The Birth of a Porn Star: Defying Daddy's Wishes

by Fh John

  I smacked him on the arm one last time just for good measure and made my way back toward the house. Bree sat on the back porch with her head slumped. She looked the same way I felt, miserable. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks were red. Her blonde ponytail hung over one shoulder and she was playing with the end of it in her lap. I was so jealous of Bree’s hair. So jealous. When she didn’t have it braided, it hung down her back like a horse’s mane, slightly wavy, despite how thick and full it was. Her rosy cheeks were already beginning to draw the attention of boys and her stylish, but country way of dressing added to her draw. By the time she reached my age and graduated high school, she would be fighting them off with a broom. Or my dad would.

  He damn near broke Jimmy Brennart’s nose when he caught him trying to climb the trellis into my room. He grounded me for a week, even though I didn’t invite Jimmy to do it. I didn’t even like Jimmy Brennart. The guy’s an arrogant prick who thinks he can lay any girl he wants. That might be true with other girls in town, but not me. I like my guys work minded, but civil, refined When I think of a hunk, I picture someone like Edward Lewis, the business mogul from Pretty Woman. I’d love a guy like that—someone who’s bold and determined but refined and debonair. Someone I could walk into a party with and every girl in the room would burn with jealousy and envy for. That doesn’t describe Jimmy at all. Girls liked him and wanted him, but he was crude and selfish, talking about the girls he was with after he was done with them. He reminded me more of Moran than anything else, which always made my skin crawl.

  I walked up and knelt down next to Bree. Just hearing her sniffle brought my tears back to me. As if I needed them. I couldn’t help it and before long, we were holding each otherbawling our eyes out like two brats mourning their dog. In a way, that’s exactly what was happening. Blaze wasn’t about to die, but to us, he may as well be dying.

  “I hate Moran, Dallas. That’s what makes this so horrible. He’s going to Moran!” She leaned back and looked at me as if I could come up with a different answer, but I couldn’t. The farm needed the quarter of a million dollars that Blaze could bring to it. I had no way of accomplishing that any other way. If I could, I would. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to stop Moran from taking Blaze from her. Nothing.

  “I know it sweetie. I know. It sucks, but we have to stay positive. Blaze has a strong spirit. If anyone knows that, you do.”

  “That’s what terrifies me, Dallas. I’m the only person in the world Blaze will let ride him. The only person. How do you think Moran will deal with that?”

  “Moran don’t give two shits about riding a horse. He breeds his stallions.”

  “Bull shit, Dallas! You know he shows the horses with riders. That’s how he gets people to want how he sets the deal. Blaze will have to be broken and Moran doesn’t break them the way we do. We do it with compassion and love. He does it with force. I hate this. I hate it … hate it!”

  “Me too, Chipmunk,” I said, lifting her braid in my hand. “I hate it too.”

  “No you don’t. You’re leaving in the fall. Two weeks and you’re gone. College is all you care about. College and being in a big city.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Isn’t that your plan? Miami University, a thousand miles away? You don’t really care about this farm, or the horses, or our life. You want to get away.”

  Ouch. What she was saying was true to an extent. Farming wasn’t in my blood the way it was with mom before she died, or dad’s, or Bree’s. I loved the horses. I loved the peace, but I hated the other aspects of living on a farm. I didn’t like the smell of pigs or cleaning a cow’s stall. I didn’t like planting and I hated harvest time. What I hated more than anything was the uncertainty and being sweaty all the time. It seemed like every year, we were worried about the weather and what it would do for that year’s yield. Some years were wonderful and it was during those years that we were able to add a filly or two, but this year, we would be losing our prize reward. I wanted a more refined life. I wanted a life where I could afford the horses, but pay someone else to care for them.

  I wanted to debate Bree. Her opinion was the only opinion in the house that still mattered to me. My dad wasn’t the same since my mom passed. Most of the time I had no idea what was going through his head. He went through the motions, but that was about it. He didn’t give me the chance to argue with her.

  “Come in here,” he said, poking his head at the screen from in the kitchen.

  I went into the house and my dad was leaning against the counter with a beer in his hands. The can was dented and I could tell by the size of the imprints that he was half way to bent. The drunker he got, the stronger his grip on the beer can. That’s how it always went. By the time he was close to finished, his cans would look like they were run over by a bicycle.

  “She’s right, ya know,” he said, tipping his can toward the back porch. “Ya ain’t got no right plannin’ ta leave us this fall. We can barely keep the shit goin’ as ‘tis.”

  “I’ve worked hard for this, dad. I have a right to make my own choices.”

  “YOU DON’T KNOW THE MEANIN’ OF HARD, GIRL!” he hollered, slamming his beer onto the counter next to him. It squished as he slammed it, forcing foamy beer to gush out, spilling onto the counter, dripping to the floor. “You think you work hard? Shi’it! You ain’t pulled your weight around this farm since you was twelve! Bree? Now that girl pulls her damn weight and some a yours too! Fuck me? You? work hard?”

  “I meant that I’ve worked hard at school, like mom told me to. Like she made you promise you would let me do!”

  “AND I DID, DAMMIT! DIDN’T I? Did I ever keep you from your studies? No, not once! Did I ever tell you not to plan for college?”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

  “Fuck yeah! We’re about to start losin’ shit, Dallas!”

  I started clenching my fists at my sides. Not my fault! “So I’m to blame for the rain now? Is that it?”

  “Yer the matri … matri … Mom.”

  “Matriarch, dad? I’m the Matriarch? Is that what you’re saying? Didn’t you just finish telling me that I don’t do enough around here?”

  “But you do work and Bree needs ya. I need ya. Ya keep my eyes pointed forward,” he said, first jabbing two fingers at the bridge of his nose and then pointing them straight ahead. “Sides. I never said you didn’t work. You just always have your prioritizin’ somewares else. Drop the college shit, and focus on the work ta be done around here and we gota shot at keepin’ our heads above the water. Family first, dammit! Every mom knows that!”

  “I’m not the mom, dad. Get that through your head. She died. She’s dead. She’s gone. She left us! Not just me. Not just you and not just Bree. She left all of us.”

  “Not by choice, she didn’t. You remember that, girl.” He had his fingers pointed right at me. Two of them, curled around each other like snakes making love, directed right at my forehead. “Your mother was all woman and she knew what was important. You’d do well to model yerself after her.”

  “I’d do well to do what she told me to do. Use my brain as something else other than sausage gravy.”

  I stormed from the room. Family first! Shit. Did he realize what he was asking me to do? Did he realize that my dreams were completely different? Did what I want matter at all? The farm was his dream — his responsibility — not mine.

  I marched up to my room and slammed the door. I scooped my Teddy bear, Junior, from his perch on my pillow. He was my longtime friend and confidant. He always listened.

  “They blame me, Junior. Somehow, selling Blaze is my fault. Like I can control the f’-ing weather.” I held Junior to my stomach, but somehow my childhood toy didn’t offer me any comfort. He felt empty to me and the warmth he used to provide during stormy nights and windy weather was gone. All he did was stare at my chest with his black, lifeless eyes. I needed someone to talk to—someone who could talk back and someone who wouldn’t cast all of the
blame on me.

  Someone who could think rationally, even though I knew there were no rational answers to my problems.

  There weren’t any rational answers, but what I didn’t realize was that there were some irrational ones.

  2

  I didn’t want anyone to know I left, so I waited until Bree and my dad were asleep. I climbed from my window and down the trellis that almost got a boy killed not too many years before. I headed out, walking through the wooded property behind our house. Alena’s house wasn’t but a skip away. She always listened as long as I could get her to shut up.

  I grabbed a handful of tiny rocks from her driveway as I headed around back. Her room was on the second floor and even though her light was off, I knew she wouldn’t be sleeping. She never went to sleep early. If there were ever a night owl, she was it.

  It took me several throws, but I finally nailed her window. She peeked out a second later, smiling. It wasn’t the first time I snuck over to call her from her room at night. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be the last.

  Alena snuck through the back door two minutes later and we headed to our secret spot. It was a little alcove of trees, tucked away by the creek bed. I sat on a stump and Alena started gathering kindling for a fire. It wasn’t cold, but Alena always insisted on having a fire. She says it’s because she likes to see better and because it keeps the bugs away, but I know better. She’s infatuated with fire. Her eyes burn almost as hot as the flames whenever she stares at the pit. I let her build her fire, but for me, it’s because of the bugs.

  “It’s been a while, Dally. I was beginning to think you didn’t love me anymore,” she said as she planted her butt on her own stump. I can’t help but admire her as the flames light up her silhouette in the night. Even at midnight, she is stunning to me. I don’t say that because I’m a lesbian—I’m not. I say it because she exudes a sexiness that I wish I could possess. Guys flirt with me almost as much as they do her, but they flirt with me for the opposite reason they do her. I am ‘the girl next door’ type. Everyone says it. They flirt with her because she exudes possibility. You can see it in her eyes when she looks at you. With her auburn hair spilling down to her shoulders, soft curls trailing about like cascading waterfalls, her eyes shimmer and her smile invites you. I’m not even a guy and I am not into women. Yet, looking at her makes me think about sex. Something she’s always dressed for. It’s the middle of the night and she’s wearing a button up half shirt tied in the front—no bra and jean shorts cut high. She exudes sex. She is a brunette version of Marilyn Monroe and I have darker brown hair but I’m more like an intelligent version of Ellie May Clampett. So not sexy. Pretty as all get out, but not sexy at all. It makes me want to chase the country right out of myself.

  I flash a smile at her, but there’s no heart in it.

  “On your period, sis?” she says with a slight pause. “Oh, shoot. I forgot. Tomorrow’s the day isn’t it?”

  I nod. She knows what’s supposed to happen.

  “How much crop did your dad lose?”

  “Half,” I tell her. “He lost half and some of the other half looks like it’s starting to water-rot. We don’t have a choice, I guess.”

  “I guess we’re lucky. My dad says we only lost a quarter. A lot of our land is on the hills and irrigated.”

  I nod again. “We’re stuck in the valleys. Dad had to sell off the better land the last time things got rough.”

  “Wish I could help,” Alena says. She reached down and grabbed a stick, tracing circles in the dirt in front of her.

  “Yeah, I know. I think Bree hates me. They both do. Somehow, they blame me.”

  Alena huffs. “To her, you are Mother Theresa, Dallas. You couldn’t do wrong if you slaughtered baby bunnies for fun.”

  “She thought the world of my mom too. Dying wasn’t my mom’s fault but Bree still won’t visit her grave and she leaves the room whenever anyone brings her up.”

  “She’s hurt. That’s all.”

  “After I leave for college, will she leave the room if someone mentions my name? Will she resent me for abandoning her and give me the cold shoulder every time I visit?”

  Alena stares at the end of her stick as it makes more circles in the ground. She shrugs her shoulders. “She might. You’re the closest thing she has to a mom now. Have been for seven years.”

  “Don’t say that. God, why does everyone keep suggesting that I’m the mother now? I’m not!”

  The idea of abandoning my own dreams pricks my heart, and my tears immediately come back for a reunion with my face, but I know I cannot desert my sister. I can’t and I won’t. That idea somehow seems worse. The idea of doing to her the same thing that my mother did, but by choice instead of an avoidable fate, makes me feel like a creep.

  “What am I going to do, Alena? I blame me too. I know it’s not my fault and yet I keep beating myself up over it. Blaze is as much a part of my family as I am.”

  “There’s no easy way out of that, Dallas. Let it go. You have no choice.”

  I laugh aloud, causing Alena to give me a weird look, because my laugh isn’t just the kind of laugh you give when you get a little frustration. It’s a deep and long belly laugh—the kind nutty people have when they’re feeding on Jell-O with a plastic spoon.

  “What?” Elena asks me weirdly.

  I don’t know how to put my thoughts into words any more than Petrie did when the same nutty thought ran through his head. Thinking about telling her what I was thinking makes me laugh again and Alena throws a hand onto her thigh and gives me an even dirtier look.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I was just thinking that I could get out of it. If I were desperate enough; I could help the family avoid selling Blaze and I could save the farm at the same time.”

  “How?”

  “Sell myself to Moran. Essentially that’s what he insinuates every time he comes rooting around our farm like the fat pig he is.”

  “That’s fucking gross, Dallas—not funny at all! Just gross!”

  “I know, right! I mean, could you picture it? That hefty fuck pushing that fat ass into me with my legs buried into the bed beneath him?”

  “OH, SHIT, Dallas! Eeeewwww! How could you even say something like that?”

  Because I’m losing my mind, Alena. Because I love my sister so damn much that I would rather give that cow of a man my virginity than see her cry.

  I don’t say those words, because I can’t bear the thought of really doing something so drastic, but a part of me is almost that desperate. I know doing that would make the rest of my life miserable and the thought of letting that pig of a man have a sense of winning over my entire family makes it even more unthinkable, but at the same time, knowing that I could save Bree some unneeded pain, would almost be reward enough. Almost.

  I sit silently without answering and Alena stares at me.

  “Is this why you came to me tonight? Are you thinking about doing that?”

  I shrug and my tears threaten to bring me to the dirt before me, because I’m not far from doing just that. God help me!

  “Don’t you even dare, God Dammit!” Alena says to me and for the first time in our lives, I swear she was about to cry. I never thought in a million years I would ever see that day, but her eyes begin to quake and her fingers start trembling.

  “There’s another option. It’s crazy and you’re so not the type, but you could do it. I think.”

  “Do what?”

  “What Marissa did.”

  I screw up my face, because I was confused. “What, go help a sick aunt for two months?” I asked her. “Wait, isn’t she going back to help again in a week?”

  “She didn’t visit a sick aunt, Dallas.”

  Marissa and Alena were close friends. I think Alena was the best friend Marissa had. Marissa and I didn’t see eye to eye, but I never gave Alena crap about being close friends with her. If there was an alternate truth about Marissa and her situation, then I guess Alena would be the one to k
now it.

  “What really happened then?”

  “If I tell you, you have to die with it. You have to swear on it, Dallas. I mean it.”

  “I swear. What happened?”

  “She sold herself for two months to some rich guy from Florida.”

  “Like a prostitute?”

  “More like a slave, Dallas. You gotta swear, you won’t utter a word. She begged me not to tell anyone. She doesn’t want her dad humiliated.”

  “Wait? Is that why they didn’t have to sell their farm?”

  Alena nodded. “He paid them a shit ton of money for her.”

  “You’re joking, right? That’s nuts.”

  “Is it? Is it any crazier than what you were just thinking about with Moran? Think about it. Moran is fucking uber rich, but he’s a gross fuck. Marissa’s master is actually hot. I’d do him.”

  “You’d do almost anybody… Wait? Have you met him?”

  Alena gave me an evil smile and she nodded like an eager kid.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re not making this up? She actually sold herself?”

  Alena nodded, giving me her most serious, I’m serious, look.

  I shook my head no insistently. “Nobody agrees to stuff like that. I mean, I’m sure that there’s an underground sex trade. I’m sure many women that go missing are because they’re kidnapped for it, but this? You’re suggesting that she volunteered? It’s nuts!”

  “I’d do it. In a heartbeat, as long as I knew I wasn’t sold to some kind of Jeffrey Daumer or somebody like that. As long as I knew I was safe.”

  “You would not, Alena. It’s crazy!”

  “I would and you know I would. It’d be kinky! Assuming the guy was as sexy as the one who bought Marissa. Kind of wish you could meet him, judge for yourself. My dad would never go for it, though. He’s not desperate for money like that. Yours probably wouldn’t either, even though he is desperate. It would solve all of your problems though.”

  “It doesn’t sound sexy, Alena. No matter how hot the guy is. It sounds creepy. What’s he do? Tie her up? Put her in handcuffs? Make her do whatever he wants? What does she get out of it?”