The Annotated Ela Darling

This interview could be described as "footnotes," as I was conscripted to rub Ela Darling’s feet during our entire conversation. She was blistered and bruised from wearing heels all day at the 2015 AEE Expo. Heels don’t fit her. Ela’s feet are more accustomed to slipping into cowboy boots, or curling up beneath a thick book, or being salivated over in a fetish film.

Ela is stacked like a loaded bookshelf—at least in the sense that her personality encompasses volumes. Her geeky proclivities include all the usual subjects: Dungeons & Dragons, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Ninja Turtles, comic conventions, cosplay. However, her overactive mental life doesn’t diminish her attraction to the carnal. In fact, her love of all things intellectual borders on a sexual fetish.

Like many porn stars, Ela dabbled in cheerleading as a child. Of course she was probably the only cheerleader to be in the sci-fi club, the chess club, the spelling team, and the National Honor Society. She also could have been president of the Sapphic Society, as she started conducting extracurricular experimenting with other girls in seventh grade.

To balance her days pursuing a degree in Forensic Psychology from the University of Texas at Dallas, Ela joined the sideshow troupe, Circus della Morte, which led to some alternative modeling. At 21 she graduated with a Master’s in Library Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ela went from juggling classes and several jobs to a 35-hour work week as the Associate Director and Head of Reference for her local library. Needing more stimulation, Ela started modeling and performing in soft-core fetish videos in 2009. This led to her first solo sex scene for Kink’s fuckingmachines.com. She eventually moved to LA with her then husband. Knowing it would be difficult to land a library job, she started working in adult full time as a fetish and girl/girl performer.

Alfie: DarlingEla.com's tagline is, “Pretty Porn for Smart People.” What about your pornographic style appeals to the intellect?

Ela Darling: Everything I do is inherently a bit nerdy. I think that has wide intellectual appeal. I used to be a librarian. That bleeds through into everything I do. The things I tend to think and talk about while jerking off, for example, are just nerdy shit. I started jerking off when I was studying in college, so I jerk off to like textbooks, science journals, articles—things like that.

Alfie: Did you jerk off to textbooks or just while reading them?

Ela Darling: Both, especially to the really exceptional, interesting parts. When authors write in a way that is very much their own voice--oh my God! I have a scientist fetish!

Alfie: Who’s your favorite scientist?

Ela Darling: Mary Anning is one of my favorite scientists. She is a paleontologist. She discovered the plesiosaur. She would walk along the beach and find fossils. All the paleontologists wrote her off because science was seen as the province of men of noble birth. She totally just busted up in there and discovered fucking dinosaurs and shit and they had to recognize that this woman was entirely capable of keeping up with them, or surpassing them. It was hot. I would totally fuck her if she were alive today.

Alfie: Do you think there will be a library dedicated to collecting and cataloguing porn?

Ela Darling: Many libraries have a porn collection. There is at least one library that has an entire porn collection. I imagine the Museum of Sex has a pretty expansive collection.

Alfie: You recently started doing boy/girl scenes. What is the biggest difference between working with a women and men?

Ela Darling: About eight inches… It’s just a lot different. Part of it is less taxing to do boy/girl because the dude is doing a lot of the work, whereas when you are doing girl/girl it’s very equal. I like doing girl/girl better because I really love pussy. I love doing boy/girl too but it’s—I don’t know. It’s just more fun doing girl/girl.

Alfie: How did you become roommates with Annie Cruz?

Ela Darling: I met her at a wrestling shoot when I first started porn. We hung out at the very first AVN Awards I ever went to. She didn’t have a room and I didn’t have a ride back to LA. So we met up. We went on a date to see Penn & Teller. She was all butched out in her fucking punk rock gear and I was all femmed out in a corset and lace and heels. We made out the whole night so I knew what was going to happen when we came back to my hotel room, but I’m really awkward and weird about sealing the deal, so I was like, “Hey Annie, I bet you can’t make me squirt.” Thirty seconds later the bed was soaked. Thank God we had two beds in the room. Then I was like, “Hey Annie, I bet you can’t fist me.” And that’s the story of how I first got fisted, and also how I got to be very close with my future roommate. Last year we were both going through a divorce, so we were both in a place where we needed a place to live. I was like, “Hey Bitch, let’s live together.” And we do, and I love it. She is amazing.

Alfie: I was going to ask what's the craziest thing that has happened between the two of you after a few shots of Jägermeister, but it sounds like…

Ela Darling: Oh my God, we have a Jager tap in our apartment. She and her boyfriend are down. They’re into some shit. It is hot, but I haven’t fucked them. I think it would be weird. He’s in big brother space for me.

Alfie: You were in Tanya Tate’s Cospay Queens and Tied up Teens, and you signed with her company, Star Factory PR. As someone who capitalizes on the crossover between cosplay and porn, what has Tate taught you about marketing your nerdiness?

Ela Darling: I really admire her hustle. She is excellent at promoting and being her brand. It’s something I struggle with when I go to my nerd conventions because that is like where I grew up. Some of my best friends in LA are friends I met at Harry Potter gatherings. Conventions used to be the place I went to not be a porn star, and she taught me the benefit of embracing your porn personas in those scenarios. She is such a bad ass. She is so honest about the fandom. She doesn’t pretend that she is into fucking everything because you can’t be into everything. You can’t be a hardcore fan over everything. You have to specialize.

Alfie: Speaking of specialization, you seem to be into most every kind of fandom imaginable.

Ela Darling: I’m not a gamer. I mean, I’m a tabletop gamer. Like I go to e3 but I don’t play a lot of video games. It’s disappointing to some fans. They want me to be their flavor of geek and I don’t want to be disingenuous. If you’re going to be a porn star marketing yourself to the geek fandom, you need to be fucking legit. You need to be real. Just be a person. You don’t have to be a brand all the time.

Alfie: Speaking of brands, on your Instagram, @eladarling, you have a lot of pictures of Shiner Beer. Why no Lonestar?

Ela Darling: Oh man. Ouch. Because Shiner is in my heart. I’m a Shiner girl. My favorite is not even being made anymore. It’s Shiner Smokehouse. It’s smoky and delicious. Oh my God dude, I would jerk off to that beer. It is making me horny right now just thinking about it.

Alfie: The first thing I do when I go back to Texas is get Texas beer--

Ela Darling: Me too. In the airport or on the way home. Usually my parents have Shiner waiting for me. I grew up in Denton, Texas, but my parents are in Austin now.

Alfie: You have a yellow rose tattoo on your back. Have you ever danced at The Yellow Rose in Austin?

Ela Darling: No, I actually don’t dance. I have no balance or grace. Maybe if I could do it without wearing heels.

Alfie: You could do a nerdy dance, like the robot, but naked.

Ela Darling: That would be not very sexy, but also kind of sexy. Heels are my downfall. I don’t know how I’m going to get back to my hotel because those shoes are not going back on my feet. I’m going to do the drunk girl walk, holding my heels.

Alfie: Strippers in Portland are pretty hipster. I noticed a lot of them didn’t wear heels.

Ela Darling: Yeah, but it’s fucking Portland. Granola strippers.

Alfie: I thought you’d be into that?

Ela Darling: I am actually. I love women who embrace their sexuality. I think it is awesome and sexy and fucking commendable. I want them on my face. I just like to talk shit.

Alfie: Which is your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?

Ela Darling: Honestly Michelangelo is my favorite, but I cosplay as Raphael.

Alfie: Raphael. No one likes Raphael. He’s so ornery.

Ela Darling: I feel like I could fuck some happy into Raphael.

Alfie: No. He wouldn’t be satisfied. You just like a challenge.

Ela Darling: You’re right. I used to have such a big crush on Michelangelo. I didn’t like boys, but I liked Michelangelo.

Alfie: You have a collection of interesting necklaces: a rocket ship, machine gun, an owl today. A beetle.

Ela Darling: Oh no, the beetle got crushed. Ringo. He’s dead. Ringo, the jewel beetle was one of my favorites. I got it at the natural history museum. They have a bug fair every year. It’s my jewelry buying event of the year. I also got a really cool reticulated python vertebrae necklace. I bought a backup because I always lose shit. But I held onto it for over a year, so I gave my backup to a friend for her birthday. Fucking a week later I lost the python vertebrate necklace on set. My favorite necklaces are the ones I lose.

Alfie: Considering you have the Dewey Decimal number from Harry Potter tattooed on your back, what is your favorite book, other than Harry Potter?

Ela Darling: Harry Potter is my favorite series, but my favorite book is called Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It’s fucking hilarious. It’s clever, it’s witty, and it’s about the apocalypse.

Alfie: Is your Pomeranian, Gonzo, named after Hunter S. Thompson’s journalistic style or the Muppets' character?

Ela Darling: It’s a trifecta. It’s those two and also porn. His full name is MC Gonzo Gwandoya Ghettoblaster Salinger: The Zombinator.

Alfie: Why MC? Does he control the mic?

Ela Darling: Because he drops a mad beat.

Alfie: What are you doing with the Oculus Rift?

Ela Darling: Facebook bought Oculus last year for a fuck-ton of money. So I’m starting a porn company called VRtube.xxx. We are doing virtual reality. 360 degree porn. The company will launch in the spring. We are starting out with a lot of solos of girls.

Alfie: Are you in need of some 3D videos of a guy in a onesie doing interpretive dancing?

Ela Darling: Suddenly yes. I can’t imagine what else anyone would want to see in 3D. Do you know a guy?

Alfie: I do. He has some moves. It’s no barefooted stripper doing the robot, but he can boogie.

See Ela Darling’s explicit body of work at DarlingEla.com and check out her ventures into virtual reality at vrtube.xxx.

Read more by Alfie and email him through shawnalff.com