Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, has found himself in the middle of a number of controversies. There was the 2013 government shutdown, wherein Cruz hijacked Congress with a reading of Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham; the time he accused President Obama of high treason for wanting to push immigration reform; the time GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you”; and the time Donald Trump branded Cruz’s wife ugly and accused his father of assassinating JFK, prompting Cruz to cower and kiss his ring anyway. Recently, the culture war-obsessed congressman has come under fire for his complicity in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, and abandoning his state for a Cancun vacation in the midst of an energy crisis that left millions without power and dozens dead.
One of the funniest Cruz controversies, of course, came in September 2017, when his Twitter account “liked” an incestuous porn clip. The adult film in question, Dicks for Two, starred the celebrated porn actress Cory Chase as a stepmother who, after stumbling upon her stepdaughter and her boyfriend getting down and dirty, joins in on the X-rated fun. The incident took many by surprise, given that his Republican Party had only a few months prior adopted a platform branding porn “a public health crisis that is destroying the life [sic] of millions,” and the time Cruz, as Texas’ solicitor general, passionately defended his state’s ban on sex toys, claiming, “There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.” (Cruz placed the blame for “liking” the porn clip on an unnamed staffer.)
According to Cory Chase, Dicks for Two is a “family roleplay” flick—or “fauxcest,” as the popular porn genre is frequently called. “I was a very new stepmom to my stepdaughter. I think she pretended to stay home sick, had her boyfriend come over, they had fun, and then of course, I caught them,” she tells me, chuckling. “It was me being a Peeping Tom, and then me finding out, ‘Man, my stepdaughter is really hot, and her boyfriend has a really big dick, maybe I should join in.’”
A still of the film featuring Chase, blouse unbuttoned, standing by the doorway and gasping at what she saw, was shared hundreds of thousands of times following the Cruz incident. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Cruz critic, tweeted, “Well done @TedCruz using the power of ‘like’ to illustrate the evils of porn.”
“I became memeable,” laughs Chase.
Instead of capitalizing on the moment, Chase turned down a number of interviews, choosing to let the bizarre episode speak for itself.
“I wasn’t doing a whole lot of press back then, and really, what can I say about it?” she says. “I’m definitely surprised that it happened, but how it happened and why it happened, I have no clue. It is very weird that someone like him would like something like that.”
When I ask her why, she replies, “He’s said anti-porn stuff and is even anti-masturbation devices and toys—everything of that nature. Since then, I think he’s become a little more relaxed about all that stuff.”
Another reason that Chase didn’t capitalize on the moment in the media: she was stuck in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, which had just ravaged her home state of Florida. Once she was able to charge her phone, she opened her Twitter to find a warning telling her to adjust her settings because she’d received too many mentions. She’d also received hundreds of missed calls, voicemails, and emails from reporters requesting comment.
Having lived in South Florida for decades, and weathered a number of hurricanes and tropical storms, Chase was baffled when Cruz took it upon himself to bail on his home state of Texas during the recent power crisis for a Cancun getaway.
“Oh my god,” she utters at the mere mention of the episode. “It’s not great… Maybe he should have sent his family away and he stayed behind to deal with stuff.” So, since Cruz appears to be a fan of her work, is she a fan of Cruz?
“No, I’m not a fan,” replies Chase, shaking her head over Zoom, adding, “And that’s why I live in Florida and not in Texas.”
Chase, who turned 40 last month, had a rather unconventional road to porn stardom. In her junior year of high school, she signed up for the Army National Guard. “I said, ‘Congratulations Mom and Dad, you’re not going to have to pay for college,’” she recounts. Within the Army National Guard, Chase served six years in Active Guard Reserve. She spent most of her time in the Air Defense Artillery Branch, and was assigned to provide additional security at the Orlando International Airport following the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We were a show of force, watching the TSA to make sure they were doing their jobs,” she explains. “I was deployed for airport duties after Sept. 11, and we were set to go to Iraq in ’03 but ended up not going overseas because [the Iraqis] didn’t have any planes or missiles for us to shoot down.”
In addition to the Army National Guard, Chase worked as a paramedic for a private ambulance company. In her early twenties, she and her husband Luke realized they enjoyed filming each other having sex, and filming themselves having sex with other people. They began submitting the videos to online contests, and adult producers came calling. Around 2005, Chase started working with the amateur porn company Southern Charms; by 2007, she was shooting with larger companies like Florida-based Reality Kings. Two years later, Chase and her partner quit their jobs to pursue porn full-time.
Chase specializes in MILF roles—the older woman seducing a younger, more inexperienced man, whether it be a college student, stepson, etc. “I’ve been playing a MILF since I was 24. Since I got into the business, I’ve been playing a MILF, because I have big, fake tits, and I have a sort of older facial structure and not the round face with the pouty lips,” she says. “I was comfortable with it; I know a lot of girls aren’t. It’s a role that you’re playing. It may not necessarily be who you are, but you can put who you are into that role for a scene.” She maintains that it’s audiences who dictate the types of porn they shoot, laying the responsibility for the rise of “fauxcest” content squarely on their—and Hollywood’s—shoulders.
“I would say Game of Thrones was the biggest show that pushed the whole incest role, and then MILF and taboo porn became very mainstream, because a lot of other TV shows were touching on the incestuous family relation-type things that were going on,” offers Chase. “Porn has a tendency to follow those same trends.”
Two years ago, Chase suffered a health scare that could have put an abrupt end to her sex-having career.
“Just after the AVNs, I suffered a pulmonary embolism,” she recalls. “It was a little scary. I was fine… and almost dead at the same time. I was having some pains and thought it was my gall bladder or some other issue, so I went to my doctor and he said he heard something funny. I went in for an MRI and they picked it up.”
Chase took a gradual approach to reentering porn—producing her own content so that she could control “how hard, how rough, and what I was actually shooting,” posting the material to her website and OnlyFans. And then COVID happened, causing adult studio work to grind to a screeching halt.
“I just hope to get back to shooting with other production companies,” says Chase. “But I’m hoping these girls, men, and everything in between that are in the industry now and coming up with OnlyFans don’t have to rely on other people to make money and can keep making their own money. I came up in the early years when we didn’t have the platforms to do this stuff.”
Whether Cruz will be along for the ride is anyone’s guess, though we do know he’s harbored a lifelong fascination with porn. During his senior year of high school, an 18-year-old Cruz was asked on video what his aspirations were.
“Well, my aspiration is to, oh I don’t know, be in a teen tit film,” he replied. “Other than that, I don’t know… Take over the world. World domination. Rule everything. Rich, powerful, that sort of stuff.”
