by Oriana Small
Back at her hotel room the day before, Lindsay had just whipped out her glass pipe and declared, “Look. I have to smoke. I hope you don’t have a problem with it. I don’t do it around many people.”
I was shocked when she flat out told me she was an addict. I appreciated her honesty, and she made it look tasty. I wanted to smoke it. She was resistant at first, but I said, “Lindsay, I’ve done speed before, even smoked it. That’s not the drug I have a problem letting go of. Just give me the pipe. Please?”
We floated around the West LA Hyatt. Lindsay was a strange and pretty girl. She was a butch lesbian, despite the fact that she looked like a model for Seventeen Magazine. The only thing masculine about her was that she smoked crystal like she was huffing on the exhaust pipe of a dump truck. I think the meth made her slightly schizophrenic, too. Or it gave her some sort of Tourette’s syndrome. Every so often she would criticize me out loud, just blurt rude things, like my name was unattractive or that my looks were not sexy.
She was staying at this hotel to see her clients. Lindsay had to quit doing porn because she said she couldn’t handle it. Escorting was much more her thing. She bragged to me how much money she made. Fifteen hundred dollars in twenties sat on the bedside table. The safe in the room was stacked high with several more thousand. The clients were what she called “in-calls.” She would chat with them online in various message boards and social network groups. An email relationship would evolve into an appointment. The men would come to her hotel, fuck her, and give her cash. She made it seem like it was the easiest, most killer job in the world. Despite getting pregnant from one of her johns and being addicted to speed, she made it sound appealing.
We finally got to the club via the most dangerous cab ride I’ve ever been on. Maybe the emotion was just heightened from being on drugs. Who knows, but we practically fell out onto the sidewalk and kissed the ground. Lindsay and I clung to each other’s arms. All of the bickering was forgotten as soon as we entered the Dragonfly.
I was busy talking a mile a minute to every person who looked at me. Lindsay and I were at the same speed, on speed. I clutched a vodka soda in my hand tightly and walked over to Dave Naz. The amphetamines made me stiff and nervous. I was afraid of overdoing introductions. I didn’t want to come off as too eager or a kiss ass. Dave Naz was the tallest man in the room. His eyes were big. That was the first thing I noticed. Dave had very big, kind eyes. We shook hands and smiled at each other and that was the extent of it. I rattled on about possibly modeling for him. He just stood there, smiled, and listened. We would be in touch. He would definitely shoot me.
I turned around to look for Lindsay, who had disappeared. I couldn’t focus on anything other than getting more drinks and taking a cab home. I lived just up the street on Cahuenga, so I bailed.
I next saw Dave at his house. He was shooting a friend and I for a girl-on-girl set for Taboo Magazine. I was used to doing grueling work for videos, so posing for still photography seemed a little too easy. I brought my usual stash of booze in my porno bag, just to loosen up in case I was uncomfortable.
Dave was cool and quietly sexy. He had true confidence, the kind that doesn’t jump out and shove you in the shoulder. He wore a shirt that said “100% Dirty” on it, but was calm and focused, genuinely professional. I couldn’t get over the way he remained detached from the anal beads or the girl-on-girl posing. I was automatically attracted to him. His non-reaction cast a spell on me. The music he played was very interesting rock ’n’ roll that I’d never heard before. Dave was in a class above the rest of the men I’d worked with over the years. He didn’t have an act. His was an effortlessly pleasant demeanor. I wanted him to be turned on by me, but I just couldn’t be sure if he was. He was so different. I’d never met anyone like him.
I was loud and sassy during the shoot. When I get nervous I put forth too much of my offensive charisma. The showoff comes out. I couldn’t tell at all what Dave was thinking, so I just assumed he wasn’t interested in me. No way would he ever go for a basketcase like me, I thought. Besides, I had two boyfriends already. Alan and Kris still hung peripherally in the picture, so I was not really in any position to be looking for someone new. But something undeniably real and magnetic was there with Dave, something entirely positive in stark contrast to the negativity with which I lived my days.
Among the things that had been consistently going wrong in my life was a fix-it ticket I’d gotten in 2003 that came back to haunt me. The original reason I was pulled over was for speeding away from a porno shoot. I’d just finished and had the cum on my face to prove it. I was paid the same day, and I wanted to get my thousand bucks into the bank. The cop dismissed the speeding, but I had to get the address on my license fixed. Even though I’d been living in Tarzana and Hollywood, my driver’s license still said Thousand Oaks.
I forgot all about the ticket. I was too busy partying to remember to go to the DMV. The term “fix-it” seemed like an optional kind of infraction anyway, so I ignored it. Ignoring the problem did not make it go away, as it rarely does with anything in life, other than maybe a pimple. The ticket caught all the way up to me one foggy afternoon in the summer of 2006. I was on the way home from a baby shower in Ventura. The California Highway Patrolman pulled me over for tailgating. He asked me for my license, but I didn’t have it on me. It was in the pocket of a pair of pants lying on the floor of my bedroom, probably snug against a baggie of cocaine. I’d often used my driver’s license to scoop the coke into my nose.
“I’m sorry. I can tell you the number,” I said.
The cop took the number and walked back to his car to run it through his computer. When he came back he said, “I’m going to have to impound this vehicle.”
“What? Impound? What do you mean?” I choked.
“You know why.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“You don’t know why you don’t have your license?” He shook his head at me and glared with dagger eyes through his sunglasses. “Your license is suspended. I could take you to jail right now, but I’m not going to. Just pick up your things and get out of the car. I’m going to have to get it towed. I’m writing you a ticket and you can clear this up in court.”
We were on the side of the freeway in the town I grew up in. I asked the cop, “What am I supposed to do? Can you give me a ride?”
“No, I can’t do that,” he said. He handed me the ticket. The cop had no sympathy for a crying girl whose BMW was being impounded. “I can call you a cab.”
I waited on the side of the 101 Freeway at the Reyes Adobe exit. The cab picked me up and drove me all the way to Hollywood. Alan met me at my apartment. He was always there when I was a mess, which was often.
It took me a day and a half of taking cabs around with Alan to retrieve my vehicle and renew my driving privileges. The whole thing cost me a thousand dollars in fees. While on the ride to the Moorpark Highway Patrol office, I thought about my life clearly for once. I was almost twenty-five years old and headed nowhere but the Simi Valley Court House. I was dragging the poor guy who was in love with me to the far corners of the county to pick up my impounded car. It’d come time to commit to change.
Many, many times I had said to myself, “Okay. That’s it. I’m never going to drink or do drugs again. I’ve had it with all of this mess.” However, I never had external forces to help impose these restrictions. I didn’t go to rehab. I never got arrested. My job was never really in jeopardy for any of the partying. I could still pass as a recreational user. I didn’t steal, or fuck anyone over in order to get high. The bottom of my existence never hit bedrock.
Dave Naz and I fell in love. It happened after our first real date. He took me out to dinner at Asia de Cuba on August 1st, the summer of 2006. From that night on, I decided to change my life. I’d been stringing Alan and Kris along, but when Dave and I got together, I decided to knock that shit off. The only reason I’d had more than one guy around was out of selfishness. I was greedy and couldn’t
stand letting my men move on to other girls. The time had come for me to stop being such a self-centered bitch, because it wasn’t helping anyone, especially me. I didn’t know what the future would hold for Dave and me, but it was time to start doing the right thing.
We’d flirted on the phone with each other since the day I first modeled for him. I would call him when I was fucked up on coke and alcohol. That’s when I felt most confident. He didn’t know that I was always like that. I didn’t hide the fact that I was a partier, but I surely wasn’t going to reveal how persistently.
I came home high after our first date, but not from drugs. It was the sex, the romance, everything about the high of falling in love. The moral conscience I’d chopped down long ago had grown into a little sapling overnight. I wanted to be an honest person. I broke things off with Alan and Kris immediately, and for good.
The next big revelation I had was to stop doing coke. There was just no room for anything else in my life if I was going to continue doing coke. It was time to retire it. If I wanted Dave in my life, the cocaine had to go. He deserved a better person to love. He was the perfect man, and this was my chance for redemption. Motivated by Dave, I could save myself from auto-destruction before my life got any worse. When I say I am lucky, words cannot explain my gratitude. Instead of getting strung out so bad that my life was ruined irrevocably, I turned my life around while it still had some potential left in it. I didn’t want to end up like my parents, or so many of my friends, by letting drugs destroy important relationships. I didn’t want my life to be mostly full of pain.
Dave helped me stay the course. I was in love with a man who didn’t use drugs or abuse alcohol. I stopped picking up the phone when my drug dealer called. All of the friends I’d hung out and did coke with were eliminated from my social circle. It was as easy as not picking up the phone. I stayed away from the old bars and clubs. Los Angeles is a huge and exciting city, and I was rediscovering it all anew. With Dave, I was seriously happy.
Dave taught me about hip music like Paul Westerberg, Ryan Adams, and Sonic Youth. I wanted as much of him as I could get! Being a compulsive binge eater, to say that Dave was an endless buffet of comfort food is the highest compliment. I could be with him for the rest of my life, gorging myself on his love like shoveling in mashed potatoes. Only, most enlightening of all, I don’t have to purge him out.
The absence of cocaine in my diet did, honestly, leave a big gap at first, which I filled with alcohol. I never realized that I drank so much. Maybe because I paired it with the drugs, it felt normal. Coke and booze are like an excellent wine and cheese pairing. I always drank to get drunk. No matter if it was to celebrate, get upset, cry, or out of boredom. Drinking filled up something inside of me that was vacant. I was addicted to it.
I moved in with Dave in June of 2007. We began living together happily, but I was far from being sober. I was still drunk every night. Although I’d quit the hard liquor for the most part, I’d graduated to consuming bottles of wine. Because it was wine, I felt like it was sophisticated. I wasn’t fooling anyone except myself, and only for a short while. I got sick and tired of feeling embarrassed about what I said and did the night before. The apologies and the blackouts had to end. Dave never pushed me, but he was an influence on me to change. He loved me no matter what. I didn’t want to exploit that. I do know that I loved to drink, and that I would crave it. As soon as I’d have one sip of something, a switch in my mind would go on. I would literally feel a click in my brain, and I would start to feel the high. And then the only thing I could focus on was staying high. I never wanted the sensation to end. I would drink as much as I could to maintain it, getting totally shitfaced in the process.
It became the norm for me to drink on every porn shoot. It was rare when I didn’t get hammered with everyone on set. I even made beer bongs and brought them to the other talent as gifts. The last time I got incredibly drunk at a shoot, I’d been pounding wine and vodka all morning and was an utter mess by the time I had to leave. Before driving drunk as hell, I insisted on doing an enema in the bathtub, in the “pile driver” position. I don’t even remeber this, but I’ve seen the footage to prove it.
When I got home, Dave was upset. He’d never been mad at me before and hasn’t been since. It hurt him deeply that I drove home fucked up. I also passed out and couldn’t be with him when he went to a business dinner that night. The kind of unhappiness, worry, and disappointment that my binge drinking had caused was finally, finally inexcusable.
I had to grow up and let it all go. It’s not cute or excusable to be an aging druggie or an old drunk. The time had come for me to stop being a child and put the childish things aside. I’d found a man who was honest, kind, smart, and loved to watch me have sex with other guys on camera. It turned him on that I did porn. There weren’t any issues of jealousy or insecurity to deal with when I did a scene. We agreed that anal was the best sex to watch, and the filthier the better. He praised my work (especially in the Girlvert series) as the performance art that it was. No one else has ever made me feel proud of myself for any of it. Dave always encouraged me as I fought to quit drugs and alcohol. Never once has Dave ever criticized me, condescended to me, or been cruel, because that’s not what you do when you love someone. I have learned so much from him. I cannot say enough how lucky I am.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bukkake (Death) and Taxes
SOME things in life are simply inescapable. There are famous sayings about these things. I’d heard the expression “death and taxes” before. I thought I could excuse myself from both while I was young.
The first couple of years, I did file my tax returns. I’d messed them up terribly in 2003 and received a letter of correction. The IRS told me to pay six thousand more dollars than the twenty-five hundred I’d wanted to pay. Keep in mind that I’d made over one hundred thousand dollars that year. I ignored the letter. I continued to ignore all of the letters that came to my apartment for the next three years. I had a special stack on my kitchen counter reserved for the Franchise Tax Board and the IRS. When the stacks would get too high and topple over, they were moved into a Nordstrom’s bag in my closet.
When I moved in with Dave I finally dealt with my tax problem. I honestly thought that a miracle would occur and I would get lost in the system. I blame that kind of thinking on the influence of religion. Blind faith is not a good quality to apply to tax evasion.
Dave and I wanted to get married and we couldn’t do it as long as my taxes were a threat. Marriage as my motivation, action was taken. The envelopes had to be opened—by an attorney.
It turned out that I had been audited in 2004. I had to go through every bank transaction for the past five years. There were so many cash withdrawals at two in the morning that we didn’t even count them. Aside from sometimes spending a thousand dollars per week on coke, I paid for sailing lessons for Tyler. I bought Kris a thousand dollar Gucci watch. I took taxis and town cars everywhere. In one year, I spent eight thousand on car accidents. My phone bills were eight hundred dollars a month. Most of it went to things that I have nothing to show for now.
Dave and I read through my life in those bank statements. So much excess, I felt like a pig. I’d paid my friend and former neighbor Oliver nine thousand dollars to be my accountant. I gave him my checkbook and trusted him to mind my finances. He’d come to me asking for a bookkeeping job. I didn’t think he was taking advantage of me when he wanted to be paid five hundred dollars a week, tax-free, for sticking paperclips on all of my utility bills and making files for them.
I’m sure there are others who have done well with all of their porn money, but in no way am I alone. I know girls who have never once paid their taxes or even opened one of their IRS envelopes. But they will. You must die first, or feed the monster.
I ended up owing twenty-six thousand dollars for three years of delinquency to the IRS and Franchise Tax Board. I remembered purposely not counting how much money I was making from all of my scenes.
I didn’t want to know. I was afraid of knowing. I don’t know why I felt that way, because it could have been so easy for me to fix the taxes right as they happened.
Cleaning up the taxes wasn’t the only thing I had to do. I had to come to terms with the aging process. It’s different for a girl in the porno movies. You can be an old hag at twenty-three, just like in legit modeling. I’d stayed popular for many years by porno standards. The average girl’s career is only two years. My span was pushing six.
Even if I didn’t look that much different than my first day and first scene, I had definitely matured. My body wasn’t a little girl’s body anymore. Naturally, my bones had to grow and my hips and ass filled out. Thank god I didn’t get fake tits or lips. Not to say that I enjoy gravity settling in, or the elasticity of my skin starting to loosen, but I still appreciate how my body turned out.
Most importantly, I no longer desperately required the approval of the variety of men who paid me to, or who watched me, fuck. The stability and happiness I found with Dave replaced the importance of being a contract girl with JM Productions. Sandy was happy for me when I got sober and found a partner in Dave. Jeff said he was happy for me, but I became less valuable to him as I became less of a disastrous porno star. I wasn’t going to hang out with customers, party with them and let them jerk off on my back like I used to.
There was no doubt now that I would move on somewhat from porn and fill my days with other things. I was once so scared that porno would be the only thing I would do well or make money at. Now, I was growing stronger and could face down my demons, my fears.