Where have I been? Well, for one, I got to hit up Exxxotica NY and met, among others, Mr. Marcus (really f-ing hot in person), Sasha Grey (also hot, but also incredibly well spoken and an absolute delight to talk with), and rubbed proverbial con-shoulders with the likes of Tera Patrick, Jesse Jane, and Mr. Ron Jeremy himself for the now-umpteenth time. Joanna Angel and the rest of the Burning Angel crew were there as well, and I always love stopping by the booth…Joanna and her girls don’t get the glazed-over con look where they’re looking through you as they sign stuff, they actually take the time to talk to you. Mr Marcus was also guilty of this, but he was considerate enough to explain that it was because the booth behind me was showing a particularly engrossing blowjob video on a wide screen. I, too, got caught in it for a moment.
A side note here, porn stars – the weirdo balloon-lip thing? No. Knock it off. Stop injecting crap into your lips. For reals. Also – judging by the ridiculous heels I saw all weekend, a chiropractor booking a booth at the next show could consider his marketing dollar very well spent indeed.
There was considerable eye candy, not the least of which were nubile young women flanking the inside entrance dancing on elevated poles, scattered throughout the cons “locked up” in cages like some kind of geekbait (I half-expected to see a target on the floor, or a hovering box held aloft by a stick), and my personal favorite, randomly strewn about the convention floor on fully made up aerobeds, gyrating and wiggling around slow mo on a pile of money. It looked like spontaneous rap videos were breaking into filming everywhere, as if T-Adjective was suddenly going to pop up and start autotuning about how hard life is for a gangspimtajuggalo.
Meeting the Pink Cross
I was especially perplexed by the presence of “Pink Cross” – who littered their table with innocent-enough seeming literature about STDs, testing, and sat stylishly behind a giant “We <3 Porn Stars” banner. I crept closer, genuinely curious, and paused like an alerted gazelle when I noticed that 3/4 of the booth people were openly sporting crosses around their necks. Cue an hour long conversation about their mission, their reasoning, and tons of other stuff between a surprisingly grounded young woman and yours truly. While it was not specifically mentioned to me that they are anti-porn (even after I attempted asking several ways), the sentiment resounded as if I stuck my head in a ringing churchbell. Upon closer examination, the literature on the table was folded in with glossy postcards done in dark, angry-dark color schemes, with a little dark-circled-eyed girl clutching a stuffed animal in the center and another girl on the side without a mouth (think interrogated Neo in the matrix) on the left, asking the frighteningly-fonted query “what if it was YOUR daughter?”
Further marketing material branded the company as one that helps “addicts find healing, and porn stars find hope”, adding that according to their research from presumably reputable sources, 75%-90% of porn performers are prostituted women, and further claiming 66% of porn performers have Herpes, a non-curable disease.
On Herpes: When put to my industry friends on twitter for their take, one mentioned that around 80% of the public – porn and “civilian” alike, has some form of herpes. The way this particular “fact” was worded leaves a lot open to creative interpretation on the part of pink cross, and I think it’s more than a little misleading.
On “Prostituted Women“: When I throw “prostituted” into dictionary.com, the very first thing that comes up is “a woman who engages in sexual intercourse for money”. And yes, that is the textbook definition of a porn star. However, it is my firm belief that they purposely use a word that is steeped irreversibly in culture as something “dirty” in order to elicit negative emotional response from their reader. Yes, I’m a marketer, and yes, chastisizing them on this particular twist of semantics would be a bit like biting the hand that feeds me. However, I’m gonna put myself out there to take the hit on hypocrisy here, for the sake of my performer friends. It’s dirty pool, and it’s not kosher.
On both claims, and many other vaguely-worded ones: There is no asterisk. No citation. No study. Putting such claims on one’s front page without a very easily located citation is irresponsible. It’s either an act of laziness or purposeful fear-mongering, and they both stink if you ask me.
Working for people who do not routinely talk about dildos
I have very quickly found out that I dislike it intensely. A month hectic 9-hour days of stapling the equivilent of TPS reports for a exceedingly racist-against-caucasians family of Chinese importers is just about enough for the toychick. Moar sex toys, pls.
Happily, I just had the opportunity to interview with a really awesome playboy playmate, and will hopefully be her new assistant. If I land it, expect lots of posts from our travels around the US on her feature dancing bookings.
Contests. They are soon.
I have stuff to give away, so keep your eyes here for updates in the next week or two! 
Wonderful post! Sounds like a fun time was had. I’ve never been to any of those conventions, so reading your experiences is always fun and informative