Pornstar

by Ian Gittler

  It’s only the middle of the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show, but thousands of people, all presumably with legitimate business reasons for being in Las Vegas, are already making time, pulling themselves away from the main convention center—shuttle buses are running nonstop—to take in the convention’s sideshow attraction. The anticipation—the collective sense that soon they’ll all get their jollies—is palpable.

  There are aspiring porn girls in the line, too, no-names, some with budget tit jobs, in slutty getups and heavy makeup. They have hardened, impatient expressions, like they don’t enjoy the goofy attention from computer geeks, especially the ones speaking in foreign languages they can’t understand. The girls stand next to their boyfriend/manager/pimps looking tense and offended—like, “why are you looking at me?”—shiny hot pants tugged into the cracks of their asses. Their business is in the ballroom. It’s where they might conceivably make the jump from small-town stripper to “star.” They aren’t carrying IBM briefcases.

  The huge ballroom is steamy, way, way overcrowded, windowless, fluorescent. The air has a taste, like it’s being sucked out—maybe once an hour—chilled, then blown back in again without the benefit of any filtration. No one made an announcement, but pushing is allowed. It’s the only way to get through the web of intersecting lines—more lines, all lines—of men and women (mostly men, by far) waiting for porn stars to sign their posters, to sit on their laps and pose for snapshots. They wait for brochures describing new video releases with tiny, explicit pictures of porn stars in action: free porn to pack into their IBM briefcases. Mostly, they wait to see what they’re waiting for—sometimes there’s no way of telling, it’s so mobbed. They’re just like the placid-faced tourists standing in the rain outside Planet Hollywood in New York: They wait because that’s what they’re supposed to do, because that’s what their friends and relatives did before them. America’s new national pastime—phenomenon—is waiting in long lines.

  Anyway, there’s exposed flesh in every direction. No matter which way they turn their heads, being in line is an excuse to stand and gawk, take a couple steps forward, then gawk some more. But this is one place where no excuse for gawking is needed. If there isn’t a long line of gawking, sweaty guys jutting out from each exhibitor’s booth, then someone hasn’t done their job. Gawking is the point.

  I move across the room, toward EXQUISITE PLEASURES glowing in neon letters—the company Bruce Seven helped Bionca start—passing the booths of rubber-goods manufacturers—falsies, dildos—specialty-video distributors—Fatties, Young & Natural—and dozens of others: lubricants, bondage attire, “virtual porn.” There’s more neon the closer I get: BUTTSLAMMERS in bright red, BIONCA in green, TAKIN’ IT TO THE LIMIT 6.

  What from the distance looked like a clearing in front of the booth turns out to be a handful of conventioneers down on their knees jockeying for position, all with lascivious grins, cameras and camcorders at their eyes, stealing shots of Careena Collins’s naked crotch. The porn actress/sometime law student is signing a poster, one leg up on a stool, miniskirt hiked, fully aware of the commotion she’s causing, acting oblivious.

  Careena looks hungover. She only sort of recognizes me. Bionca smiles, kisses my cheek, then gets serious and asks if I heard about Bruce’s stroke. There’s a two-foot-long Bruce Seven doll sitting on a shelf behind her. The mouth is partially open, yellow teeth exposed. The mean expression is accurate, eerie. A fan on the other side of the counter gets Bionca’s attention. Before tending to her business Bionca says, “Hon, I’ll see ya

  Gregory Dark

  later, OK? Come back tomorrow morning. Bruce’ll be here.” She signs an autograph as I continue toward the back of the two-football-fields-sized ballroom, in search of the Evil Angel booth. That’s where Jon Dough and I agreed to meet.

  12 NEW HUMAN FUCK DOLLS

  7 EXPLODING SEX SCENES!

  INCLUDING 7-WAY ANAL GANG-BANG

  2 DPS * 6 ASS POUNDINGS * 5-WAY LESBIAN FUCK-OFF AND LOADS MORE

  36 GLISTENING HOLES STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT!!

  “The MOST PERVERSE ACTS I’VE EVER DIRECTED IN MY LIFE!”

  PROCLAIMS GREGORY DARK, KING OF MONDO PORN

  Evil Angel, in the middle of the back aisle facing the wall, is tons of neon, cheesy basement-game-room wood paneling, and two elevated witness stand—like signing stations. There are posters for upcoming releases—Fresh Cunts, Gregory Dark’s Sex Freaks, many more. The booth itself is relatively low tech and smallish, but it has the most boisterous mob so far, fifteen deep, no lines, just a crush. And there aren’t even any girls signing right now.

  These are fans here to see their heroes: the guys, the ones who narrate the tapes they love, the directors whose hands reach into the frame from behind their three-chip digital video cameras to pinch a girl’s ass in the middle of a sex scene, the ones who really live the pubescently vigorous masturbatory-fantasy as day-to-day reality, whose existences revolve, maybe to the exclusion of anything else, around the gratification of their hard-core urges. The Evil Angel stable is all name-brand directors, each of whose titles are synonymous with his own particular arsenal of sexual proclivities, his own persona, each a star in his own right whose work carries the implicit message, “You too, can do this, if you dare.”

  These are guys who weren’t to be reined in by society’s accepted standards regarding social mores and family values. “Porn chicks are the hottest fucks in the world,” the intelligent, forty-fivish Gregory Dark once said as justification for the trade-off. These are men who don’t seem to possess the gene for embarrassment, who kind of jumped at some point and never looked back when most guys just wouldn’t have taken the risk. These are not the typical failed mainstream auteurs anonymously “moonlighting” as porn directors. These are guys who failed miserably, knew it, moved on, found a way to “say something” and in the process get laid and earn millions of dollars.

  Standing against the back wall, near Private Video’s booth, I watch the Evil Angel scene with as much perspective as space will allow. It’s a total traffic jam, impossible not to be in someone’s way, in the way of someone’s snapshot. Patrick Collins, John Leslie, Gregory Dark, John Stagliano—the stable, minus Bruce Seven and a couple of others yet to arrive—all in various states of semiformal attire, stand behind a large table covered with glossy handouts. Dirty stuff. They engage whoever shouts their names the loudest, whichever fan can get their attention, shake hands, step in front to pose for pictures—flashes pop continuously, from every angle—and sometimes give an autograph. A lot of actors and actresses are visitors here, receive big hugs. The whole thing is a hugfest. The directors hug the girls, each other, old friends, critics, interviewers, new girls looking for a break, even fans who themselves have somehow become part of “the family” simply by showing up year after year, loyalists. It’s a carnival.

  It’s different. There are more mall-rockers with bandannas and painted, bleached-denim vests, and frat boys, too, in Vuarnets, all traveling in packs and looking like they’ve found exactly what they came here to find: this booth. They spot a director they recognize, hold up a clenched fist, whistle or shout things like “man, you’re the fuckin’ best!” and “you rock!”

  Stagliano’s three assistants are here to identify the video-store owners who order big and make sure these guys get through to the front, get special introductions, to make sure that at least some actual business gets done. That sometimes means dragging Stagliano out from his hiding place in a closet at the end of the booth. Patrick Collins, as always the ringleader or master of ceremonies, sucks it all in, wafts in the recognition. But Stagliano, the founder, seems like he’ll just make it, survive this at best—all the eyes on him, all the attention—as long as it’s in small doses, with regular intervals out of the spotlight. The surging crowd around his booth is intense.

  After ten or fifteen minutes my sense of who these directors are begins to crystallize. It’s like they’re trapped in a state of arrested devel
opment, like their priorities were frozen at Seventeen and the tide of their teenage libidos just carried them away. They made a life out of that, glorified it. It’s juvenile, but still annoying, since I understand the sexual urges well. I can relate.

  The next time my eyes scan to the end of the Evil Angel booth, I find a pair of wraparound shades staring back at me from a head or so above the crowd. It’s Jon Dough, grinning. I make my way through the crush. His smile broadens as I near. He pulls his sunglasses off.

  “Man, Ian. I’m happy to see you,” he says. Then, “Are you bored yet?” in a tone that assumes I must be, that says he is. He looks much trendier than he did summer ‘94: He has a Caesar cut, a goatee, an expensive-looking casual T-shirt, and earrings in both ears.

  “Man, I was watching you. You looked serious,” he says.

  Jon points at the poster for Fresh Cunts.

  “That’s mine, my first for Stagliano.”

  So it is. One of Jon’s first directorial accomplishments was to convince three female skateboarders, all burgeoning LA tournament celebrities and all still teenagers, to perform hard-core sex on camera.

  Jon sees me eyeing his mod black boots.

  “Do you like these?” he asks. “They’re cool, right?”

  Jon says he met a girl in Spain, started buying her a lot of presents, clothes, and he liked it, liked shopping. Since then he’s been spending “much cash” on his own wardrobe, too.

  “It feels really good for some reason,” he says. “Healthy.”

  The conversation is choppy. Fans and other porn people keep interrupting.

  “Are you feeling any better?” Gregory Dark asks Jon.

  “Not much,” Jon says, “but throwing up definitely helped.” Then, to me: “Greg made me do it, said it was the only way. I ate some tainted chicken in that Sahara coffee shop and I really had a bad reaction, like I could die.”

  Dark keeps looking across the aisle toward Private Video’s booth.

  “I’m supposed to meet a guy about a deal,” he says, distracted. “European distribution.”

  Lisa Lipps and family at home, Boomtown RV Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada.

  Dark is about to wander over there when someone from Hustler’s Erotic Film Guide pulls him in the other direction, tossing off “Hey, congratulations, Jon” as they go.

  “What’s that guy congratulating you for?” I ask.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I, uh, well, I might sign a deal—I’m supposed to sign a contract with Hirsch, you know, with Vivid. I just can’t figure out how everyone I fuckin’ bump into knows already. God. Nothing’s even been signed.”

  Jon is the first actor to be offered an exclusive deal like the ones Steven Hirsch gets his Vivid Girls to sign.

  “Well, Stephen St. Croix is doing one, too. But yeah, it’s like the new thing, Hirsch’s latest way of waging war with VCA. You know, get the guys, too, into exclusive deals. I mean I’ll be able to direct my shit, do that, and even still fly up to Frisco to do loops for Damiano, which I enjoy. I just won’t be able to do scenes for other big companies, which basically means VCA. What d’ya think, should I do it, Ian?”

  Jon says he can make more freelancing, but that would mean working all the time. If this deal happens, he’ll make somewhere around a hundred thousand a year for doing a couple scenes a month.

  “That means I’ll have a lot more time to get my directing thing going.”

  I congratulate him. “Thanks, man,” he says.

  Jon is a total insider, a ten-year veteran, but he stands next to me, watching from the outside, too, in a way.

  “Look at Rocco,” he says. “That guy is just tremendous. What charisma.”

  Jon explains how Rocco Siffredi performs in scenes in America in exchange for 100 percent of those films’ distribution rights in Italy.

  “That’s brilliant,” Jon says.

  Rocco hugs his way over, dominating through sheer force of size—and charisma. He’s even taller than Jon, at least six-foot-six, and broader shouldered. “Eh, Jon, man,” he says in a thick accent, embracing Jon. “Wow, do you believe? Is fantastic!” meaning the scene around the booth. “I ‘ave to take my wife back to the ‘otel, you know, ‘cuse me.”

  Jon makes a quick introduction, and Rocco shakes my hand with an apologetic expression, already moving away. “Sorry, my wife, you know, she’s pregnant, so I ‘ave to do the business, and go—really nice to meet you.”

  “Tremendous,” Jon says, “That guy’s too much. What a star.”

  JON’S ROOM, two nights later. It’s 1 A.M. He puts Frank Sinatra on, then changes from his tux into jeans, Nikes, and one of his expensive T-shirts. He leaves the Best Actor, Video trophy he won at the Adult Video News Awards ceremony two hours ago in the closet.

  “Sinatra, out of respect for tradition, y’know?” he says.

  It is nice hearing Sinatra sing “Strangers in the Night” in a room with a view of the strip. Somehow, here, we’re far enough away—at least for a minute—that the polyester tourists blowing their lives’ savings on slot machines aren’t the defining image—or weren’t until they just popped back into my head. Jon sits on the sofa. I sit on one of the double beds with a leg up, facing him.

  “There’s a girl at Sharks who wants to fuck me tonight,” Jon says. “Is that a good enough reason to go all the way back there? She’s hot.”

  “You were out of sight for, like, maybe four minutes,” I say.

  “Oh, Ian. You don’t even know. That’s what it’s like,” he says. “Sometimes I have to turn it off. I just let the service or my machine pick up the phone. It’s too easy. It got meaningless a long time ago.”

  “You’re pathetic,” I say.

  I regret it in the same instant the words come out.

  Jon laughs.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  Neither of us speaks for a minute or two.

  I say, “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, don’t be an asshole. Every guy I meet is jealous of me. And they all think I’m pathetic. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I could die tomorrow. I’m not gonna build a life around some idea that everything lasts forever.

  “That’s why I’m not gonna have kids, a family, why I don’t want that. Tomorrow I could hit a wall on my Harley. My parachute could fuck up when I jump out of a plane.”

  Jon talks about his brother. He was gay. He had a sugar daddy. The “old fag” gave Jon’s brother lots of money, and his brother would spend it on drugs and on wild, three-day-long parties. Jon’s brother posed for gay magazines. That’s how Jon first got into porn. He changes the subject though, abruptly, before really going into detail about how he started.

  “How’d you get your name?” I ask.

  Jon is sitting on the floor.

  “I did maybe eight or ten scenes and, uh, I get a call from Jim South’s office saying, y’know, they need to bill me as someone. They told me to think of something.

  “I was sitting in my apartment listening to Los Angeles. Real loud. Y’know, X. Great, great record. So I thought, ‘I’ll name myself after the singer, John Doe.’ I just changed the spelling to ‘D-o-u-g-h.’ Everyone thought I was crazy. I think they wanted me to call myself something like Dick Hammer, y’know?”

  Jon dials Penelope’s room. She’s a nineteen-year-old French porn actress he’s been sleeping with since the first night of the convention. There’s no answer.

  “Hey, Matt Dillon gave me his number a couple of weeks ago. You think I should call him?”

  “Why’d he give you his number?” I say.

  “I don’t know. I guess he thinks I could, y’know, act. That he could help me.” “Dude, call him,” I say.

  “I’m bad about that kinda shit. He probably already thinks I’m rude. Y’know, you don’t say you’re gonna call someone then not call them,” Jon says. “Oh well. Maybe I’ll call him, if you think I should. Let’s go upstairs.”

  A BRUCE SEVEN GIRL named Felicia is throwing a party in one of the hotel’s enormous, pe
rfectly tacky, totally sixties Hugh Hefner—style penthouse suites. There are twenty-foot-tall windows, a winding stairway that leads to a balcony overlooking a sunken living room, and a white grand piano in the corner. Jon and Penelope are standing with Mark Davis, an Australian actor. He’s still in his tux. He was a winner tonight too, got two trophies. “It’s about time, right, mate?” he says. He and Jon shake and half hug. Jon pats his back. Davis is handsome in a classic, hunky way. And he has that glint in his eye, the “you know that I know that you know that I’ve fucked every girl in this room up her ass at least twice and been paid for it” male-porn-star glow.

  Winners Mark Davis, Stephen St. Croix, and Jon Dough.

  Penelope was having sex with Mark on an Anabolic set in Paris when Jon first saw her, and joined in. Penelope is beaming, just loving getting pressed in between the two actors. She has an arm around each of their waists. Before he leaves, to “circulate,” Davis hands me his business card:

  MARK DAVIS XXX ACTOR, MODEL

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX

  It looks like it was done on a manual typewriter. An 800 number and Santa Monica post-office box address run along the bottom.

  THERE’ SA FULL-PAGE AD in Adult Video News’ “Super CES Issue” for two compilation tapes: Debt You’re a Fucking Slut, Parts One &Two. Someone I ask says he heard she retired. Another person says she heard Debi got married.

  THE NASTIEST SIDE OF DEBI DIAMOND!