CALICO LANE

Last night I went to see Cinekink’s screening of Graphic Sexual Horror, the Insex documentary by Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon. If you get the chance to see it, jump! It was well-done. It left me feeling both profoundly conflicted and aroused: a feeling, after several years of shooting with PD, with which I am familiar.

I’ve worked on both his current softer sites, Hardtied and Infernal Restraints. I never worked for Insex. The documentary took its name from the disclaimer on the site’s splash page: WARNING! GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR.

I did follow Insex avidly, from discovering it through its close. I had never seen anything like it. It was bizarre and terrifying and revolting and absolutely riveting.

I didn’t masturbate to it. I mean, it didn’t look like sex. I don’t know if I could have honestly told you that it turned me on.

Everyone comes to bondage porn for different reasons, but 912 still has the best story. When I met 912, she was PD’s girlfriend and videographer. I was more than a little scared of her and the screaming fights I seemed to provoke between her and PD. I was certain she’d walk in during one of PD’s “inspirational” moments with me in the barn, fling her HD camera to the ground, and rip off my head with her bare hands.

Over breadsticks at some dim and greasy Pizza Hut, I asked 912 how she got into modeling. In the film, she tells that story. She’d contacted Insex asking for a private session with PD. Naturally, she was confused and shocked when, after her shoot, they cut her a check! I had never heard such an innocent confession of desire. I do not understand your jealousy, I thought, but … that? I understand that.

I wrote Insex, too. How could I not? And I was emailing with Cyd about modeling at the time that their payment processors pulled out and the site shut down.

I wonder sometimes how I would have turned out if I had shot for Insex. I know I would have done a great many things. Maybe if I had done those things, it would have broken me — but now I never will.

Money was the theme running throughout the documentary. Can consent really exist where there is money, and so much of it? Where does responsibility lie? Many of the girls had drug habits to support. PD dated and played with his models and even, according to some, made work contingent on it. If he respected safewords, he has interesting interpretations of boundaries. Money made Insex lavish, careless, unprofessional and greedy; and then when the money was gone, they had to follow.

I usually embrace the money-and-consent problem. I like the feeling of having endured. Coerce me, baby! I want permission! Until I sort out my issues and get New Age-y with my desires, the money is a great excuse to have fun.

Of course, when people ask me why I don’t do vanilla porn, I tell them I don’t just do porn for the money. I want to do porn that interests me. I love sex; but this, this was irresistible. Maybe the people who ask me that question have never wanted something that much.

For better or worse, the old cast and crew of Insex populate the porn world I know. Matt Williams, Cyd, Angelene, Lorelei Lee — all familiar faces. It was fun to see them all interviewed after years of post-Insex gossip. Apparently, Claire Adams has always been possessed of that unearthly composure. And I was perversely cheered to see a young Princess Donna, threatened with a cattle prod, interrupt a live feed to hiss, “That is a hard limit!” Oh, Princess, how times have changed.

One of PD’s employees was there with his girlfriend. When I left I hugged him and said, “I’ll give you guys a call when I grow the balls again.”

I always need it. It’s just a matter of time.

Squirting was not a happy discovery for me.

Even the name sucks. “Female ejaculation” is no better: it’s clinical and derivative (we don’t say male ejaculation, do we?). Whoever named it didn’t have a poetic bone in their body.

I can remember exactly when it happened, too. I was 20, and I had just dyed my hair its customary color of screaming orange the day before. I was on the set of my very first bondage video, having my very first encounter with the Hitachi Magic Wand.

“Did you squirt?” said the top, pointing to a small puddle on the floor.

“Nnmm!” I said, which meant roughly, “I’m wearing a ballgag and I can’t feel my hands, but hell if I know what you mean.”

It was my first time alone in California, and a friend of mine was sharing his makeshift accomodations, in the spare room where he slept on the floor. During the week I stayed there we became much better acquainted. When a couple days after that shoot he produced a similar vibrator from his closet, I came promptly, soaking his sleeping bag to the carpet. I was shocked and mortified.

“I adore you, and all your various fluids,” he assured me.

I don’t! I wanted to wail.

In my mind, what had heretofore been a neat and tidy affair was now a hazard. I stopped masturbating with vibrators entirely, and protested whenever my boyfriend would bring the Hitachi out. Any appeal it might hold was offset by the idea of squelching around in a cold, wet bed. I would hold back during sex for fear that a tide might be forthcoming.

Apparently most women need G-spot stimulation to squirt. That’s never done it for me yet, for which I give thanks. I need a strong vibrator to squirt, directly on my clit.

Even given a towel or a plastic sheet, I was annoyed with the affair. Squirting was messy and effusive and, in my opinion, utterly unnecessary. I’m not polite about my orgasms: being quiet usually means I need a pillow to bite. What was wrong with the way things had been?

Mostly I dreaded being one of *those* girls. I’m already one of the mythical women who can come, quickly and reliably, from penetration. I can come from vibrators; I can come from fingers; I can even come from certain types of pain. (Caning, or chest punching, for example.) In a couple of years I’ll probably discover more: orgasm by chocolate, Martian rays, or something equally preposterous. I don’t really need to get on film and demonstrate how easy it is for a woman to come. Even before learning to squirt, I was the exception to the rule.

And then there’s the question I’m always asked: Is it pee? Scientifically no one has convinced me either way, but when it happens for me it’s either clear or milky, and neither smells nor tastes like urine. (Nor can I prevent it by going to the bathroom beforehand, more’s the pity.) Is it inconceivable that sometimes, I pee by accident, and neither of us realizes? I don’t think so, but I suppose anything’s possible, including the undignified.

I should be at peace with it, I know. Everything else in sex is messy and wet and undignified. I might as well welcome one more thing.

But first, we need a better name.

I wrote this post for a previous attempt at a blog. Some time has elapsed, including a move, several jobs, and quite a lot of life. Currently I work at a dungeon, and don’t do much modeling, but the general sentiment about sex work remains applicable.

Most of my friends know that I pose for photographs, sometimes nude. It’s business that I take when other models don’t because I don’t find it offensive. The money’s good, the work is enjoyable and interesting, and I think that quality erotica is something people should have in their lives.

But I haven’t had an outlet for my experiences as a model on and off the job. I have so many journal entries I wrote and never posted, emails to friends I composed and never sent. Egotism aside, these are things I wish I’d been able to read from other girls. They’re also things I wish I had the nerve to tell strangers and friends alike.

And I want to start sharing them before I forget what it was like when I started. I’ve been modeling… just over a year, now, since I first took off my clothes in front of a camera. It was around then, too, that I was struggling with sexuality as it applied to me — a struggle that really hasn’t stopped.

If I could ease someone’s confusion, head off their criticism, open someone’s eyes — that would be effort well spent, right? I don’t fancy myself a voice of any particular wisdom, but I can be honest. A year ago, I looked for something like what I’m about to write. Maybe someone else is looking, too.