TMI Thursday: Of Porn And Preaching

Ok, ordinarily I sadly don’t join in the fun of blogger group activities (notice I’ve never joined a Carnival or a Blog Swap – which I love to read, incidentally). I just have a feeling that considering the industry in which I work, I should keep this net identity with cards held close.

But LiLu‘s little TMI Thursday game is actually a perfect vehicle for the story that’s been percolating in my head for a while.

Blahblahexcusesblahblah let’s get to it already!

Ok, then!

My last roommate was a porn star.

No, seriously. She was signed with Vivid Entertainment Group and no, I’m not going to link you to her.

So how did I get into this situation? About a year ago one of my colleagues skipped town for a gig in New York. She needed someone to rent her room so that she could get out of her lease. I stepped in because the house was closer to work. I would be living with her then-roommate, who at the time was vacationing in Brazil.

I asked said colleague about her roommate, and didn’t think much of it when she was hesitant to answer or was just generally vague. All I was concerned about was that this roommate would reliably make rent.

So after Colleague moved to New York and I was settled into the new house, I finally got to meet my new roomie after she had returned from Brazil.

I started with the regular icebreaker questions while we happened to both be in the kitchen.

“Where are you from?” She says LA. We talk about what it’s like to be raised in LA. And LA in general. And the music and art scenes. Upcoming shows. Various associated drug cultures.

Then I ask, “And what do you do?”

She sets down the knife she was using to cut an avocado. She puts one hand on her hip and turns to face me. “You’re gonna trip,” she says. I raise an eyebrow. She continues, “I used to be an adult film actress.”

Fortunately I have an appropriate response to this.

“You’re gonna trip. You know how I’m a web developer?” I say. “You know how I learned how to do that? I used to work for your industry. That’s how I started paying off student loans.”

I can visibly see her shoulders lose tension as she laughs loudly, and then is all smiles for the rest of the conversation. We talk openly about the porn industry and share stories.

She tells me about how long it takes and how tedious it is to keep cleaning *things* in order to shoot an anal scene. I tell her about Photoshopping out warts and being surprised at how often people want to move their nipple placement. She tells me about when she visits her storage space to grab something, how packed it is with free promo stuff that she’ll look for an oscillating fan and be like, “oh hey, a dildo.” I tell her about how impossible it is to edit an object embed (pun intended?) when you’re working at a coffee shop and you keep having to look around to see if anyone can see your screen before you check your work.

She expressed comfort in knowing that although she was living with a guy, that he was as desensitized to the idea of sex as she was.

And from that point forward it was actually pretty easy to live with her. We both gave each other decent space and went about our respective business. She’s totally a sweetheart and was by no means crazy despite her previous occupation.

But what had gotten her out of the porn industry?

She found God. Again, I’m not joking.

For someone who got into porn because she didn’t graduate high school, it was nice to discover she had a really good handle on Philosophy. And it wasn’t armchair pontification, like what tends to pass for philosophy these days. I could shoot the shit with her about Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Ethics. I was able to use widely recognized terms, like Utilitarianism vs. Categorical Imperatives, and though she didn’t know what the names were for those ideas, she already knew their meanings. I lent her Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and she was able to tear through it in a couple of days, and when I offered to let her borrow St. Augustine’s Confessions she said she already owned that book.

And she wouldn’t have gotten into the study of traditional philosophy had it not been for her finding God. I’m still a little cloudy on how she came about her reclaimed faith, but all in all, good for her. I wish I had that kind of reaffirming revelation.

Come to think of it, I was kind of hoping she would be able to lead me to rediscovery of my own faith but that didn’t really happen. This situation didn’t even change my impression of Christianity in general.  What it did do was make me comfortable with living with someone newly and devoutly Christian. As I’m most closely a Fallibilist it’s easy for me to identify with others’ belief systems and to treat those beliefs as true.

On top of that, becoming friendly with her didn’t change my views on the porn industry, either. And even though she was very pretty and charming, the fact that she was my roommate made it easy to not make any moves on her.

So that’s the story of my last roommate. Only in LA might you end up living with an internationally recognized porn star and discover that living with that person will be comprised of everyday human interaction.

It’s fucking weird to live in this city.

Tags: faith, god, porn, roommate, tmi
Filed Under: Life As A Nico