Jess lanai

I’m not going back and reading what I’ve already written.

Because there is some anxiety to writing. I’m never entirely sure how stupid or insane I’m being. Or inept. And I’m posting it for people to read.

It’s best to leave that be and let it be gone to the ether once it posts.

So I’m not sure if I’m made it seem like I hated doing porn.

I did not. I did it for three years. I’ve had a fascinating life because of porn. I appreciate what doing it gave me.

I did have fun for a period of time.

I did feel very lonely though. Definitely didn’t feel like I fit in or like I could be myself.

And porn sex is very different than real sex.

Porn sex is incredibly safe. No one’s feelings or egos are at stake. Theres no risk or mystery. There’s no learning curve even. Everyone’s a pro.

Real sex is messy.

There’s real ego involved it’s not just a physical need. People put their identity and self image up on the table.

People’s type of experience varies in real sex. In porn sex we’re all in the same pool.

I worked the same people all the time and the same people all worked with each other. Especially when it came to men.

It’s hard for a man to break into porn. All the girls work with all the same veteran guys.

But real sex isn’t so interconnected. People are more individual. They have their own individual kinds of experiences.

Real sex is two different worlds colliding. The terrain doesn’t have a map, it has to be explored. There’s a learning curve. And a bonding because of that learning curve.

Missing out on that and only having porn sex did do some damage.

Is it so bad my three years in porn I just had porn sex and never had a boyfriend?

Yes and no.

Yes because experiences do matter.

When we’re young we’re always in such a hurry to get somewhere and everyone tells you, you’re young you have time, but I do think it’s a valid instinct.

Advantages are real. If I bought a house when I was twenty and did a 15 year mortgage I’d be paying it off this year. The huge expense of rent is eliminated and extra resources become available to me. And resources always multiply if you use them as resources.

Having a good husband is quite an advantage in life that I have perhaps missed out on.

But the beautiful thing about human beings is we do adapt.

We adapt to a point that we can make missed opportunities transform into advantages.

There are a lot of advantages I have gained from doing porn as well. But more on that later.

I was um… quite a bit crazy in my early twenties.

Crazy how?

Apart from being a tornado of unfiltered emotions that changed faster than lightning could strike, I was also extremely disorganized and messy.

I have a story that illustrates this very well.

After Abdellatif Kechiche hired me to play Marilyn Chambers he had his producer meet me to further approve me.

I think I was 22. I might’ve been 23. Hard to remember. My age matters because I slowly leveled up my insanity throughout my twenties until it peaked after mektoub.

But this French dude shows up. Really thick accent. He changed my entire idea of what a French accent was.

Found out later it’s because he was from the south. Them south frenchies. They’re something else.

It was Vincent Maraval. If anyone reading this is involved in French film they’ll know who the infamous Vincent Maraval is.

In my first meeting with him I thought he was boring. And not very bright. Because he asked me two questions nodded and said, ‘I see exactly why Abdellatif hired you,’

I thought there was something wrong with French people. Because Abdellatif had also hired me after like two questions.

I thought it all must be either be fake and there was a plot to kidnap me and sell me into slavery or, French people just weren’t very smart. Or maybe just that French people were far too French and everything Americans did seemed interesting to them.

But we concluded our awkward interview and I was sitting there thinking maybe I needed to turn this movie down because the selling me to slavery thing could be real. Then Vincent Maraval invited me to a dinner he was having with another French director and a famous French singer.

A very large part of my life was shaped by going to that dinner.

If I hadn’t gone to that dinner that would have been the last of my interaction with Vincent Maraval.

The next time I saw Vincent, Abdellatif had fired him. He’d fired everyone. I was actually the only one that hadn’t been fired. Even the project itself had been fired.

(I survived many rounds of the Abdellatif mass firings throughout the years. It’s actually incredible I ended up in that movie)

From that dinner I developed a friendship with those past players of wild bunch (wild bunch is the name of a film production company. All my friends now work for different companies. But back then they were all in one place. In that wild bunch)

I developed a kind of friendship with that group of people that I hadn’t had before.

At that time I had one best friend that I adored. A few none porn friends that I felt isolated from because of the porn. And porn people, I really only had one good porn friend.

I was pretty lonely. And the wild bunch people made feel a way I’d never felt before in a group.

I’d never been good at groups.

I’d spent most of my time muting myself in groups. Not feeling very comfortable around most people. Feeling either too shy to speak or too on the outskirts to say anything I really thought. I worked very hard to stay as invisible as possible.

But with that wild bunch group back in those days a whole new aspect of my personality came alive. They made me feel like I could be myself without consequences. It was incredibly freeing and instantly addicting. I spent every second I could hanging out with them. And every second was magical.

Back to that night. I went to this super fancy La Chinese restaurant with Vincent Maraval who to me was just a random French producer. Abdellatif’s agent was also at the dinner. Him I’d met before.

There was also a famous French director and a famous French singer guy. (I have to ask Vincent who they were because I do not remember their names)

The dinner was kind of whatever. All the guys were fascinated because I was a porn star and I’d been hired by Abdellatif Kechiche. I was fascinated by the food. It was five star Chinese food. They had real Szechuan that actually made my mouth go totally numb.

Somehow I got roped into giving the famous French director and famous French singer a ride to their hotels.

And thing is, back then, I have changed since then. I am normal now so don’t judge me too harshly.

But. Back then I was an impressive level of messy. I was so messy that the French director had to move piles of trash to get into the car.

I think we even had to pull over to empty some of the trash because there was no room in my car to accommodate two people and all the trash.

I was also not one for being flashy. I was a porn star. I had money. But my car, it was a very beat up ugly old car.

The French director called my car ‘contemporary art’ and seemed deeply amused and fascinated by my level of messiness.

Which one again, has changed. I’m normal now. It cannot be used against me.

But it did persist into my mid twenties after I quite porn where my coworkers called me ‘Messyca’

My messiness didn’t change until I got a boyfriend and he made me change.

I do think the main reason I agreed to the Abdellatif Kechiche film had to do with me looking for a way out.

I was still pretty deep in porn when I met Abdellatif and when I met Vincent. But in the back of my mind I did want a way out.

I just wasn’t too worried about it. I knew I could not last my whole life in porn. I knew that. But I figured like, a decade. Maybe a few years over a decade. As long as I was out before 35 was my feelings I think. I can’t remember exactly.

I just know the deeper I got into porn the more the thought of getting out got pushed from the back of my mind to the front.

And Abdellatif Kechiche fell through. He never fired me he just never called me. Whatever movie I was doing for him disappeared and I got a bit more manic.

I’d done the production work before so I asked Vincent Maraval for help. He helped me get an internship with Muse productions. They’d be best known for having done American psycho.

But my favorite by them was freeway.

Those were fun days.

I dialed down my porn work. Took my Saint Bernard with me down to the Muse office where my bosses tolerated her drooling all over their nice furniture, growling and barking at people during their meetings and they let me pretend I had a future in film production.

It was really very sweet of them, I’m eternally grateful. I had blast with my little office job. I read the scripts they were considering and the books they were considering turning into movies. I walked my dog in Venice beach on my lunch breaks and spent all my money on the boardwalk.

Those were golden days.