Porn Valley- Rare is the instance when porn talent leaves an agency then discusses why they did it. Tuesday morning, I had a lengthy chat with Cayton Calley, 19, who came into the business about three months ago, signed with LA Direct then basically told the agency she was moving on. Among a few things, Calley said she was threatened with a lawsuit. From the sounds of it, Calley didn’t blink.
“I signed with Derek right away,” she says. “Now I’m leaving them and trying to cancel my contract. They’re still calling me telling me I have a shoot tomorrow. I’m, like, I don’t work for you guys any more.”
Calley signed a year’s contract with the agency.
“But I figure with what my best interests are and what I would like, Derek can’t really deliver to me,” Calley reasons. “I want a little more attention than most of the girls who just want to be in the business for money. I want a contract and Derek doesn’t seem like he wants to do it. Obviously he loses money if he did contract me versus me working for every other company. I’m not a stupid girl.”
Calley does the math noting that if her contract were $100,000, LA Direct’s cut might be 10% of that.
“Versus having me work all the time wih the potential of making $200,000 to $300,000 and he gets a percentage of all that. Which would he pick?”
To make it clear, Calley hasn’t been offered a contract, though she says something about having offered Digital Playground her first boy-girl scenes with the idea of being a contract girl for them.
“But it didn’t really work out that way,” she says. “Derek kind of negotiated the way he wanted. Unfortunately it wasn’t in my best interests.”
Calley is from Maine. When she turned 18, she began stripping out of a local club for three weeks. She left Maine for Florida where she also worked as a stripper. She met a guy who worked for Icy Porn and began dating him.
“I started going to VIP parties where I got paid for shaking my ass,” she laughs. “That was fun.” From there she began doing webcam shoots with a girl named Molly who was a contract star for Icy Porn.
“I wanted to start doing scenes but my boyfriend at the time wouldn’t let me,” says Calley. “He said you can do webcam and that’s about it.” Calley finally broke up with the guy and was determined to go to California and film porn.
“He said you wouldn’t last a day out there,” Calley recalls. “He said people just screw people over and he was basically down talking the industry out here.”
Calley agrees that it’s not too far from the case, however.
“If you’re stupid about it,” she says. “But I knew I could last more than a day. I came out here and shot porn. He told me I wasn’t going to like it but I love it.”
According to Calley, Icy Porn made the connections with Derek.
“They said he’s the best in the business and a great guy. He’ll treat you well and get you lots of work. What I wasn’t told was that he’s a control freak and wants to make sure the girls are in line. I’ve been living pretty much on my own since I was 16. I don’t need a second father figure.”
Accordingly, Calley signed the exclusive agency contract.
“I was even living at Derek’s house,” she continues. “He’s a great person. I just don’t like dealing with him business-wise. I told him I felt a little intimidated by him. I had this whole thing played out what I was going to say to him, then I went blank. I don’t know why it happened. He’s one of the only people that I couldn’t remember what I wanted to say to him and stand my ground. He’d make me feel that whatever I was saying was the most retarded thing in the world and that I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
According to Calley, the straw that broke the camel’s back is when Derek supposedly wanted her to work with stitches in her mouth. Calley had just had her wisdom teeth taken out.
“I still have holes in my mouth, now, that are almost healed over but it takes about a month and half to heal,” she goes on. “At the time he, was, I want you to do this thing for Penthouse. I thought it should be healed by that time. That’s what my dentist said but I don’t know what he was thinking. I couldn’t work and I told Derek I still have stitches in my mouth. He was, like, you have to pay a kill fee. When you cancel it’s not free. I said it’s not my fault that you scheduled me so closely. I can’t hold my obligation because if I work and rip more stitches I’m going to be in pain and longer out of work.
“It’s just not a healthy situation,” she goes on to say. “You can’t expect me to be put in that type of position. When I signed up for the job I didn’t sign up to be putting my life at risk. I already put my life at risk each day when I do a scene. Even with a test- you never know. HIV takes 13 days to show up on a test. Potentially there’s a window where you can get it and nobody knows they have it.”
And for cosmetic reasons, Calley didn’t want to do the scene, anyway, because her face was all puffy.
“So I told him no.”
Asked if she paid the kill fee, Calley said she told Derek she’d report him to the Dept. of Labor and not pay it.
“I told him he’d be in more shit- it’s kind of hard to fight the Dept. of Labor when you’re not even an American and fighting an American. It’s not a good idea. I was, like, my atorney will have fun with you. I’ve had an attorney since Day One of getting into the business. Derek knows this. When I told him that, he basically scratched it out. I guess Penthouse didn’t need an extra girl anyway so it all worked out.”
Calley says she was also signed up to work for companies she didn’t want to and that annoyed her.
“I only wanted to do boy-girl for top companies,” she explains. “I didn’t care if I worked only one day a month or four days a month. I only wanted to work for Vivid, Wicked, Digital- the top name companies. I also got to work with RedLight and I liked working for them. They hired me a bunch of times and the only reason why I even worked with them, they hired me over and over. I figured it was worth it no to mention I’m getting two boxcovers out of it.
“But Derek wanted me to work for anybody and everybody,” Calley continues.
“I didn’t want to. Right now the money is not more important to me than my mental well being. I don’t want to be stressed out. I don’t want to be sick all the time. The more you work, the more you can have things going wrong. Common things that girls get- bacteria and stuff like that. The more you work, the more you’re going to get it and the less time you have to heal between it. I can almost guarantee there’s not one girl in the industry who hasn’t had a yeast infection or VD. And it’s not fun to work on it or after it. But Derek kind of forces girls to work on infections like that.”
According to Calley it even happened with her and she was told to throw a sponge, douche and she’d be fine.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said to me,” she states. “You can pass that on to another girl and she’s going to get it.
“I just don’t agree with the way he works,” she says. “And it’s unforunate. I’ve heard that some people have had staph infections and Derek told them to put a bandaid on it and do the scene. That’s disgusting. Staph infections are very contagious. But that’s why everyone makes such great money because it is a risky business. But you also have to deal with the downfalls and Derek doesn’t like to.”
According to Calley, she gave notice and told LA Direct she was leaving. Her final day was going to be the 26th of February.
“But things change,” she says. “He was putting more pressure on me and threatened me that if I left his agency and went with another agency, he would sue me and press legal charges. My reaction to this is don’t ever threaten me. You talk to me like a human being but don’t threaten me. I won’t take it. I basically told him that’s where our conversation ends and you can talk to my attorney.
“I’m an independent contractor. If I hired a pool guy to go do my pool, whatever and I didn’t like the job he was doing, I can fire him. I don’t have to keep him around for another year because he wants to sit there and mock me and threaten me. No way! I’m even more obligated to fire the guy. But, unfortunately, Derek makes girls feel that they work for him. He tends to threaten people. Like if you do that, I’ll inform this company that you’re not a good person to work with. Why do you have to be so manipulative?
“Karma comes around and it’s going to bite him in the ass,” says Calley. “It’s a vicious cycle.”
According to Calley, she’s asked that her pictures be removed from the agency website. She’s also been told, supposedly, by Digital Playground that they can’t hire her until things are resolved and that Derek gives them permission to hire her.
“Technically that falls under organized crime,” Calley believes. “The fact this person told me they cannot hire me until Derek says so, that’s illegal.”