March 25, 2019 • 42 mins
The typical porn narrative goes from bad to worse, but one that goes from devoutly religious to somatically joyous? Well, you’re going to need an Amy Bond for that.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I wanted to be a good Mormon wife, but more
than that, I wanted to be an actress. More than that,
I wanted to be famous. And you know, sitting in
the hotel rooms and like being a call girl, I
kind of got to be an actress. Bond Amy Bond,
(00:27):
you know there's a there's a story about a young
actress goes to Hollywood and she's hanging out at the
counter of Schwab's drug store getting a milkshake or something,
and some guy comes up with his fingers in the
shape of a gold post and you know, trying to
figure out whether you're a movie star, and he discovers
her and she goes on to famine fortune. This trope
(00:49):
has traveled as long as Hollywood has been Hollywood, but
with Bond Amy Bond, it was a different sort of journey. Yeah,
she kim to Hollywood. Yeah she wanted to be an actress,
but in mainstream movies. I don't know, but I do know.
(01:11):
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(02:54):
So I grew up Mormon. My dad was Mormon until
he died. My mom is like kind of Mormon. Um
we were. Ray is Mormon, and I think out of
everyone in my family, I probably became the most militant
Mormon of everyone. When I was like thirteen, I got
really into it. What does that? What does it mean
to be like a military Mormon? Yeah, I mean, like
you know, if you follow the rules, like by the
(03:16):
letter of the law gets pretty intense. So like, you know,
you go to church every day, and I went to
a Bible study school before school and I had a
hundred percent in attendance. And you know, that was really
important to me. To deal with the magical underwear thing
that you never take off your body. That's a thing,
and it's everybody has weird practices. Magical underwear is one
(03:36):
of them. You know. For a long time growing up,
I believed that that I had this I have this
mole on my chest and I believed and this belief
was like confirmed for me by multiple elders of my
church that God had put it on me to tell
me where I should wear all my shirts above because
that was that if I wore a shirt below that mole,
it was being a modest. And you know, there's all
(03:58):
these things that you tell yourselfer because God's trying to
help you through life. I think a lot of people
survived that way. My heart was always set on California.
From the time I was young, I wanted to move
to California. I wanted to be a Californian that you know,
it's like a young girl Minnesota. Honestly, I think it
was because of The Babysitters Club. This is the series
(04:21):
of books that was very popular what I was like
eight to fifteen years old. That was about this group
of women girls who had started a club called the
Babysitters Club. And one of the girls in the group
was named Don and Don was the quintessential California girl.
She had blonde hair, she was a vegetarian, she cared
(04:42):
about animals, and she was an artist. And I loved
that idea of like being an artist. How do you
go from being a daily church girl at the age
of thirteen to being a young adult chasing their dreams.
I was traveling to finish school and then you know,
(05:04):
doing that backpacking thing, and uh, I was in no
pair and really just I felt like a bohemian for
the first time in my life. I was like, oh,
this is cool. Like I met all these artists in
Paris and I was eighteen at the height of the
Iraq War, and so there are a lot of the
people I met were like squatters and like Paris mansions,
(05:25):
and they would they would go out on the artists
and war and I like met all these I was
in no pair, but I had a lot of spare time,
so I got to go hang out with these people,
and they really um shaped the way thought about spending time,
because up until then I came from a military slash
very religious background, and time was a thing that you,
(05:49):
like I did to to like put into work, and
the idea that you like spent it creating paper mache
caricatures of George wish to go put in a float
would probably be an insane thing too, or like a
waste to those demographics. And suddenly I was immersed in
this world of artists and it felt very deep and
(06:11):
real to me and like a good way to spend
time rather than what many would consider a waste of it.
But I was still very Mormon, and so I was
balancing this like go to church on Sundays and read
the Bible every night before you go to bed, with like, oh,
but there's all these cool people who you know, many
of them didn't believe in God and um, and I
(06:32):
thought that was just crazy, you know, like that's just wrong.
And so I would pray for them for their souls
to be saved, because that's what you do. And um
and I was able to like kind of live in
both worlds really easily. And I think that's actually probably
my superpower as a human, as I'm able to straddle
different world I had purchased this keyboard piano that because
(06:56):
one of the guys who was in this UM protest
group played the keyboard and he had started teaching me.
But I wasn't very dedicated. But I liked how when
I carried this keyboard around, people thought I was an artist.
As soon as I put that keyboard under my arm.
It was so easy to get hitchhike rides because people
are like, oh, she's an artist, you know, she just
(07:17):
needs to get to her next gig. And I remember
I had one with this one truck driver. I was like,
I'll take you if you play me a song, and
I was literally like I can't. It also had like
seventy pounds and I carried it the whole way to Italy.
Can't you play it now? You figure not, Na, No,
you can't understood. It was like it was a plot
device to get her from a place of no adventure
(07:40):
to a place of adventure, a physical place as well
as a fantastical place that existed in her mind and
later reality, except she still can't play keyboard. I went
to Europe mainly because my parents were fine with me
traveling as long as it was international. They're in the military,
(08:02):
so they're big thing was, you've got to travel the world.
You've got to see how the rest of the world lives.
And so it was okay to go to Europe. But then,
you know, I really wanted to go to California, and
so I went back home, made some money, and then
I got on a bus and and had one backpack.
I didn't have a keyboard anymore. And then I moved
(08:22):
to California and I had no plan. So were they
cool with this? Or were they? I wrote them a
note I ran away because they knew they wouldn't be
cool with it. They wouldn't be cool with California. They
wouldn't be cool with California because, I mean, my mom
was the only woman, the only person and her family
to graduate from college. In her mind, going to California
(08:43):
meant that I wasn't going to keep going to community
college and get my degree. And you know, for her,
getting her degree was her pathway to freedom. So okay,
So so you say you send them a note, I
run away. I'm in California, and did I wrote them
a note. I said, you're not gonna like this. But
I got on a bus and I moved into California
to chase my dreams to become an actress. I called
(09:06):
my mom from Texas when the bus landed, and I
called her and said, I'm okay, I'm safe. She was
very unhappy. She just wanted she said, are you okay?
What the funk are you doing? And yeah, that's kind
of what I expected. You know, you just want to
(09:28):
tell you we're okay. I wanted her to know I
was okay, that I loved her very much. I had
nothing to do with her, blah blah blah, but I
needed to like go create my own path, right. I
landed in Los Angeles and like I didn't have a
room to rent, Like I had not planned nothing, because
in my mind, if I planned it, then it wasn't
(09:48):
like the way an artist would do it. So the
bus stations in downtown l a work. Yeah, bus station
lands in downtown l A. At like three o'clock in
the morning. I walk out into the parking lot with
my like little I think my backpack had actual sparkles
on it, and there were two security guards standing in
front of a parking lot next to the Gray homebus station.
(10:09):
There's like glass all over the cement. There's people sleeping
on the parking lot, which I've never seen before, and
like freak out and I run back into the Gray
Home bus station and these two security guards. I see
one of them past the other five dollar bill and
goes We had a bet on how long you'd be
out there, and so I sat at this Gray homebus
(10:32):
station for like three hours. I told myself, well, if
you get to Westwood, that's where there's u C l A.
And then you can go find like a corkboard with
somebody who has housing for rent. And that's how I
lived in Europe, you know, you just find a corkboard
and a coffee shop and then you get your next
place to live. So we go look at all these
(10:54):
corkboards in l A. And everything is so expensive. And
by the time I'm done looking at all these corkboards,
like the sun is going down, so I'm like, well,
I'm not going to find a place tonight, like my
my one plan is backfired. And on the bus, I
was so excited. I hadn't eaten in like three days,
(11:14):
Like I had just been too excited to eat. And
so I'm walking with like my luggage down this street
and I think I was I was probably crying and
like walking down the street like oh ship, what am
I gonna do? And this car pulls up behind me
and this guy jumps out and he goes hey. Then
I'm like, what you know. He's like, you look like
(11:35):
you need help. And so, long story short, I end
up living with this dude for like three weeks, was
the old was the story. He was a graduate student
at U C. L A. And I think he liked
the idea of saving somebody so perfect. I needed some out.
So it was great. So there was no creepy alterior
sexual motive. There was no creepy alterior thing. I made
(11:58):
it very clear at this and I was still a virgin.
I'm like, I'm a virgin. I'm very religious. I don't
believe in premarital sex. So you said this as you
got in the car. Well, when when we got to
his house. I was like, look, I don't want it
to be weird, and he was cool. And this dude
like drove me around. He helped log me into his
like student board so that I could look at all
(12:20):
the housing that was on the internet, like on the
u c L a specific internet. He helped me find
a room. I found a room that was like three
seventy five a month in Westwood. I shared it with
like two other people and it was fine. So this
guy really did like that's a solid basically saying, yeah,
(12:41):
why did you finally leave? Oh? I guess you found
the room. I found the room. He helped me find
the room. Like it was never like a long term solution,
but he was like, I think you need help. I
can help you. Yeah, all right, so you get your room.
I got my room. And Rick had driven me to
Central Casting the first day after I stayed at his house,
(13:02):
and I had heard that Central Casting was where everybody
went when they were trying to be an actor. So
I went there. I got my head shot taken and
lo and behold, they called me in like five minutes
and they were like, do you want to do judge Judy? Sure?
So I sat in the audience on Judge Judy, and
then I sat in the audience of Judge Joe Brown.
(13:22):
And then I sat in the audience there was another judge.
I forgot the third judge, but I like, I like
worked the audience of Judge shows for like three months.
How much were they? The opinion is an extra? Right?
Was an extra today? Fine? Good enough? Like my rents
four hundred bucks? Fine, you can tell the folks back home.
(13:43):
I'm on the show, on that show, that's right. So
anyway I'm on Judge Judy. I start going to all
of these other casting calls and I just can't nail
like a real part, like a part that has speaking right.
And in order to get the SAG card, which is
the holy grail for new actors in l A, you
have to get like three speaking parts. And I remember
(14:03):
going on this audition where there are these three girls,
three girls sitting in you had acting classes before or not?
I had never taken an acting class. Also, by the way,
I had tried out for my Hopkins High School Minnetonka,
Minnesota High School musical. I couldn't even get a part
in that. So, like, I'm by no means like an actress, like,
(14:27):
but I played an artist when I played that part,
when when I was the keyboard, you know, and I
was like, if I just do it, then it will
come true for me. And to a certain extent, I
think that's kind of a great way to live your life.
But for me, I was overly confident, Like I was
very positive that I was going to be famous in
(14:48):
like three months, and like there was no doubt in
my mind that was going to happen. So then that
didn't happen in three months, and I had started to
run out of money, and and I meet these three
girls at a sandal audition was like an audition to
be in a sandal commercial, you mean the resort or
the actual footwear like a sandal. So I'm at this
(15:10):
audition and the three other girls who I'm sitting there with,
and by the way, I had like taken the bus there,
woken up at like five am to get to this
ten am audition was still late, so i'd like run
the last half mile. And I'm sitting there like sweaty
and feeling just like the most disgusting person. And I'm
looking at these three women and they're like, you know,
(15:32):
they're wearing like very expensive clothes. They have like keratin
treatments in their hair, their nails are well done, and
they had had they had They were talking about how
they had just gotten their tone nails done for this audition,
and I was like, oh, you got your tone nails
done for this audition and they were like, yeah, that's
what you do. You dress for the part you want.
(15:54):
Like one of them looked at me with this very
like mean girl look and she was like, you dress
for the part you want. And I was like, oh, like,
I need to make like real money. I need to
buy a car, I need to like buy pedicures when
I go on auditions, like I need to do all
this ship. I didn't know that. So then I decided, Well,
(16:14):
the reason I'm not booking these, why I'm not nailing
them and then getting the parts, is because I just
need more money in order to like play the part.
Scant funds. And you see that you're being outpaced by
people who were spending a lot to look a lot
better and act actually act, So what do you do?
(16:41):
So I started nude modeling and that was like step one.
I was did you find the agency that got you
new modeling? Yeah? I mean yeah, you answer an ad
the back of l A Weekly has everything you need.
I answered two outs. I answered the back of an
l A Weekly, And the two outs were one was
a woman who was basically like a pimp, right, and
(17:04):
her thing her ads said no sex. And I really
liked the idea that I could come, that I could
do this work but go back to being religious because
I was still dating this Mormon guy at the same
time where DC and I was just lying to him
about everything close to your parents, close to my parents,
and this plan to eventually come out to really going
(17:26):
to do the long distance thing. See how it worked, right?
I mean I think his plan was like, we'll get
married and then you'll come live with me. But I like,
how did she make my dream come true? Right? So
I get hooked up with this woman who, um like,
does nude modeling shoots, and I get hooked up with
another woman who, um she puts you up in a
(17:47):
hotel room and then you do massages. Right. So that
was my pimp woman. Yeah. I never learned her name.
I always called her my girl. But she was no nonsense.
And I love that bitch because when you talked to her,
you knew she was in a hurry. She had better
ship to do than talk to you right now. So
(18:08):
it was always super straightforward to the point, get in there,
I'll call you when someone is here. I'll pick up
the money at ten thirty, and we did like a
fifty fifty split. So after like two weeks of like
the nude modeling and the massages in the hotel room,
which by the way, it was usually actually massages. Yeah,
it's just like lonely dudes. So it was actually like
(18:29):
pretty cool. So the nude modeling thing was the was
there a product associated with that? So we're taking pictures
of you for posters, we're taking pictures uh painters are
So there's a lot of photographers who do pictures that
(18:53):
they think they can sell to a magazine, porno mag
or anything. And in my mind the time, nobody actually
looks at porn. So I'm never going to get caught
doing this because I didn't look at porn. The guy
I was dating, I believed it didn't look at porn.
So you weren't draped over a nicely covered couch with
grapes in your hand. You know, the person is already
(19:18):
in the hotel or you're in the room and they
come to you. My girl calls me, hey, your name
is Candy Berryes coming up in ten minutes. So the
guy comes in the room, and what happens. He takes
all his clothes off. She was very clear about the
order of operations. So you know, he has to put
the money on the nights to first, and then he
(19:39):
can take his clothes off because the cops never gonna
just like put money down. So if he doesn't put
money down, run for your life. All right, all right?
Did you ask her Steven would be like where the
fire escape? She didn't. Not do you ever at any
point ask her like, why why are we afraid of cops?
(20:00):
It's just a massage? No, that made sense? Yeah, okay.
I was like, I think this is illegal. This is
probably illegal, but like that just made it more exciting.
I was here for the adventure. So now these guys
showed up from massages. Nobody tried to fuck you, Nobody
tried to suck me, like, absolutely nobody. Yeah. It wasn't
(20:20):
until I started doing house calls that that changed. So
in call versus outcol So, somebody calls, I want a
massage at my house, and she said, okay, well it
works out all right. He showed you the house and
then what happens in and then all that all bets
are off, like they'll offer more money for additional services.
So my girl had a really smart that. I think
(20:42):
it's really smart. I mean she's the only pimp I've
ever worked with, you know, which is she would only
send me to places where I was with somebody else.
So it was like two girls that were ordered. So
they asked for two girls yea with other girls willing
to have sex or not. Oh yeah, okay, so you
almost always the other girl was willing to have sucks
(21:04):
and like down like they were down to fuck because
then they got more money. I was like, I think, God,
I can't go that far because God won't forgive me.
So you were sitting there as you're screwing or you're like,
it's okay, I did the massage. I'll just sit out
here and wait for you. Guys know I watched okay,
so you're there, okay. I mean usually I would like
fondle somebody, you know, I would like massage somebody, fondle somebody,
(21:29):
you know, like, hey, can you play with her? Tiths? Sure?
You know that will be an extra. That was my question,
and so how much how much money are you pulling
now from So between those two things, nude modeling was
like four hundred a day and it was kind of
like six hour days, a lot of standing around and
being cold, which is, you know, kind of boring. And
(21:53):
then the like face to face was much more exciting
because you're seeing this whole as as a Mormon turned
thrown into the sex world's human I was like, holy
sh it, you know, this is so insane. This is
like what movies are about. I didn't think this was real,
you know. And so I would make a lot of
(22:16):
cash between the hotel rooms and the massages and the
calls I would make. At the beginning, I only did
hotel rooms, so I would make about eight hundred two
thousand a day if I did like a full day
sitting in a hotel room. The new modeling like four D.
So she meets this photographer Mike Square. Guy takes a
lot of photos of her. But one day Mike has
(22:37):
gotta problem. He's taking too many photos of her and
overexposure is an issue, and he's like, you know, but
what you could do is porn. And by the way,
it pays a lot better, and I was like, wow,
(23:02):
isn't that kind of what I'm already doing. So he
introduced his ma to Jim South. I don't know who
Jim South is. He's a legend, but at the time,
I'm like, oh, hi, Jim. You know, small man in
a cowboy hut and he's in this office off of
Van Eyes that's like dirty and like kind of dusty
and kind of musty and gross, and so I don't
(23:22):
think of him as this like, you know, epic legend
who like starts all these careers. To me, Poorma is
not a career. It was like a gateway to be
able to do the thing I really wanted to do.
And I'm still like undecided on like the porn thing.
I'm like, well, go meet Jim, but I don't know
if I'm going to have sex with anyone important. Like
that actually sounded so insane that it like made me
(23:46):
really excited that it was an adventure. And um So
I meet Jim and Jim tells me, well, you know
there's this guy named um At Powers. Yeah, and I'm like, okay,
And what I don't tell Jim, And what I hadn't
told Mike, because I thought that they wouldn't want to
book me is that I'm still a virgin, Like I'm
(24:07):
still a virgin, but I'm also a sex worker. So
that's a weird mix, right. I don't tell them that,
But I really liked the idea that Ed was nice.
He was nice, he wasn't going to be aggressive. And
there's another woman in the office at that time, and
she turns around and she's like, Jim's the best. He
will never put you in a compromise situation. So already
(24:29):
this girl who's sitting in the office is like, I'm
vouching for this guy, Like he's the real deal, Like
he won't put you in a bad situation. Which is
what I really liked about my girl. She always made
sure that we were we were safe. I got really
lucky in that sense because I wasn't fucked with that,
I wasn't raped, and I had a lot of fun
being an adult entertainment actress. Anyway, So you go over
(24:52):
to its place and he has this fancy house in Calabasas.
Couldn't be nicer. I like, comes to the door, So
are you going with the understanding? Like, Oh, I'm just
gonna meet this guy or do you know now? I'm like,
I'm going to do this alright, and so my my
stomach is like churning. I like, see the big mansion.
(25:14):
I'm like, oh, ship, like this is happening, and so
what you like one or I think I was still nineteen.
It's like right after my twentieth birthday, alright, yeah, I
mean six months later I went to an adult entertainment
event that I couldn't get into at a club because
I wasn't twenty one to drink, all right, So so
you show him it has He's got this mansion and
(25:36):
he's nice, super nice. He asked me a bunch of questions.
He could like, tell me about you. He loves the
fact that I have a Mormon boyfriend, so we talked
about that and then he could tell he was super nervous.
So he's like really gentle, really nice, really kind. He was.
He's just like very you just felt like what you
(25:57):
were getting was very authentic, and he was. And then
he paid me with a check and he had to
be like, oh, what's your real name again? To Candy. Well,
Mike and I had decided that my name would be Wendy,
So my poor name was Wendy James. Yeah, Wendy James.
She is a singer as well. Yeah I now know that,
(26:18):
but I didn't at the time, and so, you know,
he said, you know, you've got that Peter Pan thing,
that like forever youth thing going on, so you should
be Wendy. But I was there for probably like an
hour and a half, two hours, and I walk out
with fifteen hundred bucks, So I'm like, fuck, yeah, I
can pay like six months rent with this thing. Like
I'm on my way to my fifty grand. Now, given
(26:38):
that this was your first time, that people have all
this kind of um not necessarily romantic attached, but significant
attachment to their first time, how did this How did
this feel as the first time? Was it more or
less than what you had expected before? I'm trying to
get a fix in your frame of mind issue as
you leave. It really wasn't about this, So it was
(27:00):
about the money. So I like took myself to Starbucks,
got a vanilla frappuccino. Look at my phone, which by
now I have a new phone, and there's like five
missed voicemails from Jim that are like, Wendy, everybody wants
to book you and on the basis, off the basis
of the new modeling pictures, they see this like fresh faced,
(27:24):
chair up looking girl. You know, I've got that girl
next door look. And and then it's just like off
to the races. Like every place that I want on
an audition for there was a two side a piece
of paper that said what you were willing to do, like,
do you do like double penetration? Nope? Do you do
(27:45):
anal nope? Do you do lesbian? Great? It was fun,
Like I'm I met so many fun people, Like it
was fun and the people were really nice to me.
Do you have time left over to actually go on
auditions for non adult rules? Yeah? Like I still every Wednesday.
I reserved Wednesday to be on the extra on Judge
(28:07):
Juty Judge Show Brown, and I kept that because it
was my perfect cover. When I went to church on Sundays,
people would be like, oh, I saw you on Judge
Duty perfect. You can see I am a struggling actress
exactly how I want you to think. You know, my boyfriend,
Oh I saw you on Judge Judy. Oh perfect. I
was like living a double life, like I was trying
(28:28):
my best to live a double life. The dude in
d C. Four months into the porn I'm like, look,
this is what's going on. I'm probably like I'm really
enjoying this life. I don't think I'm actually Mormon anymore.
And for him, he like ran the other direction, which
like this is antithetical to everything. He believes that when
you said you told him you're not you don't think
you're into do you tell them about the movies or now?
(28:51):
I casually mentioned that maybe I had done an adults
entertainment Yeah. I did not say porn. I did not
say sex work. I said adult entertainment. Did he get
angry or was he just upset? Oh? I mean he
was heartbroken. Yeah, And like what would you feel if
you'd believe this person you were in love with has
(29:12):
been betraying you and lying to you for the past
like four months. Like that's shitty because on the side,
we were talking about how we were going to get married. Shitty. Yeah,
it's a shitty way to treat someone. But also I
was over the church, Like by that point I was like,
you know, I don't think this is really so then
I live in my best life for a good like
(29:33):
four months. Call girling. I'm going on cool gigs, and
I wasn't really auditioning for real movies anymore because that
was what I was going to do. After I'd made
all my cash and going on set. Suddenly I'm like
known as like a rising starlet in the porn world,
which is crazy, you know, not now if if this
(29:56):
were some other podcasts and some other interview this is
the point at which the interviewer gets his tone in
their voice where they indicate that they feel fucking sorry
for you. There's somehow that this is somehow a deviation,
a deviation from the normal, that is somehow sad. But
it doesn't sound at all to me like that jibs
with the reality that you're spelling out. And most people
(30:19):
would say they imagine life working as a point star
and a call girl would be miserable, But it doesn't
sound like that was your experience. It was fantastic, and
for me it was quite autonomous. For the first time
in my life, I'm making my own money, like real
fucking money, Like this is not like Nordstrom commission money
where you got like a thousand bucks a month. Like
(30:39):
this is like you're bringing in like two granded day cool,
and if you're disciplined enough to like put it away,
that adds up really fast. I mean it got to
the point where I couldn't like go to the bank
and look at the teller anymore because they look at
me suspiciously. What do you what do you say to
those people that who say, like this is degrading and
(31:00):
that this is not something that should and I don't
want to minimize I don't want to minimize that that
argument as well. I mean for me, I didn't know
enough to like think of myself as like an empowered
sex worker, right, Like I think if you talked to
there's a famous author named D'Antonio Crane, and there are
all these you know, Stormy Daniels is a great example.
(31:22):
I mean, she's an American hero at one, but also
she's a woman who was like, she is a sex worker,
and she is loud and proud about being a sex worker.
I was never that, So I want to be clear
about that. I was never loud and proud. I was
always lying about it. There was never a time when
I was fully honest with anyone about the fact that
I was doing it, because I clearly, like felt some
(31:45):
shame about it even after I stopped being Mormon, so
I didn't think of myself that way. But it was
the first time in my life that I thought of
myself as the owner of my own body. And like,
you know, nobody told me what they are going to
do to my body. They always asked on a piece
of paper, what are we? What are where are your boundaries?
(32:07):
And that's what I loved about porn, as everything was
so upfront. Yes, this is a transaction, Yes this is
for money. Yes we will be trading sex, but I
would need to know where your boundaries are. And porn
is highly regulated, so like you do your HIV test
every thirty days, and you show your piece of paper
to the other actor, and if they don't have your
paper their paper, you are not having sex with them.
(32:29):
And growing up religious, I never thought of my body
really is mine. I thought of it as a tool
to like have children with and something really to be
ashamed of. And so then I'm like immersed in this world.
It's telling me not only as your body yours, but
also you can like very utilitarian lie like make money
(32:50):
with it, and also it's something to be celebrated so
much so that we're going to sell this, you know, like,
and so that was all like very new and exciting
for me. And so now I'm making really good cash,
but I have to make it seem like I'm still
a starving artist, right, So I'm like playing at being
I'm like acting in my real life at being a
(33:11):
starving artist, which I'm not anymore. I have like a
ton of cash and I'm just like putting into the
bank and I'm like, you're actually being good about that,
because you're not. I was great about that. Yes, I
didn't get into drugs until I'm at a dude, and
then that's kind of where the fun ended. You paid
attention at all. The narrative is usually things start going
(33:36):
wrong and then you get into porn. An actual fact,
porn was a high point and they didn't start going
wrong for Amy until after she left porn. The bad Boyfriend,
the drugs hashtag it all. So I meet this dude,
(33:59):
and I meet him as a call girl. He's like
one of my clients, and I fall in love with him,
and maybe more than falling in love with him, I
fall in love with his math. As soon as I
move in with him. It's abusive. He's in the middle
of a divorce, and so I get in my car,
I drive away. I'm like, fuck you, I'm not moving
in after all, and he does the thing right. I'm
(34:22):
so sorry, baby. It will never happen again. Oh my god,
I can't believe that happened. It's because of my divorce
and all of the stress of my divorce. I go
back that night. I go back over and over and over.
We do math all night long. We fight all the time.
It's kind of exciting. So now what what a folks
(34:42):
going back home at this point anything. My sister actually
moved to see me Valley. She moves in with me
and Manny this guy who is abusive. Why did she
do this? Because I won't leave him, like I keep
not leaving him. So she moves out specifically to help
you leave him or yea, and she had to as
a plan, We're going to run away in the middle
of the night. She finds a place for us to live,
(35:05):
like secretly, and then in the middle of the night
she has this backpacked for us and we run away
like sleeping or he's not there. He's sleeping, but he's
not sleeping. That hard because five minutes after we walk
out the front door and start walking down the street.
I can hear his car and he had a link
in with like a really high cylinder engine. And so
(35:25):
when he starts his card and know what that sounds like,
and I'm like, oh fuck, that's manny. We run down
the street. We hide in the bushes of this graveyard
that's like behind the house that we were living in.
And it's like straight out of like a movie, Like
we're like hiding from this guy. And he's texting me
every two minutes, you piece of ship. What are you doing.
(35:46):
I'm gonna find you. I'm going to kill you. Yeah.
We try to get a restraining order. It's not enough
that he's made these threats over text message. And she
literally saved my life and and we just we go
back to being waitresses together. And I lived with my
sister and the dude slowly fades away exactly and um,
(36:10):
and then I read Build My Life. So I went
to community college. It took me like six years to
finish a two year degree like get my a. A
took six years, and I m transferred to Berkeley. So
I got into UC Berkeley good enough to get into
Berkeley exactly did when did you meet your husband? I
met my husband. Um, after I graduated from Berkeley. I
(36:34):
was in Portland, Oregon working as an ELSAT tutor, So
I was tutoring ELSA. I was a personal trainer on
the side, and uh, and I was just like taking
that gap year between undergrad and law school. You know,
I didn't want to meet anyone before law school because
I wanted to be able to focus. But I meet Keith,
(36:56):
and it was just like love at first sight situation,
and it wasn't even a choice. It's like, this is
the person I'm going to spend my life with. And
you know, right now, I I run two pole dance
studios and I'm an attorney, so you know, on the weekends,
I do like credible fear interviews for immigrants who are
trying to come to the United States. And then immigration
(37:16):
law is one that I've recently become interested in because
of the human rights violations that United States government is
involved in in terms of how we're separating children from
their families and and we actually don't have a process
for reuniting those children. And there's just an article about how, um,
you know, all these parents were sent back to Guatemala
their children are still here living in foster families. That's crazy.
(37:40):
So immigration law is not my specialty, but I've gotten
really into it in the past year. So I run
businesses by day, and I, you know, create pole dance art,
which is kind of weird and underground to most people,
even though it's what I see every day and um
and do law on the weekends. And that's kind of
how I like to live my life. Okay, So if
you're not, you're not stuck in some corporate law thing
(38:02):
where you've got billable hours to be with or no. Yeah,
oh yeah, I mean I meet a lot of those people.
I know a lot of those people. It's really shaped
the way that I think about my body now, which
is just a tool. And you know, my my creative
(38:27):
work as a pole dancer and a competitive pole dancer
now is really around like creating art with my body.
And I'm not sure I would have ever, um not,
had had not had this shame to be able to
do that if it hadn't been for becoming a sex
worker so long ago. And I wish that I had
had a place that was so full of like female
(38:48):
empowerment and like women celebrating other women, and you know,
moving to l A and having my formative growing up
years be like women competing with other women for roles
or whatever, um, and only finding that real like support
in the adult entertainment industry um, and then having that
taken from me because I made a poor relationship decision. UM.
(39:12):
Like I wish I had had spaces like this that
we're safe spaces to express sexuality. And so that's why
they're so important to me and why I create them today,
and so I want to keep doing this. If you
could tell your younger self something, what would you tell
your younger self? I think it would be the opposite
of what you would expect, which is for the for
(39:35):
the ten years after I got out of porn, I
didn't talk about my story. I told myself that it
was something to be ashamed of, and and the world
around me told me the same thing too. Write like
when people who when I was a waitress men would
recognize me, and then they would use the fact that
they recognized me against me. They'd like wait for me
(39:57):
in the parking lot and be like, I know your secret,
you know, if we don't fuck whatever, Da da da.
And it was to the point where I had somebody
escort me to my car, and I wish that I
had just owned my story earlier, Like I wish that,
you know, I'm really proud of, Like, looking back, I'm
really proud of how like resourceful I was. You know,
(40:19):
I arrived in Los Angeles with nothing, then I found
Rick and you know, and then I just let myself
be open to the universe in a way that the
universe actually really did take care of me. And I'm
a really big believer in like having a life that's
not so stringently planned that like you let the world
(40:40):
happen to you versus like trying to control everything. And um,
and I wish I hadn't spent so much time feeling
shame for something that's actually like a really exciting cool
thing looking back on it now. It wasn't until about
five year US ago when I'm living here, so a
(41:02):
decade in um San Francisco, So about a decade after
all of this story is over, that my fam texts
me and she says, Hey, Amy, who's Wendy James. And
I'm like, oh, betch, You're gonna need to sit down
for this one. If your adventure high point hits when
you're twenty and you're thirty five. Now looking back on greatness,
(41:29):
can you square yourself going forward with a life that
you expect won't be nearly as adventurous. I don't know.
I don't know, but Bond Amy Bond, I guess she's
geared to find out, and so are we. Azzy Confidential
Ozzy Confidential is produced by who ELL's me Eugeneus Robinson,
(41:54):
executive produced by Rob Coolo's and mixed and engineered by
Nick Johanson. And For more Azi Confidential go to o
z y dot com, slash Confidential, Hush Hush
I wanted to be a good Mormon wife, but more
than that, I wanted to be an actress. More than that,
I wanted to be famous. And you know, sitting in
the hotel rooms and like being a call girl, I
kind of got to be an actress. Bond Amy Bond,
(00:27):
you know there's a there's a story about a young
actress goes to Hollywood and she's hanging out at the
counter of Schwab's drug store getting a milkshake or something,
and some guy comes up with his fingers in the
shape of a gold post and you know, trying to
figure out whether you're a movie star, and he discovers
her and she goes on to famine fortune. This trope
(00:49):
has traveled as long as Hollywood has been Hollywood, but
with Bond Amy Bond, it was a different sort of journey. Yeah,
she kim to Hollywood. Yeah she wanted to be an actress,
but in mainstream movies. I don't know, but I do know.
(01:11):
I'm your host, Eugene. That's Robinson, and you're here for
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your portfolio. Sign up at Confidential dot robin hood dot com.
(02:54):
So I grew up Mormon. My dad was Mormon until
he died. My mom is like kind of Mormon. Um
we were. Ray is Mormon, and I think out of
everyone in my family, I probably became the most militant
Mormon of everyone. When I was like thirteen, I got
really into it. What does that? What does it mean
to be like a military Mormon? Yeah, I mean, like
you know, if you follow the rules, like by the
(03:16):
letter of the law gets pretty intense. So like, you know,
you go to church every day, and I went to
a Bible study school before school and I had a
hundred percent in attendance. And you know, that was really
important to me. To deal with the magical underwear thing
that you never take off your body. That's a thing,
and it's everybody has weird practices. Magical underwear is one
(03:36):
of them. You know. For a long time growing up,
I believed that that I had this I have this
mole on my chest and I believed and this belief
was like confirmed for me by multiple elders of my
church that God had put it on me to tell
me where I should wear all my shirts above because
that was that if I wore a shirt below that mole,
it was being a modest. And you know, there's all
(03:58):
these things that you tell yourselfer because God's trying to
help you through life. I think a lot of people
survived that way. My heart was always set on California.
From the time I was young, I wanted to move
to California. I wanted to be a Californian that you know,
it's like a young girl Minnesota. Honestly, I think it
was because of The Babysitters Club. This is the series
(04:21):
of books that was very popular what I was like
eight to fifteen years old. That was about this group
of women girls who had started a club called the
Babysitters Club. And one of the girls in the group
was named Don and Don was the quintessential California girl.
She had blonde hair, she was a vegetarian, she cared
(04:42):
about animals, and she was an artist. And I loved
that idea of like being an artist. How do you
go from being a daily church girl at the age
of thirteen to being a young adult chasing their dreams.
I was traveling to finish school and then you know,
(05:04):
doing that backpacking thing, and uh, I was in no
pair and really just I felt like a bohemian for
the first time in my life. I was like, oh,
this is cool. Like I met all these artists in
Paris and I was eighteen at the height of the
Iraq War, and so there are a lot of the
people I met were like squatters and like Paris mansions,
(05:25):
and they would they would go out on the artists
and war and I like met all these I was
in no pair, but I had a lot of spare time,
so I got to go hang out with these people,
and they really um shaped the way thought about spending time,
because up until then I came from a military slash
very religious background, and time was a thing that you,
(05:49):
like I did to to like put into work, and
the idea that you like spent it creating paper mache
caricatures of George wish to go put in a float
would probably be an insane thing too, or like a
waste to those demographics. And suddenly I was immersed in
this world of artists and it felt very deep and
(06:11):
real to me and like a good way to spend
time rather than what many would consider a waste of it.
But I was still very Mormon, and so I was
balancing this like go to church on Sundays and read
the Bible every night before you go to bed, with like, oh,
but there's all these cool people who you know, many
of them didn't believe in God and um, and I
(06:32):
thought that was just crazy, you know, like that's just wrong.
And so I would pray for them for their souls
to be saved, because that's what you do. And um
and I was able to like kind of live in
both worlds really easily. And I think that's actually probably
my superpower as a human, as I'm able to straddle
different world I had purchased this keyboard piano that because
(06:56):
one of the guys who was in this UM protest
group played the keyboard and he had started teaching me.
But I wasn't very dedicated. But I liked how when
I carried this keyboard around, people thought I was an artist.
As soon as I put that keyboard under my arm.
It was so easy to get hitchhike rides because people
are like, oh, she's an artist, you know, she just
(07:17):
needs to get to her next gig. And I remember
I had one with this one truck driver. I was like,
I'll take you if you play me a song, and
I was literally like I can't. It also had like
seventy pounds and I carried it the whole way to Italy.
Can't you play it now? You figure not, Na, No,
you can't understood. It was like it was a plot
device to get her from a place of no adventure
(07:40):
to a place of adventure, a physical place as well
as a fantastical place that existed in her mind and
later reality, except she still can't play keyboard. I went
to Europe mainly because my parents were fine with me
traveling as long as it was international. They're in the military,
(08:02):
so they're big thing was, you've got to travel the world.
You've got to see how the rest of the world lives.
And so it was okay to go to Europe. But then,
you know, I really wanted to go to California, and
so I went back home, made some money, and then
I got on a bus and and had one backpack.
I didn't have a keyboard anymore. And then I moved
(08:22):
to California and I had no plan. So were they
cool with this? Or were they? I wrote them a
note I ran away because they knew they wouldn't be
cool with it. They wouldn't be cool with California. They
wouldn't be cool with California because, I mean, my mom
was the only woman, the only person and her family
to graduate from college. In her mind, going to California
(08:43):
meant that I wasn't going to keep going to community
college and get my degree. And you know, for her,
getting her degree was her pathway to freedom. So okay,
So so you say you send them a note, I
run away. I'm in California, and did I wrote them
a note. I said, you're not gonna like this. But
I got on a bus and I moved into California
to chase my dreams to become an actress. I called
(09:06):
my mom from Texas when the bus landed, and I
called her and said, I'm okay, I'm safe. She was
very unhappy. She just wanted she said, are you okay?
What the funk are you doing? And yeah, that's kind
of what I expected. You know, you just want to
(09:28):
tell you we're okay. I wanted her to know I
was okay, that I loved her very much. I had
nothing to do with her, blah blah blah, but I
needed to like go create my own path, right. I
landed in Los Angeles and like I didn't have a
room to rent, Like I had not planned nothing, because
in my mind, if I planned it, then it wasn't
(09:48):
like the way an artist would do it. So the
bus stations in downtown l a work. Yeah, bus station
lands in downtown l A. At like three o'clock in
the morning. I walk out into the parking lot with
my like little I think my backpack had actual sparkles
on it, and there were two security guards standing in
front of a parking lot next to the Gray homebus station.
(10:09):
There's like glass all over the cement. There's people sleeping
on the parking lot, which I've never seen before, and
like freak out and I run back into the Gray
Home bus station and these two security guards. I see
one of them past the other five dollar bill and
goes We had a bet on how long you'd be
out there, and so I sat at this Gray homebus
(10:32):
station for like three hours. I told myself, well, if
you get to Westwood, that's where there's u C l A.
And then you can go find like a corkboard with
somebody who has housing for rent. And that's how I
lived in Europe, you know, you just find a corkboard
and a coffee shop and then you get your next
place to live. So we go look at all these
(10:54):
corkboards in l A. And everything is so expensive. And
by the time I'm done looking at all these corkboards,
like the sun is going down, so I'm like, well,
I'm not going to find a place tonight, like my
my one plan is backfired. And on the bus, I
was so excited. I hadn't eaten in like three days,
(11:14):
Like I had just been too excited to eat. And
so I'm walking with like my luggage down this street
and I think I was I was probably crying and
like walking down the street like oh ship, what am
I gonna do? And this car pulls up behind me
and this guy jumps out and he goes hey. Then
I'm like, what you know. He's like, you look like
(11:35):
you need help. And so, long story short, I end
up living with this dude for like three weeks, was
the old was the story. He was a graduate student
at U C. L A. And I think he liked
the idea of saving somebody so perfect. I needed some out.
So it was great. So there was no creepy alterior
sexual motive. There was no creepy alterior thing. I made
(11:58):
it very clear at this and I was still a virgin.
I'm like, I'm a virgin. I'm very religious. I don't
believe in premarital sex. So you said this as you
got in the car. Well, when when we got to
his house. I was like, look, I don't want it
to be weird, and he was cool. And this dude
like drove me around. He helped log me into his
like student board so that I could look at all
(12:20):
the housing that was on the internet, like on the
u c L a specific internet. He helped me find
a room. I found a room that was like three
seventy five a month in Westwood. I shared it with
like two other people and it was fine. So this
guy really did like that's a solid basically saying, yeah,
(12:41):
why did you finally leave? Oh? I guess you found
the room. I found the room. He helped me find
the room. Like it was never like a long term solution,
but he was like, I think you need help. I
can help you. Yeah, all right, so you get your room.
I got my room. And Rick had driven me to
Central Casting the first day after I stayed at his house,
(13:02):
and I had heard that Central Casting was where everybody
went when they were trying to be an actor. So
I went there. I got my head shot taken and
lo and behold, they called me in like five minutes
and they were like, do you want to do judge Judy? Sure?
So I sat in the audience on Judge Judy, and
then I sat in the audience of Judge Joe Brown.
(13:22):
And then I sat in the audience there was another judge.
I forgot the third judge, but I like, I like
worked the audience of Judge shows for like three months.
How much were they? The opinion is an extra? Right?
Was an extra today? Fine? Good enough? Like my rents
four hundred bucks? Fine, you can tell the folks back home.
(13:43):
I'm on the show, on that show, that's right. So
anyway I'm on Judge Judy. I start going to all
of these other casting calls and I just can't nail
like a real part, like a part that has speaking right.
And in order to get the SAG card, which is
the holy grail for new actors in l A, you
have to get like three speaking parts. And I remember
(14:03):
going on this audition where there are these three girls,
three girls sitting in you had acting classes before or not?
I had never taken an acting class. Also, by the way,
I had tried out for my Hopkins High School Minnetonka,
Minnesota High School musical. I couldn't even get a part
in that. So, like, I'm by no means like an actress, like,
(14:27):
but I played an artist when I played that part,
when when I was the keyboard, you know, and I
was like, if I just do it, then it will
come true for me. And to a certain extent, I
think that's kind of a great way to live your life.
But for me, I was overly confident, Like I was
very positive that I was going to be famous in
(14:48):
like three months, and like there was no doubt in
my mind that was going to happen. So then that
didn't happen in three months, and I had started to
run out of money, and and I meet these three
girls at a sandal audition was like an audition to
be in a sandal commercial, you mean the resort or
the actual footwear like a sandal. So I'm at this
(15:10):
audition and the three other girls who I'm sitting there with,
and by the way, I had like taken the bus there,
woken up at like five am to get to this
ten am audition was still late, so i'd like run
the last half mile. And I'm sitting there like sweaty
and feeling just like the most disgusting person. And I'm
looking at these three women and they're like, you know,
(15:32):
they're wearing like very expensive clothes. They have like keratin
treatments in their hair, their nails are well done, and
they had had they had They were talking about how
they had just gotten their tone nails done for this audition,
and I was like, oh, you got your tone nails
done for this audition and they were like, yeah, that's
what you do. You dress for the part you want.
(15:54):
Like one of them looked at me with this very
like mean girl look and she was like, you dress
for the part you want. And I was like, oh, like,
I need to make like real money. I need to
buy a car, I need to like buy pedicures when
I go on auditions, like I need to do all
this ship. I didn't know that. So then I decided, Well,
(16:14):
the reason I'm not booking these, why I'm not nailing
them and then getting the parts, is because I just
need more money in order to like play the part.
Scant funds. And you see that you're being outpaced by
people who were spending a lot to look a lot
better and act actually act, So what do you do?
(16:41):
So I started nude modeling and that was like step one.
I was did you find the agency that got you
new modeling? Yeah? I mean yeah, you answer an ad
the back of l A Weekly has everything you need.
I answered two outs. I answered the back of an
l A Weekly, And the two outs were one was
a woman who was basically like a pimp, right, and
(17:04):
her thing her ads said no sex. And I really
liked the idea that I could come, that I could
do this work but go back to being religious because
I was still dating this Mormon guy at the same
time where DC and I was just lying to him
about everything close to your parents, close to my parents,
and this plan to eventually come out to really going
(17:26):
to do the long distance thing. See how it worked, right?
I mean I think his plan was like, we'll get
married and then you'll come live with me. But I like,
how did she make my dream come true? Right? So
I get hooked up with this woman who, um like,
does nude modeling shoots, and I get hooked up with
another woman who, um she puts you up in a
(17:47):
hotel room and then you do massages. Right. So that
was my pimp woman. Yeah. I never learned her name.
I always called her my girl. But she was no nonsense.
And I love that bitch because when you talked to her,
you knew she was in a hurry. She had better
ship to do than talk to you right now. So
(18:08):
it was always super straightforward to the point, get in there,
I'll call you when someone is here. I'll pick up
the money at ten thirty, and we did like a
fifty fifty split. So after like two weeks of like
the nude modeling and the massages in the hotel room,
which by the way, it was usually actually massages. Yeah,
it's just like lonely dudes. So it was actually like
(18:29):
pretty cool. So the nude modeling thing was the was
there a product associated with that? So we're taking pictures
of you for posters, we're taking pictures uh painters are
So there's a lot of photographers who do pictures that
(18:53):
they think they can sell to a magazine, porno mag
or anything. And in my mind the time, nobody actually
looks at porn. So I'm never going to get caught
doing this because I didn't look at porn. The guy
I was dating, I believed it didn't look at porn.
So you weren't draped over a nicely covered couch with
grapes in your hand. You know, the person is already
(19:18):
in the hotel or you're in the room and they
come to you. My girl calls me, hey, your name
is Candy Berryes coming up in ten minutes. So the
guy comes in the room, and what happens. He takes
all his clothes off. She was very clear about the
order of operations. So you know, he has to put
the money on the nights to first, and then he
(19:39):
can take his clothes off because the cops never gonna
just like put money down. So if he doesn't put
money down, run for your life. All right, all right?
Did you ask her Steven would be like where the
fire escape? She didn't. Not do you ever at any
point ask her like, why why are we afraid of cops?
(20:00):
It's just a massage? No, that made sense? Yeah, okay.
I was like, I think this is illegal. This is
probably illegal, but like that just made it more exciting.
I was here for the adventure. So now these guys
showed up from massages. Nobody tried to fuck you, Nobody
tried to suck me, like, absolutely nobody. Yeah. It wasn't
(20:20):
until I started doing house calls that that changed. So
in call versus outcol So, somebody calls, I want a
massage at my house, and she said, okay, well it
works out all right. He showed you the house and
then what happens in and then all that all bets
are off, like they'll offer more money for additional services.
So my girl had a really smart that. I think
(20:42):
it's really smart. I mean she's the only pimp I've
ever worked with, you know, which is she would only
send me to places where I was with somebody else.
So it was like two girls that were ordered. So
they asked for two girls yea with other girls willing
to have sex or not. Oh yeah, okay, so you
almost always the other girl was willing to have sucks
(21:04):
and like down like they were down to fuck because
then they got more money. I was like, I think, God,
I can't go that far because God won't forgive me.
So you were sitting there as you're screwing or you're like,
it's okay, I did the massage. I'll just sit out
here and wait for you. Guys know I watched okay,
so you're there, okay. I mean usually I would like
fondle somebody, you know, I would like massage somebody, fondle somebody,
(21:29):
you know, like, hey, can you play with her? Tiths? Sure?
You know that will be an extra. That was my question,
and so how much how much money are you pulling
now from So between those two things, nude modeling was
like four hundred a day and it was kind of
like six hour days, a lot of standing around and
being cold, which is, you know, kind of boring. And
(21:53):
then the like face to face was much more exciting
because you're seeing this whole as as a Mormon turned
thrown into the sex world's human I was like, holy
sh it, you know, this is so insane. This is
like what movies are about. I didn't think this was real,
you know. And so I would make a lot of
(22:16):
cash between the hotel rooms and the massages and the
calls I would make. At the beginning, I only did
hotel rooms, so I would make about eight hundred two
thousand a day if I did like a full day
sitting in a hotel room. The new modeling like four D.
So she meets this photographer Mike Square. Guy takes a
lot of photos of her. But one day Mike has
(22:37):
gotta problem. He's taking too many photos of her and
overexposure is an issue, and he's like, you know, but
what you could do is porn. And by the way,
it pays a lot better, and I was like, wow,
(23:02):
isn't that kind of what I'm already doing. So he
introduced his ma to Jim South. I don't know who
Jim South is. He's a legend, but at the time,
I'm like, oh, hi, Jim. You know, small man in
a cowboy hut and he's in this office off of
Van Eyes that's like dirty and like kind of dusty
and kind of musty and gross, and so I don't
(23:22):
think of him as this like, you know, epic legend
who like starts all these careers. To me, Poorma is
not a career. It was like a gateway to be
able to do the thing I really wanted to do.
And I'm still like undecided on like the porn thing.
I'm like, well, go meet Jim, but I don't know
if I'm going to have sex with anyone important. Like
that actually sounded so insane that it like made me
(23:46):
really excited that it was an adventure. And um So
I meet Jim and Jim tells me, well, you know
there's this guy named um At Powers. Yeah, and I'm like, okay,
And what I don't tell Jim, And what I hadn't
told Mike, because I thought that they wouldn't want to
book me is that I'm still a virgin, Like I'm
(24:07):
still a virgin, but I'm also a sex worker. So
that's a weird mix, right. I don't tell them that,
But I really liked the idea that Ed was nice.
He was nice, he wasn't going to be aggressive. And
there's another woman in the office at that time, and
she turns around and she's like, Jim's the best. He
will never put you in a compromise situation. So already
(24:29):
this girl who's sitting in the office is like, I'm
vouching for this guy, Like he's the real deal, Like
he won't put you in a bad situation. Which is
what I really liked about my girl. She always made
sure that we were we were safe. I got really
lucky in that sense because I wasn't fucked with that,
I wasn't raped, and I had a lot of fun
being an adult entertainment actress. Anyway, So you go over
(24:52):
to its place and he has this fancy house in Calabasas.
Couldn't be nicer. I like, comes to the door, So
are you going with the understanding? Like, Oh, I'm just
gonna meet this guy or do you know now? I'm like,
I'm going to do this alright, and so my my
stomach is like churning. I like, see the big mansion.
(25:14):
I'm like, oh, ship, like this is happening, and so
what you like one or I think I was still nineteen.
It's like right after my twentieth birthday, alright, yeah, I
mean six months later I went to an adult entertainment
event that I couldn't get into at a club because
I wasn't twenty one to drink, all right, So so
you show him it has He's got this mansion and
(25:36):
he's nice, super nice. He asked me a bunch of questions.
He could like, tell me about you. He loves the
fact that I have a Mormon boyfriend, so we talked
about that and then he could tell he was super nervous.
So he's like really gentle, really nice, really kind. He was.
He's just like very you just felt like what you
(25:57):
were getting was very authentic, and he was. And then
he paid me with a check and he had to
be like, oh, what's your real name again? To Candy. Well,
Mike and I had decided that my name would be Wendy,
So my poor name was Wendy James. Yeah, Wendy James.
She is a singer as well. Yeah I now know that,
(26:18):
but I didn't at the time, and so, you know,
he said, you know, you've got that Peter Pan thing,
that like forever youth thing going on, so you should
be Wendy. But I was there for probably like an
hour and a half, two hours, and I walk out
with fifteen hundred bucks, So I'm like, fuck, yeah, I
can pay like six months rent with this thing. Like
I'm on my way to my fifty grand. Now, given
(26:38):
that this was your first time, that people have all
this kind of um not necessarily romantic attached, but significant
attachment to their first time, how did this How did
this feel as the first time? Was it more or
less than what you had expected before? I'm trying to
get a fix in your frame of mind issue as
you leave. It really wasn't about this, So it was
(27:00):
about the money. So I like took myself to Starbucks,
got a vanilla frappuccino. Look at my phone, which by
now I have a new phone, and there's like five
missed voicemails from Jim that are like, Wendy, everybody wants
to book you and on the basis, off the basis
of the new modeling pictures, they see this like fresh faced,
(27:24):
chair up looking girl. You know, I've got that girl
next door look. And and then it's just like off
to the races. Like every place that I want on
an audition for there was a two side a piece
of paper that said what you were willing to do, like,
do you do like double penetration? Nope? Do you do
(27:45):
anal nope? Do you do lesbian? Great? It was fun,
Like I'm I met so many fun people, Like it
was fun and the people were really nice to me.
Do you have time left over to actually go on
auditions for non adult rules? Yeah? Like I still every Wednesday.
I reserved Wednesday to be on the extra on Judge
(28:07):
Juty Judge Show Brown, and I kept that because it
was my perfect cover. When I went to church on Sundays,
people would be like, oh, I saw you on Judge
Duty perfect. You can see I am a struggling actress
exactly how I want you to think. You know, my boyfriend,
Oh I saw you on Judge Judy. Oh perfect. I
was like living a double life, like I was trying
(28:28):
my best to live a double life. The dude in
d C. Four months into the porn I'm like, look,
this is what's going on. I'm probably like I'm really
enjoying this life. I don't think I'm actually Mormon anymore.
And for him, he like ran the other direction, which
like this is antithetical to everything. He believes that when
you said you told him you're not you don't think
you're into do you tell them about the movies or now?
(28:51):
I casually mentioned that maybe I had done an adults
entertainment Yeah. I did not say porn. I did not
say sex work. I said adult entertainment. Did he get
angry or was he just upset? Oh? I mean he
was heartbroken. Yeah, And like what would you feel if
you'd believe this person you were in love with has
(29:12):
been betraying you and lying to you for the past
like four months. Like that's shitty because on the side,
we were talking about how we were going to get married. Shitty. Yeah,
it's a shitty way to treat someone. But also I
was over the church, Like by that point I was like,
you know, I don't think this is really so then
I live in my best life for a good like
(29:33):
four months. Call girling. I'm going on cool gigs, and
I wasn't really auditioning for real movies anymore because that
was what I was going to do. After I'd made
all my cash and going on set. Suddenly I'm like
known as like a rising starlet in the porn world,
which is crazy, you know, not now if if this
(29:56):
were some other podcasts and some other interview this is
the point at which the interviewer gets his tone in
their voice where they indicate that they feel fucking sorry
for you. There's somehow that this is somehow a deviation,
a deviation from the normal, that is somehow sad. But
it doesn't sound at all to me like that jibs
with the reality that you're spelling out. And most people
(30:19):
would say they imagine life working as a point star
and a call girl would be miserable, But it doesn't
sound like that was your experience. It was fantastic, and
for me it was quite autonomous. For the first time
in my life, I'm making my own money, like real
fucking money, Like this is not like Nordstrom commission money
where you got like a thousand bucks a month. Like
(30:39):
this is like you're bringing in like two granded day cool,
and if you're disciplined enough to like put it away,
that adds up really fast. I mean it got to
the point where I couldn't like go to the bank
and look at the teller anymore because they look at
me suspiciously. What do you what do you say to
those people that who say, like this is degrading and
(31:00):
that this is not something that should and I don't
want to minimize I don't want to minimize that that
argument as well. I mean for me, I didn't know
enough to like think of myself as like an empowered
sex worker, right, Like I think if you talked to
there's a famous author named D'Antonio Crane, and there are
all these you know, Stormy Daniels is a great example.
(31:22):
I mean, she's an American hero at one, but also
she's a woman who was like, she is a sex worker,
and she is loud and proud about being a sex worker.
I was never that, So I want to be clear
about that. I was never loud and proud. I was
always lying about it. There was never a time when
I was fully honest with anyone about the fact that
I was doing it, because I clearly, like felt some
(31:45):
shame about it even after I stopped being Mormon, so
I didn't think of myself that way. But it was
the first time in my life that I thought of
myself as the owner of my own body. And like,
you know, nobody told me what they are going to
do to my body. They always asked on a piece
of paper, what are we? What are where are your boundaries?
(32:07):
And that's what I loved about porn, as everything was
so upfront. Yes, this is a transaction, Yes this is
for money. Yes we will be trading sex, but I
would need to know where your boundaries are. And porn
is highly regulated, so like you do your HIV test
every thirty days, and you show your piece of paper
to the other actor, and if they don't have your
paper their paper, you are not having sex with them.
(32:29):
And growing up religious, I never thought of my body
really is mine. I thought of it as a tool
to like have children with and something really to be
ashamed of. And so then I'm like immersed in this world.
It's telling me not only as your body yours, but
also you can like very utilitarian lie like make money
(32:50):
with it, and also it's something to be celebrated so
much so that we're going to sell this, you know, like,
and so that was all like very new and exciting
for me. And so now I'm making really good cash,
but I have to make it seem like I'm still
a starving artist, right, So I'm like playing at being
I'm like acting in my real life at being a
(33:11):
starving artist, which I'm not anymore. I have like a
ton of cash and I'm just like putting into the
bank and I'm like, you're actually being good about that,
because you're not. I was great about that. Yes, I
didn't get into drugs until I'm at a dude, and
then that's kind of where the fun ended. You paid
attention at all. The narrative is usually things start going
(33:36):
wrong and then you get into porn. An actual fact,
porn was a high point and they didn't start going
wrong for Amy until after she left porn. The bad Boyfriend,
the drugs hashtag it all. So I meet this dude,
(33:59):
and I meet him as a call girl. He's like
one of my clients, and I fall in love with him,
and maybe more than falling in love with him, I
fall in love with his math. As soon as I
move in with him. It's abusive. He's in the middle
of a divorce, and so I get in my car,
I drive away. I'm like, fuck you, I'm not moving
in after all, and he does the thing right. I'm
(34:22):
so sorry, baby. It will never happen again. Oh my god,
I can't believe that happened. It's because of my divorce
and all of the stress of my divorce. I go
back that night. I go back over and over and over.
We do math all night long. We fight all the time.
It's kind of exciting. So now what what a folks
(34:42):
going back home at this point anything. My sister actually
moved to see me Valley. She moves in with me
and Manny this guy who is abusive. Why did she
do this? Because I won't leave him, like I keep
not leaving him. So she moves out specifically to help
you leave him or yea, and she had to as
a plan, We're going to run away in the middle
of the night. She finds a place for us to live,
(35:05):
like secretly, and then in the middle of the night
she has this backpacked for us and we run away
like sleeping or he's not there. He's sleeping, but he's
not sleeping. That hard because five minutes after we walk
out the front door and start walking down the street.
I can hear his car and he had a link
in with like a really high cylinder engine. And so
(35:25):
when he starts his card and know what that sounds like,
and I'm like, oh fuck, that's manny. We run down
the street. We hide in the bushes of this graveyard
that's like behind the house that we were living in.
And it's like straight out of like a movie, Like
we're like hiding from this guy. And he's texting me
every two minutes, you piece of ship. What are you doing.
(35:46):
I'm gonna find you. I'm going to kill you. Yeah.
We try to get a restraining order. It's not enough
that he's made these threats over text message. And she
literally saved my life and and we just we go
back to being waitresses together. And I lived with my
sister and the dude slowly fades away exactly and um,
(36:10):
and then I read Build My Life. So I went
to community college. It took me like six years to
finish a two year degree like get my a. A
took six years, and I m transferred to Berkeley. So
I got into UC Berkeley good enough to get into
Berkeley exactly did when did you meet your husband? I
met my husband. Um, after I graduated from Berkeley. I
(36:34):
was in Portland, Oregon working as an ELSAT tutor, So
I was tutoring ELSA. I was a personal trainer on
the side, and uh, and I was just like taking
that gap year between undergrad and law school. You know,
I didn't want to meet anyone before law school because
I wanted to be able to focus. But I meet Keith,
(36:56):
and it was just like love at first sight situation,
and it wasn't even a choice. It's like, this is
the person I'm going to spend my life with. And
you know, right now, I I run two pole dance
studios and I'm an attorney, so you know, on the weekends,
I do like credible fear interviews for immigrants who are
trying to come to the United States. And then immigration
(37:16):
law is one that I've recently become interested in because
of the human rights violations that United States government is
involved in in terms of how we're separating children from
their families and and we actually don't have a process
for reuniting those children. And there's just an article about how, um,
you know, all these parents were sent back to Guatemala
their children are still here living in foster families. That's crazy.
(37:40):
So immigration law is not my specialty, but I've gotten
really into it in the past year. So I run
businesses by day, and I, you know, create pole dance art,
which is kind of weird and underground to most people,
even though it's what I see every day and um
and do law on the weekends. And that's kind of
how I like to live my life. Okay, So if
you're not, you're not stuck in some corporate law thing
(38:02):
where you've got billable hours to be with or no. Yeah,
oh yeah, I mean I meet a lot of those people.
I know a lot of those people. It's really shaped
the way that I think about my body now, which
is just a tool. And you know, my my creative
(38:27):
work as a pole dancer and a competitive pole dancer
now is really around like creating art with my body.
And I'm not sure I would have ever, um not,
had had not had this shame to be able to
do that if it hadn't been for becoming a sex
worker so long ago. And I wish that I had
had a place that was so full of like female
(38:48):
empowerment and like women celebrating other women, and you know,
moving to l A and having my formative growing up
years be like women competing with other women for roles
or whatever, um, and only finding that real like support
in the adult entertainment industry um, and then having that
taken from me because I made a poor relationship decision. UM.
(39:12):
Like I wish I had had spaces like this that
we're safe spaces to express sexuality. And so that's why
they're so important to me and why I create them today,
and so I want to keep doing this. If you
could tell your younger self something, what would you tell
your younger self? I think it would be the opposite
of what you would expect, which is for the for
(39:35):
the ten years after I got out of porn, I
didn't talk about my story. I told myself that it
was something to be ashamed of, and and the world
around me told me the same thing too. Write like
when people who when I was a waitress men would
recognize me, and then they would use the fact that
they recognized me against me. They'd like wait for me
(39:57):
in the parking lot and be like, I know your secret,
you know, if we don't fuck whatever, Da da da.
And it was to the point where I had somebody
escort me to my car, and I wish that I
had just owned my story earlier, Like I wish that,
you know, I'm really proud of, Like, looking back, I'm
really proud of how like resourceful I was. You know,
(40:19):
I arrived in Los Angeles with nothing, then I found
Rick and you know, and then I just let myself
be open to the universe in a way that the
universe actually really did take care of me. And I'm
a really big believer in like having a life that's
not so stringently planned that like you let the world
(40:40):
happen to you versus like trying to control everything. And um,
and I wish I hadn't spent so much time feeling
shame for something that's actually like a really exciting cool
thing looking back on it now. It wasn't until about
five year US ago when I'm living here, so a
(41:02):
decade in um San Francisco, So about a decade after
all of this story is over, that my fam texts
me and she says, Hey, Amy, who's Wendy James. And
I'm like, oh, betch, You're gonna need to sit down
for this one. If your adventure high point hits when
you're twenty and you're thirty five. Now looking back on greatness,
(41:29):
can you square yourself going forward with a life that
you expect won't be nearly as adventurous. I don't know.
I don't know, but Bond Amy Bond, I guess she's
geared to find out, and so are we. Azzy Confidential
Ozzy Confidential is produced by who ELL's me Eugeneus Robinson,
(41:54):
executive produced by Rob Coolo's and mixed and engineered by
Nick Johanson. And For more Azi Confidential go to o
z y dot com, slash Confidential, Hush Hush
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