“Marco?” I called for the man creeping eerily behind the light booth. He was laughing heartily with the light designer, totally unaware of me. I called out his name again before he turned to me. “Listen, we’ve got a…shall we say…a change of plans. We’re trashing the scene – it’s just not working. We’re going back to the original idea.”
He looked at me, dumbstruck. I wasn’t one to make last-minute changes, especially something so drastic as to change an entire scene with less than an hour before we were supposed to start shooting. But I didn’t have time for him to settle into the thought. Instead, I grabbed a bullhorn and press a button, making a loud, piercing screech ring out and echo off the cold, grey cement room we had been using as a makeshift soundstage. Twenty curious (and more than a little annoyed) eyes turned my way.
“I need your attention!” I was anxious, my head sweating, and my heart racing. I hoped my crew didn’t pick up on the fact that something was off. The absolute last thing I needed right then was for them to lose any amount of confidence in their director. “Look, everybody, we’re gonna go ahead and change this up a bit. The scene isn’t working as written. No big, but I need to see the prop and set director in my dressing room ASAP – as in, now. Lights and sound, stay put, and I’ll fill you in when we’re ready. Hair, makeup, and costume? You’re with me.”
Three people and Marco, my assistant director, followed me. I heard them whispering behind my back as they tried to make sense of it. Earlier that day, I had walked in the room bursting with energy and enthusiasm. This was going to be the first time I was trying a romance, sensual scene with my partner, Kylie. I wanted to give her a shoot she would never forget, something where we could express that amazing chemistry between us – the same kind of sparks that flew when we made love in our Las Vegas hotel just the night before.
But that had changed completely in almost a blink of an eye. Her mother, my stepmother, finally fessed up and told her about my past. She gave Kylie the background on my meth addiction and how I had stolen a huge amount of money from my father. And while she didn’t know I’ve been paying him back in secret, when I told her about it, she didn’t care. It sounded like another lie, another deception.
The truth was that if I could turn back time, I wouldn’t. Being stuck in the suburbs with two parents who were so totally focused on themselves and their money was one of the worst things in the world for me. The only shining part of my life was Kylie, but I was too sucked in to even see that. And she was my sister, the geeky kid I protected from the boys on the playground. We shared a room together, a life together. But that life wasn’t anything I wanted.
I got out of there. I had to take the hard road, one that led me to the brink of death several times with ODs and gang turf fights, but I survived. And I came out on the other side with money in my hands, a career where I got to screw beautiful women on camera, and a chance to make something more of myself besides what everyone wanted me to be.
When I got a taste of Kylie, the real Kylie minus the stepsister title, I wanted more. It killed me at first to be banging my sister on camera, let alone to take it off-screen, but she drew me back in each and every time. Whatever it was between us was more than just the bond that once united our parents.
But Kylie couldn’t see that now. She wanted out, and I wouldn’t necessarily blame her. Before she knew, I was some golden god. I wasn't only the boy who shielded her for years, taught her things only brothers could, but I was also the guy who guided her through the porn world. I took her porn virginity, and I pushed her sexual tastes to whole new levels. She was an animal with me, nothing like the shell of the girl she was when she walked on set, barely being able to speak.
Her transformation wasn’t enough, though. Her need for me, my wanting her just couldn’t break through whatever poison her mom implanted in her mind. No matter what I could give her, she promised me this would be the end of our working and sexual relationship. This was our last shoot, our last time on camera together, the last time in bed.
She was adamant, but so was I. I wanted her back, to never let her threat to become a reality. I wanted her to see that I wasn’t the bad guy her mother had made me out to be. I had to redeem for my sins. I had to make her trust me again. She had trusted me when we were at our first porno shoot and she identified me. Instead of running, she let me lead her through. She trusted me when I barged into her dorm room ready to break down the walls of our relationship and make love outside our little working world. She trusted me every time I directed her, regardless of who was on the other side of the camera.
I had to make her see I was still that Wilder, that Will, who made her do the unthinkable. I had one shot, one last shot to get through to her. But the only way I knew how was vicious and cruel. So as my team filed into my dressing room, I started barking out commands without a moment to think it through. There was no going back now. What I had planned for her would be it, no matter the consequences.
“The whole romance in the bedroom, the sensual shit – it’s gone. All of it. We’re doing hardcore bondage.” I could see their eyes bulge out as they looked to each other for reaction.
Elise, my go-to makeup and hair artist, was the first to get courage and let out the elephant in the room. “Wilder, I just have one question. Did Kylie give the okay on this?”
I paused. She hadn’t. The last time we did bondage, Daniel, our old director and producer, had forced her into it. She ended up flourishing, though. I hadn’t seen an amateur take to the harder stuff like that before. I cleared my throat, drawing up all the confidence I could muster. I couldn’t be concerned if she was my stepsister or a hurt girl with a broken heart in my dressing room. I needed my talent to be on. I looked back at Elise. “No, she doesn’t know. I’m going to type up a quick script and Marco will deliver it to her. If she doesn’t want to participate, she will break contract, and I will deal with it later. But for now, I'm under the impression she will do whatever needs to be done.”
It was crap, a total lie. We didn’t have a contract. It was part of our rules. Contracts were for people like Daniel who blackmailed girls into porn. Instead, we collaborated, discussed, planned. When she wasn’t part of the process, there was an unwritten trust that I would keep her safe and never push her too far, but what I’ve got in mind for today is going to be a whole lot different than what she could dream of.
I continued, no longer wanting to discuss Kylie or what she may want or not want, “For sets, I want black. All black. Make sure lighting is aware so they can do their thing. With props, I want toys, ropes, lube…that sort of thing. Costume for me is what I’m wearing now. She needs to be in a black, silk dress and a black mask. Can we get that on time?”
Elise nodded her head at me. I watched as she gulped. She could sense danger. As the makeup, hair, and costume artist, she had seen the ups and down of our relationship from backstage. I knew she was aware that Kylie was more than just an actress to me. But she didn’t want to risk losing the job by speaking her mind. She was going to follow this to the end, as well.
I clapped my hands together loudly as my mind emptied of thoughts. Everyone nodded as I confirmed they understood their roles and that they needed it done in under two hours. But I gave one final warning, one final request. “What we’re going to be doing on stage isn’t going to be easy, especially for Kylie or myself. We don’t do this sort of thing often. But I need it to be authentic if it’s going to sell well with our market. That’s why I’m asking you all and your teams to be on their best today. No interruptions, no fumbles. Get the best shots and get out of here. Do we got that?”
The team mumbled an affirmative before I dismissed them with a wave of my hand. I closed the door behind me as the last person left. I turned my attention to the computer sitting on the small coffee table and I began to write. With porn, there was no real need to have much in the way of a script; much of what we said was always improvised on the spot or done based on characters. But I wanted to give Kylie something to read before she walked out on stage, something she could remember and hold onto.
I wasn’t going to play it nice with her. I wasn’t going to take her gently or even ease her into this. I needed for her to know she could trust me, despite my past. If she could get over that roadblock in her mind, the one keeping her from looking at our future rather than our past, then I might have had a shot of getting her back for good. But doing so was going to be one of the hardest things I would ever have to do.
My fingers paused as they hovered over the keyboard. I sighed in deeply, steadying myself in the process. I asked myself one more time if I was ready to give Kylie this kind of pain and pleasure. And as a small part of me swelled with anticipation while my nerves rolled off me, I wrote the first lines for Kylie’s last porn shoot ever:
Kylie: Why are you doing this to me? I don’t understand?
Wilder: What don’t you understand? You’re mine now. Forever and always.