Adult industry attorney Stephan Ferris, aka performer Blue Bailey, is on the phone with XBIZ to promote his new memoir, “Blue Movie.” The book is a frank, unsparing account of Ferris’ battles with addiction as he pushed the limits of his sexuality as a gay adult entertainer. A laudatory summary by Kirkus Reviews describes the book as an “account of sex and substance abuse that pulls no punches as it shocks and enlightens.”
Told through a series of nearly 80 vignettes, the memoir is intentionally harrowing in tone — Ferris is a fan of movies and books in the horror genre. He landed on literary nonfiction as the ideal method to describe his experience in the adult entertainment industry, his journey with HIV and substance abuse, and his decision to become an attorney in service to his community.
It’s okay to have a sex worker be an attorney or a therapist. We have all these traditional concepts of what it means to be a ‘professional’ and they’re usually founded in the ideas of old, straight, white men.
He enjoys the term “activist attorney” and has partnered with such organizations as the San Francisco Young Leathermen’s Discussion Group as well as industry attorney Gill Sperlein on webinars designed to educate sex workers and content creators. One such webinar is cheekily titled, “F*ck Your Community Standards! SESTA-FOSTA, Social Media & Adult Content Online.”
“I think that having worked in adult entertainment, and being a gay man, inherently makes me an outlier and a sexual outlaw. And with my experience in recovery, I found that people tend to want to talk about the solution and getting sober, but they don’t really talk about what motivates them to want to do that,” he observes.
Recovery, he states, is “a choice.” However, complete abstinence from all potential triggers for addictive behavior is often not an option for those in adult entertainment. Ferris found that the all-or-nothing approach to recovery espoused by some programs didn’t have a lasting impact.
He has been in and out of different programs for most of his adult life and describes multiple inflection points that put him on the path to recovery, but notes that he still finds his past behavior enticing.
“That kind of drug-fueled sex can be super transgressive and liberating and fun,” he says. “That type of sex was so enjoyable and attractive that it was easy to focus on the positives versus the negatives. But it was starting to impact all these other areas of my life and other life goals. I really had to evaluate what I wanted from my life. I started using at 19 and I haven’t met a single person that didn’t end up experiencing negative consequences at some point, even if it starts out great.”
Ferris describes himself as a member of a recovery community that provides the flexible structure and ongoing accountability he needs to maintain his choice to remain sober, rather than focusing on powerlessness and complete abstinence from all potential triggers. He emphasizes, though, that an individual’s recovery journey may include abstinence from all forms of addictive behavior as a necessary tool.
Ferris is proud of his adult career as Blue Bailey and his hungry exploration of the BDSM and leather scenes. As an overweight, unpopular teenager coming of age in Las Vegas, he followed the path of many men and women before him when he turned 18 by moving straight to San Francisco in search of personal liberation.
“Just living in the gay community and exploring sexually, both on- and off-camera, was liberating,” he recalls. “I had watched straight porn and realized that I was focusing more on the guys than the girls. I wasn’t really thinking about becoming famous or getting into porn specifically, but my idol was always Dawson.”
The utterly uninhibited, wanton sexual mojo of the mononymous Dawson, star of gangbang epics for such studios as Treasure Island Media, was like a siren call to the young Ferris.
“I was at someone’s house for a hookup, just playing around. He was going to film a circle-jerk scene and mentioned that the producer was looking for more guys,” Ferris recalls. “I thought I’d try it out. Why not? I got off on the attention of being in group scenes. I liked showing off for the camera. And I just gradually worked my way up from circle jerks and solo scenes to fucking and then, ultimately, the crazy stuff I’m known for doing.”
Ferris earned a measure of notoriety around town when he began working with Treasure Island Media, and earned several awards nominations. “It was a little surreal,” he recalls with a laugh. “I certainly didn’t think it would lead to creating a name or a career for myself or give me this kind of a platform.”
Ferris left adult when he began his law studies and was inspired to return when the appearance of fan sites offered a means to earn extra cash and maintain a connection with the performer community. His main focus today is on his law practice — he points out that being a content creator is a full-time job if you really want to succeed — but Ferris enjoys how his adult career, sexual exploration and ongoing recovery have intermingled with his activism.
“I originally wanted to study film and television production; that’s where I earned my undergraduate degree,” he says. “By the time I graduated, I had learned that I really liked the legal issues around media and entertainment. So I decided to go to law school.”
He admits to being “very scared” about how porn work would affect his professional status.
“Ultimately, porn is a legal job and that particular aspect of sex work doesn’t affect your ability to get a license as an attorney in California,” says Ferris. “Initially, I had everything separated. But as I was going through school and talking with my mentors, I came to the conclusion that I would be most happy not having to separate all these aspects of my life. I combined everything together and opened up my own practice as a transactional attorney where I don’t have to worry about someone judging me. And I work with many clients in adult entertainment. So it’s a non-issue.”
Ferris particularly enjoys creating webinars specifically geared to the legal needs of people working in the adult industry.
“Sometimes the laws change and the community doesn’t really know what’s going on. Or they don’t have the access to legal resources,” he says. Along with a friend and colleague from law school, Ferris also co-created the podcast, “Reading is Fundamental” to help explain the legal issues related to independent content creation “through a lens of gayness, sex positivity, radical acceptance and an obsession with ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’” he adds.
Ferris keeps a quick checklist for independent content creators on hand.
“Be super organized with your paperwork, even if it’s not necessarily a legal requirement,” he says. “Have your own records of people’s IDs and model releases — and not just a model release confirming someone’s identity, but a release that allows you to distribute what you shoot together onto third-party platforms. You should be ready to provide that paperwork immediately when it’s requested.”
As he promotes “Blue Movie,” Ferris remains passionate about its purpose, warts and all.
“What I’m saying is that I’ve experimented with a lot of drugs, a lot of sex. There are positive things that have happened, there are negative things that happened,” he explains. “If you’ve been in a really negative place, it is possible to get out of it. And this is how I did it.”
A blurb for “Blue Movie” describes Ferris as “the hero we need in the movement to reclaim sex and pleasure as expressions of radical authenticity, and his story is an inspiration.” Reflecting on that statement, Ferris believes that reclaiming sex and pleasure includes “pushing normalization further” to include “visibility and representation in professional careers.”
“It’s okay to have a sex worker be an attorney or a therapist,” he says. “We have all these traditional concepts of what it means to be a ‘professional’ and they’re usually founded in the ideas of old, straight, white men. I think what I can do is help reclaim those ideas and reformat them for a new generation of sex-positive people.”
Find Stephan Ferris online here.
[Photo: Nick Leoni]
