Pornstar Interview: Ashley Fires – Big Wet Ass, Warm Heart
Ashley Fires lights up the screen, then hoses it down. Surely it is more than being comfortable with her clothes off, right? Right. Because everyone in Porn Valley has a crush on Ashley Fires.
If porn piracy has revealed anything to me, personally, it has been the difference between a porn star and someone who happens to be naked on camera. The other day I was on the set of a movie and the director was searching a tube site (yes, he was buttering his bread with the same that is stabbing him in the back, and other convenient metaphors) for an actress who might be a last-minute fill-in for someone whose grandmother had died for the third time.
We crouched over his phone to watch several low-lit, squishy fumblings in the dark: women with pained, listless, or wildly overcompensating expressions paired with dudes hammering away in 30-second bursts.
This would have suited me when I was 12 (the Delia’s catalog suited me when I was 12), but now I?m spoiled (which is not to be confused with desensitized).
‘Too bad Ashley Fires isn’t in town,’ I said.
‘Oh, Ashley Fires,’ he said.
I think: I haven’t talked with Ashley Fires in while, and now she’s on the cover of Big Wet Asses 23. Let’s make something happen.
It’s a Friday night and she is in a just-about-to-be-closed mall in New Hampshire and I am in San Francisco. We’ve postponed the call a few times and then I reach her, expecting to have my ear filled with sunshine. ‘Hi,’ she says.
This is Ashley Fires, who is so delightful and generous to fans, who is so giving and warm, and she’s answering the phone with a brusque ‘Hi.’
Not ‘Oh Hi, Grams!’
Just ‘Hi.’
And readers: I’m touched. Because she’s allowing herself to show her annoyance at having to do an interview at 8:30 on a Friday night, and sharing this unguarded moment with her dear friend, Gram.
I know what’s up. I’ve heard this tone before. I’ve been married to this tone.
‘Would you like me to call back in 15 minutes?’ I say.
‘Yes!’ she says, all that familiar brightness returned. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because I’m a grown-ass man,’ I say, dropping the mic.
Fires and her husband live in New Hampshire, the only other state in the U.S. where it is legal to shoot porn. And while they shoot some material there for AshleyFires.com, Fires makes several trips a year to L.A., San Francisco, and Vegas, where the bulk of the porn work is.
When I get her back on the phone (she is now between the Cinnabon and the Abercrombie & Fitch), we talk about porn’s slow migration from L.A. and the style she has evolved in a porn career that started in 2003.
Gram: The condom fight in California is making some companies head to Las Vegas, where it is not technically legal to shoot porn, but where there’s a more permissive, much less litigious atmosphere. What if porn companies move to New Hampshire? What would that look like in a few years?
Fires: I don’t suppose the granite-head New Hampshirites, even though it’s a blue state, would adjust very well. There’s still a lot of close-mindedness here. Culturally it would be unfathomable. We were looking for a studio recently (in New Hampshire) and were about to close on it when I opened up my big dumb mouth and said what it would be used for. So remember that porn is legal here. And then the guy said ‘No.’
Gram: I remember talking with Jesse Jane about living in Oklahoma. She said that the inconvenience of living in a different state from where the brunt of her job was was more than compensated for by separating the two.
Fires: I definitely have my game face on when I come to Los Angeles. But I also appreciate it more.
Gram: At this point in your career, can you size up your partners a mile away?
Fires: Most of the time. You can never tell if someone has just had an off day. But with someone like Erik Everhard who I worked with on Big Wet Asses 23 (directed by Toni Ribas) he was and is always so generous. He cared if I came! I’m lying on my back with my ass hanging out over the couch, grabbing my ankles. It was great. Some guys treat you like a paycheck.
Gram: I’ve never heard a female porn performer say that. It’s usually the men who talk about feeling like a paycheck. Tommy Gunn told me once that he’s worked with several women who didn’t bother to learn his name.
Fires: Well that is tragic! Some days I’ll meet a [scene partner] and say, ‘I shaved my legs for this? He’s not even paying attention.’ But I’ve worked with a lot of people at this point. I showed up on set one day and introduced myself to this guy and he said, ‘You totally gave me a handjob six years ago.’
Gram: On or off set?
Fires: That’s what I said! It was in a movie. I was mortified!
Gram: I think the ability to be mortified now and then is a good sign.
Fires: Yes. It says you’re human.
Gram: So if you meet a guy who isn’t in the moment, have you evolved some methods to coaxing a good scene out of him?
Fires: Oh yeah. You don’t want to get right down to the wire and find the guy is an asshole. I’ll go up to him and say, ‘Will you help me? I should really warm up on your dick.’
Gram: I would max out my credit card and buy you a Camero for that.
Fires: Yes. It’s a nice flirty icebreaker. What people don’t understand is that this is a job, and even though everyone knows you’re eventually going to be fucking, you sometimes have to get the ball rolling. There’s a lot of teenagers out there!
Gram: And what must you teach a teenager?
Fires: That I am not in my early 20’s. I’m peaking. I’ve got to let them know it?s OK to be flirty. I’ve got to carry the horny with me.
Gram: May the horny be with you. Always.
