I Am Woman, Watch My Porn

Because girl power

The other day, I tweeted a link to a Los Angeles Times article about Liz Flynt, Larry Flynt’s widow, who sits at the helm of the Hustler empire. After I posted my tweet, I remembered that I’d met Liz. It was a long time ago, maybe 1998? or 1999?, and I went to what I seem to recall was a photo shoot to interview a famous porn star for an article I was writing. I want to say the article was about porn stars who were going mainstream, and maybe it was for Detour magazine, but I’m not sure. In any case, maybe because I was just there to interview the girl, I didn’t realize it was a Hustler shoot, because I showed up wearing a Playboy baseball hat. (Back then, I was working for Playboy TV, but that’s another story. And, yes, the Playboy Mansion is—was—every bit as cool as you’d think—cooler, actually.) When Liz spotted my Playboy hat, she made a noise of disdain, and then went somewhere and returned with a Hustler baseball hat, which she told me to put on, which I did. After the shoot, I interviewed the porn star. Back then, the porn star was pretty famous; now she’s disappeared (one thing I read recently claimed she’d changed her name so she could slip off the radar completely). As I recall it, when I asked the porn star about her background, she explained that when she was very young—a toddler, I think—her father killed her mother and then killed himself. Was she—the girl—present when it happened? I want to say yes, but maybe I’m interweaving memory with fiction. I felt bad for the girl. Who wouldn’t? Every once in a while I think about her, and what she told me, and how the things that happen to us can change the course of our lives forever.

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