“Excuse me, are you…” a voice in a restaurant catches me just as salmon flakes off my fork. I look up. My silverware is settling onto my plate as a man with shaky hands gives me the back of a menu to sign. He’s smiling as he tells me he loves my work. Really smiling. Really really loves my work. Did I mention he was smiling? But he’s also wearing a Frozen the musical T-shirt. He hands me a pen and I loop his name onto the paper. As I finish, he asks me what I’m working on next. My jaw slacks in the expectant pause. It’s moments like this that I have to take a quick scan of the evidence before me and assess: Does he know me from Disney or from porn?
A decade prior the answer would be clear. A dad and his boy would approach. The kid skipping up to see the redhead from Boy Meets World. We’d chat about episodes or story points, and how a penguin really is a fish (if you watch the show, you know). The kid would pose for a selfie as the dad would look on. Well today, more than ever, the dads are looking on. And the kids that watched me in their family rooms on Friday nights are all grown up. They’re in their twenties and thirties, and are part of the porn generation, where internet access to viewing sex has always been easily accessible and readily attained. They’re parents themselves now, too. And while their kids may binge me on Disney+, the grown-ups are viewing me in a whole new way.
It was a big deal when I starred in my first hardcore adult feature. The college roommate of Eric and Jack, who used to dance around washing dishes in her purple underwear, was now taking them off. And she was doing a whole lot more than that. The day Drive, the film I made with Kayden Kross for Deeper.com, was announced, the site’s traffic skyrocketed. Subscriptions for the site and Vixen Media Group went wild. The headlines were international and viral. I trended No. 1 on Google all day, topping Bernie Sanders’ heart attack (the joke was that I gave it to him). I guess you’d have to expect news of a TV teen crush becoming a full-fledged porn star to have legs, but I don’t think anyone expected they’d have such long-running ones. Celebs, especially ones from children’s TV of yesteryear, are always trying to grab their 15 minutes from TMZ. If this had been my intention, I would’ve followed the formula: make a bad sex tape, cry that it was a mistake to make said bad sex tape, then start a YouTube channel where you gain followers and sponsors by constantly wailing in your shame about your really bad sex tape.
Yawn.
This was not me. It would never be me. I am not ashamed.
Many expected my rise in the adult world, including many in the adult world itself, to be a flash in the pan. It was a stunt. I wasn’t serious. No one from mainstream ever is—like mainstream is a place you go and can never look back. But that’s what makes this story different: my genuine love for adult performance and for colorful cinema. My story is a journey rather than a cautionary tale. And I was ready to prove the naysayers wrong.
Shortly after the massive success of Drive, I signed an exclusive contract, partnering with Kayden and Vixen Media Group, to be the face of Deeper. To marry art house with taboo. I was fortunate enough to find someone in Kayden who not only has the talent and vision, but also the belief that we can do both. Not long after that, I won six awards at XBIZ and AVN—not only for the acting, but also the sex. I can’t say there’s ever been a prouder moment for me than when I was recognized for both.
I like that people ask me questions about what I do now. Whether it be total strangers or shell-shocked friends, it usually starts out in a whisper, like if the words are at full volume one of us might die. People are curious and a little afraid. Their vision of a porn set is some version of Ron Jeremy behind the camera, cigarette hanging from his lip, as a drug-infused orgy plays out before his lens. He’s always sweaty and it’s eternally 1975. But then they see me. A typical comment is, “Wow, you’re so normal”—as if porn, or the desire to perform sexually, is not. They wouldn’t feel comfortable coming up and asking a performer they saw on the internet in a double penetration gang bang these questions, but they feel safe with me. They know me. I was in their living room every week. And that means something. I’m happy to be that bridge; to normalize something that is absolutely normal.
A lot of people tell me they’ve been masturbating to me for more than 20 years. Think about that. That’s no easy task—being fap material for someone for nearly three decades. It’s so rare, I don’t think Guinness World Records has a category for it. But my fans can now buy my Fleshlight! How many of you can say your childhood crush’s vagina is in your nightstand drawer?
Porn sets are run much like mainstream. The same lights. The same cameras. Just different actions. People will ask me if I fear that the adult industry has ruined me for mainstream. It’s quite the opposite. Mainstream ruined me for mainstream. It became limiting and I was bored. This pigeonhole they put me in grew smaller and smaller. I was light. I was funny. That’s all I was allowed to be. When I hit my thirties, I was told I couldn’t be sexy. A publicist said to me, in a way that seemed polite to him, that if they wanted sexy they’d get someone who was 25. I’m glad I didn’t listen.
Now, I’m playing roles that I want to play. I can be dark and twisted and sexual. I’m afforded the freedom to find my voice, and that isn’t something mainstream often allows you to do. I have porn to thank for that. I have Kayden and Deeper. I have my fans. Now, it’s time for the walls to come down. It’s time for porn to be mainstream and mainstream to accept porn.
As for the guy in the restaurant—the one in the Disney shirt with the smile—I have my answer for him. It doesn’t matter where he knows me from. I’m proud of what I do and who I am becoming. I’m always unapologetically just me.
I smile as I hand him back the autograph and say, “I’m going to do whatever the hell I want.”
He gives me a smile back and says, “Well, I really hope it’s anal.”
