Photos by Steve Prue
Stoya is an adult performer, writer, and master of avoiding pants. Her writing has been published by the Guardian, the New York Times, and the New Inquiry. She maintains a blog at GraphicDescriptions.com and recommends you refrain from Googling her at work. The below article appears in the new book Coming Out Like a Porn Star and was excerpted with permission. For more information and to order the book, visit comingoutlikeapornstar.com.
Murphy’s Law of Inappropriate Behavior states that if you make a habit of taking your clothes off in public, eventually everyone in your family (including members so distant they share less DNA with you than a chimpanzee does with a cuttlefish) will somehow stumble upon documentation of what you’re up to.
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My grandmother is a very smart woman, and I’d been dodging the question of what I did for a living for at least three professionally naked years. I really had been meaning to tell her about my job before she found out from the television or a newspaper, but I thought I’d do it when I was ready. “Ready” consistently being defined as any time except for right now.
So I was completely unprepared when she called and said, “Your mother says that you’re sort of like a model. I don’t know what that means because if you were a model she would just say you’re a model, and you’re a bit short for that anyway. No offense, dear. What do you do with your days?”
I wished I’d discussed this inevitability with my mom or had some legitimate reason to get off the phone. My usually dodgy cell service was clear as a bell. I worried: What if I failed at easing her into the whole idea of my career in pornography and she had a heart attack, leaving me accidentally guilty of grand-matricide? What if she decided to just cut me out of her life? More pressing—how was I supposed to explain what a modern pornographic actress was to a woman who doesn’t know how to work a cell phone and still had typesetting tools laying around from her days in advertising?
“Well, um, do you remember Bettie Page and pinup? What I do is kind of like pinup but more explicit. Like, with no clothes on.”
“Oh! So you’re a noooooooodie girl!”
Either I was hallucinating or that statement had been delivered in a positive tone.
“Yes, ma’am. But, uh, pop culture is a bit more edgy now than things were in the ’50s, so I have actual sex with people and it goes on video or DVD.”
“In the mooooving pic-tures! Do you enjoy it?”
“I have fun. It’s always interesting. I only do things that I want to do, with people that I want to do them with. It’s good.”
“Well then, that’s all very nice and I’m glad to hear you’re doing something you like.”
Since the conversation was going so well, I figured we might as well get everything over with at once.
“There’s something else I should probably tell you while we’re on this subject.”
“Ohhh?”
In addition to being smart, my grandmother is an incredibly expressive woman. You know that Mehrabian’s rule thing about how communication is 93 percent nonverbal? In my grandma’s case, 99 percent of communication is pure vocal inflection. There’s something in the way she draws out the vowels. They become a whole adventure.
This particular “ohhh” had started out some distance into curiosity land, passed over the gosh-what-else-could-top-the-last-thing mountains, and settled on the patiently-waiting-to-hear-more plains.
“I’m using your name as my stage name. Well, I’m using the Americanized diminutive. The point is, I’m using part of your name as my stage name.”
“Vera? That’s not very sexy.”
“No, ma’am. I mean, I think Vera could actually be quite marketable with the current neoburlesque scene, but I’m using Stoya.”
“Oh? Oh.”
The first oh was surprised, and the second oh sounded less than enthused. In my head, I stared into the largest imaginable pit of uh-oh. I wondered if she could hear my heart pounding over the phone. My left hand frantically picked at the stitches on the hem of my shirt. I became concerned that I might be the one to have the heart attack, and I wasn’t going to die without one last cigarette. I lit up, inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled again. Finally, I couldn’t take the extended silence any longer.
“Gramma?”
“I was just thinking. I hope none of the men at the nursing home get us confused and try to put my feet behind my head. I don’t bend that way anymore.”
Apparently, since the death of her last husband, she’d acquired three boyfriends. Because it takes that many of them to keep up with her. My stressful and dramatic coming-out-to-Grandma moment turned into a farce because although the promiscuity gene may have skipped a generation, it most definitely runs in my family.
For more Stoya visit her blog, her sexy porno site TRENCHCOATx, and follow her on Twitter.
Image by Jamee Baiser. Click here to order ‘Coming Out Like a Porn Star’
