Porn Star(18)

It was a series of accidents that altered my trajectory, that sent me spinning out of orbit and into the uniquely heavy gravity of the porn world.

It started with my theater teacher approaching me after school in the spring of my senior year. He had a friend who was filming a commercial for a local community college, and would I like to give him a call? It would be easy work and the first non-retail line on my flimsy resume, and even though I wanted to be a director or a cinematographer, it never hurt to explore acting too, right?

I did the commercial. And then I did another, this time for a dating website aimed at college kids, which led to a commercial for a “companionship” phone-line, a dying service in 2005, but apparently still strong enough to pay for a television ad. I never lied to my parents about what I was doing, and to their credit, they never tried to dissuade me from it, even though it must have been awkward for them to see my phone sex commercials while they were trying to watch CSI reruns.

And that’s how I accidentally got into the commercial business.

This lasted about three months, and the day after graduation, while I was squinting at my computer screen, trying to parse my UCLA orientation email, I got a call from the director of the hotline ad.

“Hey kid, I’ve got a friend who likes your face, and he’s short an extra for a little movie he’s filming next week. You’d get fifty bucks a day, plus lunch. You in?”

The only thing I had planned for my summer was my part-time job at Best Buy, and honestly, getting paid to stand around on a film set sounded like a much better opportunity. I quit my Best Buy job and drove up to the set that next week, assuming a “little movie” meant an indie film or maybe a made-for-cable shlock-fest.

I was wrong on both counts. After meeting with the casting director—who was also the script supervisor—I was led back to the pool, where a woman lay on her back moaning, her hand buried inside of her lace panties. I remember watching, mesmerized, as the director occasionally called out instructions—more about the mechanics of her masturbation than about her acting.

“Spread your legs a little wider, Tara, we have a shadow.”

“Okay, now use both hands.”

“Rub your chest a little, please. Good.”

I glanced back over the thin script I’d been handed. I hadn’t read it over yet, because I knew I didn’t have a speaking role, but now I read the lines with avid fascination. Lonely housewife. Seductive gardener. And me, “Pool Party Guest #2,” who was scheduled to linger in the background with a red Solo cup and a veneer of partygoer merriment.

And that’s how I accidentally got into the soft-core porn business.

From there on out, it was a series of gradual steps onward—or downward, depending on your point of view. The director liked me, and I came back the next week for a film about a naughty college cheerleader who falls for her professor. I played her jilted boyfriend—a role that required a scene where I received a blowjob, something that I initially had mixed feelings about. On one hand, no eighteen-year-old male has ever felt despair at the prospect of a blowjob, but on the other hand, it felt strange to be sucked off and then handed a check.

Not wrong, necessarily. But strange.

I don’t remember much about that scene—my very first—but I do remember the actress, Traci Aliss, who’s now married to a podiatrist and lives somewhere in Arizona. She was Asian-American, with glossy-smooth hair and flawless skin, and even with all the unnecessary makeup, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. I’d never been touched in front of an audience, and so I’d been worried about staying hard with all those eyes on me. But when Traci trained her eyes on my face, licking her lips as she unzipped my pants, all of my apprehension vanished. I felt something I’d never felt before in my life, something deeper than lust, something essential, something akin to what I felt when I watched my favorite movies.

I suppose Devi would call it bigness. For a moment, I felt the entire expansive bigness of the world, of Traci’s glowing skin, of the sunlight coming in harsh and bright through the window, of the subtle dynamic of power that coursed between us. I didn’t feel like a boy who didn’t have his future figured out, a boy who already felt limited by a path he’d barely stepped on.

I felt like a man. And I threaded my hands through Traci’s hair and murmured everything I felt to her, I told her what I wanted her to do to me and what I wanted to do to her, and for a moment, I could tell that she was as lost in the scene as I was. That despite the cameras—or maybe because of them—these sensations were galvanized into something exhilarating and intoxicating, and we both ended the scene filled with a sense of happy magic.

The director was so pleased with my performance that he asked to do another film, and another, and another, and by the end of the summer, I’d made five thousand dollars by having sex on camera, with the promise that I could make more if I was willing to segue into hardcore pornography.

I was.

After signing with a talent agency, I cancelled my UCLA classes, told my shocked but accepting parents, and rented an apartment in Burbank.

And that’s how I accidentally became a porn star.



* * *



You’re right. Porn is always the answer. No wonder those people keep losing on Family Feud.

That’s the first thing waiting on my screen when I wake up. It’s crazy what falling asleep without half a bottle of whiskey will do for a man’s energy, and during the past week, the urge to go whiskey-numb has slowly diminished. Part of it is Vida’s offer, an offer that I’m still trying to think of something for.