Porn star Lexi Belle shares a deep kiss with newcomer Elle Alexandra. They press harder into each other and their excitement grows. Belle grabs at Alexandra’s thighs and slaps her behind a couple of times. “You like the touch of another girl?” she says in a sweet, but commanding voice. This is Alexandra’s debut girl-on-girl scene. She falls onto the white duvet as Belle makes her way down the tall brunette’s body, kissing her breasts, stomach, thighs. Alexandra tilts her head back and whimpers.
A few feet away from this erotic scene, I perch atop a stool scribbling notes while a man checks his text messages in the corner. Pink Visual producer Matt Morningwood yells, “Freeze!” and the moans suddenly stop.
This is my first porn shoot, and I spent most of it jotting down Belle and Morningwood’s banter between takes. When the camera was rolling, Morningwood and his crew is all business; they couldn’t care less about a journalist in the corner, scratching on her note pads.
When I imagined what the experience would be like on the car ride over, I thought everyone on the shoot would be red-faced with embarrassment. But everyone is a professionals here. While pleasing each other with a variety of vibrators and strap-ons for the camera, Belle and Alexandra even managed (seemingly) authentic orgasms. They do all this on cue.
Afterward, I asked Belle if all the shoots were this relaxed and positive. She said they were, but noted there are some companies she won’t work for because of their reputation for drinking on set or mistreating performers.
Pink Visual has a stellar reputation amongst performers and agents, said Morningwood, every bit biased.
“We’re pretty tame and a lot of that’s a reflection on me,” he said. Why? He loves women.
Morningwood said that when Pink Visual started up, it could have been one of the many companies in the industry that mistreats its female performers. But its founders opted for a positive attitude toward women, which Morningwood said is reflected in the material they produce: no rough stuff.
“It’s just a matter of taste, and that’s not really my cup of tea,” said Morningwood, referring to scenes that depict violent and forced sex — the type of material that organizations like the faith-based Pink Cross Foundation frequently rail against. Pink Cross embraces porn stars who want to leave the industry and uses their stories to speak out against abusive elements in the adult entertainment industry.
I ran into Pink Cross in January, at the 2011 Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE), a trade show held annually at a different Las Vegas hotel. There I met an awkward 20-something blonde, who told me his masturbation addiction inspired him to help porn stars who wants to leave the business but don’t know how. A former adult entertainment actress shared her personal horror stories of painful intercourse and drug addiction.
Although she’s been in the industry for more than five years — a long time for a xxx actress — Belle has avoided negative experiences on set. She chooses her gigs regularly, never veers from her list. When she first got into porn, Belle drew up an outline of what she will and will not do for money. And it has remained unchanged since her first day. You won’t catch her engaging in anal sex, but she’s featured in plenty of girl-on-girl scenes.
Belle is in complete control of her image. At the Pink Visual booth at the 2011 AEE, pot-bellied fans surround her like safari-goers approaching a lion pride. For many fans, she is more than a mere porn star. They have shared numerous intimate moments with her, and when they see her in real life, they treat her like a long lost friend. A few of them cart around suitcases full of photographs of the two of them together. Belle says she has some serious fans who make a point of showing up at all of her public appearances, snapping a photo and sending her a copy. She has a filing cabinet at home full of them.
On Twitter, she’s adored for being herself, an “animal-loving Star Wars geek.” She’s not tied to any studio. She is a hot commodity, and can work for, and with, pretty much anyone she wants. If she wanted to, she could leave the industry and focus only on her subscription-model website — one of the most popular in porn. “It’s like my baby. I work hard for it,” she says.
I learned all this after watching her initiate Alexandra into the world of porn. I wouldn’t have guessed that this then-23-year-old was such a powerful player in the industry.
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Elizabeth Hames is on Twitter. Follow her @elizabethhames
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