Maren

Every throne was built on a moment of doubt

[Maren @defimaren]

Ava Devine spent 15 years on crystal meth while doing p*rn and escorting. Clients paid for her time while she snorted c*caine in the bathroom. One night in a Philly hotel, nothing could get her high anymore. So she flew home and did every single drug in her house before rehab.

Fifteen years. On and off. Every single day when she was on it.

"That's the kind of addict I am. I can't have a bit."

"Thank God I still have all my teeth."

Even when she "quit" meth, she was never sober. She'd pop pills. Drink champagne. Do c*caine. In her head, c*caine was the lesser evil.

"I'm an addict. I'm trying to reason with myself so I can give myself permission to do more drugs."

Escorting is where it fell apart first.

She'd get stuck in hotel rooms. Picking at her face. Doing lines. Spun out.

The escort service would call: "Ava, you've got a call at 10 p.m."

She'd show up at 2 a.m. Sometimes days later.

Then it crept into p*rn.

Clients would pay for a session and she'd keep running to the bathroom to snort c*caine. On set she started taking more and more breaks. She thinks it may have cost her at least one movie deal.

"I was getting sloppy."

Then came the night in Philadelphia.

She was in a hotel room, booked with clients. Drinking. Snorting. Smoking. Everything.

And nothing worked.

"Nothing could get me high enough. Nothing could get me low enough."

She cancelled every appointment she had in Philadelphia. Then she called her ex.

He'd broken up with her because she wasn't sober. She used to argue that coke and alcohol didn't count. He told her she was wrong.

This time she waved the white flag.

"I need help."

She flew home from Philadelphia.

And before she went to rehab, she snorted all the c*caine and every drug left in her house. Then she drank everything.

On Sunday, July 29, 2007, her ex came to pick her up.

He drove her to rehab.

"I was sick and tired of being sick and tired."

She chokes up telling it.

One of the biggest names in p*rn spent 15 years high.

And her last high was the whole house.

[Maren @defimaren]

Stoya had to tell her grandmother she does p*rn. Then something even worse: she'd been doing all of it under grandma's own name. Grandma lives in a retirement home full of old men. She had exactly one concern, and it involved those old men, her legs and the back of her own head.

Everything started at AVN, the biggest awards show in p*rn.

She'd just come home from it. She'd given an interview to The Wall Street Journal. And she realized something: her grandmother could now find out what she did for a living by accident.

So she picked up the phone.

Grandma got straight to it.

"So what are you doing to support yourself? Because your mother says you're 'like' a model. But if you were a model, she wouldn't say 'like.' And no offense, dear, but you're a bit short."

Stoya tried to ease into it.

"Do you know Bettie Page?"

"Yes."

"Okay. It's like that. Except no clothing most of the time. And on video. And we're actually having s*x."

Silence. Then:

"Oh. So you're a nudie girl."

"Yeah."

"You like it?"

"It's a job. But yeah, I like it, largely."

That was it. Grandma took it completely fine.

But Stoya wasn't done. Because there was a second thing. And this was the one she'd actually been dreading.

"I have to tell you something else."

"What could you possibly have to say after that?"

"I'm using your name."

Stoya isn't a made-up p*rn name.

It's her grandmother's name.

"Oh no," grandma said.

And Stoya thought: if we got through the p*rn part, I really thought THIS was going to be the problem.

Then grandma said it.

"Well. I hope none of the men at the home get us confused and try to put my feet behind my head."

A grandmother. In a retirement home. Sharing a name with one of the most famous p*rn stars in the world.

And her only concern was the old men.

[Maren @defimaren]

Adriana Chechik has been swatted again and again. 20 SWAT rifles on her. Handcuffed face-down in the dirt. The cops now know her so well they ask if she's beaten her video game yet. But when a real stranger climbed over her fence, not a single cop showed up until the next day.

She's one of the most famous names in p*rn. She's also a Twitch streamer.

And on Twitch, people hate her. So they swat her.

Someone calls the police and makes up an emergency at her address. The cops have to treat it as real. So they show up ready for a shootout.

"Every time except for one, it's been the full SWAT team."

The first time, 20 guns were pointed at her.

The last time, 18.

Back then she didn't have a gate around her house. Just dirt. So they made her lie face-down in the dirt while they handcuffed her.

"I had to be like, guys, I'm just a streamer."

It was the middle of the pandemic. Big guns. Strangers in her face. A helicopter overhead.

Now it's a routine. She's on a list. They don't tackle her anymore and they don't storm the house. But they still have to come. The helicopter still circles. All the cars still pull up. A few of them still point guns.

She walks out with her hands up.

"Oh hey, it's you again. Are you okay?"

Two of the cops know her from video games. One of them asked if she'd beaten the game yet since the last swatting.

"F*ck you. No, I haven't."

And here's the part that still makes her angry.

During the pandemic, a real stranger jumped her backyard fence.

No SWAT team. No helicopter. No cops at all.

She grabbed a pellet gun, shot at him and screamed at him to get the f*ck out. He climbed back over the fence.

The police called her back the next day. They left a voicemail. It was after hours.

"You guys will show up for swatting. But when something real happens, you don't come."

Now every time she hears a siren, she runs to the window.

"Are they gonna come in and shoot my dogs? Or accidentally shoot me?"

[Maren @defimaren]

A rich Saudi agreed to pay Lisa Ann $10 million for s*x. She said no. She'd heard what happens to p*rn stars who say yes: locked in a room for weeks, blood drawn every day, waiting to see which girl the sheikh picks tonight. And the ones who got paid? Wait till the airport.

Lisa Ann gets the same email over and over again. Men asking how much it would cost to sleep with her.

Her answer never changes. 10 million. Sometimes 5 million. A number so big the guy would need to start a GoFundMe.

Then one day a rich guy from Saudi Arabia writes back: easy.

And Lisa Ann says no.

"We're not doing the Saudi Arabia thing. We're not going to Dubai."

Because she's heard the stories. She says she's talked to every single girl who came back.

And this is what they told her.

You don't fly out for one night. You live there. For weeks on weeks.

In a house. Locked in a room.

Every day, he tests your blood. Every single day. Even if he never actually has s*x with you.

Because he has a harem. And he decides which girl gets which night.

Usually it's a sheikh. There's a prince over there too. But according to Lisa, the girls all go over for the same person.

The pay?

"Bags on bags on bags."

Some girls came home with a quarter of a million dollars. Some came home with $100,000.

And then there were the ones who didn't want that money going through a bank. They stuffed $30,000 in cash into a backpack and tried to fly home with it.

They got busted at the airport.

"What's this for? Drop your pants."

And they lost everything.

A locked room. A blood test every morning. A bag of cash at the end, if you make it through the airport.

Lisa Ann's answer to all of it:

"Not my jam."

[Maren @defimaren]

Freya Parker started bleeding all over the floor, completely naked, on the set of a Brad Pitt movie. Margot Robbie was standing right above her. Then a p*rn star screamed one sentence across the room, 20 feet from Brad Pitt. Freya spent the next 25 minutes hiding in a bathroom.

Freya did exactly one mainstream movie in her life. Damien Chazelle's Babylon. She was hired as a nude extra for the giant party scene.

She walks into the ballroom, takes her clothes off, looks over, and Brad Pitt is just sitting there.

"I'm butt-ass naked in the same room as Brad Pitt."

The scene: Margot Robbie dances her way through the crowd of naked extras and jumps up on top of a piano. They shoot it over and over. Four, five hours on the same take. At some point the crew stops applying fake sweat to Margot because she's sweating for real.

Freya is jumping up and down, fully naked, doing her thing.

Then she feels warmth. In a freezing cold ballroom.

She looks down. There's blood. Everywhere. All over her, all over the floor, and other people's footprints already tracked through it.

Freya has endometriosis. It was coming from her.

And then the male p*rn performer in the scene, without a second of hesitation, starts yelling at the top of his lungs:

"Someone get this girl a tampon! Someone get this girl a tampon right now!"

Brad Pitt is 20 feet away. Margot Robbie is on top of the piano, looking down at the blood on the floor and the blood on Freya.

Olive, another performer in the scene, grabs the guy's arm: "Stop talking. Stop shouting. Just stop."

Freya starts panicking. She can't find her robe. There are a thousand people on set, and not one of them can tell her where the bathroom is.

So she walks around naked, covered in blood.

Finally a random woman wraps a jacket around Freya's waist and walks her to a bathroom. Freya asks if she has anything. She doesn't.

Freya sits in that bathroom for 25 minutes until someone finally shows up with one tampon.

"On a p*rn set we would have had baby wipes, tampons, pads, sponges. We would have been so prepared."

The one time she did a Hollywood movie. With two of the biggest stars on the planet.

"Dude, what is wrong with you? Do you hate me? Is this revenge for something?"

No more mainstream sets for her.

[Maren @defimaren]

Elsa Jean married a lawyer and found his secret wife and 2 kids in his iPhone. Then a British p*rn star she'd met once. Turned out he had drug trafficking charges. He wrecked her house and got banned from America. Then her family flew in for her vow renewal. She wasn't there.

The first one was a lawyer. He gave her his number, she sent a moving company for her shoes, and married him almost right away. Then she went through his old iPhone.

He already had a wife. And two kids. A whole family living in Memphis that he kept going back to visit. She had no idea. Two weeks in, she got the marriage annulled.

"We don't even need to count that one," she says. Then: "I want to count it."

Then came a male p*rn star from England. She'd met him on set exactly once. She was crashing at some guy's place and needed out, so he came and picked her up. He wanted to get married right away. He was still married when they met, so he divorced his wife to marry Elsa.

They tied the knot in Vegas. Then they went to an immigration lawyer to sort out his papers.

The lawyer dropped the bomb: "I don't know how to tell you this, but you're not even supposed to be here. You have drug trafficking charges."

Her new husband used to traffic dr*gs. No green card. No work. No ID. Nothing.

She told him he had to go. He refused. He destroyed her townhouse and everything in it. Elsa called the cops.

Now he's not allowed in the US ever again.

"It's like the best restraining order," she says.

He could have tried to get back in by petitioning from abroad. It would have taken two years. He didn't want to wait, and she wasn't going to pay for him.

"I was 19. He was in his 30s. I'm not taking care of a 30-year-old at 19."

But the marriage still wasn't over. They'd married in Vegas with none of her family there, so they planned a vow renewal. Her whole family flew in.

That weekend, Elsa left with a different man.

She married him too.

Three husbands. One secret family. One dr*g trafficker banned from America.

And she was 19.