"Porn is happening somewhere near here!" I cried, and got out. Moments later I found myself knocking at the door of a second floor apartment, in a well-kept complex arranged around a swimming pool in a residential neighborhood.
I had been given the address by Jason Sechrest, kabbalah-soaked publicist for the transsexual performer Allanah Starr.
Behind the door I heard a male voice.
"Dude with a package," he said. I am often mistaken for talent, despite my lack of charisma.
A naked woman answered the door, opening it just enough.
"I'm here for the shoot," I said.
"Downstairs," she said, and closed the door in my face.
I walked downstairs to another apartment. I knocked and the door opened, revealing a purple room festooned with bondage equipment. Perched atop a little cage in the middle of the room was Allanah Starr, but the door had opened, it seemed, by itself.
"Are transsexuals telekinetic?" I wondered, having not read deeply of the literature.
The door had been opened by Gia Darling (above), the day's other transsexual, and the owner of the company for which Starr would be shooting. Both looked like solid porn girls ready for action. A third person entered the room and I naturally assumed she was a tranny as well. But it was Anita Cannibal.
"Girl, you got to put your face on!" I didn't say, not snapping my fingers in a zigzag fashion. Showing the pictures later, I was surprised that several pornish associates were not able to tell who the genetic female was.
Taking in the scene, I realized I'd never been to a porn set in someone's apartment before. I'd been to offices, hotel rooms, warehouses, industrial spaces, airports, golf courses, churches, lofts, McMansions, real mansions, car washes, and boiler rooms, but never something as normal as an apartment. Further, this apartment, from which I could hear families swimming outside, heedless, was a dungeon.
Awesome. Way to stick it to Westside Rentals.
Allanah Starr is very nice.
"I was born in Cuba," she said (she pronounced it Coo'-ba, so I know it's authentic), "and came to Miami, then New York. I'm just here this week."
Because I am mired in my own laterosexual worldview, I am afraid my questions of Starr sounded naive.
"I can't seem to find a consensus on what a genetic male who dresses and identifies as a woman, who has both a penis and breasts, calls herself," I said, rattling off the terms transsexual, tranny, shemale, T-Girl, and Tom Hanks' character from "Bosom Buddies".
"I call myself a transsexual," Starr said after a little consideration. "The industry term is usually 'she-male'." In fact, Starr's website is called She-Male Exotica.
I asked her if the transsexual porn population was worried about Brazil's status as the Tranny Capital of the World, the way Hollywood is concerned about runaway production to places like Vancouver, and she said she wasn't, but admitted that content is a lot cheaper in Brazil. She hedges her bets by having a lot of Brazilian content on her website.
Starr noted that there wasn't much of a transsexual scene in Southern California. I mentioned that, to the layman, the scene seemd restricted to Santa Monica Blvd. between certain hours of day.
Starr's experience this week will be a little lonelier than that of other adult performers in California from out of town. "When I come here to work," she said, "I do five or six shoots in a week and try to chill out as much as I can, because there isn't very much else to do here."
Starr said that tranny content is usually shelved with gay material, and that stores in general had a hard time classifying transsexual products. I asked her what the optimum conditions would be.
"We need our own category," she said. Not gay, not straight, transcending ethnic boundaries, and with no reliance on midgets.
T-Girls are the new X-Men. Whose side would Magneto be on?
Starr and Darling both described today's scene, filmed as part of Starr's Big Boob Adventures 2, as "campy". Starr played the principal of Darling, who had been caught rendering blowjobs in the school bathroom. At a parent conference, Darling's parents, played by Anita Cannibal and a fellow named Jimbo, offered alternatives to Darling's expulsion.
"Is this your first tranny shoot?" Starr asked me.
"No, my second," I said, thinking of Mya Luanna.
The scene wa different, obviously, for a couple of reasons, but the main one was this: in a straight scene, Starr as the principal would have seduced the parents. In this scene, Jimbo provided the impetus.
"Surely there's a way for our daughter to stay in school," Jimbo said. "You look like you haven't been fucked in a while."
"All right," Starr said to the camera. "I'll try anything once."
Starr removed her top and Jimbo went to work below.
"Oh My God!" Cannibal said. "The principal's got a penis; and my husband likes it!"
This was Starr's first scene with a genetic female, she said.
Cannibal is studying business at CSUN and hopes to go to law school by next fall. She has been in the adult business since 1997, featured in movies like Porn Queen Feet and this year's World's Oldest Gangbang for Metro. She wants to be the first porn star with a law degree, as opposed to the recent trend of lawyers dating porn stars.
From Anita Cannibal's blog:
...assimilating into the academic realm has proved challenging at several levels.Expectations on the professors at the college of business are sadly unrealistic. It seems the 11 billion dollar a year industry that surrounds them has somehow been ignored as a potential market for graduating students. The industry statistics, finances, marketing force, accounting, and economic impacts are my favorite subject matter in the college of business. Not only is it the same SIC codes as Hollywood but inherent is the challenges of censorship and creative thinking beyond the scope of mainstream studios. Thanks be that most of the professors have allowed me to customize reports my ponofied lexiphile interests.
Jimbo fingered Cannibal's pussy while Cannibal blew Starr, then there was a short break, because the small office set, though credible for an apartment, was also getting hot.
"Bring back the Clam," Darling said of Cannibal.
Today was advertised as Allanah Starr's first DP. I asked how a double pennetration was going to be pulled off, what with Starr being short one of the traditional apertures.
"We're going to improvise today," she said. I got the feeling that, like "transsexual". the double penetration was open to interpretation. I stayed for about an hour, noting that, for certain reasons, this was the best smelling porn set I'd been on for a long time, as well as a very friendly one.
I walked out of the purple tranny dungeon apartment into the 90 degree Porn Valley day. It was the fact that it was so goddamn hot this late in the year that I found weird.
For more pictures, click here. Previously: At home with April Flores and Carlos Batts; Tucker: a tran and his breasts; Tranny kept a' rollin'; Transsexual stripper notes
See also: Allanah Starr, Gia Darling
