1. Bar hopping with \”fuckup contest friends\” after consuming very little food. In the cold. When I promised my roommate I wouldn\’t come home that night so as not to disturb his sleep.
  2. Getting dumped at bar #1 by someone I didn\’t even know I had been seeing. I don\’t know how this works, either, but considering the circumstances, I couldn\’t figure out what reaction I was supposed to be having. Eventually, I went with \’amused but dismayed,\’ which lead to a Guinness on the house. A cold Guinness. Guinness is not meant to be cold.
  3. Sitting down at bar #2, taking my coat off, and immediately receiving a sloshed jarhead at my left shoulder and a sleepy but sloshed junkie at my right knee. \”Hey, you\’re really pretty. I\’m leaving for Iraq on Monday, second tour. Wanna leave with me?\” Sorry, I don\’t do people who signed their own death certificates.
  4. Having a very queer lad with his boy draped on him reach out to stroke and admire my clavicle before even introducing himself to me. If I wanted to go to a swinger\’s club, I would have gone to Entre Nous.
  5. My friend announcing, loud enough for people in a fifteen feet radius to hear, that she needed to find me a dick for the night. \”Who in here can we get you?\” To which I replied, \”Are you kidding? This place is crawling with herpes,\” thus cementing my luck in that, should I ever decide to boink someone from that venue, I will, of course, get the oozing sores that are the sex plague.
  6. Drinking from five bars, all beverages courtesy of the house. One Guinness, six or seven rum and cokes, one shot of Jager, and then I started to lose track of more than just my alcoholic intake.
  7. \”You cannot sleep with _____.\” \”If you tell her not to sleep with ____, she\’s going to do it.\” Goddammit. The idea would never even have occurred to me (too young, too poor, too many drugs, too friends-material) until it was suddenly pounded into my head not to do it.
  8. To keep me from sleeping with _____, my friends get me extremely shitfaced. As such, I couldn\’t walk out of the bar on my own, let alone navigate my way over to ____\’s. Unfortunately, this also meant that I couldn\’t drive (ha!), and the last thing I remember is sitting behind my wheel, laughing my ass off, waiting for…something, and one of my friends telling me, \”Cassandra, cut it out, sit up, there\’s a cop right there.\” We were waiting for her man; I think he had to go hide his bike somewhere or something, but I can\’t remember. The next thing I remember is…
  9. My friend calling a friend of mine and asking him if she can drop me off there. I\’m not entirely sure of the logic behind this one, myself, but it may have had something to do with my friends wanting to go home and fuck and not have my drunk ass in the way. Or maybe it was just because they don\’t have anything other than a floor, which my back is notorious for rejecting. Either way, they are angels.
  10. Waking up on Saturday morning with my face in a blanket I didn\’t recognize and wondering \”where the fuck am I and how did I get here?\” Upon raising my head above the covers, I breathed a literal (minty–but I\’ll get to that in a moment) sigh of relief when I recognized the Chief\’s apartment and his sleeping body on the bed next to me. Which then left me with the following questions: \”How the fuck did I get here, of all places; is he going to be pissed?; are my other friends pissed?; where is my car?; where the hell are my pants?\”
  11. Sitting in bed and wondering why I didn\’t feel ill, and then remembering hovering over a toilet at some point while it was still dark outside. The Chief confirmed that after my enablers in debauchery dropped me at 4:30am and ran, I made myself at home in a nest on the floor (isn\’t the first time, probably won\’t be the last) because I didn\’t want to get sick in bed. However, no sooner than he had supplied with me a huge quilt and pillows, then I moved (crawled, stumbled, I don\’t know–he didn\’t elaborate and I didn\’t ask) to the toilet in the dark and proceeded to reverse kiss the toxins goodbye. I remember it being fast, relatively painless, and completely liquid–so here\’s to only having consumed soup the day before. I then remember brushing my teeth with some Tom\’s of Maine on my finger, though by the minty after-taste the next morning it may be more accurate to say that I ate a few teaspoons of the organic gum cleanser.
  12. During the usual chocolate with coffee, chatting, and cuddling morning routine, being explicitly asked by the Chief to date a friend of his. His friend likes me and needs to get out more (according to the Chief), and I would be good for him (the friend) to get his head back together. What am I; Atheist Sexual Services for the Stunted or Needy? I might trade money for sex services, but that\’s business. I\’m not a charity. I don\’t care if it\’s a jarhead on his way back to Iraq, a shaking junkie who can\’t get his usual fix, a queer boy who is looking for a softer hole for just an evening, or a friend who needs to be cheered up and put back on the right track: I don\’t come for free. When did everything become a negotiation, a transaction, or an agreement? What happened to romance and courting? Goddamn. Just throw some more shit in my face and keep calling me Pretty Woman, assholes.
  13. Going home from the Chief\’s palace and spending the rest of the (gorgeous) day at home, cranky, with strained stomach muscles. At this point I decided my weekend was essentially lost and ruined. Things could only become more fodder/entertainment.
  14. Finally getting some work that I could have done without. I spent Sunday on call as crew at a fetish event here in the city. Dr. Gonzo wants me to quit the biz; I feel the chains of possession creeping in and wrapping their way around me. Can\’t afford to quit entirely, so I decided to experiment with a compromise. At this event, instead of being \”talent,\” I was \”crew,\” which loosely translates to \”lowest piece of shit in the ladder of pornography.\” The worst paid, the worst conditions, and the least amount of consideration.
  15. Spending five hours in an overly air-conditioned sex club, continually pissing my pants from the cold. Granted, I was glad I wasn\’t one of the working gals in their little dresses and high heeled sandals, because goddammn, I had on jeans, knee high socks, a winter jacket, and gloves, but was still shivering.
  16. Knowing that I could be a better event/business producer than the schmuck running the show. Over five hours, he had maybe ten clients show up. His ladies all arrived late. His equipment is for shit. Enter most other cliches about porn producers here; he even stars in the movies he produces.
  17. Running out of the club into the night after a client who received services without paying. It was the gal\’s first time and the event manager hadn\’t explained a damn thing to her. He didn\’t oversee the customer-provider relationships, and despite that the party was a pre-paid only event that required a picture ID to attend, he had no idea who the guy was. So when the lady emerged from the back looking flustered, tottering on her high heels that were now covered in the running john\’s slobber, I took off after the guy…only to run out the padlocked front door of the club just as his Jeep was chugging into the loose gravel at the back of the building. Great.
  18. Trying to focus the camera on the blowjob and feet trampling with one eye while using the other eye to make sure no club staff were going to bust us for performance of sodomy. I accepted the job with the understanding that I\’d be working at a foot fetish party. Fair \’nuff; those are easy going. Once there and prepping for the film got underway four hours later, I was told to make sure to focus in during the cock sucking. Oh, and also to alert the three girls and the guy if anyone walked up the stairs, because we weren\’t supposed to be filming, let alone performing oral sex.
  19. Spending an hour crawling around the cold, stained floor, with an old VHS camcorder taped to my body. The camcorder was so old that the battery pack had died years ago. The producer claimed that he was looking to buy new equipment soon, and so he hadn\’t purchased a new camera. As a result, I had to leave the camera plugged into the wall, which meant a long trailing power cord and and power lumps. To keep from tripping on them, I ended up borrowing some gaffer\’s tape from the sex club (because the film producer didn\’t have duct tape with him; how can you have a traveling film set with no duct tape?) and tapping the cords to my wrist and the power lump to the inside of my jeans on my ankle. Other than the cutting off my circulation, it worked well, and led one of the ladies to remark \”Hey, you really know what you\’re doing! Where\’d you learn all this stuff?\” \”Fucking grade school education.\” Well, it was. Just got lucky in that respect, I guess. Look at how far it\’s gotten me, ma! My eighth grade public school education. Making crap low budget fetish films in a sex club in the worst rundown area of the city on a Sunday night, for shit ass money and even less respect. I\’m going far.
  20. Arguing over promised payment. After all that bullshit, I received $75 for five hours. He tried to write the check for $60, but I wouldn\’t take it. Prior to my arrival, we had agreed upon $15 per hour for five hours, with the hourly rate to be renegotiated after he saw my camera work. After convincing him to give me the measly $75, he told me I was hired if I wanted the job on a permanent basis. There\’s another party next weekend, this time in Georgetown. I think some fee haggling is in order. The female talent gets $120 for 30 minutes of video work, then $20 per ten minutes of private sessions. He, as the sole owner, producer, and male talent, gets an untold cut–but it\’s sure as hell plenty. On the way home from the gig, I got a speeding ticket in the 395 tunnel; $90 for doing 60 in a 45, which means I actually paid $15 to participate in that fiasco of a foot fiesta.

I had such potential; now I keep finding myself moving among drug addicts and $$$-for-cum-guzzlers who all live hand to mouth. Not that there\’s anything necessarily wrong with that, but I\’ve always felt that if you have to keep looking over your shoulder for fear of being seen or getting caught, then you shouldn\’t be doing whatever it is you are doing. I\’m not ashamed, which is why I don\’t wear a mask in my fucking porn videos. I don\’t feel fear or hesitation, and yet I sense them consistently in those around me. Therefore, I\’m figuring that there must be something better I could be doing. Somewhere else I should be. Someone else I could be. But I don\’t know what, where, or who, and so I just keep doing this: falling backward without looking behind me.

Oh, and I can on occasion be completely dignified and socially acceptable. I worked with a photographer last week who caught an amazing shot of me. We were going for the classic screen sirens\’ 8×10 portfolio and publicity shots, such as those the Hepburns were so famous for. Enjoy.


Nov 14 2005 by Rob Swift Photography