Sometimes I Think About It

by Stephen Elliott

  The people who attended the readings had usually not heard of me. They came because it was a party at their friend’s house and the friend promised to make those cupcakes they like or they were coming as a favor. Nobody wants to give a bad party, and touring this way ensured there would be at least one person other than me who would be embarrassed if no one else arrived.

  The readings mostly went long, more than an hour with questions, and people didn’t leave. We were often up talking until one in the morning. An important part of the book is my troubled relationship with my father and what I took to be his confession to murder in an unpublished memoir. (I investigated and found no evidence of any such killing; my father refused to confirm or deny it.) Following the reading, over a glass of wine or slice of cake or nothing at all, people told me about their own difficult relationships with family members, people they couldn’t forgive or who wouldn’t forgive them. The readings felt like an extension of the book.

  At a reading in West Seattle, I sat in a corner. The attendees surrounded me on a large sectional sofa with extra seats. The host had stacked my books on the mantelpiece. Nobody asked about my writing process, or how to find an agent or a publisher. Unlike at every reading I’ve done for every other book I’ve written, there were no aspiring writers in attendance. One of the guests asked about my mother—why isn’t she a bigger part of the story?

  The person hosting the reading usually picked me up at the airport or bus station. Then I met their friends and tried to sell them books, like they were Tupperware. Altogether, I sold about 1,100 books (not counting copies of my older books, which I was also selling) at seventy-three events. Seven hundred of those were books I’d purchased wholesale; a few hundred more were sold by local booksellers.

  A lecturer invited me to read at her small college in Ohio. I read to undergraduates in the coffee shop in the bottom of the English building. Most of the students looked like they were in high school, but one of them bought a book. She had a firm grip and I asked her how old she was and she said she was just getting used to saying she was eighteen. Another student was waiting, but the last student in line didn’t want to buy a book.

  “I don’t have any money,” she said.

  “That’s OK,” I said. “I’ll put my address inside and you can send me a check.”

  She thought about it for a second. “No,” she said. She wasn’t going to have any money anytime soon. Then she asked about writing from experience. She said she was afraid to expose herself in her own writing.

  When I’m writing a book, I feel like I’m in a cave. It’s so lonely. I come out of the cave years later, surprised to see the sun.

  I’ve published all my books with small presses. When someone asks me to explain the book tour, I tell them about the time I was traveling in Australia. We hiked to the top of a mountain using topographical maps and then belayed on ropes into the canyon. We dropped deeper until we were in a place that was darker than anywhere I’d ever been. There was a stream running alongside us and an echo of a waterfall in the distance. Then the walls were covered in glowworms. We turned on our headlamps, and the glowworms disappeared. We had been warned of the possibility of flash floods, and if there was a flood, none of us would survive. But there weren’t any floods that day, or rain, and we emerged into a forest that seemed so bright, I was certain we would run into Snow White or one of the dwarfs. We’d been hiking for hours and I was in the same shape as my friends and I fell a couple of times, cutting open my chin on a rock. The final hike was different from the trek through the canyon but still a part of the whole.

  In other words, the book tour is part of the book.

  I did one of the best readings of my life at that reading in Ohio for forty college students and sold fewer than ten books. At fancy homes, I sold more books than there were people in attendance.

  Not everything worked out. At a home in Boston, I read to seven people. During the discussion a graduate student who had returned to Harvard to study government announced, “You must be tired of talking about yourself.”

  Nobody bought a book that night, and on the way out the same woman urged me to “keep writing.”

  In Chesterfield, after an hour of getting to know one another, we set up the folding chairs, and people sat politely in rows. I read leaning against the kitchen breakfront. They asked interesting questions about murder and confession and the moment when I describe lies mixing with the truth like red and yellow paint becoming orange, the original colors ceasing to exist. Afterward people went back to talking, grabbing another drink or a snack.

  —New York, 2010

  An Interview with Lorelei Lee

  The first sex work I ever did, I was nineteen. It was mostly photos of me stripping and fake masturbating. Then I made this recording pretending that I was talking about the first time that I gave a blow job or something. The guy who did that shoot now owns Naughty America. It’s a huge porn company and they have, like, twelve websites. I was nineteen and he was eighteen and just starting. Now he has a million dollars and I don’t.

  Then I moved to San Francisco. I worked in a coffee shop for two years, quit, and started posing naked for anyone who would hire me.

  Kink.com was advertising on this website, offering $400 for a four-hour shoot, more money than I had ever made. I called, and it was Marty, who now runs Sex and Submission and Whipped Ass. I told him I didn’t have any pictures because I didn’t like the pictures I had. He said to just come down to the studio. I knocked on the door of this unmarked warehouse building. Somebody let me in and introduced me to Marty. I took my clothes off and did a little spin. He took Polaroids and said, “Yeah. We’ll call you.”

  Soon after that I did my first shoot with Peter Acworth for Hogtied. I curled my hair and wore false eyelashes, and I thought I looked ridiculous. I didn’t really know how to put on makeup. It was an abduction scene, and he grabbed me on Eighth Street with a cloth over my face and I screamed really loud. People were staring, and he pulled me into the building. When we got inside he said, “Thank God we had the camera. We would have been arrested.” Then he tied me up, tore my clothes off, flogged my tits. I don’t remember everything. I remember being really excited about it, feeling really in my body in a way I hadn’t felt before. I went home afterward. I was exhausted and had bruises all over me. My roommates were a little freaked-out, and they were like, OK, that’s what she’s doing now.

  Two months after that Kink took me to BondCon in Las Vegas. All of a sudden I felt like a movie star. We would hang out at the booth and pose for pictures and these guys would come through and say, “Oh yeah. I saw you on the Internet.” I knew I was making these movies, but it didn’t occur to me that there was an audience. At BondCon I met Adrianna Nicole. She helped me learn how to dress and wear makeup. I felt we were kind of in it together.

  Porn was an incredibly therapeutic thing for me. I got to go into rooms with people and experiment with being vulnerable in a place where I had no emotional responsibility. I went into work and people said, “What do you want to do today? What don’t you want to do today?” Nobody had ever asked me that before in terms of sex. I could decide at any time that I never wanted to go back. I had to be there for four hours for the shoot, and I got to deal with whatever the emotions were afterward on my own.

  In 2005, I did my first boy-girl scene. I was like, OK, I’m really a whore now. Kink had become a bigger company, working with girls from L.A., hiring through agencies. The girls from L.A. told me how they worked all the time. I only worked every couple of weeks. I felt like maybe it was the next thing. I had done everything at Kink: boy-girl, two boys, location shoots, suspensions, and all the blah, blah, blah. It stopped feeling new to me. I didn’t feel like I was accomplishing things. So I decided to go to L.A. And there was money, of course. I couldn’t imagine working every day for that much money.

  I called Adrianna’s agent, Mark Spiegler. I said, “I’ll do everything.” He said, “Buy a ticket.”

  H
e picked me up, and we went to dinner at a deli. I already had shoots lined up for that week. I met Annette Schwartz, who I fell in love with. We lived together at Spiegler’s. Everybody said we were girlfriends.

  Spiegler is this older man in his fifties, and he is very controlling and I think he would be lonely if he didn’t have girls living in his house. He was this father figure. We had curfew, and he drove us everywhere. It was like being a teenager. But he approached it like a businessman. He would encourage us to work all the time. He said it was for our own benefit. If you don’t work, people forget who you are. At the time I believed everything he said, but later I started to think everything was for him. He was getting his cut, but I don’t think that was it. We had this sort of weird dysfunctional family going on, and I think that was a huge part of it for Spiegler. But I don’t think there was anything sinister about him. He’s a sweet and lonely guy. He would never try to hit on us or anything like that. He looks the way you think a porn agent is going to look. He’s got a big belly, and he’s always wearing these T-shirts that have funny sayings. He always said, “I wouldn’t mess with the girls. It’s bad for business. Then they get jealous of each other. I have to lock my door at night. I’m scared of them.”

  There was also George, our driver. He was younger, and we would complain to him about Spiegler. I loved George. He was this tough gangster type, and he would show up on set like Mr. Tough Guy. If somebody tried to pay you less … I shouldn’t name names, but one director in particular had me and Annette on set and we’re doing a blow bang and there’s four guys and the director wants to be in the scene too, and he’s saying, “Well, you guys are basically only doing two blow jobs each because there’s two of you and four of them.” And I was like, “No fucking way. Obviously we’re both giving four blow jobs, and if you’re going to be in it, that’s going to be five, and you have to pay us for five blow jobs.”

  I was flying back and forth for a year and a half, spending two to three weeks a month in L.A. I lived out of a suitcase the whole time and felt very disconnected from my friends in San Francisco. I couldn’t take a class. I felt alienated from the world, except for porn. I couldn’t talk to people in the grocery store. I still feel this way.

  I flew back for a week of shoots. There was a new Spiegler girl, and I came in and she said hi and I went in the other room and started crying. Spiegler came in and said, “All right. You don’t want to do it. You’re going to be crying more when you don’t have any money.” I said, “I don’t know if I can.” And he said, “Can you just come in tomorrow?” Then I did the week, and I was fine.

  I decided I needed a break. I came home and signed up for a class. At State I felt exposed, because the other thing about working all the time is that I never had to be in a room with a lot of people who weren’t in porn. I was kind of depressed. I was scared because I thought I couldn’t keep making porn and I couldn’t do anything else. I got a job as a waitress and I worked and I went to school. I got a boyfriend. I hadn’t dated anyone in years. I had been having all this sex, and I hadn’t had any personal sex in a very long time. I was still performing at Kink occasionally. I was starting to feel better about myself, starting to feel sexy again. And then I did the Sex Workers’ Art Show. For six weeks I was on tour with all these amazing queer sex workers who felt really good about themselves. I was going to go back to L.A. after the tour, but I didn’t. I called in sick the night before I was supposed to go back.

  Now I work for Kink once a week, sometimes more. The difference is that I have my whole life.

  In the end you do all this stuff, and you’re like, That was something, but what? I would look at these pictures of these mainstream porn girls. I thought they looked beautiful. The girl in the picture is always smiling. She’s not the girl who’s alone in her room. In BDSM you don’t get pretty pictures. The Kink shoots were fun, but they weren’t glamorous. I had this feeling that I was not good enough, pretty enough. I wanted to be the girl in the picture.

  Sometimes I get emails. They tell me I’m beautiful, they tell me I’m a whore, it’s all the same. They don’t know anything about me. People come up to me in a bar and say, “You look familiar.” But they don’t know why I look familiar. In real life I’m just a girl. On the Internet, on their computer screen, on their TV screen, I’m the embodiment of their sexual fantasies. But their sexual fantasies are wrapped up in every other part of who they are. I have this one guy who has been writing me for years. He tells me I’m like his little sister. He says he’s in love with me and thinks we could have had this amazing relationship if I hadn’t ruined it. It’s not really threatening. There have been times when I felt sensitive, but for the most part I just think it’s fascinating. I think, Look at all these lonely people out there. Why are they writing to me? It’s like a window into the insides of all these people. Sometimes I feel a little less fucked-up.

  I’m an adult now and I make these choices because I’m doing what’s best for me. It’s not because I’m programmed by some trauma; it’s because I’m doing the best I can to make my life the best it can be.

  —San Francisco, 2009

  Silicon Is Just Sand

  1. THE ACCUSED

  August 29, 2015, is a hot night on Venice Beach. Normally the super heated inland desert sucks the damp air off the ocean, blanketing the coast with a layer of moisture all the way to the 405. But tonight, something has gone wrong. There’s no fog, and the sky is boiling, even at two a.m.

  A dark SUV pulls in front of the Cadillac Hotel, a two-star lodging better known for its cheap rooms and stained carpets than its views of the ocean. The car’s lights wash over a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. The homeless live all over Venice Beach and have for as long as anyone can remember, particularly at the northern end of the boardwalk, on the edge of Santa Monica. Their tents line the small, grassy hills between the sidewalk and sand. Stuffed sleeping bags, shopping carts, signs and bedding made from cardboard. You almost wouldn’t know how much this place has changed recently.

  The SUV’s lights stay on, illuminating the scene as Sris Sinnathamby, the owner of the Cadillac Hotel, steps out of the passenger side. He’s followed by the driver, identified by multiple witnesses as Francisco Cardenaz Guzman. Guzman is known to the police as a member of the Venice 13, a gang with ties to the Sureños, who control the local drug trade. He has been arrested many times, for gun possession, robberies, and car theft.

  Sinnathamby and Guzman have just returned from James’ Beach bar, a five-minute drive down the street. Sinnathamby walks up to a homeless man and tells him to get away from the front of the hotel. A security camera at a nearby café records the scene.

  Sinnathamby is not like Guzman. He was born in Sri Lanka and came to the United States in his twenties. He happened to be passing through Venice twenty-five years ago when he ran out of money and took a job cleaning hotel rooms at the Cadillac, then worked his way up to manager. When the owner retired, Sinnathamby bought the place from him. It’s not fancy, but it faces the ocean, and, pretty or not, it has dramatically risen in value in the past decade.

  The run-up in real estate prices has been driven in part by the explosion of tech companies along the beach on the west side of Los Angeles. Google, Snapchat, Hulu, BuzzFeed, YouTube, Netflix, and Facebook have overtaken an archipelago of properties, bringing an influx of programmers, sales executives, and the refined retail that follows such a massive migration of well-paid people. They call it Silicon Beach.

  The homeless don’t necessarily mind the newcomers, but the newcomers mind the homeless. Sinnathamby is not one of the newcomers, but they have been very good for his businesses. In addition to the Cadillac, Sinnathamby owns the gourmet eatery Dudley Market, a parking lot on Ocean Front Walk, and other Venice properties. Sinnathamby again tells the homeless guy to get moving. The man rises and shuffles toward the boardwalk, twenty feet away.

  In 2012, a law made it illegal to sleep on the boardwalk from midnight to five a.m. The justific
ation was public safety. Homeless advocates have filed lawsuits challenging the ordinance. In the meantime the homeless feel harassed, with people always kicking their feet, telling them to move. Venice is a place with a long history of art and activism, and now, a flood of wealth. Tempers run high on all sides.

  …

  Sinnathamby’s efforts to move the homeless man attract the attention of a group of nearby boardwalk denizens. “Leave him alone,” says Shakespeare, a twenty-six-year-old rapper and poet who frequently sleeps on the boardwalk near the Cadillac. Sinnathamby walks over to him, passing a man pushing a cart, who exchanges greetings with Sinnathamby. Everyone knows one another.

  The homeless have been drinking. They had a party earlier on Hippie Hill, a mound of grass nearby, to celebrate Shakespeare completing a new recording. Shakespeare argues with Sinnathamby, insisting the man has a right to stay on the sidewalk. But then Guzman, who has so far hung back on the boardwalk by himself, suddenly pulls out a gun and fires four shots down the beach. Shakespeare gets even more agitated, gesturing toward Guzman as if to challenge him. Sinnathamby stands between the two men, keeping them apart. Guzman waves his gun in a threatening manner.

  Two women, friends of Sinnathamby’s who were waiting in the SUV, now get out and walk over to him. He turns to the women, and as he does, Shakespeare shifts to his right and lunges at Guzman. Guzman notices Shakespeare and shoots him three times, stepping aside like a bullfighter as Shakespeare falls past him, exiting the frame of the surveillance video. Guzman waits for a moment, then gestures for the women and Sinnathamby to come with him. But they stay. Finally Guzman runs to the SUV and drives away. At least that’s how it all appears on the video.

  The ocean is as calm as a sheet of paper.

  2. THE JOURNALIST