It was only 11am when I got kicked loose from jury duty, so as I left the courthouse on McAllister I decided to walk over to Borders to check out the latest literary journals. While I was making my way down Market Street a hand grabbed my ass. Fortunately, I’m from New York, so assaults to my person like this do not tend to faze me. I simply wheeled around, and came face to face with the boyfriend who dumped me twenty-two years ago.

Now, I like Jack, and don’t mind that he’s somewhat still in my life. But there seems to be an unspoken implication that somehow all those years ago I started him in his predilection for bondage and discipline. Our relationship was nothing like that. I distinctly remember separating my personal from my professional life back then, and when it came to doing it
with boys I preferred it plain and straight. And I really loved Jack for six full weeks when we were both twenty-four. Maybe it’s the case that when you’ve been a porn actress people pin all sorts of sexual modus operandi on you.

Anyway, Jack treated me to a coffee and told me about his new lady who, as it turns out, shares his tastes. This is good to know. Makes me believe San Francisco’s still the wild town I moved to in the 70s. Apparently there’s a whole BD subculture, complete with rentable dungeons and handcuff parties. I wouldn’t care to participate though. I do have a fantasy life, but it consists of being kidnapped by Alan Rickman.

I explained to Jack what I was doing on 6th and Market, that is, walking down the street, and not on celluloid in some booth at one of the adult bookshops there. It would have been a two-month case, a humdinger of a lawsuit, and I ought to have been the perfect juror: mature, a college graduate, female (always good for sympathy), a housewife with a grown son, and time on my hands. If I was going to be excused, I expected it to be by the corporation’s lawyer, not by the salt-of-the-earth plaintiff’s. But there he was, Mr Clarence Darrow, with his brown suit and his peremptory challenge, wishing me good day.

Free until next year! But as I was sipping coffee and chatting with Jack a silly, vain, but unmissable thought crossed my mind: Could Clarence Darrow have seen one of my pictures?