He was very nervous. Samuel gave him a
cigarette and told him to go smoke it outside, by the bushes that covered a
large part of the house. As they filmed inside with another guy, he was
smoking, his hands shaking and even his lips turning a very bright pink. He had
been chosen just of the street, after one of the producers had just loved the
way he looked. He wasn’t a very hipster boy or anything like that, he was just
naturally beautiful and that was something they really needed in their movies.
There was a market for those who liked guys
like him, the kind that looks very young but that’s old enough to sign a
contract and win a decent amount of money for working in the adult industry. Of
course, there was always the problem of him never having done anything like
that. The producer had told him it was something very safe and very private or
at least as private as it could be when the video could be seen by, at least, a
million people online. The point was that it was a very lucrative business.
And the guy needed it. His name was Phillip
and he had no money to go to college. He lived with his single mom and a little
sister. She was being sent to public school, so her mom had no money worries
there. But she just couldn’t do anything for her son. Her advice for him was to
just get a job and start making money, in order to avoid giving his future
family a life like that one. He was saddened by those words but, at the same
time, it was funny that his mom had no idea he had no interest in women or
families.
He accepted the offer by calling the producer
the night he talked with his mother. They agreed to do a screen test, with a
video camera and taking some pictures. For him, that was no problem. He just
did what they asked from him and, not surprisingly, he was all that they could
wish for in a guy and maybe even more. He looked exactly like what their
audience was asking for. He was very flattered when they told him this, not
really understanding the whole dimension of the matter. The important thing was
he was going to get paid.
However, the morning of the first shooting he
realized that, although he had sexual experience, he had never done it in front
of so many people. There was a camera guy and his assistant, a makeup person,
the sound guys, the director, a producer and, of course, the other guy that
would be having sex with him. It was al a bit overwhelming when he first saw it
all and that’s when Samuel the sound guy gave him a cigarette and told him to
go outside and chill for a bit. It was a good advice. Phillip tried to calm
down but he wasn’t fully calmed when he was called inside, in order to begin.
To his surprise, he had neglected to realize
he was going to have sex with only one person. So when they started touching
and kissing, the others just seemed to disappear. Of course, every now and
then, they would say some direction or tell them to move in a certain way. It
would break the moment for a bit, but he would go on doing what they were
paying him to do. When it was all done, everyone congratulated the pair. The
director looked very happy and the producer told Phillip he could be the next
big star.
He got paid right then and there and took the
bus straight home to go and stash the bills inside a can he had in his room. He
would have loved to tell his mother he was going to make good money, but he
realized he had to lie first. He just couldn’t tell her what he was actually
doing. Not because it was bad or wrong, his mother was not that kind of person.
He just didn’t have any intention to tell her that he was gay. It didn’t seem
like the right time to do it. So he had to come up with something else to cover
for it.
Phillip announced her, the next day that he
was going to work in a comic book store. He said it was one of those big stores
in the fancy side of town, where many men would pay hundreds of dollars for a
vintage version of their favorite comic book. She was very surprised but
pleased and, as expected, she didn’t ask anything else. Not how he had gotten
the job or when or how much did it pay. She was just happy to know her son
could take care of himself. Besides, he knew that once he made more money, he
would try to help her a bit with it, by buying groceries or paying some of the
home bills.
Time passed and the producers came through with
their promises. Some weeks, Phillip had to go and perform for at least four
movies. Some were done for the same production company and others would be done
by foreign people that would pay to have Phillip in one of their pictures. At
the beginning, he was only portrayed as a young innocent boy. But he eventually
got into more specific genres within the industry. Of course, nothing too
violent or dangerous. He was a pretty boy but not a stupid one.
More than once, some man somewhere would try
to touch him without permission or do crude jokes about him in front of him. At
first he tried to just shrug it off, but once he realized he had some weight in
the conversations, he started to talk back to people and to let them know
exactly what the rules were. One thing was the performances he gave and
another, very different, was his intent to be with someone, if there was any
intent at all. This made him lose a few jobs but it made others fall in love
with him and inviting him to do more work and even a few side things.
He would do silly videos with some of his
costars, in order to raise money for different things, or he would model
clothes and accessories for many brands catering to the gay community. The
moment he felt he had made it, in some way, was when they asked him to go to
the other side of the country to promote some of his movies and also some of
the clothes that he had been modeling for. He would make a ton of money doing
that and he would also gain much needed exposure that was never a bad thing for
anyone.
His mother thought he was going on a trip to
buy rare vintage comic books for the store. It was around then when he felt she
knew something, maybe not the whole picture but maybe parts of it. She looked
at him differently and would seem to be careful with her words when she spoke
to him. He would have liked to ask her what was going on but it would be
pushing a little bit too much and it wasn’t worth it, not in that moment that
seem to be going so good for her. That part of his personal life could wait.
However, life never really agrees with anyone.
She just takes her own course. On his trip, he met a photographer for a new
brand that wanted him as a model. He posed for him and talked a lot during the
photo-shoot and at an event where they ran into each other. He realized he
really liked that guy, and the guy seemed to really care about him, beyond the
pornography and the pictures. Luckily, he too lived on the other side of the
country, so they even went back together, talking and talking during the
five-hour flight.
It was about three months into them dating,
when Phillips mother told him he was proud of him, no matter what he did. He
was confused by that and had no idea what to say. She then grabbed her tablet
and showed him an advertisement she had seen online for men’s underwear. It was
him. She told him she investigated a little bit more and realized what other
business he was working in. Before he could say a word, she assured him it was
all fine, because he wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was just different.
Weeks later, Phillip introduced her to
Jonathan, the photographer he had been dating for a while. He really hit it off
with her and with his little sister. They would even go to the movies or the
park, enjoying the weekends together as a big family. It was a very strange
feeling but a good one.
Phillip kept doing his jobs. Eventually, he
moved on more into the modeling aspect of the whole thing, but still loving to
work for some brands that let him get in touch with that side of him that gave
him a chance in life. It was strange, but he owed it all to pornography. Who
would have thought?
