Insatiable. Asa Akira

      5

      Liar Liar

      Halfway through my second year in porn, when my career was really starting to take off, I started to get bad acne. It was the cystic kind that covers the entire face, the kind of acne where you see someone, and it’s the first thing you notice about them. Eventually I got to the point where it put me in such a deep depression that I didn’t leave the house unless it was for work. I blamed porn. Every day, a different makeup chair. Thick layers of product caked onto my skin, only to sweat half of it off during the sex scene. I’d have to get back into the makeup chair, and get more product caked back on over my sweat to shoot the rest of the scene.

      It was crippling. It hurt my feelings. I felt betrayed. How could you, Porn? I love you. I do everything you ask for. When you wanted to see me put my fist inside my vagina, I did that. You want to inspect my asshole using a speculum? Sure, why not. Double anal? You got it!

      I gave you everything. In return, you gave me a disfiguring rash on my face.

      I kept hoping time would make it would go away, but it didn’t. Thousands of dollars were spent on spa treatments, expensive creams and lotions, homeopathic remedies. Reluctantly, I even tried to slow down on shooting in hopes it would get better. Acne is especially bad for porn; between rubbing spit-covered cocks all around my mouth, making out, getting my face smooshed into furniture, and sweating like a pig under the hot lights, the makeup never manages to stay on. I’d start off the scene looking like a pornstar, and end it looking like a monster. No one was saying it out loud, but I knew I was losing work because of my skin.

      During this miserable time in my life, I got booked for a softcore movie for a big cable network series. Shooting a softcore movie is completely different from shooting a hardcore one, which is what I usually have the pleasure of doing. Once or twice a year, I’ll agree to these “Skinemax” type projects, but every time I get to the set, I remember: “Oh yeah. I hate this shit.”

      The first thing about these softcore productions that makes me want to shoot myself in the face is that the cast consists mostly of mainstream actors, meaning, they don’t do actual porn. They are aspiring “real” actors who happen to be comfortable showing nudity. This is just a pit stop on their way to achieving their dreams.

      Which, by itself, is fine.

      Except that now, it leaves me to be the target of their objection. I’m the smelly kid in the class. I become the one who no one wants to stand near, in fear that they will catch my New and Improved Airborne Super-AIDS.

      Second, and perhaps this is the main thing, there is no real sex.

      Like, not even with a condom.

      We are shooting simulated sex—actual penetration never happens. We have to wear these paperlike G-strings (guys included) so that our genitals never even touch. The whole reason I got into porn in the first place was for the sex. What is this bullshit? It’s certainly not what I signed up for is usually my secret mood by the end of the day on one of these jobs. Every moan and scream is dishonest, and something about knowing I have to pretend I’m getting fucked, when I’m really not, makes me say stupid and outlandish things like “My little pink pussy feels like a flower giving birth to your big beautiful rocket!” or “Fill my gushing river of a pussy up, you sexy bastard.”

      I’ve never been good at lying.

      So my skin was making me hate life, and I was on a set where everyone thought I was disgusting, when Roger, the director of this stupid softcore production, asked me to stay after everyone had left. Great.

      This is another thing I hate about softcore sets. I’m automatically assigned the role of “resident slutface,” and I have to explain (usually to the director or the producer) that I’m just there to do my job—which, on this particular set, as I’m all too aware of, is not to have sex. This hardly ever happens on a hardcore set; as the legendary Nina Hartley so eloquently puts it, “You don’t fuck to get the job. Fucking is the job.”

      I mentally rehearsed my usual “I have a boyfriend, we don’t sleep with anyone else outside of sex scenes” speech and entered the room Roger had set up to be his office.

      “So you wanted to see me?” Roger was standing at the desk pretending to go through some paperwork. Typical.

      “Can you shut the door? I want to talk to you in private.”