Porn Star in a Red Dress

Originally Posted Saturday, November 16, 2013

I wanted to title this something really offensive in reference to the old, antebellum south and wanted to use the words "colored girls" but changed my mind, sort of, as I seem to have used the words but not in a title.  It would have had the word "cotillion" in it, too.  It would have been really wrong as opposed to this paragraph which is just a report of something that almost happened that would have been really wrong.  I told the model what I wanted to title the series.  She laughed. 

"I've heard a lot worse than that," she said.  I'll bet she's heard much better, too. 

"I'm the worst photographer in the world," I said.  "I have a porn star in front of my camera and I only take pictures of her in a dress." 

It was true.  I looked her up when I got home.  She had told me this with a sort of surprised/miffed tone.  I guess she thought I would have known who she was. 

"I don't like porn, really," I said. 

She looked at me like the RCA dog looking at the gramophone.  "What?!  Why?"

"I'm a romantic," I said.  "Porn is all mechanics." 

She looked at me and made a porn star face.  "Like that?"

"Yea, like that." 

"It's fun," she said.  "It's so dramatic." 

"Mmm-hmm."  Then I told her, "I do like all the pictures every girl with a cellphone and a mirror takes, though.  I love those.  I think that is the cultural history of our time.  It tells the story of the early 21st century by and large, all those happy girls saying 'Look at me, look at me.'  And now boys are doing it too.  That's really a change.  Yep.  It tells the tale of a shifting morality."

She was looking at me like Nipper again. 

"You know what I mean." 

She wasn't much impressed with amateurs, she said.  She was a P-R-O-F-E-S-S-I-O-N-A-L. 

"What's the difference between a hooker and a porn star," I asked? 

"Hookers don't get to be stars," she said.  "You can be a porn star, but have you ever heard of a star hooker?" 

I didn't know. 

"Can I ask you a personal question?" 

"Sure." 

"Do you like dick?" 

"What?"  She doubled over and laughed and repeated the question.  I already knew the answer. 

"I'm a lesbian if that's what you mean.  I have a girlfriend." 

"Is she white or black or hispanic or other?" 

"She's white.  Why?" 

"I would have guessed.  You're kind of like a white girl--like the black girls on the Disney Channel."

"Yea, I guess." 

"Totally Raven." 

Good god, the conversation was just so wrong, but what could I do?  I wanted to know. 

She had to leave by 5:30.  That's when her daughter came home from school.  She had her when she was fifteen, she said.  I didn't think to ask if she had gotten pregnant at fourteen.

"When you go on the road to make porn movies, how long are you gone?"

"Ten days or so.  But I call my daughter every night and we do face chats, so she sees me all the time." 

We talked about me photographing her daughter.  She needed Christmas pictures.  It was the least I could do, I said.  She got her phone and showed me pictures of her girl and her girlfriend.  The girlfriend was in another state.  The porn star and her daughter were living with her mother. 

In the end, what can you say about it all.  I'm the weird one, I think.  I have a girl who makes a living being naked and I photograph her in an early 20th century dress.  She was cute.  She was funny.  I was curious, but only about her, her stories.  I wanted more time, not to photograph her, but to talk.  We will, she says.  We will sit down and talk.  I will take her to dinner.  I will photograph her there.  I will probe.  She is something.  She is a story.