LOS ANGELES — As I pull up to one of the many nondescript bungalows on a quiet street in South Los Angeles, a vintage pink-and-red couch sits lonely, abandoned on the front porch.
It’s the only marker on a sleepy stretch of road — which is just waking up on a tranquil Saturday morning — hinting that this is the shoot location for “Estate Sale,” the latest creation for Erika Lust’s venerable XConfessions site.
The door swings open and Lotus Lain, wearing jeans and an oversized Doc Johnson tee, pops out. “We’re just in the back,” she says, welcoming me inside.
Skirting past the fringed couch that inevitably makes an appearance later, we snake through the home. It belongs to a friend of the director’s, and although they’ve only just moved in, it’s piled high with knick-knacks, vintage furniture and collectibles.
“They’re e-Bay resellers,” she tells me.
It’s a far cry from the shoots that typically happen but a few miles north in Porn Valley. Nondescript luxury is replaced with retro specificity, the ubiquitous white couch traded in for the aforementioned design. They’re doing something different today.
Entering through the amalgam of novelty items in the living room and making our way to the backyard, a hearty crew tessellates around the central point of the morning: an estate sale that sets the scene for the ensuing action. Great care is being taken to capture the moment of two bystanders having a comedic exchange surrounding a riding crop.
“Mae was quite the equestrian,” chirps Nina Hartley. “Horseback riding is a dying art.” The potential buyers chuckle and move along their merry way, making room for Daisy Ducati, the star of Erika Lust’s latest fantasy creation. She stuns in a sapphire sundress and heeled booties as she holds up a typewriter, and the grand find of the day — a “Ladies Book of Etiquette” riddled with naughty boudoir photos of the past.
Aside from Ducati and Lain, it’s none of the usual suspects. Director Gordon B. sits off to the side while Kristina River, the director of photography, mulls through the scene, establishing the line of view for the camera and making notes of where to take the next shot from.
It’s Gordon’s first adult shoot, although he’s no stranger to the industry. As the son of Richard Pacheco, an acclaimed performer and director from the ‘80s, the shoot is very much a first-stab at something familiar in many senses of the word.
“I grew up in a very sex-positive household,” Gordon relates. “My dad was an adult actor and my mom was a sex therapist. When I was caught with Playboy magazines, he just gave them to me and put a lock on my door.”
Sitting in a shaded corner of the backyard on an apple box, Gordon elaborates on his inspirations and foray into adult cinema.
“I started off doing Theatre of the Oppressed and working at universities with a focus on HIV education, which inevitably touched on sexism, racism, homophobia […] it was a way to reimagine social change through theatre.”
With “Estate Sale,” aside from orchestrating an uber hot scene between Ducati and male talent Mickey Mod, the production also plans to use the opportunity to “expand gender expressions in heterosexual relationships,” highlighting a myriad of more true-to-life expressions of sexuality not commonly explored in porn.
“We really want to navigate consent as part of the experience,” noted Gordon, echoed by Lain, who added, “The normal negotiations that always happen privately don’t always get conveyed on screen.”
The idea of “ongoing consent” can seem pedantic and alienating when prescribed clinically, but in reality, as Lotus points out, it’s something we all do, and as XConfessions mandates, “We don't just show what sex looks like, we tell stories about what sex and desire feel like, and how we communicate and interact sexually with each other.”
At this point, the term “decentralize the male orgasm” also came into play, which again, is not something that’s been actively discussed in most mainstream conversations.
For those who don’t know, to “decentralize the male orgasm” simply means to remove the male orgasm from being the focus and end goal of a sexual interaction.
In “Estate Sale,” the male orgasm happens early in the scene, with the remainder of the action focusing on predominantly female pleasure.
“Think of it like the Supporting Actor award at the Oscars,” related Gordon. “It’s a moment, but not the main event.”
Although Lust stakes her claim as being an “other” in the industry, one would be remiss to simply label her work or subsequent productions as “feminist porn” and leave it at that. From the air of the day on set, the otherness of XConfessions lies in the weight and value being given to the work and artistry of pornography and the social criticism that comes with that.
With so much of mainstream porn fixated on “the money shot,” this is a deviation from the norm, albeit one that is most overdue. As Hartley put it, “This is a scene about a masculine, manly dude, but it’s not all about him.” For while dynamics like “dominant man vs. cuckhold sissy” or flatly lit fauxcest scenarios with cumshot finales may certainly prove profitable, they are not necessarily true to life, which is why XConfessions can successfully challenge prevalent narratives — not merely for the sake of catering to “feminist porn” or “porn for women” niches.
This mission is further amplified by the various forms floating around the set, which include Lust’s and APAC’s Performer Bill of Rights, as well as Gordon and Lain’s co-authored commitment to running an “anti-racist” and “anti-patriarchal” set, by hiring predominantly people of color both in front of and behind the camera.
Aside from Lust’s more obvious social critiques of mainstream porn, the other caveat of XConfessions' intent to “elevate” pornography comes with a more tangible element; namely, a budget that allows for two days of shooting both a solo and B/G setup.
Lain, who is a first-time producer for the project explains, “The budget is definitely more than I’m used to but it’s refreshing because it allows you to create the image you really want, and that’s great when you’re able to see that come to life.”
As Hartley puts it, “Giving an alt story the mainstream experience” helps to neutralize the potential roadblocks that hinder more thorough storytelling. Various colleagues on set echo her sentiment, mainly that the freedom allowed by a larger budget equals its weight in gold.
“Production ethics are at the top of everyone’s mind and when you have a budget to work with, it means you don’t have to cut corners,” says Lain. “Being around people with mainstream experience who have an appreciation for porn really puts the possibilities of this genre into perspective.”
During a break in shooting the exposition, Ducati cools her heels in the shade of the 90-degree heat, sharing her thoughts of the shoot at large. “This type of character is typically reserved for white people,” she says, a statement reinforced by Lain, who notes that as a cast of mixed performers, the scenario offers something not usually seen.
“It’s a really cool, cute, quirky original story of a black couple that’s never really shown in this light, but it’s definitely something we can all relate to and feel nostalgic about. This story is like us in our twenties,” Lain says. “Black porn is usually…” she makes a gesture mashing her fists together. “This is really refreshing.”
“I really identify with this character,” Ducati remarks, adding that she typically browses the vintage section of Craigslist, with her most recent purchases including a dental chair from the ‘60s and a funeral prayer bench. “Finding erotic pictures at an estate sale and then recreating them later is totally something I would do!”
Sifting through the wares on set, Ducati lands on the book of etiquette and, ironically enough, opens it to find a collection of erotic photos, presumably of the late Ms. Mae, portrayed by model Erika de Leija. She brings the book and hidden surprises home to her onscreen boyfriend (Mod), suggesting that the duo roleplay using her found treasures as inspiration.
Gordon then dishes his cinematic plans for the scene finale, explaining that it’d be a “threesome between two people” at the peak of the action.
“We’re going to be projecting the images in the photos onto Daisy and Mickey’s scene,” explained Gordon. “We’re trying to line it up so that while they have sex, it’ll also look like Erika’s hand is on her thigh or her lips are on Daisy’s nipple, for example.”
Conceptually, there’s something unique and just out there enough to work.
“He’s written a really sexy, insightful, fun, intimate script,” praises Hartley. “Up until a few years ago, sex had little variance but with this shift in how content is being produced nowadays, it’s given way for more alternative stories to enter the mainstream adult industry. You have more people now than ever sharing their ideas on sex and sexuality, people have different sensibilities and understandings of gender — it’s brought about a sort of social reckoning that’s opened up the conversation of ‘what is porn.’”
Speaking to Gordon’s work that day, Hartley notes, “I appreciate his vision. I’ve known Gordon his whole life so it’s really great to see him be able to create in this way. He was raised in a theatrical household where he was taught that sexuality is worthy of artistic intention.”
Smiling, Gordon shares, “Nina is like an aunt to me. And for my dad, one of his great goals was to bring art to porn and push back against the trivialization of it.
“I’ve worked in mainstream film, but this is really the first time a project has felt like ‘my baby.’ Through my work doing Theatre of the Oppressed, I started to imagine what uncensored sex ed would look like, and that really informed a lot of this project.”
On a more personal note, Gordon reveals the other side of the coin that fed the impetus for “Estate Sale.”
“I thought about the kind of porn I wish I would have seen when I was younger,” he said. “I used to be so anxious about getting hard and keeping it up, trying to imitate the porn I’d seen and as a result, I was a less present, less generous lover.
“We don’t talk about it as much as we should, but the patriarchy robs us of our pleasure as well. When you throw all of that out, it’s really liberating.”
By design, XConfessions seeks to take crowdsourced fantasies and bring them to life, putting the power in the hands of the viewer to share their most intimate desires. While other studios may opt for more conventional “hardcore” or taboo fare, an ultimate-fantasy scenario surrounding a vintage sale and erotic retro photos may seem relatively tame in comparison.
“The setup is just two people who like each other,” asserts Hartley. “It’s not a keyword or genre, there’s no gimmick, but when something doesn’t fit into a prescribed niche, it leaves space for anything to happen.
“Looking back, people like Candida Royale and Dita von Teese, Shine Louise Houston — their work didn’t fit into the niches that already existed, and so they reinvented them out of their own necessity to do so. Lust — alternative porn in general, is doing that now.”
As the production breaks for lunch around 12:30 in the afternoon, the team of extras is largely released, in preparation for a solo scene to be shot on the pink couch.
As Lain buzzes about the living room, ensuring everyone is fed and feeling good, she takes a moment to reflect on the process thus far.
“I was nervous to work with a first-time director but it’s been great. We’re similarly aligned on a lot of things. This project too has brought together such an incredible caliber of people,” said Lain, who enlisted Tnava, keyboardist for Anderson .Paak, to produce the soundtrack, along with the work of several other notable creators.
Excited anticipation hangs in the air throughout the rest of the morning: for a project that is making space for new voices and fresh perspectives, for a continued commitment to trailblazing and elevating porn through added artistry and for a budget that actually allows for the freedom to do so — even in sweltering heat and after tedious takes, everyone still has a smile on their face.
That kind of passion is infectious, and suffice to say, expect this to be one estate sale that’s a major score.
