Life Back (eBook)

...for More, from Loss, to Less Is More

Lisa Ann (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
Lioncrest Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-5445-2298-2 (ISBN)

Infos

This is the story of life after The Life. In December of 2014, Lisa Ann announced her retirement from the adult entertainment industry. She released her first book, The Life, in December of 2015. On New Year's Eve, she received a phone call threatening her life-a call that came from inside her own home. For Lisa Ann, this was only the beginning of a terrifying year that would spiral completely out of control. In public, she was still entertaining her fans and maintaining her persona on her wildly popular Fantasy Sports Radio shows. In private, she descended through layer after layer of depression, isolation, fear, and darkness. But the more her life contracted physically-as she retreated into the small, quiet places where she could feel safe-the more her mind began to open. The force to be still created a silence that gave her room to listen. Room to learn. Room to change. And the chance to break free. The Life Back chronicles her three-year odyssey through terror, chaos, forgiveness-and becoming unstoppable.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

1. #TheAftermath

As we walked through my home with the officers, we started talking about me—my life, people who knew me, and people who might be after me. One of the officers was aware of a Twitter war that I was somewhat one-sidedly involved in.

It was a week after I announced my retirement, while bored at the airport on my way home from my last dance booking. I’d made a bad joke on social media back in December. The joke was based on my theory of women in the industry visiting Dubai. The theory was an industry secret (though not a well-kept one) regarding many women in the industry traveling there to have sex with the sheik and his friends. These were among the highest-paying prostitution jobs for porn stars. As I was scrolling through Instagram, I saw a post from a porn star about betting on camels in Dubai.

On Twitter, I said I bet on other things happening when porn stars visited Dubai.

While I hadn’t made the post specific to anyone and had made the comment on a completely separate social media platform, none of that mattered. I had ignited a war. No one wanted to talk about prostitution in the industry being a real thing. Once the person who posted about betting on camels on Instagram found out about my tweet, everyone got involved, and the social media bandwagon fueled the fire. When I realized the extent of the potential damage from this land mine, I reached out and apologized to the person in question. I didn’t need to have a beef with anyone. My apology was from a place of taking the path of least resistance as opposed to standing my ground over a joke, even though I didn’t tag anyone on the tweet. I deleted my tweet and did what I could to mitigate the situation.

But it didn’t matter.

This one-sided war was real, cruel, and very, very personal. The officer who was aware of the situation suggested I file for a restraining order. It was all too evident to him that this event was connected to the Twitter war, his reasoning being that I had lived there for ten years and never had an issue. For the first time, I accepted this situation might not end well––that my lack of better judgment to keep my jokes to myself had turned into something far more serious. Hate is so real and escalates so fast.

“None of this happened to you till the wrong person hated you,” the officer said.

He suggested I document everything that took place from that night onward. The other officers went on to tell me that these online attacks often rallied other fans to do awful things for their favorite stars. Upward of a few million people on the internet had viewed and discussed the beef, and overnight, there was a target on my head. The officers suggested I collect the threatening tweets and build a case for my restraining order. They were helpful and calming—but at the same time, they filled my head with the potential worst-case scenarios, a startling reality check as to the seriousness of my situation.

Once the officers left, my friend and I sat back down on the couch in disbelief. I was still in incredible pain from my surgery, but I decided I was no longer comfortable taking pain pills. I wanted to be alert and ready to handle the next situation that might come our way. My paranoia was at an all-time high, and in my gut, I felt this call was just the beginning. I replayed the conversations with the officers in my head, all the stories and examples of similar situations they had dealt with in the past. I had to face facts: this was not going away. It was only getting worse.

Talk about a wild start to a new year.

During the time this harassment took place, I had to wait at least three weeks to have my post-surgery check-up with my doctor and get medical approval to fly. Normally, I would have been locked in my apartment in New York City, where I have twenty-four-hour-a-day security and feel safe. Unfortunately, New York wasn’t an option. I had to stay at my house in Los Angeles—the same place where someone already knew the setup and location, along with my phone number.

I had just retired from the industry with the hope of leaving the fear of health risks from shooting scenes, late-night fights at clubs, and stalkers behind me, only to realize I had to accept a new level of anxiety—the fear of the unknown, along with the fear for my life. My fear was complicated by the concern that someone wanted to hurt me and get in my head. The “mental warfare” term the officer used stuck with me. He’d said that harassers rarely physically torture someone but instead look to terrorize their targets with mind games, creating high levels of paranoia, fear, and anxiety.

I tried to convince myself no one wanted to physically hurt me, if only to ease my fears. Mental warfare, though? Bring it on. I had been through enough in my life that I knew I could bounce back from this New Year’s Eve experience and live as if nothing was happening.

Or so I thought.

I decided not to talk about my current state of chaos outside my small circle of friends. I waited to see and hear if the story came back to me from anywhere else. I started to speak to a detective, but I also played detective myself. I wrote notes about everything and monitored the social media timelines posting nonstop menacing messages about me.

Over the next couple of days, I received a number of calls, all coming from numbers I didn’t recognize, all with more violent threats. I didn’t answer or call back. I took the detectives’ advice and blocked the numbers. I’ll admit I listened to the messages more than I should have, but I also wanted to see if I recognized the voices.

Then on the sixth day of the new year, I got a call on my cell phone. The caller ID registered from my home phone number again. The thing that caught my eye this time was that it was my old home phone number—the one I’d just changed. Curiosity overruled my common sense, and I answered the call. I planned to stay on the phone as long as I could to see if I recognized the voice as someone I knew in order to help the detective potentially trace the call.

The caller’s first words were threatening and demanding. As he rambled on, it became clear that I didn’t recognize his voice. He proceeded to tell me what a whore I was, that I should fuck him, and that he knew where I was and everything about me.

I’d had enough. I responded with fury. I was running on limited sleep, still in pain, and sick of being violated. I was hostile and responded to him with wise-ass comments. I harassed him in return, telling him he was awful at prank phone calls.

He became irate. Still, I continued my banter with him until he went on a rant, screaming that he planned to kill me. Not buying it, I said, “So, young man, just what do you know about me?”

When he answered, I gasped.

He went through a detailed list. He knew my Social Security number, driver’s license number, and previous addresses. He really did know everything about me. I assumed he was a hacker, so I went online immediately to set up a LifeLock account while he ranted and raved. The call lasted nearly twenty whole minutes. As I was going through the finishing steps of adding my accounts to LifeLock, I asked him what he wanted, and I took notes.

He said, “You have to wire me a million dollars, or I am going to kill this baby on your porch. I am on your porch.” He then said the address. I had lived at that address years ago. I didn’t hear anything in the background—certainly not a baby. With the assumption I might have a hacker on my hands, I knew better than to deny that was my current address.

“Listen,” I said, “my husband and I aren’t home right now. You can kill the baby on our porch, and we will clean it up when we get home, okay? Thanks. And by the way, have a great day!”

He went verbally insane on me. He started screaming about how he had enough information about me to hack all of my money. He promised he would ruin my life and then kill me just for fun. He then said he couldn’t believe I didn’t care about someone killing a baby. His last words into my ear were, “You are a horrible piece of shit. I hope you die!”

Surprisingly, I wasn’t the least bit rattled by the time the call was over. In fact, I was calm. Taking that chance by answering put me at ease for my safety. The guy sounded like some kid trying to fuck with my head, so I took his threats with a huge grain of salt.

My mind was clear. I wrote some notes, finished the setup of my LifeLock account, called my banks to put an alert on my credit, and reached out to the detective assigned to my case.

The officer took my notes and instructed me on what to do next. He and I agreed that someone was going to great lengths to make my life uncomfortable and wanted me to live in fear.

I decided I’d had enough. I would not be taking any more harassing phone calls when my home number showed on the caller ID, and I...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.1.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-5445-2298-3 / 1544522983
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5445-2298-2 / 9781544522982