Everything from interviews with pornstars, to our “Ask a Pornstar” series, to the porn we love, to our attempts to get philisophical about porno
There are a lot of people in the world who are anti-porn. To those people I say: “Wait… what? Porn is awesome, duh.” Below are some incredible facts that I hope will help you rationalize and/or intellectualize your porn addiction. Continue reading “13 Amazing Facts About Porn”
By Vera Papisova /
When I told my friends I was going to start this column, Kayden Kross was the girl all the boys wanted me to interview. She is one of porn’s most coveted treasures, and a few years ago she landed one of the highest-paying performing contracts in the industry. She’s kind of a big deal.
Did I mention she’s been published in the New York Times? (It’s a great personal essay that was part of the Modern Love column.) Yup – and she’s also written columns for Complex magazine and XBIZ Magazine (her take on LA’s Skid Row and the New Era of Celebrity Porn Stars are gold.) My favorite find, though, has to be this lovely ode to cum for xcritic.com. (The site is NSFW, but Google it sometime.)
Like other porn stars, Kross uses her popularity as a platform for business ventures. She most recently launched a site for curated smut called TRENCHCOATX.com with fellow adult star Stoya, and it’s blowing up. So, without further ado, here’s what Kayden Kross has to say about the perfect date (ice cream is involved), sex workers finding love, and *Hallelujah emoji* why the girl you’re with can’t orgasm.
1.) Your best cunnilingus/blowjob tip:
Treat them as one and the same—techniques scaled to size, of course.
2.) Your favorite sex toy:
My Fleshlight!
3.) What’s your ideal date?
I think an accidental date would be ideal. You go out, start going through the motions of other plans, meet someone off chance, find yourself eating ice cream and telling stories at the end of a pier off the coast of Mexico around midnight. Something like that. Maybe not Mexico. Piers are everywhere, though.
4.) “Why can’t she orgasm?”
There’s a handful of options: You’re putting too much pressure on her. She doesn’t like you. You’re blowing out her senses by going too hard/fast. She’s addicted to Hitachis—and you are not one. She’s near her period. She’s on her period. She just finished with her period. She is nowhere near her period. You just don’t know what you’re doing. You suddenly know what you’re doing, and it’s making her suspicious. You’re doing the same thing you always do and she’s over it. She’s feeling self-conscious. You need to shower. Her head is somewhere else. Her head is too much in it. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. Her body just won’t get there today. She took Tylenol. She drank too much coffee. She drank too much alcohol. It’s just not time yet.
Pick any one of those. It’s probably one of those.
5.) Please fill in the blank:
Something more people should try when fucking is to not try so hard.
6.) You and Stoya just launched a new site featuring curated smut called TRENCHCOATx. Can you tell me about the pay-per-scene business model you’re using and what incentives there are for viewers to pay per scene when they can find porn for free somewhere else?
Well, they (hopefully) can’t find this porn somewhere else. It’s a nominal fee, and surely they understand economics enough to comprehend how it costs money to make content, which must be somehow repaid for the cycle to continue. We’re being as honest as we can about how we’re bringing the entertainment. We are bringing the best we can. We believe that a consumer can respect that enough to respect us and purchase what he/she can if he/she desires to consume the product.
7.) Now if you wouldn’t mind answering a reader question, here’s what you’re working with:
Hi Kayden! I turn into a total freak when I meet a guy I like. I go from being a totally hot, awesome, fun babe and spiral into a anxious mess pretty quickly. I don’t really have boyfriends because I am a full time escort. Complicated! My most recent squeeze is an epically hot sexy freak. After a month I decided to come “out of the closet” about the sex work to him and he was really excellent and open minded to it. We still continue to see each other, but I’m secretly liking him in a “I want you to be my boyfriend” way, and I’m terrified. I’m cool as a cucumber fucking influential, famous and wealthy men at work. I’m great at one-night stands and casual affairs. But when it comes to meeting someone I generally like in the real world, I crumble. Last night I got so drunk, got kicked out of a bar and then cried in a gutter. Do I just tell him how I feel? I don’t want to come across like a needy psycho hooker.”
Sex workers deserve to find love as much as the next person. Is it possible you become anxious because the world has been telling you otherwise, and you’ve bought into that mindset? I think so.
Main image credit: clubkayden.com
Vera Papisova is a freelance writer and sometimes standup comedian who’s written for publications like Yahoo Style, Complex and Teen Vogue. To submit questions for her future “Ask a Porn Star” columns, leave a comment below or tweet them to @VeraPapisova or @Slutever.
Words and photos by Vera Papisova /
This isn’t a Vegas convention center filled with fake tits and Mr. Clean lookalikes handing out complimentary butt plugs. Contrary to what you might expect from a porn fest, the NYC Porn Film Festival takes place in an experimental art gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The vibe is somewhere between your favorite dive bar and a Fassbinder film. The event staff looks like a group of Bard graduates. Miley, you would’ve thrived.
Friday is the first day of screenings, and tickets for the public are sold out by the time I pick up my press pass. There were 12 cops outside in anticipation of protestors that didn’t show up until the next day (more on that later). The first screening features MySpace star Tila Tequila in a performance that won an AVN award for Best Celebrity Sex Tape. “My dick sees the light,” Tila Tequila’s faceless paramour muses, “it wants to go in your butt.” The crowd roars with laughter. This was my first taste of something bigger—yes, my wide-eyed children, something bigger than Tila Tequila.
Watching porn in a room full of people is empowering. It reminds you that sex and porn are nothing to be ashamed of, that we’re here to celebrate sexuality in all of its forms. I realized very quickly that the crowd at the NYCPFF is the best you can ask for: incredibly friendly, supportive and genuine. There is a palpable kinship, which is arguably the direct result of socializing porn. This is something festival organizer Simon Leahy should be proud of, especially considering the main goal of the weekend is to facilitate a comfortable environment that encourages a greater discourse around pornography. But enough about Tila Tequila.
The next hour features a serious discussion about the future of porn led by MakeLoveNotPorn.TV’s founder and total badass, Cindy Gallop. She talks about how the porn industry functions on broken business models, after which we’re prepped to watch a compilation of Make Love Not Porn #realworldsex videos—something they claim is a completely separate category from porn and amateur content. This is something entirely new to the internet – real people, having real sex. (E.g. no screaming, fake orgasms here.)
The video compilation begins. There’s a 70-year-old couple using a sex swing (#GOALS), a cheeky lesbian couple explaining “how to f- butts without hurting people,” and a hipster couple so natural and in love that you’d never guess they were porn stars IRL. The compilation received some of the best, if not the best, audience reception at the festival. After the presentation, I overhear Gallop saying MakeLoveNotPorn is the only place on the Internet where current or former porn stars submit videos of themselves having #realworldsex with their partners. (I’m in!)
I spend some time talking to festival goers, most of whom are Brooklyn transplants in their 20s who are very excited to watch porn with their friends. “I didn’t know porn had a sense of humor,” said an NYU student to her friend. This is a popular reaction all weekend.
I miss the majority of the Yaoi screening. Yaoi is Japanese manga porn featuring men banging, and—plot twist!—the authors and viewers are mostly women. I entertain the idea of cartoon sex, but only because I long to be Sailor Moon. Next, the opening night party starts up with a screening from CockyBoys that, among other things, features artist Colby Keller. Keller’s work is a standout, and not just because it’s a big gay acid trip. I try to stick around for the clothing optional party, but it takes too long to get started.
The following day, anti-patriarchy protestors show up right before James Franco’s screening. I ask them if they’re protesting Pornhub as a sponsor, which would make sense given the countless degrading and misogynistic titles in their database. But nay, they’re protesting porn in general. Sigh, anti-porn feminists. When I ask one protestor how feminists feel comfortable telling women what they should and shouldn’t do with their bodies, she gets flustered and hands me a pamphlet as wildly misinformed as she is. I decide against asking how protesting gay porn is fighting patriarchy, or if they bothered reading the content in the festival program, which is consciously feminist. I politely tell them that the point of the festival is to get people talking about porn, so their protest is actually helping the cause.
But back to James Franco: Interior. Leather Bar is not porn as much as it is straight actors having emotional breakdowns about filming gay scenes. My boredom is on a level that can only be compared to the time I had to read Watership Down in 7th grade.
At this point, I get hungry and go buy a cupcake with a vagina on it. It’s delicious.
Sunday is filled with more art porn, BDSM, and horrorporn. Yup, horrorporn is a thing. Paralyzed by content overload, I spend the majority of the day getting drunk with drag queens at a porn festival. In Bushwick.
When people experience adult content as a group rather than in secret, it influences a public reaction – a discourse. Without a doubt, the NYC Porn Film Festival achieved what it set out to do: I found beauty in all different kinds of sex. I felt a connection to other gender identities and sexual orientations on a deeper level than I had before. In porn we trust.
Vera Papisova is a freelance writer and sometimes standup comedian who’s written for publications like Yahoo Style, Complex and Teen Vogue.
Words by Vera Papisova / Photos by Tim Barber /
It’s only fitting that the first installment of “Ask a Porn Star” features one of the most badass players in the adult industry. She’s won multiple awards for her niche performances (super vague way of saying hardcore lesbian shit), is living proof that natural beauty exists in the porn world, and was crowned “America’s sweetheart of smut” by The Village Voice. Continue reading “Ask a Porn Star: STOYA”
Pic by Helmut Newton
You might know a lot about sex, but you don’t know everything. Below are 20 of my favorite weird truths that I found on the internet about sex that are guaranteed to either turn you on, gross you out, or at least give you a serious sexual reality check.
1. Harvard University now offers a class called “What What in the Butt: Anal Sex 101.” No, that’s not a lie–the workshop is offered in conjunction with the Ivy League university’s Sex Week, and is intended to help students practice healthy and pleasurable anal sex. How cool is that?? You can read more about it here.
2. Guys, your worst fear is a reality: the penis gradually shrinks with age.
3.There is more to the clitoris than the eye can see. The clitoris is actually close to four inches in length, however three fourths of it is inside body. And the clitoris actually grows throughout a woman’s life. After menopause it can grow 2.5 times larger than it was during the teenage years. (We win!)
4. Masturbation is healthy for you! For example, it’s good for stress management, it’s good for your pelvic muscles, it releases endorphins, it lowers the risk of type-2 diabetes and of prostate cancer, it prevents cervical infections in women, and it helps you fall asleep! Why not add a healthy dose of masturbation to your daily kale salad?!
5. Oh, also, masturbating is one of the most effective natural ways to cure period cramps. (Cheaper than Advil.)
6. Eating semen can make you less depressed! Or, at least it’s packed full of natural mood-enhancers, like prolactin, oxytocin, serotonin and estrone, which are natural antidepressants.
7. The word “vagina” comes from the Latin root meaning “sheath for a sword.” (As a half lesbian, I am OFFENDED by this!)
8. Scary (but also kind of funny): Seventy-five percent of Malawians believe that homosexuality is a “Western invention.”
9. Roughly half of Americans lose their virginity by the age of 17, but 10% stay virgins after the age of 24.
10. Depressing: The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973.
11. 46% of Israel’s Arab citizens say they would be bothered by having a gay couple as their neighbors.
12. 9 Viagra tablets are sold every second. (I wonder if this affects the sale of lube?)
13. A quick kiss burns about 2-3 calories, whereas more passionate kiss burns 5 or more calories, depending on the duration and intensity. So basically if you’re not using tongue kissing is not dietetically worth you time.
14. Unsettling: Over the course of two weeks, a single human male produces enough sperm to impregnate every fertile woman on the planet.
15. 75% of Japanese women own a vibrator, but the average worldwide is only 47%.
16. Duh: Most women get hornier than usual right before their period.
17. Weird: A woman is more likely to consider committing adultery during ovulation than at any other time in her menstrual cycle.
18. 1 in 10 European babies is conceived in an IKEA bed.
19. Some women cum during childbirth.
20. Ending on a sad note: Earlier this month, UK porn was heavily censored–specifically BDSM porn, noooo! The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations introduced a series of seemingly arbitrary moral restrictions on the pornography produced and sold in the UK. Some of the sex acts now banned from British porn are: spanking, caning, aggressive whipping, penetration by any object “associated with violence”, physical or verbal abuse (regardless if it’s consensual), urolagnia (known as “water sports”), role-playing as non-adults, physical restrain, humiliation, female ejaculation, strangulation, facesitting. Read more about this idiotic and moralistic censorship here.
I recently interviewed Sasha Grey for the cover of Nero Homme magazine–dream interview, yay! We chatted about porn, childhood, writing, provocation… and being bad Catholic girls ;)
Everyone knows Sasha Grey: she’s the pornstar who changed the game. A quick-witted, sexual provocateur, Grey entered the business in 2007 at age 18, and quickly spearheaded a shift in the mainstream’s view of the porno starlet from hapless victim to sexual heroine. Her first ever scene was a twelve-person orgy, during which she famously asked Rocco Siffredi–the notoriously rough “Italian Stallion”–to punch her in the stomach. Her porn career would go on to be defined by the extreme nature of her performances as well as her outspoken, intellectual approach to her job–the latter of which resulted in her often being called “the intellectual porn star.”
After leaving the business at 21, Grey went on to transcend the standard limitations of pornography when she was courted by Hollywood, playing the lead in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, as well as a semi-fictionalized version of herself HBO’s Entourage, among others roles. In 2011, she released a book of photography, titled “Neü Sex,” that consisted mainly of racy self-portraits. Now 25, Grey recently added ‘author’ to her list of achievements, with the release of The Juliette Society, a satirical, erotic novel that follows Catherine, a film student who enters a secret, elite sex society.
You are obviously a very creative person–you perform, you act, you write, you make music, you take photographs. Back when you were still doing porn, did you see it as a creative outlet?
Grey: Oh, absolutely. Porn was my art. I poured my heart and soul into it, and that’s a very controversial thing, because a lot of people just want porn to be porn. But that was something I was always very outspoken about. And ya know what… I’ve been traveling all over the world this part year and a half, and meeting fans, and it’s been great to find that the things that I was outspoken about and stood up for back when I was doing porn still resonate with people. And as I continue to grow and do other things with my life, I can only hope that my new projects have the same power, and resonate with the people in the way my porn performances did.
You’re someone who instigated a change in the mainstream’s perception of women in the porn industry, and pioneered a new wave of intelligent, sex-positive, feminist porn stars. Now that you’ve been away from porn for a while, do you look back and feel happy with the progression the business has made?
Well, I definitely see a difference. You know, even when I was in the business, other women like Bobbi Starr and Kimberly Kane were being outspoken and sex-positive, and very girl-power in general. And I think the internet has had a lot to do with the change in perception as well. In the past, pre-internet, porn stars were marketed, packaged and sold through major companies–they were just a face, a toy. But now, the internet has given girls in porn a tool–girls aren’t limited to signing a contract with a major company in the industry, so now you have independent women who form their own businesses online, and they can do whatever they want, and be as outspoken as they want.
Totally. Girls are cutting out the middle man, and taking control of their own image. The bummer is, though, that there still aren’t many career options for girls after they leave the business. Your post-porn career has been anomaly. Do you think it’s just a matter of time before that changes, or is this just the way it is?
Well, I hope it changes, but America is largely a conservative place when it comes to sex. It’s not like this everywhere in the world. This stigma of being an ex-pornstar is stronger in America than in Europe, for example. The agent I used to work with in Florence represented a lot of European women who went on to become doctors, others to have very successful real estate careers, etcetera. They were just doing porn to pay for college, and it didn’t affect their ability to get a job afterward. Also, something I was interested in doing when I was still performing was forming a union for pornstars, which would at least provide career help for performers while they were still in the business. California has a union for strippers, but not porn stars… why is that? Sure, the porn industry is very safe and hygienic, but there’s not a union to make sure the performers have health insurance. Just because a performer has the highest standard of STD testing doesn’t mean he or she is immune to the common cold or the flu. And hey, porn stars need to see the optometrist too.
Part of what makes you so compelling–both in your performances and otherwise–is your confidence. Were you a confident kid?
Growing up, we’re constantly confronted with stories–in the media and in our personal lives–about women not feeling confident in their skin or in bed, and wanting to have sex with the lights out, etcetera. We’re so inundated with the image modern beauty and modern sexuality, and at a point I just said, “Fuck that… I want to be myself. I don’t want to have to live up to anybody else’s expectations.” So I sort of gained a sexual confidence before porn, but I still never felt like this buxom sex symbol–like, I’m a fucking toothpick! And when I started doing porn and I had success, I never felt like I physically or visually embodied the things that I understand I represented.
When I first started performing, I looked around and saw all these women with plastic surgery. And honestly, even though plastic surgery isn’t for me, I really don’t have anything against it. But when it’s one out of insecurity, or when it’s just bad plastic surgery, it makes you think, ‘Wow, it’s sad she felt she had to get that terrible boob job.’ It made me feel really lucky to be secure and happy with what I have. Because nobody is flawless, but being secure with yourself is such an important thing. Obviously, there are other women in porn–like Jenna Hayes, Tori Black, Kimberly Kane and Bobbi Starr–who have natural bodies, so maybe it’s a generational thing as well.
So, why did you decide to write a novel?
Well, I’ve been writing since I was young, but I had become very frustrated because I was writing screenplays with my mentor Anthony D’Juan for quite a while, and we were shopping them around, and then last year I was at the Cannes Film Festival trying to find financing for a film, but nothing came of it. After then I started thinking about a conversation I had with one of my agents about five years ago, as well as various conversations I’d had with fans who all said I should write erotica. More recently, erotic literature has become a huge part of pop culture, far more than it’s been in the past. Erotic lit has always sold well, but it’s never been talked about this much in the mainstream. So I started to familiarize myself with what else was out there, and I found there was a lack of female characters that represented my generation. I didn’t know if writing a novel was something I could do, but I wanted to challenge myself, and I wrote a few sample chapters and shared it with my agent and some friends, and everyone responded really well to it, so I kept going.
Can you name some of your influences?
Well, what I feel is missing from a lot of contemporary erotica is satire, whereas the erotic novels I enjoy have a sense of humor, even if they sometimes deal with dark subject matters. I really wanted to pay homage to novels like 120 Days of Sodom and Therese the Philosopher and Voltaire’s Candide. Those were three books that really inspired me to write The Juliette Society. We’ve become so liberal with the term “erotic literature”–when people think of erotic literature today, they think of romance novels, but there is a fine line between the two genres.
I based Catherine at the beginning of The Juliette Society on myself when I was 17 or so. Like me, she was experiencing extreme sexual fantasies that she didn’t quite understand, and she didn’t know where to take them. I personally overcame my insecurities and ended up going into porn, where I had room to explore those fantasies, but Catherine doesn’t have that outlet, so she’s pulled into a Juliette Society by her friend Anna. Obviously, there’s some sex scenes in the book are based on my personal experiences, but not all of them are, by any means.
In writing the book, was part of your goal to provoke or shock people? Personally, with my writing, my goal isn’t to piss people off, but I definitely enjoy pushing the boundaries of what’s comfortable or appropriate…. and I love hate comments :) Is provocation something that fuels you?
Back when I was performing, most definitely. That was a huge part of what I did, and a necessity in order to accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish in the world of porn. But now, as I grow, I sort of vacillate, because I think if provocation becomes too much of a tool then it becomes it’s expected, which makes it uninteresting. When I was writing The Juliette Society I just wanted to tell an entertaining story, a story that allowed people to find a part of themselves within the characters, and hopefully be less ashamed about their own desires. That’s something I wanted to accomplish when I was doing porn, too–to inspire people to not be ashamed of who they are sexually. Another thing really wanted to explore when I set out to write the book, which I suppose some people might find shocking, was male sexuality, because it’s something that’s still incredibly taboo. There’s this idea in society today that women are inherently bisexual, but if you’re a man and you have a sex with another man, you’re gay. I think that’s ridiculous.
Do you remember, when you were younger, when it first started to become apparent to you that you were a hyper-sexual person, or at least someone who was potentially more open or interested in exploring sexuality than your peers?
Probably when I was 12 or 13. I had a lot of BDSM fantasies, and it was very difficult to deal with. I grew up Catholic, and I thought my fantasies and desires were wrong and immoral, and I didn’t have anybody to talk to about them, and the few friends I felt comfortable speaking to thought I was crazy. I wish I’d read 120 Days of Sodom when I was that age–I think it would have healed me as a person a lot. On average I think I was fairly normal, and dealt with the same hormones that every other kid my age was dealing with, but I suppose I had a hunger and a drive to explore more than most other people, and that’s where the divide comes in.
Man, there’s something about Catholic girls… they’re the best at being bad. So did your Catholic mom have a difficult time dealing with your porn career?
Yeah. I actually tried having conversations about sex with her when I was younger, but she always said it was not to be discussed. The only time pre-porn it was ever talked about was when she found my birth control and got really angry. At the time I was actually in college and working and supporting myself, and I just said, “Well, you should feel lucky that I won’t have a kid at eighteen,” and then the conversation was over. But when the porn started, she was very opposed to it, and she felt like she failed me. But I don’t feel that way.
But now that you’ve become so successful, is she like “Woops… you were right!”?
Ha, no, she just laughs says, “Oh, my little black sheep. It’s okay, you’re done now.” She jokes about it now, so that’s good. I remember once when I was cast in the film Would You Rather, I told her, “Mom, I’m doing a horror movie,” and she goes, “What? A whore movie? Didn’t you already do those?” She’s the worst at jokes.
I recently interviewed pornstar Tori Black for the cover of Richardson magazine. I conducted the interview alongside another hero of mine, the cult artist and pornographer Bruce LaBruce. For the cover and accompanying spread, Tori was shot by the legendary Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki–all in all, a really good crowd! You can read the article below. I can honestly say, I think this is the most extreme interview I’ve done thus far. You will soon see why. (Also, you should check out Richardson’s newly launched clothing line. Photos on their site.)
Ladies and gentlemen, hailing from Seattle Washington, measuring five feet eight inches tall, weighing in at 125 pounds, two-time AVN Starlet of the year and mother of two, Richardson is proud to present the most beautiful girl in porn, Ms. Tori Black. Read about her emergence from the insanity of home life, her chaotic early days in the adult entertainment industry, and the true story of her coke-induced face-off with death at the hands of a human trafficker. And so, without further ado, here’s Tori…
Tori: I spent a lot of my youth fighting. When I was in high school I beat a girl with a baseball bat. She thought I fucked her boyfriend, but I didn’t even know who she was. I was like, “Who are you, who’s your boyfriend?” Then she stabbed me. So I put a baseball bat into her cheekbone and it imploded. Her eye almost popped out of her head. She went to the hospital and had to have plastic surgery. Afterwards she had scars all over her face; it was bad.
Karley: Did she stab you badly?
T: No, I didn’t even have stitches. But still, I’ve never forgiven myself for that; she was a kid, and she was stupid—you don’t go around stabbing people—but my part in it was totally unacceptable.
K: Maybe you’d like to tell us a little bit about you were like growing up.
T: Well, I think I must’ve been about twelve years old when I started experimenting with drugs. I was never addicted to any one drug or another, but I was addicted to getting high, to getting outside my body, outside my mind. Eventually my mom said, “Enough. I’m done with this.” My grandparents happen to be filthy rich, and so I got shipped off to boot camp. After boot camp, they recommended I go straight to boarding school, but my mom decided that I should be homeschooled instead, that way I could come home, but I wouldn’t have any contact with my old friends. So we moved about three-hours away from my old home. I was totally isolated. I was in the house by myself all day, everyday, while everybody else went to work and school.
K: So you weren’t actually being schooled at all?
T: No, I had internet school. But unless you love to learn, at age sixteen you’re not going to sit by yourself and study. So I started sneaking out and getting into a lot of trouble because I was failing school again. I ended up moving in with my grandparents back near where I used to live. All my old friends were around, so it was back to getting high and everything else, until my grandparents kicked me out. I went to live with my dad for about a day and then he kicked me out too. So then I was homeless, living with friends, going from couch to couch. I was on top of the world. I was dropping acid, taking literally any pill I could get my hands on, crunching, snorting, having sex with people I would’ve never had sex with. Eventually my parents sent me away to boarding school.
Bruce: You mentioned that it wasn’t a typical boarding school…
T: It was called Mission Mountain. It’s shut down now. It was a school for gifted girls with behavior problems. I was stuck with twenty-five psycho girls in the middle-of-nowhere, Montana. The school was for the crazy of the crazy, but also the smart of the smart, and when you put crazy and smart together, it’s not a good combination: the things they come up with, to do to each other, to do to themselves. It was like living in some weird horror movie.
K: Sounds like a good movie.
T: It was like a cult. They trained you as if you were going to live in the middle of nowhere for the rest of your life, as if the only people you were ever going to be around would be soldiers hand-selected from their therapy game. I felt like I’d been brainwashed. When I finally got out and went to college—and when I say college, I mean a 12,000-student university—I felt like an alien.
B: It was during college that you got into porn?
T: In college I was partying a lot, and essentially I found myself right back where I started before I went to boarding school. I wasn’t going to any of my classes because I couldn’t pay attention to anything. My mind was reeling; I’d become an insomniac. The only thing I was doing was going to keggers. I’d never felt crazier in my life than in that moment—trying to assess myself, the world around me, trying to figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do, who I was, what I was doing, what was right, what was wrong. I immediately started looking for a way out. I said, “You know what? I love to dance. I’m going to be a go-go dancer.” Then I saw an ad for porn: “Do you want to make $20,000 a month?” A week later I flew to Florida. Talk about flying by the seat of your pants. My whole life has kind of been like that.
B: Could you tell us how you came up with your name, Tori Black?
T: Well, to be honest, I was wasted one night in college and still trying to figure out if porn was what I wanted to do. I asked my friends, “Ok, if I was a porn star, what would my name be?” Of course I’m hanging out with black guys, of course, of course… and they say, “Your name should be Tori.” And I’m like, “Tori? Why?” And they’re like, “Because Tori’s a hot white girl name.”
K: Like Tori Spelling?
T: So I’m laughing and drinking, and I asked, “What’s my last name going to be?” From out of the back room, somebody who must’ve been eavesdropping screamed, “Black!” I died laughing. Even though I hang out with a lot of black guys, I’m not a “hood,” as some people would say, you know what I mean? I don’t talk with that kind of vocabulary, I don’t dress the same way; I listen to similar music, but I’m not trying to be black. Of course I’m not. So it was a sort of a big inside joke to call me Tori Black.
B: You’re known for working with a lot of black performers. Was that a deliberate career decision, or something that just happened?
T: Well, when I first started in the industry, they had me fill out this checklist of what I would and wouldn’t do: Do you do boy/girl? Do you do girl/girl? Do you do solo? Do you do interracial? When I reached the interracial box, I thought, there are a lot of different races out there, so if I don’t check this, does that mean I’ll only work with white people? So of course I checked the box. Then my agent said, “You don’t want to do that so soon or you’ll ruin your career.” I was dumbfounded: “I’m going to ruin my career? What the hell do you mean?” It just made me laugh; you’re sitting there jerking off to porn, but at the same time, you’re going to tell me I’m somehow immoral or unacceptable because I’m fucking a black guy?
B: But do you think starting your career with interracial porn had an effect, one way or another?
T: Yes. I started advocating for it. When I talked to new girls entering the business I told them not to listen to their agents because the whole thing is just ridiculous. If you look at some of the greats in the industry—Belladonna, Jenna Haze, ummm… not Jenna Jameson, she’s not a good example for a million reasons—but if you look at a lot of the big names, they all started their careers doing anal, interracial, everything. Jenna Haze’s first scene was anal and they told her she was going to ruin her career. Obviously that didn’t happen. Jenna’s retired now and people are still demanding more. So I think the reason people say I’m known for interracial porn is not because I did it anymore than any one else, but because I’ve been so outspoken about the taboo—about how stupid it is.
K: You described to me some kind of abduction by a coke dealer. Would you talk a little about that? It sounded extraordinary.
T: Well, I started doing porn in Miami. And what do you find in Miami except cocaine? I was doing coke all the time. I felt just like Scarface—like I was impervious, just completely bulletproof. After a couple months, I moved to L.A. to do porn and live in a model house. One of the other girls and I went to a party, and I was introduced to this coke dealer, an older black guy. He was like, “I don’t want to talk about your work because I think you’re better than that.” And me being me, I’m like, “Oh! What a perfect gentleman!” So one night, my girlfriend and I went over to his house. We ended up staying until four or something in the morning. My girlfriend had to work the next day, so she said, “Hey let’s go home now, I gotta get some sleep.” And I said, “I don’t have to work for another five days, what are you talking about? I’m not ready to go.” And then she left. But I never left. Well I did, but not for a while.
B: Was there a moment, after your friend left, when you suddenly realized that this was no longer fun?
T: Yeah. At some point I think I said, “Okay, I’m ready to go back now, it’s eight o’clock in the morning and I’m tired.” And the guy said, “No, you’re going to stay here for a while longer.” At first I started laughing. I was like, “Yeah, okay, whatever. You want to keep me forever?” But he wasn’t laughing. And so I said, “No. I’m really ready to go home now; I need to relax and shower.” That’s when he said: “You can shower here.” As soon as he said that—“you can shower here”—I knew something was wrong.
K: What happened?
I was trapped in a basement for five days. They took away my phone and my shoes.
There was a lot of beating and a lot of raping. I wouldn’t say it was just about sex; it was more about domination. At one point they had to tie me down because I was fighting so hard. I don’t even know how many guys came and went. They watched me in shifts. Someone would go sleep, and then someone else would come and force me to do drugs. They kept me awake for days. They didn’t want me to sober up because then I might’ve figured out how to get out of there. When you’re high out of your mind, you’re not thinking very clearly.
K: Did you fear for you life?
Yeah. One time they took me to this one guy’s house, and this guy was a celebrity. He didn’t rape me or anything, but I was looking at him the whole time, thinking, Oh my god this is a celebrity. What if he’s involved? If he’s involved, then they must have a lot of power. Who else do they know? You know?
K: Didn’t your friend wonder where you were, since you didn’t come back for five days?
T: Well she did show up, along with my ex-boyfriend. But the guy holding me hostage pulled out guns—he had so many guns—and all of his friends were hiding in the trees. It was late at night and you couldn’t see where they were hiding, but they were all pointing guns at my ex’s car. So when I came out into the street, I said, “No, no, no. I’m good. I’m having a good time, guys. I don’t know why you’re here, everything’s fine.” I’ve got bruises all over my face, my lips are bleeding, and of course my ex is looking at me like, “I know you’re not okay.”
K: Did they call the police?
T: They did after they left. When the cops showed up at the house, they said they were looking for a Michelle—“Is there a Michelle here?” And I said, “No, I don’t know who Michelle is. My name is Tori.”
K: You didn’t take the chance to escape?
T: I was so high. And I was terrified. They warned me, “You’re high out of your mind. Do you think they’re going to believe anything you say right now?” I don’t know how many different kinds of drugs I had in my system—crank, meth, whatever they were making me snort. I’d been up for days. I had no concept of where I was or what was going on. All I knew was that if I told the police and it didn’t work out, I was probably going to get killed.
K: How did you finally escape?
T: Eventually they decided to take me to San Francisco and told me that I needed to go collect my shit. I told them that I didn’t know where my “shit” was, that I’d been staying in a model house and needed to call my agent to see what happened to it. They agreed to let me call him, but said that he had to be on speakerphone and that if I said anything they were going to fuck me up. So when I called my agent and told him I needed to pick up my stuff, he said, “It’s in garbage bags. We’ve given your room to somebody else. If this is the way you’re going to behave, we can’t represent you.” So the guy brought me to my agent’s office to get my stuff; he brought along his dog too. My agent is very anal, very British; he said, “What’s that dog doing in my office?” The guy said, “This is California. It’s a dog friendly state. I can bring my dog wherever I want.” Then they started bickering about stupid shit. Eventually my agent said, “If you don’t get your dog out my office, I’m going to call the cops.” The guy was a felon, and so as soon as my agent called the cops, the guy just bolted. He didn’t have enough time to grab me. He said he was going to go to the bathroom and then he snuck out the back.
K: Did you explain to your agent what had happened?
T: Yes. But I was still very high. My whole body was shaking, my eyes were bloodshot, and I had bruises and cuts all over me. Of course he didn’t believe me. He was looking at me like, “You’re out of your mind, you’re a crack head. You would say anything at this moment because you have jack shit.” And I said, “You’re right. He stole my credit cards, he took my money; I don’t have anything.” And he was like, “Well, that’s your fault. I didn’t tell you to go to this guy’s house.” My agent showed no mercy in that moment. He just told me, “The doors are closing—get out.” So there I was, standing on the street with my garbage bags and a broken-ass cellphone. I called my ex to come and pick me up. We’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks by this point, but he let me move in with him.
B: Did they ever catch “the guy”?
T: Well, he started calling me and harassing me, and so I took all these voicemails to the police. They brought him in for questioning, but ended up having to release him because they didn’t have enough evidence. They found my blood in his apartment, but that wasn’t enough. “How do we know it wasn’t voluntary?” they asked. “How do we know it wasn’t just a nosebleed from all the cocaine you were doing?” The police told me that the only way to charge him with kidnapping and rape would be for me to get him to confess. There was no rape kit, and I’d admitted to having been high, so my testimony was already on shaky ground.
B: Did you think he was running a prostitution ring?
T: I think so. I found out later that he was wanted in New York for pimping and pandering. But at the time I was so naïve. I came from vanilla middle of nowhere where things like that don’t happen. I’d never seen things like that. Anyhow, he ended up getting arrested years later for something else. Now he’s in jail.
B: I’ve heard similar stories about the fashion industry. You have all these young girls, living in model houses; they’re cut off, they’re naïve, and some of them end up as prostitutes.
T: Now more than ever. And porn stars especially. I mean, if you look at the trend right now, Kevin Durant just mentioned me in his rap song. I don’t know if you know who he is—Kevin Durant’s a basketball player. The only reason I know who he is is because my fiancé loves basketball.
K: Kevin Durant from the Oklahoma Thunder…
T: Yes!
K: …is rapping?
T: Yes. About me!
B: Wow.
T: Lots of well-known people out there have propositioned me. I need to say that Kevin Durant has never approached me; the only reason I mention his name is because he put me out there in a song. Anyhow, I’m not going to say who’s out there looking for me, but there are people literally hunting me.
B: Athletes or…
T: Athletes, celebrities, entertainers…
B: They’re offering you money for sex?
T: Yes. I’ve been offered trips on private jets. I’ve been offered everything from $50,000 to $100,000.
B: You turned them all down?
T: Yup. Because I know that as soon as they can buy it, as soon as it’s for sale, then they own me, then I become obtainable, and that’s something I never want to be.
K: Do many porn stars make that transition to prostitution after their careers are finished?
T: No, no, no. Porn stars are prostitutes. I’d venture to say that eighty-five, ninety percent use porn as an advertisement for their hooking careers.
B: But it sounds like porn was never about that for you—never about the sex per se.
T: It had more to do with power. Like I could steal your soul out of your eyes. It was like: I want to be perfect in your eyes, to capture you, to control you, to make you do things you would never otherwise do. That was my high—my orgasm. I wanted to seduce everybody in the room. I wanted the sound guy, I wanted the lighting guy, I wanted the camera man, I wanted all my fans, even my agent, I even wanted my agent to wish he could goddamn experience me. I wanted that power, not to make them have sex with me, but I wanted everyone in the room to be in love with me, to become completely engulfed in this perfect creature I’d created called Tori Black.
B: Looking back on it now, why do think you ended up in porn?
T: I think it must’ve come from a lot of different places. It’s not like one day something happens and then the next you decide to become a porn star. It takes a certain kind of person to enter this industry. Even being confident about my sexuality, I would say that for me, having been abused from a very young age, that it completely changed my view of my body. I remember when my dad got drunk he had this weird thing where he would tell all his friends how pretty I was, how I was single, and that they should hit on me. Of course, all his friends were his age, and I was thirteen or fourteen.
K. Did you parents abuse you?
T: No. I was sexually abused by people outside my family. It started at age four actually, I think. What happens is that the abuse makes you look at yourself as a vehicle for someone else’s pleasure. Literally just that—a car. If you use that as a metaphor, somebody will go, “Look at that car in the window. I want that car.” They might spend a lot of money to get that car, but they’re going to take care of it the way they want to take care of it, not necessarily the way you need to be taken care of. In order to cope, I think I just decided that I was here for somebody else’s pleasure, that I existed to be whatever they wanted, to become their fantasy—the car they saw in the window.
B: Did porn allow you to regain some control over that?
T: That was part of it. It was more like: Fuck that. This is your life. You’re going to do what you want. You’re going to fuck how you want to fuck, and you’re going to do it in front of the whole world. I don’t give a shit how much you hate me. I don’t give a shit how low you think I am. This is me. This is my life.
B: I’m sure that there are a lot of women in porn who were abused as children. What’s interesting is how you manage that, how someone responds to that history of abuse.
T: Well, I think there are three ways that people go. Either they become asexual, completely cutting off their sexuality, or they go the opposite direction, becoming hypersexual, which is what happened to me, especially during my high school years. Other people find some sort of inner peace with the matter. But you’re always going to be affected; there’s no way getting around that. You know, when I was in boot camp, there was a fifteen-year-old boy who’d been involved with a gang. As part of the initiation, he’d raped a girl. At the time he’d thought it was okay; but, as the weeks went by, he’d see her around school and it ate him alive. Just talking about it, he could barely get the words out; his whole body shook, tears started streaming down his face. I was thirteen-years old, and I’d just been raped by somebody at my school, somebody who I knew and saw all the time, and sitting there with this guy who’d been through something similar, I had this moment, this epiphany: Oh my god, you’re a person too. It took some of my anger away. But I wanted to be angry; I wanted to hate him. I wanted to hate all of them so much for what they did to me. Even to this day, there are moments when I’m making love to my fiancé, and I’ll have a flashback, and there’s nothing I can do except to say, “Ummm, can you hang on for just a minute.” And then I just have to burst into tears. The only thing you can do is take care of that hurt inside of you. When I have these feelings, these flashbacks, I can’t hold them in. If I try to hold them in, that’s when I know I’m starting to abuse myself all over again, that’s when I’m thinking: he doesn’t want to see me cry; he’s enjoying himself right now and I don’t want to ruin this for him.
K: You’re pregnant with your second child now. How has having had children affected your career?
T: It’s really hard. For example, when I went to the AVN [Adult Video News] awards, I’d just found out that I was pregnant. I was sitting there signing autographs, listening to my fans say, “Oh my God Tori! I love the way you sucked this dick,” or, “Oh my God, you take cock in the ass so great,” and all the while I was saying to myself, “These Spanx are really tight; I really just want to let my belly out.” If I’m feeling pregnant, it’s hard to get myself into Tori Black mode.
K: You’re about to turn your back on hardcore porn. What’s next?
Well, being pregnant and doing porn—I won’t do that. But I can do solo work for the next four or five years and make triple the money I made taking two cocks at the same time. It’s a matter of being smart about it—smarter instead of harder. I’ve reached a point in my career where people in mainstream entertainment are approaching me and saying, “I want to do a reality show, I want to do this, I want to do that.” Of course there are still options for me in the adult industry, but I’m not going back to hardcore. If I want to do hardcore again in the future, that door is always going to be open. But am I ready to do that right now? Obviously not—I’m having a baby. It’s family time right now.
I interviewed porn star Tori Black for the cover of the new issue of Richardson, out now! The cover features Tori photographed by Araki, and inside you can read her crazy interview, conducted by me and the iconic cult pornographer Bruce La Bruce. And when I say “crazy” I actually mean it–her life story is beyond anything I’ve ever heard, from psychotherapy boot-camp, to gang rape, to kidnapping by a human trafficker to… well, porn stardom :)
Richardson is an academic sex magazine. You may remember that I interviewed the very dashing editor and publisher, Andrew Richardson, for the publication of their last issue, which was themed around love. The theme of the current issue is DEATH, and features contributors like Harmony Korine, Dan Colen, Aurel Schmidt, Terry Richardson, Paul McCarthy, Nate Lowman, Bret Easton Ellis and way more. There’s some scary stuff in those pages, so beware…
Yum… :)
“Pornography allows us to explore our deepest, most forbidden selves. Porn dreams of eternal fires of desire, without fatigue, incapacity, aging, or death.” – Camille Paglia
Bobbi Starr is one of the best and biggest porn stars today. She’s also an intelligent, funny, sex-positive feminist. Duh, all the best post stars are! You may remember that I interviewed Bobbi in the “Orgasms: Where R They?” episode of the VICE Slutever show. Bobbi also does a lot of work with the fetish porn Mecca Kink.com, and directs porn films for Evil Angel. She and I recently chatted about butt stuff, girl-power and emotional breakdowns.
Slutever: You’ve said that your butthole is what made you famous. How so?
Bobbi Starr: Well, just because of the mass amount of work I’ve done that has involved my butthole. I think some people recognize my butthole before they recognize my face.
Last year you won the XRCO award for best “orgasmic analist.” What does that mean, exactly?
Who knows. I don’t understand a lot of the awards I win. I also won “orgasmic oralist,” but last time I checked your clitoris isn’t in your throat, so…
When I was younger I had a boyfriend that genuinely thought I should be able to cum from giving him head. Although he also thought that all girls store breast milk in their boobs from childhood, and didn’t understand that the absence of a period is a sign of pregnancy.
Wow, you dated winners.
Tell me about it. But anyway, can you actually cum from anal sex?
Yeah. Actually it’s way easier for me to cum from anal sex than vaginal sex. I just like the intensity of it. I think it’s because my butthole is sensitive. I’m not saying that my butthole is more sensitive than my vagina, but I don’t know… maybe it is? I’m at the point now where if I want to cum fast I just stick something in my butt.
How much stuff have you had up there at once, like multiple dicks?
Two. I did double anal twice.
Is it good?
It’s crazy intense. I don’t know if it’s good yet, I haven’t done it enough. Like, you know how the first time you try anal sex you’re like, “I don’t know if that was good, but I want to do it again anyway”? Well that’s how I feel about double anal. I think if I did it more, I would probably figure out a way to relax my body into it and enjoy it.
What about people who aren’t porn stars but want to be double anal’d? That seems like it would be a difficult thing to orchestrate.
True, that seems hard. Do you just stroll into a bar and say, “Hey guys, wanna DP me?”
There’s always OK Cupid.
I once tried to get these two Italian brothers to do double anal on me, but they weren’t really into it because they were brothers, so they didn’t want to sword fight my asshole, unfortunately.
That’s a perk of being a porn star: you can have experiences that normal people fantasize about but can’t actually make happen.
Right! People always ask me, “What made you want to do porn?” and I say, “Well, it’s the safest environment to participate in extreme sex acts.” In the real world it’s hard to bring the party back to your apartment for an anal gangbang. And even if you could make that happen, you’d be taking a huge risk. In the porn industry people are tested frequently, and you know who you’re fucking, so it’s a special environment.
I was actually pretty anti anal for a long time, because I tried it as a teenager and there was a minor shit situation, which was obviously my worst nightmare, and after that I didn’t do it for six years. But then recently I tried it again and I realized that I like it because if the dick is in my ass, it means it’s out of the way enough that I can masturbate without interference. Because sometimes when the dick is in my vaj, it’s just too up in my grill to be able to touch myself efficiently.
I agree with that–it’s a serious added advantage. Like, get that thing out of my way.
Exactly. So, I know you often talk and write about being a sex-positive feminist. However, some people, including many feminists, think that porn degrades women. Thoughts?
First of all, any industry can be degrading toward women, if the woman is allowing herself to be degraded. Also, what the general public needs to understand is that what they see in a porno is the edited version of a scene, not what happens on set. When a girl walks onto a porn set she has all the control in the world. She can stop the entire production, because if she leaves, there is no vagina or asshole to fuck. I have never felt degraded on a porn set, I have only felt powerful. I participate in porn for my own enjoyment and exploration.
I think that’s why it’s important to have porn stars like you, Sasha Grey and Kimberly Kane–girls who are perceived by the public as being intelligent and sex-positive, and who love their job. It’s changing the mainstream perception of the porn industry.
I think this has a lot to do with the current wave of feminism, which is a very personal wave. The previous waves of feminism were very public. They were about protest, fighting back, and going out into the streets. Whereas this particular wave of feminism is like, “This is the way I want to live my life, and I don’t care if you think it’s right or wrong, and no one is going to convince me otherwise.” It’s about living by example.
Yeah, that’s so true! Also, modern feminism can get a bit whiny at times. It’s like, stop complaining and just do something cool instead yo! Don’t talk about it, be about it! But moving on, do you think porn presents an accurate representation of female pleasure in sex?
I think the porn industry gives an exaggerated example of all types of sex, including female pleasure It’s kind of like in theater, where the actors have to give performances big enough to reach the people sitting in the last row of the theater. It’s the same with porn–everything is exaggerated, everything is bigger. That doesn’t mean the representation is necessarily inaccurate, I just think it’s sensational.
I’ve said this before, but when I was a teenager, watching porn helped me to have a more positive body image, because I realized that I preferred watching the curvier girls have sex, because I was turned on by the way their bodies bounced.
That’s something I find really amazing about porn–the girls aren’t rail thin, they are real women. Porn stars don’t starve themselves. Porn stars think, “Maybe if I eat this piece of cheesecake it will go straight to my ass, and then I’ll get hired for more butt movies.” And actually, the girls who are super skinny don’t sell well, because people want to see bodies bounce. They want to see flesh–something to grab onto and suck on. Like, I don’t want to stick my face in somebody’s bony ass, because it will hurt my face, you know?
Totally. So, you do a lot of work with the fetish porn empire Kink.com. Is dominance and submission something you’re into IRL?
I wouldn’t say it’s something I’m specifically into, because the sex I have isn’t very specific. I’m more in the moment. If I find a partner who is submissive, then I know I can pull out my dominant side. Generally I don’t like to use terms like ‘switch’ or ‘dom’ or ‘sub, or even terms like ‘gay,’ ‘straight’ or ‘bi,’ because honestly, my sexuality goes with the wind. One day it’s one thing, the next it’s completely different.
Sometimes you’re in the mood for pizza, and sometimes you’re on a no-carb diet.
Sometimes you want sausage, and sometimes you want a taco.
That’s so true Bobbi. So, do you think BDSM allows for a heightened emotional connection with your partner?
A lot of people who participate in BDSM on a regular basis are looking for an extreme high. For them “subspace” is a sexual goal. It’s kinda of like an orgasm–once you have one, you want more. So once someone who is into BDSM achieves subspace, all they can think about is getting back there.
Can you explain what subspace is?
Subspace is what I consider an orgasm for a BDSM sub. It’s basically a very intense emotional reaction to something of an extreme nature that’s being done to you. This could be being beaten, or verbally humiliated, or pissed on, and so forth. There’s something that is triggered in your brain when you’re going through an extreme experience–you have to give into it, physically and emotionally. But subspace is different for everyone, so it’s a little ambiguous to describe.
So at the Kink.com armory do you see people experiencing intense emotional breakdowns through S/M where they like cry and stuff?
Yes, we see this on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s a very healthy release, and sometimes it’s not so healthy. For example, some people will allow themselves to go into subspace when they don’t quite understand the intensity of going through an emotional experience like that, or other people are just so desperate to achieve the state that they are reckless with the trust they give out. That being said, Kink are very familiar with this, and we have a BDSM protocol that we go through. We make it very obvious to performers that we have a safeword and they need to use it. Our crews are allowed to stop a production at any point if they feel something unsafe or unhealthy is going on, and we allow for aftercare if someone has broken down. Our talent department will even follow up with the talent a few days later, just to make sure they’re still alright. Kink.com wants to provide an experience not only for the members of the website, but also for the models who walk through their doors. That being said, negative experiences do occur, both in BDSM and vanilla sex, and there’s nothing you can really do about it.
Do you think BDSM is a form a therapy for some people?
Oh, completely. I have friends who do pro-domme sessions that say the job is one third dominatrix, one third business, and one third therapist. People will walk into their dungeon and say, “I have this and this going on in my life, and I need you to beat it out of me.”
I suppose that’s just as a fine a way to deal with something as any. Some people drink, some take Prozac, some pray, some see dommes. I guess.
I think it’s admirable and healthy, as long as people understand what they’re getting into. S/M is not for the weak of heart :)
Photos @ Slutever
A couple months ago, while on a trip to San Francisco, I had the pleasure of being an audience member during the filming of Public Disgrace. This was extremely exciting, as I’m a huge and long-time Public Disgrace fan. (Sorry mom!) If you’re not familiar, PD is a porn site that’s part of the Kink.com empire–Kink being the largest BDSM porn company in the world– that specializes in hardcore, public sex. Most episodes of PD follow a similar pattern–a submissive girl is dragged out in front of an audience, after which she’s stripped, bound, punished, gangbanged, ass-fucked, tortured, etc. Hot, right?
Public Disgrace was founded by Princess Donna, a porn actress/director, and she runs the show on all the PD shoots. So basically in each video Princess Donna acts as the dominant woman, and she controls the humiliation of the female sub by directing how the gangbang ensues. Along with founding Public Disgrace, Donna also founded such classics as BoundGangBangs.com (another fave of mine–can’t get enough of those against-her-will gangbangs these days!), and UltimateSurrender.com, a sexual wrestling reality show (lol). The following is a quote from Princess Donna that I particularly liked, from an interview she did with the Village Voice: “I grew up in a Silence of the Lambs culture, a culture where rape and killing women are very common themes for movies and TV shows. Society isn’t afraid of sex and violence; they are afraid of women owning their own bodies and controlling their own sexuality—which is what happens in BDSM.”
But back to San Francisco. I was there with Richardson magazine, helping out with a project they were doing with Kink, which meant I got to hang out in the Kink studios. Pretty cool, considering it’s the place where the best fetish porn in the world is currently being made. Also, the Kink.com mission is to “demystify and celebrate alternative sexualities,” which I consider an important goal of Slutever too, so being there felt, you know, “meaningful” or whatever.
As I briefly mentioned in the San Francisco episode of the VICE Slutever show, the Kink headquarters is an old military armory. The company purchased The Armory–a giant brick fortress the takes up an entire city block in SF’s Mission district– in 2006, and they’ve since transformed into into an insane bondage playground. The energy inside the place is incredible. When you walk in, as you move through the hallways, it has the appearance and professionalism of any standard film studio. But then you open a door and it’s like, ‘Oh, a woman being fucked by giant machines.’ And then you open another door and two guys are fisting each other. And then behind another door there’s a gangbang. But it’s all very casual, like, “Oh hey I have three dildos in my ass, but sure I’ll shake your hand, welcome to Kink!” #nbd. I was only there for one day, but I’m pretty sure I was involved in more conversations about enemas during my time there than ever before in my entire life. Every time you turned around someone was talking about having just had an enema, or needing to get one later, or once a man just shouted, “Anyone need an enema?” at a group of actors lounging around a set, and everyone just smiled and shook their head like, “Not right now, but thanks for asking!” I can’t lie–that made me feel a little weird. Then there was one point when I was watching this French girl have sex with a fuckmachine, and I started to feel sort of awkward, like “Am I supposed to turn away? Is it creepy if I’m smiling?” But as I looked around the room I realized that I was clearly the only person who was feeling any weirdness, which made me feel even weirder because I was like, “Wait, am I a square?!” Although I suppose it was sort of humbling to be the “normal” one in a sexual situation for a change.
The Kink Armory–impressive yo
Back to Public Disgrace. Since the series is usually filmed in front of an audience, there’s generally a couple hundred people from the San Francisco area invited to be in the crowd, and to partake, to an extent, in the gangbang action. The episode I watched had a house party theme, and lucky me, I got to ride in the production van from the Kink Armory to the shoot location. Also in the van was Princess Donna, pornstars Cherry Torn and Skin Diamond (who were the two female subs about to be publicly disgraced), two male porn actors (who join the crowd and lead the gangbang), and the rest of the crew–cameramen, makeup artist, producers, etc. During the ride one of the male actors–a cute, 23-year-old with curly blonde hair–confessed that this was his first hetero porn scene, and that even though he was straight, he’d only done gay scenes up until now. He seemed pretty nervous, and was asking Donna questions about how it would all go down.
“So, like… are you going to tell me when to fuck the girls?” he asked from the back of the van, his voice shaking. “How do I know when it’s the right time?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll help you,” Donna replied, not looking up from her phone.
“OK but like how–”
“Look,” she interrupted him, vaguely annoyed. “The main thing is, just don’t take your dick out if it’s not hard. No one wants a wet noodle–that’s a killjoy. And keep your clothes on. We don’t want you to be the naked person in the room. We want the girls to be the naked people in the room.” After that the boy didn’t ask any other questions, and instead spent the rest of the ride talking to the other male actor about how he might move to Australia because it “seems cool there.”
Meanwhile, I’m in the front of the van with Donna, contemplating whether or not I should fan-out at her about Bound Gang Bangs. I eventually went for it.
“Yeah, oh my god, it’s just the best,” I was saying, eyes wide. “My favorite episode is that one where the girl gets dragged out of that crib thing and then fucked by a group of men in stocking masks.”
“She’s in a cage?”
“No, not a cage, a crib.”
“Huh… I don’t know if I remember that one. Is the girl crying?
“Um, she’s not really crying but she’s life screaming for her life. I think they’re in a foreign country?”
“Oh, the Russian birthday rape! Yeah, I remember that. Really fun shoot.”
Princess Donna in makeup
Once we arrived at the location, it was time for hair and makeup. While in the makeup chair, someone asked Cherry Torn the inevitable question: What do your parents think about what you do? Cherry just shrugged. “Given my troubled youth, by the time my mom found out I did porn, she was just like, “At least it’s legal.”
The heavily dolled-up makeup artist was suddenly very interested. “Oooh, tell us about your troubled youth!” she said excitedly.
“Well, I just really liked sleeping with 40 year old men off the internet,” said Cherry. “From 15 on I was a total jailbait ho, basically.”
“Oh, I love that!” said the makeup artist, clapping her hands.
“Then at one point I ran away for a month with this 42 year old guy, and my mom, who works in law enforcement, ended up finding out where I was and came and found me in this really spectacular manner. But the real eye-opener for my mom was when I did this long interview for Huster’s Taboo, and the production assistant stupidly sent my free copies to the address on my license, which was my mom’s house. Inside was a photo of me expelling a milk enema, and me talking about how I want black eyes, how I like getting my ass reamed, old dudes, slavery–all of it. My mom was like, ‘They make some of this stuff up just for the magazine, right?’ I was like, ‘Yes, yes they do!’”
Cherry and Skin pre-gangbang
Casual pre-gangbang photoshoot!
By the time the show was about to start, the venue was packed with more than a hundred people. Princess Donna got up and addressed the crowd. “Feel free to get involved!” she said with a smile. “You can touch the models, slap them, touch their boobs, you can put your fingers in their pussies and their asses, but no fluid exchange,” she said sternly. “And no telling the models that they’re bad at their jobs. OK, enjoy!” I found those boundaries sort of strange–ass fisting from stranger: OK; professional insult from stranger: NOT OK–but I went along with it. And so did everyone else. I was genuinely surprised by how involved the crowd got, how comfortable everyone was in the situation, and just the overwhelming positivity of the atmosphere. I mean, I know this is “San Francisco sex mecca” or whatever, but the people in the audience weren’t your stereotypical sex freaks. They were hipsters. It was literally a hipster gangbang. And it was SO fun. Afterward I was having a conversation with someone about the possibility of something like Public Disgrace, or just interactive public sex in general, becoming a socially acceptable form of entertainment. Like, “What should we do on Friday–bar or public gangbang?” It seems a bit extreme, but that night seemed proof to me that it’s not an implausible future.
View from my hotel–Bye!
