The Seduction of Jade

I've been over things in my head a thousand times in the last ten years with everything that involves her. It's a little hard not to overthink everything that's happened with all the traveling I do for work. There isn't really anyone I can discuss this with like the next UFC pay-per-view with the guys at the bar.

So, while this may seem like a twenty-first century confessional, it's more than that. For me, it's the letting go of my story dealing what happens when your heart, your mind, and your rather lustful desires all run roughshod over your common sense. Before I forget, I guess I should at least introduce myself.

I was born Derrick Daniel Morris to a hell and brimstone country preacher and his very submissive, younger wife in a place that was somewhere in the middle of nowhere, that you'd need a GPS and directions on how to find it just to get there. After thoroughly disappointing the old man, I moved out on my own and never looked back.

Almost as mandated in this kind of tale, I made my way out to the left coast in search of making it big. Hindsight being what it is, I wish I could go back and have a good ass chewing with that younger version of me. I might still have turned out a bit twisted, but I doubt I would be less innocent then I am now. I can laugh about it today though. It is a good part of the reason I have the salt and pepper beard I do at forty. I deal with it by considering it a badge of honor gained by surviving the war of life we face every day.

It was the nineties and a strange time in L.A. If you've ever had to deal in the business of make believe, regardless of the medium, you might be able to understand what I mean. The music scene was in flux when I was there. Big hair was crashing and burning on the strip. Grunge was losing it's counter culture faster then bands were losing members to overdoses. Gangster rap was claiming talent in Hollywood drivebys, it was just a mixed pot of coming and going influences.

I became friends while I was out there with a young vocalist that was on the next wave of what was going to be the next big sound in the music industry, rockrap. And it would be king until Fred Durst killed it at Woodstock, but that's a different story. Back to my reason for telling you this, at the time I had scored a pretty decent camera and started going to my friend's gigs with it to show my support and to try and get laid by saying I was with the band.

I know, I know, but I was twenty something and had a healthy sex drive. The girls used me to get closer to him and I felt it was only fair play to act as a gatekeeper to the band. That was what I told myself in my head anyway. At that point if I could get a nut off in a drunk groupie that I would never see again, I was fine with it. I'd take pictures and make them feel special. Oh, the table top book I could make with those old shots. But I digress.

At some point I managed to get a video camera and started to film the shows. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and being in L.A. I was going to direct as funny as that sounds now. I was surprisingly good at it. I eventually went to school for a piece of paper that said I was good. It had more to do with doing it day in and day out for months watching his band get bigger and bigger crowds at the shows then anything they taught in the classroom. I'm just a more hands on learning kind of guy it turns out.

As the band got more of the spotlight, the venues, the groupies, the drugs... they all got better. The guys actually got a budget of sorts and asked me to do the first official video for their first big song. It was an honor and a pain in the ass all at the same time. Now there were deadlines and artistic vision, that made me laugh if I remember it correctly. We made it happen though. And it actually made it onto the former channel that played music videos at some point before birthing the genre of reality TV garbage.

And my career as a videographer was pretty well cemented. I started to do other bands, commercials for companies that wanted that edgy vibe of the young, dumb kids that had money to burn and nothing else to spend it on, and some fashion designers that wanted their new lines out but not necessarily on the runway.

It was a great time. And then it came crashing to a horrible end when the touring van, driving from one gig to the next, got into an accident and my best friend of now many years, died in the rollover. I got the phone call that night and to this day, I've never really gotten over it.

I took it harder then I thought. I had done a private event for a swingers club a few months prior to the accident and the members loved the video. I had been given the golden ticket if you will and could come back any time I wanted. I never thought I would use it, but I needed a distraction, and what better way then sex, sex, a few drugs, and more sex to lose yourself in? I always enjoyed the touch, the smell, the taste of a woman and in this enclave of horny, beautiful woman with nothing better to do while their CEO husbands were busy making money, I was welcomed with open arms, among other, more inviting things.

My work though started to suffer in quality and after a while even quantity. I knew I had to get out of the whole Los Angeles thing and get my head back on straight or I'd end up shooting porn for Vivid or something. I'm not knocking the porn industry, but the dope man doesn't use his own product and knowing I was very much a sex addict at this point, that wasn't going to be a good career move for me.

My cousin had an appartment out in Indianapolis and told me I could crash there for a while and get my head straight after he heard about the accident. After I woke up one morning with two very decent wannabe-star waitresses in bed with me from the local dinner and I had no idea what either one of there names were, I knew I needed to leave L.A. for good.

I grabbed my stuff and got on the first iron pimp out of the City of Angels. It was a long trip to Indy. I only knew my cousin out there and even though it wasn't the media make believe capital of the world, the thought of starting over in a quickly growing big city certainly had its appeal.

And, ultimately, it's where this story gets started with what you're really here to read about. Isn't it? I mean, it is, afterall, where quite randomly the seduction of Jade started.