I say she works "quite happily," and she does in fact seem to like her job.
These days she has a great relationship with her husband and daughter (whose almost tearful "you're my hero mom" would make a stone verklempt) and works, quite happily, as a bounty hunter. She chose the obvious option, treated it like a day job-no parties, no drugs, no alcohol-and quit when she inherited some money and didn't have to do it anymore.
Millions originally got into the porn industry because of her daughter as a single mom, she had a choice between spending all her time working a minimum-wage gig-or being a porn star for a few hours a week, making more money, and spending most of her days with her kid. She says that during sex she would often feel like she was outside of herself looking down: a textbook description of dissociation from trauma. Even Tiffany Millions, who is not especially negative about her time in the industry, describes the work in unintentionally disturbing terms. Asia Carrera talks about enjoying the chance to have sex with some good-looking guy and get paid for it, but Shelley Luben (now an anti-porn crusader) clearly experienced many of her scenes as rapes. Which is not to deny the particular awfulness or difficulties of porn. And even the Mensa thing-yes it strikes me as pitiful, but is it really any more ridiculous than me looking at my blog's statcounter? Everybody needs reassurance, not just porn stars. Porn in this case didn't isolate her quite the contrary. Carrera herself says she has no regrets about doing porn, and talks emotionally about the outpouring of donations and support she received from fans after her husband was killed in a car accident just before the birth of their second child. But I don't think that that's exactly a fair conclusion. So it is possible to watch After Porn Ends and come away with the impression that being in porn is a traumatic psychic and social wound that will never heal. But at the same time, it's clear that if you're a former adult performer a lot of people are going to judge you-and you can see how, living with that, having Mensa declare you worthy might pack a certain punch. Given the way many of the ex-stars talk about their families and spouses and kids, he's obviously making a gross generalization. One expert talking head argues overdramatically that being an adult star cuts you off from all personal ties. Even more poignantly, he suggests that his career in the adult industry made it hard for him to form normal relationships, and thus may be responsible for the fact that he never married and has no children. Randy West-who otherwise seems fairly happy with his career-talks bitterly about the fact that most charities won't allow adult stars to donate to them. Houston lost her job selling real estate when a client recognized her. And nearly all of them talk about the bitter stigma of being in the adult industry. A number of the former performers link their entry into the industry to child sexual abuse and/or to drug addiction. There's certainly a fair bit of evidence in After Porn Ends, available on iTunes now and on DVD later this month, to support such suspicions. The antipathy and contempt porn workers face is more intense, but the stories here could confront any non-former-porn-star in the swelling ranks of the lower middle-class. The natural conclusion to leap to, of course, is that the neediness and the porn career are inextricably intertwined: that Carrera entered porn because she needed to be loved, and/or is so unsure of herself because she's ashamed of her porn career. For someone like her to need the approval of someone like them is an apocalyptic admission of neediness that's depressing to think about.
Yet, despite all of that, what she wants is validation from some random group of self-declared smart people. This after all, is Asia Carrera, a woman who ran away from home at 17 and pulled herself together to become a successful businesswoman and a world-famous name and face. Eventually, though, the society did feature her in an issue of its magazine devoted to Mensa celebrities-a big moment for her, she says. She explains that Mensa links to all its members' websites, but that they wouldn't link to hers because. The most heartbreaking scene in the documentary After Porn Ends, about the post-porn lives of 12 adult stars, may be when Asia Carrera talks about her membership in the high-IQ society Mensa.