Page 12 of Interview With a Porn Star

I nodded.

“What about gay men in the industry?”

I shrugged. “What about them?”

“Well, how do you feel about it?”

“It makes no difference.”

“None at all?”

I sighed. “Look, I happen to think the sexiest thing in the world is the sight of two beautiful women in each other’s arms, kissing and exploring each other’s bodies with their fingers and tongues. Lesbian scenes are the greatest turn on… and I’m not the only guy who feels that way.”

Connie nodded. “I get that,” she said, “but what about gay men?”

I shrugged my shoulders again. “The gay scene is a large part of the porn industry,” I said, “and good luck to them. I have no problem with gay men working in porn.”

Connie sounded persistent. “But do you like gay men?”

“I do... I just don’t want them to hold it against me!” I quipped.

Numb silence.

“It’s a joke,” I said.

More numb silence.

I sighed. “Maybe not a funny one…”

Connie fixed me with blank eyes. “I’m laughing on the inside,” she said dryly. “And I’m trying to be professional.”

Touché.

Connie’s hand raced across the page as she made notes. When she looked up again, ready to ask her next question, I cut her off abruptly.

“Have you ever been married, Connie?”

She arched her eyebrows, like maybe the question was too personal for her to want to answer. She gazed at me steadily for a long, appraising moment, then nodded.

“Once,” she said softly.

I frowned, intrigued. “Once… as in you have been married one time, or once… as in ‘once upon a time’?”

“Once upon a time,” she said stiffly.

I nodded. “A long time ago?”

She smiled bleakly, like even now the memories were still painful. “A very long time ago,” she sighed. “I was only eighteen. The marriage didn’t even last two years.”

“You divorced him?”

She nodded. “We separated for a while, then tried again after a few months passed but nothing had changed. He was still the same guy. I never saw him again.”

I got up and went to the big desk. In the top drawer were a dozen cigars. I clipped the end off one with a pocketknife and moistened it between my clamped lips. “Have you always been a journalist?”

Connie nodded. “For the last fourteen years,” she said. She shifted her weight on the sofa, and crossed her legs. They were long legs, perfectly shaped.

I lit the cigar and drew on it until the tip was burning evenly. A trail of blue smoke drifted in lazy tendrils towards the ceiling.

“Have you always worked at ‘Infinity’?”

Connie shook her head. She had set her notepad aside and now her hands were clasped in her lap. “When I first started out, I was working as a reporter on local newspapers. I didn’t start working on magazines until a few years ago.”

“You prefer magazines to newspapers?”

“I do,” she said. “The magazine format gives me a lot more freedom as a writer. I found the newspapers too restricting and impersonal. There was only ever enough space to write the facts. With a magazine, I have a lot more page to fill, but a lot more room to explore the subject.”

There was a loosening within the shape of her body, as though she had begun to relax now we were talking about a subject she was comfortable with. Her face became more animated and her personality began to shine through that confronting façade.

“The writing style in a magazine is a little more creative and casual,” Connie said. “I like that. I enjoy being able to express myself with less limitation. I feel it makes for a more interesting article.”

I glanced at the big clock and realized that filming couldn’t wait any longer.

“Connie, I want to talk to you more – but I have to shoot a scene, and if I don’t start filming now I’ll never get to the second scene later this afternoon.” I got up from the sofa, and then as an afterthought I turned back to Connie and reached out my hand. “Do you want to come and watch this?”

Connie’s eyes went from my face, to my hand then back to my face. There was a tiny frown of hesitation on her brow, and then it faded away like a passing cloud and her face lit up into a bright smile. It wasn’t the kind of smile to make a man’s heart melt – it was the kind of smile that guests wear when they go to a party they don’t really want to attend. “Sure,” she said.

Connie took my hand like that pretty wallflower who gets asked to dance at a high school prom, and I led her out onto the pool deck.

Chapter 8.

If it wasn’t midday yet, it was awfully close. The sun was high overhead, the view down into Los Angeles smudged in haze, like a scene filmed through a soft focus lens. I waved everyone over to me.

“First scene,” I held up my hand for silence, “will be Maxine and Hannah with Victor and Roland.”

The two actors nodded, and Hannah gave Maxine a provocative little smile. “The rest of you girls will perform with me in the second scene I shoot later this afternoon. For now you three ladies can go inside and enjoy yourselves. There’s plenty of booze and plenty of bedrooms. Do whatever you want to entertain yourselves, but get the fuck off this pool deck,” I delivered that last line with a smile to take the edge off. “The last thing I want is one of your pretty asses popping up in the background, okay?”

I turned to Jilian. She was a woman in her mid-thirties, with high Slavic cheekbones, and platinum long hair. She had made a couple of porn films about a decade ago, and she still retained her stunning looks and amazing figure, but in the last ten years she had also developed enough common sense to realize that getting laid on film wasn’t ever going to be a long term career. Now she was a makeup artist – and a damn good one.

“Jilian, I need you to finish up with these girls as soon as possible,” I said.

She nodded. “Five minutes, Rick,” she said.

“Good. Not a minute more.”

I turned to Hannah and Maxine, and then did a quick double take back to Jilian. “Is the makeup waterproof?”

Jilian frowned, shook her head. “Sorry, no.”

I waved it off. “No bother,” I said, formulating the scene I would film in my mind. “We’ll take a different direction.”

---