The Truth about Porn Star Boyfriends

by Sunniva Dee

  He’s just back from Istanbul when I ghost-dial him and he doesn’t pick up. Maybe my nightmare came true. He’s hooked up with the perfect woman from his own ranks, Silk or not.

  He calls me half an hour later, and I don’t dawdle. I pick up. Out of curiosity.

  “Savannah, are you okay?”

  I try to interpret his tone, wait for it to come off different somehow, but he only sounds concerned. “My cell was in the break room, and I didn’t get off until now.”

  Get off?

  I don’t tell him my call was an accident. I need to apologize anyway. This is as good a time as any. “I’m good. Sorry for the cactus. I didn’t mean to be acidic.”

  “You were prickly more than acidic.” Humor tints his voice.

  I want to ask if the cactus was what stopped the barrage of flowers.

  “True. How are you?”

  “I’m all right. A little jetlagged. Was hoping for a few days off, but Sharon has me booked solid this week. Guess I’ll be relaxing in the weekend. Are you working at Mintrer’s tonight?”

  I nod into the phone. “Yeah.”

  “I can pick you up. What time are you off?”

  My heart kicks into action, rolling into a shimmy as I scan the restaurant. I’m glad we’ve dimmed the lights already. “I’m off at ten.”

  “Oh earlyish. That’s nice. You want to see Princess? I know she’ll want to see you.”

  “I’d love to see Princess.”

  I press my phone against my chest after we hang up. Then I close my eyes and let the confusion inundate me.

  I feel so much for this man. I worked like crazy to overcome his job and got damn close. I’d almost even accepted his version of faithful.

  But picture yourself getting there. You’ve surpassed the unsurmountable and you believe your beautiful, perfect boyfriend when he says it’s just flesh. How far would you go? I’m looking at you. If the most stunning creature of an ex-girlfriend with a past to match slips into his house and wants to sleep over, when she nuzzles into his throat the way only you should, do you still trust?

  Do I still trust?

  I can’t meet him at Mintrer’s again and again and all over again.

  I ask to leave early, rush out, and call him on my way to the playground. It’s dark here, but all I care about is finding new territory, a place where we’ve never met before. I don’t want to go home to my house after, and I definitely don’t want us in his.

  “Hey, it’s me,” I say into the phone.

  “Are you off work already?”

  “Yeah.” I try not to puff out my nerves. “You know the Seven Eleven a block west of Mintrer’s?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m behind it. On a swing.”

  He’s there five minutes later. You don’t get from Ciro’s house to anywhere near Mintrer’s in less than fifteen, but I won’t ask.

  He parks the car. I watch the lights go off. I watch him stride toward me with a purpose, the dark mass of his body contouring against the lamplights. I feel arrhythmic.

  When he gets to me, he glances around like we’re breaking some law. It’s hot—I don’t know. His eyes gleam and search me. He leans in. Kisses me without asking.

  I kiss him back, my chest swelling and deflating. It expands into his body and levels out, and then he hoists me off the swing, onto his hips and kisses me, kisses, kisses, and I have nothing solid under my feet.

  “Why here?” he whispers.

  “I just couldn’t again, from Mintrer’s. Things went wrong between us.”

  He groans and pushes my face against his neck, holding me tight as if he doesn’t want to let go. The crisp night makes it better. The two of us are the core of everything that’s warm.

  “We need to talk,” I say.

  He nods, but his face burrows against me like he wants to hide. He inhales through his nostrils—inhales me. My heart doesn’t hop at that. It wrings with pained bliss.

  “Baby girl.” His words are so low they breeze against me. “I’m holding you in my arms right now, and that’s a little bit unbelievable.” He kisses me on an inhale of my perfume—my sweat—I don’t know. “You’re a tough one to keep around. Desert wind.”

  I swallow. “What?”

  “You know how it blows hard and strong, and it’s scorching in the middle of the day? That’s you to me. And if I’m not careful, you keep going and I’m left behind like another cactus.”

  I’m glad he said cactus. It makes me snicker, and if I didn’t snicker, I’d be crying. “Ciro, the cactus man.”

  He smiles. Lifts me higher. Breathes hot air against my chest. “I’d be the big kind of cactus, with both girth and length.”

  “You.” He’s funny. He drugs me, and suddenly I’m inhaling him the way he inhaled me. “Girth and length mean nothing if it’s covered with needles.”

  “Oh did I not mention that? No needles, just girth and length.”

  “Eww, shut up.”

  “You haven’t complained before. Unless you count statements like, ‘Oh please, baby. Deeper.’” He ends his too realistic moan with a sigh against my mouth.

  My stomach floods with heat. “We need to go someplace where we can have a real talk.”

  His lips still against my skin before he pulls back. “Princess is waiting for you at the house...”

  “No. I can’t.”

  I shouldn’t start in the car. I should wait until he’s not driving anymore, but two weeks of silence is enough.

  He nods. Of course he knows. “What did you see?”

  “What was there to see?” I snap, but then I reel myself in. “I saw you embracing her. I saw her snuggling as tight as she possibly could with no concern for someone else being around, not even someone you had just kissed. And you buried your nose in her hair, and you stroked her back.”

  “So you saw me comfort her?”

  “Yeah, but...”

  He stares.

  “You guys were intimate as hell, Ciro! It was so clear you were used to holding her like that. She’d snuggled with you so much before—I could tell, and—”

  “And it hurt?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m so sorry, Savannah.”

  He could have said more. He could have reminded me of the horror of Silk’s situation and how broken she was. He’d be right. I feel bad for her, but above that is a thick layer of thoughts and assumptions and hell-nos. I need to express them now.

  “I didn’t know how far you would go. If it were up to Silk, you’d be in bed in seconds. Then, I learned that she stayed at your house, and I never wanted to talk to you again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because what stops a porn star from sleeping with another porn star when she’s lonely?”

  The waves crash against the sand in chaotic, never-ending clusters. He pulls his fingers through my hair as I lean back. The last month has been doomsday. I’m deep in, at the center of it, but I feel better with my ear over his heart.

  When I shiver, he folds his hands over my stomach and pulls me closer.

  “We could go to Moonshadows. It’ll be warmer inside a restaurant.”

  “No. This is good.”

  “Not too cold?”

  “Not against you.”

  His stomach sinks with relief, a firm surface sliding with me. Gently, he kisses the top of my head. It’s easier to talk when I don’t see his face.

  “I’m afraid, Ciro.”

  “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, and there’s no relief in sight. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t we have to be brave to win in life?”

  “That depends on what’s at stake. Do you think my mom is brave for wanting to pack up the house and check out of reali
ty in search of a fantasy?”

  He squeezes me, and I turn so my nose finds the soft fabric of his shirt. I rub against it, closing my eyes.

  “No. Your mother should definitely not chase her dreams.”

  I let out a quiet laugh. “We’re so fucked up.”

  He sits up and turns me toward him, holding my face in his hands. “You’re so unsure of me, Savannah. What we have is not fucked up. It’s beautiful. We just need to sort through this mess until you understand that you can trust me unconditionally.”

  He has my attention when he crosses his legs and pulls me down on his lap, straddling him. The moon is so mild above us it’s almost too much.

  “Hear me out, because I’m going to tell you a story. Some of it, you know. Other parts are new, and maybe they can help you understand better.”

  I’m ready.

  “If I ever become a father, I’ll do nothing the way my parents did it. They lived in the dark ages when it came to raising a child and a teenager, and it wasn’t even because they were strict. Their parenting style was like hurling off fistfuls of darts with blindfolds on and never once hitting the target. Obviously, we didn’t understand each other.

  “It wasn’t difficult to find excitement and sexual stimuli. I never had a problem finding takers at school or elsewhere. At the country club, the supermarket, the library, the theater. The only thing I did right during that time was to use a whole lot of condoms.”

  He finds my lips with a soft kiss that sends tingles down my spine.

  “I even slept with the country club manager’s wife. That got complicated. What I regret most is spending the last two years of high school fucking someone, high, or both at once. When I was about to get expelled from school, I seduced the principal.” He shrugs, a small apology. “If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have had a high school diploma.

  “I had food and a bed, everything material I needed. Just, I could gobble pills right under their nose at the dinner table. I could have a ‘study date’ in the sunroom and fuck her against the wall without being caught. Once, my father walked in on me with a girl, and all I had to do was tell him I’d spotted a crane by the pond and that was why we were pressed so tightly together by the window.

  “Anyway.” He chuckles, stroking hair away from my face. “A few years later, someone told my parents straight up that I was in porn. That’s when I was cut off, and I’ve been dead to them ever since.”

  “Have you tried to contact them?”

  “No. My parents don’t mess around. They actually took out a restraining order against me. I can’t be within a hundred feet of my mother and father.” He lets out a small snort.

  “Jesus Christ. That must have hurt like crazy.”

  “Eh, it’s whatever. At least I don’t have to feel guilty for not visiting anymore.”

  “No shit.”

  “Fast-forward few years, and I’m starting to miss someone in my life. I fall in love a couple of times, start relationships, and that’s when I learn how off-putting it is to women that I’m in the industry.”

  “You were surprised by this?”

  “To be honest, yes. I guess I hadn’t thought it through. I’d been busy working and staying clean of drugs, and during the first years of paying my own bills, I had people around me night and day. Afterhours, we hung at clubs and bars. I’d go home with young colleagues for a quickie, or I’d have a one-off with some girl from a club. You live so fast it takes a while to notice that you need more. But at a certain point, you notice that it’s there and glaring at you.

  “In the beginning, it wasn’t that bad. Mostly, I never got past the dating stage with them, and it was just surprising when they moved on after only a few weeks. I’d hit a home run on the first night, but that was the extent of it. A few weeks of taking them on dates and sleeping together, then bam, as soon as emotions other than desire started up, so did the fights and the breakups.

  “By the time I met Silk, I’d tried a dozen times, at least. Lots of great girls, but what does that matter?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve said it before, but I can’t believe you keep trying. If I were you, I’d have stopped a long time ago. Or I’d find another job.”

  “I don’t give up easily.”

  “Oh believe me, I know.” I gasp a laugh as he sucks my lower lip into his mouth, swirling over it with a skilled tongue.

  “Silk was a big lesson for me. I worked hard to make our marriage last, but it made her unhappier than she was when I met her. I wanted help her, not make her miserable.

  “I took a break after Silk. For almost a year, I didn’t date at all. When I got back on the horse again, it was with even more purpose than before. About thirty girlfriends in, I started becoming methodical about it. I found my type—not adult performers but regular, smart girls. I tested out different ways of telling them about my job.

  “When I met you, my fifty-second girlfriend—”

  “You really have been counting.”

  “Yeah. On a mission and all that.” His arms tighten around me before he relaxes and continues. “By the time I met you, I’d already learned that I didn’t have time for dating. I needed my girl to jump into a real relationship immediately, and I needed a few weeks for her to get to know me and like me before she learned the truth about my job.

  “I needed her to trust my feelings for her. I needed to woo her. To make sure she enjoyed every aspect of being with me.”

  “You sound so calculated. You’ve been trying to manipulate me this whole time?” The moment I ask, I know it’s not true. It can’t be manipulation when a person tells you what they’re doing from the start.

  “Yeah, I’m guilty. I’ve swayed our relationship as much as you allowed. But guys do worse during the dating dance. Like being the best version of five different guys in one, and then once you’re a couple, he’s none of those people. I wanted to skip that part. Be with you and be the best me I have in me with you, always.”

  I scoff. “That’s nice, but look at you. A person with as many exes as you can’t possibly feel much for number fifty-two. I’m just another girl you like slightly better than the crowd, a chick from your serial harem, and that’s bullshit.”

  “Shh, relax. Please?” His mouth caresses mine. I don’t pull away, but my lips are stiff against his.

  “I admit that you started out that way—I had a few walls up to guard myself. You’re so beautiful. Those big innocent eyes made me want to own you and treat you so well you forgot yourself. You’re my type. I’m not going to lie about that.

  “But then I did get to own you, and it was staggering. You were there so fully, so in our moment. You let me lead you through your body, and you sensed everything I gave you. You’re a cat, Savannah, arching into my hands, rippling like water that forms around me. You’re addictive.”

  My stomach tightens at the memory of how this man guides us to ecstasy. He blinks, savoring gone pleasures too.

  “But it wasn’t just that. You and I, we joked. We talked. You entrusted me with your fears and your secrets. You welcomed my help—even with your mother, you did, and that was huge for me. We had so much in the beginning, and it killed me when it disappeared. It was like being expelled from a heaven I hadn’t even known to miss.

  “You’ve had names for what we were or weren’t, Savannah, but those names never changed what you were to me. You’ve been my girl the whole time.”

  I open my mouth to reply, but Ciro isn’t finished.

  “I know what I want, and I don’t mess around. I want you. I want you so badly I’ll do anything to keep you. These ups and downs, the breakup, the distance between us has only solidified the one thing I know for sure, and that is how much I love you. I mean business, Savannah. Long-term business.”

  I let out a sob. “Ciro, I… I’m sorry.” I shake my head, forming and letting go of words. “I love
you too, but—”

  “Good.”

  “No, it’s not. You know I’ve had a hard time thinking of you with other women.” He wants to cut in, but I cover his mouth. “It helped to meet Ana and Aaron. I saw how he looked at her, how completely he accepted her other world.”

  I exhale. Get ready for the rest of it. “Then you came with me to my mom’s, and again you helped me coax her out of a crisis in the smoothest way possible. I was so full of you after that I believed I could do us.”

  I don’t like the tentative smile on his face. It’s like I’m giving something only to snatch it away in the next instant. “For a moment, I thought we could be together. I thought I might not question your loyalty to me. I’d keep to the rules of smart porn-star girlfriends and boyfriends and not visit you at work. I wouldn’t watch gifs you’re tagged in on your social media or read the fans’ comments. I’d do it right.”

  “Savannah, baby girl.”

  “Ciro, I never told you what I was doing at your house the day Silk was there. I was there to tell you I was ready to be your girlfriend again.”

  He groans. Drops his hold on me to scrub a hand over his face. Then he curses under his breath. “She shouldn’t have come.”

  “She did because she needed you.”

  “I couldn’t shut the door on her! She’s been through so much.”

  “I know, and that’s exactly my point.” I draw back to caress him. Watch my own fingers as they trace his temple and run down the hollow of his cheek. Light stubbles. God, I love him. I do love him, and this hurts so much.

  “I’d come to terms with living with your job as our shadow. I wasn’t going to let myself freak out over it anymore because you kept telling me, kept showing that you wouldn’t attach your heart and mind to another woman.

  “But now...” A lump growing in my throat, and I have to swallow it before I can continue.

  “If I not only have to struggle with your job, if I can’t trust that I have your heart— If Silk or another woman can bounce in at any moment, then I’d be a fool to give up Status Quo for you.”

  I expect him to rebuke me. Reason with me. Instead I get silence. It stretches on, longer, wider, until my lump is replaced by the threat of tears. I can’t let them leak out right now.