he camera was rolling and I knew it. I was terrified, as if forced into a corner. That’s when Jon leaned into me and said, “Forget all that. Just look at me.” And I did. And after it was over I cracked a big smile. I’d become infatuated with a porn star.
I think it happened during the shower scene, which we’d talked over to get the action and lighting right. But a few minutes into our drenched passion the hot water suddenly went cold. Jon didn’t flinch. He led me away from the spray and into his arms, keeping the scene alive. Chilled to the bone, we drew closer, not further away, and with the kissing and touching came laughter. When we had sex, I lapsed into, dare I say it, rapture. Here was a man — a married professional porn star — which at once aroused me and made me feel safe — go ahead, laugh. I wanted to but couldn’t because I was feeling too much. Jon was a character out of some 1990s Guy Ritchie film (a Jason Statham-type), handsome, rugged but also sweet, with a jester side that kept us together for hours. Porn has a dark side, he told me. And make no mistake, it can very dark indeed. This sort of encounter was a relief — for both of us as it turns out.
That said, this wasn’t a typical porn shoot. I’m the producer and director and treasurer. Jon and others are on my payroll. Liking him was an accident.
And porn is only a loose way of describing what I’m up to, which is making videos that then go up on my paywall-protected web page.
What’s interesting from a commercial vantage point is that I’m making more than the porn pros. Take Kiki, who’s played in a number of three-and foursome scenes. She’s been in the porn business for a decade but these days has trouble getting more than a grand (if that) for a daylong shoot. Jon has the same problem.
Why? They’re overexposed, literally. They’ve been at it long enough that their videos are all over the web — and free.
The less you show off for free the more chance someone will slip a coin into your slot.
There’s enough of their sexual antics out there that they can’t really charge anyone to see anything new they might make. By taking flat fees in the early days of web voyeurism, they can’t now rebrand themselves. That’s porn’s Catch-22, especially with private self-made sites such as mine beginning to proliferate.
Almost by accident, I stumbled onto a secret. The more you tease but the less you show off for free the more chance someone will slip a coin into your slot. The porn situation isn’t much different from what happened with newspapers and magazines, they gave away everything willingly but have now retreated behind pay walls — only to see clicks drop and subscriptions lag.
Free is a dangerous word if it’s money you want, and I do. Using my personal site and my fans page, I pushed people to want to know more.
Who is this Katrina girl? Why can’t I find her porn videos? Working at this mystery game (it’s exhausting, trust me) I brought in some 40K last month, not bad for a one-woman entrepreneur in half-locked down London.
Jon can no longer make that kind of money because he’s simply too well known and can’t cut off the supply of free videos floating around in cyberspace. Kiki’s problem is the same. Her sex acts are everyone’s for the watching.
None of this was on my mind with Jon. In fact, it felt so very not fake we had a chat about it afterwards, to try to put a cap on the emotions. We shall see how that goes, but suffice to say I like men again.
But a little bit of backdrop might help. Openly looking for a “costar,” Jon’s name seemed to come often among my friends in the porn and escort business.
I got in touch, we met, got on, and the rest you know.
The more important aspect of all this, so it seems to me, is that I’m in control of what I’m doing, which keeps my extensive emotional and sexual instincts in check. It’s my business. I’m scouting for people I like enough to pay to get involved with it. Of the 40K I made, more than half goes to them. I am, in essence, my own start-up.
That matters in sexual terms because as an escort I had no such power. I could vet men to weed out dodgy ones. But once I agreed to a meeting I couldn’t know for sure what I was getting into, physically or emotionally. And trust me, few clients ever looked like Jon. Escort work means taking what you get while hoping for the best. You’re the pretty thing someone picked out from a catalogue while shopping for fantasies.
Yes, I’m smitten with Jon, but in part it’s because I chose him and liked my choice more than I could have dreamed. To be the one doing the choosing and arranging is empowering beyond words. When Jon told me to look only at him, I did, and all the rest followed naturally. That would never happen in an escort encounter. You’re too busy acting a role for a stranger.
With Jon, there was suddenly no need to fake. He took charge and got to me, a woman who, despite her work, is a sexual innocent when it comes to feelings. No, we won’t marry and live happily ever after. He loves his wife and we have no practical future as a couple.
To be the one doing the choosing and arranging is empowering beyond words.
I’ll be meeting other potential costars soon and Jon may well just vanish into the background over time. But right now I fantasize about him, and because of that I’m happy, grateful also that he sensed the precariousness of that anxious instant when the camera scared me and he told me to forget the rest of the world, a nice thing to be invited to do.
I never liked porn. In fact, I never liked the idea of porn. It seemed to me to ruin sex as a mystery at the core of who we are.
But that’s a moot point now. I just filmed my first porn scene, which I think disqualifies me from value judgments.
Why did I do it? Why do you think?
How did it come to pass? I needed footage for my subscribers’ online page, and talking sex takes you only so far. This is a visual age, and carnal voyeurism sells.
One shoot can last a decade. If you want proof, consider lots of porn freely available on the web was shot ten years ago, often more. Some of the “stars” forever lustful online are now grandparents.
Here’s the upside, and it’s a big one: I wasn’t at the mercy of a male porn producer who could use me as a sex doll in exchange for a few bucks and a promise of promotion.
No way, Jose, or Joe, or Arthur, or even Jacky. To quote Sinatra, I did it my way. My own choice of a partner, my own terms, my own “production values,” my own preset limits, all of this strictly set out and enforced.
Since shooting porn scenes isn’t something I want to be doing regularly (in fact, I’d rather not do it again at all), I decided to make this video count, which means withstand the test of time (sex usually does) and give those paying customers who wanted a bit more of me their ounce of flesh.
