He Made Me Ch. 12

This naturally didn't mean that I was famous. It just meant that I wasn't a nobody drowning in the ocean of porn streaming on the internet. Also, it meant that I was nominated with Lotus for the first edition of the "iPorn awards" for our "inspired absurdist porn" in the "alternative" category.

It was at these awards that I rose to fame. They were basically just a publicity stunt for a new big porn convention in Las Vegas that was meant to give a better representation of how the industry worked in the camming era. I attended it in May with Barbie to represent Mikey's agency and its assets (read our boobs). He wanted to prove that in a time of self-made productions, when the studio could be in the porn star's home, it still made sense to work with an agency, which could offer tech support; set up personal websites, more lucrative than Onlyfans; organize collaborations and provide sponsors. The way he talked, when he presented us to the crowd as the evolution of porn stars and used terms like "sex influencers" and "bespoke porn entertainment", you would think that you were attending some big tech event and he was the CEO/guru of some new startup. If only hadn't he looked like a pimp!

As innovative as he wanted to be, however, our activity there consisted mostly in meeting fans wearing only a thong and tall platform boots. Even though the crowd around our stand was mostly for Barbie, Jackie Cummings and a few other more important clients, I was happy to see some people who knew me too and asked for autographs or selfies, mostly while fondling my new awesome boobs or my ass: by then I was pretty used to being groped by strangers because of my work as a stripper in clubs that allowed touching, so if they asked nicely and behaved, I allowed them. Besides, Mikey was right next to me to "protect his newest asset". Apparently my behavior wasn't that common and so I gained visibility as the convention went by.

After an hour or so, a small crowd was surrounding me and that's when it all happened. I was standing next to our table, taking a selfie as I was giving a kiss on the cheek to a very tall guy with a bristly beard who held one of my breasts in his hand as though weighing it. My phone was on the table, because I had just texted Lotus to try and convince her for the umpteenth time to come and keep me company. Perhaps it was bad timing on his part or I was on high alert because of the human wall surrounding me, but when another man tried to swipe my phone, I immediately noticed him and spun around to snatch it back. He was faster and decided to run for it.

Without thinking, I grabbed the nearest object, a huge floppy dildo I was sponsoring, and ran after him. He was taller and I was on impossibly high heels, but I still reached him in no time and drove him into a corner.

"I'm not a thief! I just wanted to have a look, get to know the real you" he babbled looking terrified, as he should've been: if until then I was fueled only by the desire of defending my property, those words sparked real rage.

"Give it back!" I barked, beating him with the dildo, as he cowered behind his forearms.

He complied, but it wasn't enough for me.

"My… Life… Is… Not… For… Sale!" I yelled furious, punctuating my words by hitting him again with the dildo.

"All right, all right!" he apologized.

"It's not alright. Say you are sorry!" – another hit – "Say it!"

"Okay, I'm sorry, stop hitting me!" he whined.

"Now, get out of here!" I hissed.

At that, I spun around and loped proudly back to my post.

"Sorry for the interruption, baby," I said to the bearded fan who was gawking at me petrified. "You won't pull any shit with me, right?"

"Hell no!" he hastily confirmed with a chuckle.

"Good," I replied with a big smile, put his hand back on my boob and kissed him on the cheek for the camera.

It was only then that I noticed that there were many more pointed at me and, among the buzz, I heard someone whisper: "Did you see what she did?"

"Oh fuck," I said to myself.

And with that line ended the soon-to-be viral video that someone had made of me for the whole internet to see.

Barbie was gaping.

Mikey was in damage-control mode, reminding everyone the rules, while actually trying to divert their attention from me to himself. It was pointless. The buzz was so strong that I almost couldn't hear him and he was inches from me! I felt so scared by the incredibly stupid mistake that I had made, that my legs almost gave away.

"I should take a smoke break…" I mumbled to my agent. Technically it was true: it had been almost an hour since the previous one with Barbie and I was dying for a couple of cigs.

"You stay here and make them happy!" Mikey hissed at me. I'd never seen him so serious and… Honestly it was hard to tell whether he was furious or… Something else. Either way, it was kind of ominous and I didn't have the guts to contradict him.

So I spent the next hour dying inside, craving desperately my cigarettes and smiling as if I was having the time of my life, which was a torture in and of itself. Where the fuck was Lotus? Probably stoned in my hotel room! At least, that's what she'd been doing when I wasn't around during all our trips to Vegas – we wanted to strip in cooler clubs than those in LA. Sometimes her passiveness drove me crazy!

"Don't worry!" Barbie mouthed in my direction, with reassuring cheerfulness.

Come on, even a narcissist surrounded by adoring fans somehow managed to notice me! How could we possibly… Well, that'd been the question that had been popping in my mind increasingly often after New Year's Eve: how could we possibly become a couple?

It had all started with a very different question: was Lotus referring to me when she had looked at me in the eye and said that she wanted to fall in love someday? I knew that I had no reason to think so: she often had that piercing gaze and she was talking to me, so it was natural for her to stare. However, somehow I had a feeling that she had a thing for me. We were, after all, inseparable and we had so much fun together, not to mention the sex. Actually, she seemed to be unable to function like a human being without me: case in point, she was spending her time mindlessly smoking weed now, instead of having fun in the most fun city in the world. Wasn't that a dead giveaway for a relationship that had crossed the boundary of friendship?

Perhaps it was the other way around and I was the one with a thing for her. What was sure, was that I too longed to be in love as she had revealed that fateful night. My idea of intimacy had changed a lot during the previous year and it was now definitely unrelated to sex, but that just meant that even though I was having all the sex I'd always wanted for fun and work, there was not enough intimacy in my life. I needed to make love to someone, not just sex. Of course my relationship would have to be different from every other one before, because it definitely needed to be open, and not just because I fucked people for a living: sex for fun was now part of who I was. This was a huge problem, as I had immediately found out with Patrick. In this sense Lotus was perfect and perhaps that was what I found so attractive about her. If only she weren't terrible on so many other fronts! I wanted someone who could be there whenever I needed them, someone that would take care of me. With Lotus it was the other way around!

No, maybe that wasn't fair: she was just missing that day, but she had been there for me in every major crisis. Was I being needy? Was it possible that all these problems stemmed from the fact that we were both women and I was stuck in a man-woman dynamic? Honestly, I had no idea of what the roles in a lesbian relationship were. Had I been backward-thinking already when I was with men, thinking about myself as a princess who needed a prince to take care of her?

These thoughts kept whirling tirelessly in my mind, with the only result of leaving me more confused than before. One thing was for sure: finding out that I was bi had truly opened the floodgates for doubts about fundamental life facts. Honestly, sometimes I felt very shallow.

"Hey, Mikey, Jules and I are going for a pause," I heard Barbie say behind me in a very commanding tone.

He just mumbled ok, looking pensive. So we each took a jacket and sneaked away from the crowd, which I noticed for the first time: it was actually quite big now.

As soon as we were outside, my hand acted on its own to put a cigarette between my lips.

"Oh, I so needed a smoke!" I said, letting it dangle from my mouth with my eyes closed in bliss.

"Yeah, I bet. How are you feeling?" Barbie replied, taking a long drag from hers.

"Like I've just thrown away my career!" I replied, exhaling a huge cloud over my head after having kept it in my chest for as long as I could.

"Oh, don't be so sure! People do stupid things all the time! Most porn actresses have tweeted the wrong thing or made the wrong joke once or twice. You just need to weather the storm!"

"Yeah? What mistake have you done?"

"Well… Er… I wasn't referring to myself, but really, other women I know…"

Barbie then went on to list a few scandals of porn stars who hadn't their career ruined, which was nice if only her argument wasn't fatally flawed: these were all famous and their fame was too solid for a single mistake to be an actual threat, whereas mine wasn't: my career was just beginning! So all she was accomplishing was to make matters worse.

"Well, I guess there's little I can do now: we'll see," I stopped her before she could make me any more anxious, chaining into another cigarette.

"Yeah… And whatever happens, we are all here for you!" she added bracingly. "At least I and Mikey: where's your friend?"

Lotus was just "my friend" for her, usually pronounced with a slightly haughty intonation. Of course Barbie never missed a chance to try to drive a wedge between me and my bestie.

"Fuck if I know," I replied. Even though I knew that Barbie was just exerting her toxic influence on me, this time I actually felt like talking shit about Lotus.

"You know, I learned a long time ago that some people have just a limited use: they can't be all you need them to be. Take your friend for example: she's good when you want to shoot silly videos, but she isn't there in times of crisis."

"Actually she refused to accompany me here even before this mess! And you have no idea how much I had to insist for her to just make the trip to Vegas! We got nominated for this fucking award together and she doesn't want to be there for the ceremony!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! I get that this isn't important for her, fuck nothing apparently is, but it is for me! I thought that at least with a woman I wouldn't have to put up with this insensitive boyfriend bullshit!"

Oops! Damn it! I slipped, and with a crazy jealous Barbie too!

"Wait, sweetie, are you two… A thing?" she asked, sounding like a very protective gun-bearing father.

"No, no," I hastened to reassure her.

Her knowing gaze didn't leave me much of a choice.

"Fine… As far as she knows, we aren't anything, I'm just thinking about it. But I'm not even sure how it would work: usually it's the guy who asks the girl out, but with a woman who does the first step? Should it be me?"

"If you are used to being asked out, that's how it should be," was her terrible suggestion.

"She's never going to do the first step. Ugh, life is so complicated when you do porn!"

"Oh, don't say that, Jules! Besides, porn makes you meet so many people… I'm sure you've already met your guy, you just haven't had the courage to ask him out yet!"

"Yeah, I've met a lot of people… Actually most of them are taken, which kinda surprised me. Anyway, I haven't met anyone who's really interesting and fun like Lotus."

"You just need to be more patient and keep looking. Speaking of, if you wanted to find someone, you could've asked: I know lots of people, I would've introduced you to a nice guy!"

"But whenever we are at some party you always set me up with producers twice my age!"

"That's were the money is! Besides, you like older guys: I see how much fun you have with Mikey!"

I wondered how she couldn't hear just how much she sounded like her mother, whom she criticized exactly for saying things like that. But that's who Barbie was: caught in her own twisted view of the world, where people where just things to use, I was her favorite toy and it was unacceptable that any other girl played with me. She was a sweet, broken thing, but I loved her anyway, so I ended up indulging her as always: "Fine, when we come back you can try to set me up with someone… But nobody older than 40!"

"Come on, give me something to work with!"

"Fine, 45…"

"Yay! I have already a couple of guys in mind! Trust me, you'll forget about your insensitive friend soon enough!"

After a few more minutes and a third cigarette, we went back in. Mikey was now typing fast on his laptop.

"It's online," he answered gravely our mute question.

And the torture started again in a seemingly endless loop: attending my duties as Mikey's talent with a smile in my face, smoke break, finding Mikey more pensive than before and repeat.

When it was finally over, I basically ran away to the hotel as soon as Barbie, caught up with a few friends, lost track of me. Mikey had booked a single room in a fancy place for the both of us, because he enjoyed "the room service": the old fatso was too lazy to walk out of his room to get some! If only I wasn't too embarrassed for having disappointed him with the scene I had caused, I would've wished to drag him there to cheer me up. Instead, I found Lotus, to whom I had given a spare key so that she could enjoy our luxurious whirlpool bath in my absence: the hotel she had booked for herself was cheap and kinda dingy. She was laying on the king-size bed, lost on her phone, wearing Mikey's giant monogrammed bathrobe and his personal towel as a turban.

"WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?" I yelled immediately.

"Wow, tune down this aggro attitude, dude. No wonder guys are terrified of you," she replied, getting up, cool as a cucumber and smelling like a weed dispensary.

"I NEEDED YOU, WHILE YOU WERE HERE GETTING HIGH… Wait, you know about the video? YOU KNEW AND DIDN'T EVEN TEXT ME?!"

"I was busy," she shrugged, her face perfectly emotionless, as usual.

"DOING WHAT?"

"Well," she started, counting on her hands, "first laughing my ass off watching it and then posting it everywhere I could, tagging the right people."

There were so many words I wanted to shout at the same time now, that somehow they got in the way of each other and left me speechless.

"I'm surmising, the way you are yelling like a crazy person, that you are upset about the video," she calmly added, squinting her eyes pensively, "which is weird, considering that everyone is loving it."

"Really?" I mumbled, blushing violently.

"Of course," she replied, diverting her eyes from mine to my boobs. "Think about what it shows. First, you get mugged and instead of being a victim, you chase the thief – who was twice as big as you, by the way – running like a movie star on crazy-tall heels, and then you subjugate him by hitting him with a dildo. That was incredibly badass and hilarious at the same time."

"Oh, I guess it kind of was… But now everyone will think I'm a maniac!"

"Are you kidding? It was a stroke of genius! At the end you go back to your fans and put a dude's hand on your tits: you basically proved that you can be strong and easy, scary and friendly, all at the same time. It's like the perfect combo for a porn star. Men nowadays are both attracted by and afraid of girl power, but you showed them that if they behave like normal human beings, they've got nothing to be afraid of."

Would that really work? Maybe for some people, but all of them? I wasn't convinced.

"That's why I tagged in my posts on Twitter every feminist porn star I could think of," she went on, her gaze still fixed on my breasts. "They retweeted me and now you are kinda trending, at least in the sex-work-related feeds."

No matter whether she was right or not, guilt was replacing anger, digging a painful hole in my stomach. Lotus had been there for me in her own way after all! And if she was right, her way was actually much better than everyone else's, even Mikey's, who was supposed to be the expert about the inner workings of the sex industry. How could I get out the horrible position I just put myself into? Come think of it, Lotus had already offered me a way.

"Shit, I'm sorry I yelled at you, you are the best friend one could– My eyes are up here, Lotus!" I scolded her as I pointed at my face and then crossed my arms as if I wanted to protect my boobs from her indiscrete staring. This had become one of our recurring inside jokes ever since I had gotten fake tits.

"It's okay, sugarboobs, as long as you offer me free private shows of those, you can do whatever."

Oh, yeah, this too: after my boobjob Lotus had started using silly nicknames like that to cheer me up during my "boobie blues" and it kind of stuck.

"So, what have you been up to?" I asked lighting up the umpteenth cigarette ever since I had left the convention.

"I watched 'Adventure Time' in your Jacuzzi high as a kite, then ordered some expensive shit to eat, since Mikey's paying anyway, and then… You know. How was your convention?"

"Fun, before the incident. A lot of people came to see me! And the stands were fun too. I think you would've liked it."

"Maybe. Going back to your first question, I tried to go and visit you but I couldn't."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I was there thinking 'I'm going now', but I never actually did."

"Why?"

Lotus shrugged, but it didn't drive me nuts as it should've done. She was like that, perpetually perplexed by her own emotions, which hardly ever came to the surface. Actually this was partly the reason why I was so confused about her feelings for me. Could it be that a part of her was scared of being recognized for her first porn shot, a traumatizing experience in which she had been badly abused? Or maybe it was the crowds? Or Barbie, who hated her?

"It's ok," I said bracingly, putting my hands on her shoulders. "But tonight you are coming."

She didn't seem enthusiastic about the idea.

"If we win, it would be your award as much as mine!" I insisted.

"You said that Mikey probably bought the nomination."

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean we don't deserve it! And the spotlight will make us more popular!"

"I'm not pursuing career in porn, though. I'm just a stripper."

This was usually the time when I had to lead her to understand herself, a task that I was getting really good at.

"Then why do you make so much porn with me?"

"It's fun?" she shrugged, like a student grasping at straws after being asked a difficult question by a teacher.

"We could have the same fun without publishing it."

"Yeah, that's true… You know, perhaps I like that we are making the kind of porn I'd like to watch but never find."

"See? You are doing for the audience. And if we want more audience we need to go to this goddamn party!"

She just looked at me with the most emotionless face.

"And… After what happened today I really need you!" I added.

"You are going to drag me there whatever I say, aren't you?"

"Definitely! Speaking of, we have an appointment with your hair stylist in a few minutes, so you better get dressed."

Without so much of a reaction, she let the bathrobe fall and fetched her clothes. She was so hot, her body lean and sensual… Focus, Jules!