There’s a saying among men: Bros Before Hoes. It’s why men rule the world, basically, because no matter how horrible their fellow man is, no matter what horrible thing he’s done, no matter how useless he is, all men stick together. And they never, ever let a hoe get between them. If a woman does come between them, sure there may be a fist fight, but at the end of the day, men are smart enough to know that there is strength in numbers and even if they hate each other’s guts, they stick together as a united front. That’s the real power.
But I’ve always said, Hoes Before Bros, specifically my hoes— whether they be my clients, my friends or my family— if anyone brings any harm, discomfort or even embarrassment, I will always side with my ladies. They’ve been better to me than any man has ever been, and I’ve always felt so lucky that in the darkest of times, I still have my career as a porn peddler to take comfort in, to lose myself in and to occupy my mind with. Even when I’ve known that my girls have fucked up, I will still always side with them publicly and then privately give them the proverbial tongue lashing. I learned this from my mother. No matter what stupid thing I did as a kid or as an adult, and there have been many, she always stuck up for me and then when we got home she beat the snot out of me, yelling that the last thing she wanted to do on a cold, dark winter’s day was to get dressed and haul ass to my school to speak to a guidance counselor on why my grades were so bad or where I had been for the last few days. That’s called loyalty, and without it, you’re nothing.
Case in point: this past Christmas one of my clients got into an on-air tiff on a popular podcast with a comedian who I’ve worked with in the past. As many comedians know how to do, he found the soft spot, the vulnerable, tender area, and he kept poking it until my client, who’s well-known for being scrappy got into it with him and the Bronx in her came tumbling out in a major way until the show was over. It was rare that I was not there for the show. I was stuck behind my desk working on a deadline but I listened to the entire thing. My heart sank. It’s not that my being there would have changed anything, but I perhaps could have yanked her out of the studio before things imploded. I’ve been there before. It’s one of the things most people remember about my work: when a client has had a meltdown live on the air. Nobody ever remembers the good stuff. That’s the sad state of human nature. In interviews I’m still asked about the time porn star and “Penthouse Pet of the Year” Shawna Lenee lost it on Opie and Anthony almost 10 years ago, so I knew this would be a doozy. I was right. I got a call from the podcast host,and was pleasantly surprised that he was not angry at me, but concerned that I would be angry at him. He even asked me if my client was okay, a real gentleman.
I took to Twitter right afterward because I knew the comedian, who is notorious for living on social media, would tweet about it, and again I was right. He must have still been in the studio when he made the statement on social media. “I just got physically threatened by a crazy, so-called porn star,” he wrote. While my client may have overreacted to his ribbing about prostitution and porn stars (for future reference, no, we don’t like that), I didn’t appreciate how he knew she was my client and didn’t think that this was disrespectful to me, a woman who has not only worked for him but who also got him an all-expense trip to The Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Reno that included him getting the royal sex treatment. I even gave him my “VIP Sex Ticket” that I wasn’t going to use because I’m Strictly Dickly so he could have a three-way. And I didn’t even tell anyone because he asked me not to so his baby momma wouldn’t get upset at him. This guy, whom I’d been so good to, didn’t have any loyalty to me. So, I tweeted back, “You’re not afraid of a girl, are you?” That one sentence upset his masculinity greatly, so his legion of fans fired back on his behalf because again, “bros before hoes.” They called me a stupid cunt and a bad pimp and tweeted “why don’t I keep my girl on a leash?” The comedian tweeted back to me, “How can you say that? She’s done this before.” And I replied, “Why don’t you be a gentleman?”
I thought it would have ended there, with his fans calling her names and calling me names. That would be it and then they would be on to the next victim. But no. The next time I did business with the comedian’s partner, I was asked what I did to make this man so upset. Why did I attack him over him getting attacked by my client? So I showed his partner what I wrote on Twitter, and he rolled his eyes and thanked me for not going deeper with it. That was no problem with me; success for a publicist is knowing when to open your mouth and when to keep it closed, no matter how bad to want to fuck with someone. With great power comes great responsibility and you have to know when to back off and when to understand your actions towards one person will have a domino effect. And those dominoes will all fall on you, the messenger. So I let it go. I stayed silent. But I told his partner that what I did was nothing more than he would have done if someone was fucking with one of his boys, right or wrong. Men stick together, men have each other’s backs, but when a woman does the same, she’s a harpie, a busybody, an asshole. But I let it go. Even when said comedian kept talking about what happened on other podcasts and called me a “Jew Face” and that I should go to my “Jew Bank in Hell.” I admit I shed a few tears over that. No matter how old I am, when someone says anti-Semitic remarks to me, I get sensitive. It reminds me of being a dorky Hebrew school student and having the Irish/Italian kids in my neighborhood make fun of me and throw pennies at me. I know I could have gone to social media and tore this guy a new asshole and started a whole thing about what a racist and woman hater he is. I could have taken the link from the podcast where he went on his rampage and posted it and gotten a lot of people, specifically Jewish managers and comedy club owners, against him to ruin his career, at least for a little while. But I kept my mouth shut because his business partner is also my client and he would have suffered the consequences as well. And as my client, he is also my hoe, so again, hoes before bros.
Sometimes I have to deal with bad boyfriends and/or husbands, and although I’ve been called a pimp, it’s really these jerks who are the pimp, or as we call them in the industry, a “Suitcase Pimp.” This is a pimp who doesn’t look like he’s working the streets, and he’s not because he’s working his woman. A Suitcase Pimp gets angry when you do well because he’s a loser with no life or job of his own, so he takes your hard-earned money as compensation and lives the good life of your blood, sweat, and tears. A Suitcase Pimp may also encourage you to have sex with people you do not want to have sex with for money, and then gets upset that you did it without being sensitive to his feelings. A Suitcase Pimp always has a lot to say about my work and to be fair most of them think I do a good job, and a few of them, admittedly, have been somewhat of a help. They make sure my client shows up on time, stays sober during work hours, doesn’t miss any flights, and some make sure they look pretty. But the downside to that is I have to act like they are “part of the team” and allow them to come to all of the bookings I set up. By and large, most show hosts don’t feel comfortable with boyfriends and husbands sitting 10 feet from their sexy guest; they feel like they are being monitored and feel they can’t go all the way on the interview. And when I’ve asked them to stay at home for this or that, they tell me, “It’s not me, Lainie. She doesn’t want to go to anything without me,” or “It’s not like people don’t know I exist, she talks about me on Twitter all the time, so there’s no point in hiding me.” Sometimes I stand tough, especially for the big shows and other times I tell them to hang with me outside of the studio.
But it’s true, some of the female porn stars do want their man with them everywhere, and almost always they want him on the road, so they don’t get lonely. So they don’t have to worry about what their man is up to when they are gone. They tell me his job is to be their road manager. The Suitcase Pimp carries all of their merch to conventions, store signings and feature dance gigs, he acts as security, he sweeps the money off the stage and he brings drinks and food. The girls think he’s cheaper than hiring a professional road manager or security guard. “You don’t have to pay for an extra hotel room for starters. And bonus, you can cuddle with him before you fall asleep.” But for me, the numbers don’t add up. You still have to pay for an extra plane ticket (unless you’re the number one porn star in the country, most clubs won’t pay for another person’s flight), and you can’t entirely concentrate on your job because you’re keeping one eye on your man. Because co-dependence knows no security, if you’re not worried about him cheating on you when you’re away, you’re concerned about him flirting with the strip club’s house dancers. And then there’s the resentment that follows on both sides. The Suitcase Pimp gets a moment of clarity and realizes he has nothing without his porn star wife, and then his porn star wife starts getting annoyed at the fact that she’s working her finger to the bone while this jackass enjoys a wonderful lifestyle courtesy of her hot ass. It eventually falls apart, and I either get caught in the middle or blamed for making his woman too big for her britches. Everything was fine until I came along and showed his woman her worth, and she no longer wants to live in low self-esteem city.
Sometimes it’s hoe against hoe. Nothing upsets me more than when two of my clients hate each other’s guts. I try to tell them that they don’t have to love each other but please, keep it classy, (also known as please don’t go online and attack each other). It’s a horrible situation when you go to a show with one client and the other client who hates her gets upset at you for doing your job. I’ve had two clients literally tear each other’s extensions out at an event where I had to put myself physically between them and then beg security to please not call the cops. Then I had to tell the girl who got most of the battle scars to please not do the same. Then the girl who got off scot-free in the club without getting handcuffed by the boys in blue gets angry at you for not following her out of the club but staying with her arch enemy. What can a publicist do? I try to remember how my mother handled conflict between my sister and me, and say, “C’mon you’re both on the same team, you shouldn’t be doing this.” The only people who are getting anything out of your fight are all the online vultures sitting on their fat asses, not only watching it, but trying to instigate it even more and going as far as to suggest a topless boxing match. Okay, I myself have been dying to promote a porn star topless boxing match event, but the girls don’t want to ruin their pretty faces, and I can’t argue with that. But still, wouldn’t you buy a ticket? But what can I do? Hoes Before Hoes, now that doesn’t make any kind of sense.
I’m no interfering porn mother-in-law because I know even when my girls are on the outs with the bad boyfriend, they may come back to him and then tell them the shitty things I said, which will only make my life harder. I learned this from my personal life, most women (and men) go back at least once just to make sure they were tortured enough in the relationship. They backslide, and I know I have. And my friends after a while would say if you go back to him, fine but please do not complain about him anymore because you went back. Asking me not to talk, whine and kvetch is like asking me not to breathe again, so this method on me was useful. I have tried to use this method with my clients, and it never works because I’m a frigging softie and they are paying me, so there’s a shift in power. I stand by them; I listen and I propose they bury their bad feelings in work. I think of a way to get them out of town on a plum gig. And sometimes it’s worked. Mostly with all people, they need to reach rock bottom before they make a change. But it burns me when I see strong, beautiful women go totally broke because they are paying for two on everything. No matter how badly I’ve been abused, the one thing I never, ever allowed is for some jerkoff to get in the way of my making a living and keeping my career on track. I’ve been accused of choosing my hos over everyone, but let me tell you that hos have done more for me than just about anyone I’ve ever met except my familye, a few choice friends and maybe my husband, (the verdict’s still out we haven’t been married long).
But I will say this, my husband gets it. When he comes downstairs in the middle of the night to find me on the couch hunched over my Galaxy phone, he’s not thinking I’m sexting some guy; he knows. “Your hoes?” he asks. I nod, and he bends over for a kiss, then grabs a handful of my bushy red hair, saying, “Don’t stay up too late,” and leaves me back to my business.