Chapter 103

Leslie and Rebecca arrived – eyes bright with happiness – a little after 6 p.m. Of course Rebecca's return was enough reason for a cookout by itself. But Karlie had called at two o'clock to let everyone know not to expect the group until around 6:30 p.m.

Adam was in class, so Erin took the message. She said Karlie didn't sound distressed or angry so she didn't think it was because things were going badly. Indeed, she was right – as everyone found out when the car dropped the trio off a half hour after Leslie and Rebecca pulled up.

Hugs and kisses were exchanged between – well, pretty much everyone, Adam decided – before Walt yelled that dinner was coming off the grill in five minutes. It was simple fare this time – cheeseburgers and potato chips along with a plate of raw vegetables with ranch dip. It sounded pretty good to Adam.

It was after 7 p.m. before everyone dropped his or her paper plate in the trash and the group got down to business. The first order of business was Walt's announcement that the inspector had found no structural problems with the Rayburn property.

"The wiring is old in some places," he said. "The basement is on a separate breaker box but the upstairs – particularly the kitchen – will need to be rewired. Steve is paying for an electrician to come in next Monday to handle it."

Next was an update from Allie and Sarah, who were bursting at the seams to tell what happened that day.

"Renaldo says hello," Sarah began with a grin at Adam. "And he wants us to give you a kiss from him."

Adam lowered his head in shame while everyone laughed at him.

"The shoot was amazing," Allie said with the laughter ended. "We are already half a day ahead. Adam, I know you'll appreciate this and I'm sure Leslie and Rebecca will, too. Peaches didn't plan to actually start the interview until after lunch. They give a 10 a.m. start time so they can actually get going by 1 p.m. We all know the reason for this but it is still ridiculous. The driver told us on the way home that this morning was the first time in his memory that he didn't have to sit and wait for at least 30 minutes for the talent to appear."

"He also said it was the first time he could remember anyone thanking him," Karlie added.

"Sadly true," Allie continued with a frown. "Nancy Drewery started the interview precisely at 10 a.m. We finished before lunch but we went back afterward for some follow-up questions after a discussion at lunch. I've seen these interviews and you can guess how they usually go. 'What is your favorite color?' 'If you could be a tree, what would it be?' That is not how today went. It was a serious interview and Nancy was gracious enough to permit us to direct it to anywhere we wanted to take it. I could tell from her facial expressions she was impressed – not so much by what we had to say but by the fact we managed to use three-syllable words in context."

Everyone chuckled but Allie wasn't certain she was joking.

"Unless they edit the hell out of the text – which they will in order to fit more of it into the magazine, it will be as clear mission statement for what Subarctic and Five Friends wants to accomplish," Sarah said. "Nancy said Peaches does not edit the video unless it is to avoid embarrassing the talent. So that means they edit it regularly, I would suppose. She is going to push to leave it alone and post it, as is. She also plans to do a story about the shape of the industry. The work that Karlie and Trinity have done this week astounded her."

"And Erin," Trinity said. "She did a lot of work on pulling up the archive sites for the talent agencies so we could verify that the girls were there when they started down the Rabbit Hole. It was her idea to go that route. She even took screen shots and cataloged them for cross-referencing."

"Wow!" Rebecca said. "That sounds labor intensive. But I have to ask. What is a Rabbit Hole?"

Rebecca's face expressed nothing but revulsion when Allie and Sarah provided the explanation. By the end she was shaking her head sadly.

"How did you realize this?" she asked.

"Accident," Adam admitted. "We suspected Sven Swenson of doing this. We knew who he tried to send Allie to. We also knew which other young actresses he represented during Allie's tenure at Elite. Once we got started, it became obvious. The first month at Elite, girls did the standard sites. They used 'Frisky First Timers' and 'Naughty Newbies.' They were sent to 'Doable Dolls' and the Miami shoots. I think we can agree that those sites are pretty mundane. I mean, the guys in Miami aren't exactly terrific but I get the impression that they're harmless."

"They are," Sarah said. "Even when I told them I didn't want to do the creampie site, they didn't push. They asked me to reconsider but once I told them firmly, they went along with it. They didn't whine or complain. They didn't threaten me with legal problems. They just shrugged and changed their plans. They are easy to get along with and they really do treat the talent well. Allie and I agreed to share a room at the hotel but if we hadn't wanted to, they would have sprung for a second one. They pay on time and they provide travel that is standard for the industry."

Rebecca nodded. She had seen the number of top-line girls who had done a scene with "Hidden Treasures," "Handjob Hotties" or "Swallow Your Pride."

"By their third month in the business – or early into their second contract and two months after they've been moved to Sven or one of the other reps, the girls start showing up on other sites," Adam continued. "But the pattern is always the same: 'Daddy's Little Fuckhole;' 'Ten Black Poles in a Little Brown Hole;' 'Teenage Potty Mouths' and 'Hose Beast.' Others do it with other sites. We spoke to Tara Twain and Sheila Corvette about it. They both said they'd heard of it but didn't think it was real. Well, it's real."

"And it's bullshit," Rachelle said. "But if the girls balk, they get washed out of the business. They bookings dry up or they get sent on a tour of strip clubs in the middle of nowhere."

"So it's going to stop?" Leslie wondered.

The group could only shrug. They doubted it would even slow down but at least they could try to get word out to the girls who entered the business about what to look for.

"We hope to give them other options," Allie said. "But we don't think we can end it. We're too small and it's too lucrative. We plan to present this to Tate and Ben and to Jerry and whoever replaced Ellen. They have some real influence because they use the agencies. Given what I know of Gloria Jackson's management style, I'm not sure she even knows."

"There is another way," Trinity said softly. "It will make you a lot of enemies and win you no friends but it will put a stop to this practice in a hurry."

All eyes turned to the girl who had been sitting quietly in the corner.

"We're not really interested in making friends," Walt said.

"I'm serious, guys," Trinity said. "Look, Allie has already laid the groundwork with her suit against Elite. We start to contact the women this has affected and we get them to file a class-action suit against not only sites involved but against the agents and the agencies. We have enough anecdotal evidence to get an attorney interested. All we need is for one or two of them to testify that they were pressured into accepting these low-tier jobs or blacklisted when they refused. All we need is for someone like Tate or Jerry to testify that they were not approached about hiring the girls for their sites. It will serve two purposes. It will sink the agencies. I mean they will go bankrupt and disappear. It will also give a little money back to the girls who got tossed down the drain by these assholes."

Mary had sat up when Trinity started to speak.

"What's the downside?" she asked with a smile.

"The downside is that if word gets out who is behind the suit, about 60 percent of the industry will turn on you like a viper," Trinity said. "It's been tried before. Not with this issue but with the issue of health testing. A group of performers got the idea to unionize and to force all the studios to chip in for health care, insurance and retirement."

"Sounds like a reasonable idea," Shelly said.

"It might be, but you want to know what happened?" Trinity asked. "They disappeared. I don't mean they were killed. I mean they were blackballed. No one would hire them as a fluffer even. This was back in the mid-1990s. Every single one of the leadership group was gone within a year. Anyone who had voiced support was out of the business in 18 months. You're independent contractors – well, except for Rebecca, who owns her own site, and Allie and Sarah, who have contracts. Studios are under no obligation to work with you.

"The pressure the studios can exert is tremendous. The agencies are only slightly below the studios in the power structure. You have to understand, this probably extends a lot past some low-grade web sites and a few agencies. You start turning the rocks over and some major players are going to come out. Vapid Video seems to have a sweetheart deal with Regal. I noticed that almost all their contract girls come from there. The same is probably true for a lot of the big players, too. You might find the whole industry under a microscope. That is a problem in itself. Then there is the issue of who some of the players are behind the major studios. I've been doing a lot of reading on things. It is rumored that some unsavory characters are the money behind the big boys.

"Jerry went out and got some legitimate businessmen to help him out. His needs were small and so were their investments relative to the size of the industry. The health scare cost the bigger studios as much as it did anyone. Remember, in 2003, the industry was shut down for almost six weeks by the AIDS scare. No new projects were created. The only releases were things already in the pipeline. No product means no profit for these places. Some mob types stepped in to help out. Or so I've read."

"Jesus," Leslie said. "I mean, I've read the same thing. You know, that mafia types are the money behind Mogul and Chaos. I've never worked with either of them, so I've never met anyone there."

The group was silent as they considered the ramifications of what Trinity had told them.

"Where does that leave us with what we've already done?" Adam asked. "I mean, I really don't want some guy named Guido to show up here and ask to speak to me privately."

"I think we're talking more about guys named Boris," Trinity said. "Russian and Chechen. And I don't think they show up to talk. They just blow up your family. That's why I was so hesitant to point out the class-action thing. Right now, you're trying to tip over a few small-time web sites and small-scale agencies. My point is that if you help to initiate a class-action suit alleging misconduct in hiring practices, you can't limit the scope. Any woman in the industry who can prove she qualifies will be eligible to join. Some of those are going to come from the bigger houses.

"I have no doubt something like that would be successful and I have no doubt it would end the practice – mostly because it would be too costly to continue it and a judge would oversee the process for a while to ensure compliance. But it could turn out to be a really bad idea. It would endanger not only the people in this room. It would endanger the girls who have already been screwed over. It's something you'll have to consider strongly."

"Where does that leave the ones who got forced to do those sites?" Sarah asked.

"About where they are now," Adam said sadly. "On their own. I think we can handle the pressure from Elite, Live Angels, Premier, Rival, Majestic and Cannon. They are all relatively small. I would guess none of them have more than 15 employees. But I'm not sure we have the stroke to stop this. I'm also not sure that Tate will be willing to go along with us. There is no evidence that he participates but I'm sure he understands the concept and has given tacit approval. Ben will go apeshit. I think I can safely say that any active participation from Daystar on this front will come at Ben's insistence. Jerry has never had a reason to deal with this before. There might be something similar for girls who do girl-girl only. I'm not familiar enough with those girls to guess. But I can say that a lot of them have been doing scenes for 10 or 15 years now so I suspect there isn't."

"Some of those girls have done 'Bitch Battles'," Allie said. "I know for a fact that Lucy Luck has done it two or three times."

"Which suggests she did it of her own volition," Shelly said. "The site calls the newcomers 'prey.' Ninety percent of the prey do one scene and that is it. If she has gone back two or three times, she either spend the money on rock or she enjoyed it. Either way, I'm not real interested in helping her along."

"I guess not," Allie said. "But I'd hate to leave out one segment of the industry because we don't like their sexuality."

"I didn't say a thing about her sexuality," Shelly insisted. "I said she either gets off on pain or she needed the money badly enough to do it again. I don't have a problem investigating the girl-girl side to see if the situation exists over there. But like Adam said, a good percentage of the girls have been in the business for a decade. I saw one, let me think of her name ... Juliette Prim. She has done like 900 girl-girl scenes in the last 11 years. I'm sure one or two of them were hinky. But I don't think she was adversely affected by this scheme."

"True," Allie admitted. "But it bears watching. I know the smaller agencies won't re-sign a girl who does girl-girl only."

"Which is a separate issue," Sarah interrupted. "Look, there are a lot of decent people who do lez exclusively. But discrimination based on their scene preference is outside of what we're talking about. It's wholly different than what Sven does to girls who lack the experience to understand what's happening. These agents are supposed to look out for us. We don't sign on with Elite or Majestic to be exploited by the people who are supposed to being providing guidance to our careers."

Allie shook her head to clear it.

"You're right," she said. "I got sidetracked there. Can we talk this over with Ben tomorrow before we get in over our heads?"