.”

I shook my head. “Damn.”

“Yeah, well,” he offered, shrugging. Just then a strange structure caught my eye. We were still on the outskirts of the city, and so a fifteen-story building seemed out of place. It was also oddly shaped and oddly lit. The lights seemed to snake and— wait, is that a hill? As we got closer, I saw that it was, in fact, one of the city’s famous hills, rising almost vertically above the highway. The twisting, trailing lights were glowing windows all right, but they were in separate houses, not one tall structure.

“Yeah,” I said slowly, still miffed by the hill-building (hillding?) “I made sure to really check out the site first. I still don’t know much about San Francisco though. But these— these hills are pretty amazing!” I realized I sounded like a total rube. “Uh, you know, compared to New York…”

“Yup,” he said. “Oh, and here’s the downtown coming up over here. That means we’re almost at The Armory.”  I followed his finger out above a lower, rolling hill and gazed out towards the brilliant center of San Francisco. The view struck me as roughly similar to what Manhattan looked like when approached from its eponymous bridge: the imposing architecture, the looming lights. Everything was further, though, and somewhat smaller; even the imposing hills couldn’t make San Francisco seem as outsize as New York. I smiled slightly, relieved that I wouldn’t be tempted to move out West for good.

By the time I snapped back to attention I realized my nameless driver was talking about the history of The Armory. “…and even though the bids were the same, the city gave the contract to Kink because they promised to preserve it.”

“Yeah, I read that,” I affirmed. He seemed taken aback by this— researching Kink.com was one thing apparently, but the Armory too? I wondered if I should mention my cursory knowledge of The Mission District and really blow his mind.

“Oh yeah? So you really did do some research, huh.” He may have asked this, but it came out as a statement. Suddenly he pointed again, this time to our left. “So you see those flags there?” I squinted. My eyes had not been particularly reliable that night already, and they were threatening to fail me again. “See? Over sort of where near those lights are, and that steeple?”

“I…uh, I’m not sure…”

“You’ll see them soon.”

And indeed, once we pulled onto the off-ramp I exclaimed “Oh! There!” I had thought he’d been referring to a bunch of flag poles or something, maybe showing me a monument.

“Uh-uh,” he affirmed, “that’s The Armory.” The flags were sticking up from the corners of a building that took up a whole city block. I couldn’t make out what they depicted, but I recognized their flapping in the breeze from the beginning of all of Kink‘s preview videos. “Wait ’til you see the inside. I’ll be giving you a brief tour.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Wait, is, uh, is there a 24-hour drug store around here anywhere?”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Well, I didn’t check my bag, so I need to get some toiletries, like, a razor and—”

He waved his hand. “They have all that stuff there. Pretty much everthing you could need.”

“Oh. Oh, okay. Cool!”

“And here we are in The Mission. There is a Walgreen’s a few blocks over that way if you end up needing something. Just be careful walking around here at night. It’s one of those neighborhoods where, you know, if you make the wrong turn, you might be in trouble.”

“Oh, I get that,” I said. “I live in [my NYC neighborhood]“

He nodded, apparently familiar with what that entailed. “Yeah, so you know then.”

“And I sort of read a bit about this neighborhood. If I wanted to go out tonight, like, to a bar, Valencia might be my best bet?”

He wasn’t as surprised by my further knowledge as I hoped he’d be; maybe he already anticipated I’d pored over the Wikipedia entry for The Mission. “Yeah, although you’re gonna want to go in kind of a round-about way to get there. I”ll show you.” He pointed out the route as we neared The Armory. “And actually there’s a bar right across the street from us that you might like to go to. Riiiiight there.” He pointed at a small black building with a red neon sign: Ace. “And here we are.” He pulled the truck around the corner of the castle-like Armory and waited for a garage door to open in the back. My eyes widened as we drove inside and came to a stop. “This used to be the drill court. We mostly use it for parking now, but we sometimes shoot for Ultimate Surrender and Naked Kombat in here.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Yeah it looks familiar.” The room was the size of a small arena, nearly twice as large as my college’s main basketball court. The ceiling rose up three stories and at the top level, all around the court if I remember correctly, was a seating balcony. I wondered if it was as old as the rest of the structure, or if they’d added it on later. If this was only used as a drill court, what could the seats have been for? In response my mind conjured up an absurd image: a whole army of WWI-era soldiers marching in lock step, their generals and majors and… whatever other high-up ranks there are, watching them from the balcony while eating popcorn out of old tins. Yeah, I’m sure it was *just* like that, I thought rolling my eyes at myself.  My driver had already stepped out and was removing my bag from the back seat when I noticed the hot tub with a neon sign on the side: the scarlet K with a devil’s tail. As I opened the door to the truck I asked, stupidly, “Is that a hot tub?”

“Yes it is.” He smiled.

“Damn. Do you all get to use it?”

“That’s just for the models.”

“Fuck, if I’d known I would have brought a bathing suit.”

“What do you need a bathing suit for?” As soon as he said it I realized he was right.

“I dunno… isn’t it… unsanitary?” I weakly protested. He just laughed and shook his head, and I followed him across the court towards the glow of an open door.

_____________

“Sign in here, Ms. Adorable,” the security guard instructed me. Like my driver he was balding and probably in his late thirties, but he had no trace of the surfer accent. He was also scrawnier, white, and wore glasses.

I squinted at the sheet asking me if I understood that I was now in an ‘adult’ space and required to be over the age of 18. “Do you want my real name? Or…”

“Eh, whatever. Both, I guess.”

“Ok…” I quickly printed and signed my real name, and then I paused. Writing ‘Lori Adorable’ in print was easy, but in cursive? I signed it for the first time, and just like I feared, it came out looking like I had signed it for the first time.

The guard proceeded to hand me the key to my room, then added, ”Oh, and sign in here Lori.” He pushed another sheet of paper at me, and I obliged. This time, however, I only signed my initials: L.A. Wrong city, girlfriend. I sighed at myself and the guard gave me a strange look. Just then a black cat jumped on the desk to distract us. “Ruby, get down.”

“Hey kitty cat,” I cooed and scratched her chin. She hopped back down as quickly as she’d come up and sauntered behind me to a giant kitty condo.

“Well, I’m gonna give her the tour and drop this off in her room,” my driver said, lifting my bag up in his left hand.

“Have a good night!” the guard replied.

“Oh, wait.” The driver stopped. “Do you know if that Walgreen’s around the corner is open? She maybe wanted to pick up some stuff.”

“I’m not sure, man. I thinks so,” the guard looked over at me in apology, and I gave him a sympathetic smile in return.

“It’s fine.” I shrugged. “I hear you guys have everything I need here.” I’d decided, looking at the lobby, that this had to be the truth. It struck me as what the entrance to an austere old hotel would look like, complete with historical photographs on the walls. The only thing that was off (well, besides the kitty condo) were the figurines in the glass cases along the walls: they were bound in various submissive positions.

“We’ll start your tour here, I guess,” said the surfer-driver at the foot of one of two symmetrical staircases. “That over there is the talent office. That’s where you’ll go to get paid.”

“Oh, do they pay you right away?”

“Yup, as soon as your shoot is done,” he replied.  I immediately felt a huge weight lift. I had squirreled away some eighty-five dollars over the past two weeks, being careful not to raise my parents’ suspicions (I told you they paid my bills; they also have access to my bank account.) I’d meticulously budgeted my trip, figuring that if I were careful— and since Kink was paying for airfare and lodging— I could get by on that. Knowing that I would be getting a $500 to $600 check the following day, however, freed me up to be a total alcoholic. If only I weren’t so tired…

I trudged up the worn marble stairs behind my surfer-turned-driver-turned-guide, admiring the tapestry hanging over to one side. As we reached the second floor, a large, toned, completely bald white man appeared at the top of the staircase across form us. “Hello there!” he remarked in a British accent.

“Hey Mark,” my guide replied. I waved and smiled as well. After the man had disappeared I was informed that I had just been greeted by Mark Davis.

“That name sounds familiar,” I mused.

“It should. He’s been in the industry for twenty years. You might see him at that Ace bar across the street tonight— probably where he’s headed out to.”

“Oh!”

“Yup.”

“I’m not gonna lie. He kind of totally looks like my high school psych teacher.”

My guide laughed as he led me to the first door on our left. “Well, you’ll be seeing a lot of him. This is the bathroom— it’s unisex, so you’ll be sharing it with all the other models who are staying here.”

My immediate reaction upon seeing the large, turn-of-the-century communal bathroom was fear. I looked at the showers and saw a prison rape scene. I shook my head. They’re porn stars, not prisoners. YOU are a porn star. And for fuck’s sake they probably do this because of the trans folks who work here! This thought not only relaxed me, but buoyed me: how progressive! Of course, the real motivation for the unisex bathroom was probably that it required no renovations, but I allowed myself to believe that This is clearly a sign of radical inclusivity, a blow against the patriarchal gender bianary a—.

“So over here are the towels,” he continued, pointing to stacks of blood red terrycloth, “and ya got everything you need on these shelves here. Oh, except the shampoo and soap are in the shower.” It did look like there was everything I could need: hair pins, hairspray, toothbrushes, toothpaste…tampons? And, oh no, those cheap, disposable, two-blade Bic razors. If I use one of those on my bits, I will chop them to…bits. I resolved right then to find that Walgreen’s.  ”The enemas,” my guide continued, ” are on the top shelf, but don’t use them in here.” He turned to leave and on our way out he pointed at a sign on the door which I’d missed coming in (the door was propped open.) ‘Private enema bathroom is located on the third floor,’ it read. “You just go right up these stairs again,” my guide eleaborated, leading us down the short corridor that was populated by a handful of rolling carts. Some held lighting equipment— different bulbs, gels, and other items I couldn’t hope to name— and others contained what I can only think to call amenities: make-up sponges, lotion, granola bars, lube. Behind the rolling carts was what looked like a sound-proofed bamboo room divider and a cluster of blinking signs: ‘Shoot in progress. Please keep noise down.’

The two of us turned right into a large hallway. “On our left right here is the men’s wardrobe, and that back there is the men’s greenroom. They use that after six at night.” I couldn’t help thinking it bizarre that Kink had segregated green rooms but unisex bathrooms, but I didn’t question it. “This is women’s wardrobe,” he continued speaking, but he had stopped walking. “The next door is hair and make-up. And this right here,” he turned to the first door on the other side of the hall, “is your room. Let’s see if the key works.”

I searched in my pocket and pulled out the small gold key. Holding the heavy, ancient metal knob, I turned the key in the top lock until I heard a click. “Seems to work just fine,” I remarked and pushed open the door. My guide stepped in front of me to turn on the lights, then placed my bag down on the dresser nearby.

“Yup, this is it,” he said. It was a handsome room— small, but not too small, with off-white walls and solid wood furniture. On the left side was a full-length mirror, propped on a chair. It reflected the bed. “And over here,” he said, beckoning me, “is your closet. Or, you know, another room.”

“Wow,” I stood next to him, peering into the ‘closet’: it was almost the same size as the bedroom. “This is bigger than my room back in New York,” I mumbled

“Yeah, it’s a little ridiculous,” he affirmed. Like the bedroom, it also had cream-colored walls and a dark red carpet a shade or so deeper than the blood-colored towels. “Ok, I’m just going to show you the green room you’ll be reporting to tomorrow morning, and then I’ll leave you alone. You still think you’re going out?” We turned to leave, brushing past the tan, white, and maroon bedspread and the small mahogany night table. I couldn’t help noticing it held the only non-furniture items in the room: a box of tissues and a bottle of lotion.

“I…I might go out. I’m pretty tired, though. Didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Ok then—”

“But…but, I mean, even though I have to get up tomorrow—”

“Call time isn’t ’til eleven,” he reminded me.

“Right. And I don’t want to stay indoors in a new city. You said Mark Davis would be across the street?”

“Yeah, probably— at The Ace bar,” he replied, leading me further down the hallway, past wardrobe and hair & make-up. The last door on the left was open. “Here’s where you should report tomorrow morning.” A flatscreen TV glowed blue from the far corner until my guide switched on the lights. “Here’s a computer over here,” he said, stepping into the room and gesturing to the near right corner. “You got the TV and couches over there, and the fridge is over here.” I followed him to the refrigerator and watched eagerly as he opened the door. Dozens and dozens of juice bottles lined the bottom shelves, and a similar number of granola bars and packs of gum sat on a table on our right. “We lotsa juice. It’s important to hydrate, doing this kinda shoot…”

“Can I—”

“Yeah, take one.” I grabbed a cranberry juice. I hadn’t realized til that moment just how thirsty I was. “Ok then! I’ll take you back to your room, and then I’ll leave ya alone!” He smiled.

“Thank you so, so much. You’ve been really helpful.” We walked back down the hallway, and I waved good-bye as he turned and headed toward the stairs. I pushed my door open and let out a huge breath. “Well,” I said to myself. I needed to decide what to do— go out, or stay in? First things first: see if they have wifi, and if not, go use that Mac in the green room. I unzipped my radioactive bag. Hey, I wonder why the green room isn’t green like this… Probably because this is obnoxious, [my real first name].

I plopped down on the bed only to discover it was about twice as nice as my brand new mattress at home. Then I connected to the ‘bicycle’ network, e-mailed my (ex?) boyfriend, checked my Twitter, and let you lovely readers know what was going on. By the time I shut my laptop, it was 11:30 local time, and I was feeling even more exhausted than ever. I knew I had to buy a razor, though, and so I figured I might as well get a drink too. I changed from my Fiona Apple ‘self-affirmation with snail’ shirt and put on a plain black tee. With the military jacket and cuffed jeans, I decided I’d fit in in what I assumed would be a neighborhood filled with gentrifying hipsters.

I grabbed my small totebag and locked my door, listening with my head cocked for the strange moaning I’d thought I’d heard minutes before.

“UhhhhhaaahHHHH!”

There it was, a woman’s voice. This night has got to be interesting, I thought as I made my way down one of the twin staircases.

_______

To hear about that night’s adventure and the porntastic day that followed, make sure to check back tomorrow!

To be continued….

Update:        Part 3,         Part 4

So this isn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever written, but it’s Cinco de Mayo, I’m drunk, my Depression sucks right now, and this isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever written either. Enjoy, chums, and we’ll chat again tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, the same disclaimer from Part 2 applies here: these conversations are approximate but as close to the original as my mighty mind can muster. Finally, here are some links to Part 1 and Part 2 , if you missed them and are too lazy to scroll down. 

_______

“I got a date with the night/ burnin’ down my finger/ Gonna catch the kids dry/ Gonna walk on water”- The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

____

The guard wasn’t at his desk. I tapped my fingers nervously and looked down at the second piece of paper I’d put my name on (or my initials, at least). It was a sign-in sheet, and it had sign-out column, too. Was I supposed to mark down that I was leaving? This struck me as odd, creepy even. I felt like I was back in high school, and like high school, I decided to blow this off. I walked over to the glass doors and peered to my right down the long hallway to the drill court/ garage. There was the guard, standing all the way down at the end. I paused. Was I sneaking out? I walked back over to the sign in sheet, picked up the pen, put it down, walked back to the door. Just as I opened it the guard turned around.

“Hey,” I called. “Do I, uh, need to sign out?”

“Yeah, yeah you do.” He was heading back toward me, so I shuffled to the desk and picked up the pen again. He sat down in his chair just as I finished writing.

“Is there… a reason for this?”

“Oh, yeah. Some of the models used to just go out and not come back.”

“What? Like, leave their stuff?” At first I wondered why Kink cared. Was it any worse than bailing at the airport? I realized it probably was: theft of services for staying in the company’s dorms without fulfilling their half of the agreement, or something.

“Yeah. That hasn’t happened in a while.”

I frowned and nodded. I suddenly felt very justified in going out the night before my first porn shoot even though I was sleep deprived, getting over a cold, and needed more strength the next day than my puny muscles could contain— getting mildly drunk would still leave me as one of their more responsible employees. “So I think I’m gonna hit that Walgreen’s and then maybe grab a drink. I was told the bar across the street might be a good idea?”

“Actually, I think that closes at midnight,” he said, looking at his watch. It was after 11:30.

“Oh, hmm. Well, should I try down on Valencia?”

“Yeah, let me point you in the right direction. You want to be kind of careful how you get there.”

Just as the guard was about to open the door, my driver/guide reappeared. “Oh hey there!”

“Hey!” the guard and I replied.

“She wants to go out, but I think The Ace is closing—”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s gotta go somewhere else,” the guide concurred.

“I was gonna show her how to get down to Valencia. Do you know the names of any of the bars there?”

“There’s the Elbo Room, the— well, you know, I’m heading out now,” he turned to me. “I can drop you off. That way you’ll know how to get back.”

“Oh, that would be great! Thanks!” I waved good-bye to the guard and headed out the glass door with my still-guide.

“You want to be sort of careful in this neighborhood,” he repeated. “I mean, it’s not bad, but you have a few prostitutes over on those corners, and the homeless people nearby…” I got his point— that those kinds of people signaled a dangerous neighborhood, not that those kinds of people were necessarily dangerous themselves— but it still felt strange hearing a representative of a porn company telling me, a porn model, to be wary of social deviants. We turned a corner, and I saw a homeless man huddled up near a side door to The Armory, at the top of a small ramp. I’ll give him a twenty tomorrow, I thought, suddenly amazed at the thought of holding several hundred dollars in my hands. I’ll just find a check cashing place first.

The driver/guide and I climbed into another pick-up truck that was parked around the corner, and I finally got up the courage to remark, “I’m sorry, but what did you say your name was?”

“Gonzo.”

“Gah- Gonzo!” I grinned. “Like the muppet or the style of porn?”

He laughed again. “Like the style of journalism actually.”

“Oh! You’re a fan of Hunter S. Thompson?”

“Yes I am.” He proceeded to tell me a bit about how the man had changed his life. At the end, almost as an afterthought, he added, “It kind of makes sense anyway since my real name is Gonzalez.”

“Ohhh okay. Yeah, that does make sense.” I smiled back. By this point we were driving down Valencia, and Gonzo was pointing over his shoulder.

“So you’ve got that place there, and then this bar—”

“Oh, this one looks fine,” I assured him. I didn’t want to get too far from The Armory.

He pulled over and asked if I was sure. “I mean, Cassanova is fine, but I got a ways to go, so if you—”

“No, no. It’s all good. Thank you so much for the ride.” I crossed the empty street and waved good-bye. Then I turned to look into the bar and immediately felt intimidated. The Mission is SO the Williamsburg of San Francisco. I reminded myself that I was wearing the right outfit, or, at least, not the wrong one, and strode through the door. No bouncer. Not anything like New York at all.

It was true: despite the fact that the people looked the same, the whole place had a different feel. It was quiet on the streets and loud with honky-tonk music indoors. Kids in oversize glasses and tight jeans hugged at high tables and mock square-danced back by a raised sofa. The decor was vaguely Tex-Mex, vaguely southwestern— just different enough from what I was used to to keep me interested. It was also just different enough to make me feel like I stuck out as the unfamiliar jackass I was. The fact that I was the only one who was there alone didn’t help. I just need a drink.

I politely pushed my way to the bar and soon enough the plainly handsome young bartender asked me what I wanted. I froze. You cannot order a fucking vodka tonic here, you yuppie. “I’ll have a—” I tried to think of a cooler mixed drink and utterly failed. Caring so much about what you drink is the least cool thing of all. Just SAY SOMETHING “Sierra Nevada.” He went over to the tap to fill a glass, and I was left feeling old as well as uncool. Maybe they just don’t card here, I soothed myself. When the guy  handed me my drink I smiled and immediately took a sip.

“That’s 4.50.” Seriously? Already? He’s not even gonna ask if I want to open a tab? I put the drink down and reached for my wallet. They just do things differently here. That’s all.

Five minutes later I was standing back against the wall, gulping my beer and looking around for anyone to talk to. There was the Asian chick with the bowl haircut— but, oh, there was her friend. The White guy in the t-shirt looked like he was just waiting for that blonde girl to turn around again and— yup. Two Latino men caught my eye and then looked me up and down. Oh fuck no. We are not doing that tonight. I am NOT here to get laid. I went back to staring off at a far corner. I decided I would chug my beer and leave. This night blows. You need to find something interesting to do. You need to drink faster. You need to— goddamnit you’re a porn star! Talk to someone! I looked around again, then looked down at my feet. The faster I drank the faster I could move on. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at chugging.

“Ummm, exxcusse me.”

When I looked up I was greeted by the looming presence of a tall, thin, olive-skinned young man. Too young. Maybe even a teenager. “Hi,” I smiled. I didn’t really care who he was. As long as he wasn’t going to hit on me right away, we’d be fine.

“I’m…. Tommy,” he said, sticking out his hand at an odd angle. “Whasssyour name?”

Ho boy.  “I’m… Lori.”

“Issnice to meet you, Larry,” he replied. We both took another drink. “Whaddooyou do?”

“What do I do? Or, what am I doing here?”

“Whaddooyou doin’ here? I guess? Like, whaddooyou do?”

“I’m— I model. I’m doing porn, actually. Kink.”

“Sssoooo what kind of modeling do you do?”

“You’re kiiiind of drunk right now, aren’t you?”

“I’mmssorry. I’ve just—” He moved closer as if to share a secret. “I’ve been drinking all day. Like, had a whole bottle uh Hennessy.”

“A— a whole bottle?”

“Yeah, you know, at a barbuhcoo.”

“Oh yeah?” I took another large sip.

“Yeah, jussat my house. Like, on the porch.” He moved his arms to, I suppose, indicate the limits of his porch, and he spilled a third of his beer on my shoes in the process. “Ohhhhmaaannn….” We were quiet for a minute. I couldn’t think of anything to do but laugh, and it came out forced. I followed it with another gulp of beer.”I’m sooooossssoorrry. Lissen, my name is Tommy…”

“It was very nice to meet you, Tommy,” I said, taking another big sip. “But I have to go now.” I pushed my way back to the bar to put down my nearly empty glass. Then I gave Tommy a gracious smile and left.

“Oh fucking hell,” I murmured. The small group of hipsters outside the bar looked over and then looked me over, so I started walking. The air felt cold on my wet feet as I moved past one low, empty building after another, further and further from The Armory. For the first time that night I was really struck by the variety of the architecture — the stucco store fronts alternating with the tall, thin, wood-shingled homes. Some of it was Spanish revival, some, perhaps, Victorian, some modernist. I didn’t— don’t— have the words to describe to myself what I was seeing. In my ignorance, all I knew was that things seemed… tropical, even though the weather was cool. It all felt like a contradiction: the unnameable trees swaying near the Philly-style tram lines, the desolateness of a street that was clearly alive at every hour but this, the fact that I was supposed to be here but hardly anyone knew it. The thought began to settle in that it was all a dream, and I peered in the windows of every building I passed to try to find something that would convince me otherwise. Every restaurant and store was proving dark and empty, and the homes were quiet. I shivered.

I’d been passing by the occasional car and pedestrian, but it wasn’t til that moment that I got the feeling someone was following me. I turned around quickly, just long enough to see the tall, tanned white man some third of a block behind. In my snap assessment I determined he had somewhere to go and was not walking just to keep me in sight. I relaxed, and then relaxed further when I saw a bustling corner another two blocks ahead. Did I have somewhere to go now too? I peered in the dark windows of a pizza shop as I passed, making sure not to miss an opportunity.

“I see you checking yourself out in all the windows,” came the controlled voice from behind me. There was something about it that was ever-so-slightly effeminate. I stopped and whipped around.

“I wasn’t checking myself out!” I protested. I saw an opportunity. “I just got into town! I’m looking for a place to go, but everything’s closed here. You guys aren’t like New York.”  For a second I thought the tall man was going to keep walking, but by the time I finished he had stopped right next to me. I gazed up at him.

“Oh? You’re from New York?” he said with a slight smile. It wasn’t just his frame that was large: his features were also broader than they should have been but strikingly handsome. He reminded me vaguely of my 5th-grade drama teacher, the one I’d fallen madly in love with. I’d recently looked him up on facebook and discovered he was gay and living in Los Angeles. “What are you doing here?” His voice somehow seemed smaller than it should have been.

“I’m— working. Sort of,” I replied.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m—” I took a deep breath. “I’m in porn. Or, I will be.”

“Oh?” He grinned and his blue eyes gleamed in the street light.

God, what a cliche. “Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled. “Tomorrow.”

“At Kink?”

“Uh-huh. Are you familiar with them?”

“Sort of. I know they’re at The Armory, but I’ve never been there, and I don’t really know what they do.”

I laughed. “Some crazy stuff. Which is why I shouldn’t be out too late tonight, but I just wanted to see the city. I just got in.”

“Well why don’t you come with me?” he asked. “I’m Nate, by the way.” He stuck out his large hand and waited for me to take it.

“I’m…” I gave him my hand, then my real name.

“Pleasure,” he replied, and we started walking.

“So where are we going?” I asked, wondering if we’d be hitting the busy bar on the next corner.

“There’s this place I think you’ll like. It used to be a hair salon, and they kept all of the old equipment. It’s pretty cool.”

“Sounds good. But, um, I should probably let you know, I’m not— I’m not looking to hook up with anyone. I mean, I have a busy day tomorrow but also I sort of have a boyfriend, and also I think I might be getting a cold sore, and… yeah.”

He laughed. “That’s fine”

_______________

Some half an hour later I found myself in a familiar situation. “Get OUT!” I exclaimed when Nate told me he used to work in an animal shelter too. It wasn’t just echoes of Elaine Benis ringing in my head. There was another scenario that— Sam. My neighbor. The last time I was sipping drinks in the semi-dark with a gorgeous, thirty-something blue-eyed man and had practically screamed at him for fulfilling my wildest expectations was— could it be?— a year-and-a-half ago, with him.

“What do I want to do after I graduate? Oh jeez. This probably sounds corny, but… like, I’d love to use theatre as a means of social activism. Maybe start a charity program for children.” I’d told Sam.

Five minutes later I asked him what he’d been doing since he graduated Yale. He smiled and answered quietly, “I run a charity program. For children.”

I shook my head and came back to reality. This night was not going to end like that one. “I can’t believe that!” I remarked to Nate. “Oh my god, then you’re going to love these pictures.” I reached into my bag and pulled out my i-pod. “I don’t have my phone, but I do have this, and yes, I’m totally being this person right now.” I turned it on and opened up the ‘Animal Shelter’ photo file. “Look. at. this,” I commanded.

“Oh my gosh! Is that— that little guy fit in your hand?”

“Yes!” I squealed. “Oh my god, it was so sad though. So this kitten was an orphan, a week old, and his mother—”

“Hey, if we’re gonna talk, do you want to go over to the corner?”  I grabbed my vodka tonic and followed him to a salon table in a dark, quiet nook near the door. “I’m just going to go to the bathroom real quick,” he said, putting his beer down.

“Okay,” I replied. “I promise not to roofie you.”

“You’d need a lot of roofies for that to work, and then good luck dragging me back to The Armory.” He smiled and headed toward the back of the bar. I smiled too, taking a big swig of my yuppie drink and reveling in the buzz. He returned almost immediately (I’ll never stop being amazed at how fast people with penises can pee) and proposed a new idea: “How about we go to this other little place? It’s quieter there.”

“I— yeah?”

“Yeah.” He stood as if waiting for me to join him.

“Just have to finish my drink first!” It was still over half full.

“Why?”

I was confused by this question. “Well, I want to drink it, and… it cost money?” Even though Nate had paid for the drink (over my protestations), the idea of just throwing it out made me profoundly uncomfortable.

He shrugged. “It was seven bucks. We’ll get you another one.”

“Okay…” Was this what it was like, having money? Nate didn’t work at an animal shelter anymore. He worked in IT. Will I throw money away too when I get my check tomorrow? I’ve never had 600 dollars to just… spend… I followed my new companion out of the bar, hazy from exhaustion, alcohol, and the possibility of being briefly rich.

“So you were saying, about the cat?”

“Oh gosh! Right!” It was quiet again outside, cool and peaceful. “Okay, so this is a really sad story.”

“I’ll brace myself,” he said.

“Well I took care of the cats my second summer there. Like, all of them. Four days a week.”

“All of them?”

I was surprised by his surprise. “Yeah, all of them! Geez, what shelter did you work at that they could afford more than one of you?”

“The PSPCA, in Philly.”

“GET. OUT.” I stopped walking. “That’s where I got my cat! I’m FROM Philly!”

“I went to college there.”

“Where?”

“At Penn.”

“Oh my god, another Ivy Leaguer,” I remarked, shaking my head. “How do you guys always find me?”  He gave me a curious look, but I ignored it and proceeded to tell Nate the sad story of the orphan cat. He told me more about the PSPCA, and we talked for awhile about Philadelphia. By the time I thought to look up at the street signs we were a mile from The Armory. “Twenty-fourth street?! Where the hell are you taking me?”

“You’ll see!” he teased.

“Oh god, you’re taking me back to your rape cave.”

“I am not taking you back to my rape cave. Here.” He pulled out his wallet, removed his driver’s license and handed it to me.

“What’s this for?”

“So you know who I am. So you know I’m not going to take you to my rape cave.”

“Of course you can still take me to your rape cave! I’ll just be able to tell the cops afterwards where you live.”

“Right. So why would I rape you now?”

“Probably because you’re going to kill me afterwards.”

“Hmmm…well, no one would know you were gone, right?”

I stopped. “Hey, pal. Kink would know when I don’t show up tomorrow.”

“I know, I know! I’m kidding!” He took my hand in his to reassure me, but I paused. “You don’t actually think—”

“No! No, no. It’s just… I’m not going to fuck you. I don’t want to make you think—”

“I don’t. We’re just holding hands.”

“Okay,” I conceded, and we started walking again.

“We’re almost there. I figure we can get some food too. There’s this pizza place slash rum bar I’ve been meaning to try.”

“That sounds awesome, actually.” I quit protesting, quit looking up at the street signs, and just went with it.

“Beretta,” he said, when we arrived.

“I— this sounds familiar,” I mused as he opened the door for me. “Oh! I read about this! It’s one of the places they tell you to go in all of the tourist guides.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

_________

Despite Nate’s protestations that, “[his] friend, here, she’s only in town for a bit,”  we were informed that they were done making pizza for the night. It was after one, so that rather made sense. Instead, we split crab cakes and polenta and sipped some of their signature cocktails.

“I’m paying for half of this,” I clarified after we ordered. “I’m getting 600 bucks tomorrow.”

“You sure? I mean, about paying?”

“I’m sure! Men shouldn’t have to buy women. Plus, you’re not buying anything from me anyway, since I’m not fu—”

“I know, I know. You’re not fucking me. Who said I even wanted you to?” He smirked.

“It’s true,” I replied. “For all I know you could be gay.”

“I’m not gay,” he sighed. Did he get that a lot? Because he was vaguely effeminate? Because he lived next to the Castro? Did he care? He took a sip of his drink and said, “Here’s a riddle for you: who doesn’t eat pussy and doesn’t go to Antarctica?”

“I—”

“Gay men.”

“What? Why wouldn’t gay men go to Antarctica? Actually, why would they go to Antarctica— why would anyone?”

“To climb a mountain.”

“Huh? I’m pretty sure gay men climb mountains.”

“No, I— I’ve been to Antarctica. To climb a mountain.”

“I don’t—”

“And I’m not gay.”

“You climb mountains?”

“Are you familiar with The Seven Summits?” he asked.

“No, but I can guess. You climb the highest mountain on every continent?”

“That’s right.”

“Wow. You really like doing that?”

“You like doing kinky porn?” He must have seen that I was taken aback. “I didn’t mean that in a mean way. I meant, isn’t it kind of the same thing?”

“How?”

“Psychologically. We go to the same place.”

“Maybe.” We were silent for a second. “So can I ask you something?”

“Ask away,” he replied.

“If you’re not going to climb me or eat my pussy, why did you bring me here?”

Now he looked slightly taken aback. “I can’t like talking to you?”

“You can, but—”

“I’ve never talked to a porn star before.”

“And how is it?”

He thought for a second, but instead of answering my question he replied, “I used to be a prostitute.”

“I…a mountain-climbing prostitute!” Then, quietly, I asked, “You really did that? I wasn’t even sure if straight men could make a career out of that.” Did I expect him to admit he slept with men?

“Oh, I didn’t make a career out of it,” he clarified. “It was… supplemental. When I was a motivational speaker, I’d meet all of these women—”

“A motivational speaker too. Did you talk about climbing mountains?”

“I did.” He smiled, and I smiled back. Things made sense.

_______

To be continued…

Update:        Part 4

Disclaimer: While I almost always use pseudonyms for the folks I write about (dogs included), I have not used pseudonyms for the folks at Kink. This is partly because some of them are porn performers and therefore not private citizens, and partly because any reader could figure out the identities of the people mentioned herein simply by checking the shoot schedules from April 26th and/or the credits for those shoots. What I mean to say is, yes that guy really went by ‘Gonzo.’ Also, the same disclaimer from Parts 2 and 3 applies here as well: these conversations are approximate but as close to the original as my mighty mind can muster. Finally, here are some links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you missed them and are too lazy to scroll down.

____________

“Is she pretty on the inside?/ Is she pretty from the back?/ Slut-kiss girl, we’ll have some rot black strap/ Is she ugly on the inside?/ Baby, ugly, ugly from the back?”- Hole

That night I dreamt in a brand new way. Instead of riffing on long-gone events, my brain simply rehashed what had happened a few hours earlier. Everything came out distorted through the fish-eye lens of my subconscious— time warped, perspectives alternated— but essentially unchanged. This seemed like a reasonable response to my present situation; I was probably too tired to be creative and too anxious not to dream at all, or maybe my brain freaked out under the bizarre circumstances and started skipping like a record. It’s even possible that I woke up and misremembered. In any case, I recall dreaming of the Armory and of Nate. I saw his house from above; saw us walk through an alley on the side the thin, white clapboard structure; watched myself discover it was a complex; heard myself agree to go upstairs instead of wait outside.

“Are you sure?” Nate asked. “I’ll only be a minute. I just have to grab something.” He was supposed to be driving me to the Safeway so I could buy a razor.

“No, no,” I reassured him. “I’ll take the bait. I want to see your puppy dog. I’ll crawl into the back of your van.”

“Huh?”

“Joke. Nevermind.”

“Hillary isn’t a puppy,” he explained as we climbed the wooden stairs on the back end of the building.

“Hillary? You’re a fan of Mrs. Clinton?”

“Hillary’s a boy.”

“So…. not a fan?”

“I named him after Edmund Hillary, the—”

“The guy who climbed Mt. Everest!”

“Very good,” Nate replied. When he opened the door I was back in my body, patting the large hound mix who greeted us. Nate started to baby talk him, and then abruptly the three of us were on his couch. I stared at us from another room— so many rooms! He claimed he had a roommate (“Joe, who’s probably in there with Kylie”) but he could have had a wife and three kids living in such a huge place, and I wouldn’t have known. I watched myself watch him fumble with a large black contraption.

“Is that a— a breathalyzer?” Now I was looking out from my own eyes again, at the .07 I’d just blown.

“So you could drive too,” Nate responded.

“Noooo. No, I mentioned I was on medication that, that interacts with alcohol, right?”

“Now you did.”

“What are you doing?” I responded. It was another jump cut. Nate was now carrying me like a baby in his giant arms, and I watched us both from beside Hillary. “Oh, god, I knew you were going to—” I was trying to keep things light, trying to joke. I couldn’t say the word ‘rape.’

“I’m not going to do anything,” he said, walking into his bedroom and dropping me down on his mattress. “I just want to be able to say I had a porn star in my bed.”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I groaned, looking up at him from within myself again. I pushed up,off the bed and headed out of the room.

“Yeah, we can go now.” And we did. Instantaneously.

“Is that… the Batman symbol?” It was spray-painted in silver on the wall of the garage, right above a BMW.

“You’re the first person who’s noticed that,” he said, in awe. He clicked the button on his keys and the BMW beeped. “So I’ll let you decide: top up or down?”

“Down!” 

I could watch us from way up high now, speeding over the hills and past the palms. “Do you want a tour?” he asked.

“I do.”

“What do you want to see?”

“We’re near the Castro, right?”

“We are.”

“So show me the gayest places around.”

We drove past Moby Dick’s, the Lookout— “where Harvey Milk used to pick up men”— and finally stopped at a light. Two flamboyantly dressed men crossed in front of us, and Nate shook his head at them. “It’s ridiculous.”

“What?! Really? How can you—” 

“You don’t live here.”

“He doesn’t live here,” I said to the man in line at the Safeway. He’d heard us talking about the tourist spots in the neighborhood, and I was suddenly struck by the need to lie.

“You can always tell,” the man replied. He wore a black shirt, halfway unbuttoned, and a stud in his right ear.

Nate was mildly amused. We pulled up in front of The Armory and the guard watched me get out of this stranger’s fancy car. How many times had he seen a model do this? “Will I see you tomorrow?” Nate asked.

“E-mail me,” I replied, and suddenly woke up.

_____

I grasped in the dark for my i-Pod just to find that the time was 6:07. Somehow, even in the pitch black of the windowless room, I’d managed to set my internal alarm. The only problem was that I’d set it for east coast time. I shook my head and lied there for a while, waiting to fall back into sleep. When I eventually did, I dreamt of nothing. I don’t mean I didn’t dream, I mean my mind flickered white like an empty movie reel for the rest of the early morning hours.

When I awoke again it was to the alarm on my i-Pod. I didn’t hit snooze but rolled out of bed with the blood-boiling energy of adrenaline. Still, even when I turned on the light and rubbed my eyes, everything seemed fuzzy. It was as if the energy flow stopped at my neck. Thankfully I’d thought to grab the two-pack of Five Hour Energy at the Safeway cash register the previous night. I fumbled with the packaging and immediately gulped down a half of a bottle, all the while wondering whether I should grab something to eat before or after using an enema. Did I even need to use one? I’d taken a shit the day before.

Ultimately I decided that eating was of no consequence to the very end of my digestive tract. I also decided that it was better to be safe than sorry and resolved to do some ‘cleansing’ right then. Hastily, I dressed in my clothes from the previous night and headed out into the communal bathroom. I picked up a disposable enema bottle from the shelf of toiletries and turned back around, heeding the sign on the bathroom door that told me to take that shit (pun really intended) up to the third floor. As I climbed the lefthand staircase I passed two men who looked like construction workers— set constructors at the least. My face burned, and I moved the bottle to the side of my body nearest the wall, only to immediately realize that it was useless: why else would I be going up to the third floor? A portrait of a man in colonial-era garb gazed down at me as if to assure me that everyone knew what I was doing. Should I have even been embarrassed, though? Wouldn’t it be more embarrassing to not use an enema in a porn studio?  Social norms are contextual, I thought, glaring back at the portrait.

When I reached the third floor it became clear that the men I’d seen were in fact construction workers. Everything was in the process of being torn up and rebuilt, and I suddenly recalled Gonzo mentioning the transitional status of the third floor during our tour. The set-up was the same as the second floor, except that where the left-hand wall should have been was an open archway: the balcony seating around the drill court. I scurried past it (and the construction workers), through the door whose sign read, “Private enema bathroom.”

I turned on the light and then turned behind me to turn the lock, pausing to puzzle over exactly what kind of room I was standing in. It smelled vaguely of bleach and was entirely empty but for a drain in the middle of the raw, old concrete floor.  Just as the panic set in that I would be shitting into a drain, I saw the bare doorway across from me. It led to a singular bathroom that dated to the turn of the previous century. Crossing the Saw-style anteroom, I noticed the sign posted next to the bathroom: “Cleaning Schedule: 1997. 1969.” Hilarious, I thought. This is really something you want to joke about.

______

According to the instructions on the bathroom wall, I had two options: use one of the disposable enema bottles (there were more stacked on the shelves in there, next to tampons and— seriously?!— douches) or use the shower attachment. There was a tupperware container of stainless steel nozzles and, on the other side of a ratty plastic curtain, a singular shower stall with a contraption I didn’t want to begin to understand. I was very much set on my disposable bottle; I’m a firm believer that some things just shouldn’t be reused, and anything that touches shit is one of those things.  The instructions on the wall told me that, should I choose the disposable option, I was to check the box for further instructions.

Two minutes later I was kneeling on a red towel I’d laid out on the floor, my ass in the air, squirting saline into my rectum. The last time I’d used an enema was probably 1998, and even then it had been used on me: my mother had realized I was constipated. Obviously anal sex is not a regular activity for me. I haven’t had it in… oh, over six months, and I hadn’t agreed to have it that day either, nor had I tabled it. Rather, I didn’t have to decide yet either way. Once I was down in the basement I would negotiate it depending on how I felt. I tried to keep this reassuring fact in mind and use it to crowd out the creepy surroundings and the fact that I was kneeling on them bare-ass naked trying not to shit.

I did shit, and probably sooner than I should have. At least, I think I shit— all that came out was vaguely brownish saline. Did I do it wrong? I’m sure as fuck not doing it again. I cleaned up and got dressed, all the while listening to Hole’s “Pretty on the Inside” play through my head.  Surely this was what Courtney Love had in mind when she shouted “IS SHE PRETTY ON THE INSIDE? IS SHE PRETTY FROM THE BACK?”: porn performers using enemas. Now in a good mood, I walked past the construction workers with my head held high.

______

This confidence was fleeting.  Ten minutes later I was standing in the communal bathroom downstairs with my brand new razor, trying to decide whether or not to close the door that was still propped open. Anyone who walked by might see me in the shower. Finally, when another construction worker passed, I decided that it was ridiculous of me to even have to debate this with myself. I shut the door. Just because you’re getting naked on camera doesn’t mean you’ve given up your right to privacy, I consoled myself, no matter what they told Tila Tequila. You have just as much right to shave your ass crack in private as anyone.

I spent a lot of time shaving. I wanted to make sure not to cut myself, and even more, I wanted to make sure not to miss an area. Should I have brought a mirror into the shower with me? Should I have been spending even longer? This was not, after all, the longest I had ever spent depilating. Before meeting up from one of the pedophiles from online when I was fifteen, I took hours shaving and tweezing and bleaching. The thought briefly overtook me that I shouldn’t let that be the longest I’d ever spent getting ready, and that this was the prime opportunity to *really* groom. After all, I was about to be immortalized exactly as I appeared. Thankfully my sleep-deprived self had pre-empted the possibility of this obsession rearing its head and had only left two hours for me to prepare for my shoot. I shook my head and settled on a compromise: I would spend ten minutes checking myself below the waste in the bright, artificial light of my room, and that would be enough.

After twenty minutes I was ready to return to the bathroom. I was totally bare below, and I had painted my fingernails a carefully-selected greenish black. If I can’t have pubes, my reasoning went, I can at least have slightly unorthodox nail polish. As I walked to the bathroom with my tweezers (plucking my brows while leaning on the bathroom counter had to be easier than resting my elbows on my knees as I sat on my bed), I pondered whether having gothic nails was enough to make ‘Lori Adorable’ an ironic moniker. I was still undecided when I opened the bathroom door and then opened my mouth, inexplicably shocked to see Mark Davis toweling off.

I quickly closed my jaw again. You got too used to having this to yourself, I thought as the naked man greeted me.

“You’re the new girl, right?” he asked in his stately British accent.

“Yeah, I’m Lori.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Mark.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” I said, smiling. He laughed, and I tried to figure out what to do; I never pluck my eyebrows in front of other people.

“What site are you shooting for?”

“Device Bondage,” I replied, making my way over to the counter above the sink. I was trying to be professional and not stare at his junk, but not looking at him at all seemed equally unprofessional. I decided that I would simply have to busy myself with my eyebrows, weird phobia be damned.

“Oh really?” He seemed as surprised as Gonzo had when I’d told him the same thing last night.

“I take it that’s kind of a strange place to start?”

“Well, not necessarily…” He trailed off as he dried his legs. Yes, I was still watching in the mirror. I was impressed by how completely hairless his body was— toned, tanned, and totally waxed. I looked back at my own reflection and realized how pale and furry I was in comparison. Your eyebrows are fine, your eyebrows are fine, your eyebrows are fine. “Orlando’s a great guy, I’m sure you’ll have fun today,” Mark finally said. “Good luck to you!” He wrapped his towel around his waist and headed toward the door.

“Oh, you too! I mean, not that you need it…” I heard him chuckle as he left, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Alone with my tweezers at last.

______

Just as I finished up my eyebrows two other men walked in, chatting. If I recall correctly, both men were shirtless, one tanned, toned, and waxed like Mark Davis, but with a bodybuilder’s physique; the other (his friend? partner? co-star? all of the above?) was much slighter and had a healthy amount of salt-and-pepper hair on his chest. Oh, well thank god for that, I practically said out loud. He was painfully handsome and fit one of my types to the T: late thirties, hairy, blue eyes, probably queer… I reminded myself not to stare and pondered why he looked so familiar.

“Hi,” I said, turning from the mirror. “I’m Lori… Adorable.” Should I have added the last name on there?

“Derek Pain,” said the bodybuilder, extending his hand.

“Master Avery,” said his companion.

“Getting ready for my first shoot!” I squealed. I suddenly sounded more excited than I felt. It seemed as if all of the nervousness had dissipated somewhere in midair the previous day; all I felt now was anticipation and a sense of hibernating exhaustion that threatened to wake-up and overtake the mild stream of adrenaline and Five Hour Energy now coursing through me.

“Oh! What site are you shooting for?” asked Master Avery.

“Device Bondage,” I told them.

Derek nodded quietly and Avery remarked, “Oh wow. Okay. Very cool.”

“Yeah,” I replied, smiling. “I’ve been getting that reaction a lot. But, uh, I was told I have to do my own hair and make-up, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“Really?” Avery asked, interrupting my exit. “They usually do that for you. You should check in with the make-up folks.”

“Oh? Well, uh, oh— okay.” I left and headed back to my room. I knew what I’d been told: Device Bondage wanted ‘natural’-looking girls. Avery wouldn’t have known that, shooting for whatever site he was. I grabbed my straightening iron and make-up and pattered back down to the bathroom. I was relieved to hear the showers running; I wouldn’t have to explain myself further.

_____

Eventually I made my way to the green room— ten minutes to spare. I grabbed a granola bar and an orange juice and sat down on one of the couches. The TV was off and soft light was filtering in through the windows. On one side of the room, a door was open, leading into Hair & Make-up. I munched quietly, looking at the young, muscled man on the couch perpendicular to mine. He was reading. Oh good, I thought. The porn stars around here have brains. I briefly contemplated grabbing a book from my room but decided against it. Surely they would be coming to fetch me soon. Instead, I self-consciously picked up the Charlie Sheen issue of People magazine sitting on the table in front of me. I flipped through it while repeatedly looking up into Hair & Make-up. A frazzled, somewhat nondescript woman in her late twenties had just come in and out. It wasn’t until she’d styled herself that I’d recognized her as Maitresse Madeleine.

After ten minutes or so I put the magazine down, threw out my granola bar wrapper, and tentatively walked into the adjacent room. The bustling didn’t stop, but everyone did look up at me.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Lori…” I decided to leave out the last name this time.

“Oh hi!” said a stocky, effeminate Hispanic man, pausing in putting away some supplies. He introduced himself and then his co-worker, a fat white woman with bright pink hair who was in the middle of applying make-up to another, smaller woman’s body. This woman flashed a broad smile as the first covered over her bruises.

“I’m just making sure I wasn’t supposed to be in here,” I said.

“What shoot are you doing?” asked the woman with the pink hair, whose name I’ve since forgotten.

“Device Bondage,” I said for the third time that day.

She waved her hand. “No, you’re fine,” she replied. “Your make-up looks good.”

“Thanks.”

“The wardrobe people will get you soon,” said the man whose name I’ve also let slip my mind. I turned to leave but he interrupted. “Oh, wait, did you fill out your paper work?”

“I— no, I don’t think I did.”

“You haven’t filled out any forms since you’ve gotten here?” the pink-haired lady clarified.

“I haven’t,” I said, shaking my head.

“Yeah, go on and head down to the Talent Office,” the man continued. “You know where that is?”

“Uh-huh. Thank you.”

They all smiled, and I heard the man say as I left, “They should really have a check list for this sort of thing.”

I turned around as I was halfway out the door, just to add, “Yeah, that would be helpful!”

_____

After being sent back upstairs to get my ID, I was finally sitting on a sofa in the Talent Office reading through legalese. Yes, yes, you get to own my images AND my nosies… I was trying not to skip through any of the text, but I felt self-conscious watching a pretty Hispanic woman with large breasts and braces flip through her paperwork like a pro on the adjacent couch. She probably IS a pro. I’m sure she’s done this a million times. Now pay attention. My father’s lawyer voice popped into my head just then, yelling at me for “even THINKING about not reading that paperwork! You NEVER, NEVER sign something without reading it!” I obeyed but couldn’t help wondering what good it was doing me. If I found something in there I didn’t like, what would my recourses be? I now needed the money I’d be getting that afternoon in order to make it home, and I still needed Kink to pay for my flight and provide me with a place to sleep that night. I was reminded of my stay in the hospital: Trapped, of my own accord.

Luckily there was nothing in the forms that I found particularly troubling. The paragraph telling me to address all complaints to Peter Acworth himself was certainly strange, but otdidn’t seem to preclude complaining publicly; I wasn’t signing a nondisclosure agreement, and that was something I’d been worried about as a blogger. No, the only thing I recall finding worrisome was the last two pages asking me how I felt about specific activities, telling me to rate my comfort level with them on a scale of 0-5, and allowing me space to write in specific comments. Hadn’t I already done this with my original model application? Did they lose that? No, it’s just that it doesn’t hurt to ask twice, I thought, marking down a ‘3’ (‘neutral’) for ‘live head shaving.’

By the time I handed my papers to the large, bearded man at the desk, the Hispanic woman (‘Foxxy,’ they called her) was long gone. “Thank you,” the man remarked. “Do you want to grab a sandwich?”

“Oh, thanks, but I just ate,” I said, thinking of the granola bar and also of the enema. I didn’t feel particularly hungry.  He smiled and handed me back my passport (no, I didn’t use my driver’s license), and I walked upstairs again to wait for wardrobe.

________

The same young man was still reading when I entered the green room again. I took another granola bar and sat down on the couch adjacent to him once more. He was holding his book in such a way now that I could see what he was reading: Atlas Shrugged. I smiled slightly and considered making a comment about Ayn Rand. Thankfully, someone called me from Hair & Make-up just as I was about to open my big, granola-filled mouth.

“Lori? Would you mind trying some things on for me?” asked a kindly, tattooed young woman.

“Oh, sure,” I remarked, hopping off the sofa and tossing the rest of my granola bar in the trash.

“I’m sorry,” she said, seeing me throw out my food.

“Oh no, no. I wasn’t really that hungry anyway,” I replied. Back in the make-up room, things seemed to have calmed down. The stocky man and pink-haired lady were sitting and chatting, and the woman who’s bruises were now fully covered was dressed and lounging in a chair.

“Do you mind getting dressed here?” the tattooed lady asked.

“No, not at all.” I smiled, appreciating the fact that she had offered me the option of privacy. Being the professionals they were, no one really looked anyway. I stripped down and neatly folded my cloths on a chair, then pulled on the sheer, blue-gray bra and panty set the woman handed me.

“Oh, perfect,” she remarked. It was, actually— it even went with my goth nail polish. I proceeded to put on the tight, white tank top and the blue pleated skirt. “You’re gonna pull that up high, over the—”

“Like this?”

“Exactly.”

I pulled on the knee-high white stockings and black peep-toe heels then looked myself over. “Well, I definitely look like I’m doing porn.” Everyone giggled and smiled, and I elaborated, “This is my first time.” The giggling got louder.

“You’ll be fine,” the tattooed lady reassured me.

“Yeah? People have been giving me weird reactions when I say I’m shooting for Device Bondage.”

“Is it your first time for Kink, or your first time ever?” asked the lounging woman whose bruises were now invisible.

“Well, both.” I smiled.

“It’s my first time for Kink,” she replied, getting up to take a tight, gray velvet mini dress from the wardrobe woman.

“What site are you doing?” I asked.

“Whipped Ass.”

I watched her wiggle into her dress and heels. “Are you the Domme?”

“Oh! God no!” She laughed. “Maitraisse Madeleine is.”  The tattooed lady interrupted our conversation to compliment the woman on the fit of the dress. “I know!” she exclaimed in reply. “I need to get myself one of these.”

“For going out or staying in?” asked the tattooed wardrobe woman.

“Both!”

“I do that all the time!” she replied, laughing. “I’ve done some shoots here too,” she said to me, by way of explanation. “I love bringing things home to use in the bedroom.  Which reminds me…” She exited the room and came back a minute later with another pair of heels. These were black Mary Janes with what I can only think to describe as horse-hoof platforms. “Here,” she said, handing them to me. “I actually brought these from home. I think they’ll go better with your look.”

I changed into the new heels. They felt a bit small, but I didn’t think much of this. “They are cute,” I concurred.

“I’ve never had anyone wear them on set before,” she remarked. Then she added, “Oh, by the way, you’ll do fine here.”

I sat down and talked with the woman in the velvet dress— “Audrey Rose”— and we both watched as they led Mr. Pain into the room to get changed into his jock strap. Yes, I thought. I will do fine. 

_______

To be continued…

(Yes, the title of this post is a reference to this previous piece of mine.)

First of all, let me give you a half-assed apology for not getting Part 5 of ‘My First Porn Shoot’ up earlier than what will probably be late tonight: I’m kind of sorry about that. I probably could have gotten it up earlier, but I chose to do other things instead, and you might be mildly annoyed about that, and I don’t like to mildly annoy my readers, and so I’m appropriately slightly sorry.

Now then, before I can post that piece I have to address some of the issues around it (I also have to finish writing it, but yeah): why I’m writing it, why I *can* write it, whether or not I’m a critic of Kink or a sycophant. Yes, I’ve recently been accused of being both of those things, even though it should be clear to anyone who’s read just about anything I’ve written on them that I am neither. What I am is honest about my personal experiences with them. That’s my goal, to be honest and open about my first experience in the porn industry. I get why this has confused people into believing I must have a huge bone to pick with Kink or an ass to kiss: most of us don’t write about our jobs unless we’re doing one of these two things. But then, most of us don’t work in porn

Porn— as I have argued for years and will probably argue until I die— is simply different. Being a porn performer is not like being a bartender, for several obvious reasons. One of those reasons (the one that’s relevant here) is that participating in the bartending industry is not  participating in an incredibly powerful part of the mainstream media that has an immense influence on sexuality and usually ignores all of its attendant social responsibility because, duh, capitalism. The porn industry is notoriously coercive, misogynist, racist, sizeist, and every other -ist imaginable. It is also notoriously secretive, probably because being coercive and prejudiced isn’t good for publicity. Because of this combination of power, secrecy and corruption, those of us who work in the porn industry have a theoretical moral duty that other workers do not to publicly talk about our work.

Unfortunately, people who talk about their work and aren’t completely sycophantic usually end up not working (because, duh, capitalism). Being unemployed is not a burden anyone has a moral responsibility to bear, so in practice few porn performers really have an ethical duty to speak publicly about the good and the bad of producing smut. I am not one of those porn performers. This is not my career, and it’s not my livelihood. I am one of the few people for whom this is the case, and I’m one of even fewer people who also identifies as both a feminist and a writer. For this reason, I feel that I owe it to society to talk about what goes on during a shoot at Kink.com.

So, just to make this very, very clear: I am not writing about my experiences with Kink because I have a major grudge against them. Believe me, you would know without a doubt if that were the case. I am also not writing about my experiences with Kink to earn Brownie Points with them so that they’ll hire me back. That should be painfully clear to everyone by the end of this series of posts. When it comes to my feelings about Kink, I’d say they’re complicated. I have a good number of very serious criticisms that you’ve heard about before right here and which you’ll be hearing more of soon. I also have a lot of good things to say about Kink, and overall my view of them is more positive than negative. I would gladly work for them again. But not if it means being quiet about it.

I’ve previously implied that I was going to publish one really long post describing the whole five-hour shoot, but I decided it was more practical (for you, the reader, as well as for my emotional and mental health) to split it in two. This part includes all of the immediate preparation in the studio, right up to the point when the camera is about to roll.  I figured there was no point withholding it from you all any longer just because the rest of it isn’t finished yet. After all, I can’t promise when the rest of it will be finished, but I promise you I’m pushing myself to do it. In the meantime…

_______

To read Parts 1-4 of ‘My First Porn Shoot’, scroll down and click the tag for it over on your right in the ‘tag cloud,’ and please note that previous disclaimers apply here as well.

 _____

“I gather my thoughts the further and further I go/ With some luck I just might keep on climbing/ So better to climb than to face a fall/ So high the climb/ Can’t turn back now.”-No Doubt 

[Trigger warning for BDSM apparatuses and negotiations]

_____

Going down the stone stairs in four-inch stripper heels was not easy. I gripped the rail and tried to step sideways to make my descent more practical, but still Mr. Derek Paine and our escort (I believe it was the make-up man) had to pause to wait for me.

“Only two more to go!” the escort said, referring to the number of staircases until we reached the basement studios.

“You know, maybe I’ll just take these off then,” I replied and reached down to undo the strap on my left heel.

“That might not be such a good idea.”

“Hmmm? Oh, yeah. You’re right. I’d slip and fall right on my ass in these stockings.”

“Well, that and the fact that they’re doing construction here. You don’t want to walk around barefoot,” our escort asserted. I nodded and kept going, and though I knew it was illogical, I couldn’t help but draw a comparison between stepping on rusty nails and what I was about to do. Is there that much of a difference between a bleeding foot and bruises from being spanked? I wondered before immediately telling myself that yes, tetanus is a pretty big difference.

As we reached the basement I got an uncomfortable, inexplicable feeling of familiarity. It took me a second to identify the source as the smell of the place: it was just like the scent of the dusty cellar in my now-deceased grandparents’ house. I shivered with the recognition.

“Oh. Lori?” I snapped back to see that the owner of the disappointed voice was a young white woman about my age. “Orlando actually didn’t need her down here for another half an hour,” she was saying to the man who’d escorted me down. He in turn looked down at my shoes, then looked back up to protest. “It’s okay,” the woman said kindly, pre-empting him. “I can take her to the studio.” Derek Pain and the escort disappeared off down a hallway, and the woman started walking forward through the large concrete space. I tottered behind her, unsure if I was moving through a room or a main hall. “I’m Kat. I’ll be your assistant on the shoot today,” said the woman cheerily.

“Lori,” I absent-mindedly responded. I was busy peering down each smaller, branching hallway that we passed, looking for clues to a riddle that no one had asked. The walk wasn’t long enough to gather much information. After the banner advertising a queer sex shop and a small hanging sign indicating ‘Acworth Way’, Kat and I turned left past a large, black, sound-proofed curtain and into another short hallway. She pulled open the second black door on the right and ushered me in.

“Here we are!”

“Oh!” I exclaimed dumbly, immediately distracted by (of all things!) three reusable water bottles sitting on a table off to the side. They were the same kind my nutritionist mother used to pack everyday in my overstuffed lunchbox, except none of them had my name sharpied on it. Instead, written on tape, were, “Orlando,” “Rick,” and “Lori.” That’s me, I reminded myself.

I was pulled from my quiet shock by Kat’s beckoning, and finally followed her into the surprisingly small room— deceptively small, as it turned out. When I tottered further in, I noticed there was an adjoining area: another, even larger room. It was clear that this bigger space was where I would be performing.

Here's a diagram to help you out. My Paint skills are amazing, right?

I wasn’t much focused on the stage, though. In my brief glimpse into the adjoining area I found myself fixed not on a mundane thing like a water bottle but on one of the bizarre aspects of the place that should have caught my attention from the get-go: a wall covered in hanging metal items. There were steel bars of all sizes, some bent into horseshoes; metal chains; metal cuffs; metal collars. Only then did I realize that there were other pervertables surrounding me in the anteroom. Most impressively, there were a number of strange configurations of metal pipes. So, so many pipes. Against the black, bare, windowless walls, it all seemed, if not menacing, then imposing. Yes, the various metal pieces were imposing in number, in size, in severity. Still the place managed to look less like a set from Saw and more like a metal shop that was hiding backstage in a high school theatre. The haphazardness of the clutter was—

“You can go ahead and take a seat over there if you want,” Kat said, interrupting my frantically analytical thoughts. I nodded and headed over to the black leather couch that was on my right. There is no use trying to pinpoint what this place reminds you of. This place isn’t like anywhere you’ve been. Stop overanalyzing for a second and just look around. “There’s a robe and some flip-flops for you, too,” Kat continued as she followed me over.

“Flip flops!” I exclaimed, beginning to unbuckle my heels before I even sat down. The prospect of getting my feet out of those torturous shoes was enough to quiet my mind, at least for a bit. As I removed my heels, I listened to Kat explain that Orlando was in a meeting and was running late. She apologized several times but I kept shrugging her off.

“It’s no big deal. I mean, you know what they say about showbiz…” I gave her a wry smile to offset the use of such a painfully cliched and inappropriately glamorous word. “It’s all hurry up and wait.” By which I probably meant, I’m getting paid for this time anyway.

While we were sitting around, I engaged Kat in conversation about a variety of things: college, family, porn, how one tells her family that she’s using (or not using) her college education to help produce porn. The longer we spoke, the more surprised I was at myself.  I’m normally a taciturn person, but under the extraordinary circumstances I’d somehow become gregarious. Perhaps annoyingly so.  It wasn’t the nerves that were driving me either (as they still hadn’t reappeared); it was a genuine desire to make the most of my experience. This. This is the energy for living I lack in my daily life, I thought. Porn was forcing me to overcome my mental illness and actually….well, live. God that’s corny. But it was also true: sitting in a basement kink porn studio was like gonzo cognitive behavioral therapy.

I smiled. “Why don’t you have a seat?” I asked Kat for the third time.

“Oh, no, no. That’s fine.” She paused. “Hey, have you eaten?”

“I… sort of did. I mean, I had a granola bar. And a half.”

“You really have to eat.”

“I guess I’m just not that hungry.”

“You really should force yourself to eat anyway,” she insisted. “I’ve seen girls just get wiped out halfway through because they didn’t eat and be, like, totally unable to continue.” The extreme nature of what I was about to do had never left my mind (how could it, with all of those metal contraptions everywhere?), but her comment really brought it back to the forefront of my concerns. I knew better than to not listen to her.  I agreed, and got up to get another granola bar from the amenities table (which was also stocked with lube and make-up sponges— “To stuff inside you so you can protect your cervix while you’re getting rammed,” Kat had explained). “Oh no, no,” she said, stopping me. “I mean eat some real food. I’ll go get you a sandwich.”

“Oh! Thank you.”As she left the room I headed back to the couch and picked up the robe. The cold had suddenly gotten to me. I thought back to all the rumors I’d heard about the chill in the basement studios and pulled the black cloth tight around my chest as I sat. My feet rested in the invisible corona radiating from the space heater, and I leaned the rest of my body in to catch more of the warmth.  I still wasn’t nervous, but I was now apprehensive. Hurry up and wait was getting hard.

_____

After Kat had come back with the second sandwich (I had stupidly forgotten to tell her I was a vegetarian before she left the first time), after I had eaten, after we had talked again about the strange world of porn and discussed where I’d grown up, I finally heard a man’s voice approaching. I straightened my spine and then bent again to pull my shoes back on. I didn’t want it to look like— like what? Before I could come up with an answer or buckle the first heel, the black door was pushed open and two men strolled in.

The first was a tall, thin white man in his late thirties or early forties with blonde hair, a matching hipster mustache, and a flannel shirt. It was the second man, I knew, who had to be Orlando, and it wasn’t just the black jumpsuit and hat that tipped me off, though they do appear on the edges of the frames in every Device Bondage preview video. There was also something about his presence that made me realize he was The Guy: a severity and intensity that exuded from his large frame. He was well over six feet, and he had olive skin, dark curly hair, and a face that immediately— despite the still youthful, round cheeks— made me think of Richard Ramirez. Just days before ,my (ex?)boyfriend and I had been joking about who the most handsome serial killers were, and I’d put my vote in for the gaunt, male-model-type Night Stalker. Now here was a man who looked eerily like him about to wrap me up in metal chains. Was this resemblance a racist misperception or an objective fact? A turn-off or a turn-on? I think the answer, in both cases, is ‘the latter.’

I finished pulling on my second shoe just as I was introduced to him and to Rick, the videographer. Our meeting was rushed. Rick immediately went to work setting up his equipment and Orlando and Kat started to design some new ‘device’, stopping only so Orlando could turn on the i-Home sitting on the stool between the two rooms. It started playing music that I can only describe as ‘like John Zorn, but weirder’ (no, I hadn’t thought that was possible either.)  Rick was out of site, but I watched Kat and Orlando working at the wooden slab table across from me. Apparently she’s not just my assistant, I thought, as the two of them talked about some of their favorite bondage predicaments they’d created and debated how to construct their device for today. Kat busied herself with something and Orlando walked into the next room with Rick. I could just see him on the edge of the stage, pulling horseshoe-like items from the wall.

“Lori, would you come here for a second?” he asked in a deep voice that was polite without being solicitous.

“Sure,” I chirped ,and teetered over in my heels to join him on the raised wood-plank stage. He held up a giant, rounded horseshoe.

“Let’s try this on you,” he said. I came up in front of him and turned around. “I’ve been wanting to do this forever, but I couldn’t find a girl who this…fits.” As he said the last word, he slid the horseshoe snugly around my waist. “I think you’re it,” he said, letting go. It stayed balanced on my wide hips. “It fits!” he shouted to Kat.

“Well hot damn,” I offered.

After Orlando and Kat had finished building a device out of the horseshoe they began making a harness from leather straps. This was, necessarily, done around my body as well. I couldn’t help feel like a dress mannequin.

“Hmm,” Orlando pondered. “How are we gonna get this to—”

“Maybe you could put this—” Kat offered.

“No, no,” he replied. “Damn. If only we didn’t have to worry about breaking her neck,” he mumbled.

“Oh stop it,” Kat replied, and  I decided then that I really liked having another woman on the shoot. “You’re going to freak her out.”

He laughed. I sighed.  Soon enough I was free to go back to the couch

“Is it cool if I use the bathroom?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not that I have to go, but I feel like I should probably do that before you guys lock me down for real.”

“We have a while still,” Orlando commented, carefully handing the makeshift harness to Kat.

“I can go get you a book or laptop or something of yours from your room if you like,” she offered. I immediately remembered how disastrous my room was— I’d flung everything about in the haste of my preparation that morning. I doubted she’d be able to find anything in there.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll go.

“You sure? You want me to go with you? It’s easy to get lost down here you know.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “I’ll use landmarks.”

“Oh. Huh. Good idea.” As I walked out in my flip-flops and robe, I couldn’t help but wonder if paying attention to the banners and signs on the walls was actually a novel idea among the women who performed here. It was one of the few, distinct moments I had when I felt that maybe I really was smarter than the average porn star.

_____

I returned less than five minutes later with the other bottle of five hour energy and Charity Girl, a book about a young woman who was detained for months during World War I (along with thousands of other women) just for having an STD. It’s based on true events. Ironically or fittingly, depending on your level of cynicism, I’d also brought down my make-up so I could cover up the cold sore that was popping up on the corner of my mouth. I put all of my things down on top of the mini fridge, gulped half the bottle of sour syrup, and sat on the couch to apply concealer and touch up my eyeliner. When I finished I sat staring off into space. I could no longer remember why I thought I’d be able to read right then.

Orlando approached me soon enough anyway. He pushed past the space heater and sat down next to me on the couch, saying we were going to go over the paperwork I filled out. I looked down at the papers in his hands and recognized my handwriting with a jolt. The normality, the familiarity of my penmanship made me uncomfortable.

Going over my limits again made me feel better. At first. But as we went down the list, I realized that, though I’d tried to write down exactly the same things as I’d typed out here, I had gotten a few wrong. I realized I was pushing myself further than I’d said I would. And I realized that that was kind of the point.

“When you say no caning—”

“I meant, like, with an actual cane.”

“So you’re fine with the switch?”

I thought about this for a second. I could always use my safeword, right? “Yeah.”

“And no paddles.”

“Right.”

“So is it mostly the thudding kind of pain you don’t like?”

I had to take a second to think again. His statement was certainly true, but so was the phrase that was ringing in my head: I don’t like any pain. He knew that though. That was on all of my forms. “Right. No thudding stuff,” I said simply.

By the time we reached the end of the list I felt I’d done decently with maintaining my boundaries. Trying new activities wasn’t so bad. I could always safeword if I needed to— that was going to be the really important thing. Before Orlando got up to finish designing whatever diabolical torture scene he was creating, I made sure to inform him of my burgeoning cold sore and reaffirm that it wasn’t going to be a problem. He restated our contact limits— hands only— and I nodded. My resolve was strengthening. I was doing everything right, I was doing all right, I was fine.

After he got up I picked up my book, clutched it in my lap, and proceeded to stare off into space again. You’re going to be fine. Just don’t be a martyr. Use your fucking safeword. It doesn’t end the shoot. But even if you DO want to end the shoot, that’s okay! You’ll still get paid however much you’ve earned up til now— I checked the clock. It was after one.— You’ll have at least a hundred bucks. They won’t kick you out of the dorms. No one’s going to hate you…

When Orlando called me up to the stage to do the ‘before’ interview, I was relieved. “Oh. But— should I use the bathroom first?”

“No, no. We’re just going to do this part. You’ll have more time before we start the actual bondage.” He turned off the bizarre music, and Kat helped me up onto the stool that had materialized on the stage.

“Should I look at you?” I asked him. I fidgeted, debating with myself as to whether or not I should rest my feet behind the bar connecting the legs of the stool. Sticking them in front of it was awkward, but tucking them behind… I could see myself trying to get up and forgetting how long the heels were. I’d fall flat on my face and probably ruin the whole shoot. In front it is. 

“Just look at me.” I shifted in my seat again, trying to appear ‘natural.’

“Okay,” Rick announced from behind his video camera. Kat appeared next to him with a still camera. She smiled at me. “In three, two…”

_____

To be continued…