Madeleine knew she hadn’t changed her mind that night, because she lost consciousness (though that could have been alcohol intake as much as blood loss). But she was rescued, and the question remained: subconsciously, had she known she would be? She couldn’t see anything inside the Kaleidoscope that would tell her either way. She couldn’t remember what she had said to her roomie Carole-Ann in the hours and days before. She couldn’t even remember whether she locked the bathroom door. She desperately wanted to think that there was something she had said, something she had done to ensure she would be found in time.
It scared her now to consider what depths her mind had visited, but it terrified her more to think how close to death she might have come. How near she had been to losing all she might ever be; how the things that had wrecked her past had almost stolen her future too.
Madeleine didn’t experience any Capra-esque awakening to the value and joy of life. Coming round in a hospital room, realising where she was and why, was not a euphoric moment. Considering how low your self-esteem has to get before you consider offing yourself, it’s not comforting to think of the new levels of shame and embarrassment you’ve just descended to as a failed suicide and bona-fide basket case. However, with the knowledge that she hadn’t hit the bottom came the understanding that she was no longer sinking, and if you’re no longer sinking, there’s only one way to go.
She moved out of the shared house and got an apartment on her own, using the latest instalment of guilt money from her father. She didn’t have any pride obstacles to negotiate in taking his cash; if it meant he could tell himself he was helping her, or that she needed him, then that was just a couple more bubbles in the hot-tub of self-deception the prick already luxuriated in.
She went back to college the next semester. She didn’t feel as self-conscious as she had feared around people who knew – or were likely to know – about her suicide attempt. Maybe it was the thought that she’d nothing to hide, certainly nothing to gain from pretending to be anything she was not. However, she was self-conscious about the scars. Their visceral ugliness appalled her, as if they were the face of the person she was when she inflicted them, a face she didn’t want anybody else to see. She also didn’t like the story they told about her to anyone with the eyes to notice, and took to wearing long sleeves at all times. The paralysis in two fingers of her left hand could not be covered up so easily, but chances were the type of people who knew what that signified would also have knowledge enough not to be judgemental.
It was through her psychology class that she had her first encounter with pornography. She was working extra hours to catch up with what she had missed through her convalescence and the rather unproductive weeks that had preceded it, and as she was staying late around campus most nights anyway, she volunteered to be part of an experimentation group. Sexual psychology was starting to hold an ever-keener interest for her, as she searched for the Holy Grail that would help her diagnose quite what was wrong with her own.
The study was into what Professor Farraday called ‘Desensitisation’, monitoring the effects upon attitudes of a group exposed to explicitly sexual material. He was seeking to test the hypotheses that exposure to pornography made men callous in their sexual attitudes to women (leading to a greater disposition to rape and a lack of sympathy towards victims of sexual violence et cetera et cetera, see Dworkin, McKinnon et al);and that it made women feel degraded, objectified, dehumanised and all the other pathetic things they were supposed to turn into any time a skin flick met a VCR. He gave all the members of the group a number of videotapes and a viewing schedule, plus a rota for passing each other’s tapes around. Watching the material alone in the privacy of your own home, he observed, was conducive to a more accurate reading of reactions, as most pornography users tended not to view it in seminar rooms alongside a dozen people they hardly knew.
As she had quickly come to learn, there is no such thing as an ‘experiment’ in academic psychology, because that would suggest the prof was in some doubt as to what the results would be. He knew all along that sustained exposure to this material would make the depicted behaviour seem more natural, commonplace and perfectly ordinary; the effect was ‘demystification’ rather than desensitisation. So a blow-job neither elevated the recipient male to a position of dominance and supremacy any more than it made the woman a debased slattern deserving of all contempt: it was just a blow-job. A pussy wasn’t any kind of mystic portal to the sexual dimension: it was a pussy. The men were neither perverts nor superstuds for doing what they were doing; the women neither whores nor goddesses. They were all just people fucking. And it was no big deal.
Madeleine knew the prof had no doubt what impact the porn would have on her sexual attitudes; he could have less easily predicted the impact it had on her sexuality. In short, it turned her on. It was deeply ironic that this should seem so surprising, as that was the material’s intended purpose, but then in the current climate, the list of expected effects placed dehumanisation, depravation and damnation a long way ahead of titillation.
It excited her. It made her feel the way she imagined sex was supposed to but in her unfortunate experience never had. She watched tapes and tapes of the stuff with a compelled mixture of fascination and arousal. However, it wasn’t the men that turned her on, it was the women; what they were doing, how they were doing it. They weren’t ‘passive’ as she had heard one Dwork opine; and by God they weren’t ‘compliant’. They were freely, energetically, uninhibitedly indulging their desires, in a fantasy world where it appeared they had every right to do so; a world without shame and guilt, a world where sex wasn’t dirty and dark, but natural, healthy and joyful.
Watching these women was the erotic revelation of Madeleine’s life: the only thing that had ever made her feel, damn it, sexy about being female, about having this body, this mind. And this was not because of any latent lesbian tendencies, however attractive she found many of the women. It was not because she desired them.
It was because she wanted to be them.
Pretty soon she found herself asking why she couldn’t, and truth was she didn’t find a long list of reasons. Unlike the prescription beauties of the mainstream media, the women in these videos came in all shapes, sizes, proportions, colours, ages and races. It seemed pornography was the one visual medium that still believed beauty was in the eye of the beholder: whatever turns you on, literally.
She started buying the LA X-Press, looking up the want-ads offering work in the ‘adult business’, as it was referred to. That was where the reality brakes applied themselves, as she asked herself what she might be getting into here. Through door number one: a new career as an adult movie star. Through door number two: white slavery. Choose carefully now.
But one of the ads quoted a name she recognised from some of the tapes she had rented after the prof recalled his own ‘research materials’.
‘New adult models required. Hard or soft – however far YOU want to take it. Contact Marco Pia . . .’
She became aware through the X-Press that Marco Pia was a comparatively big name among porn directors, but the videos she knew him from were a different matter. He did a series called First Timers, which she guessed was really a compilation of the auditions – or screen-tests or whatever you’d call them – of women with no experience in front of the camera, who were either trying to get into the business or just wanted to experiment. She had initially picked one of these up after watching a tape in which she felt the actresses were ‘performing’ too much, as if trying to fit a rather immature male fantasy of how a woman should behave in bed. The First Timers tape promised a less polished product, and delivered a more honest depiction of sexual behaviour than she had seen so far. For one thing, the progress of the encounters – from athletic feats of sexual gymnastics down to just stripping for the camera – was dictated by the women rather than by Marco Pia or whichever other male he brought along. That was how she knew the ad was for new First Timers – ‘however far you want
to take it’ was the phrase that kept cropping up during the often lengthy on-camera discussions between Pia and the women.
She rented a few more of these tapes as the idea of getting involved herself took hold. It seemed there wasn’t going to be a better way of getting in or simply of finding out whether this stuff was really for her after all.
Marco Pia was taller than he seemed on her TV screen, but then it occurred to her that she’d probably never seen him standing up. He seemed like a bit of an old hippie in the videos: early forties, grey streaks in hair that shouldn’t be allowed to grow that length past thirty-five, and looked like he would smell of joss-sticks and pot. In the flesh he appeared slimmer, more lithe, and smelt only of shower-gel and body spray. His house smelt so fragrantly of fresh coffee that she wondered if he was trying to sell the place.
He had asked her to come around at eight in the morning. His place was in Burbank, so having risen at six to be there in time she was glad of the coffee, both in aroma and liquid form. The drive over was weird, a mixture of trepidation and anticipation, worry and excitement, plus the freeways were quiet, which was always a little freaky. They traded small-talk while she drank from the mug and he set up the camera and lights in front of a fold-down couch in his expansive lounge. She found his decor slightly amusing. If tacky could be conservative, this was it. It wasn’t garish or gaudy: everything looked new or immaculately maintained, but all of it seemed about twenty years out in a precise and pristine sort of way.
‘All right, first of all I’m gonna sit you down on the couch and ask you questions, and I’m gonna be behind the lights here,’ he said. ‘It’s to get you used to the camera. I’m gonna introduce you, but rule number one is you never use your own name.’
‘I know,’ she told him, sitting where he pointed. ‘I’ll be Katy. Katy Kox, with a K.’
‘I think there’s already a Kelly Kox, but that’s fine. Long as you’re in front of this camera, you’re Katy Kox. Maybe with two xs, huh? Now, just try and relax, and don’t worry if you don’t feel relaxed, because you’ll get there eventually.’
‘I’m relaxed,’ she lied.
‘That’s good, that’s good. But before we start, let me just state rule number two, which is: you’re in charge. You do what you want to do, and remember that you can leave at any time.’
‘I know. However far I want to take it.’
‘That’s right.’
He began asking her questions, the familiar Q&A she’d seen on the videos. She imagined most people cued through those parts of the tapes to get to the action, but Madeleine had watched every second of those interviews, wanting to find out a little about who these women actually were. Mostly it was sexual stuff, like what kind of thing turned them on, their previous sexual experiences, and why they had come along – did they want into the business or was it just curiosity? Sometimes they talked about what their day-jobs were, whether they were in a relationship right now. They told – in keeping with the spirit of the thing – as much or as little about themselves as they felt comfortable with.
Madeleine didn’t feel comfortable telling much. One of the first things he asked when the small-talk faded was how many partners she’d had. He always asked that, and she’d often been surprised at how low the figures were in reply. The notion that you had to be a prolific sleeparound before you’d consider doing porn turned out to be a total myth; it was also reassuring, given her own limited history. However, she didn’t want to admit that technically speaking there had been only one, and she certainly didn’t want to widen the definition to include certain other experiences.
‘Not many,’ she settled for. To head off any further pursuit by Marco she added: ‘Let’s say we’re talking less than the fingers of one hand, even if this hand was on a yakuza.’
He smiled. He liked that.
She was a long way from relaxed when he asked her to take her clothes off. She stripped down to her underwear, not feeling anything remotely erotic about what she was doing, concentrating mainly on preventing the fit of giggling that this whole scenario was threatening to brew up. She felt a need to disguise her discomfort, fearing Pia’s disapproval if he could sense it, like he’d pull the plug on the whole thing if he thought she wasn’t up to it. It wasn’t that she was afraid he’d get mad at her: he was a very laid-back kind of guy. It was that she felt she wanted to please him.
That was when she realised what was going wrong. She was complying. She was trying to be a good little girl for Daddy, and that wasn’t why she was here. Marco Pia wasn’t Daddy, and she sure as hell wasn’t a good little girl.
She was Katy Koxx.
She stopped, put her hands on her hips, and looked at Pia.
‘This isn’t really doing much for me,’ she said.
‘That’s fine, that’s okay. You wanna quit?’
‘No. I want you to get over here.’
‘Is there some kind of release I have to sign?’ she asked. They were in his kitchen, drinking Pepsi from bottles, her hair still wet from the shower. It was Katy Koxx who had climbed in and turned on the faucets, but although it was Madeleine who emerged, it wasn’t the same Madeleine.
‘There is, yeah, but you should cool off first.’
‘Cool off?’
‘Yeah. Come back over here tomorrow. I’ll let you watch the tape. Then, once you’ve seen what it looks like up there on the TV screen, you can decide whether you want to sign the release.’
‘I want to sign it now,’ she said. ‘I want to commit myself before I change my mind.’
‘And that’s why I’m telling you to cool off. Right now you’re still getting off on what you just did. It’s all a big buzz, right? But once you sign that release, for the rest of your days, wherever you go, that tape’s gonna follow. So you should take a fresh look at it in the cold light of day, so to speak, before you “commit” yourself to anything.’
‘But . . .’
He put down his Pepsi on the table. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Madeleine. I think you’re pretty hot. I think you could go places in this business if that’s what you want to do. I could use you, definitely, and I would really like to use you. But I don’t need you. I make maybe twenty First Timers tapes a year. I cast and direct the same number of professional adult features too. And I can fill all of them with people who want to be there. I don’t need to dupe, deceive or harass anyone to be in one of my pictures.
‘Now, I don’t care what people think about adult movies – I’ve got a clear conscience about what I do. So if you come back tomorrow, watch the tape and you’re cool to continue, great. I’ve got a feature shooting in a fortnight I can put you in if you want the start. But if you’ve changed your mind, then it’s no loss – we both had a good time and that’s the end of it. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Hey, don’t look so freaked out. I’m sure you came along here today with the idea that everybody in this business is a sleazeball. Everybody in this business is a sleazeball. But some of them are okay sleazeballs and some of them are asshole sleazeballs. You’re gonna be vulnerable if you don’t know the difference.’
In a way it was an extreme form of role-playing therapy, stepping outside of herself to become this voraciously sexual person, confident, in control, getting what she wanted. She now fully understood what people meant by the term ‘abandon’. When she was being Katy Koxx she was abandoning everything about Madeleine Witherson, existing without the constraints of fear and worry for a while. And when she returned to being Madeleine Witherson she brought a little more of Katy Koxx back with her each time.
The sex itself was far from great. For one thing, the sense of adventure about what she was doing was always going to wear off, and there was little chance of orgasm when at any second the director was likely to interrupt and call a halt for the dozenth time.
But that didn’t mean the whole thing wasn’t one enormous turn-on. It was like having a secret lover: she had this other life, this other self that nobody knew
about, and the thought of it was a constant thrill. While she was in familiar company, she got off on thinking how surprised they would be if they knew. The paradox was that the longer she was a porn actress, the more the public Madeleine changed into someone they’d be less surprised to learn that about.
She didn’t think much about the future. She had done half a dozen features, and was moving up the credits as her face got known, but she didn’t have any great sense of ambition about it. She was just rolling with it, and that was probably because she always knew it wouldn’t last. Although she had taken precautions to protect her anonymity, she’d always known it was inevitable that her identity – or rather, who she was related to – would be discovered in the end (and that it would be the end). That hadn’t been part of her motive for doing it, certainly not consciously, but deep down she’d always known it was going to limit her stay; and maybe that had made it easier to get involved in the first place.
It hadn’t been a career move; it hadn’t been a springboard; it hadn’t been a protest; it hadn’t been a cry for help. It had just been something she had done, something she had had to do. And something that had made her feel better. Just a pity it was also something that was considered punishable by death in certain quarters.
She pulled out the plug to drain away the water, standing up and turning on the shower as she did so. A bath was soothing, but you ended up sitting around in what you had just washed off, which was bad enough when you hadn’t been bleeding off bruises with a razor blade. The first blast from the shower-head was cold, discharging what had been lying in the pipes. It brought her skin out in goosebumps and sharpened her up after such a long meditation.
She thought of the last shower she’d had. It had been that morning, a few hours and a lifetime ago, when the biggest thing on her mind was making the right impression – and on the photographer rather than the photographs. She’d stood there under the spray, nervous and still glowing from their meeting yesterday. The way he’d looked at her, the way he’d talked to her. No games, no postures, no bullshit. Refreshingly, it seemed here was someone who really couldn’t give a shit about her having been a porn star. There’d been so many who didn’t want to know her because of it, and plenty who only wanted to know her because of it. Even those who claimed not to have a problem with it still saw it as a vastly disproportionate part of who she was. This guy Kennedy wasn’t interested in a porn star, ex porn star, to-be movie star, senator’s daughter or whatever the hell else. He was interested in Madeleine Witherson, and it had been a while since anyone else was.
Not the End of the World Page 30