Stoya: The Footnotes

1) Some stars actually have specific parts of their body contracted out to different production houses. For example, though performer Flower Tucci says she's "mainly known for her female ejaculatory abilities," in 2002, she was signed by Seymour Butts on an "anal-exclusive contract." Which means, on film, she's legally allowed to have anal sex only in a Seymour Butts production.

2) POV means "point-of-view," and refers to a type of shaky-cam filmmaking used to put the viewer in the perspective of receiving a blowjob or whatever. A creampie is an internal cumshot — when a male performer has unprotected sex with another performer and actually ejaculates into his or her anus or vagina. Gangbangs are a whole bunch of people having sex with one person. Anal sex is anal sex.

3) Jasmin St. Claire is a former pornographic actress who made a living doing stuff like this. Among her films is World's Biggest Gang Bang 2, during which she purportedly performed 300 sex acts with 300 men — mostly fans, presumably — in a 24-hour period.

4) "When I first moved here I lived with an industrial DJ and a drum and bass DJ next to Subzero (off South Street), volunteered at the Wooden Shoe for a while, and would help Schane out in the shop sometimes. ... After getting enough 'work experience' to land a real job, I ended up working in the Commerce Square building as a secretary, living in Rittenhouse and handing out fliers for various parties at clubs at night. Eventually, waking up at 7 a.m. wasn't really working out for me anymore, so I convinced Tommy Up that he really wanted to take me on as a sort of apprentice at PaperStreet. Of course this involved thousands more fliers, but it also involved lots of lessons in guerrilla and viral marketing, branding and lots of required reading. At some point I started go-go dancing for Shock Therapy/Fusion over at Emerald City. Around the time my lease in Rittenhouse was up, my friend Jonny Sorber (eventually half of the men behind Hands and Knees up at the M Room) was moving into the city and had a room open in his apartment. He had photographed me a few times, I was living with him and one of his friends in Society Hill, and a couple of alt-nude Web sites had contacted him about shooting for them. Trusted photographer roommate plus girl who is comfortable with her body and dances practically naked in nightclubs equals some pretty awesome naked photosets. Jonny's place was starting to turn into more of a bachelor pad, and my best friend (Jess) had some space open in her house in Graduate Hospital, so I moved down there. I went up to NYC to dance for a fetish weekend up there and then out to L.A. to shoot a really softcore girl/girl scene for a porno movie. Because the trip was so long I had pretty much everything I owned with me in a big suitcase. L.A. had the potential for a lot of awesome work, so I decided to give living there a try. Tommy let me do office stuff from home on the West Coast until I was sure I had enough work as a nude model to make ends meet. I love the East Coast and after a few months missed Philly so much that I moved home just in time for the winter. Back to Graduate Hospital, new house this time, and started dancing at the Mansion over on 19th for a weekly that Robbie Tronco threw with Reno from Shock. Robbie got me in at Glam as a dancer as well, and I spent most of my time either dancing, answering e-mails and booking shoots, or running Jess' notebooks up to her at the Art Institute when she forgot them at home and looking for our final house to rent down in South Philly. Really, final. Unless I find something to buy or this house burns down we are never moving again. Last year, I was on a trip to the West Coast to shoot with a bunch of photographers and meet with Digital Playground about a possible girl/girl scene with one of their contract stars at the time. Robbie asked about boy/girl, I said I'd have to think about it. I went home, thought about for it for a week, and couldn't find any truly important reason that it could be a bad idea. So we shot a movie, they liked me, and next thing I knew I was under contract and looking for apartments in L.A. I love doing porn, but as a contract girl I shoot very few movies a year and have a lot of downtime. I prefer to spend that downtime with my close friends in a city that I love. ... The adult industry is something that I've been on the edges of since I was 18, and although it wasn't necessarily a goal, porn has definitely been interesting to me for quite some time. Exploring my sexuality on camera is a really fun adventure, and a little over a year ago I was just at a point where I was ready to go further. Further for me involved touching penises on camera and a contract with the best company in hardcore high-class adult entertainment. I think that's pretty ultraplus."

5) Stoya is "not allowed to have sex on film with anyone but Danny inside the state of Pennsylvania."

6) Not at all true. From the CDC Web site: "Results of a nationally representative study show that genital herpes infection is common in the United States. Nationwide, at least 45 million people ages 12 and older, or one out of five adolescents and adults, have had genital HSV infection. Over the past decade, the percent of Americans with genital herpes infection in the U.S. has decreased."

7) Actually true. Again, the CDC Web site: "Genital HSV-2 infection is more common in women (approximately one out of four women) than in men (almost one out of eight). This may be due to male-to-female transmission being more likely than female-to-male transmission."

8) No idea if this is true.

9) Your narrator intended to write a large part of this story about Adult Industry Medical, the organization — for porn stars by porn stars, mostly — through which most major porn production houses test their stars for HIV. But the topic simply became too large, and we were forced to shrink it down to these few sentences: Contract porn stars like Stoya are generally not provided with health insurance benefits. AIM is the closest thing they have — a way to regulate testing for the most dangerous sexually transmitted diseases (mostly herpes and AIDS). HIV and AIDS cases in pornography are rare and make news when they occur. Herpes is harder to test for and it apparently runs rampant in the adult industry.

10) There are repercussions to performing in widely distributed hardcore pornographic movies. For example: If you make the leap into porn, chances are your life in politics is over. You probably also can't represent any institution with the goal of teaching. Or be in any way involved with children. Or the government. Which is to say: Step one to becoming a porn star is — at least in our current cultural climate — limiting your goals and aspirations. Stoya knows this, of course. In interviews, while she is careful to say (in very shrewd PR-speak), "I'm just trying to have fun," "taking one step at a time," "not making any plans for the future," she is quick to acknowledge her admiration for 1) Jenna Jameson's transition from pornographic actress to multimillion-dollar entrepreneur/pornographer and mainstream sex symbol, and 2) the work and writing of Tristan Taormino, an award-winning author, columnist, editor, pornographic film director and self-styled "anal sexpert." Taormino — niece of author Thomas Pynchon — graduated Phi Beta Kappa with her bachelor's degree in American studies from Wesleyan University in 1993, well after she stopped acting in porn scenes. During your conversations with Stoya, she mentions Taormino on multiple occasions, and also discusses her belief that "a real, no-nonsense guide to like, the basics of porn — like, how to prepare for multiple shoots in one day, how to keep your ass clean, things like that" does not yet exist in book form. An indicator of Stoya's future aspirations? Perhaps. In conversation, though, she responds to this with a curt: "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."