So this post will bring the second Safe/Ward blog carnival to a close- please check out part 1 and part 2, and thank you for all who contributed by sharing deeply personal stories.

I felt like this story deserved its own entry, in part because it highlights how entitlement culture is not just an issue with BDSM, but an issue in altsex generally and society at large. I also think it's important to outline that boundaries and clear limits are complicated- for example, in this situation, it's not just the way he keeps badgering her after she says no, it's also the consequences of her no that she worries about, which leads her to say yes.

I used this image, which is a Slutwalk sign, because it quotes one of the videos we use for Safe/Ward, an "Always Sunny in Philadelphia" segment that, to me, highlights why a yes may not be a 100% consensual yes. To ignore that a yes may be coming from a place of uneven power distribution is a dangerous thing.

"If I can't say no, I can't really say yes" is a phrase I use a lot.

I'm an adult actress in San Francisco and while I now focus on my own projects, there was a time when I mostly worked for other people. I was exclusively a girl-girl and solo performer for the first few years before I told my jealous partner that it really was just work and I wanted to earn the higher pay rates given to performers in boy-girl scenes and sleeping with a bunch of handsome, well-hung men who wouldn't be bothering me the next day was just icing on the cake.

At every single adult company I worked at, condoms were routinely--mandatorily--used on toys, but male partners only wore one when requested. I had always been told that it wasn't a big deal and wouldn't prevent me from getting work, so when I did my first boy-girl scene, I asked that my co-performer wear a condom. I mean, why not? It was just an extra layer of protection. I also wanted to maintain something private for my long-term partner. Yet if someone had asked me point blank why I wanted my co-star to wear a condom, I'm not sure that I would have been able to articulate just why that bit of latex seemed so important, yet also so inconsequential.

The producer-director was a former adult actress and very understanding of my limit. She told the guy I was working with in advance, along with my few other limits. From working with her in the past I knew that she had a few little tricks here and there to make shooting easier and I was sure she would be a great facilitator for my first boy-girl shoot and I still think that she did her best.

I arrived on the set on time, picked out my wardrobe, and sat down to talk to my co-star about our limits and what we wanted to do. He asked a few times if I was sure that he had to wear a condom. I said yes and we got into position.

As we began setting up the scene, he started talking about how dirty I was, how I was probably crawling with venereal disease. The director cut the scene and asked him what the hell he was doing. "Well, there has to be a reason why I'm wearing a condom." She told him not to question my health. He'd seen my test and I was clean. Anyway, the audience didn't want to fantasize about some disease-riddled girl.

We started again. It was some of the best sex I've ever had, rough but with lots of kissing. One of the best parts was that he wanted to continue off-camera. I was used to working with girls who mostly made it very clear that I was not to touch them off-camera and the few girls who were interested in continuing on our own had been working with me for months before we got to that point. It was fun to be with someone who just wanted to fool around. Every ten minutes or so he asked if he could take off the condom. I continued to say no.

At some point, the director pulled me aside. "You don't have to keep playing with him off-camera, you know. He's taking advantage of you because you're new." I told her that I was thrilled to be having sex with this guy. He was hot, enthusiastic, and knew what he was doing. I could tell that he was a jerk, but we were both going home at the end of the day and he would be someone else's problem.

I was enjoying myself, but it was still a long day. There were a lot of difficult positions and really deep face-fucking. I threw up. I was getting tired. He kept asking to take the condom off. I kept saying no.

When we moved on to the anal scene, he took the rubber off and looked me in the eye. "Please." He looked at me hard, staring me down.

The director asked, "It's just to prevent pregnancy, right?" That sounded like a much better reason than, "I just want him to." After all, I'd seen his test. He was a professional. I was insulting him. This was my first boy-girl scene. I didn't want to fuck it up. I wanted to get more work. He'd been asking all day and if I said no now, he'd just keep bugging me. He might even tell other male talent to avoid me. Maybe he already would. It would cost me money. Perhaps it would affect my girl-girl and solo work, too. Maybe it really was unusual to use condoms on set. Was I implying to the audience that I had a disease? Would I get a bad reputation? Was I just slowing down the whole shoot? I wanted to go home.

"Yeah. It's to prevent pregnancy."

We finished the shoot sans condom. I went home and took a shower. I updated my blog. I reassured my partner and we went to sleep.

It seemed that everyone was excited to hear about my first boy-girl scene, like it had been a first date or something. I'd been around for a long time before actually taking the plunge, but when I told female talent who I had worked with, they all turned their noses up. One woman said, "There are two guys on my no-go list: that guy and my brother." A few months later I heard that there had been some sort of problem between the female director and the co-star where she had laughed him off the set as he cussed her out.

Evidently he was not a nice fellow, but no one had told me anything about him until afterward, like I had to go through a rite of passage in order to be told these things. Perhaps I would still have worked with him, but I would have also been much more assertive and committed to proclaiming my limits, or maybe I just would have gone in knowing it was futile, that he was going to pick and pressure until I gave in. I went on to work with other male performers, but I didn't bother having the condom argument again. I like to think that other performers were nicer just because they were nice guys, but it may be that I didn't insist on safe sex. A few even told me that I was their favorite performer to work with. I'm back to performing exclusively with women and on my own, so I suppose that I'll never know if they would be just as nice if there was a thin layer of latex involved.