Dear Darrah,

You must have assumed, as my most frequent commenter, that I’d eventually notice you. At first I was unsure. I’ve never heard the name Darrah before. It’s very pretty. The same thing I thought when I named myself Kayden (inconsequentially a boy’s name). I wanted a name that no one else had. To this day, I’m what comes up on the search engine even if you spell it wrong or leave off the last name. Jenna would have been a hard name to have in porn. Jenna Jameson and Jenna Haze pretty much own that one. Searching for me would have driven wonderful traffic to them. But it was my stripper name and I did try it on for size as a model. Jennal Nickol. Nicole is my middle name. They say the best way to name yourself in porn is to take the name of  the first street you lived on and combine it with the name of your first pet. I would be Clarrissa Sampson. I like it. Wish I had thought of it sooner.

But back to you. The first comment of yours that caught my attention was on “The Fastest Way to Kill a Propostion”. It made you angry. So angry in fact, that you left two comments back to back. You said:

“If you publish any personal information of any of these men, you and Mike will be sued.

You need a thicker skin honey if you want to be in porn. Why are you surprised that a man assumes that you also hook on the side when you make your living having sex on camera with strangers? Yes I know the difference between porn and prostitution. But porn is a form of legalized prostitution. Every day plain-jane Mary Smith down the street gets propositioned. Why are you surpised that you do? If you don’t hook like most other male and female porn stars, then just delete the email or walk away.

Many porn stars make videos having sex with their fans instead of other porn stars. She’s not having sex with a professional. So isn’t she a prostitute? Who do you date off camera? Does he drive a nice car? Does he make lots of money? Does he own his own home? Would you turn down a date if he said he was taking you to Burger King instead of Mr. Chows? Everyone is a prostitute unless they are their own boss.”

Then you said:

“You really take yourself way too seriously and unless you come down from that thrown you placed yourself on, your crash landing back down to Earth will be bumpy. You were complaining on your first blog post here how “Vivid” served McDonalds on your first porn shoot. You’re not Julia Roberts on a $100 million dollar budget movie. Were yu expecting lobster being flown in and champagne being served? I don’t have a problem with prostitution or porn obviously. But you make your money from having sex with strangers on camera for all the world to see. Don’t be surrprised or insulted that a man assumes that you would hook on the side. And I’m sooooo sure if George Clooney was offering you $25,000 an hour or Brad Pitt offering you a starring role opposite him all in exchange for sex, that you would gladly say yes.

Be grateful that you’re still being propositioned before your looks start to fade and you start gaining weight. You won’t have many of these men propostitoning you anymore or any porn company giving you a contract.”

Darrah, I don’t think you realize exactly where I’m coming from. You couldn’t possibly. As you later admitted in another comment, you aren’t in the industry. I would love to get sued for posting a propostion on this site. I don’t honestly think I would be though. I don’t even think I can be but I haven’t done the research. Where are you going to find a guy willing to stay involved in what will quickly become a very public lawsuit in which he tried to pay me for sex and I said no? And if there is one out there, by all means, bring it. The amount of exposure I’d get from it is priceless.

And this has nothing to do with thick skin. I’m annoyed, not hurt. I’m annoyed the same way I’m annoyed when the same spam makes it into my inbox after I’ve marked it as spam ten times. I have been deleting the emails and walking away for a year and a half now. The reason for posting that blog went entirely over your head. I didn’t post it because I’m surprised that I’m propositioned, or because I think there is anything wrong with prostitution. I posted it so I would get fewer emails about it and as a reassurance to some of the people in my life who support me in this industry but only to an extent. And guess what darling? It worked. I have not recieved a single propostion since that post went up.

Who do I date? Well, right now, a fellow pornstar. Before him, a man who “packaged and sold risk” as he put it. That’s what got me. It was hot. He dealt in credit derivatives and I just wanted him to talk and talk. There was nothing better than hearing about the way money works from a mind like his. Before him, a bartender. A greek god more than anything. Money is not the single motivator. I like men with the minds to make money. I like men with ambition and money usually follows. But I don’t date men simply because they have money. That’s stupid. It’s not like they’re going to give it to me. Same reason I won’t fuck a guy simply because he drives a ferrarri. Its not like I get to keep it afterwards. And really, if you can attack women for liking men with resources, then we should be attacking men for liking younger women with a waist to hip ratio of .71. These are the ways attraction naturally flows. Evolution. I learned it in high school.

I don’t take myself all too seriously Darrah. You take me too seriously. But if we are going to split hairs about catering with McDonald’s (how on earth were you able to conjure up any sort of emotion about that line anyway?), then please name one venue outside of a six year old’s birthday party where catering with McDonald’s seemed appropriate. I don’t expect lobster and champagne. I would look bloated before my scene (:

If George Clooney or Brad Pitt approach me about sex, you’re damn right I’d fuck them. I’d fuck them at the same time, camera or not. I’d give them my first DP. That’s a horrible example. Now ask me if I’d fuck Jack Nicholson. Do you see where I’m going with this? Here is my test for whether I will fuck the guy on camera: would I fuck him off camera? It’s very simple. Have you seen Nick Manning and Tommy Gunn and Erik Everhard and Jean Val Jean? Gorgeous. I look forward to my work. They aren’t strangers either. But its a moot point because I’d fuck them anyway.

You say everyday plain mary-jane gets propositioned off the street? Do you mean mary-jane the street hooker or a regular girl? I was not once propostioned before I started stripping. Guys do not just walk up to random girls on the street and offer them sex for money. We are not all starring roles in Borat the movie. And before I began being propositioned I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. It’s not like a period where girls can’t wait to get it to confirm their womanhood. When I’m too old and ugly to be propositioned I won’t miss it either. And I don’t think I’ll be fat. Thank god I have genes on my side there. I will miss being attractive to the opposite sex though.

That’s actually how I started thinking about your name. Men and women focus on and interpret things differently. They communicate differently. I originally thought you were a bitter middle aged woman when your comment focused on me one day getting old and fat. I thought Darrah was a very pretty name for a girl. Maybe I would name my firstborn that. Maybe it would be my tranny name. Or my next horse’s name. You see, Darrah, small things take me off into many splintering directions. You have become more of an excercise in creative writing than anything. On my next post you began to remind me of the third grade woven bracelet we all wore. WWJD. It was intended to stop and make us think about our actions, to ask ourselves, What Would Jesus Do?  Now as I type I wonder, what would Darrah say? Frankly, I just don’t know. I can rely on you posting a very emotionally charged comment. I can rely on you posting the exact opposite of whatever I say or believe. I just don’t always know what its going to be. And now I’m a bit attached to your input. You are the blog yin to my yang.

So I was almost disappointed when it took you awhile to comment on “Goddammit Shelley Lubben”. You didn’t fail me though. You called Jenna Jameson a gold digging whore who hates the industry and you defended Shelley Lubben because, according to you, so many girls call her for help and if she scares girls away from porn, then good, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. 

Jenna Jameson can be called a lot of things, but where did you get gold digger, Darrah? She and her ex made their fortune together and now she’s independently wealthy of any man. She doesn’t have to dig for gold. And I really can’t see her hating the industry, privately or publicly. It has done more for her than it has for any other female performer.

About Shelley: I cannot be unbiased here. How, as a self proclaimed fan of porn, can you honestly say it’s good for the girls to be scared away because they shouldn’t be there in the first place? Where is the dissonance here? You tell me, from your outsider point of view, to just wait, I haven’t been in the industry long enough to be bitter. Then you hail Shelley as an expert-altruistic-repentant-ex-pornstar. Do you realize she shot movies for two years and my first scene was shot in october 2006. I’m three months away from expert status in that case. If so many girls call her for help, then why has she only “saved” five of them?

I do think about what you say though. I asked myself, have I been traumatized in this industry. How has it changed me. What are my biggest stressors? I freaked out yesterday. I started crying. I realized I am overly sensitive in some areas. A touch of PTSD maybe? It wasn’t porn though. It was because my horse layed his head on my lap. I was saddling him up and he started choking on grass hay (no, the bit was not in his mouth). He was heaving and gasping and I threw the saddle off of him and came around and stood in front of him with my phone open not knowing who to call. I haven’t gotten a vet since I moved to LA. Would 911 respond? They do for cats in trees don’t they? Horses can’t throw up but he looked like he was about to. Then he just dropped the full weight of his head on my lap. Horses don’t do that unless they are sick or sedated. The last time Intrigue did that to me he died there. So when Conte did it I immediately broke down in tears. I couldn’t handle losing two horses in six months. Conte is fine though. We can all be a bit melodramatic at times.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that you just like to argue. I don’t know why you chose me as your adversary. I rather like it though. You give me a little spike in my day. People ask me why I chose to buy a young unbroke arabian stallion when I could have gotten a safe and well trained gelding for the same price, all other things equal. Because it’s interesting. You do push it though and I think you’re mostly wrong. Like when your moral reasoning for not supporting Max Hardcore is that he wouldn’t return the favor. Moral reasoning based on how someone else might hypothetically behave is an absence of moral reasoning… if that makes sense.

And of course, we cannot forget my first post about Shelley Lubben. The one where you gave a breakdown of exactly how wrong I was about the prevalence of  stds and drugs, way before I knew whether you were in the industry or not, before I cared to find out whether Darrah was a masculine or feminine name. I’m finding more and more every day that these figures are hazy and unreliable, that they can be manipulated for and against the industry depending on who we’re counting as “the industry”. But you knew. You felt very strongly about that too. You also said I was off on porn addiction vs. sex addiction. I got my information from the man paid to testify to the committee… the one with the PhD… and I can’t help but wonder what your credentials are…

Either way Darrah, don’t take me too seriously. I always have two motivators for writing a blog: the issue at hand and the need to write a blog. I think with the kind of comments you like to leave you will probably like the attention. I’m giving you something you can cut and paste on your own blog, something you can tear to pieces with rebuttals and personal attacks. Mostly I just have nothing especially important to write about right now. Still no horrible abuses at the hands of porn…. no recent propostions… nothing that could really piss off a large group of people. Maybe I can piss you off instead.

Sincerely,

Kayden Kross