Scenes From My Life in Porn

After an hour of Greg’s exhaustive directions -- he claimed to block sex scenes based on his experience as a wrestler -- the two performers‘ bodies were satiny with perspiration. Shayla’s back muscles rippled and veins bulged on her neck as she held one convoluted pose, while Greg circled and peered through their limbs, looking for sweet spots to capture with his Fisher-Price camera.

When shooting paused, the performers giggled and chitchatted. “You‘re doing great, honey,” Shayla repeated to Shelbee several times, giving the novice porn star encouragement like a big sister.

During a break, when Shelbee knelt on all fours, Shayla played with her by tapping out rhythms on her butt, saying boop, boop, boop with each beat. Shelbee laughed. Shayla traced her finger from Shelbee’s neck to the small of her back. “You‘ve got killer lines,” she said. “Did you do gymnastics in high school?”

“No. Swim team.”

Shelbee’s husband was brought into the scene after two hours. His entry had to be re-shot several times, since he had trouble following Greg‘s directions. “Come in to the left of the table and enter the pit on the right,” Greg said.

Pat kept screwing it up until Greg said, “Come in by the window and go past the TV set.” Pat did it perfectly.

“Is my face okay?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” Greg answered. Pat was only in the frame from his chin to his penis.

“Pat,” Greg called, “jack off and . . .” He thought, then added, “Drool on yourself.”

On a break, Pat sat staring out the window. His hard-on remained upright. Shayla sauntered past, looked down at his talent and said, “That‘s great, Pat.”

He nodded and gazed at his hard-on as if it were an animal standing on its hind legs and staring back at him.

It is often said that the difference between a violent Hollywood movie and a hardcore sex film is that no one shoots real bullets or actually dies in the making of a Hollywood movie, but performers in a sex film really a do fuck. Indeed, one of the most overpowering sensations on a XXX set, especially after the performers have labored for hours under the hot lights, is the smell. But if sex is an intimate act, bordering on sacred, what I saw on porn shoots seemed no more real than eating a wax apple.

Porn stars’ careers last about as long as votive candles. As the novelty of Jasmin St. Claire‘s gangbang faded, she came up with another publicity stunt. She was going to star in a movie called Blow It Out Your Ass. For several weeks she had been working with a “master magician” named Randall Richman, developing an act in which she would shoot 4-foot flames from her anus.

The shock value of this stunt ensured that the Valley studio where it was being filmed was jammed with paparazzi from the adult press, as well as local radio personality Larry Wachs from KLSX’S Regular Guys show. After two hours in makeup, Jasmin walked onto the stage and shed her robe. The photographers and writers sat amid the video and electrical cables on the concrete floor, crouching beneath the lights and a low-slung boom. A few in the press tried to engage Jasmin in banter, but she was focused, tuning everyone out as she entered her pre-performance zone.

She knelt on the carpeted stage. Her surgically scarred, conical breasts jutted forward as she leaned down and raised her posterior. Richman, the magician, a boyish 28-year-old, tinkered with his apparatus. He had handcrafted an anal plug with a brass nozzle and a small, clear plastic hose attached to a can of butane. The idea was that he would hide behind a wall and pipe the butane into the plug as the director filmed.

Both Richman and Jasmin were nervous. They had never performed the stunt before. Richman explained to me that the danger was that the plastic plug could superheat, melt down and possibly explode -- though he assured me he had performed several practice runs in the garage of his apartment building without incident.

The room hushed as Richman delicately inserted the device and tested the control valve on his butane can. The sound of hissing gas filled the room.

I sat near the stage, closest to Jasmin. Kneeling on all fours, she turned to me. She was crying. “I‘m scared,” she said. “Will somebody hold my hand?” She slid her hand across the stage and waved her fingers.

This was our most intimate moment. Jasmin’s vulnerability and fear had shown through her mask of supreme confidence.

I averted my eyes and fumbled with my notes. I had developed such an overwhelming crush on Jasmin St. Claire that I could not face her. I feared if our eyes met in this charged moment, my feelings would be evident to everyone in the room. Finally, a tech girl walked up and took Jasmin‘s hand.

Shirking the opportunity to offer emotional reassurance proved to be our last magical moment together. Jasmin ceased her morning phone calls and her lunch-time visits to the office. Things were never the same.