Maitland Ward - Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood

How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood

Rated X

Maitland Ward

To my husband, who has encouraged and stood by me every step of the way. And to my mother and father, who raised me to be the independent spirit that I am.

I USED TO HIDE IN my room and imagine David Hasselhoff and I would one day get married, probably after a fast chase and definitely after we solved some crime with KITT, his talking car. Who knew that KITT was played by Bill Daniels and that he would one day be my teacher? David would wear his leather Knight Rider jacket when we wed, with his curly chest hair exposed, and I would wear a gown with ribbons and hoopskirt, and my dogs would be my flower girls. I thought he might smell like the baking vanilla or maybe gasoline straight from the pump. KITT would marry us, and we would drive off to a place where we could make babies. But the fantasy always abruptly ended there. I knew that in order for any of that to happen, I would have to grow up and leave my parents. And that would disappoint everyone.

I was acutely aware that if I could remain around the age of seven for the rest of my life, I would make my family proud. Seven, I thought, would be an age where when you danced around the living room in a Cinderella dress, theyd applaud you, but the glass slippers wouldnt yet pose any real threat. Its an odd thing to realize no one wants you to grow up when youre actively doing that.

I was a sheltered only child, raised in Long Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles that people nicknamed Iowa by the Sea because of the simple small-town vibe and also because in the postwar years, it was said that you couldnt swing a cat in this town without leaving a patch of fur on a Hawkeye. We werent Iowans, though. My people came from Texas and Saskatchewan, somewhat respectively.

I walked home from school with the same kids in the first grade as I did in the eighth, and I could smell what was cooking for dinner the second my mother greeted me at the door. In the afternoons, my mother and I would watch soap operas, and then Id play Star Wars with my dogs and cats in a big yard with a little frog pond that was shaded with avocado trees. Our springer spaniel was always Chewie, and I was always Princess Leia. At dusk, Id sit at the front window and wait for my fathers car to turn into the driveway. Those headlights and that turn and my dads footsteps walking up our porch were predictable. Every girl should take for granted that her dad will always come home.

I spent a lot of time alone. I didnt have any siblings or first cousins or much family at all around, but I was lovedso much so that I felt guilty whenever I played away from home too long. Family consisted of my mom and dad and my grandmother on my fathers side, whose love of gardening and her obsession with the Rapture always had her at odds with the natural elements. They say Jesus is coming this year, shed say. I wonder if my grapefruits will have come in. So much casual planning for the end of the world made me feel at home in a controlled state of chaos.

Dont give it up to any man who wont commit to paying your bills, my grandmother once said after giving me the talk about the cows and the mooching pervert who drank all that free milk from the fast titties. She thought this was encouragement for me to uphold my virtue; it turns out it was a solid business model for OnlyFans.

My grandmother was always worried about everything, but mostly about God punishing her for doing something wrong. And when she was worried, she cleaned. She was in constant zigzag motion trying to avoid a lightning strike. It all stemmed from her father who took her out of school in the eighth grade. She said he didnt like the teacher, and she said it like that was a valid reason. He was a man of Gods word, she would say as she washed each dish by hand in her sink. And he brought us up right to obey. And she never had a good nights sleep because of it.

Jesus watched over me through my childhoodnot from some place of peace on a cloud but from a miniature gold-plated frame that my grandmother one day propped up on my dresser. Like, poof, all of a sudden there was a blond, blue-eyed Jesus right next to my David Hasselhoff lunch box and they were at odds. She said that this picture would bring me comfort. In fact, much like her father did for her, it kept me up at night.

Talk to him, my grandmother said, pointing to the frame. Just tell him whatever you did bad today, and youll be forgiven. I looked away fast from David Hasselhoff. Unless its drugs or premarital sex, she said. Then youll have to be burned at the stake by the Beast because youll never get up in the Rapture.

Bad felt like such a broad-ranging topic. Did she mean bad because I ate too many cookies or bad because I could feel my breasts coming in and I noticed a boy at school looking at my shirt? Bad got more complicated as I grew up.

I put an elastic bandage around my breasts at various points in my upbringing (I had gotten the bandage for an ankle sprain), depending on how guilty I felt for growing and how much I thought Jesuss eyes were following me from inside the frame. I thought that maybe I could stop myself from having to develop boobsor at least they wouldnt poke out of my shirt and have that boy looking at me anymore. I was already so tall for my age that I thought if I squished myself down with something heavy on my head every nightlike a book or a water jug or anything else I could find that felt satisfactorily oppressive but wouldnt actually crack my bonesthen my spine would get the hint that it had already grown enough. Maybe word would travel down to my breasts and also my vagina, which was now tingling with prepubescence. But every time I measured myself on the inside of my closet door, I found that I was losing my battle at remaining a child. And there was that tingling.

My family believed I had a weak constitutionthat I was constantly under the threat of sickness and needed to be protected. They never tried to get me diagnosed with strange diseases for attention or put me in a wheelchair like Munchausen by proxy victims, but there was a constant undertone that I couldnt handle some thingsmost thingssimply because I nearly died at birth.

My mother, who had suffered miscarriage after miscarriage, was told I wouldnt make it. That she would keep bleeding and all of me would eventually flush right out, just like all the others had. She looked for me in the toilet every morning. She was on bed rest for weeks, the doctors amazed that I still had a heartbeat. You and me, we stuck it out and you came out so beautiful, she said. When my mother was cut open as she lay on a metal slab and I was presented to the world, I was over eight pounds and screamed the moment I breathed air. But my screams or my breath were never proof enough of my strength to survive.

And thats really where it comes fromthe feeling that I should never grow up. I felt if I did, then Id grow away from the story of my weakness and that special connection with my mom.

I believed in this fable that I was weak for some time. Though I was never unusually sick as a child and I had a strong throwing arm, I still believed that I was less able than other kids because of some trauma I suffered in the womb. Finally, when I was grown-up, it dawned on me that I hadnt escaped death by a lottery ticket or a Hail Mary pass. Id survived because I was determined enough to hold on.