Oriana Small - Girlvert: A Porno Memoir

THIS IS A GENUINE BARNACLE BOOK

This is a work of nonfiction. The author has done her best to tell this story the way it happened and, in some cases, clear up standing misconceptions and misunderstandings. Events and actions have been retold to the best of her accurate ability. Conversations presented in dialogue form have been re-created based on the authors memory of them, but they are not intended to represent word-for-word documentation of what was said; rather, they are meant to evoke the substance of what was actually said. Also, in the interest of privacy and to protect the innocent and the guilty, the majority of the names have been changed.

A Barnacle Book
453 South Spring Street, Suite 531
Los Angeles, CA 90013
abarnaclebook.com
davenaz.com/oriana
askori.com

Copyright 2011 by Oriana Small

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address:
A Barnacle Book Subsidiary Rights Department
453 South Spring Street, Suite 531
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Cover illustration by Corey Smith
B&W photos by Dennis McGrath
Design by Tamra Rolf

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Print Data
Small, Oriana, 1981
Girlvert: A Porno Memoir / by Oriana Small AKA Ashley Blue

1. Small, Oriana, 1981 2. Porn actressUnited StatesBiography.
3. Ashley Blue (alias)

Includes Select Filmography (p. 306)

ISBN-13: 9780982505687

The woman inspects her hand. She holds it away from her face and looks at it as if it does not quite belong to her, as if its history is something she has read. Thirty-two years before, the hand had gone into her mouth regularly.

BEN GREENMAN, Her Hand (Atlanta, 2015)

GIRLVERT

a porno memoir

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Modeling and Recreational Sex

FIGURE MODELS NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY
WORLD MODELING

T his was the ad. I was dissecting the classified section of the Los Angeles Daily News . The paper was spread out all over the carpet of my studio apartment. I was living in a raunchy part in Hollywood. Transvestite prostitutes worked the street outside my window. It was three in the afternoon. I read each of the ads twice, desperately searching for my next potential workplace failure and limiting my focus to any job not requiring previous experience. I kept coming back to this one: World Modeling . The word scared me though, modeling . Who exactly did I think I was, responding to a modeling ad?

I hung up on the guy who answered the first time I dialed this so-called World Modeling office. I gathered the guts to speak and tried again. I hadnt expected a guy to be answering the phone at a modeling agency. The smooth-operating actors voice on the other end told me to come in for a consultation, if I was interested.

Just like that? I said. Dont you want to know what I look like first? I could be five hundred pounds for all you know.

It doesnt matter. Just come into our office, and well talk more about it. I can explain more when you get here. His voice was so overtly persuasive that it struck me as suspiciously sleazy.

I was nervous. This was a stupid idea. Theyre going to say no. Definitely. Maybe they will say something worse. Ill be a laughing stock. Long after I leave their offices, theyll still be joking about how I came in to apply. What if they told me I was too short? Or too fat! Not once in my life has anyone told me I could be a model. It was an entirely far-fetched dream for a girl as average as me, medium in every way. I was neither tall nor gorgeous, big-eyed nor buxomI would call myself cute , at best.

As I drove down the 101, the thought occurred to me: Maybe I could just model my feet. My feet look pretty good. But then I remembered the hair on my toes. And my second toe is noticeably longer than my big toe. Models have to be perfect, right? No modeling agency would give me a shot in hell. It would end in disappointment.

On the Van Nuys exit, I began to brace myself for the blow. I rehearsed what I was going to say when these people told me, Sorry, you just dont have the right requirements to be a model. Come back when youve grown about a foot taller, midget!

But, oh, how I needed a job! Id been fired, asked to quit, and just plain not shown up (my favorite technique) for my last four jobs, all in only five months time. Id recently quit Moorpark Community College after already dropping out of art school in San Francisco, had moved out of my aunt and uncles home in Thousand Oaks, and I was on my own. I hated Thousand Oaks. It was stale, and all of the people in it were stale. Going to class seemed like a waste. I wanted to figure out all the answers to life on my terms. I knew where I could find them. I moved to Hollywood. What can I say. I was young.

I fantasized about being a Hollywood burnout or a rock groupie, someone who eclipsed herself before the age of thirty. I was too young, perhaps too shallow, to understand anything beyond skin-deep attraction and barfly philosophies. Work was not my number one priority in life. Going out, partying, and having fun came before anything else. And my idea of having fun consisted of experimenting with drugs and having sex with older men. Even if they werent conventionally handsome, I always found something appealing about the older guys I slept with. Anything from the way their musky armpits smelled to an out-of-state accent. There was no rhyme or reason to my selection. Most of them were one-night stands, unless they had a big dick. I liked that.

Ever since high school, I was really into one-night-only sexual encounters. It could be as little as a make-out session or a blowjob. I loved meeting new men and going off somewhere to have sex. I never thought of it as giving it up. I got something out of it, too. Instead of orgasms, I received knowledge. I was learning about mens bodies, and I was learning about my own body. Sex gave me a feeling of power. Sex is power. Sex made me feel pretty, wanted, needed, and smart. I did all I could to make those feelings stronger.

I have never been good at hiding my feelingsor ignoring themand one thing I felt for certain was that the traditional service industrywaitressing, secretarial work, even lobbying/political activismwas not for me.

The modeling agency was on Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Id envisioned a tall, professional building with sleek, tinted glass on the outside. Imagining it, I could almost smell the spacious, fashionably decorated lobby, the waiting area full of headshots and rsums. I parked on the street, looking for it. I was so full of nervous energy that I forgot to pay the meter.

The buildingthe building in my mindwas not there. Instead, the door to World Modeling led up some ratty carpeted stairs above a corridor between two other equally questionable businesses. I couldnt even ascertain what kind of establishments they were. The signs on the buildings faade were too old and faded. I had noticed an adult video shop on the corner. Sherman Oaks sounds nice, but Van Nuys Boulevard is still Van Nuys Boulevard: a good place to disappear to if you want to run away from home and live a miserable life. Ride the bus and do heroin.

I was wearing a cute little lavender dress and heeled sandals. I felt pretty. My skin was clear. Twenty year old, fresh-faced Oriana Rene Small. I took a deep breath before I opened the door to the suite.