by Asa Akira
Who knew what was to come after that! I certainly didn’t expect all of this success. You made this all possible for me.
Or, remember the time in that helicopter . . . ? Or the time with the ten guys in the movie theater? Those are such fond memories . . . from times when the end felt so far away.
You taught me to love myself for who I am. You taught me never to compromise what I want. Whenever people claimed “Gonzo porn lacks depth,” I defended you—I showed the world a girl can enjoy herself being fucked like a dirty slut, with no scenario, no context, just straight-up hardcore fucking. You taught me to embrace this side of myself; to let go of the shame that comes along with loving sex. And if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even know how to make my asshole gape in a perfect circle.
So . . . before you find out from someone else, I want you to hear it from me.
I’ve met someone.
Now, before you get upset . . . Do you remember when I first came to you, it wasn’t you I wanted? Do you remember, I wanted so badly to be a contract girl? I didn’t even know what you were . . . I didn’t even know what “Gonzo” meant.
Well, it’s finally happening. With this new offer, I was reminded of my original dream. To be glamorous. To make porn that’s beautiful. I also saw a way for me to extend my career . . . to continue living out my dream of turning people on, having sex in front of the camera . . . without putting on a freak show. Without fisting my asshole on a weekly basis. Don’t get me wrong: I loved doing those things with you. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. But you had to know that phase of my life wouldn’t last forever, that my tastes would eventually mature. It’s only a matter of time before people are sick of watching me “take it to the next level.” Not to mention, before there is no next level.
In feature porn, I’m going to make different kinds of movies. I’m gonna show the world a different side of myself. I’m gonna show everyone I can be just as sexy without putting on a circus show. It’s gonna be a new era—I want to make movies that the average woman would want to watch, that couples can watch together. Just as I defended you when people said, “Gonzo has no depth,” I want to show that feature porn is still passionate, that I can turn the world on just as much without getting fucked by two cocks in my ass at the same time. I’m gonna learn the fuck out of how to be a good actress, and just you watch, I’m gonna get that AVN Best Actress award. I know you think I can’t win anything without you—a part of me was scared of that, too. But you’ll see. Like I said, you’re the one who taught me to believe in myself.
I know this is confusing because of what I said. I always prided myself as a Gonzo girl, a girl who gave a filthy, hardcore scene every time.
“Gonzo is where my heart is,” I’d tell everyone.
And it was. But like I said, I’m in a different place in my life now.
It’s time.
Today, I signed a contract to perform exclusively for the top feature porn company in the world—Wicked Pictures. I’m proud and excited to go on this new journey. You’ve been so good to me, Gonzo, but I hope you can be happy for me in this next chapter in my life.
I’ll always love you, and I hope we can remain friends.
Love, Asa
Haiku
Shaving the butt-hole;
Only thing more im-por-tant
Than shaving the vag.
16
Food Porn
I placed the order online quickly, before the shame could settle in.
“Tell me I have to do it. If you don’t, I won’t be able to press the button,” I told Toni.
“You have to do it. Or I’m leaving you.”
“Say it like you mean it. Please, I’m serious—I can’t hit the order button.”
“Listen, you fucking bitch, I don’t care what you eat but order me my fucking pizza before I smack your slutty little face and leave you crying in your closet.”
Order sent.
A good amount of my life is spent thinking about food. I’d say 80 percent of my waking hours is a fair estimate. The lack of it, the hunger for it, the fantasy of it, the decision to consume it, the resulting guilt of doing so. I’ve never been able to understand people who don’t eat when they’re under stress. Because I’m a class-A emotional eater myself, everything makes me hungry. Being sad makes me hungry. Being happy makes me hungry. Celebration, mourning, avoidance, boredom—they all call for a feast. I can even down a huge meal on Adderall.
Inside, I am an obese woman with the munchies dying to come out. In true game-recognize-game fashion, I can see this handicap in other women who share my pain.
“She wants to be fat so bad,” I’ll comment, watching a girl eat a salad at a restaurant, as her boyfriend digs into his plate of pasta. “Look how hungry she is,” I project.
As I hit the “refresh” button over and over on my inbox, waiting for the confirmation email, I could feel my heart rate rising.
Asalotapuss:
Thank you for placing your Papa John’s pizza order via our Online Ordering service. Please find below the details of your order:
ORDER DETAILS
1 Large Original Crust Grilled Chicken Club Pizza (Onions, Bacon, Grilled Chicken, Roma Tomatoes, Mushrooms)
1 Buy any Large Pizza for $11 and get any Second Large Pizza for $9.99
Large Thin Crust with Pineapple
Large Thin Crust Spinach Alfredo Pizza
1 Large Original Crust Steak and Cheese Pizza
1 15 piece Chicken Poppers
1 Add a 2-Liter to your Order
2-Liter Pepsi Max
Delivery Fee $2.99
Grand Total $59.11
Order Type: Delivery
Method of Payment: CASH
Estimated Ready Time: 45–55 minutes
Thank you for choosing to order online with Papa John’s Pizza.
That email. My favorite email.
“Are you excited? Are you?” I nervously asked Toni.
“Yes, super-excited to the maximum,” he said, comforting me, smiling. He knew the rules to keeping me calm and neurosis-free during a cheat session: Show enthusiasm, don’t be a Debbie Downer. I needed to know he loved my cheat days as much as I did. “How much time does it say?”
“Forty-five to fifty-five minutes. Not bad. I’ll start the timer now.” I picked up my phone to do just that.
I went to turn on the TV and automatically pressed the numbers on the remote control for the Food Network. Paula’s Party, starring Paula Deen, was on.
Perfect.
As Paula deep-fried cupcakes in the background, I asked Toni to tell me what kind of pizza he had ordered. Having placed the order myself, I already knew, but I wanted to hear the words.
“An original crust pizza with mushrooms, bacon, sausage, grilled chicken, and tomatoes. Did you add onions for me?”
I nodded as I envisioned each ingredient on his pizza cooking in the oven. The cheese melting and bubbling, the tomatoes browning ever so slightly, the oils from the meats seeping on to the rest of the pie, floating and glistening. I thought about my own order, a large thin crust with pineapple, in addition to a large thin crust spinach Alfredo pie. I would alternate slices, going back and forth between the sweetness of the pineapple and the savory, salty richness of the Alfredo. That was my favorite, having a variety. And a good quantity of it, too.
It had been two weeks since my last cheat day. The ideal amount of time between cheats was a month, but I would still enjoy this meal; there were pizza days that were completely undeserved, only days apart from each other. Without a doubt, the hardest day to avoid eating unhealthy is the day after I eat pizza. It’s like I ingested a drug, it’s escaping my system, and my body is craving more.
Growing up, I was always skinny. I was that girl who could eat anything and wake up the next morning with a flat stomach. If anything, I was embarrassed about my low weight; I would lie and say I was one hundred, when I was really about five to ten pounds short of that.
“Telling a skinny person they’re too skinny is like telling a fat person they need to lose weight,” I would foolishly say.
I wish I could go back in time and smack the shit out of myself. And then enjoy a huge meal and wake up the next day with a flat stomach.
Around the end of highschool, I started to gain weight. I was happy to see my ass filling in, to have Puerto Rican and black guys whistling at me on the street, yelling, “Damn, look at that ass on that Asian chick!”
It was when I was living in Tampa that I really started to pack on the excess weight. Working on the radio show twice a week, shooting for my website once a week, I spent the other four days shopping and eating. Keep in mind, this was Tampa—the healthiest thing around was a processed-chicken salad with candy-coated walnuts and a corn-syrup-based dressing from Applebee’s. Making fun of my increasing weight became a common theme on the air.
“You came here as a hot Asian, and now we’re stuck with a Samoan,” they’d joke.
It still didn’t bother me; I thought it was sexy.
And then I moved to L.A. And I was never happy with my weight again.
It might be that the average woman is thinner in L.A. It might be that my tastes have changed. It might be that porn has made me more self-conscious, or maybe even it’s an age thing. The weight I want to be now, I would have cringed at back when I was living in New York.
It’s an everyday struggle. Truly it is. I wake up feeling good. I down a smoothie and get myself to the gym, yoga, boot camp, or whatever class I take on that particular day of the week. I take no days off. I get home, eat something light and healthy, and head to my shoot.
So far, so good.
Then, I’m on set and there is junk food everywhere. Once I’m shooting, I’m fine—but before that, as I go through the makeup chair, wardrobe, and dialogue, I am secretly thinking about the bowl of mini chocolate bars and platter of subway sandwiches the whole time. I mean, the entire time. Through conversations with the director, reading my script and memorizing my dialogue, douching my vagina to prepare it for the scene, in the back of my mind, I am always thinking about the food I could so easily just go and eat. Walking by the kitchen one too many times is dangerous.
Once I’m done shooting and I get home, the remainder of the time is spent fighting the urge to say “Fuck it all” and eat a huge amount of empty calories. Fighting the urge to order pizza, go get cheesecake, a burrito, go out for steak.
“Just do it, just enjoy your life,” the binge-eating fat kid on my shoulder whispers.
“You can’t, you have a shoot tomorrow, the other girls are skinnier than you,” the self-loathing anorexic bitch on my other shoulder argues.
My body naturally wants to be twenty-five pounds heavier than it currently is. I’ve tried every diet under the sun short of bulimia, and that’s only due to my lack of a gag reflex. It’s proved beneficial to me in my profession, but if I could make myself throw up . . . my whole life would be different. Currently, I was eating nothing but salads (no dressing!) and smoothies. Basically just raw vegetables and fruits.
Except, of course, for cheat days. The days that I lived for.
I looked at the timer. Only ten minutes had passed. Thirty-five to forty-five more to go.
“Let’s play a game,” I told Toni.
He knew what was up. “Okay. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would you choose?”
“Aw, that’s boring; you already know I’d pick pizza. Or potatoes. You can prepare them so many ways. Mashed, baked, au gratin . . .”
“Okay. What’s my favorite food?”
I thought about it. He liked so many things. “The Spanish sausages with tomato bread and cheese!” I screamed. “Oh! And soup!” I added. “Another! Another game!”
“It’s your last day on earth. You can have any dinner you want. Go.”
This was one of my favorites. “I’d start with lobster bisque—”
“No salad?” Toni joked.
“Fuck a salad, it’s my last day on earth. If only I never had to eat another fucking salad again, oh my God . . . Okay, so lobster bisque, hmm. Actually I’d just go to a buffet. And have some of everything. And then red velvet cheesecake for dessert. And then back to the buffet.” I could taste the foods as I thought about them. I was so excited for my pizza!
Just as I hit the maximum amount of excitement level for our delivery, I started to realize how I was going to feel tomorrow. It’s the worst feeling, the morning after a cheat day—I wake up, remembering the night before, and the real self-hatred begins. I feel sluggish. I feel fat. And I am so far away from my next cheat day.
I closed my eyes and pretended I was just waking up, and I had eaten the pizza last night. Feeling horrible, I wanted to cry.
Should I cancel the order? Was it going to be worth it? I would eat this pizza tonight and pay for it for the next three days, at least—I would feel self-conscious on set in my lingerie, no doubt.
As the two girls on my shoulders argued once again, my phone rang.
“Hi, this is Papa John’s. I’m downstairs with your delivery.”
Every bit of unsureness disappeared. We both jumped up, and Toni went down to collect our food while I set up the coffee table in front of the TV.
After inhaling my two pies, after Toni gorged on his own pie and chicken poppers, we lay on the sofa, not moving.
“I’m so gross,” I whined.
“It’s okay, you deserve it. Tomorrow we eat healthy again,” Toni assured me.
We cleaned up and went to bed. I lay on my stomach, being too full to lay any other way without gagging. I set up my iPad to read when I felt something on my back. Toni was jerking off, kneeling behind me. I threw my ass in the air and smiled.
And then I really thought about it. I wasn’t so sure I felt like having sex. “I’m so fat,” I whined again.
Indifferent to it, Toni hovered over my back, stuck his dick in me, and whispered in my ear, “So is my cock.” Fucking me hard, but all I could think about was how full my stomach was. Was this what it felt like to be pregnant? Just really, really full, all the time?
As Toni fucked me, forcing my body to move back and forth, my stomach moving up and down, I swore that if this was what pregnant sex felt like, I’d be celibate for nine months.
I felt liquid come up my chest, into my throat, and onto the back of my tongue, where I tasted the throw-up. Just a little.
“I’m gonna throw up,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll be fast,” Toni said with his eyes closed.
And before I had time to even think to myself,
Married sex . . .
he came.
17
Nerves
It was twelve noon, and despite having been up for hours already, I wasn’t ready to open the blackout curtains of my hotel room. I had been pacing back and forth across the hotel room, nervous as fuck. The sunlight would have somehow made everything too real. Back and forth, back and forth. I was scheduled to host the AVNs that night—the biggest award show in the porn business. Just to be asked to host was an honor, really. I chain-smoked. Why? I didn’t smoke anymore. Right now, though, the only thing I could envision doing with my hand was to hold a cigarette in between my first and middle finger, rhythmically, robotically, switching between holding it up to my lips and flicking the ashes on the floor. My mind was racing with one run-on sentence after another. Back and forth, back and forth.
“Don’t worry, you’re going to be great,” Toni said with a smile from under the crisp, clean white sheets of the hotel bed. AVN week in Vegas is a big party week for everyone in porn. Except me. Toni was hungover, still in his underwear, hadn’t shaved, showered, nothing. How could he? The room was barely light enough to see each other.
“I’m not fucking nervous, I’m just bored,” I answered as naturally as I could. I knew the speed of my delivery gave me away. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being called out on being anything but cool. “Hand
me a cigarette,” I said, distracted.
“You’re still smoking the one in your hand, Asa.” Toni was smirking at this point. He wouldn’t admit it, but I could see the outline of his face. He was smirking. “Just relax.”
Something about hearing the word relax has the exact opposite effect. “I don’t WANT to fucking relax right now, Toni! I’m bored as fuck and I’m fucking starving.”
“So eat something.”
Men can be so cruel.
“I can’t! My dress is too tight as it is. Why are you doing this to me? You always do this! Please, just be nice to me!” I yelled.
Toni sighed and turned on the TV. I knew I was being crazy. He knew I knew I was being crazy. The awards were still hours away, though, and it was like the more normal I tried to act, the worse my behavior ended up being.
The truth was, I wasn’t nervous about hosting. I wasn’t nervous about fitting into my dress.
I was nervous I wouldn’t win anything.
As a child, I don’t remember being competitive. I was never any good at sports. Having no siblings, I just did my own thing, never expecting to be the best at any particular activity or subject. If anything, I was the opposite; I preferred to stay in the background, going unnoticed.
“Shy people never get anything,” my mother would repeatedly tell me in her accented English. I’d nod, understanding, but fully planning on sticking to my timid ways.
Fast-forward to middleschool, when I gave Dan Sherzer my first blowjob. I was the talk of the school. All of a sudden I was the bad girl. Girls were asking me for boy advice. Boys were asking me on dates. It felt good.
Fast-forward again a few years to highschool. I was arguably the biggest slut in my grade. I hung out with derelicts, the “rebels” of New York private school. We thought we were badasses; we did everything other kids wished they could.
Fast-forward one final time to my fourth year in porn. I had won fourteen AVN awards, I was one of the top three current pornstars, and was regarded as the biggest Asian star in the history of porn. Tonight was the AVN Awards. I was nominated for the coveted Performer of the Year award for the third year in a row, but had yet to win it; I wanted it more than I could ever admit to anyone but myself.