Exploring Porn Star Asa Akira’s Mysterious Need to Have Sex on Film
With her new memoir, “Insatiable,” author Asa Akira – arguably the biggest porn star in the world – has put pen to paper in the hope of seducing us not only with her body, but also with her wit. It’s a pretty tall order, but she does a damn fine job. Indeed, the book contains no photos, “NSFW” (not safe for work) or otherwise–a fact I didn’t even notice until after I’d finished reading it–but vivid depictions of Akira’s porn star hijinks and sexual exploits provide us with more than enough stimulation.
Don’t get me wrong: “Insatiable” is not likely to inspire readers to deep thought. Even the porn queen’s darkest moments are related with a dollop of humor and modest self-reflection. The word that best describes Akira’s prose is “glib,” perhaps too glib in certain cases. For instance, in the book’s opening pages, Akira wonders why she was drawn to a career in porn when, as she remarks, “I had a normal upbringing…my parents are kind, loving and present.” Yet later, she recounts a baroque episode where she confessed to a married couple (whose girlfriend she was) that as a child her babysitter had likely molested her. This potential smoking gun is treated as a minor detail in one of the book’s many tales of carnal hijinks, and is never mentioned again. Akira offers little insight into the importance of the memory, or why she cried when she confessed it to her lovers. We never learn if the molestation story is even true, and perhaps might offer a clue to Akira’s life-long obsession with sex.
Full disclosure: I know Asa Akira professionally. I’ve directed her many times and I like her tremendously. In her memoir, as in real life, Asa is charming and delightful; down to earth, but with a touch of mystery. She is the quintessential porn star: gorgeous, but not “out of your league” unattainable. Smart enough to get your jokes, but not to outwit you. She is devoid of airs, intellectual or otherwise, and has the strange ability to seem at once powerful and submissive.
Like the girl of your dreams, she’s anything you want her to be.
That’s the lure of the porn star persona, and “Insatiable” does little to dispel it. Akira paints herself as merrily, mindlessly sex-crazed, and satiated by nothing less than an endless parade of hard cocks. She is the manifestation of a fantasy every man hopes to experience in his lifetime, just once. But is she telling the truth? There’s an easy bravado to Akira’s prose that tells us she is not only in on the joke, but the joke is on us. She knows that we feverishly jerk off to her behind our partner’s backs, and she wants us to know that she’s more than okay with it. She takes our sexual frustrations to the bank, cashes them in and uses the money to buy the man she loves a Mercedes. Then, she writes about it in a book we clamor to buy, hoping for a glimpse of the woman behind the false eyelashes and cum-hither smile. Akira’s “Insatiable” stops short of revealing Asa the Human Being, but we’re too entranced by her wayward antics to notice. Like the simple pleasure of jerking off to her movies, we know we haven’t come close to experiencing the real woman, but somehow we still feel satisfied.
