Janet

I leave Amy alone Friday night. I know she’s got her livestream, and I get the idea it can go kind of late depending on how well it’s going, so I don’t want to cause any trouble. But then when I try to see if I can get her to hang out on Saturday, she’s got plans with Brandy. And on Sunday, she says she’s not feeling well and is spending the day in bed. I offer to come over and take care of her while she’s under the weather, but she declines. The weird part is that it feels like she really wants to say yes, but just thinks she better not. I have no idea what she’s afraid of, unless it’s that, once we’re in the same room, her feelings for me will overpower the fear she feels of allowing herself to explore them. And I get that, even if it is a bummer to be on the receiving end. Still, when I ask, she says she still wants to shoot on Monday. So that’s the plan.

We’re not getting together until 3 PM, but as usual for me I’m up super-early, walking down Sunset Boulevard at 9 AM trying to keep my head from shaking apart. All I’m thinking about is Amy. I’m so glad I’m seeing her today, but I’m still nervous. I don’t think I’m really going to feel right about her – about us – until we can be together for real. And right now, that’s entirely her decision.

I’m trying to distract myself with an album Amy suggested – Sunset Funeral by Glare; she was right, it’s awesome – when the music suddenly stops. I’m getting a phone call. I pull my phone out of my pocket, expecting nothing more than another “Spam Risk” call to reject, and see it’s the Blackout office number. Uh oh.

I shut off Bluetooth, shove my Airpods into my pocket, and accept the call. “Hello?”

“Hi, am I speaking to Janet Starr?” A receptionist. What could this be about?

“Yes, this is she,” I say.

“This is Serena, I’m calling for Mr. Harris. He wanted me to see if you’d have some time to come by the office today. He’s free from 10 until noon and 2 until 4.”

My stomach drops. Here it is, the exact thing Amy’s been afraid of for a while now. Mr. Harris is Christian Harris, President and CEO of Blackout Video. I can’t think of any other reason he’d want me to come in today, on a day I’m not even shooting for Blackout, other than him finding out that I’ve been doing scenes for someone else’s SoloSlams channel. I don’t know if this means someone ratted me out or someone with some unexpected interests just happened to run across Amy’s SoloSlams, but it doesn’t really matter. Either way, I’m being called on the carpet.

I don’t let on that I know any of this. Instead, I think quickly. It’s just after 9 AM now. I’ll be another 20 or so minutes walking home, then I’ll need about an hour to get ready. If I go for 11 AM, I’ll have 45 minutes to get out there. It’ll be cutting it close, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to run late for my shoot with Amy this afternoon because I’m busy getting lectured in some second-floor office in Porn Valley.

“I can do 11,” I say.

“Great!” says Serena. “Do you know where we’re located?”

I nod to myself. “Still in that little office building just off Foothill in… what, Pacoima?” I ask.

“It’s actually Sunland, but you’re probably thinking of the right place. Across the street from the Jack In The Box?”

“Yup, that’s the one! I’ve been there before.”

“Great, we’ll see you at 11! Thanks so much.”

I end the call, pull my Airpods back out, and put the Glare record back on. Won’t get home any later if I listen to music while I walk.

At 10:57, I park on the street in Sunland, just around the corner from Foothill Boulevard. The building where Blackout has its offices is old without quite being rundown, and looks like it would have been in the background of some chase scene in an 80s cop show or something. The sign in the lobby doesn’t say Blackout Video, but it does say Harris & Weed Enterprises, LLC, which is the name that shows up on my bank statement next to my monthly direct deposits. This meeting may mark the end of those. Well… it is what it is.

I march up the stairs, walk in the door, and meet Serena. She’s a tall, thin blonde. I wonder how often she gets hit on, working in this office. Probably a lot. Ugh. I sit down on a leather couch to wait. I’m wearing black athletic shorts, a red Silversun Pickups t-shirt, and high-top Converse Chuck Taylors. Maybe I should have dressed more nicely. Maybe I would have if I really cared whether I still work for Blackout when I walk out of here. But I thought about it on the walk home, and in the shower, and on the drive over, and the whole time I just couldn’t figure out any reason why I should give a shit. I have a bit of money in my savings account, so I can take a month or two to figure out what I’m doing next. And I can keep shooting with Amy – I’ve gotten a bit of money out of that deal already. She’d also help me start my own channel if I wanted to. I’d rather just partner up with her full-time, but I’m not sure she’d have the guts to pull the trigger on all that. I hope she does. It’ll be a real shame if we never get to be a couple for real.

I’m daydreaming about that when Serena calls my name, so it takes me a second to notice. Then I look up and see her looking at me. “Janet?” she says again, in a sharp tone. I nod. “He’ll see you now.” She points to the door to Mr. Harris’s office.

When I go in, he’s looking at something on his computer, nodding and making notes on a piece of scrap paper. It’s been a few years since I last saw him in person; he’s started to go bald, and his response seems to have been to grow a beard. Whatever gets you through the night, I guess. I sit down in a chair in front of his desk. I feel like I’m back in the vice principal’s office at Cedar High. The difference being that now, if I decide to walk out of here, this guy can’t exactly call my parents. I hold onto this thought as I wait for him to give me his attention.

After another minute, he closes his laptop and looks up at me. “So,” he says, placing his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair, “Ms. Starr. I bet you’ll be surprised to hear who called me on Friday, asking about you.”

I raise my eyebrows. Where is this going? “You’re right, I probably will be,” I say, keeping my face as neutral as possible.

“It was Tom Rendon, over at PornoNews,” he says, his eyes widening. “You’ll never guess what he’d heard about you.”

I can’t help it; I giggle. “Oh, I bet I can.”

“Can you?” He leans forward in his chair, clasps his hands, and rests his forearms on the edge of his desk. “Because I had no idea! Turns out, according to Mr. Rendon, that you have been moonlighting on SoloSlams with a trans porn star we’ve previously brought in for a couple of shoots! I said, ‘But that can’t be, that’s against her contract!’” He’s making a face to illustrate his wide-eyed naivety, that he couldn’t imagine I would break my contract. Then he thumps a small manila folder sitting on the left side of his desk. “I even got it out and checked, to make sure we hadn’t written in some kind of… unprecedented exception for you. Turns out… nope!” He points at me. “You… violated… your contract.”

It's all I can do not to roll my eyes at his histrionics. Instead I fold my arms. “These are scandalous allegations,” I say in a flat tone. “I assume you have proof.”

He nods. “We have footage we collected from Amy Nitrate’s SoloSlams account showing you and Ms. Nitrate, or whatever her real name is, engaging in the sort of filmed activity you’re contracted exclusively to Blackout for.”

Now I do roll my eyes. “There are so many debatable points you just made I’m probably gonna miss one in my response, but let’s start here: I shoot for a whole bunch of companies in Porn Valley, and you know it. You make your little partner deals, and I get a lower fee so those companies can give the rest of my fee to you. That’s not even covered in my contract.”

“There are references in the contract to pre-existing agreements between Blackout and our media partners, which you’ll find do cover that,” says Harris.

I shrug and roll on. “Here’s another problem with what you said: that contract is for work done under the name Janet Starr. Anything I may or may not have done for other parties was done under other names.”

He waves his hand irritably. “Yeah, yeah, Renee Anderson, I get it. Do you really think we don’t know that’s your government name? We sign your checks, Janet!”

“Look, much love to Jim Franconi, wherever he is these days, but I wish he’d negotiated me a better contract back when I signed with you people,” I say. “Instead, he put me in a situation where I’m essentially agreeing to portray a character named Janet Starr. I have zero rights to that name – all use of it is governed by you. The one loophole that no one thought of is that using another name in movies made for another party isn’t covered at all. And I never called myself Janet Starr on Amy’s SoloSlams channel. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I know she has explicitly denied that I’m Janet Starr on her channel! And that’s because I’m not, at least not in those videos. I’m me. The real me. Renee Anderson.”

“Do you really think that’ll hold up in court?” he asks, sneering.

I throw my arms in the air. He’s really pissing me off. “No, of course not! And that doesn’t matter, because you bastards don’t want to go to court either.” I point at him. “You act all high and mighty in hopes that you’ll scare me into complying with whatever plan you’ve got cooked up. That might work on most of the girls around here, because they actually care if they retain their connections to Blackout. As for me, I’m ready to walk. In fact, I’m assuming that’s why I’m here.”

This throws him a bit. “Uh… no, I brought you in here to come to an agreement.”

“We can do that!” I declare. “I don’t even have to quit Blackout if the agreement is to my liking. So go for it – what are your terms?”

He’s still a little flustered. “Well, um…” He glances at a piece of notepaper on his desk that has some words scribbled sloppily on it. I bite my lip to keep from smiling. He hasn’t thought this through. Good. “We have three requirements for you to remain in good standing with Blackout,” he says, finally recovering. “First, paying what Blackout is owed as your fee for appearance in a non-partner production. You’ve been in six of Ms. Nitrate’s SoloSlams videos. That adds up to $9000.” I can’t stop myself from scoffing. I literally have that in my savings account right now. I motion for him to continue. “Second, cease and desist all appearances on Ms. Nitrate’s SoloSlams videos and any other unauthorized performances for the remainder of your Blackout contract—” he turns his eyes up from his desk toward me “—which is roughly 21 months. Third, all appearances by you on Amy Nitrate’s SoloSlams channel must be removed immediately. This includes promotional social media clips and any still photos that depict you and were used for promotional purposes.” He sets his fist down on top of the piece of notepaper. “Will you agree to these requirements?”

I cough to cover up my instinct to laugh. “Um, no. We can talk about the first thing – I’m willing to give you a cut of my money from the videos we’ve done so far, though nine grand is frankly ludicrous. But I can tell you right now, the third requirement is a hard no. I’m not messing with Amy’s channel, or Amy’s money. You have no claim over her, and if you want to get at her, you’ll have to come through me. I won’t go down without a fight.”

“Look,” he starts, “I don’t want to end up in court over—”

“Neither do I!” I exclaim. “But these conditions are not gonna fly. We’re going to have to find a compromise. Here’s my suggestion. You guys owe me about $4000 for my last five appearances in Blackout films. You can keep that. Write it off like you paid it to me and I paid it right back to you. I’ll leave here a free woman, you won’t have to worry about my bullshit anymore, and I can go fuck my girlfriend on her SoloSlams page in peace.” Oh holy shit, I just called Amy my girlfriend. I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

“As for everything else,” I continue, “we could do legal action, I could call in ACLU lawyers who’ll fight for my rights as an artist with freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment. Donald Trump’s America hates queer women, even white ex-Mormons like me, so chances are you’ll win. But I can make it take years and cost you an assload of money. And all so you can get what, fifteen, twenty grand out of Amy and I? When we can just make a YouTube channel to complain about it, and send people to the SoloSlams page where we’ll keep making sex videos, and we can rake in whatever bucks going viral for getting sued by a sleazebag porno company will get us? Chances are at the end of it all, we’ll be able to pay for everything with money we raised by making content about it! How stupid would that be?

“Here’s my alternative proposition – we make this a viral moment for both sides. The only time Amy and I shot together when I’m identified as Janet Starr is the Paul Johnson Meets The Blackout Girls movie, which… is it done?”

Harris sighs. I can tell he thought this was gonna be easy. I can’t hold back a grin. “The Paul Johnson movie is almost done,” he says. “It’s supposed to hit our streaming service in two weeks. It’s edited, it’s cut together, we’re just making promo materials and getting the DVDs for the porno shops pressed up.” He sighs and waves a hand weakly. “And then I get a call from Tom Rendon, and I get Serena to pull info on you, and that’s when I find out we probably facilitated all this by introducing the two of you. I’m frankly not sure whether to request an edit of the Paul Johnson movie to take you two out, or what. I was going to keep you in if you agreed to conditions. Now I’m not sure what we can do. An edit will delay the whole thing by at least a month, and that’s a big title for us. You’ve really fucked me here, Janet.”

I lean forward in my chair. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Christian. We can make this work for both of us. Give this Rendon guy my number. Have him call me, and I’ll do an interview about how I fell for a girl on a Blackout Video set and bailed on my entire career to be with her. It’ll be romantic. It’ll make everyone want to see our meet-cute in the Paul Johnson movie. It’s viral marketing! Better yet… do you know what happened when we shot together on that?”

He looks at me, confused. “I just know the two of you did a double-team scene with Paul. Did something else happen?”

I laugh. “Yeah, we kept fucking after Paul moved on! We were immediately into each other, so neither of us wanted to stop, and no one was making us. They ended up having to kick us off the set once Paul headed upstairs. I gave Amy a ride back to the city and… the rest is history.” I shrug and grin at him. “But someone has that footage. Sure as the day is long. No one’s fucking on a porn set in the valley without at least one camera rolling. Jake Weathers was the AD on that shoot. He’ll know. Call him and ask him if he’s got that footage. Bet he does.”

Harris gives me a look like I’m starting to scare him. “What, like now?”

I shrug. “Yeah, why not? You’re the CEO, he’ll take your call.”

He picks up his phone. Scrolls through his contact list, presses a name. Holds the phone to his ear. “Jake! Yeah. Listen, I’ve got Janet Starr in the office… Uh huh. That’s kinda… Yeah. You heard, huh?” He sighs. “We’re figuring it out. But she just told me something. Is it true that on that Paul Johnson movie, she and Amy Nitrate…” He laughs. “That’s what she’s saying, yeah. And you have footage of that?... All of it, though? Even after Paul moved on?” He raises his eyebrows and gives me a grudgingly impressed look. “OK, great. Yeah, I think we’re gonna use that… Yeah, if you could cut that together into something that would work as a short for the subscription service… Exactly. How long do you expect that to go? … Sure, leave Paul in. We’ll throw him a few hundred extra. He’ll be glad to have it… OK, then. Perfect… Yeah, email me when you have that. Janet and I are still working out details. By then I should know more… Great. Thanks man! Take care.” He disconnects the call and looks at me.

“I’m glad to hear you still know how to run a porno company,” I say. “That’s exactly what we should do. Let this whole story break. You guys can make all the right grumpy noises to the reporters about me breaking my contract. You can take some money of mine, so we can all say you were compensated for my transgressions. You tell ‘em when you told me I had to quit working with Amy on SoloSlams or my time here was at an end, I picked her over you guys. Tell them some bullshit about how you wish me the best, but you think I really blew it by doing this. You make sure to mention that we met on the Paul Johnson Meets The Blackout Girls shoot, so everyone is trying to see that shit when it drops. And maybe a week or so later when the story’s about to die, you release that clip you and Jake just talked about. Call it ‘When Janet Met Amy’ or some shit. Boom, the hype train rolls on for another week. And you keep raking in the dough. More than you’ll ever get by suing me.”

He nods. “Much as I hate to admit it, you’re talking sense. Most of you girls don’t seem to know shit about this business.”

“What you don’t know is that my ambition’s always been to run a porn studio of my own,” I say, grinning. “This is teaching me some valuable lessons.”

“Make sure your contracts are airtight,” Harris says, tapping the folder on his desk.

I shake my head. “That’s not the lesson. The lesson is: make sure the girls are happy. And if they aren’t, do what you’ve gotta do to make ‘em happy.”

He sighs. “If you say so, Janet. Look, you can’t talk to anyone about this conversation.”

I nod. “Put what we’ve agreed to in writing, send it over, and if I’m happy with it, we’ll sign it. Send an NDA too, if you want. Amy and I will sign that too – pending guidance from our lawyer, of course.” I’ve lost contact with the last guy who helped me with contracts, but he was a sleazebag anyway. I’ll have another lawyer by the time those documents show up. A queer female lawyer, if I can find one.

He nods. “Of course. And you know you can’t be Janet Starr anymore, right?”

“Yup. Once I walk out that door, I’m just Renee Anderson, from Cedar City Utah. I will acknowledge that I was once known as Janet Starr, but that’s all I’ll say.”

“Yeah, yeah, fair enough. All right, get outta here, I got stuff to do. Look for some documents by registered mail in the next few days.”

I nod, jump up, and dash out of the place. I’m stoked – that turned out about as well as it possibly could have. My excitement fades once I hit the street, though. I look across the street at the Mustang, parked by the curb. Am I gonna have to sell that thing? I wonder. What’s this gonna do to my money? It was easy to think I could take a month and figure this out when it wasn’t actually a problem. Now that it is a problem, a month doesn’t seem like nearly enough time.

I cross the street, unlock the Mustang, and jump in. It’s hot inside, so I get it running and turn on the AC. But I don’t pull away from the curb. Instead I pick up my phone and call Amy.

She picks up on the third ring. “Janet?”

“Hey babe,” I say softly. It’s so good to hear her voice.

“What’s wrong? You never call.”

I hesitate. “Well… some shit just went down. And we gotta talk about it.”

She sighs. “You know, next time I saw you in person, I was gonna start the conversation the same way.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, I mean… I am. But like…” She seems to run out of steam.

“Is this why I haven’t been able to pin you down all weekend?”

“Mmhmm,” she says quietly. “Scared you’re gonna be mad at me.”

“OK, let’s make a deal,” I say. “I won’t get mad about your shit if you won’t get mad about my shit. Can we agree to that?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” she says, sounding relieved. “Do you wanna just come over and talk?”

“That’s fine by me. God knows I’ll feel better when I can see your face.”

“Me too, babe.” She sounds like she’s getting emotional. I guess whatever’s going on with us has just gotten even more complicated.

“OK, sweetie, I’m on my way.” I end the call and pull the Mustang away from the curb.