Girlvert: A Porno Memoir (22 page)

Chapter Thirty

Disappointment

A
nother
year had quickly gone by. It was already 2005, and Kris and I were in Vegas yet again for the big annual porno convention. It feels like a little reward for all of the hard work everyone puts in all year, an excuse to party together. No one knows how to party like a bunch of slacker porno people.

I was signing in the JM booth with Sissie. She and I had separate hotel rooms that shared an optional adjoining door. We kept that door open most of the time because Sissie’s male companion (no longer Tyler, thank goodness) was a coke dealer. He told me I could have as much as I wanted, and I sure did. I was high the entire week. It was a good thing he was Sissie’s boyfriend and not mine. Part of my subconscious has kept me from falling for a drug dealer. If I had, I fear my life would have come to a tragic ending.

Kris and I drove to Vegas in my beautiful BMW. He loved my car but couldn’t stand it at the same time. Kris was frustrated because he wasn’t making money yet off of the movies he was producing for Vice Seraph. It takes time for anything worthwhile to see success, but that’s not how it happened for me. I was a porno girl, and everything was instant. Kris could hardly bear to ride in my new car when all he could think about was what he didn’t have. Kris wasn’t green with envy, he was chartreuse. When we settled into the hotel room, Kris got on the phone immediately to call his friends. It wasn’t about us anymore. I had to sign autographs all day, every day of the convention. So he would go out without me.

I wanted my depressing relationship to work out. Kris was just going through a rough time, and I wanted to stick by him. He’ll snap out of it, I thought. Things can’t be good or bad all the time. Emotions fluctuate. I wanted to show him that I was truly in love with him. I would be there for him when he didn’t make much money. I wouldn’t just give up on the love we had. I tried to appease him as much as I could.

While Kris went out all night, I stayed at the Venetian with Jeff and Sandy. Sandy hated Kris just as much as she hated Tyler. Jeff didn’t like Kris at all. They saw Kris as a whiner and a source of torment in my life. They knew I was doing a lot of drugs, and they blamed that on my relationship with him.

The convention lasted every day from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Wednesday until Sunday. All day I slaved, strung out on coke, signing posters and taking photos with all of the fans. My forehead was an oil slick and my nerves were a mess from all of the excitement. All we could focus on was getting through the days so we could drink and party at night.

Saturday was the night of the awards show. The entire thing is ridiculous, but I love it. The porno industry gets to act like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Oscar night. It was a surreal event for me. The massive attention and illusion of glamour somehow made what I did for a living a respectable facet of the entertainment profession. There were cameras and fans everywhere. All the porno girls felt like Cinderella. On that one special evening we pretended to be bona fide film stars rather than glorified hookers.

It was such a thrill for all of us to gather downstairs, dressed up in sparkly outfits, and go to an event where our work was honored. I cared about what my peers thought of me. I wanted to win and make all of the other girls jealous. My self-esteem was a garbage can that could be filled with the envy of the rest of the porno girls until it shone like a pot of gold by winning those damn awards.

Sandy, Jeff, Sissie, the coke dealer, and I sat at the JM table. Kris—Kriss—didn’t want to sit at our table with me. He was my boyfriend and my date, but he refused to sit with us. He sat at the Vice Seraph table. I was an important part of JM, but my value there meant absolutely nothing to him.

I was nominated in a few different categories. JM won for some of them, and I forgot all about Kriss. I presented an award on the stage and accepted another on someone else’s behalf. Then I won Best Supporting Actress. I was all over that awards show. And again, as cheesy as it is to be awarded for your contribution to pornography, the feeling was genuinely joyous. Then,
Girlvert
won the award for Best Continuing Series again. I was so happy. It was
my
series. I ran over to Kriss, at the Vice Seraph table.

“Can you believe it?” I was beaming from ear to ear.

“I lost, Ori!” Kris sobbed and reached for me and buried his head in my stomach and chest. “I lost. So don’t rub it in my face. I even lost to you, Ori!”

Those words have stuck in my ears for years. They’ve left a skid mark because it was such a shitty thing to say. He was supposed to be my lover, not my competitor. That’s all it had been for all these months, some sick and cruel competition. If he had won something, I would have been sharing his joy even if I’d lost to him. Didn’t Kris remember how I’d won the biggest award possible the year before, and how little it’d mattered after? Kriss was devastated by the industry’s lack of recognition for his self-proclaimed greatness.

“It’s okay,” I stammered. He clung to my blue sequin dress and bawled his heart out. I was mortified at his public display of self-pity. He had no shame. It certainly embarrassed me to be holding my big, old, bawling baby of a boyfriend. I did my best to avoid eye contact with the rest of the people at his table. He was acting like an idiot in front of his company. I pulled at him to get up and walk with me to the restroom. We needed drinks. As we walked, he said hello to other porno girls and congratulated them on their wins.

We went up to the hotel room and Kris got on his cell phone. He was going out to a club to see some of his “real friends.” He wanted to be as far from porno people as he could. Before he left, he said, “I’m going out to this club. You’re welcome to come with, if you want, but I don’t want to hear any shit out of you, if you don’t like the music, or if it’s too loud. I am not in the mood. I just want to get wasted and forget this night ever happened.”

With an invitation like that, how could I refuse? Well, I refused. Kris left and I went into Sissie’s room to do some coke. The night, spectacular in the beginning, was ending sour. Sissie was having a temper tantrum, screaming about not winning Best New Starlet. She thought she was a shoo-in because she fucked one of the guys on the awards committee. She was also livid about something her coke-dealer boyfriend had done. Who the hell knows what she was mad about? She threw all of his clothes into the hallway and proceeded to knock over the furniture in her room. I didn’t want security to come and ask me to help get her under control, so I went to the bar downstairs.

Everyone I passed congratulated me, but the only praise I wanted was Kris’s praise. Lacking that, I wanted more cocaine. I bumped into a guy who owed me payment for when I hosted one of his parties. I told him to just pay me in coke, and he did. I spotted Kris walking through the casino. He was with a group of other old wasted adults. He was smiling and carrying on. I joined the group for some more coke and booze. We moved to the room of a guy I’d done coke with all night a couple of times without Kris, back in LA. He’d asked me to fuck him about twenty times, but I always refused. I said it would be a conflict of interest, since he was the editor of the magazine that handed out the awards. Sissie had fucked him under false pretenses. I sure as hell was not going to. I didn’t need to fuck anyone to win an award for fucking.

Up in the room, several men and women in their thirties, forties, and fifties were doing coke and ecstasy. I just sniffed the lines of coke. I couldn’t do enough of it that night. My misery wouldn’t numb, no matter how much I put up my nose. Kris ignored me like I was a moldy heel of bread. I sat solemnly in the room while everyone else partied. At six in the morning, as the sun was starting to peek up over the desert, I left the room.

I called Sandy when I got back to my room. “What am I doing?” I cried. I was laying in the bed with my pajamas on, thrashing around like a dying fish.

“Kris is a jerk. You should tell him to get out of your room and find somewhere else to stay,” she calmly replied.

“I’m just going to leave him here. Right now. I’m packing up and getting the fuck out of here. I don’t care what happens to his bags either! When he finally decides to come back to my room, his key won’t work anymore. Fuck him!”

“You can’t drive back by yourself. It’s too dangerous. Let me see if someone can go with you. Please don’t take off yet,” Sandy said. She knew I was out of my mind on coke and hadn’t slept at all.

I packed up my things in minutes. I was dumping Kris, literally, in the middle of the desert like a dead carcass. He could find a new ride home and a new, young girlfriend to talk down to. I was through with him. I called a couple of friends to tell them what I was doing. I hoped that the maids would just throw his bags in the garbage. I should have done it myself, I thought, as I strode down the hallway of the Venetian to the elevator. I’d thrown Tyler’s clothes in the trash when we were breaking up. Not all of them, just the ones I’d bought for him.

Wyatt, the sales guy for JM Productions, agreed to ride home with me, bless his soul. He was very brave to do so. It was raining, and I was ranting. The road was practically invisible the whole way home from Nevada. The rain kept coming down harder and harder. My driving was the worst it had ever been. I felt like I’d sobered from the coke, but I hadn’t. Wyatt listened to me yap and tried to warn me about watching the road. I thought the car was the only thing I had under control. I wasn’t worried about the pouring rain. My life was much stormier. We hydroplaned several times. I could have killed us. I drove my little blue sports car way too fast. I am an LA driver. I don’t know how to drive in the rain. It was heavy all the way to Hollywood.

Ditching Kris in Las Vegas, as it turned out, was merely the first of several break-ups to come. It did empower me, though. Maybe it didn’t turn me into an assertive, independent woman overnight, but it made a rip in the wool Kris had pulled over my eyes.

On Valentine’s Day, he gave me a half-assed marriage proposal. His attitude about it was that I seemed to want it more than him. We had discussed getting married many times during the course of our relationship. He said he wanted to marry me. I didn’t put any pressure on him, but Kris gave the impression that I’d been hounding him for this ring—a beautiful diamond on a platinum band. It was prettier than the one Tyler’d given to me, which I lost as soon as we broke up.

Kris acted somewhat excited to give it to me, but ultimately dismissive, like, “Okay, so now you have my ring, does this make you happy?” I felt like the ring already represented an unwanted union, and it scared me. We didn’t have anything in common anymore except what we watched on TV. A marriage cannot be held together by episodes of
South Park
.

I again had a ring on my finger, and again it meant nothing.

Chapter Thirty-One

Attention Whore

M
y
engagement to and entire relationship with Kris was off again for the tenth time. It left me with a vacancy for a trip to Jamaica. While Kris and I were having a good week, I’d booked a stay at Hedonism III, a “pleasure-seekers” sex vacation in Runaway Bay, Jamaica. The airline ticket I purchased for Kris was a wash. It was a small price to pay for the way I felt about him now. I called all of my friends to join me, but to no avail. My best friend, Hannah, was still an illegal immigrant at the time and couldn’t leave the country. The others I asked couldn’t take time off work. I found it hard to believe because they were all porno people or drug dealers.

I’d started starring in a show for Playboy TV called
Night Calls Hotline
. The gist of the show is that people called in to have phone sex with real porn stars. My producer, Derek, called and said, “Al will go with you.”

“No, he wouldn’t. I’m such a pain in the ass to him.” I couldn’t fathom the production assistant I never responded to on a routine basis wanting to join me for a week’s vacation. I’d been rude to him. I was known at Playboy for being a little abrasive. I didn’t mean to be inconsiderate, but I was sort of an angry, conceited, and self-centered brat. My head was huge now that I had my own show on TV. Still, Al agreed to come with me. The morning of our flight, I drunk-drove to his house. We left my car there and Al’s stepdad drove us to the airport.

“
Modern Drummer
? What is that? Are you a modern drummer?” I mocked Al, regarding his magazine.

“Yeah, actually. I play the drums.” He handed me the mag. I couldn’t stop sticking my foot in my mouth with this guy. I was trying to act like a normal girl, but the Girlvert in me just took over.

We landed in Miami for a layover. We’d drunk vodka sodas and Jack Daniel’s the whole flight. Al had me in tears when he told me about his Mormon grandma. Al was chasing the dream, the cliché, in Hollywood—to make it big in the movies. He wanted to finish a documentary on Thor: The Rock Warrior. It was in process and had a lot of promise.

For the next plane, I popped a Xanax and offered one to Al. He’d never done Xanax, or any other drug. He had only smoked one cigarette in his life, on a dare. We were having such a good time. We each took a pill. Then we blacked out.

Hedonism III is a swingers’ resort. I knew that when I booked the trip. I only wanted to go because coworkers from Playboy TV were going. Two women who were the most established hosts at the channel were going, and I looked up to them. Everyone knew me as a classless girl. I wanted to be perceived as having some kind of intelligence and charm, as these two were. Other than a few familiar Playboy TV faces, the people at Hedonism were all cruising for sex. I didn’t know that it would be so blatant. It was definitely a
Real Sex
crowd, but they were all fans of Playboy TV. I was sort of a small-time celebrity there. Everyone knew Ashley.

I have a tendency to underestimate the amount of exposure I’ve had because of porn. I never think people will recognize me. I always believe I’m under the radar. From the first scene, I’ve believed this and never stopped. I’m not a porno-looking girl. On the surface, I’m normal.
I’m the exception to every rule
—another ridiculous motto I’ve lived my life by. Because of this motto, I’ve made mistakes that could have been avoided by common sense. Because I thought I was so different, I believed that Al wouldn’t go for me. We got wasted on rum and whiskey on our first night at the resort. We clung to each other for protection. Everywhere we turned, there were couples scanning us up and down, waiting to get us in bed. In the room we shared, on the king-size bed, we passed out in our clothes. In the middle of the night, I awoke and curled up to Al. Half-asleep, I started making out with him. Then I reached into his boxers to grab his dick. I was surprised to feel how big it was. He’s a short guy, but his cock was huge. I went for it like a drunken college girl.

We had sex that night. We had sex day and night the entire stay in Jamaica. We acted like best friends, always joking around and making fun of each other. I pushed him around but held hands with him at the same time. One day, by the pool, I ordered him, “You know what? I don’t like your name. I don’t want to keep calling you ‘Al.’ It sounds awful. From now on, I’m only going to call you by your full name, Alan.”

Alan didn’t mind. He didn’t mind any of the insane, pushy things I did or said to him. Alan liked me. For so long, I’d had the mentality that I was damaged goods and not good enough. I was convinced that no normal guy would want anything from me other than a blowjob. Alan was happy to be with me. He didn’t demand a condom, either. He fucked me with the risk of catching all my diseases, no questions asked. He was proud to be strolling around side by side with me. I felt confident.

I did do a substantial amount of cocaine while in Jamaica. Here we were, on a hot, beautiful, Caribbean Isle, and I couldn’t go one day without coke. As soon as I got there I asked around. I asked the men selling knickknacks on the beach. Alan escorted me to the spot where I bought the drugs. I paid a hundred dollars for two grams. I also purchased a large branch of marijuana for some of the other guests I’d befriended. The Jamaican drug lord didn’t have a bag for the weed bush, so I just dropped the whole thing in my purse. It was hanging out of my bag as we walked back to the resort.

The humidity was so extreme that I couldn’t cut up my lines fast enough. The coke kept getting wet from the air, even with the swamp cooler blaring in the room. I was frustrated, but managed to shovel the damp white substance into my nostrils. The stuff was good. It was really pure. I can still remember how it tasted. It wasn’t like the turpentine mixture I usually got at home. It was more organic. It got me feeling high and blissful, not paranoid and tense.

“Have you ever seen a girl do as many drugs?” I turned to Alan. The last line was still trickling down the back of my throat. “And you love me for it, don’t you,” I laughed. My ego was soaring. I could do anything and he would like it.

We continued our casual fling and friendship all the way home to LA Alan was the first guy to make me laugh in a long time. He was twenty-eight, a bit of a late-bloomer. He looked like a teenage boy. He was a pretty, wholesome, small-town boy from the state of Washington who played jazz drums. I teased him about how many girls he’d had sex with. He’d only done it with six. I was his seventh. He also revealed to me that the girls he’d been with were a little “sporty”—the term he used for girls who had a few extra pounds on them.

My self-esteem was still bruised from Kris, who’d always made sure to tell me how beautiful every other girl he shot was. I tried not to overanalyze it too much. Alan could take me as is—a drug-using, foul-mouthed, loud, careless, conceited porno chick. I was constantly smashing up my car and losing my belongings. All of my money was drained from my bank account. I had no sense of consequence. I had become my own version of Tyler.

On our way home, we again had to change planes at the Miami Airport. I wasn’t dumb enough to bring any coke back with me. Alan asked me five different times to make sure I wasn’t carrying any. The drug-sniffing German shepherd at the entrance to our connecting terminal lunged forward and barked as I walked by. “I don’t know what that dog thinks it can smell. I don’t have anything on me. You can check.” I was annoyed that this service animal was making a stir. The cop holding the leash was a woman. I rolled my eyes at her and looked at Alan

The policewoman said, “Ma’am. Excuse me? I’m going to have to search your belongings.” I handed her my purse and she looked through it carefully. There wasn’t anything in there, but it was the same purse I’d been toting grams of coke and bushels of weed in. When she was finished, the policewoman said, “Go, on. Have a nice day.” The dog had obviously smelled the remnants.

Just in case we might feel differently when reality truly set in, Alan and I fucked once more in his bedroom before I went home. We both knew that the odds for us to try to make it as a couple were risky.

No matter what he thought of me at the time, he could have done a lot better. Though I’d returned my ring to Kris, we were still engaged. I never told Alan. I dated both of them simultaneously because I was too selfish to let either one of them go. I strung each along, telling both how madly in love I was and that I wanted to be together forever. I was so scared of losing affection from men. Breaking my own protocol, I’d even fucked my drug dealer so he would still hang out with me and like me. When my platonic male friend and old neighbor Oliver came on to me, I gave in and made out with him. I needed him to love me, too. He was married and I felt like a total whore, so I tried to keep it to a minimum. We kissed only a few times late at night, drunk and on coke. He wanted more, I could tell. I’m sure Oliver would have loved one of my sloppy porno blowjobs from the movies, but the most I did was grab his cock outside of his pants.

It hurt to realize that the men around me were only after sex. I should have been happy about it, right? I chose to be a porn star. My entire livelihood counted on how much men wanted to bang me.

I remember being on the kitchen telephone when I was thirteen. I was talking to my friend, and I said, “When I grow up, I want to be a porn star!” I did it to get a reaction out of my dad, who was sitting nearby. He turned around and looked at me and shook his head.

“Ori, don’t say that. It hurts me to hear such vile things come out of your pretty face.”

As a teenager, I knew that my life was going to be a lonely and desperate struggle to survive. By the time I was fifteen, I lost all communication with my dad, and my mom was a complete junky. I was never abused physically or sexually as a child or teenager. The abuse I received was in the form of neglect. I sought attention very negatively. I could easily find boys and men to have sex with. I was shrewd and put all of my energy into meeting the opposite sex. Why should I do that well in school? I thought. My mom didn’t deserve to put my A+ papers on the refrigerator. I missed my dad’s love. I needed him around, but I told myself that I didn’t. I told myself it didn’t matter that my own father decided to cut out. I must have slept with at least thirty guys by the age of eighteen. None of them were my true boyfriends. I told them all that they were, and that I loved them. I couldn’t stay infatuated with one boy for longer than a week or two after I’d slept with him. Enduring relationships seemed very trivial. Sex gave me a sense of empowerment. I started having it when my parents began to fail me. I got the love and attention I craved from sex. It was a solution to some of the confidence I’d lost.

So now I’d gotten what I wished for. I became the porn star that I’d always wanted to be. All the attention I could possibly ask for was mine. I could have sex with anyone and they would definitely remember me. Well, it didn’t fulfill me. Admiration is like empty calories. With Kris, Alan, and the other men around, I was starving for affection. I was too busy being a selfish pig to see that it didn’t fill me up. The life I’d created for myself was just a trough for me to gorge in. I couldn’t get enough.