“When you uttered your first line on the set of Priceless,” Steve Orenstein, or Blinky as I now called him, told me, “I breathed a sigh of relief. You could act.”

I didn’t think I could. All I really did was deliver my lines without looking like a complete imbecile. But I guess that was good acting to him. Steve wanted to shoot a big-budget production on actual film, a sixday $120,000 job —his biggest movie ever, by far. So he pitched me a bizarre story that a sweet grandmotherly woman, a painter named Raven Touchstone, had written. It was a take-off on the real-life story of Ed Wood, a cross-dressing director responsible for movies that were so bad they were good, like Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Raven’s script was a movie within a movie about a cross-dressing porn director filming a camp classic. Steven St. Croix was cast as the Ed Wood character. Blinky had a high-concept, campy John Waters —like movie in mind, except with more nudity and sex. He was so serious about the film, which would go through several working titles before finally becoming Blue Movie, that he even loaned us his own car to film on set.

It was convenient that I was dating Steven, whose oddball sense of humor was starting to grow on me, because we would walk around all day running lines and improvising in character. I spent hours studying my lines. Blinky’s words kept ringing in my ears about having faith in my acting, so I knew I had to deliver. Here, finally, was a new challenge for me, something I had never done before. Of course, in the back of my mind, I imagined the audience with one hand on their dicks and the other on the fast forward button skipping over the acting scenes, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

I arrived on set in my pajamas at 6:30 A.M. for the first day of shooting. I was so eager that I beat the entire crew there. So I sat around in my duck-covered flannel with built-in feet, writing in my day planner and waiting. Half an hour later, the makeup artist, a dramatic, highly cultured queen named Lee Garland walked in and asked me where my mom was. When I told him I was the star of the movie, he did a double-take. I wondered when I was ever going to look my goddamned age. Lee later became one of my closest friends and confidants in the business —he still does my face on set to this day.

I was relatively unknown in the industry at the time, and everyone else on set seemed to know each other from hundreds of previous productions. The girls, most of whom had been in the industry longer than me, were extremely catty, probably because I was starring in the movie over them. It didn’t matter, because there was only one girl I was excited to see: Jeanna Fine, who had been Savannah’s best friend and lover. The first porn I ever saw had the two of them in it. I idolized them both.

My hair was up in rollers for my first scene, a solo masturbation in bed. There’s nothing quite like looking like crap in front of a bunch of girls who want nothing more than for you to look like crap. Off camera, a production assistant threw me a big blue ball that I was supposed to catch in the scene. But I was so nervous I kept dropping it. Fifteen takes later, after exasperating the crew and making my competition very happy, I finally caught it.

I didn’t know if I’d be good at acting, but it was so easy to draw from all the bad things that had happened to me. I didn’t even need words to convey anything, just my eyes. As I sat on the bed, playing with a big blue ball that symbolized some cross between a lost childhood and a lost lover, I could see the director, Michael Zen, in my peripheral vision and he had an ecstatic look on his face, a mixture of relief and optimism. It was all the encouragement I needed.

I’d never worked with a director like Michael Zen before. He’s a heavyset, meticulous, and soft-spoken visionary, with an odd little haircut and glasses that give him an Elton John aura. I always thought he was gay until I found out he was married. The oddest thing about him is that he doesn’t direct sex scenes. He labors over the acting and filmmaking, and if anything goes wrong he gets extremely flustered. Then he leaves the room just before the sex scene and lets his assistant director take over. He is one of the few true artists making adult movies.

His set was the first one I had been on that felt comfortable, clean, and professional since the Andrew Blake movie. I looked around and thought, “This is my niche. This is what I want to be doing.” After all the drama of the last few years, I just knew that this was where I belonged. This was what my life had been leading to.

In the movie, I play a budding young reporter for Sleaze magazine who goes undercover to get an interview with a reclusive award-winning director (who’s dressed as Carmen Miranda). The director ends up casting me in his B-movie epic, Legend of the Golden Oyster, as a barmaid who hooks.

My partner was to be T.T. Boy. I had never met him before, but I’d heard about him. He’d been working since 1989, and had a reputation as one of the roughest woman-handlers in the business. He hates kissing. He hates blow jobs. And he loves fucking. (He is the only male I’ve ever met who doesn’t like blow jobs.)

When I first saw him, he was walking on set eating a super-size can of tuna fish. He had a very strong, dominant presence. He walked up to the assistant director and started talking rapid-fire, with a slight twang and his lips tightly pursed, almost like a yokel from a Puerto Rican remake of Deliverance. Then he looked at me and shoved a forkful of tuna in his mouth. He looked like he was going to tear me a new one.

Before the scene, I found a quiet room and tried to psyche myself up, repeating words and phrases over to myself like “confidence,” “dominate,” “come out on top,” “don’t look like Bambi in the headlights.” Once on set, T.T. and I positioned ourselves in a dimly lit tent that was supposed to be somewhere on the African savannah. Michael left the room and, as soon as the assistant director yelled “action,” T.T. Boy became the first man ever to take control of me in a scene. I’d never been with anyone so aggressive. I felt like a chew toy.

He raced through the foreplay —a little kissing, a little oral sex— and then all hell broke loose. He slammed me so fast and hard that it took every ounce of control I had to stay focused and in the moment. Trying to maintain eye contact with him was like trying to read Dostoevsky on a roller-coaster. I could feel my thighs bruising against his. Then suddenly it all stopped. He pulled out and shot straight into my mouth. I wasn’t expecting him to pop so soon.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He grabbed my hips and held me just over his lap and started slamming me into his dick. I was in decent shape cardio-wise, but he moved with such force and speed that I was winded. It felt like my insides were going to fall out. And then, finally, he popped —again.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“No,” he grunted.

And he put it right back inside. The guy was a machine. There was no lull. His focus never dimmed. His intensity never wavered. He’d throw me into position after position, and would come in each one. I was in shock. I’d never been fucked like this in my life.

I couldn’t wait for him to finish. I was starting to get sore. Finally, after four pop shots, he said, “Hold on. I have to go eat something.”

“Are we done?” I dared to ask.

“Not by a long shot,” he said.

I didn’t think I could take anymore, but I kept my mouth shut. I was curious to see what he was up to now. He walked off, devoured three cans of tuna, and was back with a raging hard-on still pulsating in the air. Within minutes, he was pounding me over and over, in every position I’d ever imagined and some I hadn’t, until finally, with one last climactic pop, he was done. Time elapsed: 156 minutes.

Nobody said a word. The crew was as flabbergasted as I was. He must have been totally into me, because no one had seen him —or any other guy— perform like that in their lives. We didn’t even think it was humanly possible. (Even today, with the advent of Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra, a scene like this would be miraculous.)

I literally limped away from the set, licking my wounds, and followed him around for the rest of the day. I had to know what was going on in his mind. All I got in exchange were a few words of wisdom: “Damn, that’s a bomb-ass pussy.”

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got bomb pussy,” he repeated, and walked away.

It was one of the most explosive scenes I had ever filmed. However, I never watched it afterward. I have no problem with having sex on camera, but I don’t actually like watching myself doing it. It’s uncomfortable. There’s too much of me to see.

Me and the Wicked crew.

I hounded T.T. for the rest of the production, fishing for more clues to his performance. The only other thing he said was, “I wish I could take your pussy out of you and keep it at my house.” So, the best I can come up with is that he has a major fetish for certain types of pussy. And when he finds one, he tries to knock it out.

I wanted to work with T.T. all the time afterward because that kind of adrenaline charge and moment-to-moment surprise is hard to come by in the industry. Other male actors were creepy, and looked at me as if they wanted me to be their wife afterward; or they had erection problems and, even worse, hygiene problems; or they were so professional that they just went through the motions, timing each position for five minutes and then switching. T.T. even became a great friend afterward, a perfect gentleman who would only be too glad to pummel senseless anyone who dared to say a cross word to or about me. It’s always good to know a few people like that.

I only had to film one other sex scene in the movie, with Jeanna and another girl. Jeanna was smart, confident, and candid, and had a million stories about Savannah. She was everything I wanted to be. But the scene didn’t live up to my expectations. She just went through the motions, and seemed disconnected the whole time. I kept thinking, “If we are going to do this, let’s do it right.” There was no passion, no connection, and no energy invested in the moment. The final insult came when we were done and she yelled, to no one in particular, “Why do you guys put me with these little girls? You make me look like I’m one hundred years old.” I don’t think she realized how bad that made me feel.

After the scene, Joy came by with a giant cake with my name on it. I had completely forgotten that it was my twenty-first birthday.

The next few days passed quickly. Everything seemed to be coming together perfectly. The director was great, the vibe was great, the actors were great, the sex was great. And, though I didn’t have any scenes with Steven, I loved watching him goof off. He was horrible to people. He would rip farts in the middle of big dramatic scenes and flip his cum at the cameramen. There was such great camaraderie on set. It changed my entire view of the adult industry and showed me what was possible if every piece was functioning properly. In addition, T.T. had given me a new perspective on what a sex scene was all about. It wasn’t until writing this book that I learned that, before filming, T.T. struck a deal with Michael Zen in which he got paid one hundred dollars for each extra pop shot he did.

Of course, no shoot is perfect. When I arrived on set for the penultimate day of shooting, everyone was walking around in a daze. The lights and cameras weren’t set up, and no one was in makeup. The talent was walking around the set in shock. Some of the girls seemed to be having panic attacks. I asked Michael Zen what was going on, and he said that a woman in the industry had contracted HIV. She had received her test results the day before, and they were positive.

In order to do a sex scene on camera, regulations require monthly early-detection HIV tests. Thus, every month, I stop by my doctor’s office —or he comes by the set— and he sticks a needle into my arm to take some blood. It is just part of my routine, like brushing my teeth or buying a new purse. Before this announcement, no one in the industry to any of our knowledge had contracted the HIV virus before. And condoms were rarely used in films at that time. We canceled shooting that day because no one could work.

The next day, Steve told us that it had been a false positive. Everyone was relieved, but at the same time, we had all changed: we were now aware that something like this could happen.