My Conversation with Donny Pauling

Reposted from www.MikeSouth.com:

This post is long overdue, and my interview with Mike reminded me of it.

I wrote a critique on Mike South’s blog about the Nightline debate: Craig Gross and Donny Pauling (of XXX Church) vs. Ron Jeremy and Monique Alexander (adult performers). The debate was about porn, and the article is here.

I came home in November of 2011 to find a message in my inbox from Donny Pauling. We had a phone conversation shortly thereafter and he explained a few things to me.

Donny Pauling says he worked in Chino, California for a number of years. He shot amateur content, and he said that once a female felt that she wanted to expand in adult, he would send her to people in Los Angeles. He also said that he produced for Playboy during the last eighteen months of his career, but whether or not you recognize him as a personality is really irrelevant. When it comes to adult content, Los Angeles is really just a small portion that specializes, mainly, in movie production. It’s not representative of the smaller amateur productions going on elsewhere across the country and the larger internet content industry.

What was most enlightening about the conversation (after we talked about Craig Gross and he assured me that Craig is a genuinely nice guy who–while definitely a businessman–really does cares about people), were his intimations about how he lured women into doing work he said they otherwise had no intention of doing, and how he then got them to do much more than they agreed upon.

What reminded me of this was speaking with Mike about the comeback of Max Hardcore. You can listen to our interview here.

Max Hardcore, a.k.a. Paul Little, was someone who used strategically withheld information to get a model to his house before using other manipulations to make her feel she really had no choice but to do the scene. This may not have been every situation, but it certainly was mine and others have come forward with similar stories. (You can read my response to a GQ.com article about working for Max here.)

During the course of our conversation, just kicking around ideas about choice, religion and other things, I explained to Donny that his manipulations sounded pretty tame compared to Max’s. I reasoned that it’s one thing to smile and make a girl comfortable enough to take a picture, and another thing altogether to smile and show her an abusive video and, very friendly-like, explain to her that she only has to endure ten minutes of gagging and pain while her car is blocks away and she has no physical address for the location and no friend in sight. He said that his manipulations were similar (for the purpose of constant, new, revolving faces), but because his manipulations were coming more from an actual “friend” perspective, they were ultimately more dangerous.

According to Donny, he preyed on college-age females who needed money to complete their schooling. Basically, he painted a picture of being cool and successful and well-to-do to fill their heads with the possibilities of what sex work could provide them.

He said he always kept a clean house and appearance that projected the lifestyle he wanted to sell to women new to adult content production. He’d start them off very soft, then encourage them with how fun it was going to be, all the while building trust with care and patience.

He said he recruited women knowing full well that they were going to regret the decision to make porn at some point down the line. He said he even went so far as to use a clip from an interview where a “feminist” sided with him about a woman’s right to do that kind of work, as part of his recruiting process. He’d play the clip and then talk about empowerment to bolster their confidence.

Furthermore, he said that similar to Max’s tactics, he would not discuss the details of the scene over the phone, just the dollar amount. He said that he’d basically plant the dollar figure in their head to initiate their mentally spending it. By the time they showed up and he explained that they had to do something much harder than they’d anticipated, he’d simply tell them that if they didn’t do the work, they wouldn’t get paid. He feels he has knowingly ruined the lives of people who had no way of really understanding that their choices would eventually dwindle their work opportunities in other areas.

What I think should be made clear, however, is that not every person enters adult work uninformed, and not every pornographer withholds information before the job. In my case, I was prepared to do some of the work before signing up for it. Max Hardcore happened to be one person out of many I worked for who strategically withheld information and set intimidating factors in motion to make sure that, even though I didn’t want to do the work, I felt it would be easier to do it, anyway. Ultimately, if you depend on a constant stream of new faces, you need a system that will guarantee a majority will do the work. With product like Max’s–implied pedophilia, vomiting, fisting, etc–you must be craftier than someone wanting a simple and straightforward sex scene.

We can talk about how people in other industries get swindled and manipulated all day, but this sort of thing is never discussed, except by anti-porn people or groups who do not differentiate between people who inform and are informed and people who, literally, con people out of their future. We live in a world where being even just topless in a video for a short moment can bar you from future job opportunities. Have many people done things they regret and that made them feel humiliated? Sure. But how many of those people are permanently kept from obtaining certain types of jobs? Making a sacrifice or succumbing to a humiliating thing that will never follow you in life, except in your own psyche, is different from being overlooked and even fired over something you did when you were young, not fully understanding to what extend it will eventually effect your future. I’m not judging one against the other–it’s just that there is a different.

This is a short overview of many topics. I’m sure you can read Donny’s story in several places on the internet, but Donny shared it with me as a direct result of my post here, so I feel it only appropriate to share it with you here, as well. I do believe some women take their experiences in life and make conscious decisions towards sex work. A bit like, ‘Well, sex is important in my life because of ‘this thing’ or ‘that thing’ or ‘some thing’ so I’m going to do sex work and turn it into a kind of empowerment for me.’ Some really are conned and would have been better off never doing the work.

One Calm Place in the World

I archived all my posts from MikeSouth.com and AINews.com over the last few weeks because I want all of my writing to be found here. I meant to add Mike’s as I went, but had a day job and just wasn’t thinking about it at the time. Now all of it can be found under the category “Archive Posts” and my interviews with Bobbi Starr, Kayden Kross and Tanner Mayes can now be found under “Interviews”, as well. I wish I could find my very first article for a magazine from 2005, but alas, it’s nowhere on the internet. Regardless, thank you Steve Nelson, Mike South and Tod Hunter for providing me with portals from my own mind to the outside world.

A friend wrote to tell me that I Feel Like I’m Dying spoke to him as he is a manic depressive. We had an email exchange and I’d like to share some of the things that came out of it because I think there is a lot of misunderstanding around meditation, and meditation can be helpful for those of us with minds that never stop spinning. For instance, I have sleeping problems because I can never get my brain to quiet down. Meditation, for me, had been a love/hate experience for me until recently.

No matter what is going on in my life, meditation is the one thing I always gravitate back towards because it is with a calm mind that I am able to pull back from stress and drama and regain a clear perspective on the things that whirl around me. I have a friend who is right in the middle of working and corroborating with people who have screwed him over in ways. He feels like he’s in Hell and doesn’t know what to do. And I have a few thoughts to give anyone in a similar situation because it might help you extract yourself from your stress and pain long enough to see some practical solutions.

When I find myself the most stressed out, I start by asking myself a series of questions beginning with, ‘Why am I so stressed out?’ It’s an elementary start but I forget that I hold all the answers to my own psyche. That instead of running here and there on the outside looking for the next step, sometimes the better choice is to stop and search my mind for the core of my particular problem.

The answer doesn’t always come right away, but with some patience and through avoiding contact with other people, if possible (at least through the duration of my introspection), the answer usually comes to me within a day. And I know the right answer has come to me when I instantly feel more better.

Meditation is difficult because the mind wants to wander and storm and jump around, but the moment I stopped focusing on the end result, I found that meditation is a lot of fun. I make it, personally, about the process and not what’s “going to happen”. About the journey and not the destination. I make the joy happen through my own amusement at trying to tame my brain, which is just near impossible sometimes. So, I find that rather than getting frustrated that it won’t settle, I take personal pleasure from chasing it around like a child on a playground. I can bring my thinking around and back to some singular thought or sound, and then it jumps away from me and I have to chase it and get it back to the start. I’m just trying to say that it doesn’t have to be a painful process, but again, that’s up to the person meditating or praying or whatever you want to call it.

The important thing, always, is that you are having fun with yourself and whatever you’re doing is a process of self love that makes you feel better. Without fail, the moment you forgive yourself or practice some patience with yourself, you are expressing love for yourself that immediately gives back to you by making you calmer and making you feel good. You owe it to yourself to feed the feelings and situations and people who give back to you. The moment you find yourself emptying yourself into things that don’t give back to you, your energy drops. Low energy and low self-esteem and depression go hand-in-hand. But what’s so great about that is that it doesn’t last! That’s the nature of energy. What goes up must come down, or as it were, what goes down must come up. That’s a good thing. So even at your lowest know that your low feelings will pass.

And try to stop and take inventory. Try to stop and tally the positives if you can. I was in a situation recently where someone asked for my help and put everything on me but wouldn’t respond to my questions for specifics. I started to get really frustrated until I stopped and thought, ‘As it stands, I’ve been asked for help but haven’t done anything because I’m not getting the information that I need. I’ve already expended a lot and this is barely underway, so it’s probably best that I’m not more invested than I am. I’m going to pull back and reserve my energy until this person reaches out again, but even then, I’m going to be careful not to get snared into something that will only make me feel used.’ Instant relief! No hard feelings, no torturing myself, just a simple inventory check and I find that I’m not so very put out, yet, and am in no way obligated to feed myself into something that seemed, at first, beneficial to us both, but quickly devolved into a communication void. Why do I want drama with someone where there was none? I don’t. I can honestly say my life is better without it.

I hope this is helpful to anyone entrenched in drama and the unnecessary wasting of personal energy. It doesn’t mean you don’t get involved with people and it doesn’t mean that you should be rude, it means you keep your head and consider yourself, first, in every situation. Even your closest friends will fail to consider you at times, but you don’t have to take it hard, just take it seriously and take care of yourself. And when you want to pour yourself into something you know will probably drain you, do it conscientiously. That way when you do need to pull back you can say so without getting upset.

The Impossible Debate: Anti-Porn vs. Pro-Porn, by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on July 21, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

First of all, congratulations to John Stagliano for what is, hopefully, the last of his time in court.

I only started blogging last year, and I was working so hard to catch up financially after having no work at all upon my exit from the adult industry as a personality in 2005, that I admit to being a little behind about much of what happened between 2005 and 2009.

I just got around to watching a debate posted in 2008 between Craig Gross of XXXChurch and Ron Jeremy, with Monique Alexander as Ron’s partner and Donny Pauling as Craig’s. It shot for Nightline and Martin Bashir mediated. Regardless, anti-porn and pro-porn debates are still important, ongoing and never too talked about… in my opinion, anyway.

I posted the videos on my blog’s page as interesting “anti-sex worker info” because, I think, whether you are a fan, or you work in the industry, or both, you should know what anti-choice people look and sound like. Now, Craig Gross claims to be pro-choice, but the fact that he ever challenged Ron Jeremy or anyone else from the adult industry to a debate, tells me that he’s really not, but at least he proposes a tolerant stance. I’m all for a spirited debate, but a real debate requires facts. It’s just not possible to state a preference as a fact. It’s a preference, that’s all. It may have just been for publicity, but nonetheless, saying something is wrong for you hardly qualifies as debatable material. In fact, I would say what most people judge as correct and even preferable is debatable – McDonalds food as an acceptable daily food choice, Tom Cruise as a “hot leading guy”, Sarah Palin as a role model – but that’s the beauty of the pro-choice world we live in.

The debate begins, actually, with Craig Gross of XXXChurch asking Ron Jeremy to explain why he always has to lead the debate. I was willing to hear Craig’s side right from the start, but this immediately set a ridiculous tone, for me. Obviously, the person on the offense goes first, the defense – second. I thought it a very strange way of handing the opening argument over to the other side. And don’t forget, these videos are posted on XXXChurch’s YouTube page. The whole thing is proudly displayed the way Shelley Lubben’s weird and nostalgic hooker-like antics were captured recently at Exxxotica LA and uploaded to her and Pink Cross Foundation’s websites. Hey, whatever floats your boat. Better you make my argument than I.

Ron’s response: “Because I’m not on the attack.” He says more, but that says it all. Then Craig gets to his first point. “Pornography is not real.” … And then I lost complete interest for anything this guy has to say. That’s the first point?? Wow. What a let down. Let me just think about that for a second. Pornography is not real. Is this something that people don’t know? I think there’s a real pandemic of comic book readers in The United States. And I think comic books are a real problem. My first point, super heroes are not real. (lol) I’m laughing, I’m sorry. I’m being disrespectful. I digress. Let me start over… I think there’s a real pandemic of sci-fi addicts in The United States. And I think sci-fi movies are a real problem. My first point, aliens and interstellar space travel is not real. (lol) No, seriously, I mean it now… I’m being serious. Uh-em! I think there’s a real pandemic of romantics in The United States. And I think dramas are a real problem. My first point, passionate onscreen kisses are not real. Wait, but that’s actually true, too! People go to the theater, or they download a movie to their laptop, or they rent a dvd, and they watch a romantic comedy, even if they watch a “true story”, the actors are paid performers and the plots are fictitious or mostly improvised around actual facts. They are paid to create chemistry where there is none – Legal Eagles, back in the ’80s, Robert Redford and Debra Winger hated each other – but they are paid to create chemistry out of nothing because that’s what people want! They want an escape, and they want a fantasy, and personally, comic books are not for me, but I wouldn’t attack the comic book industry because I don’t like them. It’s not real, though. I think there are a lot of men in the world with stunted emotional growth who still collect comic books and refuse to grow up. I don’t think it’s healthy to indulge too much in any one thing, but I don’t inhabit their minds and it’s not my choice. Even if I could control their minds, I wouldn’t because that’s too much power for one person. And this happens with people who “channel” the divine or, at least, propose to. Once they get some kind of following, they forget that they are fallible human beings only relaying an image of the ideal, and are not the ideal. Too much power comes with a healthy scoop of humble pie, at some point.

I’m sure someone’s written this (I really hope so!), but it can’t be said too many times. Freedom of choice is a good thing, regardless of whether or not you like others choices. I don’t even like most of the porn I’ve seen. I don’t like the aggressive shit these cowardly guys produce who prey on the vulnerable emotions of underdeveloped women who are confused and not really sure what they should be doing with their lives. It also sickens me to know that there are young women in the mainstream movie making industry who unknowingly sleep with directors and producers who beat them up, mothers who turn over their children to child molesters for the promise of fame. And what of the children pushed into beauty pageants who are objectified at as young as five years of age? It’s all unhealthy, in my opinion, and we all have the right to voice our opinions about whatever we deem unhealthy. Thing is, these people and organizations back sex workers into a corner when they take our critiques and use them in a “See!!! Porn is bad!!!” way that distorts our view to satisfy theirs. These people shut down communication, not open it up. To silence everyone in an industry is to open their lives up to hurt and harm. Thank goodness we live in an industry where a young man or woman can report someone for abuse on set, or go to the police station without fear of being arrested themselves for doing something illegal. We need our voices to make the industry a better place, not to validate company heads and directors and producers who’ll use it to make sure you never work again because you speak out on the one side, and on the other, people and organizations that will take your statements about one or two people as an absolute stance to criminalize an industry you only want to be healthier, not banned completely! Abusive directors and anti-sex industry people stand on either side and reflect each other completely, and both will make sure you are not able to live somewhere in the middle and speak your mind without reprimand. I don’t think these religious organizations understand that their efforts duct tape the worker’s mouth and keep them down. What about the dream of the healthy industry for people who like it but would like to see it cleaned up, who would like industry people who are abusive and do illegally push alcohol and drugs on performers to be held accountable for their actions? Craig Gross used Jenna Jameson’s statement about never spreading her legs for the industry again as evidence for his “porn harms” argument. That, alone, tells me this isn’t a “live and let live” stance. It isn’t that different from Shelley Lubben using dead people as a fact statement against the industry. I would argue that Jenna was just as abusive to a few female performers I know as some men are to both male and female performers! You should know the people you are speaking for, and the meaning behind sentences you borrow from people you don’t know before you borrow them, otherwise, pose it as a question. It further makes example of their and other organizations position that “porn women are victims.” It’s one-sided and very attacking towards the females specifically. It’s no different than Shelley Lubben claiming all porn women as man-hating con artists with herpes because they never use condoms and give birth to children they neglect just because she did all of that. The “debate” was a joke. Ron had a stack of papers and quotes and personal experience to draw from as an adult industry worker and Monique stated quite matter-of-factly that everything in the industry is about choice. Donny Pauling was interesting because he was a porn producer, but his father was a church figure as a kid, so it’s easy for me to see his flip flop from one side to the other. I listened to him until he was asked why his marriage failed and he said, “I wish I could tell you.” If you don’t know why your own marriage failed, why are you engaged in a debate about what may or may not be good for other people? It’s a valid question to ask why his marriage failed because, he states himself just before he says he wishes he could say, that his own marriage was torn apart by porn. He either can’t or won’t say, but then he says it’s because she knew that, “this is not the way things are supposed to be.” Hmmm…. I don’t know why he couldn’t have just said that in the first place.

One woman in the audience asks, “Isn’t it more demeaning to sort of force this victim status on an entire sector of women who are choosing this job of their own free will?” Craig answers no and elaborates. A man asks if it’s more degrading for a mother of three to make seven dollars an hour working at McDonalds. Another man references a passage in the Bible about how homosexuals should be stoned, but that that wouldn’t necessarily mean he would present the Bible as a murderous book, and if by that turn, Craig feels like he is fairly depicting both sides of the industry since he only gets letters from abused people and probably does not get letters from healthy sex workers talking about how happy the industry has made them. All-in-all it’s a very good video, even if I’m not impressed with XXXChurch’s position. It proves that there are people who shouldn’t be in porn, and that there are people who are happy working in porn. Part 9 is my favorite, which would probably explain why it wouldn’t upload yesterday no matter how long I waited. It’s probably many people’s favorite.

You won’t find this posted on my blog until next week, but I will elaborate on it because there is much more that is questionable about this video and about the argument that “porn harms.” It’s a general statement and as a fact: IT. IS. NOT. TRUE. Porn harms who? You have to point at who it harms or lie and speak for an entire population of people you can’t possibly know. For the person challenging a sex worker to a debate, porn harms you, or porn harms someone you know. That’s it. It’s always simpler than the anti-sex industry people present it to be. There is the opportunity for conversation here, not debate, but their anti-choice and their shut-down-the-sex-worker’s-voice goal is accomplished when everything becomes a process of walking on egg shells when critiquing the industry, but the bottom line is, people who work in the industry have more right and reason to critique it than anyone else, and these crazy anti-industry people make it impossible for anyone to actually be honest because they are attacking. They should try listening for a change, but they only listen to the perspective they agree with, not all perspectives. And Craig Gross can say he’s friend’s with Ron Jeremy because Ron is friends with everybody. Ron doesn’t discriminate, that’s why they get along.

The industry should undergo some changes, and maybe in some visceral way they’ve even helped see that some of these changes begin, but will they ever admit to the abuse they lay on the heads of the people who enjoy the industry? Will they ever admit that they play the reverse role of manipulative and exploitative directors and abusive producers by chastizing and shaming happy and healthy people into feeling bad about themselves when they otherwise would not feel bad about themselves? Will they ever admit their harassments and prejudices create as much pain and harm as the side they’re fighting?

Pick A Side , by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on July 16, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

There seems to be a lot of positioning lately on one side or the other in the world of adult entertainment, but the lines seem blurred. It used to be that you were in porn and pro-porn, or not in porn and pro-porn or anti-porn, but there are a lot of people in porn, it seems, and a lot of people infiltrating the industry via industry alliances, doing everything they can to make it a more difficult place to exist in or trying to get rid of it entirely. Maybe I don’t have the full picture of the industry’s past, but there’s a weird game being played and I’m disappointed by the people playing an integral part in allowing these anti-porn groups to get what they want, as if taking their money is just “business as usual”. Maybe it is. Maybe these “industry” people have always been indifferent. Maybe they have a backup plan should their livelihood go away. They certainly aren’t the thousands of actors and actresses faced with losing their jobs should their jobs just “go away.”

But, then again, maybe it’s brilliant. I mean, you’ve got the anti-porn organizations showing up at Exxxotica LA, AdultCon, etc… They bring their church people, who surely get a thrill from all the tan and toned, scantily-clad bodies. Maybe it’s a match made in heaven… so to speak. Hell, Shelley Lubben wrote this on her latest blog post of Exxxotica LA,

“Saturday morning Pastor Chadwick offered communion to Pink Cross team members. It was an awesome moment and probably a first time that has ever happened in a porn convention. Then two Christians representing their home church came inside the porn convention just to encourage Pink Cross and pray for us. Wow. It made a huge difference to know that churches support us and care about our mission. We hope more churches will get on board and help us continue to spread the Gospel in the porn conventions!”

Wow. Maybe these convention people are laughing all the way to the bank. Maybe the adult industry information blogs that buddy up to anti-porn organizations and post everything they send are laughing all the way to the bank, as well. Maybe it just makes sense to them to take their money if they are sure that no one can just “take down” the porn industry. It directs a new group of traffic their way, it certainly fills the venues a bit to replace the folks that are too broke to attend. Everyone knows that religious groups thrive during times of economic strife because people scramble towards faith for peace of mind. That and liquor. Plus, we all know that “saints” struggle to not be “sinners”, so it’s the perfect opportunity for them to dabble in voyeurism up close and personal. Balance in all things, right? I’m sure just as many people convert to a pro-porn stance by being subjected to it as turn anti-porn. I say if you struggle at all with it, you’ll eventually go the other way. One extreme begets the other extreme. That’s just the simplest and most logical way to look at it. The church is probably converting more people towards a pro-sex perspective than ever before thanks to the hordes these people lead straight into the convention halls and forums. They could, in their own way, be saving the industry by reviving it. I’m sure all the men Shelley boasted, who out-attended the women, would be very disappointed if they were no longer able to hang out and rally for “God” among the adorable faces and writhing bodies. Very disappointed, indeed!

But what if it is not just “business as usual?” It seems irresponsible to let thieves into your home, to take over at the head of the table and lead your family in prayer while they ransack your possessions. Shelley talks about all the free gifts they gave out at the show, that they’ll be handing out and throwing around more at the next show, that they need more donations for more gifts. What? Lipstick? Perfume? Twenty dollar Bibles? It’s a Circus-freak joke, at this point. I’m glad I’m not a performer in the industry, anymore. I would not have a sense of humor about one of these people – especially a full grown woman trying to look like she’s sixteen – insulting me to my face and trying to give me It’s A Girl Thing “Snob” Lip Gloss, or a pink Bible. I can say that even in porn, I was a woman, not a little girl. Guess perfume? A pink bracelet from Claire’s Boutique? A hot pink T-shirt? Not even when I was sixteen did I wear such things. Maybe the people who rent space for conventions are just not affiliated with pro-porn or anti-porn issues. They just rent the space and don’t care who rents it as long as they aren’t running people out, but I know that as a performer and/or adult company owner, I would avoid the events due to these anti-porn groups on principal alone. Will the adult industry ever grow a hairy sack and say no to people whose aim is to abuse it, eliminate it? I guess my question is: Will the “adult” industry ever grow up?

The Industry I Remember, by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on July 3, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

I did not suffer as a drug addict, an alcoholic, or as a traumatized woman in the adult industry. I didn’t lie to anyone because I had nothing to hide. My experience was just a series of scheduled work dates and what was really a fairly rigid routine within the loose world of the Los Angeles sex industry.

I am a responsible person, and so when I took work from a person or a company, I asked all the questions I needed to ask: “Who am I working with?” “What does the scene require?” “Yeah, but what does the scene require, as in, are you telling me everything because if you spring anything on me last minute that I’m not okay with, I’ll leave.” “What kind of clothes do you want me to bring?” “When do I get paid?” “Do I need to do my own makeup?” And so on and so forth. The production manager usually had all that information at the ready, but I had a list in my head acquired over years of learning that, in order to be an intelligent businesswoman in the industry, one had to know all the angles. Once you got all the angles down you eliminated the element of surprise that directors were so willing to throw at you last minute. People do it in every industry. Some people just live for negotiations and pushing your buttons just to see how you’ll react. But if you keep your temper even and maintain your intelligence, no one can get the better of you. And in the worst situations, with a compassionate air, the best answer you can give is, “Because I don’t wan to, and if that’s not enough, I definitely don’t need to be here.”

I didn’t do drugs or drink or smoke pot before scenes. I didn’t even have a prescription for medication. Every year I bought an At A Glance Daily Planner for the year, and carried it with me everywhere. I wrote all of my dates into it, kept strict check of every testing cycle and updated my wardrobe as often as didn’t seem obsessive. I did not exercise a lot, but I did watch what I ate. I tanned and lightened my hair, but I never wanted to completely destroy my hair by over dying it, so I found a nice balance in streaking it with lemon-based Sun-In. Easy maintenance. Spray on while hair is wet and lay out in the sun or blow dry. I didn’t have my nails done because I’m too much of a tomboy for that. My Dad was a cop from Texas, so I thought about it all it the simplest way. “If it keeps me from running from a dangerous situation, effectively using a weapon or changing a tire, I don’t need it.” It was very hard for me to get used to heels and dresses, but when I didn’t need that garb for work or appearances, you bet your ass you didn’t see me in anything but jeans and tennis shoes. Then again, I learned that dressing like that was its own arsenal. When you walk with confidence and look people in the eye, especially when you look good, it’s disarming and a perosn is less likely to be overly confident in dealing with you.

I got breast implants, for myself, and I got them enhanced to a reasonable size because I didn’t want them to keep me from doing sporty things. I would have done it even if I hadn’t gotten into the sex industry. Nice boobs are nice boobs. Even other women can appreciate that.

I tried to go to bed early before a work day, wake up and leave an hour earlier than necessary to allot for unexpected traffic problems, etc… and no matter what, was always way too early, but I never let that keep me from showing up a half hour to an hour early to every shoot. In my six years as a performer I was late on two occasions. And that’s just camera work. I was never late as a featured performer on the dance circuit.

My experiences as a porn star were very responsible because I took my job very seriously. I didn’t depend on anyone handing me feminine products before a scene. I brought my own feminine hygiene necessities and condoms in various sizes and even drinking straws to use so I wasn’t constantly messing up my lipstick. I always drove myself to work and brought books for reading during the down time, music to listen to, crossword puzzle books and even a travel size chess set on the rare occasion that someone actually wanted to play. I learned to take down time as an opportunity to rest even when friends were hanging about and cutting up and making jokes. I learned to make friends with the crew guys because they’re the coolest most down-to-earth people on a set and they’ll root for you when you really need encouragement. I made a lot of friends that I will always cherish because they were real with me. Tony Crane, Jane Hamilton, Bud Lee, Chris Cannon, Chloe, Brittany Andrews, Stacy Valentine, Jimmy D., Rob Spallone, Herschal Savage, Eric Walter, Russ and Betty Hampshire, everyone at VCA, and now Mike South and so many behind-the-scenes people I can’t name. I always remembered to show courtesy to my scene partner and make sure he was comfortable and happy, because caring made me happy.

Being an adult is not too hard. I can, though, finally see why some old folks get snappy and stop giving a shit about what they say. I began my life reserved and courteous. I continued that trend until I realized most people don’t care. I still care, but I’m starting to care less and less about what people who don’t care think. There’s little time and you don’t get it back, so fight fiercely for the people you love, live with your conscience, and cherish your best memories, because those are the riches you take with you.

Happy Freedom Day Mike South Readers! Happy 4th of July and Happy Sex Industry! Treat each other well. Like Jimmy Durante said, “Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.”

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!!!

Shelley Lubben’s Story, In Her Own Words, by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on June 24, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

In a way, I’m glad “Devil Lady” attacked my friend Monica Foster’s mental health and challenged her to a debate. I’ve written about her before here, in a post called Questions for Shelley Lubben about The Pink Cross, because like anyone who is not anti-porn, I had an immediate list of inquiries as to the personal integrity of someone who used to be in the sex industry of their own volition, and then turns around to attack it.

The challenge to debate Monica, and then the verbal attacks to me and the condescending tone with which Shelley directs all her commentary towards people who are not anti-porn caused me to look more deeply at this “savior” of porn stars, and I can see very clearly what her game is. And it is a game. I did not know, until my digging, that she and her minions had sent menacing emails to popular porn stars to get saved from porn – and even to get saved on MTV. Menacing emails meant to intimidate and manipulate, and it is not for the purpose of saving porn stars. If you look at her financial records, more goes towards travel than to helping porn stars. She’s a plagiarist on her own site because she stole a story from AVN without crediting them for the information, and without an autopsy report, does credit porn with the death of Ami Jordan, someone who had not done much in the industry at all and had not even worked recently doing any scenes just before her death. Accusing agents and pornographers of illegally positioning themselves as “doctors” while she poses as an authority on information without all the information hardly warms my heart towards her motives. Does Shelley Lubben own the rights to the pictures she uses in her Dead Porn Stars Memorial video? And if not, does she at least own the licensing rights to use those pictures?

Before I get into her story, in her own words, I have to go back to the simplicity of her game plan. First of all, she attacks porn because porn is not illegal. There’s no reason to kick prostitutes when they’re down because they’re already down. Secondly, she needs to save a popular porn star so she can ride on the coattails of the woman’s already established fame. All of this points to a political career, which angers me because religion and politics should never mix. She especially targets strong independent women, like my friend Monica, because it angers her that an intelligent woman would stand in her way. She’s fixated with Monica’s sites www.GettingIntoPorn.com and www.GettingOutOfPorn.com because Monica offers free and practical solutions for entering and exiting the business of adult movie-making. It defies her “God Saves” position because it proves that a person can actually save his or herself from anything, logically, practically, simply, just by using their own common sense.

I just watched a five part video series, Shelley Lubben speaks truth about porn industry, about ex-prostitute Shelley Lubben, and she explains herself perfectly, in her own words. I couldn’t have done it better, myself.

Shelley is on a stage, and she explains (to an entirely male audience, I guess, because she only addresses the men ever), how she grew up and came to be a married Christian woman. She explains that her father was distant and that her mother preached at her a lot and judged her, and was not a very Christ-like woman. I’m guessing that she was an only child because she never mentioned having brothers or sisters. She said that her favorite time of the week was Sunday and going to Sunday School because Jesus “talked to her all the time.” Okay.

At the age of nine she was molested by a boy and his sister. She started masturbating after that and started having sex with other people at the age of sixteen. She said that her mother let her dress up as a Playboy bunny and took pictures of her when she was fifteen, “to keep the peace.” She says she was a real handful. Very rebellious and absolutely set on “getting the attention she wanted.” Her dad kicked her out right after she graduated High School. She said that he warned her he was going to before he did and she shrugged him off. So she was on the street, crying, and a man came up to sit with her and she thought, “My Jesus has come to rescue me.” It’s creepy and it’s heartbreaking, because this woman/child is on the stage explaining why she is the way she is, and she still doesn’t really understand any of it. I feel incredible sympathy for her if those things really happened to her, and I have no reason to believe they did not, but as she clearly spells out exactly why, what and how, she attributes all of her subconscious decisions to “The Devil” and “God” and “Jesus”, all of her conversations with her conscience as conversations with “The Devil” and “God” and “Jesus”, and never once portrays herself as a whole person, even as she claims to now be a whole person. But honestly, most of my sympathy goes to her husband, because instead of just giving him all the credit for meeting her and loving her and marrying her and sticking by her even when she “smacked him around,” “spit on him” and “cheated on him,” all the credit during her entire speech goes to “The Devil” and “God” and “Jesus”. She says as she’s listening to him talk one day, her thought is, “Is this God?” Um… no? It’s a man? Oh, I don’t know. A man in front of you that you should be talking about for at least half of the entire hour of your life story? Garrett, her husband, and the man who saved her from being a single-mom/prostitute only got some mention, and when she told him to stand up so she could “honor” him, after telling everyone that when he asked her to marry him, she said, “I don’t love you, I’m not attracted to you, but I’ll do it [marry him],” and “You went to college, you can make the money,” the camera couldn’t even see him. It careened all over the place. The angle centered on her, from backstage, and there was room for no one else. Shouldn’t he have gotten a moment on stage, maybe? Maybe he didn’t want it, but she didn’t have very nice things to say about him, even though he was the actual reason her life got better. And also because she made her life better. That’s probably the worst part of the brainwashing process to me, that the level of self-loathing is so deep, even when one starts to feel better about themselves, they still can’t attribute their happiness to their own efforts. “By the grace of God!” What’s wrong with, “By the grace of my ability to listen to myself and my presence of mind and love myself and love for myself and not through someone else.” And, “By the grace of a real live human being who helped me… named Garrett.” Too many words? She still won’t give herself any credit, and even though she deserves to give herself credit, she continues to describe an entire life led by other forces and other people, where she never took the reigns and steered any of it on her own, right down to making a website.

So, she was crying and a man came to talk to her, and she wondered if it was “Her Jesus come to rescue her,” in a little girl’s voice, and it was someone offering her thirty-five dollars to have sex with someone else, his treat for his friend, I guess. She said her first thought was, “No. I’m not a prostitute,” but then “The Devil” came to her and said, “God doesn’t care about you, your parents don’t care about you.” End result, she took the money. Then she says she became a “con artist” after that, her own words. “I became a master manipulator, a practiced liar, a con artist conning men out of thousands and thousands of dollars.” (As she says this to a room full of men whose support she wants. Do you think she did her speech for free? Who payed for her travel?) Ahem. Anyway…

Now, this is where it really gets weird on another level. She says that she hated men, but then she says that “all women in the sex industry hate men.” Okay, she attributes all her misfortune to “The Devil”, and all her fortune to “God” and “Jesus” (with a teeny smidgen set aside for the man she also severely emasculates in front of hundreds of people, her husband), then proposes to know the minds of “all women in the sex industry.” Her two faces change back and forth constantly through the entire performance. She’s controlled by other forces, yet she knows the minds of all sex industry workers. It’s not physically possible for her to know the minds of “all women in the sex industry,” because it’s not physically possible for her to be all women in the sex industry. I would have to be you to know what you think, and it’s not physically possible for me to be you. Not possible. She doesn’t explain how she knows this. She doesn’t say she met every woman in the sex industry and asked them if they hated men. How can she not attribute her own happiness and healing completely to herself and her husband, but then attribute knowing all women of the sex industry to her own faculties without explaining how she knows that? I was in the sex industry and I never hated men. She’s appealing to the emotions of this all-male crowd to feel loathing and pity for sex workers because sex workers hate them, and then at the end of her performance she gushes about how much she loves all the men she’s talking to. She is incorrect in her statement because I don’t hate men, and if I don’t hate men, “all sex workers” don’t hate men. You can’t say “all” and exclude one sex worker, past or present. She can’t speak for me because it is physically impossible for her to be me, and therefore impossible for her to know me and my mind without asking me. Her statement is a lie. She conveniently relinquishes responsibility for her own mind in one sentence, and then poses as all-knowing for others minds in the next. There is a very clear disorder in all of this.

She got pregnant three times as a prostitute, lost two in miscarriages and gave birth to and kept her third. That seemed a triumphant ending even if she doesn’t know who the father is, because she could have aborted the baby or given it away, but she kept it. Unfortunately, she also said that she was an alcoholic, a drug addict, that she had stalkers, and that she gave her daughter a beeper to go to the park while her tricks showed up, and then she would beep her daughter when they left. So, you had “stalkers”, but you sent your daughter to the park, by herself? Then she says that she continued to talk to “God” and she’d say, “Where are you? Why aren’t you saving me?” Definitely the mentality of a little girl, and it pains me that her parents didn’t try to raise her, the way she didn’t try to raise her own daughter, at that point. There’s no mental balance in letting your children run wild on their own to learn from other children and predators. No inner voice handed down, a conscience to say, “No, don’t do that,” or “Don’t trust that person,” with a sound and solid explanation behind it. That is very sad.

She says, “I never met a woman in the industry who loves what they do. We’re all liars, we’re all very good actresses.” I like that she uses the editorial “we” in this statement because so much of the things she thinks she’s skewing against porn stars points to the truth about herself. “We’re all liars.” And, of course, in all of this we know she’s saying “I”. Yet again, she projects herself on every female as being her even though she does not steer her own life. In her mind, her conscience is an outside voice, but other women’s minds are her own. It’s all very mentally disturbed and cult-like. In fact, it’s a kind of mental fragmentation. A split in the personality. It’s not possible for every women in the industry to be her. Nina Hartley would absolutely disagree with this woman. I know. I talked to her on Sunday and that woman loves her job. Loves her job. There was no camera on her. She meant it. Who would know but her? Again, Shelley can’t be incapable of owning all her mental faculties and owning someone else’s. Not possible.

So, she said that she talked to God but, “there was no answer.” So, by her count we’re supposed to believe that “Jesus talked to [her] all the time” as a child, but for her darker periods as an adult, God wouldn’t “answer” her. It doesn’t seem like a very kind God to not say something when you are talking to… it. Him. Then someone suggested she do a porn movie because she knew prostitutes that were “raped and beaten”, and she “didn’t want to be raped or go to jail”, so she showed up to do a scene. She says there was a dark presence in the room and she “knew porn was worse than prostitution.” I don’t know any sex worker, personally, who would say that being a legal sex worker is worse than being an illegal sex worker. The only way this makes sense is that her political and evangelical position is to attack the legal side with all means necessary. It’s not possible for porn to be worse than being a completely unprotected sex worker. She doesn’t explain exactly how it’s worse, of course. Then she said that once the camera started rolling, all of her anger towards every man that ever hurt her, and a father that never loved her, came out and she was a wild woman. “Roxy!” And then she says, “Anointed by The Devil, himself.” What a split. She admits that she took out her man-hating frustrations in front of the camera, explains why she turned into a wild woman, and at the same time hands responsibility to yet, another man, albeit an invisible one. Very extreme. But then, she also says later that she was diagnosed as bipolar, as well as other things. All in her own words.

Then she states that, “On porn sets you can hear women crying and throwing up.” This is an absolute statement and she is addressing it to the audience to say, if you are ever on a porn set, you can hear that. But who heard that, really? And on whose sets? Could she have really been privy to every porn set? It’s not physically possible. She is, yet again, manipulating their emotions through an illogical statement. What she’s really saying is that she heard that, and it’s vague enough to imply she heard that on all porn sets. She’s saying it in the present, except that she can’t know because she’s not on porn sets anymore. Hasn’t been for over fifteen years. I never in six years of working regularly on porn sets ever heard women either crying or throwing up. Not even on the not-so-great gonzo sets I worked on in the beginning, were there ever any women crying or throwing up. If that was her experience at that time, she should specify that that was her experience at that time. Neither Jane Hamilton nor Nina Hartley ever said that making porn was anything other than fun, years before “Roxy” was making movies. Could that period of time really have been that dotted with crying, vomiting women when no other era had a constant population of crying and vomiting women?

“Enema boxes and rags in the corner, which is what we’re staring at as every man takes his turn.” She’s speaking in the present again, and “as every man takes his turn?” “Every man taking his turn” implies a gang bang, and by Mike’s post Shelley Lubben Now Whoring Jesus, I can see that she did, in fact, do gang bang scenes. At least one. Personally, I didn’t perform in gang bang scenes, so again she is including me in the editorial “we” which makes her statement a lie. And still, you have to say, “Yes, I’ll do that,” or it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t sound like “waiting for God to save you” is a very good idea at all. Why not save yourself at that point? According to her, she’s a zombie to the forces of good and evil and a mind reader. And since she knows what happens on all porn sets today and every day since she got out of the industry, even while living in Washington with no contact with people from the industry, she also has teleportation powers. A clairvoyant, teleporting zombie. Psychiatrists have names for conditions like that. And what, you never used “enemas” or “rags” as a prostitute? How did you clean your ass out and wash up after?

She did crystal meth and drank before her scenes. I never took one drop of liquor before a scene, never smoked one joint, popped pills or did anything other than eat food and drink water before a scene. There are lots of women like me. I know that because I know them. I’m not saying “all”, because I know I’m not clairvoyant and I do not teleport or claim to be all-knowing while also claiming to not own my mind entirely. To quote Bill Maher, “…anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don’t. How can I be so sure? Because I don’t know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not.”

She talks about how sex is pain for her. The acts were painful and so she would “bite down on an invisible bullet and take the pain.” There’s already an invisible cast in this performance, might as well throw in an invisible bullet, too. Again she pleaded, “God get me out of this!” And God said, “Dummy, get yourself out of it!” and God waited, but there was no answer… I made that part up. Then she says, “In the industry we don’t use condoms.” To her audience, the way she’s speaking, she’s still in the industry because she’s speaking in the present… again… and she is implying that condoms aren’t even in the vicinity of any porn set, not when she was in, and not now, even though she’s not in the industry right now… nor has been for over fifteen years. I did condom-only scenes for years. I can show you the movies and point to the condoms! Where was she a porn star? Europe? She should be clear that she was not a porn star here in L.A. “In the industry we don’t use condoms.” Liar. Then she says, “Every single day we live in fear of catching a sexually transmitted disease or even worse, HIV.” And then she very blatantly contradicts herself. She says she got into porn, and then she says she left porn quietly and got back into prostitution because she contracted herpes. We are to assume she contracted herpes as a porn star, even though she adds that she went to “swinger parties” and “did coke” and had “whipping parties”. So in all of this, she was only in porn for a year and feared for her life every day, except that if you only did thirty movies in a one-year period, that hardly justifies being afraid of contracting a sexually transmitted disease or HIV every day, unless you’re having unprotected sex every day. And how does she know she didn’t contract herpes at one of the parties? She practiced her right to use condoms at coke parties, but not on set? But here’s where she changes it.

So… so far, chronologically, she got into porn and only returned to prostitution because she contracted herpes. She lived in fear every day of catching a sexually transmitted disease or HIV because “the industry doesn’t use condoms.” Later she says, “What we do is when we’re porn stars, we’re also prostitutes.” Okay! So she could have contracted herpes as a prostitute? Yes, because then she says, “We fly around the country and sleep with people for lots of money, ‘cuz they’re our fans. So then we have unprotected sex with them, of course.” Of course? I don’t know one high-paid escort/porn star who has unprotected sex with their clients!! This irresponsible woman did not insist on condoms, admits that she did coke and drank before scenes, contracted herpes and then says she infected a married couple with herpes, then adds, “Did that stop me?” as in, ‘No. It didn’t.’ And then horror of horrors, “I helped contribute to America’s epidemic of herpes.” … Um… Wow. She admits to unprotected sex with clients while she performed in sex movies and then immediately says, “So I believe the adult film industry is a huge contributing factor to sexually transmitted disease in America.” Right! Evidently, you are the huge contributor, in your own words! And if you’re sleeping with clients without protection, you can’t say “the adult film industry” gave you herpes, because you don’t know, the way you don’t know who the father of your firstborn daughter is. Honey, you are contributing to more epidemics than that! You gave your daughter a beeper so you could turn tricks, you had unprotected sex with people knowing you had herpes and now instead of trying to teach these young women in the industry that they should be intelligent and own their minds so they don’t end up like you, you just propose that the industry should go away? Just disappear? Like your “God” disappeared? As irresponsible as she admits to being, these women are supposed to be okay with being saved by her? A robot? Do I have that right? “We” should all relinquish our minds and our sense of repsonsibility and make porn go away. Which will only drive it underground where it won’t go away but will be seedier and less safe than it is now. I am nothing like Shelley Lubben. A woman of her advanced age should know better. My cat would make a better mother figure and he licks his butt. I’m suppose to just turn into a huband-emasculating woman-hater. No thanks!

She admits to looking towards pornographers as “daddy figures”. (Yeah, that’s mother figure material.) She says about porn stars, “Don’t ever let them tell you they aren’t prostitutes. Oh yes they are.” Of course, she’s the only one making the huge distinction between the esteemed prostitute versus the lowly porn star. Then she thinks to herself, “I’m a prostitute again, [she just said she never stopped!] and I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life and I feel like no man will ever want me.” Really? You never felt that way while you were a drug addict and your daughter was at the park with a beeper so you could have unprotected sex with strangers? Then she met a Pastor’s son who had crystal meth, they stayed up on meth and “played checkers ’til 3am.” This is where she emasculates him through demeaning details about not being attracted to him but marrying him, anyway. Classy. Oh, and great for your daughters to hear, by the way. Nice way to respect your meal ticket. The actual man who saved you. She says, “We never went to the doctors [sic] or the dentist [the editorial "we", again]. The outside appearance looks pretty good.” Insinuating that the inside is neglected while the outside is kept up… although all the porn stars I know consider their teeth to be part of the “outside appearance”. I love the constant projection of her own stupidity. She does it so much better than anyone else possibly could. “We” meaning “me and the voices or lack thereof in my mostly empty head.”

She overdosed on drugs several times – slits her wrists, took pills – and none of it ever took (because she’s too dumb to even accomplish suicide… ugh!). Garret joined the army and they moved to Washington. She ran to the army psychologist one day and poured everything out and he diagnosed her! This is rich. Her list goes, “Bipolar Disorder, Impulsive Control Disorder, Depressive Disorder, Addictive Disorder” while adding that she needed to attend Anger Managment classes. Her own words. Then she went to church and the preacher pointed at her and said, “Do you know that there’s a champion in you?” Then she says it, “hit her hard [because] no one ever saw the champion in me.” Um… your husband!? You know, the one you happily emasculate in front of the world. I guess it’s a good thing you don’t have any sons because they would really be traumatized. Still, just a little girl that can’t see the gem inside herself who needs the validation from others to see what’s already there.

So, she starts to heal and go to church and every once in awhile, while she’s doing dishes or cooking and “trying to be a Mom,” (oy vey), “Satan would come along and, [whooshing sound and weird vector hand movement] here’s a scene with you and those three guys, [next whooshing sound and weird vector hand movement] here’s a scene where you’re doing prostitution with so-and-so, [third whooshing sound and weird vector hand movement] here’s a scene where you’re doing [pause, and then because she can't think of anything properly graphic] … another movie.” Her conscience didn’t make her remember she was an überwhore for several years, “Satan” did. But then again, “Satan” is one’s conscience when you don’t want to remember what you did, and “Jesus”and “God” cheer you on to do the right thing… when they’re… ignoring you… through the worst period… of your life… because… they can… Okay…?

“I started putting scriptures all over my walls like a crazy lady.” She said it. I didn’t say it, she said it. “God’s freed me from all the trauma of the sex industry.” Oh yeah. Freed you so much you’re… submerged in it… and talking about it… and obsessed with it! “Crazy lady.” She said it. I didn’t say it. “God is the biggest promise keeper. He’s the only one who never let me down.” Except when he was ignoring you, of course. “God is everything to me. He’s the air I breath. I can’t do anything without him.” Poor Garrett. How can you compete with that? If she transferred that feeling into the relationship with her husband, and had a healthy sex life with him, and worshiped him the way she worships her “God”, he’d probably be the luckiest man on the planet! She’s got loads of charisma and energy. If she loved him like she loves “God”, he’d get the masculinity she’s stripped from him, back, and their daughters would see what an actual healthy relationship looks like, rather than watching their mother rant and demand attention from strange men she doesn’t know. “I don’t love you, I’m not attracted to you, but I’ll do it [marry Garrett].” What was the other thing? Oh, after he kicked meth she said she found him boring. “I liked you better on meth!” Nice. He probably liked you better as a whore.

And then of Tiffany, her oldest, “God totally restored our relationship. She’s on fire, she ministers to the youth. She also had a problem with pornography and masturbation so she’s out there like I am, saying, ‘You know what, let’s get free from masturbation…’” So the porn industry isn’t enough, you have to preach against masturbation? Are you crazy? Well, you already covered that. There was a half-hearted bout of clapping from the crowd after that. Free from masturbation? Does “Satan” live my middle and index fingers? Give up masturbation! You really do want everyone to be crazy!

So, God “promoted us and made us move back to California.” … And she said, “No way.” And you can guess what happened after that. God said, “Yes way.” And she said, “No way.” And so on… She really did say that she said, “No way.” Like totally? Gross me out!

“At the time, I had no idea that there was a porn addiction or a porn pandemic going on.” So, all those clients just happened to be the only people paying for sex when she was a prostitute? Larry Flint becoming a millionaire with Hustler Magazine in the ’70s was just a fluke, I guess? I suppose she made as much as she did as a performer in the adult industry because the producers wanted to pay her high sums of money out of the kindness of their hearts and not because they got a huge return on their investment? Then she says that for eight years she didn’t watch t.v., she just devoted herself to “God”. “I didn’t even like t.v., I still don’t like t.v., it’s so boring.” You don’t like t.v., but you want to be all over it? “What do I want to watch t.v. for? Those people aren’t powerful.” The 700 Club isn’t powerful? ABC News? Nightline? MTV? Why did you agree to be on t.v., then, if “those people aren’t powerful?” Right.

And then, because everything else isn’t offensive enough, she talks about ministering in prisons and how, “God was delivering demons out of people, was healing them. I mean, gays were turning straight. God was performing miracles right in front of me.” So you’re against gays, too?? This sleazy, nasty, disgusting, disease bag who, in her own words, “…helped contribute to America’s epidemic of herpes,” gave her kid the boot so she could trick, smacked her husband around and cheated on him and continues to torture him by even being against masturbation, is now a moral authority on sexual orientation, too? You gotta be fucking kidding me! And she didn’t want to create her own website, but “God” told her to? And she doesn’t like t.v. because t.v. isn’t powerful? Really? Even though every time you make an appearance you re-record it and post it on YouTube! You psychotic windbag!

She says she got out of the film industry just in time for her movies not to be smeared all over the internet? Are you kidding me? You’re ugly. I can’t imagine you got out of porn as much as you just couldn’t get any more work. You’re ugly inside and out. “I know anybody who watches my stuff’s gonna get zapped by the Holy Spirit.” Or zapped by an unholy urge to cry and vomit. Then she’s talking to wives who are jealous of porn stars and says, “You’re jealous of us? We’re plastic. Every piece of us is fake.” Speak for yourself on that one, Devil Lady, because you’re right. Every piece of YOU is fake. The current weave in your head right down to your fake soul. And then she drops the “we” just in time to say, “Those girls are slaves of Satan.” You do not have the authority to speak for other people. According to you, you don’t even have the authority to speak for yourself. You “don’t do anything without God.” You don’t even move back to California or create a website of your own volition. You don’t speak for me! I don’t know who owns your brain, but they are not handling their duties very well. Your “God’s” not very impressive. He’s a sloppy, herpes-spreading, woman-hating, child-hating, husband-emasculating “God”. He’s a loser, quite frankly. Which means (because I know you’re stupid and you won’t understand), that you’re a loser, because as much as you don’t want to admit it, you chose to be a whore because you wanted to be a whore.

Then she tells husbands that, “it’s impossible for a woman to enjoy making a porn movie, because the director’s always yelling ‘Cut!’ ‘Freeze!’ Can you imagine being in a hardcore act with several performers and having to freeze in position for five minutes while they adjust lighting and cameras?” She’s talking about her gang bang movies, again. She’s kinky. I guess one-on-one is too intimate, hence all the voices in her head and the entire male-dominated group she’s addressing.

Then she describes performers as “adult survivors of child abuse, like me.” Tell your own story, Devil Lady. You are a liar once again. I didn’t suffer from child abuse. “I’ve researched hundreds of backgrounds of porn stars for the last three years.” Well, there are thousands, and you could only be researching people who want your help, and that is not “everyone”. I know plenty of McDonalds employees that want to be saved from their life, too.

And then the really creepy part comes… She points to the crowd and says, “I need you… to be our fathers.” Ew!!! I thought she said she found her father in “God”? Soliciting daddy functions from a crowd of strange men using the all encompassing “we” for women – most of whom don’t want her representation – is pretty fucking sick. “I need you men to rise up and be the leaders of this country.” Honey, those men are the leaders of this country. If Garret wasn’t insulted before, he should be insulted now. Really? You don’t see the severely warped connection between bowing down on a set around multiple strangers and taking whatever they give you, and standing in front of multiple strangers telling them you’ll take whatever they give you. Demanding it? You need voices to tell you to move to another state and create a website, and yet you want men other than your husband to “lead you”? She pleads with these men, who are the ones “in powerful positions”? Is this another “Satan” flashback of multiple men popping jizz onto your face? And really? “Women can’t save America.” You actually propose to lead porn stars out of porn so they can what? Depend on themselves, or depend on a man? Give them to someone in your congregation? That’s exactly how you are vocalizing your thoughts about a “woman’s place” under a man. Wow. How anticlimactic. But then it makes sense. If “we” are “you” (even though you don’t know who you are, or how many you are), then that means we were all molested as children, we all have herpes and daughters we’ve traumatized through husband-emasculation and abandonment, we marry men we don’t actually like and aren’t actually attracted to just because they want to marry us, we masturbate because of “Satan”, and we need to ask men we don’t know to take care of us because our dumb boring husbands are just not good enough. The whole asking men to “be our fathers” and “lead us” thing is perverted, and extremely inappropriate. If I were a woman married to one of the men in the audience, I would be highly offended.

“I was an innocent victim. I didn’t raise my hand to do that [get into the industry].” Yes, you did. “Did you know the largest group viewing porn is ages 12 to 17?” Really? Someone like your own daughter because you weren’t around to be an actual parent? “Do you know that if we don’t help these children within the next few years we’ll have an entire generation of porn addicts who’ll become our politicians and leaders.” Ha!!! As if our politicians and leaders aren’t sex addicts and perverts due to years of sexual repressions. You are fucking kidding me! “My eighteen-year-old [Tiffany] looks at me and says, ‘Mom, there’s no one to date. They’re all looking at porn.’” Evidently, she turned them onto it because you turned her onto it. “Go tell the men what they’re viewing [porn] is hamburger meat. In the form of horse meat.” What? You may be as brain dead as a Big Mac, but I’m not hamburger meat… in the form of… horse meat? What does that even mean? Bitch be crazy! Then she explains that horse meat will poison you? She’s reaching here to make the connection between porn stars as meat and porn as poison. And it’s not true, or Jack In The Box would have gone completely under years ago. She can’t even get that detail straight. Then she says she knows that men in the audience are struggling with porn addiction. Eva Peron played this same angle with the Argentines, having been a sleazy woman who slept her way to the top. Wanting the men to see her as a fantasy, and a saint. She proved just as corrupt a leader as any man. By projecting her sex appeal, telling that crowd of men that they need to be women’s daddies and “take back the country”, she’s playing the same game. I am disgusted that she comes from the same industry I come from. I’ll take fifty uppity Jenna Jamesons over Shelley Lubben any day, because at least Jenna told the truth about herself. She’s not a good spokesperson for the industry anymore, but she doesn’t profess to talk to invisible people, not know her mind, and she doesn’t inject false words and lies upon other performer’s lives.

She tells the men suffering from porn addiction to stand up and she’ll pray. She starts praying and then she says, “God says there’s more of you that need to stand up.” My mind drifts back to what she said in the beginning of her story, “I became a master manipulator, a practiced liar, a con artist conning men out of thousands and thousands of dollars.” She never stopped. After she prays some reverberation comes out of the speaker and she says, “I command that to stop in Jesus’ name.” And when the sound guy makes it stop and she says, “God is such a showoff.” That’s right Shelley. Thing is, “God” is the sound man, and me, and even the porn stars who like their life. You need to listen to “God” more often. Your conscience isn’t worth shit.

Shelley has flipped the coin. She was extremely one way, and now she’s extremely the other way, but her coin still has two sides, and therefore two distinct faces. She’s a frustrated woman with a new gig, but her game is still the same, and my guess people treated her badly because she treated them badly.

I have sympathy for anyone who goes through difficult things, but the voices in your head are you, and if you never stop and make sense of them, you will be a constant danger to yourself and those around you. I am nothing like you and never experienced any of the things you mentioned. You boast “ex-porn star” for attention, and then boast prostitution for street cred, but the fact is, you were a prostitute for years, with only thirty movies under your belt. That doesn’t make you a star, it makes you a more recognizable whore. We all go and back and forth on our ideas and philosophies because life is ever-changing. I hated the word whore but now I like it. It’s a powerful word and only a word that powerful can be born of extreme feeling. Women have that kind of power, like it or not. But you don’t deserve to wear that word. Any person who claims to be purely controlled by outside forces is an object. There’s no word for you because, according to you, you don’t exist. No spirit and no thought that is your own. What a sad waste of life. But it’s not to late. Go worship your husband, for a change. Go give him a blow job and sit on his face and stop hitting on strangers. When you’re truly happy, you’ll find out what “God” is.

Random Whatnot, by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on June 11, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

I don’t know what to write about, so I’m just going to write about the things that pop into my head.

I woke up this morning to my husband telling me that twelve people were found dead from a flash flood that happened in the wee hours of the morning where my son has been camping with his girlfriend and her family this week. I won’t get specific about where, but I went through a series of panic and denial thoughts, and then the calming, ‘You don’t know what’s going on, so relax until you do know,’ and then just distracted myself with a project I’m working on, trying to push back horrific thoughts from the news posts I’d read about stranded people and then hundreds more missing and a makeshift morgue being set up in the area. My ex finally called to say he’d spoken with our boy and that the storm had just barely missed their area. I took a deep breath and am still shaking it off.

My husband is unhappy with his job, and it pains me to watch what he goes through. Some employers reward their star employees and some use their power to keep them down so they won’t go anywhere, I guess thinking that rewarding them will give them a big head and they’ll leave. What he endures is harassing and eventually they’ll just push him away. He’s math wiz and knows better and yet they still treat him like he doesn’t understand everything fully. Telling a genius they “don’t get it” is not an endearing way to help them “get it”. Just the facts, man.

Times seem so strange right now. People are up in arms about immigration and then confusing it with racism. We’re facing a lot of problems and I don’t mind saying I’m not very impressed with Barak Obama. I don’t like gun-happy Republicans who don’t know how to pronounce the word “nuclear”, but I really don’t like how absolutely ineffective Obama seems to be, either. A combination of brawn and diplomacy is obviously just too hard to come by in a figurehead, but I have to remind myself they are just figureheads. Oh well, we get what we get, I guess. I still wouldn’t go back and vote for Sarah Palin. We really are fulfilling a sad projection. When Doug and I saw the movie “Idiocracy”, we nearly cried. We are living that right now. It doesn’t seem as bad as that, but if you really look at everything, it is that bad. The movie, itself, is a product of a projection based on how things are right now.

And the documentary. It’s going and it’s going well, as far as getting good content, but it does piss me off that two resources were suggested that, in the end, tried to own the product. That was a real hassle. I can’t go into any detail about it, but why in the world would I make a documentary in favor of models being treated like people just to hand the product over to “work for hire” sources I don’t know and am not in favor of over the models? Fucking people.

I guess that’s it. The sun is out, my “sun” is alive, no one strange owns the documentary and Doug, though disgruntled, is near me.

Steve Driver and his victims…, by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on June 3, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

How sad that anyone gets to that point. I’m sure everyone knows about the incident by now. There are only so many details, but I’d like to interview someone close to Steven Hill and/or one of the office employees, company owner… The mainstream media will make a circus of this, as they do all things. Even something spun as an ‘in-depth and intimate piece’ by popular celebrity hosts would surely focus on the anti-porn aspects of this tragedy regardless of the fact that so many people from various walks of life exhibit this same desperate behavior. It would be nice to post something that talks about the actual reality of the situation.

I feel really bad for everyone involved in this. If you don’t know, Steve Driver worked for Ultima DVD, Inc. and also lived at the office building, and for some reason (they say because he was getting fired and kicked out, though I’m sure there’s so much more to it than that), he took hold of a machete, located in the building, and killed one man and wounded two other people. Letting someone live in your office building may seem like a kind thing to do, but this is the second violent situation in the adult industry, that I am aware of, to arise from someone living in an office building. The first being the shootout at Evil Angel when a man was living in the warehouse and police investigated one night. I tried to find a story on this, but I couldn’t. If this information in incorrect, someone please let me know. It probably is out of kindness that any company owner or manager would let someone live in an office building, but I also know there are very stringent guidelines against this sort of thing. Human Resources people will give you a thirty minute lecture about lifting a box inappropriately. I can only imagine the diatribe that would follow wanting to let someone live in a building when there should always be in place very specific rules that cater to labor laws and health codes. It may seem very good for the individual, but it is not very good for the company.

My ex let his friend live in his recording studio years ago, which was an office building in Texas. The friend had a dog, and between them both, they trashed his studio. They didn’t hurt the equipment, but the friend was lazy and left his trash laying about, and the dog tore up the carpet and left the nice pungent stench of urine everywhere. I’m not suggesting everyone is like this, just emphasizing the importance of keeping the work place, the work place. Not everyone can afford to hire a Human Resources person, but there are several locations online that provide the same information and guidelines for office life that an actual person can provide. www.HR.com looks like a good resource for information. Just a little digging and you can learn everything you need to know about procedures for calming hostile coworkers, talking to employees without crossing any lines, etc… The adult community gets a bad rap for being irresponsible in ways, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are very good reasons that certain laws are in place and very good reasons for having an experienced HR person on your staff to talk to people about safety, appropriate behavior, good work ethics – not to mention that they are the people you go to if you feel you’re being treated unfairly, or have a problem with a person, or the job, itself. They are the mediators, the counselors, and their presence is good for every work environment provided the actual person is doing their job, doing it well and not, themselves, being harassing and inappropriate. I’m sure there are cases where one must revolve through a few to find a good one.

I guess in feeling bad, and helpless because all I have are words and not enough information to talk about anything else, this is my way of releasing the intense feelings of regret I feel for everyone involved. If anyone knows anyone I can reach out to who might be interested in talking about it, let me know. I don’t have to videotape it or provide the person’s name. It would be nice to at least provide a source of information that is not spun, or corrupted, or geared toward gouging already traumatized people. The point is to fascilitate an opportinuty to talk about it in a theurapeutic way.

Relax!, by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on May 27, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

I was thinking about people, men and women, yin and yang and all that. I’m pretty deep into the documentary at this point and the impossibility of pigeon-holing people with labels, etc… Take Samantha Ryan, for instance, she doesn’t fit the “porn star” mold. Not the “porn star” stereotype that a person would like to have. She writes her own music, plays the piano and sings, can talk to anyone about a variety of topics and defies the “dumb bimbo” image. Bobbi Starr – trained oboist, educated, eclectic. Monica Foster – website developer, entrepreneur, owns and manages her own career and content. And I guess people would argue that there are always exceptions to the rule, but isn’t the act of labeling a person just a lazy way to avoid evaluating each person on a case-by-case basis? Isn’t that the foundation of all small mindedness?

I guess it all comes back to catching up with our present. So many rules and laws and stereotypes about people are stuck in the past. Our era is running at breakneck speed into the future with technology leading the way when we don’t even fully comprehend the consequences of all the things we create, and our feeling systems sit far back in time only crawling to catch up with all this bleeding invention. Our logic is hemorrhaging with political correctness and gadgets and how to make time for it all as our feelings sit safe and tucked away in a box in the attic. It’s not even valid to label people anymore, and yet in the business of catching the bus and watching missed television episodes on our iPod, we still label as a quick compartmentalization tool to avoid our own deeper minds wrought with unused, undissected feelings. And I suppose that has always been the case.

So what? Does one move to Tibet and meditate in mountain recesses to make time for sorting through feelings, for relaxing? Is it pssible that sorting through feelings is the only way to truly relax? We find these other mass communication ways to do it and bond with “our own kind” yet still seem to miss the mark. Going to church and nodding through talk of Heaven and golden gates and angels and yelling agreement at the person during their soliloquy. It’s all an organized “fast food” process of just making it through the day without killing anyone, including ourselves. Drink, shoot up, buy a prostitute, fill a prescription, collect animals, go to the store, read a book, run… It’s terrifying to think about sitting still. … Why? I’ve always wondered why. What bad can happen from it? I’ll see something I haven’t seen in a long time? I’ll feel something? But what if that’s not true? What if all the running and going is to avoid something truly wonderful? And I find even my judgments extend to the things I don’t know, out of fear. Too much fear of inactivity and too much fearlessness for running and going and accidentally colliding with someone and wars based on illogical things and misunderstandings. There should be classes in school about relaxing. Learning relaxation techniques at an early age should be mandatory. Hmmm…. and do we mistake sleep for relaxation? The conscious mind’s falling away is a “recharge” action, yet I sleep pretty restlessly. Every year there’s some new mental and emotional diagnosis and some new drug to treat it. Alcoholic, sex additcion, ADD, OCD… and maybe it all really comes down to our inability to stop for twenty minutes and really relax. Hmm… on that note…

Why Be ‘Julie Meadows’?, by Julie Meadows

I originally wrote this at Mike South’s blog on May 19, 2010. It is being added to other articles under the category ‘Archive Posts’.

Someone posed a question to me, sort of… It was in an e-mail and it wasn’t a direct question, but it made me think of it that way and want to write about it. The question, basically, is “Why put yourself through being ‘Julie Meadows’?” I think it’s a good question.

Some people are born with a healthy conscience. Some people are oblivious to apparent things and others have their humanity beaten or programmed out of them somehow. I wasn’t always very aware and I probably still have a long way to go, but I do work on it. Becoming ‘Julie Meadows’ was a way of working on it.

I write these posts lately about “weird and gross” people on my blog because there are so many people wondering around without their “lights” on. It doesn’t matter how much information you retain in school, how well you can parrot the things that are told to you, if you can’t work it out in your head and think for yourself you’re not a whole person. It’s important to have emotional intelligence as well as retain rote forms of information. Being artistic is a form of suicide. The process is to tear yourself down again and again and strip it all away until you’re bare. As long as you survive you will accumulate layers again, so there is always the opportunity to tear everything away. Even if you don’t think porn is art, living is, and living isn’t limited to any set of experiences.

Funny, but when I responded to the letter, I wrote, “Be careful what you wish for, right? I wanted to be deep. And what’s interesting is that anyone else would see that as an oxymoron, but once you’ve been drug through the slime and know what it’s like on the other side, I think it’s a good exercise for the heart. It can shrink or grow. I think deep down I wanted a bigger heart, and I got it.” I’ve always wanted a bigger heart and I want an even bigger one still. We are defined by our ability to rise to the challenge. What better way to know your ability to survive than to choose the greatest challenges of all?

My then-husband wanted me to get into the adult industry, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t have anything against it, I just wanted to be a regular actress. I was sure it would be more challenging than having sex on camera knowing I’m not very good at that, anyway. Too geeky. (lol) Of course, I learned that you don’t have to be very good at it to make a living, but that was, of course, after I started performing. No, I wanted to act in regular movies because I wanted to work on my ability to read a script and understand it, ask the right questions and feel the motivation the writer meant behind the words. I wasn’t a very good actress, either, but it was challenging. For a shy kid who trembled at even the notion of being in front of a crowd or being involved in a confrontation, it pushed me to try. There’s nothing wrong with pushing yourself to be more than you and other people might think you are. There’s nothing wrong with reaching towards the divine.

It finally seemed there was no way I could really compete with the talented people trying to make it. Younger, single people without families to take care of, with better resolve in their health regimens and more unique appearances. I got really introspective one night and thought about it, and I thought, “Why can’t I do it? It can’t be that hard? I can be mean. If anyone tries to bully me I can be as levelheaded or as mean as anybody else. Why can’t I do it? I’m determined. I can make anything out of it that I want to make out of it. I can actually turn it into something more than entertainment. I can be an activist. If I’m not afraid of death right now, why can’t I do the “impossible” in life? Why not?” I still think that way. Why not?

My favorite scene in Young Guns is towards the end, and Billy The Kid and his friends are faced with riding straight into the enemy or heading to Mexico to escape. His band of Regulators are pleading with him to flee and he gets pretty upset because he wants to face the enemy. He wants to live. It doesn’t seem that way, but it’s all relative. One person can think that living means playing it safe and preserving the chance of survival by making sure there is another day to look forward to, and some people feel that living means taking chances by fighting for the soul through acts of bravery. Neither is wrong, it’s just a matter of what living means to you.

Billy’s friends plead and finally he “gets it”. He tells them that everyone will be expecting them to head for Mexico and that it’s the greatest challenge of all, not something they want to hear, naturally. It’s the greatest challenge of all. When we want to test ourselves we pick the hardest thing to accomplish. What? A model can’t say important things? Be important somehow? Why? If I have blood in my veins and a light in my eyes and a strong heart, why can’t I say important things and be effective in some good way? Why not?

It’s all a matter of perspective. The first story I ever read by Charles Bukowski was The Most Beautiful Woman In Town. The most beautiful woman in town cuts her face up, puts holes in her nose, distorts her appearance, rebelling against the way people treat her based upon her looks. It’s all a matter of perspective. Being a porn star is a form of mutilation. You might see a gorgeous female who poses just the right way to entice you, but she is no different from the female who cuts up her face and pierces and tattoos it. She’s very punk rock. She may not know consciously that she is tearing herself down to bare her soul, but more than likely she does, and it doesn’t make her any less an artist for the virtual suicide. It makes her quite beautiful really. More beautiful to me than the female who plays it safe.

Tyra Banks, with her pompousness about never showing her private parts and the way she sneers at women who do and the way she molests their feelings by using the ruse of her false virtue against them is one of the ugliest people I’ve ever seen on t.v. There is something monstrous about her flamboyant cruelty, something so hideous about her anti-humanity and the lack of feeling that is required to cater to those important selling points based in false ideas about what poses as “real” and the fear of living, that I can’t even look at her without having a physical reaction. She is one the most disgusting figures on public television, but even ugly people are a valuable reminder that we must be careful of what we think we see. The child molesting priests, lying politicians and God-fearing parents who kill their children disciplining them are reminders that we can’t be too shallow in how we look at anything and anyone. The media has to sell you on the things you “want” above other things by putting those things down. In the end, they still just want your mind so you’ll give them your money. It has nothing to do with you unless there is a monetary gain. That is the truth.

There is a Navaho expression I don’t know how to spell – /nan-nuh-túh-chay/. It means “It is a good day to die.” It is the best reason I can think of to put myself through anything. To be brave. To tear the self down. To strip away the debris. To find truth through mutilation. To be art. To die so I can live again.

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