Speaker 1: I wanted to be a good Mormon wife, but more
Speaker 1: than that, I wanted to be an actress. More than that,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be famous. And you know, sitting in
Speaker 1: the hotel rooms and like being a call girl, I
Speaker 1: kind of got to be an actress. Bond Amy Bond,
Speaker 1: you know there's a there's a story about a young
Speaker 1: actress goes to Hollywood and she's hanging out at the
Speaker 1: counter of Schwab's drug store getting a milkshake or something,
Speaker 1: and some guy comes up with his fingers in the
Speaker 1: shape of a gold post and you know, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out whether you're a movie star, and he discovers
Speaker 1: her and she goes on to famine fortune. This trope
Speaker 1: has traveled as long as Hollywood has been Hollywood, but
Speaker 1: with Bond Amy Bond, it was a different sort of journey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she kim to Hollywood. Yeah she wanted to be an actress,
Speaker 1: but in mainstream movies. I don't know, but I do know.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Eugene. That's Robinson, and you're here for
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Speaker 1: So I grew up Mormon. My dad was Mormon until
Speaker 1: he died. My mom is like kind of Mormon. Um
Speaker 1: we were. Ray is Mormon, and I think out of
Speaker 1: everyone in my family, I probably became the most militant
Speaker 1: Mormon of everyone. When I was like thirteen, I got
Speaker 1: really into it. What does that? What does it mean
Speaker 1: to be like a military Mormon? Yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: you know, if you follow the rules, like by the
Speaker 1: letter of the law gets pretty intense. So like, you know,
Speaker 1: you go to church every day, and I went to
Speaker 1: a Bible study school before school and I had a
Speaker 1: hundred percent in attendance. And you know, that was really
Speaker 1: important to me. To deal with the magical underwear thing
Speaker 1: that you never take off your body. That's a thing,
Speaker 1: and it's everybody has weird practices. Magical underwear is one
Speaker 1: of them. You know. For a long time growing up,
Speaker 1: I believed that that I had this I have this
Speaker 1: mole on my chest and I believed and this belief
Speaker 1: was like confirmed for me by multiple elders of my
Speaker 1: church that God had put it on me to tell
Speaker 1: me where I should wear all my shirts above because
Speaker 1: that was that if I wore a shirt below that mole,
Speaker 1: it was being a modest. And you know, there's all
Speaker 1: these things that you tell yourselfer because God's trying to
Speaker 1: help you through life. I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: survived that way. My heart was always set on California.
Speaker 1: From the time I was young, I wanted to move
Speaker 1: to California. I wanted to be a Californian that you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a young girl Minnesota. Honestly, I think it
Speaker 1: was because of The Babysitters Club. This is the series
Speaker 1: of books that was very popular what I was like
Speaker 1: eight to fifteen years old. That was about this group
Speaker 1: of women girls who had started a club called the
Speaker 1: Babysitters Club. And one of the girls in the group
Speaker 1: was named Don and Don was the quintessential California girl.
Speaker 1: She had blonde hair, she was a vegetarian, she cared
Speaker 1: about animals, and she was an artist. And I loved
Speaker 1: that idea of like being an artist. How do you
Speaker 1: go from being a daily church girl at the age
Speaker 1: of thirteen to being a young adult chasing their dreams.
Speaker 1: I was traveling to finish school and then you know,
Speaker 1: doing that backpacking thing, and uh, I was in no
Speaker 1: pair and really just I felt like a bohemian for
Speaker 1: the first time in my life. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is cool. Like I met all these artists in
Speaker 1: Paris and I was eighteen at the height of the
Speaker 1: Iraq War, and so there are a lot of the
Speaker 1: people I met were like squatters and like Paris mansions,
Speaker 1: and they would they would go out on the artists
Speaker 1: and war and I like met all these I was
Speaker 1: in no pair, but I had a lot of spare time,
Speaker 1: so I got to go hang out with these people,
Speaker 1: and they really um shaped the way thought about spending time,
Speaker 1: because up until then I came from a military slash
Speaker 1: very religious background, and time was a thing that you,
Speaker 1: like I did to to like put into work, and
Speaker 1: the idea that you like spent it creating paper mache
Speaker 1: caricatures of George wish to go put in a float
Speaker 1: would probably be an insane thing too, or like a
Speaker 1: waste to those demographics. And suddenly I was immersed in
Speaker 1: this world of artists and it felt very deep and
Speaker 1: real to me and like a good way to spend
Speaker 1: time rather than what many would consider a waste of it.
Speaker 1: But I was still very Mormon, and so I was
Speaker 1: balancing this like go to church on Sundays and read
Speaker 1: the Bible every night before you go to bed, with like, oh,
Speaker 1: but there's all these cool people who you know, many
Speaker 1: of them didn't believe in God and um, and I
Speaker 1: thought that was just crazy, you know, like that's just wrong.
Speaker 1: And so I would pray for them for their souls
Speaker 1: to be saved, because that's what you do. And um
Speaker 1: and I was able to like kind of live in
Speaker 1: both worlds really easily. And I think that's actually probably
Speaker 1: my superpower as a human, as I'm able to straddle
Speaker 1: different world I had purchased this keyboard piano that because
Speaker 1: one of the guys who was in this UM protest
Speaker 1: group played the keyboard and he had started teaching me.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't very dedicated. But I liked how when
Speaker 1: I carried this keyboard around, people thought I was an artist.
Speaker 1: As soon as I put that keyboard under my arm.
Speaker 1: It was so easy to get hitchhike rides because people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, she's an artist, you know, she just
Speaker 1: needs to get to her next gig. And I remember
Speaker 1: I had one with this one truck driver. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'll take you if you play me a song, and
Speaker 1: I was literally like I can't. It also had like
Speaker 1: seventy pounds and I carried it the whole way to Italy.
Speaker 1: Can't you play it now? You figure not, Na, No,
Speaker 1: you can't understood. It was like it was a plot
Speaker 1: device to get her from a place of no adventure
Speaker 1: to a place of adventure, a physical place as well
Speaker 1: as a fantastical place that existed in her mind and
Speaker 1: later reality, except she still can't play keyboard. I went
Speaker 1: to Europe mainly because my parents were fine with me
Speaker 1: traveling as long as it was international. They're in the military,
Speaker 1: so they're big thing was, you've got to travel the world.
Speaker 1: You've got to see how the rest of the world lives.
Speaker 1: And so it was okay to go to Europe. But then,
Speaker 1: you know, I really wanted to go to California, and
Speaker 1: so I went back home, made some money, and then
Speaker 1: I got on a bus and and had one backpack.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a keyboard anymore. And then I moved
Speaker 1: to California and I had no plan. So were they
Speaker 1: cool with this? Or were they? I wrote them a
Speaker 1: note I ran away because they knew they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: cool with it. They wouldn't be cool with California. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't be cool with California because, I mean, my mom
Speaker 1: was the only woman, the only person and her family
Speaker 1: to graduate from college. In her mind, going to California
Speaker 1: meant that I wasn't going to keep going to community
Speaker 1: college and get my degree. And you know, for her,
Speaker 1: getting her degree was her pathway to freedom. So okay,
Speaker 1: So so you say you send them a note, I
Speaker 1: run away. I'm in California, and did I wrote them
Speaker 1: a note. I said, you're not gonna like this. But
Speaker 1: I got on a bus and I moved into California
Speaker 1: to chase my dreams to become an actress. I called
Speaker 1: my mom from Texas when the bus landed, and I
Speaker 1: called her and said, I'm okay, I'm safe. She was
Speaker 1: very unhappy. She just wanted she said, are you okay?
Speaker 1: What the funk are you doing? And yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I expected. You know, you just want to
Speaker 1: tell you we're okay. I wanted her to know I
Speaker 1: was okay, that I loved her very much. I had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with her, blah blah blah, but I
Speaker 1: needed to like go create my own path, right. I
Speaker 1: landed in Los Angeles and like I didn't have a
Speaker 1: room to rent, Like I had not planned nothing, because
Speaker 1: in my mind, if I planned it, then it wasn't
Speaker 1: like the way an artist would do it. So the
Speaker 1: bus stations in downtown l a work. Yeah, bus station
Speaker 1: lands in downtown l A. At like three o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. I walk out into the parking lot with
Speaker 1: my like little I think my backpack had actual sparkles
Speaker 1: on it, and there were two security guards standing in
Speaker 1: front of a parking lot next to the Gray homebus station.
Speaker 1: There's like glass all over the cement. There's people sleeping
Speaker 1: on the parking lot, which I've never seen before, and
Speaker 1: like freak out and I run back into the Gray
Speaker 1: Home bus station and these two security guards. I see
Speaker 1: one of them past the other five dollar bill and
Speaker 1: goes We had a bet on how long you'd be
Speaker 1: out there, and so I sat at this Gray homebus
Speaker 1: station for like three hours. I told myself, well, if
Speaker 1: you get to Westwood, that's where there's u C l A.
Speaker 1: And then you can go find like a corkboard with
Speaker 1: somebody who has housing for rent. And that's how I
Speaker 1: lived in Europe, you know, you just find a corkboard
Speaker 1: and a coffee shop and then you get your next
Speaker 1: place to live. So we go look at all these
Speaker 1: corkboards in l A. And everything is so expensive. And
Speaker 1: by the time I'm done looking at all these corkboards,
Speaker 1: like the sun is going down, so I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to find a place tonight, like my
Speaker 1: my one plan is backfired. And on the bus, I
Speaker 1: was so excited. I hadn't eaten in like three days,
Speaker 1: Like I had just been too excited to eat. And
Speaker 1: so I'm walking with like my luggage down this street
Speaker 1: and I think I was I was probably crying and
Speaker 1: like walking down the street like oh ship, what am
Speaker 1: I gonna do? And this car pulls up behind me
Speaker 1: and this guy jumps out and he goes hey. Then
Speaker 1: I'm like, what you know. He's like, you look like
Speaker 1: you need help. And so, long story short, I end
Speaker 1: up living with this dude for like three weeks, was
Speaker 1: the old was the story. He was a graduate student
Speaker 1: at U C. L A. And I think he liked
Speaker 1: the idea of saving somebody so perfect. I needed some out.
Speaker 1: So it was great. So there was no creepy alterior
Speaker 1: sexual motive. There was no creepy alterior thing. I made
Speaker 1: it very clear at this and I was still a virgin.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm a virgin. I'm very religious. I don't
Speaker 1: believe in premarital sex. So you said this as you
Speaker 1: got in the car. Well, when when we got to
Speaker 1: his house. I was like, look, I don't want it
Speaker 1: to be weird, and he was cool. And this dude
Speaker 1: like drove me around. He helped log me into his
Speaker 1: like student board so that I could look at all
Speaker 1: the housing that was on the internet, like on the
Speaker 1: u c L a specific internet. He helped me find
Speaker 1: a room. I found a room that was like three
Speaker 1: seventy five a month in Westwood. I shared it with
Speaker 1: like two other people and it was fine. So this
Speaker 1: guy really did like that's a solid basically saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: why did you finally leave? Oh? I guess you found
Speaker 1: the room. I found the room. He helped me find
Speaker 1: the room. Like it was never like a long term solution,
Speaker 1: but he was like, I think you need help. I
Speaker 1: can help you. Yeah, all right, so you get your room.
Speaker 1: I got my room. And Rick had driven me to
Speaker 1: Central Casting the first day after I stayed at his house,
Speaker 1: and I had heard that Central Casting was where everybody
Speaker 1: went when they were trying to be an actor. So
Speaker 1: I went there. I got my head shot taken and
Speaker 1: lo and behold, they called me in like five minutes
Speaker 1: and they were like, do you want to do judge Judy? Sure?
Speaker 1: So I sat in the audience on Judge Judy, and
Speaker 1: then I sat in the audience of Judge Joe Brown.
Speaker 1: And then I sat in the audience there was another judge.
Speaker 1: I forgot the third judge, but I like, I like
Speaker 1: worked the audience of Judge shows for like three months.
Speaker 1: How much were they? The opinion is an extra? Right?
Speaker 1: Was an extra today? Fine? Good enough? Like my rents
Speaker 1: four hundred bucks? Fine, you can tell the folks back home.
Speaker 1: I'm on the show, on that show, that's right. So
Speaker 1: anyway I'm on Judge Judy. I start going to all
Speaker 1: of these other casting calls and I just can't nail
Speaker 1: like a real part, like a part that has speaking right.
Speaker 1: And in order to get the SAG card, which is
Speaker 1: the holy grail for new actors in l A, you
Speaker 1: have to get like three speaking parts. And I remember
Speaker 1: going on this audition where there are these three girls,
Speaker 1: three girls sitting in you had acting classes before or not?
Speaker 1: I had never taken an acting class. Also, by the way,
Speaker 1: I had tried out for my Hopkins High School Minnetonka,
Speaker 1: Minnesota High School musical. I couldn't even get a part
Speaker 1: in that. So, like, I'm by no means like an actress, like,
Speaker 1: but I played an artist when I played that part,
Speaker 1: when when I was the keyboard, you know, and I
Speaker 1: was like, if I just do it, then it will
Speaker 1: come true for me. And to a certain extent, I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of a great way to live your life.
Speaker 1: But for me, I was overly confident, Like I was
Speaker 1: very positive that I was going to be famous in
Speaker 1: like three months, and like there was no doubt in
Speaker 1: my mind that was going to happen. So then that
Speaker 1: didn't happen in three months, and I had started to
Speaker 1: run out of money, and and I meet these three
Speaker 1: girls at a sandal audition was like an audition to
Speaker 1: be in a sandal commercial, you mean the resort or
Speaker 1: the actual footwear like a sandal. So I'm at this
Speaker 1: audition and the three other girls who I'm sitting there with,
Speaker 1: and by the way, I had like taken the bus there,
Speaker 1: woken up at like five am to get to this
Speaker 1: ten am audition was still late, so i'd like run
Speaker 1: the last half mile. And I'm sitting there like sweaty
Speaker 1: and feeling just like the most disgusting person. And I'm
Speaker 1: looking at these three women and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're wearing like very expensive clothes. They have like keratin
Speaker 1: treatments in their hair, their nails are well done, and
Speaker 1: they had had they had They were talking about how
Speaker 1: they had just gotten their tone nails done for this audition,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, you got your tone nails
Speaker 1: done for this audition and they were like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what you do. You dress for the part you want.
Speaker 1: Like one of them looked at me with this very
Speaker 1: like mean girl look and she was like, you dress
Speaker 1: for the part you want. And I was like, oh, like,
Speaker 1: I need to make like real money. I need to
Speaker 1: buy a car, I need to like buy pedicures when
Speaker 1: I go on auditions, like I need to do all
Speaker 1: this ship. I didn't know that. So then I decided, Well,
Speaker 1: the reason I'm not booking these, why I'm not nailing
Speaker 1: them and then getting the parts, is because I just
Speaker 1: need more money in order to like play the part.
Speaker 1: Scant funds. And you see that you're being outpaced by
Speaker 1: people who were spending a lot to look a lot
Speaker 1: better and act actually act, So what do you do?
Speaker 1: So I started nude modeling and that was like step one.
Speaker 1: I was did you find the agency that got you
Speaker 1: new modeling? Yeah? I mean yeah, you answer an ad
Speaker 1: the back of l A Weekly has everything you need.
Speaker 1: I answered two outs. I answered the back of an
Speaker 1: l A Weekly, And the two outs were one was
Speaker 1: a woman who was basically like a pimp, right, and
Speaker 1: her thing her ads said no sex. And I really
Speaker 1: liked the idea that I could come, that I could
Speaker 1: do this work but go back to being religious because
Speaker 1: I was still dating this Mormon guy at the same
Speaker 1: time where DC and I was just lying to him
Speaker 1: about everything close to your parents, close to my parents,
Speaker 1: and this plan to eventually come out to really going
Speaker 1: to do the long distance thing. See how it worked, right?
Speaker 1: I mean I think his plan was like, we'll get
Speaker 1: married and then you'll come live with me. But I like,
Speaker 1: how did she make my dream come true? Right? So
Speaker 1: I get hooked up with this woman who, um like,
Speaker 1: does nude modeling shoots, and I get hooked up with
Speaker 1: another woman who, um she puts you up in a
Speaker 1: hotel room and then you do massages. Right. So that
Speaker 1: was my pimp woman. Yeah. I never learned her name.
Speaker 1: I always called her my girl. But she was no nonsense.
Speaker 1: And I love that bitch because when you talked to her,
Speaker 1: you knew she was in a hurry. She had better
Speaker 1: ship to do than talk to you right now. So
Speaker 1: it was always super straightforward to the point, get in there,
Speaker 1: I'll call you when someone is here. I'll pick up
Speaker 1: the money at ten thirty, and we did like a
Speaker 1: fifty fifty split. So after like two weeks of like
Speaker 1: the nude modeling and the massages in the hotel room,
Speaker 1: which by the way, it was usually actually massages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like lonely dudes. So it was actually like
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So the nude modeling thing was the was
Speaker 1: there a product associated with that? So we're taking pictures
Speaker 1: of you for posters, we're taking pictures uh painters are
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of photographers who do pictures that
Speaker 1: they think they can sell to a magazine, porno mag
Speaker 1: or anything. And in my mind the time, nobody actually
Speaker 1: looks at porn. So I'm never going to get caught
Speaker 1: doing this because I didn't look at porn. The guy
Speaker 1: I was dating, I believed it didn't look at porn.
Speaker 1: So you weren't draped over a nicely covered couch with
Speaker 1: grapes in your hand. You know, the person is already
Speaker 1: in the hotel or you're in the room and they
Speaker 1: come to you. My girl calls me, hey, your name
Speaker 1: is Candy Berryes coming up in ten minutes. So the
Speaker 1: guy comes in the room, and what happens. He takes
Speaker 1: all his clothes off. She was very clear about the
Speaker 1: order of operations. So you know, he has to put
Speaker 1: the money on the nights to first, and then he
Speaker 1: can take his clothes off because the cops never gonna
Speaker 1: just like put money down. So if he doesn't put
Speaker 1: money down, run for your life. All right, all right?
Speaker 1: Did you ask her Steven would be like where the
Speaker 1: fire escape? She didn't. Not do you ever at any
Speaker 1: point ask her like, why why are we afraid of cops?
Speaker 1: It's just a massage? No, that made sense? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: I was like, I think this is illegal. This is
Speaker 1: probably illegal, but like that just made it more exciting.
Speaker 1: I was here for the adventure. So now these guys
Speaker 1: showed up from massages. Nobody tried to fuck you, Nobody
Speaker 1: tried to suck me, like, absolutely nobody. Yeah. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until I started doing house calls that that changed. So
Speaker 1: in call versus outcol So, somebody calls, I want a
Speaker 1: massage at my house, and she said, okay, well it
Speaker 1: works out all right. He showed you the house and
Speaker 1: then what happens in and then all that all bets
Speaker 1: are off, like they'll offer more money for additional services.
Speaker 1: So my girl had a really smart that. I think
Speaker 1: it's really smart. I mean she's the only pimp I've
Speaker 1: ever worked with, you know, which is she would only
Speaker 1: send me to places where I was with somebody else.
Speaker 1: So it was like two girls that were ordered. So
Speaker 1: they asked for two girls yea with other girls willing
Speaker 1: to have sex or not. Oh yeah, okay, so you
Speaker 1: almost always the other girl was willing to have sucks
Speaker 1: and like down like they were down to fuck because
Speaker 1: then they got more money. I was like, I think, God,
Speaker 1: I can't go that far because God won't forgive me.
Speaker 1: So you were sitting there as you're screwing or you're like,
Speaker 1: it's okay, I did the massage. I'll just sit out
Speaker 1: here and wait for you. Guys know I watched okay,
Speaker 1: so you're there, okay. I mean usually I would like
Speaker 1: fondle somebody, you know, I would like massage somebody, fondle somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, like, hey, can you play with her? Tiths? Sure?
Speaker 1: You know that will be an extra. That was my question,
Speaker 1: and so how much how much money are you pulling
Speaker 1: now from So between those two things, nude modeling was
Speaker 1: like four hundred a day and it was kind of
Speaker 1: like six hour days, a lot of standing around and
Speaker 1: being cold, which is, you know, kind of boring. And
Speaker 1: then the like face to face was much more exciting
Speaker 1: because you're seeing this whole as as a Mormon turned
Speaker 1: thrown into the sex world's human I was like, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, you know, this is so insane. This is
Speaker 1: like what movies are about. I didn't think this was real,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I would make a lot of
Speaker 1: cash between the hotel rooms and the massages and the
Speaker 1: calls I would make. At the beginning, I only did
Speaker 1: hotel rooms, so I would make about eight hundred two
Speaker 1: thousand a day if I did like a full day
Speaker 1: sitting in a hotel room. The new modeling like four D.
Speaker 1: So she meets this photographer Mike Square. Guy takes a
Speaker 1: lot of photos of her. But one day Mike has
Speaker 1: gotta problem. He's taking too many photos of her and
Speaker 1: overexposure is an issue, and he's like, you know, but
Speaker 1: what you could do is porn. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it pays a lot better, and I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: isn't that kind of what I'm already doing. So he
Speaker 1: introduced his ma to Jim South. I don't know who
Speaker 1: Jim South is. He's a legend, but at the time,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, hi, Jim. You know, small man in
Speaker 1: a cowboy hut and he's in this office off of
Speaker 1: Van Eyes that's like dirty and like kind of dusty
Speaker 1: and kind of musty and gross, and so I don't
Speaker 1: think of him as this like, you know, epic legend
Speaker 1: who like starts all these careers. To me, Poorma is
Speaker 1: not a career. It was like a gateway to be
Speaker 1: able to do the thing I really wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And I'm still like undecided on like the porn thing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, go meet Jim, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm going to have sex with anyone important. Like
Speaker 1: that actually sounded so insane that it like made me
Speaker 1: really excited that it was an adventure. And um So
Speaker 1: I meet Jim and Jim tells me, well, you know
Speaker 1: there's this guy named um At Powers. Yeah, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: And what I don't tell Jim, And what I hadn't
Speaker 1: told Mike, because I thought that they wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: book me is that I'm still a virgin, Like I'm
Speaker 1: still a virgin, but I'm also a sex worker. So
Speaker 1: that's a weird mix, right. I don't tell them that,
Speaker 1: But I really liked the idea that Ed was nice.
Speaker 1: He was nice, he wasn't going to be aggressive. And
Speaker 1: there's another woman in the office at that time, and
Speaker 1: she turns around and she's like, Jim's the best. He
Speaker 1: will never put you in a compromise situation. So already
Speaker 1: this girl who's sitting in the office is like, I'm
Speaker 1: vouching for this guy, Like he's the real deal, Like
Speaker 1: he won't put you in a bad situation. Which is
Speaker 1: what I really liked about my girl. She always made
Speaker 1: sure that we were we were safe. I got really
Speaker 1: lucky in that sense because I wasn't fucked with that,
Speaker 1: I wasn't raped, and I had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: being an adult entertainment actress. Anyway, So you go over
Speaker 1: to its place and he has this fancy house in Calabasas.
Speaker 1: Couldn't be nicer. I like, comes to the door, So
Speaker 1: are you going with the understanding? Like, Oh, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna meet this guy or do you know now? I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this alright, and so my my
Speaker 1: stomach is like churning. I like, see the big mansion.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, ship, like this is happening, and so
Speaker 1: what you like one or I think I was still nineteen.
Speaker 1: It's like right after my twentieth birthday, alright, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean six months later I went to an adult entertainment
Speaker 1: event that I couldn't get into at a club because
Speaker 1: I wasn't twenty one to drink, all right, So so
Speaker 1: you show him it has He's got this mansion and
Speaker 1: he's nice, super nice. He asked me a bunch of questions.
Speaker 1: He could like, tell me about you. He loves the
Speaker 1: fact that I have a Mormon boyfriend, so we talked
Speaker 1: about that and then he could tell he was super nervous.
Speaker 1: So he's like really gentle, really nice, really kind. He was.
Speaker 1: He's just like very you just felt like what you
Speaker 1: were getting was very authentic, and he was. And then
Speaker 1: he paid me with a check and he had to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, what's your real name again? To Candy. Well,
Speaker 1: Mike and I had decided that my name would be Wendy,
Speaker 1: So my poor name was Wendy James. Yeah, Wendy James.
Speaker 1: She is a singer as well. Yeah I now know that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't at the time, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, you've got that Peter Pan thing,
Speaker 1: that like forever youth thing going on, so you should
Speaker 1: be Wendy. But I was there for probably like an
Speaker 1: hour and a half, two hours, and I walk out
Speaker 1: with fifteen hundred bucks, So I'm like, fuck, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can pay like six months rent with this thing. Like
Speaker 1: I'm on my way to my fifty grand. Now, given
Speaker 1: that this was your first time, that people have all
Speaker 1: this kind of um not necessarily romantic attached, but significant
Speaker 1: attachment to their first time, how did this How did
Speaker 1: this feel as the first time? Was it more or
Speaker 1: less than what you had expected before? I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get a fix in your frame of mind issue as
Speaker 1: you leave. It really wasn't about this, So it was
Speaker 1: about the money. So I like took myself to Starbucks,
Speaker 1: got a vanilla frappuccino. Look at my phone, which by
Speaker 1: now I have a new phone, and there's like five
Speaker 1: missed voicemails from Jim that are like, Wendy, everybody wants
Speaker 1: to book you and on the basis, off the basis
Speaker 1: of the new modeling pictures, they see this like fresh faced,
Speaker 1: chair up looking girl. You know, I've got that girl
Speaker 1: next door look. And and then it's just like off
Speaker 1: to the races. Like every place that I want on
Speaker 1: an audition for there was a two side a piece
Speaker 1: of paper that said what you were willing to do, like,
Speaker 1: do you do like double penetration? Nope? Do you do
Speaker 1: anal nope? Do you do lesbian? Great? It was fun,
Speaker 1: Like I'm I met so many fun people, Like it
Speaker 1: was fun and the people were really nice to me.
Speaker 1: Do you have time left over to actually go on
Speaker 1: auditions for non adult rules? Yeah? Like I still every Wednesday.
Speaker 1: I reserved Wednesday to be on the extra on Judge
Speaker 1: Juty Judge Show Brown, and I kept that because it
Speaker 1: was my perfect cover. When I went to church on Sundays,
Speaker 1: people would be like, oh, I saw you on Judge
Speaker 1: Duty perfect. You can see I am a struggling actress
Speaker 1: exactly how I want you to think. You know, my boyfriend,
Speaker 1: Oh I saw you on Judge Judy. Oh perfect. I
Speaker 1: was like living a double life, like I was trying
Speaker 1: my best to live a double life. The dude in
Speaker 1: d C. Four months into the porn I'm like, look,
Speaker 1: this is what's going on. I'm probably like I'm really
Speaker 1: enjoying this life. I don't think I'm actually Mormon anymore.
Speaker 1: And for him, he like ran the other direction, which
Speaker 1: like this is antithetical to everything. He believes that when
Speaker 1: you said you told him you're not you don't think
Speaker 1: you're into do you tell them about the movies or now?
Speaker 1: I casually mentioned that maybe I had done an adults
Speaker 1: entertainment Yeah. I did not say porn. I did not
Speaker 1: say sex work. I said adult entertainment. Did he get
Speaker 1: angry or was he just upset? Oh? I mean he
Speaker 1: was heartbroken. Yeah, And like what would you feel if
Speaker 1: you'd believe this person you were in love with has
Speaker 1: been betraying you and lying to you for the past
Speaker 1: like four months. Like that's shitty because on the side,
Speaker 1: we were talking about how we were going to get married. Shitty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a shitty way to treat someone. But also I
Speaker 1: was over the church, Like by that point I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think this is really so then
Speaker 1: I live in my best life for a good like
Speaker 1: four months. Call girling. I'm going on cool gigs, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't really auditioning for real movies anymore because that
Speaker 1: was what I was going to do. After I'd made
Speaker 1: all my cash and going on set. Suddenly I'm like
Speaker 1: known as like a rising starlet in the porn world,
Speaker 1: which is crazy, you know, not now if if this
Speaker 1: were some other podcasts and some other interview this is
Speaker 1: the point at which the interviewer gets his tone in
Speaker 1: their voice where they indicate that they feel fucking sorry
Speaker 1: for you. There's somehow that this is somehow a deviation,
Speaker 1: a deviation from the normal, that is somehow sad. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound at all to me like that jibs
Speaker 1: with the reality that you're spelling out. And most people
Speaker 1: would say they imagine life working as a point star
Speaker 1: and a call girl would be miserable, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like that was your experience. It was fantastic, and
Speaker 1: for me it was quite autonomous. For the first time
Speaker 1: in my life, I'm making my own money, like real
Speaker 1: fucking money, Like this is not like Nordstrom commission money
Speaker 1: where you got like a thousand bucks a month. Like
Speaker 1: this is like you're bringing in like two granded day cool,
Speaker 1: and if you're disciplined enough to like put it away,
Speaker 1: that adds up really fast. I mean it got to
Speaker 1: the point where I couldn't like go to the bank
Speaker 1: and look at the teller anymore because they look at
Speaker 1: me suspiciously. What do you what do you say to
Speaker 1: those people that who say, like this is degrading and
Speaker 1: that this is not something that should and I don't
Speaker 1: want to minimize I don't want to minimize that that
Speaker 1: argument as well. I mean for me, I didn't know
Speaker 1: enough to like think of myself as like an empowered
Speaker 1: sex worker, right, Like I think if you talked to
Speaker 1: there's a famous author named D'Antonio Crane, and there are
Speaker 1: all these you know, Stormy Daniels is a great example.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's an American hero at one, but also
Speaker 1: she's a woman who was like, she is a sex worker,
Speaker 1: and she is loud and proud about being a sex worker.
Speaker 1: I was never that, So I want to be clear
Speaker 1: about that. I was never loud and proud. I was
Speaker 1: always lying about it. There was never a time when
Speaker 1: I was fully honest with anyone about the fact that
Speaker 1: I was doing it, because I clearly, like felt some
Speaker 1: shame about it even after I stopped being Mormon, so
Speaker 1: I didn't think of myself that way. But it was
Speaker 1: the first time in my life that I thought of
Speaker 1: myself as the owner of my own body. And like,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody told me what they are going to
Speaker 1: do to my body. They always asked on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper, what are we? What are where are your boundaries?
Speaker 1: And that's what I loved about porn, as everything was
Speaker 1: so upfront. Yes, this is a transaction, Yes this is
Speaker 1: for money. Yes we will be trading sex, but I
Speaker 1: would need to know where your boundaries are. And porn
Speaker 1: is highly regulated, so like you do your HIV test
Speaker 1: every thirty days, and you show your piece of paper
Speaker 1: to the other actor, and if they don't have your
Speaker 1: paper their paper, you are not having sex with them.
Speaker 1: And growing up religious, I never thought of my body
Speaker 1: really is mine. I thought of it as a tool
Speaker 1: to like have children with and something really to be
Speaker 1: ashamed of. And so then I'm like immersed in this world.
Speaker 1: It's telling me not only as your body yours, but
Speaker 1: also you can like very utilitarian lie like make money
Speaker 1: with it, and also it's something to be celebrated so
Speaker 1: much so that we're going to sell this, you know, like,
Speaker 1: and so that was all like very new and exciting
Speaker 1: for me. And so now I'm making really good cash,
Speaker 1: but I have to make it seem like I'm still
Speaker 1: a starving artist, right, So I'm like playing at being
Speaker 1: I'm like acting in my real life at being a
Speaker 1: starving artist, which I'm not anymore. I have like a
Speaker 1: ton of cash and I'm just like putting into the
Speaker 1: bank and I'm like, you're actually being good about that,
Speaker 1: because you're not. I was great about that. Yes, I
Speaker 1: didn't get into drugs until I'm at a dude, and
Speaker 1: then that's kind of where the fun ended. You paid
Speaker 1: attention at all. The narrative is usually things start going
Speaker 1: wrong and then you get into porn. An actual fact,
Speaker 1: porn was a high point and they didn't start going
Speaker 1: wrong for Amy until after she left porn. The bad Boyfriend,
Speaker 1: the drugs hashtag it all. So I meet this dude,
Speaker 1: and I meet him as a call girl. He's like
Speaker 1: one of my clients, and I fall in love with him,
Speaker 1: and maybe more than falling in love with him, I
Speaker 1: fall in love with his math. As soon as I
Speaker 1: move in with him. It's abusive. He's in the middle
Speaker 1: of a divorce, and so I get in my car,
Speaker 1: I drive away. I'm like, fuck you, I'm not moving
Speaker 1: in after all, and he does the thing right. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, baby. It will never happen again. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that happened. It's because of my divorce
Speaker 1: and all of the stress of my divorce. I go
Speaker 1: back that night. I go back over and over and over.
Speaker 1: We do math all night long. We fight all the time.
Speaker 1: It's kind of exciting. So now what what a folks
Speaker 1: going back home at this point anything. My sister actually
Speaker 1: moved to see me Valley. She moves in with me
Speaker 1: and Manny this guy who is abusive. Why did she
Speaker 1: do this? Because I won't leave him, like I keep
Speaker 1: not leaving him. So she moves out specifically to help
Speaker 1: you leave him or yea, and she had to as
Speaker 1: a plan, We're going to run away in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. She finds a place for us to live,
Speaker 1: like secretly, and then in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: she has this backpacked for us and we run away
Speaker 1: like sleeping or he's not there. He's sleeping, but he's
Speaker 1: not sleeping. That hard because five minutes after we walk
Speaker 1: out the front door and start walking down the street.
Speaker 1: I can hear his car and he had a link
Speaker 1: in with like a really high cylinder engine. And so
Speaker 1: when he starts his card and know what that sounds like,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh fuck, that's manny. We run down
Speaker 1: the street. We hide in the bushes of this graveyard
Speaker 1: that's like behind the house that we were living in.
Speaker 1: And it's like straight out of like a movie, Like
Speaker 1: we're like hiding from this guy. And he's texting me
Speaker 1: every two minutes, you piece of ship. What are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna find you. I'm going to kill you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We try to get a restraining order. It's not enough
Speaker 1: that he's made these threats over text message. And she
Speaker 1: literally saved my life and and we just we go
Speaker 1: back to being waitresses together. And I lived with my
Speaker 1: sister and the dude slowly fades away exactly and um,
Speaker 1: and then I read Build My Life. So I went
Speaker 1: to community college. It took me like six years to
Speaker 1: finish a two year degree like get my a. A
Speaker 1: took six years, and I m transferred to Berkeley. So
Speaker 1: I got into UC Berkeley good enough to get into
Speaker 1: Berkeley exactly did when did you meet your husband? I
Speaker 1: met my husband. Um, after I graduated from Berkeley. I
Speaker 1: was in Portland, Oregon working as an ELSAT tutor, So
Speaker 1: I was tutoring ELSA. I was a personal trainer on
Speaker 1: the side, and uh, and I was just like taking
Speaker 1: that gap year between undergrad and law school. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to meet anyone before law school because
Speaker 1: I wanted to be able to focus. But I meet Keith,
Speaker 1: and it was just like love at first sight situation,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't even a choice. It's like, this is
Speaker 1: the person I'm going to spend my life with. And
Speaker 1: you know, right now, I I run two pole dance
Speaker 1: studios and I'm an attorney, so you know, on the weekends,
Speaker 1: I do like credible fear interviews for immigrants who are
Speaker 1: trying to come to the United States. And then immigration
Speaker 1: law is one that I've recently become interested in because
Speaker 1: of the human rights violations that United States government is
Speaker 1: involved in in terms of how we're separating children from
Speaker 1: their families and and we actually don't have a process
Speaker 1: for reuniting those children. And there's just an article about how, um,
Speaker 1: you know, all these parents were sent back to Guatemala
Speaker 1: their children are still here living in foster families. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: So immigration law is not my specialty, but I've gotten
Speaker 1: really into it in the past year. So I run
Speaker 1: businesses by day, and I, you know, create pole dance art,
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird and underground to most people,
Speaker 1: even though it's what I see every day and um
Speaker 1: and do law on the weekends. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: how I like to live my life. Okay, So if
Speaker 1: you're not, you're not stuck in some corporate law thing
Speaker 1: where you've got billable hours to be with or no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean I meet a lot of those people.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of those people. It's really shaped
Speaker 1: the way that I think about my body now, which
Speaker 1: is just a tool. And you know, my my creative
Speaker 1: work as a pole dancer and a competitive pole dancer
Speaker 1: now is really around like creating art with my body.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure I would have ever, um not,
Speaker 1: had had not had this shame to be able to
Speaker 1: do that if it hadn't been for becoming a sex
Speaker 1: worker so long ago. And I wish that I had
Speaker 1: had a place that was so full of like female
Speaker 1: empowerment and like women celebrating other women, and you know,
Speaker 1: moving to l A and having my formative growing up
Speaker 1: years be like women competing with other women for roles
Speaker 1: or whatever, um, and only finding that real like support
Speaker 1: in the adult entertainment industry um, and then having that
Speaker 1: taken from me because I made a poor relationship decision. UM.
Speaker 1: Like I wish I had had spaces like this that
Speaker 1: we're safe spaces to express sexuality. And so that's why
Speaker 1: they're so important to me and why I create them today,
Speaker 1: and so I want to keep doing this. If you
Speaker 1: could tell your younger self something, what would you tell
Speaker 1: your younger self? I think it would be the opposite
Speaker 1: of what you would expect, which is for the for
Speaker 1: the ten years after I got out of porn, I
Speaker 1: didn't talk about my story. I told myself that it
Speaker 1: was something to be ashamed of, and and the world
Speaker 1: around me told me the same thing too. Write like
Speaker 1: when people who when I was a waitress men would
Speaker 1: recognize me, and then they would use the fact that
Speaker 1: they recognized me against me. They'd like wait for me
Speaker 1: in the parking lot and be like, I know your secret,
Speaker 1: you know, if we don't fuck whatever, Da da da.
Speaker 1: And it was to the point where I had somebody
Speaker 1: escort me to my car, and I wish that I
Speaker 1: had just owned my story earlier, Like I wish that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm really proud of, Like, looking back, I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of how like resourceful I was. You know,
Speaker 1: I arrived in Los Angeles with nothing, then I found
Speaker 1: Rick and you know, and then I just let myself
Speaker 1: be open to the universe in a way that the
Speaker 1: universe actually really did take care of me. And I'm
Speaker 1: a really big believer in like having a life that's
Speaker 1: not so stringently planned that like you let the world
Speaker 1: happen to you versus like trying to control everything. And um,
Speaker 1: and I wish I hadn't spent so much time feeling
Speaker 1: shame for something that's actually like a really exciting cool
Speaker 1: thing looking back on it now. It wasn't until about
Speaker 1: five year US ago when I'm living here, so a
Speaker 1: decade in um San Francisco, So about a decade after
Speaker 1: all of this story is over, that my fam texts
Speaker 1: me and she says, Hey, Amy, who's Wendy James. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, betch, You're gonna need to sit down
Speaker 1: for this one. If your adventure high point hits when
Speaker 1: you're twenty and you're thirty five. Now looking back on greatness,
Speaker 1: can you square yourself going forward with a life that
Speaker 1: you expect won't be nearly as adventurous. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but Bond Amy Bond, I guess she's
Speaker 1: geared to find out, and so are we. Azzy Confidential
Speaker 1: Ozzy Confidential is produced by who ELL's me Eugeneus Robinson,
Speaker 1: executive produced by Rob Coolo's and mixed and engineered by
Speaker 1: Nick Johanson. And For more Azi Confidential go to o
Speaker 1: z y dot com, slash Confidential, Hush Hush