WWW- [Village Voice] Dana DeArmond has one hand on her clit and the other on her laptop. At least, that’s how I imagine “the Internet’s girlfriend” as she replies to my interview questions over MySpace (myspace.com/ littledana), where she has over 305,813 friends and counting.
The 27-year-old nerdy pervert resembles my Williamsburg neighbors, with her striped bangs, straight edge sweatshirt, and subtle sexiness. Even though she lives in California, she seems just like my fellow L-train riders—if they made 10 porn flicks a month, pranced around the zoo, stayed glued to their Sidekick 3s, and were utterly adorable. She’s part of a new generation of porn stars who aren’t about big boobs or preconceived ideas of hotness, but instead about showing off a bit of their real selves while spreading their legs, sucking cock, and fingering girls’ asses.
I’m not gonna lie—I don’t watch very much porn. I’m lucky if I see three porn flicks a year, and those are usually made by friends. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good fuck film, especially if there’s a hot (and smart) girl like DeArmond involved. See, I can’t jump right to the sex. I like my porn with a little background, a bit of setup that tells me who the performers are and why they can’t wait to tear each other’s clothes off.
That’s why I was intrigued with the “highly biographical” Dana DeArmond Does the Internet (a/k/a D3TI ) before I’d even seen it. One of the latest offerings from Eon McKai’s brainchild Vivid Alt, it features DeArmond banging her favorite pals and Internet buddies with threesomes, anal, and lots of blowjobs and spitting. I met the totally down-to-earth porn star in the bathroom at a party for Tristan Taormino’s Chemistry, and found her utterly charming. She told me about Justine Joli slapping her so hard she blacked out for a few seconds. When I paled at this description, DeArmond gave me a wicked grin. “Oh, I loved it—I asked her to do it!” she triumphantly proclaimed.
In the film, she manages to morph from a MILF-like-older-than-her-years seductress to an innocent Barely Legal-looking girl by simply changing the expression on her face. In one scene, she’s spitting on a guy’s cock before swallowing it, while others find her innocently eating ice cream, showing off her Prius, picking up her mail at the post office, or visiting the zoo. It’s hard to tell which one’s the real Dana, the slut or the geek, though I think if there’s any message to be learned from D3TI, it’s that she’s both.
The best example of her slutty geekdom is a scene where she’s perched at her computer while a hot couple fuck right next to her. She’ll take an occasional break to slap an ass, then turn right back to her computer. But when she truly gets into it, DeArmond doesn’t hold back. My favorite scene was the final lesbian tango between her and Princess Donna, an extended, kinky, ferocious bit that involves hot shoe worship and toe sucking. My least favorite involved some oral contortions, namely, a guy’s entire cock and balls being slurped into a girl’s mouth. I prefer to see (and suck) them each separately. She’s also got an actor with the best porn name I’ve heard in a while: Julius Ceazher.
When she’s not filming, DeArmond likes to lounge in bed as long as possible. “I enjoy playing Viva Pinata on Xbox 360 and Katamari on PS2.” She also makes out with her boyfriend, cuddles, and shops—that is, when she’s not online cultivating a ridiculously devoted fanbase. While she’s not quite at Jenna Jameson’s level of popularity (Jameson has more than a million MySpace friends), that’s a goal DeArmond hopes to surpass in the next year. It’s fitting that our interview took place over email initiated on MySpace. Since joining the social networking site in February 2004, she’s put up different kinds of photos to see which were most popular. “It seems that people like butt pictures, especially ones that include my ass and the soles of my feet,” she explains. Her mom is in her top friends to keep an eye on her and ward off skeevy potential stalkers, and the online queen receives upward of 1,000 comments on some of her photos (such as one of her about to eat a banana or sporting ass-cleavage-baring panties).
The self-proclaimed “porn unicorn” was inspired by the likes of her uncle’s Playboy magazines and watching Elvira, Mistress of the Dark at age 10. “I knew I wanted to be like her or at least be with someone like her.” She worked at a strip club for three years, and after careful consideration, began doing nude modeling and then made her leap into hardcore with McKai’s Neu Wave Hookers. Her unicorn affectation isn’t literal, however. “It’s more of an analogy of me being like no other porn star: I’m pure, innocent, drug-free, and reclusive. I’m a shy person and a homebody, but I have the magical ability to draw hundreds of thousands of fans. Some of them admit they don’t even know what I do or why they like me, they just do.” Even I, who wasn’t always aroused by her movie, still find DeArmond endearing.
She calls herself “terribly shy” but onscreen, DeArmond is a tigress going after her prey. She says she “takes girls out on dates a lot” and that her at-home sex life “gets pretty wild. I like variety, and go through phases where I become obsessed with certain sexual acts like fisting, squirting, straight to anal, BJ, shower sex—the list goes on and on.” She’s been dating her onscreen partner, Daniel, for about a year, and says the only reason the relationship works is that they’re both called to fuck other people for a living.
The grassroots nature of her MySpace campaigning could be a turning point in porn fandom. Rather than a slick, pre-packaged, company-produced site, DeArmond’s helming her own online universe, reaching out directly to fans, and showing off via the comfort of her own home. DeArmond seems totally content with her budding online empire one click at a time, and has plans to direct another movie for Vivid Alt. “Porn is a safe, healthy environment for me to act out my deepest sexual fantasies and not fear anyone judging me. It’s very freeing. It’s just nice to get respect for doing what you like instead of people saying you’re a piece of shit.”