by Lynsey G
Despite its importance, however, all this human interaction with fans can be rather humdrum in practice. The Raritan Center in Edison is one gigantic open space, and in 2009, the Exxxotica convention hadn’t yet managed to cover more than half of that space with booths, giving the expo a sadly small look. Go-go dancers gyrated lazily on poles and in cages set up around the show floor while much-too-loud hard rock music blared from somewhere high overhead. Someone at the far end of the show floor shouted into a microphone on a temporary stage, trying to attract a crowd to some booty-shaking contest or giveaway. Awkward fans laden with goodie bags, lanyards, and expensive cameras goggled at the scantily clad dancers, graphic depictions of sex splattered on DVD covers, posters, and other promo items, and performers clattering around in mile-high platforms. It was at once disappointing in its fluorescent lighting and ho-hum tackiness, and awe-inspiring in its sensory overload.
But the convention also exceeded many of my expectations. Thus far in my career, the particular subset of porn insiders I’d been running with had viewed the industry as a delightfully disgusting source of sleazy entertainment, in which they could delightedly abandon the trappings of “civilized” behavior. Case in point: Our tag line at WHACK! was “A Provocative Periodical for the Cultured Degenerate.” When we started up, j. vegas had made it known that our tone was to be one of sly camaraderie with the industry, so long as everyone involved recognized that we were all swimming in the shallow end of the morality pool. In other words, my experiences with professionals in the adult entertainment sector thus far had reinforced the idea that nobody was going to take any of this seriously. Porn was for miscreants and malfeasance, and we were there to party.
I met Chet, my editor at the second of the two print magazines, for the very first time at Exxxotica. We’d corresponded up until then entirely by e-mail, and I’d developed a mental picture of him as grumpy old man with bushy eyebrows and a deeply embedded scowl. I had been spot-on: Chet was younger than I’d imagined, probably in his late forties when I met him, but he was as jaded a man as I’d ever met. He and Charles—brothers of a sort in their simultaneous adoration of and contempt for pornographers—had both been in this business for decades, and they’d been to more than a few rodeos. As the elders of my little corner of the industry, I’d looked to them as the bearers of wisdom.
As I put it in a later McSweeney’s column: “These jaded folks paint a picture of porn performers as broken-down human beings with deep-seated emotional issues whose only love is for degrading themselves and each other … Who would do this willingly but broken-down delinquents?” With this understanding of our industry in mind, I went into the convention expecting a menagerie of debauched cretins swilling booze, snorting drugs, and throwing clothing and dignity to the wind. To be honest, all the while I’d been exhorting my readers to think of porn stars as people and to cross the middle ground between “them” and “us,” I’d been pretty damn comfortable thinking of “them” as fundamentally different from me.
But, as the day wore on and the WHACK! crew made the rounds of performers’ booths for introductions, autographs, and video interviews, I realized that most of the models were different from me in only one striking way: They were businesspeople. Focused, effective businesspeople. Pros who were willing and able to plaster on their fake eyelashes and enough makeup to balance out the terrible lighting at the convention center, spill themselves into undergarments that squeezed in all the right places, and dazzle onlookers with radiant, rehearsed smiles for hours on end. Specialists in batting those fluffy fake lashes in just such a way as to inspire adulation, self-confidence, and the desire to spend money on the spot—and well into the future. Crack practitioners at styling, maintaining, and promoting their own brands.
And make no mistake: Branding is as much a part of the porn industry as it is anywhere else. As we barreled along through the early years of the Information Age, porn stars caught on to the power of their own personal styles and sexual proclivities in selling their work. As Christina Cicchelli told me once in an interview, “My brand as a sex worker is important because I have to compete with so many other ladies.” With thousands of women active in the adult entertainment industry at any given time, it’s important to stand out.
For the porn fan with an affinity for bubbly Southern blondes with big butts, Alexis Texas was happy to offer herself as a brand distinct from, say, Kelly Shibari’s variety of curvy, kinky, nerdy, Japanese intelligence. Just as Joanna Angel catered to an alternative punk-rock crowd that enjoyed tattoos and quirky senses of humor, Misty Stone fed the desires of a more mainstream audience with a penchant for a lithe body and raw sensuality.
A heightened awareness of one’s strengths and a recognition of the demographic that enjoyed those strengths enabled savvy models to make the most of their fan bases, and to keep adding to them. In short, most of the porn stars I met at Exxxotica had actively developed themselves and their public personas to fit their fans’ desires. These were people who had decided to trek from Los Angeles (or Las Vegas or Phoenix or Tampa or Miami) to the suburbs of New Jersey because they meant business. And they were great at it.
As a young adult who majored in English and minored in philosophy, then spent her few post-collegiate years messing around in a variety of odd jobs, I was flabbergasted by the level of professional focus I saw in these porn stars. But watching Jenna Haze in a skintight minidress and six-inch platforms as she effectively seduced a fan without even touching him—and then performed the same feat over and over, all day long—I was awestruck. She told me a few years later in an interview that her convention demeanor was just as meticulously planned as I suspected: “I’ve always believed that if you carry yourself like a star, and if you carry yourself with respect, then people will respect you and treat you like a star … I go all-out on my signing outfits. I always wear something that’s very sexy but that’s really classy and fashionable. I think that kind of sets me apart.” Given that the line for her signing booth stretched around the “block” of her section at the expo, clearly her strategy was paying off.
Nyomi Banxxx, a hugely popular performer who headed her own mainstream production company, adult production company, and clothing line, told me in a 2011 interview that her best advice for aspiring female stars was this: “Your name is your company, your body is the assets and stock in that company. Trademark, copyright. Do your research on who’s the hottest in the industry and where you fit in. Know your markets! And never sell yourself short! Know your worth!” Nyomi took her own advice and became highly successful, transitioning out of the adult industry gracefully and on her own terms years later, with no regrets.
Ever hear someone express awe over a bootstrap start-up selling for billions? Of course you have; it’s a tech-age fairy tale we all know and love. But here’s a challenge: Try achieving success with a business in which your body is your capital and you are selling it in an industry in which royalties are nonexistent, job security is elusive at best, and there are no formal pay standards. Add to this equation the fact that the rest of the world looks at this industry with contempt, fear, and sometimes outright hatred. Do all of this in the face of outside forces attempting to legislate what you are permitted to do with your body, protestors arriving at most of your public appearances, and the media waiting to pounce on any whisper of negativity in your industry. And do it all in stilettos.
What I’m saying is: Successful porn stars are not the flighty bimbos many of us expect. They are successful because they work hard at succeeding in conditions that aren’t conducive to success. Not only do many porn stars turn a profit as freelance contractors on the above dreadful terms, but a growing number of them also take the reins of production, go on to start their own companies, and expand their personal brands to encompass the performances of their colleagues while negotiating distribution deals, merchandising opportunities, and—at last—residuals. So, when I met Joanna Angel in September of 2009, she wasn’t just a porn star. She was a
n entrepreneur, and one whose star has continued to rise steadily in the time I’ve known her, despite astronomically high odds against success. Please don’t try to tell me she doesn’t deserve the cover of Businessweek. I disagree.
I WAS, IN SHORT, IMPRESSED by the women I met in New Jersey. In some cases, perhaps too impressed. I formed a crush on one star in particular, who I’ll dub Jennie Hart. Sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning, at the after-after-party back at the hotel, where my WHACK! cohorts and I, with a group of porn actors, had taken over a lounge on the top floor after the bar downstairs closed, I slurred a proposition to her. I thought myself quite savvy for phrasing my come-on in the form of a drug reference as we passed a joint around, but she just smiled and told me that, though she thought I was “really cute,” she couldn’t go around kissing people outside the performer talent pool, since she hadn’t seen any of my STI testing paperwork and couldn’t be sure it was safe.
In the cold, sober light of the next day I realized that Jennie’s refusal made no sense—kissing wasn’t dangerous to her sexual health. But she’d had her wits about her enough, even at three a.m. and after numerous drinks and a puff or two of the aforementioned joint, to turn me down in a way that showed she valued me as a future consumer of her products, but which conferred that, as a professional, she simply had to act in her own best interest. Smooth, indeed. Of course I was disappointed not to have landed a make-out session with my porn crush, but I came away from the experience with a whole new appreciation for her business acumen. And a hangover.
Speaking of hangovers, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention here that not all the female porn stars in Edison that weekend were cut form the same cloth. As a journalist who’s let into the VIP section of the party might be expected to do, I gravitated toward the most famous people in the room. And I got very lucky; while there was a small but vocal media presence at Exxxotica in 2009, I was the only female journalist for an industry-specific publication in attendance. And that got me much further into the fold than I could have hoped.
This may seem incredible now, with the Internet having changed the landscape of media and journalism so drastically, but believe me when I tell you that in 2009 there were very few publications that covered adult entertainment with any degree of seriousness. Whereas today the porn industry is often the subject of journalistic scrutiny and celebration at outlets as varied as Marie Claire, The Atlantic, Vice, and even CNN, in the first decade of the new millennium, WHACK! was pretty damn unique in talking about pornography as an industry instead of a punch line (although we were obviously not above punch lines, either). And I was unique in that I was near the helm and female, which seemed to put many of the models at ease; after being “on” for their mostly male fans all day, they were able to relax around me. Although there may have been a number of women I would have accepted a proposition from—most notably Jennie—I was likely the only reporter they spoke to that weekend who wasn’t obviously hoping to sleep with them. I try to be discreet, after all.
But I digress. While I was enjoying the heady scent of success as a porn industry journalist, I also bore witness to a fair share of what my elders at the magazines had led me to expect from a porn convention. There were, naturally, drinkers and pill-poppers exhibiting their addictions at the after-party. Ghosts of humans with vacant eyes and too much makeup. Washed-up elders who seemed to have nowhere else to be. Hopefuls with no idea how to go about realizing their dreams. Even a few young, attractive Jersey girls hoping to catch the eye of a casting agent for a quick scene that night at the hotel.
In short, the after-parties that weekend displayed a cross-section of humanity you might find at just about any crowded bar in New Jersey that charges a cover on Friday and Saturday nights. Just, maybe, with higher platform heels and more stringently enforced VIP entry criteria.
I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I will say it again, but I simply cannot stress this enough: Porn stars are not much different from anybody else. As Nikki Darling put it in an interview I did with her in 2016, “At the end of the day, you’re dealing with different individuals of different backgrounds and different beliefs, just like in the real world. We just all happen to be having sex with each other for money.”
There’s little holding the group together as a universal characteristic, except for maybe one salient feature. Former industry scriptwriter and producer Dan Reilly told me in an interview that porn stars “seriously get off on the attention. They get off on the act of shooting it. That’s really the equalizer that I see … That’s the universal thing.”
It’s true: Exhibitionism must enter into the personality of any porn actor who has a shot at success. Without the desire to show oneself off to the world, nobody in any entertainment industry can survive. But particularly in pornography, where so very much of oneself is shown on camera and also as a branded commodity on social media and in public appearances, a yearning for attention is necessary. Prominent performer and now two-time author Asa Akira wrote in her first book, Insatiable: Porn—A Love Story, “Almost every time I shoot a sex scene, I feel a little bit in love. It’s the only way I can describe it. Not necessarily with my partner, but just in general. With the situation. In love with being watched. In love with being on display.” These exhibitionist tendencies and a relatively high sex drive, really, are the only differences I could pinpoint between porn stars at the Exxxotica conference in 2009 and the rest of “us,” and they are to date the only differences I have ever found.
Holding up my first-ever media pass as a porn journalist at Exxxotica New Jersey—with my first-ever porn-convention hangover—in 2009
(PHOTO COURTESY J. VEGAS)
Ron Jeremy signing Miss Lagsalot’s shirt at Exxxotica New Jersey in 2009
(PHOTO COURTESY J. VEGAS)
CHAPTER 9
The Guys
OF COURSE, THERE WEREN’T only female performers representing themselves at Exxxotica New Jersey in 2009. Though women comprised easily ninety percent of the talent there, a healthy contingent of their male counterparts was also on hand to represent its equally important role in the straight porn industry. (Gay male pornography didn’t have a presence at the expo; the gay industry and the straight industry maintain a fairly strict separation, which I’ll address later.)
The male talent pool in straight porn is notably smaller than the female for reasons both numerous and complicated. To name a few, and to skirt their many implications in favor of brevity: (1) The consumer demand for female models is far greater than the demand for males. (2) Porn is likely the only industry in which women typically out-earn men by three times, which makes men less likely to jump into the game than women. (3) There are astonishingly few men both psychologically and physically able to achieve and maintain erections on camera in front of film crews, and even fewer are able to ejaculate on command as the job requires. With all of these obstacles set up to bar entry, it’s rare for a man to decide to go into porn and actually prosper in the field—and it’s just as rare for a director to give new guys a chance.
Ryan Driller, the Superman of many a porn parody and a talented actor to boot, laid it out for me. “Most producers, most directors do not want to take a chance on a new guy. I shouldn’t say they don’t want to, but they’re hesitant, because a guy can’t fake it,” he said. On set, “if you’re waiting and hoping that the guy is going to be able to perform … every minute is money lost [if] he’s not going to be able to do the job. So once a studio usually finds a guy or a group of guys that they like and they’re comfortable with, and they’re getting the performances they want specifically from them, they’ll latch on to them and keep them because it’s more of a sure thing.”
Even once they’ve gotten started, suffice it to say that straight male porn actors don’t have it easy, so many careers don’t last, making straight male porn stars quite the rare breed. At any given time, there are maybe a few dozen (and that may be a generous estimate) guys in the industry who get regular work from b
ig studios, a few dozen lower-tier performers who work for smaller companies (often websites that deal in more extreme content, located in far-flung hubs outside LA and Vegas), and a few dozen more who appear in group scenes for low pay. These guys are not-so-lovingly referred to by some in the industry as “mopes”—a term that j. vegas enjoyed using.
It’s safe to assume that any male actor you see in a well-produced straight porno probably works a lot. The upper crust of male talent shoots almost constantly with the hundreds of female models active in the industry at all times. I’ve heard lots of people complain about how unattractive they find male porn stars (which I find mystifying—I mean, have you seen Ryan Driller or Manuel Ferrara?), but their purpose in the skin biz isn’t to be attractive, it’s to perform. Moe Johnson, also known as “Moe the Monster” on set, told me that the impression he often gets from directors is, “You’re a tool. Be what you’re supposed to be.” The men who excel in this role are those who can establish their personalities along with their cocks strongly enough to attract a following. That requires charisma, as well as a strict mastery of one’s body that requires practice and self-discipline of a very specific kind.
In short, straight male porn stars doing well enough to fly to New Jersey for a convention are hardened professionals (sorry, not sorry!) with oodles of experience and often a fair amount of pull in the industry. Most of the male performers at my first Exxxotica were professionals in a business in which they were highly successful and confident as hell. And it showed.