A Porn Star’s View of the Escort Business
by Mariah Milano of http://mariahxxx.net
I am not an escort and never have been making me one of the very few Porn Stars who can honestly say that. I know that a lot of Porn Stars also work as escorts and if it’s kept discreet and safely done I have no issue with those who do. I have friends, people I really love, who do this and I’m fine with it because it is never, and I mean NEVER spoken about or brought up. That is their separate life and their choice. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like that decision but respect it as being theirs much in the same way I don’t like abortions but respect the choices of those women who have to make that decision for themselves.
Many of us Porn Stars don’t have a lot of education therefore limiting us in what we could do for a living to make the very nice income we make as Porn Stars. So understandably, the huge amounts of money Porn Stars can make as escorts is all the more alluring and many of us justify this by saying “What’s the difference to having sex on camera for money than having sex in a hotel or on a yacht for money? It’s still sex for money right?” Well that’s been the argument for a long time in the legalities of the skin business. From what I understand is that basically when it is filmed it has entertainment value therefore making it legal.
As full-time Porn Stars we should make anywhere from $100k a year to over $250k depending on how we market ourselves and how often we are willing to work and what we are willing to do. That’s just from shooting videos and photos. When you add the income from a website, live appearances and feature dancing then the amount of money can be overwhelming when you think about it. But all of these things take serious work and dedication which are generally not the strong points of the average Porn Star. We want the easy money and we want it right now. We want to shop every day at the best stores and live an exotic lifestyle with minimal input to earn that money. As much a fantasy as that is for most of the world it’s very much a reality for us. I spend at least a day or two a week at the beach and travel constantly. I am at the mall at least 2 days a week and never leave without spending a thousand bucks. Now mind you, this is after 11 years in this business and having learned about throwing my money away so I consider myself pretty conservative for a Porn Star! At 18 I was making $20k a month and rarely had a dollar 3 days after a shoot! I would go directly to the mall and spend it all. I don’t do that any more but I have done it and know how it feels, so I really understand that fantasy lifestyle.
When I was 19 and had done around 100 movies I was approached by a woman who told me she was a Beverly Hills Madame and could make me a very rich girl. I was just getting used to having fans so this was all still relatively new to me. I went to lunch with her and listened to everything she said and the offer was unbelievable. Ultra-rich men would fly me all over the world for thousands of dollars a day to show me off on their arm for their friends or business colleagues. I was excited and ready to do it until I sat down that night and really thought it out. I was going from being a “glamorized technically-a-whore” to an actual whore, and saying that out loud startled me back to reality. I couldn’t go through with it and being only 19 and very full of myself I didn’t call her and tell her, I just flaked.
The draw of the money I certainly understand and to those who do it respectfully of themselves and to the business, well more power to you. But I do take issue with those who don’t require a test by their clients and allow them to not use a condom if they throw more money at them. Again, those are personal choices but when they go the next day to a movie set that makes it personal to me because I might be in the scene or working with that guy the next day. We are only tested every 30 days so whatever one is exposed to between the test dates is unknown. In my humble opinion, escort clients are high risk simply due to the fact that they pay for sex therefore put themselves in a higher risk category.
I also don’t appreciate the dozens of emails a week I get from fans asking me how much to fuck me. They always tell me of other Porn Stars they have fucked as references and just assume that I am an escort too. I always have a pretty harsh reply to those emails.
I recently saw a raging argument on Twitter between a retired Porn Star who has been my friend since 1998 and some new girls about escorting. She had made a comment that the girls nowadays are ruining the industry and giving real Porn Stars a bad name. I agree and I don’t. I don’t think they give anyone else a bad name other than themselves but yet I do think that voicing it to anyone and everyone is not the best use of brain power they could have. I have to think that any girl who boasts about being an Escort on a site like Twitter has some issues to deal with and that she is doing no one any good service by this.
I certainly think that far too many of these young girls are selling their souls without any thought to what they are going to have to deal with later in life or about the dangers that they are exposed to or the absolute drain that this lifestyle has on you to begin with. I know that for me life has become far more fulfilling now that I actually work hard on my life and my projects and to make my name one of value. I am proud to be who I am and have dearly paid the price for the mistakes I have made in my stupid youth. I own my past and I cannot imagine having to be at some gross old man’s beck and call thousands of miles away from home. The money would be great, but to me, some things just aren’t for sale.