I opened the door to Ing’s and bathroom nonchalantly, trying to downplay even the remotest possibility of any potential horror awaiting on the other side. I looked back with a shrug, “What could possibly be so bad?”

Spark knew. “You have to see it for yourself.” He said as if I might be walking into a room where someone just got hacked into bloody bits.

Then I saw it with my own eyes.

It could could have been a twisted prank. Some dadaist art piece designed to instigate disgust and provoke a riot. Or special effects from a horror movie made real  and therefore infinitely more disgusting. The bathtub. It looked like it was alive, crawling… hairy. From the hot water a steamy cloud thick with a stench of body odor and scented putrid soap scum hung in the air. The bathtub was thick with Ron Jeremy’s body hair, short, thick curly black hairs that clung to the sides of the tub with greasy suds drying to a hard fuzz lined it end to end. The puddled remnants of water that could not pass down the choked drain was grey with a dirty film. It rippled at one end trying to find a way down and out drop at a time.

Renting an apartment or house out for a location one is always taking a huge risk. The bored production minions, the apathetic actors, the selfishly arrogant directors and producers that are too busy trying to get their shots couldn’t care less. As far as they are all concerning, that space is theirs to do as they wish for the duration of the shoot. They own it.  They don’t care if they break the vase, flick burning ashes on the oriental rug, rip the upholstery moving the furniture into a stack in the corner. In mainstream or in porn, it is all the same regardless but ALL of those things would have been easier to handle than the devastation of Ron’s bath.

Ing stood behind me gently sobbing, demanding a new bathtub. “How am I going to clean that?” She wanted to know and I honestly was at a loss for any suggestion. Some sort of incendiary device would be too dangerous. Chemicals too noxious. It would require a complete hazardous waste disposal team to secure the premises and begin a toxic waste disposal process. Chances were good that Dupont hadn’t yet come up with a solvent that would break down such a biohazard as Ron Jeremy’s hairy soap scum.

I didn’t have the heart to warn her that we were probably going to find used anal sex condoms under the couch too when the Vivid shoot was finally wrapped.

Don't look under the couch...

I ran into the courtyard between my studio and Ing and Sparks. The screams stopped. I had to check myself. Were those screams the sounds of someone shooting her anal sex scene for the Vivid shoot going on in both our respective lofts?  I have heard a few porn stars in my day that were hard to tell if they were enjoying themselves to the outermost limits of pleasure and beyond, I mean – at least until the cameras stopped rolling. If you couldn’t see them then you might wonder if they were fending off an attack from a deranged fan/abusive boyfriend/fiendish serial killer. But this was not that sort of scream…

I paused to listen more closely. Since there was a possibility that an anal sex scene was indeed being shot, I would only be a problematic distraction if I burst through the doors and tried to save whomever was screeching so vehemently because a huge cock was possibly cracking her ass in two. Now breaking down the “4th wall” – the imaginary wall that separates the stage from the audience, doesn’t only happen when the actors speak directly to the audience, from the inside, out. Breaking down the 4th wall can also occur from the outside in, when the audience intrudes on the stage, usually unwittingly. In fact, this can be a problem in most of Los Angeles, where reality and fantasy can intermingle on any given day wherever a film is in production, and it happens all the time. But, on a porn shoot if it happens then you tend to feel a bit more awkward.

Sure, in both cases, the director is going to scream at you and yell to get off the set. On the porn shoot though, the stud might lose his edge and have a tough time regaining his… composure… so to speak. So I listened more closely, the quiet actually kind of disquieting.

Then I could faintly hear sobbing. Time to finish donning the superhero mantle and figure out what the fuck was up.

Ing wasn’t from that part of California, the Valley, the part where all your neighbors worked in film and television productions and moonlighted as porn set hands and had friends and friends of friends that all earned a few bucks on the side renting out to porn companies looking for places to shoot one-day-wonders. She was from the part of southern California where the neighbors were the ones everyone hoped would hire them for their next project so that they wouldn’t have to moonlight on porn sets anymore and risk getting outed to the Union.

From the softer sands of Malibu, a place where the green blue sea soothes the savage and sometimes heartless soul of Life in Los Angeles, Ing came from the whitest white Christian purity whiter than the walls of Pepperdine. She was innocence and cordiality, grace and refinement. She is the kind of gentle soft soul that should be kept a million miles away from things like cum gurgling and anal lube bubbles.

But having Vivid shoot a porn in her studio kind of made that impossible, now here she was practically catatonic. Still, she was coherent enough to say that she was going to be fine. She was going to make it through. Never again. But she was going to make it through. Rent had to be paid and at least the rental would cover it in a single day. A day of hell, but just one day of hell.

She left our loft to go back and check on her bathroom after Ron’s bath. Ron Jeremy was finally out after what seemed like hours that had no beginning water running or ending of its draining.

Shortly after is when we heard the screams.

The time Ron Jeremy spent in the bath seemed to Ing like hours. She was becoming frantic. She couldn’t figure out what was taking so long and it was wearing her down just thinking about it. She looked like she had reached that point beyond where the last tear of worry has been shed and all that is left is a cold, expressionless shock that drained her face of color and froze every trace of emotion.

The Vivid shoot in the meantime was going on swimmingly. Scene after sex scene was wrapped and “in the can”. All the non contract stars would be performing the anal sex while the Vivid contract starlets didn’t have to put their asses on the line, so to speak, but assholes were being properly fucked and that what was selling so that is what had t be shot. The top studs in the industry were delivering the goods, wood lasting through all the camera and lighting changes and the starlets sagging interest when the camera was off.

At the end of a day of shooting multiple anal sex scenes, as one can certainly unfortunately surmise, there is a lingering stench of butt and sweat and cum. To director Paul Thomas, that smell was the smell of victory, the sweet and sour scent of a hard day at the orifice.

A long day, just one more scene to shoot. Someone would have to get Ron out of Ing’s bathroom.

I could see Ing wrestling with the idea. Yes, letting Ron Jeremy take a bath in her bathtub would mean that he would be clean at the very least and that meant she could worry a bit less about his body odor destroying her couch, even if she still had to worry about the anal sex scenes being shot on it later in the day. But one stressful thing at a time. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown as things stood and anything to hold that off was positive. On the other hand, I could tell she was freaking about what would happen to her tub if he soaked down in it.

Ing’s boyfriend Spark walked in. He was munching on a sandwich prepared by the caterer. He couldn’t have come at a better time. On the surface, Spark was about as mellow a dude as ever deserved to be referred to as a “dude”. But woe to whomever crossed his path because underneath his live and let live mellow vibe was a dangerous beast. A lion. And since Ing was essentially paying all their bills it meant that, like the King of Beasts, all he had to do was get up and kick some ass every now and again for the pride. His animal instincts were sharp and he picked up Ing’s distress signals right away.

“What’s the matter, honey?” A little bit of turkey shot from his mouth onto my floor but that was fine. I was more concerned with Ing falling to pieces and Spark lighting a fire to Vivid’s shoot and kicking them all out like someone’s smoke alarm just went off. The shoot was spread across both our lofts so our getting paid would be contingent on them getting paid too and that was only going to happen if the shoot was completed.

I was pretty much holding my breath like I had just dove into a deep pool and didn’t realize I had gone so far down – unable to figure out if I could get back to the surface. Ing’s voice was quivering like she just came out of the same pool with its waters too cold for comfort. “Ron wants to take a bath.”  Now I could tell that she was really hoping Spark would say no go, but Spark wasn’t hearing the whispers between the lines. So he said, “Sure, not a problem.” Ron Jeremy thanked him and made his way back to their loft.

Spark and I both assured Ing it would be fine. In retrospect, Spark and I undoubtedly had a difference of opinion on the definition of  ”fine” but we could navigate that disparity well enough… Ing, on the other hand, well… “fine” only referred to the line that is so easily crossed and from which there is never any easy return.

We love clean soapy boobs!

You can’t really tell anyone to buy you a new couch, not even a porn company that shot an anal sex scene in your apartment on that very same couch and even if Ron Jeremy was taking a nap on it just then. Maybe if you had negotiated it into your location rental  contract but that would require foresight. Unfortunately that was something Ing had been short of at the time it mattered. Now it didn’t matter if she wanted a new couch, Vivid was not about to buy her a couch and neither was Ron. He also apparently was too busy snoring, making a noise that sounded vaguely familiar, in a sort of twisted way, something like a very unladylike pussy queef being mic’d and amplified through a super sub woofer. Ing was not taking it well. Her stress level rose to a point where the pressure was literally choking her. Her usually pale white face was red and her she had trouble getting words out.

“I… I… I am going… going to… done… their done… This is not what… not what was agreed.”

“You can’t stop the production right in the middle. That will cause all sorts of havoc and forget getting paid. They should be almost done. Get paid; get the couch cleaned. You made it through this far, you can make it the rest of the way.”

“He stinks. I am going to have to get a new couch.” She didn’t want to let it go. No one can blame her. But I guess I was to blame. I should have been more cautionary when they were considering renting their loft to Vivid. There will be anal sex. There will be used condoms found where you least expect and hope most for them not to show up. There will be porn stars standing outside your door taking a smoke break and talking loudly and incessantly about what stud they took in the butt last week that made it hard to walk for three days. There will be phone bills for calls to Jersey and Prague and all points in between. There could even be Ron Jeremy on your couch snoring away sounding like a giant endless pussy fart.

Just then Ron himself walked in.

“Ing. Do  you mind if I take a bath?”

Clean as Ron Jeremy!

No ass make up needed here!

Since Ing seemed to be on the verge of tears and totally freaked out about having to apply concealer to some porn girls pimply ass, I really didn’t want to push her over the edge and say something like “what the fuck did you expect?” I could understand where she might of thought that doing make-up on a porn shoot would only entail trying to make the girls look their best and not mean in fact that she was going to be painting the tail ends of girls getting ready for anal reamings. I recommended that her boyfriend Spark handle the ass make up since it certainly wouldn’t be something I would expect him to have a problem with and as a graphic artist he would have the necessary skills to blend any colors necessary to make those butts look good. Ing liked the idea which was cool because I could easily have seen her getting jealous about it. Luckily that was not the case because she was willing to take that chance more than she was willing to rub some model’s naked ass with  a sponge of cake make-up. Good to know your limitations when it comes to stuff like this…

So, of course, making porn is still show biz and the sex show must go on. Ing went back to her loft. Vivid was renting both our lofts out for the shoot and that meant more of everything. More girls. More grips. More suitcase pimps. More catering. More director – assistant directors – assistants to the assistants. More craziness. And of course more of Ron Jeremy hanging around waiting for his scenes to be shot. Ing came back over for a report.

She stood there staring at me. I couldn’t tell if she was going to kill me or cry me a river even while the sun of good fortune and easy money was shining brightly on her and making it so she could harvest enough cash to pay rent. Shadows from the clouds of emotion passed by reflecting each shade of expression so quickly.  Kill. Look, that one floating by looks just like a crazy guy with a knife. Cry. That one looks like a baby… being dropped. Kill. Cry. Kill. Probably everyone is asking her why she doesn’t do porn…

Ing is a gorgeous girl… but innocent as the lamb that ended up on the dinner table slathered in mint jelly.

“Everything ok?” I asked. Ing was from a good family, deeply religious, and had led a life very sheltered from the weirdness of things like the porn industry. I knew she was being immersed in a world that was completely alien and somewhat intimidating to those with any sort of prudish bent, which Ing certainly is – straight as the crucifix on top of the steeple. The sight of naked people walking around completely unconcerned as if LA was actually the Garden of Eden freaked her out, but she had weathered it so far. She was even cool with Ron Jeremy sleeping the day away on her couch… until she got close enough to realize, to her horror… he had B.O.

“He smells.” She said with a look of potent disgust cinching her lip to try and constrict her nostrils from any further abuse. “I am going to have to get a new couch! Do you think Vivid will pay for it?”

You don’t get to be Vivid if you buy everyone a couch. Of course, by the same token, everyone should surmise with a smidgen of forethought that couches on porn sets should be roped off with Hazardous Waste KEEP OUT tape. I would have laughed except I realized that she was completely serious.

From amateur porn debutante to Vivid contract starlet, Meggan Mallone is perhaps the fastest success story ever for amateurs that originally appeared in Homegrown Video but go on to become contract stars for big name porn companies. Meggan appeared in Homegrown Video 737 as well as in the Cherries series, but now she will be exclusive to Vivid. My guess is it is only a matter of time before she ends up getting a boob job just like many of the other so-called “Vivid Girls” do like Sunny Leone and Sunshine Thomas. This is one more reason why Homegrown amateurs provide such an important historical document of what models were like before becoming porn superstars.