Crazy In Love

 

By Kayden Kross (via email for the dumb fuck who thinks that because I post these I write them…Kayden writes much better than I do)

So I’m sitting in a hotel room. I’m sore and I’m antsy for two separate reasons mostly related to planes and uprooted sleep schedules. I’ve had four cosmos, at least, but probably more, and the AC cannot battle the humidity any better than the windowpanes can battle the sound of the crickets outside who bark, not chirp.

I spent some time poking around the internet. I got a blog posted that was not well written but got the story across and that was all the energy and/or coherence I could muster. I don’t want to open my book because it’s a good one and not meant to be wasted on times like these, where I will absorb nothing but remember just enough to not want to reread it. It’s a book based on free, on a free economy and how to monetize free. It says free is not going away and I believe it based on countless tube sites who have transformed our industry by giving away stolen content for—you guessed it—free. If it were a Tom Clancy novel though I’d tear through it right now without remorse. I hate him and everything his crap stands for and I like the idea of reading and forgetting it like a cheap whore. Danielle Steel too. If I had a dictatorship there would be book burnings, and anything sold in grocery stores would be at risk. I’d call it “Quality Control”. It has the ring of propaganda to it.

It’s funny what you end up thinking about when you have no deadlines or things to pass dead time. I caught up on Mike’s blog, where Julie Meadows posted a response to a question asked long ago about why us girls end up with those losers. The pimp and ho phenomenon. The bad boyfriends. We’ve all had them.

I can’t say I’ve never had one. I have and he trumps most of the stories I’ve heard. How did I end up with him? Simple. I didn’t know I was dating him. He lied. About his past, his future, his age, his job, his finances. The person I thought I was dating was completely different. And after I figured it out—on his birthday (“I’m sorry baby, I forgot what year I was born” (I’m offended that he thought that one would get by me)), it was absolute hell getting rid of him. Suddenly he had a history of domestic violence, and a history of bumming off of people, and an unstable relationship with alcohol and a whole host of other bigger issues that magically appeared overnight. I still deal with the aftermath of having dated him. You don’t realize how serious a serious relationship is until you meet the person who would use it against you.

But everyone since him has been wonderful. I can’t say I have a history of dating losers. I think these things get blown out of proportion. Nine girls can date great guys and sustain drama free relationships and then you get the one who can’t and you’ve got a story and it propels the stereotype. It seems like we go through life always hearing about but never actually meeting this enormous fleet of psycho exes who are out there running around, lurking in the shadows waiting to key your car or check your phone and run crying to your mother. My theory is that we all get a little psycho in a bad relationship, we all do the things we would never think to do to a close friend or family member. But we’d do it to the person we love most passionately. It’s backwards and horrible but it happens again and again.

Bad relationships and crazy relationships and parasitic relationships are not unique to our little industry. We are just especially keen on airing our dirty laundry and we’ve been catapulted into an especially uneven earning bracket with all other things held equal. We’re a bunch of girls dating the guys were dating before we started making money. The higher earner always seems to give a little support to the lower earner in relationships and men have traditionally held that role. Why would you expect any different in porn, where for once the chicks aren’t banging their palms against a glass ceiling and making 70 cents to a man’s dollar? As for crazy, we date the people we have chemistry with, or at least we try to. What is chemistry other than a magical connection you feel with another person who can fill in the missing parts just right. Don’t you remember high school science with the atoms floating around looking for that other half, the extra electrons to scoop up or the buddy atom who was also missing a few electrons and they would team up because together they were stable. They form a bond. That’s chemistry and when you find it you don’t want to let it go. It can make you crazy and people went crazy and cheated and freeloaded in relationships long before porn and strip clubs came along. Maybe next week we’ll talk about one of the other thousands of things that people sometimes deal with in life that is also not the fault of porn.

28600cookie-checkCrazy In Love

Crazy In Love

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7 Responses

  1. Although I agree with you in general about good and bad relationships having no corollation with the porn industry, I think you have entirely missed the nature of the question originally asked of Julie Meadows. It is possible that those active in the porn industry don’t quite understand the distinction in the question from someone not affiliated with porn, as the question I believe is probably asked from a specifically monogamous point of view. (Even though the john may not have been being monogamous when he asked the question) I think the question the man was intending to ask is this: “What would cause a woman to be attracted to and support a man who is not just parasitic in behavior, but in addition, is supportive of and sometimes instrumental in creating a situation where the woman he supposedly says he loves is intimate with other people for the sole purpose of producing an income that will support him.” And that is very specific to the adult industry, whether it be filming or prostitution because it involves sex for money.
    My experience with female porn stars is somewhat limited, but that experience would tell me this situation arises a hell of a lot more than 1 out of 9. Maybe your chemistry answer is still a good analogy for what would make a woman tolerate this. Or maybe as you also hint in your statements about high wage earning women, it also provides an extra sensation of power being financially responsible for a man? I think Julie was trying to answer the correct question in her blog.

  2. That’s funny! I just had a friend text me and say, “Wow…that Kayden Cross chick really just kind of dissed your blog,” and now there’s a comment explaining my stance. Awesome! Cocaine is right, but I should say, I don’t feel dissed at all. I only have my own perspective and that of my friends and all perspectives are correct and valid. Mine just happens to be a perspctive long after the sex industry, long after two bad relationships, and during one really good one. I don’t know non-sex industry women, so I can’t speak for them. Also, can I say how much I love topics that stir up dialogue. Weeeee! I really miss Shayla LeVeaux, too. Anyone know what she’s up to?

  3. Good for you Julie I know for sure Kayden wasn’t “dissing” you she was just coming at it from her own perspective and that is why I am extraordinarily proud of my writers, my readers and my commenters, we can speak to a topic without being all defensive about the fact that someone may not agree with us.

    Julie you and Kayden are both amazing, so is Steve Lick you all bring a much needed diversity here i am thankful to have you.

    As for Sjayla, I love her too I saw a few months ago something abouti her coming back but never heard any more….I havent seen her in ages….Always liked her though.

  4. Mike, you keep good company. I say that knowing full well that I am inflating my own ego. Awesome! j/k I haven’t read anyone’s writing on your blog that I don’t enjoy. Good writing is always fun to read. “…and the AC cannot battle the humidity any better than the windowpanes can battle the sound of the crickets outside who bark, not chirp.” That definitely paints a picture. 😀

    And it looks like Shayla is launching a new site at http://www.shaylalaveaux.com. I sent her an e-mail.

  5. Julie-
    Thanks for not taking the blog personally. It wasn’t aimed at you or your response it was aimed at the question in general. You touched on part of what I was getting at when you pointed out that men paying women alimony is considered a good thing but parasitic when flipped around. The thing is, it’s rarely flipped around except in industries like ours because of the wage gap.

  6. Is it? There are women in other jobs that make good money. I would be very interested know just how often it happens that women who do well in other jobs support their husbands. And there are couples who make about the same who both work in adult. But the question I answered was still about what makes a suitcase pimp and a stripper and/or prostitute and/or porn star. The question is still what makes two people get together and start down the road to the sex industry.

  7. Kayden, I’m really not trying to offend you and your writing is quite expressive and a pleasure to read. If you can make crickets bark, you must be an amazing woman. I do, though, get the distinct feeling that your perspective is somewhat skewed as though you have no idea of anything outside of the porn industry. One, you seem to clearly be in denial about the fact that the question Julie was trying to answer is very clearly specific to the porn industry and two, you also seem to be under the false assumption that there is a wage gap of some sort in porn and that porn is the only industry where women can be high wage earners where one sided relationship issues might arise.

    For the first issue, it is clearly an adult industry related issue. I do hope you read my version of the question again and give it some thought. It is a very valid question for someone to ask and I think it is important that women in the adult industry give it some serious thought. Women in the adult industry are somewhat like athletes. You might make a premium wage over wages you’d be paid in other industries, but there are reasons for the wage premium outside of the fact that you’re having sex on camera for money preserved for generations to come. You have a VERY short career window with which you are capable of earning that high wage, and then where are you? Will you want to be making MILF, Cougar and Jaguar movies for the rest of your life? There may come a time when you want to get out of the porn industry, and then what will you do? I couldn’t count the female adult film stars I’ve met with just the fingers and toes I have available, and nearly every single one of them wanted to get out of the industry and 99.9 percent of them were not able to do it because they hadn’t saved any of the money and couldn’t get a regular job. There are only so many off camera porn gigs, and they don’t pay so well, and it is a rare day in hell when any mainstream company of any sort will hire a retired porn star. It may not be that the employer looks down on you for your past career, but they don’t want to take the chance of loosing customers who might not be so understanding. If they do hire you, it may be under the false impression that you are obviously easy and they are going to get some perks. The question is important to understand, not so much from the relationship perspective involved with the parasitic partner, but from the perspective of why many of these women have none of this high wage money saved when they decide its time to get out of pornography, can’t get a normal job to put food in their mouths, don’t have a man who is willing and capable of supporting them and then often find they are having to compromise their morals to a far greater extent than they ever were when choosing to have sex on camera for money. I could rattle off a handful of once A list talent in this exact situation right now! An athlete with a short earnings career can at least get real jobs afterwards in other industries, maybe gigs pushing weight loss systems or become sportscasters due to their past fame, but you’re not really going to have those options unless mainstream develops a lot more acceptance of the porn industry really damn fast. I don’t see any non-active porn stars getting product endorsements and most of those getting the opportunity to host shows are still doing scenes. The last thing you need when its time for you to get out of porn, by choice or by necessity, is to find you have no money left because you let a guy siphon it off of you, you can’t find a new income, and you suddenly don’t have the guy anymore either, who you thought you had great chemistry with…because he needed to go find another woman who actually has money to take care of him. The people producing the movies don’t care that your trapped in the industry, they make a hell of a lot more money off of you than YOU make off of you. Take Julie for instance, I know she’s been out of the industry since 2005, yet she’s been in numerous new releases the past 4 years…of which she made ZILCH! Why…because most new girls in the industry get blinded by what seems like exorbitant amounts of fairly easy money for a scene and you don’t think about the future, and thus never consider pushing for contracts with residuals like mainstream talent. I remember hearing the prior owner of what was once one of the larger companies respond when asked about what he thought of one of his former contract girls, it was a chuckle of satisfaction followed by “yeah, that stupid bitch made over 200 movies for me.” The point is, the feeling you have now of being on top of the world may someday be the feeling of covered in shit in the bottom of a ditch with no way to dig yourself out, unless you use what you have now to safeguard your future. I’m certainly not suggesting that you currently have a suitcase pimp on the payroll, but I really hope this sinks in and you are never one to fall into this trap.

    For the second issue, I think you’ve been deluded by somebody that there is a wage gap in porn, probably intentionally. Larry Flint makes a lot more money than you do- he’s a man in porn, Mark Bell makes a lot more money than you do- he’s a man in porn, Paul Fishbein probably makes a lot more money than you do- he’s a man in porn…I could go on for an hour! If you are just referring to those earners in front of the camera, that’s only a small fraction of the porn industry, but even at that I’d bet that Evan Stone for example, has at least at one point in his career, made what you’re making…even if he had to work a lot harder to do so (no pun intended.) And as far as porn film crews go, they are typically substantially underpaid compared to their mainstream counterparts, so of course you’re going to have a wage gap from you to them, but that’s far from an accurate test group to sample to compare your earnings to the rest of mainstream society’s males. There’s really no wage gap in favor of women in the porn industry overall, and in fact, when you consider the size of the revenue stream created annually from the pornography industry, you’re paid peanuts compared to the money you are generating. You may be making a lot of money compared to your peer group, and those reaping the rewards of your work probably want to convince you that you’re making big bucks in comparison to something or someone else, but I can tell you it’s not that much in the big picture and every time you do a scene you are more than likely getting screwed twice, not once. As far as high wage earning women, Um, how about Oprah…she’s not in porn and makes more than most men alive in any industry. Danica Patrick (Racecar Driver) is one of the highest paid drivers in the sport without ever having won a race, though sexy- not in porn. Meredith Whitney (financial analyst) was one of the only people to call the economy correctly over the last few years, I’m sure she made a lot more money than most of the men in the industry. Angelina Jolie, although you would sometimes think she’s trying to make porn, is in fact not and certainly makes more money than a lot of men in her industry and probably more than all female talent in porn (excluding maybe Jenna, as you’d have to consider her a producer at this point.) Look these up: Safra Catz, Meg Whitman, Barbara Novick, Sue Decker- none in porn, but all paid substantially higher than a lot of males in their respective industries. They very well may have men that leach off of them, but they won’t be blackballed from other careers because they did pornography, should they one day find themselves penniless and in need of employment.

    Female talent in adult entertainment needs to be cognizant of her future even more so than almost any other industry, because you can be guaranteed nobody else is doing it for you. You need to be aware of what part of your future earnings capacity you are giving up when you agree to be on screen talent in adult entertainment, because it will most likely catch up with you. Most adult talent doesn’t have any type of contracts for residuals to provide future income; and though you may have Social Security taxes deducted from your pay, you most likely don’t get IRAs and a 401(k) for retirement, and odds are that you will never be able to have another career outside of the adult industry, at least not in this country. This is the subtext hidden in the original question.

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