Career Day XXX.

My son just turned six last week. He has been in kindergarten the past seven months- half days, so the contrast between here and not here isn't quite so apparent. I love taking part in his little projects: the finger painting, learning his letters, the little brain-teaser puzzles... I think the whole learning experience has been just as new and exciting for me as it has been for him. But that was before the note he brought home last week:

MONDAY, MARCH 22ND- CAREER DAY! STUDENTS BRING YOUR PARENTS TO CLASS!

I almost forgot to breathe. Here was my darling, little angel all abuzz with excitement, "Cara's daddy's a cop-officer! Marissa's mommy is a secermatary! Jeremy's daddy works on the Wall Street! He sells stockings and bonds!" (I wish I were making this stuff up.)

I thought, perhaps, his excitement would attenuate as the day progressed; but, alas, motherhood holds no such luck. On and on her prattled about Career Day, for hours on end. There were to be cookies and juice, after all- cop officers, 'secermataries', cookies, juice- and of course- a veritable shindig such as this just wouldn't be complete without its token porn-star mom. The iconic antagonist of mini-van driving, bake sale endorsing, PTA attending mothers, nation-wide.

In Amsterdam, I'd be woefully commonplace. In Iran, I'd probably be strangled to death with my own ovaries. But in AMERICA, the good 'ol US of A, I happen to be just plain old stigmatic. That "poor child's" mother who pimps out her body for sneakers, vaccines, and regular unleaded for her red Honda Civic.

However, cowardice has never been my modus operandi. So the very next day, head held relatively high, I bravely led myself to the slaughter- with the cogent question still left unanswered: how in the hell do I tell 30 six-year olds that I have sex for money?

In the end, it was Occam's Razor all over again. You don't. You lie in order to avoid the scathing looks. The curled lips and only half-disguised mutterings. To spare that little boy of yours the stigma you all too willingly bear in order to see through yet another day.

Once in front of those thirty questing eyes, their little chins cupped in tiny hands, the lie came almost reflexively. "Hi, I'm XXXXX's mom and I'm in the movie industry!" The whole room whispered excitedly, my little boy beaming with pride.

Not exactly a lie, is it?

A cute, red-headed girl in overalls, freckles speckled desultorily across her face, raised a hand, "Can we watch one?" she asked excitedly.

Another boy piped, "My dad has her movies, probably. He has alla' the good ones."

I swallowed heavily, sweat beginning to accrue beneath my halter-top. Who would have thought- often bearing my body, and its most intimate functions in front of an entire filming crew on numerous occasions- that a few clueless, kindergartners could fluster me so easily?

I awkwardly deflected a few more questions before being (gratefully) saved by my son's teacher as she hurried on, ushering in the next waiting parent. "Maybe one day XXXXXX's mom can bring in one of her videos for us to watch. Wouldn't that be nice of her, class?" she asked, placating her disappointed students.

A chorus of cheers greeted the suggestion.

I don't think fire trucks could accurately replicate the exact hue of my face at this point. I was beyond embarrassed. In fact, I've seen bloody tampons with less vivid pigmentation.

But soon, the entire affair was put behind me- but I doubt it ever to be fully forgotten. And that night, looking into the mirror, I let the robe slide from off of my body. I studied the curves and creases. The undeniably embedded symmetry that the world unfailingly defines as beauty. I look, and try to see past this image. Past the superficial aesthetics. I look for that splotch of grey between the lines. That small annex of truth, so cleverly hidden in each of us, disguising who we truly are.

I see nothing. But still, I am not ashamed. Only bewildered. Does the things I do make me a good mother, I wonder, or just another dissolute grain of humanity, forever hiding truths behind the veil of necessity?

I pray desperately for the former.

Cam-sex and the cost of complacency.

Webcams, webcams, webcams. It's all anyone seems to be talking about these days. With the power to encapsulate all your naughty little deeds using a thumb-sized camera clipped to the top of your laptop, it would come as no surprise to me if the hard-copy porn industry took a staggering hit as more and more computer-savvy porn viewers lined in front of the broadband wagon to sate their varying desires. Why settle for static films containing cold and distant actresses, when the power to command and direct your entertainer of choice is only a click (and $2.99 a minute) away?

This weekend, I did a guest appearance on an adult site (that will, of course, remain unnamed), and I must admit: the whole experience was fairly... intoxicating.

I'm a horribly insatiable nympho- there's no shame in this girl's game- and usually, just the thought of potential viewers getting off while watching my films is enough to make my pussy sweat a little. But being able to see them live, first hand (no pun intended), and in HD no-less, was... well, let's just say that Jesus C. himself wouldn't have been able to calm that particular storm.

While on the site, I had the privilege of talking to a few of the girls who consistantly work in webcams, and to my aghast, I was told that most of them made 50+ thousand dollars a year working from home, a few hours a day, a couple days a week. But what was even more shocking then, was the staggering amounts of money that the sites themselves must make. Some of these companies had thousands of models working them- three to four hundred online at any given moment.

While, in their benevolence, taking a mere 70% of these girls' per-minute charge.

Uh, what--?

Once again, it all comes back to the simple issue of control. The very control that we don't have. Our reliance upon some slime-bag fuck who pulls in cash, hand-over-fist (again, pun wholly unintended) off our bodies and our sometimes degrading expense. We need a solution. We need to grab at just one of these illimitable strings affixed to our limbs and tug back. Show the world our inherent capabilities. Our raw, untapped potential. Many of these webcam models are beautiful, sexy, gregarious women with SO much going for them. Look at some of the top webcam models in the industry right now. How can their beauty remain blind? How can it remain inured and complacent? I'm here to tell you, it cannot. It can only sit silent and in the dark for so long before nature herself forces it to shine through.

Slut vs. Thief.

Last night I was called a slut. By my executive-producer, no less. I almost mustered up the strength to be annoyed the invective before realizing, I just don't care anymore.

Society loves to put these stupid, arrogant little labels on anything in reach. We duly ignore every defining, despicable variable that has slowly but surely melded each of us into the creatures we are today- choosing instead to seek comfort in the arms of simplistic type-casts and easily definable brackets: Slut. Whore. Skank. Tramp.

While retaining my anonymity, I have no qualms admitting that I have been raped on several different occasions. Seven, to be exact. And this body of mine- which is so sacrosanct in the eyes of the hooded, judging masses- has been violated to the point of irrecognition. Violated to the point where I don't even feel like it belongs to me anymore. Every time I make a dollar off this limpid flesh of mine, I am a thief. I steal from my creator alone (whether that be god or the hands of cosmic design, I don't know). But me, the composite form which defines me as a person- as an individual- is bound by no constructs of cellular tissue, no flesh and blood. What defines me is my actions. My ability to feel, think, and to love. My ability a million times over, making pennies or riches, and still retain my identity, uncompromised and intact.

But what of you, Mr. Excecutive Producer? Mr. Smiley-Glad-Hands? How many principles have you sacrificed in order to assuage that unremitting greed gnawing inside you? How many lies fed, dreams crumpled, and lines have you crossed in order to further your piss-ant, oily agendas? How many times a day do you sell out for your nickles? For your paltry comeuppance?

Tell me which is worse: Selling a wet-hole, or selling your humanity? Selling a body so already inundated with shame and regrets that another thrust couldn't ever hope to make a difference, or felling that tiny spark inside of you still able to feel?

So, call me a slut, a whore, a tramp- give it your best. Because to me, I'll always be just a plain old thief. Selling what doesn't belong to me.

What I believe isn't for sale.

The Art of Whoring.

I bought a notebook today. I might very well be the only pornography actress in history, body sheathed in some pseudo-silken robe scribbling furiously in her composition pad as six swinging dicks perambulate in the peripheral.

And I am sure at this moment at least a handful of Virginia-Slim-smoking, Anne-Rice-reading dilettante actresses are reading this page, scoffing at my presumption in calling myself an actress (while they dutifully receive their daily protein-intake from the giving end of some executive producer's limp dick). Which is fine. But I don't believe that art (and expression) can be so easily bracketed. Summed up into something nice and wholesome then wrapped in the thespian strings which hold an entire class of expression close to its greedy little chest.

Well, I have news for you: pornography is the most raw, passion-fraught form of art that can ever hope to be encapsulated. It depicts release in the forms of the emotional as well as the chemical. It triggers that response that all life is stemmed from- that same response that has driven kings to their knees and Average Joes to their basements alike. It is the universal response. And every time I lie on my back, feeling every greedy, passionate eye in the room fixated on my body- feeling that palpable stilling of breath in the air around me- I become something more than art. I become woman in all her consummate, unbridled glory.

You actresses mimic a contrived emotion. A mere echo based upon the feelings of something fictional rather than anything real and visceral. It's all fiction. That same emotion? I release it.

Who is selling their body now?