Community Profile:
12 Questions from Darklady of Darklady.com

1. How long have you been in the adult industry?

Darklady: 14 years.

2. Can you give our readers a little background about yourself. What did you do before you got in this business?

Darklady: Before I started working in adult I spent a lot of time wondering what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew I wanted to write, but I also had a real urge to perform and basically dabble in as many creative areas as possible. I'd always had an aptitude for writing and had studied journalism in high school and community college. I knew that my looks would never made me a leading lady, so I didn't focus a lot of attention on acting, although I was apparently well upon the road to developing a "persona" for myself long before I realized it. I went to university to study history and anthropology, getting BA's in each, which included taking two years of Classical Greek. The more I studied, the more I wanted to write. My professors praised my intellect but told me I needed to make my writing more academic, which was something I strongly resisted, believing that academics already have plenty of stuff to read and that the average person was who I wanted to reach. I was fascinated by war, religion, art, and sexuality. While in college I'd worked as the manager of a shop that sold puzzles, board games, role playing games, and sometimes even these new things called computer games. Upon graduating from college, I took a job as a telephone relay operator working with the hearing impaired. I then managed to get myself spectacularly fired. I found regular work as a clerical temp until I was critically injured in a car accident. While I learned how to walk again, I bought my first computer and modem, and decided to use them to make friends, learn about computers, and focus on my writing. I foolishly married the guy who'd been driving the car I'd worn when we flew off the embankment and wrapped around a tree, but the upside was that one night he brought home a copy of a trashy local adult tabloid and suggested that I offer the publisher my proofreading services. The rest is history in the making.

3. How did your previous job/profession help you in what you do today?

Darklady: My previous work exposed me to a lot of different kinds of people with a lot of different kinds of stories to tell. My college work did the same while giving me a historic perspective.

4. What is your daily routine - of and with the maintenance of your website(s)?

Darklady: I get up at 9am each morning – seven days a week – and deal with email first, while waking up. Then I look at my To Do List and begin tackling that. During the week this means writing two feature articles for YNOT plus any work I have for other clients, primarily AVN. In addition to hosting "Darklady's Sexpose" each Thursday for YNOTRadio.com, I review about 40 DVDs a month for AVN, although some months have seen me with nearly 100 discs waiting for review, in addition to any books and/or toys. Throughout the day and during weekends, I work alone and with my volunteers on a variety of small and large events, book guests for my show, provide consulting and advice services for companies and individuals, attend local and regional sex positive events, keep on top of the various list servs I subscribe to, and develop my long-range business plan. I also give presentations, lead a monthly discussion group, and work on a variety of speculative writing projects, including erotica and an autobiographical book about my experiences within the adult industry and world of alternative sexuality. I generally get to bed somewhere between midnight and 4am (later when my boyfriend doesn't visit) and end the day by writing up a new To Do List. My website has been an absolute embarrassment for years due to a number of sad realities, including the fact that every webmaster except for the ones I'm working with now have basically vanished after realizing exactly what they were dealing with. I have a temporary, blog-style site up now that is about a zillion times better than the poor beginner's effort I had up previously. The temporary site was created by Jonathan Andrews of Jonathan Media, who is responsible for my Masturbate-a-thon.org site, bless his heart. He's going to focus his attention on the M-a-T site now and I'm excited to be working with Shane of Energy Factor and ShanesPorn to create a more comprehensive Darklady site. Her enthusiasm and appreciation for my work totally knocked me over during Cybernet Expo this year. She indicated a strong interest in working on my site and I had a feeling that she might be much better at understanding and capturing some of the "essence" of Darklady than had previous webmasters, most of whom hadn't really taken the time to familiarize themselves with my work as perhaps might have been best for us all. I'm looking forward to launching the upcoming site and keeping it stocked with fresh articles and photos. Having a site I could be proud of has been very important to me and with the introduction of Jonathan's temp site, I'm feeling really re-energized and full of ideas.

5. What is the most important thing you have learned over the years in this industry?

Darklady: To have confidence in myself. There's a lot of money moving around in this industry but the bulk of it isn't going to writers. It's easy to get discouraged and I see a lot of people bail out of writing when the money gets tight, which it is nearly guaranteed to do from everything I've seen, heard, read, and experienced. On the other hand, the bulk of money going around in ANY industry tends to avoid writers . I ain't rich yet, but I've managed to get work in the adult industry, then get enough work that I was able to quite cheerfully quit everything else. I've used a lot of basic professional and personal skills that would have been just as useful had I gone mainstream -- and I've made a name for myself along the way. My family was never supportive of my writing for a living, so I had to work through a lot of negative self-talk surrounding that – and then there were all the personal issues I had to deal with as a good looking but plushly upholstered woman working within adult. I spent a lot of time worrying that all the nay-sayers were right and that I'd never be able to make it. But I am making it and things are only getting better. Sometimes when you step off the cliff, you fly. It's pretty cool.

6. Can you tell us about your website – what it is and what it offers?

Darklady: I have two websites currently: Darkady.com and Masturbate-a-thon.org. The latter currently promotes my annual Portland Masturbate-a-thon fundraiser. There's currently three pieces by me about masturbation (did you know that snot is an excellent lubricant?), a collection of links to masturbation related websites, information about the event, its sponsors, and the charities it benefits. It's a work in progress. The Darklady site will contain an assortment of my columns, feature articles, profiles, reviews, hate mail, love letters, links, and photo galleries, along with an assortment of other goodies, including a calendar of my social and educational events and appearances. I'm toying with the idea of including some audio clips, as well. I want the site to be a destination site for recommendations, information, entertainment, activism, and community.

7. What is your favorite part about working in this business?

Darklady: Getting up every morning and knowing that although I still need to be polite and even though I may not be in the mood to watch yet another young woman slobber all over some guy's cock while swearing like a Tourettes victim, I get to be who I am -- instead of needing to fake some kind of interest in conforming to what feels like a phony way of living. Every person finds happiness and fulfillment in their own way and while I will continue to cast bigger and bigger nets as my business grows, I get an enormous amount of satisfaction from working within the adult industry and within the overall world of sexuality and relationship options. I am rarely bored and often inspired.

8. What is your least favorite part about working in this business?

Darklady: Getting up in the morning and needing to watch yet another young woman slobber all over some guy's cock while swearing like a Tourettes victim – when I'm not in the mood for it.

9. If you were starting all over today, would you do anything differently? And if so what would that be?

Darklady: I wouldn't marry my first husband and I wouldn't let my second one have so much control over my website.

10. What piece of advice would you give yourself if you were just starting out in this industry?

Darklady: Get a good set of luggage, a light laptop, a reliable desktop, the right OS, dependable tech support – and know that everybody you meet is your teacher.

11. If you weren't doing what you're doing now, what other profession would you like to pursue?

Darklady: That's an excellent question. I worked for egghead.com for a while as a copywriter and came to hate their management style with a burning bleeding passion. It really burned me out on working in the mainstream, which I suspect is unfair to it. I doubt I'd have gone back to college immediately and suspect I'd have pursued writing, perhaps within a PR, marketing, or advertising context – but always with the intention of creating my own writing niche, probably focusing on the curious and the unusual. When I was laying in that hospital bed unable to use my arms or my legs, I vowed to be true to myself and my nature. My writing allows me to do that and I'm delighted that the adult industry has embraced my work. I don't think sex is anything to be ashamed of, I do think it connects to our emotional and spiritual states in unique and important ways, and I do think that the human right to speak frankly is worth defending. Because I'm not boring and pedantic when I write about those things, I'm able to make it in an industry that isn't famous for Deep Thought. Why would I pursue any other profession?

12. Any new projects in the near future you would like to share with our readers?

Darklady: I'll continue to book great guests for "Darklady's Sexpose," on YNOTRadio.com, my reviews continue to come out in AVN and Portland's Just Out, and I'm planning my annual Polyween party (and always on the look-out for good sponsors). Depending on how the photos turn out, I may be writing an article for Hustler about my Masturbate-a-thons and there will definitely be articles on HotMovies.com by me about the Portland and Washington DC 'thons. In October I'm a keynote speaker at the Seattle Building Bridges conference and will host another fabulous Polyween party. In November I'll take Level 2 at the Human Awareness Institute. My essay "Private Acts vs. Public Art: Where Prostitution Ends and Pornography Begins" is now available in the newly released Stanford Press anthology "Prostitution and Pornography," edited by Jessica Spector -- so everyone should rush out and get a copy, of course.

There's a ton of other stuff, too, so it's gonna be a really cool future and I look forward to sharing it with
folks. :-)