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“What do you think of, ‘Ricky’s L.A. Adventure’, as a title for my next DVD?” I asked suddenly.
Connie made a face like she had stepped in something on the sidewalk. “Is that the best you can come up with?” she asked. “It hardly screams, ‘buy me!’.”
I smiled, and nodded my head. “Good point,” I admitted. I stared up at the ceiling for a moment, as if the answer might be written in big letters there. It wasn’t. “How about, ‘Wicked Teen Sluts of America’s West Coast’?”
“Better,” she said. I went to the desk and wrote the title down on a scrap of paper.
Connie tilted her head inquisitively and narrowed her eyes. She paused for a moment, like she was searching for the right words, and then asked, “Tell me the downside. Tell me what you don’t like about being a porn actor.”
I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t have to gaze thoughtfully off into the distance because I knew the answer immediately. “Intimacy,” I said. “That’s the downside.”
Connie leaned forward. “What do you mean?” she asked softly.
“Working in this industry comes at a cost,” I said. “The price you pay is the intimacy that most people enjoy and take for granted in their lives.”
“Because of all the sex?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s very difficult to maintain a relationship when you work in this industry,” I explained. “The sex is always physical, and it’s rare that you get the opportunity to really connect with anyone on a level beyond emotionally superficial.”
Connie’s expression was subdued and serious. She was watching me with careful eyes.
“I miss the intimacy of a real relationship,” I admitted. “I miss having that special someone in my heart and in my life. I miss kissing someone who I care deeply for, and I miss making love, Connie. I miss loving someone physically and with the emotional passion that people in love enjoy.”
“That sounds sad,” Connie said.
I shrugged. “This industry is demanding. It’s like being a professional athlete. The best, most vibrant years of your life have to be dedicated completely to your passion if you want to succeed. Then, maybe at thirty or thirty-five, you realize your career is over because you don’t have what it takes anymore to compete with the younger stars rising around you. So before the age of forty, most people in the industry are washed up and forgotten – cast aside and left to fend for themselves in a world they never really grew up in. They have no experience of love, or how to find it,” I shrugged, “or what it even feels like.”
Connie sat pensively for a long moment and then looked up. “You say you miss love, Rick… but to miss something so powerful means you must have experienced it…”
“Once,” I said with a forlorn sigh.
“Want to tell me about it? How old were you?”
“Twenty-three,” I said.
“And…?”
I sighed, overcome by a sudden sense of heaviness at the memory. “And I was living in Italy.”
Connie looked intrigued. “Was the girl you fell in love with Italian?”
I nodded. “I met her when I was in Europe. I was working in porn, and had a contract with a film producer who was based in Italy, so I moved there for eight months and shot about a dozen films in that time.”
“Was the girl you loved a porn actress?”
I shook my head. “No, she was a photographer. She was studying photographic art. I met her at a little sidewalk café one afternoon.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“She was beautiful,” I said softly. “Her name was Amelia. She was living away from her family while she studied. She had a tiny little studio apartment above a pastry shop.”
“What do you remember of her?”
I smiled wistfully. “Everything,” I said. “She had the face of an angel, and the most beautiful smile. She smoked cheap French cigarettes and when she looked at me, I swear she could see straight through to my soul.”
“I didn’t know you spoke Italian.”
“I didn’t – and I still don’t. But somehow when I was with Amelia words didn’t seem important. Everything she said was in her eyes and the touch of her fingertips. It was in the way she smiled, the way she moved. She was love in motion.”
I glanced up at Connie. She had her elbows propped on her knees, sitting on the edge of the sofa with her chin cupped in her hands, gazing at me.
“The first time we made love was on the rooftop of her apartment building,” I smiled to myself fondly. “Amelia brought a bottle of wine and I brought a blanket, and we sat, high above the city, looking down at the lights and up at the stars. That’s when I learned the difference between making love and having sex,” I said. “That was the night I grew up, I suppose. Everything before that evening with Amelia was about the physical. After that night I realized I was a changed man. Something inside me had come alive… and then died again when we eventually broke up.”
“How long did the romance last?”
I shook my head. “A few months,” I said softly.
“Did she know you were a porn actor?”
“No. I told her I was in advertising.”
Connie looked suddenly intrigued. “Why didn’t you tell her what you did for a living, Rick? Were you embarrassed?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I’ve never been embarrassed about the work I do. I’m proud of my body of work over the years. I didn’t tell Amelia because I knew she wouldn’t understand.”
“And did the romance end when your work finished in Italy?”
“Before that,” I said sadly. “One day she followed me to where we were filming,” I made a helpless gesture with my hands. “She thought I was having an affair.” I dropped my eyes to the floor. “In hindsight, it probably would have been better if I had been. At least that she could have understood.”
“I’m sorry,” Connie said in a whisper.
I looked up and smiled. “That was all a long time ago,” I said like it didn’t hurt anymore. “But one day… one day when I’m finished making porn films, I want that again, Connie. I want that all-consuming passion for someone. I want to love someone in the way the great poets write about it. I want to love someone so much that I know if I ever lose them my heart will break.”
I needed a drink – badly.
I went into the kitchen and spent a long time staring at the litter of bottles on the counter, before mixing together a witch’s brew. I drained the glass in a single gulp and prayed the numbness would come quickly while I tried to think about something else.
Connie watched me in silence. She waited until I had come back into the living room, and then glanced up at me from out of the corner of her eye. “What do you believe is the attraction of porn for men?”
“The attraction?”
She nodded. “What is it about porn films that men find so interesting?”
I smiled. “Well, I have a theory… if you would like to hear it.”
“Sure.” She flipped through her notebook until she found a new blank page and squirmed on the sofa for a few seconds to get herself comfortable.
“I think a lot of men watch porn films because, in their heart, they want to believe that sexy women really do exist,” I said.
Connie looked nonplussed. She sprinkled me with a cold little smile. “That’s it? That’s your theory?”
I nodded. “That’s what I believe in a nut-shell,” I said. I found a half-empty bottle of rum, hidden in the litter of empty bottles on the kitchen counter. I poured myself a drink.
“A lot of men live boring lives with boring wives,” I explained. “They watch porn because they want to believe that somewhere in the world, sexy nymphomaniac women really do exist. Guys want to hang on to the dream that one day a woman like the ones they watch in porn films will walk into their lives,” I said.
Connie’s head was bowed over her notebook.
“Watching porn is a way of escaping the reality of the dragon-wife they’re married to who only wan
ts sex once every few weeks, and then only in the missionary position, and only in the bedroom after the kids are asleep… and only with the lights out. And only for fifteen minutes.” I said, then stood there, like Napoleon, with one of my hands tucked inside the opening between my shirt buttons.
(I was scratching).
