The tricky thing about making porn, for me, is not being sexual in front of the camera. It's not even having sex, attractively, with someone you've just met. It's the terribly unnatural timing of it. That's what I found out when I did my first real porn video shoot for Kink.com two weeks ago.

My shoot was for Kink's anal-sex site, EverythingButt.com, with a lovely woman named Bobbi Starr. You don't get a script beforehand in porn, so while I knew ass-fucking would be involved, I had no idea what the overall theme of the shoot was or what, precisely, I'd be asked to do with her. That's an unusual situation for a top, but I viewed it as an interesting challenge.

It was the stop-and-go nature of the shoot that was difficult. Like most films, porn videos are made in short little pieces. So the director would give me a few minutes worth of instructions about lines and actions. "Matisse, in this part, you're going to bend Bobbi over the desk and pull up her skirt slowly. Then fondle her ass and tell her how hot it is."

I'd do that. Then the shooting would stop, the crew would rearrange the lights and get ready for a different camera angle, and the director would give us another little chunk of instructions. For a four-hour shoot, that's a lot of stopping and starting. It was hard to maintain my energy from one segment to the next, especially without knowing exactly where the scene was going. My director, Lochai, is someone I know from the BDSM community, and he had warned me about this aspect of porn: "This is different from the way you and I are used to playing."

He was correct in more ways than one. Before we began shooting, I asked Bobbi about her limits. She eyed me a little warily. "Don't slap me in the face—someone dislocated my jaw that way. And don't call me a stupid whore or spit in my face."

I was slightly taken aback. It isn't that I've never done those things. (Except the "stupid whore" part; I don't like that brand of verbal humiliation.) But I wouldn't do them to someone I just met unless he or she very specifically asked for that. I suppose it's different in porn, but I assured her that wasn't my style of domination.

So Bobbi and I got along just fine. Lochai was clear about what he wanted from each scene and patient with my lack of experience. Overall, it was a good experience. I haven't seen the finished product yet, so I'll be curious to see how it looks. Privately, I wished that we could just turn on the cameras and go, let the scene happen naturally, and edit it later. But while I'm still a porn newbie, I know it's all about giving people the fantasy, not the natural reality.