Death in Eden

by Paul Heald

  He nodded and squinted at the sign in the distance. “Don thought everyone would be flattered and try to impress us. We may bring out the professional side in people rather than the sleazy side.”

  “Maybe.” She thought for a moment. “She’s still pretty intimidating, though. Even dressed conservatively, you can tell she’s got a killer body, and you sit there thinking . . .” She paused again. “But she was interesting. I’ll give her that.”

  “Definitely, but I doubt everyone is going to be like her. Don admitted he was throwing us a couple of ringers at the beginning. When we get down to the last round of interviews, it’s going to get pretty boring. It always does.” He pulled into the restaurant parking lot. Technically the storefront eatery was walking distance from the motel, but taking the car avoided an unappealing trek through crowded parking lots.

  He looked over as he parked the car. “Did you notice that Layla was more analytical about the industry and the market than about herself? She skimmed over the personal questions.”

  “Yeah,” Angela replied, “but I think you can read between the lines pretty well: She thinks having sex on camera is work and claims not to feel degraded while she’s doing it, but the public’s attitude towards it pisses her off.” She put on her sunglasses as she got out of the car. “Her response to your feminist question was telling. She was pretty insulted by the notion that she doesn’t have free will in making decisions, that she’s some kind of victim.”

  “You’re probably right, but I can’t ask book reviewers to look between the lines,” he explained. “I need juicy quotes.”

  “Then you’re going to have to ask better questions. For good quotes, you need to get people going.”

  “Like how?”

  “We saw that movie yesterday.” She paused for a moment while a waitress sat them down and then continued when she was out of earshot. “Ask some specific questions about the kinds of scenes we saw: What were you thinking the first time you did a scene with a woman? How long does it take to get prepared for a bondage fantasy? Does your jaw get sore from going down on a guy for a half hour?” She giggled. “Does size matter?”

  Stanley realized she was right. It had been a good first interview, but he would have to be less prudish if he really wanted to get the information he needed to write a good book. He looked at her and grabbed her hand. “I’m glad you came.”

  VIII.

  THE FREUDIAN

  “Sweetheart, could you check the audio from this morning and make sure that the levels were right?” Stanley sat down and browsed through his notes from the first interview, adding additional questions in the margin of his yellow legal pad while Angela donned a pair of headphones and listened to the playback. A large burrito de carne asada with extra guacamole was rumbling ominously deep in his gut.

  “Sounds fine.” She took off the head set and sipped on the soda refill she had saved from lunch. “How much will it cost to get the audio transcribed?”

  “A small fortune, but the grant covers it.” He heard a soft knock on the hotel room door. “Are you ready?”

  He opened the door and greeted Kristy Page, a young brunette who had sat across the table from them the night before. His formal handshake and introductions seemed to amuse her. She plopped down in the interview chair and grabbed a bottle of water from the end table. “Don told me you’re an old friend from college. Where did you guys go to school?”

  “University of Virginia.”

  “Cool.”

  “Speaking of Don,” Stanley added, “have you spoken to him since last night? I can’t get a hold of him.”

  “No,” she shook her head vigorously, “but he must be wrecked. Jade was not only his biggest star, but he had a serious thing for her.” Johansson had said Kristy was twenty-three, but she looked much younger. She was petite, slim-waisted with a small pert bust. If she had implants, they were only a modest addition. Her thick hair was cut in a stylish bob that emphasized her high cheekbones and deep blue eyes. There was a freshness about her that Layla might have had ten years earlier. She managed to make her simple outfit of blue jeans and a t-shirt seem dangerously sexy.

  “Don told me that you went to school too.”

  “Oh yeah, I did two years in the psych program at Cal-Irvine before I started working for Eden.”

  “Do many actresses have an education?”

  “Well, Nina Hartley has a nursing degree, and I heard Sharon Tyler went to graduate school somewhere, but most of the girls just have high school diplomas, if that.” She bit her lower lip and tried to come up with some more examples then shrugged her shoulders and took a sip of water.

  Stanley nodded at Angela who clicked a button on the side of the camera. “Why don’t we get started?”

  * * *

  INTERVIEWER: Could you tell us your age, and place of birth?

  SUBJECT: I’m twenty-three years old, and I was born in Milton, Wisconsin.

  INTERVIEWER: How long have you been making adult films?

  SUBJECT: About a year.

  INTERVIEWER: How did you get into the business?

  SUBJECT: Well, I came to Los Angeles to go to school, and my sophomore year I met this girl in one of my classes. Her boyfriend had dropped out and was running a soft core website featuring college girls, mostly just college-age girls as it turned out. She asked me if I wanted to make five hundred dollars for a weekend of getting my picture taken. She showed me the website. It was really nicely done, no banner ads like “SoCal Sluts Spreading for You!” or anything like that. Just a site for guys with a particular girl-next-door type of fantasy. I figured, what the heck, it’s easy rent money, so I went. The photographer was really polite and easy to work with, so I continued to do it periodically.

  INTERVIEWER: Did you see this as a big step?

  SUBJECT: I was a little worried about my mom finding out, but I figured the chances were pretty remote. But of course they always find out! I didn’t think my dad would mind, given the amount of porn he consumed when I was growing up. So, if he objected he was going to look like a prime hypocrite.

  INTERVIEWER: Is that necessarily so? Couldn’t he enjoy his porn without wanting his daughter to do it? He might have had a vision of these women that didn’t fit his image of his daughter.

  SUBJECT: Probably. He’s not talking to me right now, so you may have a point.

  INTERVIEWER: Do you wish you hadn’t done it?

  SUBJECT: [Silence] I don’t know. I like the respect that I’m getting from people in the industry. And if Toys in Babeland goes nationwide, everyone’s going to know who I am. Have you seen it yet?

  INTERVIEWER: No.

  SUBJECT: It’s an excellent movie! I’ve got one super hot girl-girl scene in it and a lot of dialogue. I don’t think that this kind of opportunity would have happened any other way. I’m having a lot of fun, so I guess I regret my dad’s attitude more than I regret my decision.

  INTERVIEWER: How did the transition from soft-core to hard-core happen?

  SUBJECT: About a year after I started, the website offered me triple my normal pay to give my boyfriend a blow job on camera. By this time, my folks already knew, so I figured what the hell? For ten minutes work, I made the biggest paycheck of my life. It was more than I made in a month as a lab assistant in the Psych Department.

  INTERVIEWER: So, it really is all about the money for you?

  SUBJECT: [Laughs] You have no idea what a loaded question that is. Every girl you talk to will tell you that they’re in it for the money, except for the ones who pretend money is only incidental and say it’s all about the ‘great sex.’ In one sense, of course, it is all about the money. I wouldn’t work for free. The real question is what sort of personality traits lead you to accept the work in the first place. That’s the juicy one.

  INTERVIEWER: Well?

  SUBJECT: Okay, here’s what two years at Cal-Irvine gets ya! Seriously, I don’t think that there’s any single personality type in porn. You’ve definitely got one set o
f girls who are just plain rebellious. They’ve got issues with their family, with their high school, with their jobs, with society in general. Doing adult videos is basically a big “fuck you” to the world. Then, when they get inside the business, they meet a bunch of other people who also consider themselves rebels. Like some of the producers see themselves as spitting in Hollywood’s face. Anyway, for the first time they’re working with like-minded people, and they’re getting a lot of attention and pats on the back. For some, it’s essentially their first taste of adult approval. That hooks them more than anything.

  INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard the word “family” used more than I thought I would.

  SUBJECT: It’s weird, isn’t it? But for some it’s the most normal family they’ve ever had.

  INTERVIEWER: Would you put yourself in this category?

  SUBJECT: No. At least not according to my therapist! He says I’ve got a sexual fixation. He says I’m reenacting the psychosexual dynamics of my childhood. He says I feel comfortable having sex on camera because it validates my sense of self.

  INTERVIEWER: Um, could you put that in layman’s terms?

  SUBJECT: Well, he says that video sex is a fetish for me. Supposedly I don’t have sex on camera because I’m horny, but because it releases tension from my childhood. When I fully understand this, he says, I’ll no longer want to make adult movies.

  INTERVIEWER: Do you believe it?

  SUBJECT: I think he’s half right. I was a sexually precocious kid. I wasn’t molested or anything, but I started having sex with my boyfriend when I was fourteen. And I do find something satisfying about being primped for hours by a stylist and makeup artist and then being the center of attention on camera. I get pretty excited on the set. On the other hand, I don’t think that self-awareness affects people’s behavior much. Think about the guy who likes brunettes wearing stockings and garters. According to Psych 101, this guy’s mother’s a brunette and he saw her in stockings and garters as a child. But guess what, you can explain all this to him and he’ll still like brunettes in lingerie! And who cares? It’s a harmless fixation.

  INTERVIEWER: I read where guys who get off on pictures of women peeing probably spent a lot of time hanging on their mother’s knees as toddlers as she sat on the toilet.

  SUBJECT: Exactly. And so what? Let them get off on pee pee porn. No one’s getting hurt. I had a feminist professor who tried to prove to us that all porn was about violence. I think it’s way more about fixation. The pee pee porn guys are not fantasizing about hurting anyone. They’re getting some kind of comfort.

  INTERVIEWER: Would you want to generalize this to performers as well?

  SUBJECT: (pause) Good question . . . I don’t know. You see, I’ve met a lot of control freaks out there too. There’s definitely a subset of women in the industry who’ve been dominated by men their whole lives. Making a man come provides a temporary sense of control, of being in charge for once. And if you’re a porn star, you can magnify that feeling by a couple of thousand, because that’s how many guys are whacking off to your video! And, of course, getting into the business reproduces both the problem and solution. It’s still a very male dominated industry and there’s plenty of shithead managers and boyfriends out there ready to latch onto you. So, if you’ve had an abusive or manipulated background, then the porn scene can be very familiar. You can rapidly oscillate between being controlled and being controlling.

  Of course, some people just need money for drugs. But that’s begging the question too. There’s a whole lot of women with drug problems who don’t go out and shoot porn.

  INTERVIEWER: Do you see any commonalities in all these personality types?

  SUBJECT: I see a lot of people desperate for a sense of security. The business does provide that to a certain extent. Everybody knows everybody else, and there’s always a shoulder to cry on when things go wrong. But it’s a pretty sad and dysfunctional kind of family. That’s why I’ve tried to keep my friendships with people outside the industry. That’s hard, but it’s worth it. Whatever sense of security you get from being in the business comes at the cost of long-term stability in your life. You can forget about having a romantic relationship with anyone outside the business. It never works. I mean never. I have less real sex now than when I was in college.

  INTERVIEWER: Is anyone in the business because of a conscious career choice? Like: I could be a banker or a porn star . . . hmmm, I think I’ll be a porn star.

  SUBJECT: Nice! When that happens, you’ll know that porn has been truly mainstreamed! I don’t know. Television now certainly teaches kids that shaking your booty in a man’s face is a normal thing to do. Paris Hilton has her own television show, for god’s sake! Girls Gone Wild videos are advertised on regular television channels. Maybe the generation growing up now will think porn is normal. On the other hand, there’s something pretty reactionary about those MTV rap videos. I find some of them really demeaning, so maybe it’s all just a step backward. I don’t know. When it comes to sex, things are always pretty complicated . . .

  * * *

  Stanley looked at his watch as the young actress said goodbye and left. To his delight and surprise, she had talked for over ninety minutes. Two interviews down and one to go. He walked to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face. “I saw a Starbucks a couple blocks from here,” he yelled to Angela. “Do you want something? We’ve got a thirty minute break.”

  “Nah. I’m going to stay put.” She watched him leave and then stood up and stretched. She checked the quality of the two recordings that she had just made and then popped a new memory card in the machine. Satisfied that they were ready for the next girl, she sat down where Kristy had been and opened a bottle of sparkling water. She stared into the digital camera and wondered how hard it would be to tell two strangers the intimate details of her life. Probably like falling off a log if you had sex on camera for a living. She brushed her hair back and addressed the camera.

  “Hi! I’m Sandy Sweetcheeks and I just did a scene with three Chippendale dancers and a large cucumber.” She rolled her eyes and took another sip of water. The interview with Kristy had been both easier and harder than the one with Layla. As a former student, Kristy was a more familiar and engaging personality. But she also oozed a more immediate sex appeal than Layla. Just being in the same room with the young college dropout had made her feel stodgy and matronly.

  She sighed. If they did three interviews a day, then they would be done in two weeks. She wondered if she could convince Stanley to stay a couple of extra days to do some tourist stuff. Visiting Disneyland would be a lot of fun. Her best family vacation as a child had been to Orlando. She and her brothers and sisters had run wild for three days, trying out every ride and attraction a half a dozen times. Playing tourist would be fun, not to mention that a couple more nights in the hotel might lead more quickly to having kids of their own to take on future vacations.

  IX.

  THE VICTIM

  A sharp knock on the door interrupted Angela’s reverie, and she peered through the peephole to see who was there. An impatient middle-aged woman stood in the hallway looking at her watch. Angela cracked open the door.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Susan Jenkins. I have an appointment with Professor Hopkins.” She looked past Angela for a sign that she was in the proper place. “I hope I have the right room.”

  “This is it. Come on in.” She introduced herself and offered the woman a fresh bottle of water. “Stanley just ran out to get some coffee. He’ll be back in a moment. We weren’t expecting you until three thirty.”

  “Traffic was lighter than I thought.” She looked to be somewhere in her early forties, tall and slim, with thin lips and large brown eyes. She wore a long print skirt and a white blouse buttoned almost to the top of her neck. Unlike the first two interviewees, it was difficult to imagine her performing. “I hope this isn’t going to take too long. I’ve got to get back at work this afternoon.” She looked at her wa
tch again.

  “We’ll get started as soon as Stanley gets back,” Angela replied. “Are you filming this afternoon?”

  “Good lord, no! Didn’t anyone tell you? I’ve been out of the business for years now.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Aren’t you doing some sort of exposé of the porn industry?”

  “I don’t know if you’d call it an exposé. My husband is studying five different professions, including adult films.”

  She arched her brow. “I wouldn’t call making porn movies a profession. That gives it a dignity it totally lacks.”

  “I think Stanley uses the term pretty loosely.” She tried to change the subject, but could not think how. “We’re just collecting data at this point.” Much to her relief, she heard a key being inserted in the door and got up to let her husband in. “Susan is already here,” she told him, “and I think she’s anxious to get started.”

  “Great.” He cast a forlorn glance at the blueberry muffin in his hand. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”

  * * *

  INTERVIEWER: Could you tell us your age and place of birth?

  SUBJECT: I’m thirty-two years old and I was born in Pasadena, California.

  INTERVIEWER: How long have you worked in the adult video industry?

  SUBJECT: Like I told your wife, I quit five years ago. Before that, I was in movies for three years and modeling and dancing for five years before that. I worked under the name Sheila Easy.

  INTERVIEWER: How did you get into it?

  SUBJECT: My boyfriend and I were huge coke heads. He figured that I could make a lot of money as a model, and he was right. I made even more money dancing, but we snorted up every penny.