stoya

For here each day unravels what the night has woven —Walter Benjamin

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Stoya revealed that her popularity as a porn star has made it difficult for her father to enjoy pornography. Her first year in the industry, she was crowned “Best Newcomer” by Adult Video News, one of many industry awards including a bawdy pun in the name. “I expected my orifices to be viewable in high definition by anyone with an internet connection,” she told The New York Times. On the other hand, she also participated in one of the more non-explicit erotic film bits, a web-series by photographer Clayton Cubitt entitled Hysterical Literature. In the 2-4 minute films, a woman is seen sitting at a table and heard reading aloud a passage from a book of her choice while below the table, we are to assume distracting things are taking place, against which she fights to maintain composure. In the books of Milan Kundera, a frequent point is that every public thing has a perfect private rendering. Madeleine, at five years, summarizes the public bath: “It was like Brazil. It was sweaty. I almost didn’t want to breathe.” Stoya comments on what it’s like to be occasionally called by her real name, Jessica, at events or on the street: “All they’re doing is letting me know that they had thirty seconds to spend on Google and no sense of propriety, which may sound funny coming from a woman who flagrantly disregards it herself.” It is Sunday night, in September. We call them changes, the seasons, but that they happen with such regularity suggests otherwise. In a puddle beside my foot, at the moment, a beetle paddles from one dark shore to the other.

Dustin is working on an MFA at Georgia College. He has won prizes at The New York Times, Caesura, and Willow Review, and has published in The Journal, South Carolina Review, the minnesota review, New Orleans Review, Natural Bridge, Chattahoochee Review, Euphony, and so on.

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