Silicon Valley Porn Star : A Memoir of Redemption and Rediscovering the Self (eBook)

A Memoir of Redemption and Rediscovering the Self

Jason Portnoy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5445-3219-6 (ISBN)

Infos

From modest roots in the suburbs of New Jersey, Jason Portnoy followed a script carefully crafted by society and found himself in the middle of the PayPal Mafia, launched into a Silicon Valley career of wealth and prestige he never dreamed of. Stock options, flashy cars, an amazing family. On the outside, his life looked perfect, but unhealed traumas from his past left him tortured, descending into a dark world of pornography and sex that eventually pushed him to the edge. In Silicon Valley Porn Star, Jason willingly shares his personal transformation from a life of extramarital affairs and superficial excess to one of chosen values and renewed relationships. His journey sheds light on a crisis of masculinity in our modern world, where quests for unlimited power and success are gateways to addiction, dependency, and unhinged behavior. No matter your profession or position in life, Jason's story will inspire you to look within and find your own path toward success, fulfillment, and becoming the man you truly want to be.

Textauszug

The Wake-Up Call

“Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.”

—Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

February 2015

The ringer on my phone is loud enough to wake me up, and it scares the shit out of me. It’s early on a Saturday morning. I never get calls at this hour, and I don’t recognize the number. Something isn’t right. My heart races. “Hello?”

“Where is my daughter?”

The woman’s voice is raspy, unfamiliar to me. And who is her daughter? I’m confused and groggy. “Uh…who is this?”

“This is Lisa’s mother. I know she was with you last night. Where is she?”

Unmistakable anger rises in her voice as she speaks. Fear creeps into my room.

I bolt upright. A sliver of light shines through the drapes and casts a line across the bed, as if pointing to the empty space where my wife usually sleeps. I stare at the vacant side of the bed, awake, yet not quite comprehending what’s happening.

Flashing back to the night before, I see myself waiting at the hotel, pacing, repeatedly checking my phone, trying not to get aggravated. Lisa arrived two hours late.

I’ve become so good at lying by now that I already know what to say: You have the wrong number. I don’t know any Lisa. But deep inside, I knew I was caught. Denial would just make things worse. Besides, what if something bad really did happen to Lisa?

“I’m sorry.” I clear my throat. “I don’t know where she is. She told me she was going to a club with friends last night. Maybe check with one of them?”

“You are the last person she was with.” She distinctly pronounces each syllable, almost in staccato. “And now, she is not here. I know where you live, Jason. I know where you work. If something has happened to her, I will find you.”

The line goes dead.

A wave of panic comes over me. Fear isn’t just in my room now, it has climbed into my bed and fused into every cell in my body. Slowly, the realization that I won’t be able to control this sinks in. I have gone too far this time. I know nothing about these people.

I try to slow my breathing, but I can’t. I am alone and I am frightened. I stare at my phone, but I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t tell anyone about this. Nobody.

Actually, there is one person who already knows a lot of my secrets. She’s the only person I can be honest with about this, and she’ll know how to help me. I send a text message to my life coach: I’m having an emergency. Can you talk?

Immediately my brain switches gears. It races to calculate a fix, tries to spin a way to explain things to make them sound less bad than they are. I turn sideways on the bed to open the drapes and let in more light. Outside the world looks distant, like I’m suddenly viewing it from an alternate reality. The silence of the room presses against my ears. How am I going to get out of this?

A few minutes later, my cell rings, startling me again. I hope it is my life coach, but it’s the unknown number from before.

“Hello?” I try to sound polite.

“Lisa just came home.” The woman’s voice is low and shaking. She speaks slowly, angrily. “What did you do with her?”

“I didn’t do anything with her,” I lie.

“That is not what she said.”

“What did she say?” I ask. What could she have said?

“You have defiled her!” She yells the accusation. “She told me everything. She told me what you did to her. She is devastated. She was a pure woman. I am going to find you.”

I jump out of bed. What the hell? This woman is wrong. Granted, I had wanted to have sex with Lisa the night before, but she’d said no. We fooled around a little, but no sex took place. I certainly hadn’t defiled her.

“I swear to you.” I pace my words, trying to control my shaking voice. “I did not have sex with your daughter.”

“I will take her to the doctor, and we will see.”

The line goes dead again.

Once more, I stare at my phone, then look out the window, feeling powerless. Already I know Anne Marie will find out about this. She’ll be so hurt. After everything we’ve been through, how could I do this to her? Shame washes over me. The room spins.

My breath comes in shorter and shorter. Something wasn’t right about any of this, but in slowly dawning dread, I realize how stupid, and possibly dangerous it was to try to do anything with Lisa in the first place. I knew she lived with her mother. She didn’t have a car, which created logistical issues when we’d tried to hook up. But really, I knew nothing else about her, except that it was very possible she knew where I lived. That meant her mother could send someone over to beat the shit out of me.

My phone blinks with a text message. My life coach, Melissa. Thank god she is an early riser.

Good morning. Yes, you can call me.

I dial immediately. Yes, please rescue me, I think.

“Hi. What’s happening?” Her typically cheery voice has a hint of concern. This is the first time in five years of coaching that I’ve contacted her with an emergency.

“I’m not exactly sure.” I pace the room, staring at the floor. Fear forces words out of me in a rush, faster than my brain can try to fix the situation. “Last night I did something I shouldn’t have. I met up with a girl. Anne Marie and Maya are out of town. I swear nothing bad happened, but I just got a call from the girl’s mother telling me she is going to come after me. She knows where I work.”

Melissa is quiet. I wait in anxious anticipation. I don’t expect sympathy from her; that’s not her style. She will hold me accountable.

“Where are you right now?” she eventually asks.

“I’m at home.” I pause, then add, “I’m scared.”

“Do they know where you live?”

“They might. I met Lisa at the gym. She’s the receptionist. My address would be in their records, but I don’t know if she has access to them.”

“I think you need to find out if they have your address.”

My brain starts to come back online. Yes, right. Of course. That sounds like a good first step. “I can call the gym. Maybe speak with the owner.” My voice trails off. The implications of my words are clear to me immediately: this will not remain a secret.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Melissa says.

We hang up, and I return to the bed where I sit, motionless, staring out the window. I can’t keep living like this. I’ve known that for a while. The lies have been eating away at me for a long time. It needs to end. All of it.

Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to dial the gym. It is a small local place. I’m not close with the owners, but I know them well enough to say hello if we pass in the hallway. And from now on, every time they look at me, they will think about how I hooked up with their receptionist. I feel the embarrassment welling up inside me before anyone even answers the phone.

After a brief moment on hold, I’m connected with one of the owners and I tell her what is happening. Although I fumble my words and don’t give her gory details, she learns enough to know I hung out with Lisa last night, and now her mother is threatening to come after me. She listens quietly and, thankfully, keeps the conversation on a professional level.

“Interestingly, Lisa was on the schedule for yesterday and never came in,” she says, which surprises me. “She didn’t even call out or anything. It’s not the first time that’s happened, and I was planning to fire her on Monday.”

“Oh, wow,” was all I could muster. That was a bit of a relief. “But did she have access to membership records? Is it possible she knows my address?”

“No, not to that information. Only your name and photo pop up on the monitor when you check in, so that’s all she would see.”

“Okay, great, thank you.” There is an awkward pause. I feel like I have to say more to fill in the empty space. “Listen, I’m really embarrassed about—”

“We don’t need to go there,” she interrupts. “Your life isn’t any of my business.”

“Oh, well, thanks again.”

“Just one more thing,” she says before we hang up. “You might consider going to the police.”

Alarm bells go off in my head. The police! Hell no!

I try to sound unfazed. “Why do you say that?”.

“I don’t think the woman Lisa calls her ‘mother’ is really her mom,” she says. “There’s something fishy about them. Be careful.”

“Do you think I should be scared?” The fear bubbles up again.

“No, no. I don’t think they’re dangerous. But if she calls again, think about getting the police involved. I have a feeling that would scare them away.”

I thank the owner, and she wishes me luck. As I click off the call, I realize that going to the police isn’t such a bad idea after all. I can’t tell anyone else about what is happening, and I’ve committed no crime. If I’m worried about the “mother” coming after me, the police may have good advice.

I decide that I have nothing to lose, Google the local police non-emergency number, and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.6.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-5445-3219-9 / 1544532199
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5445-3219-6 / 9781544532196