After arriving, Strong hung out with the couple, partying, laughing, enjoying their company. Having planned a staycation that weekend, they’d gotten a suite. Hearts and Raven were at the Roosevelt socializing with porn industry friends. Located on Hollywood Boulevard, the place is a classic high-low Los Angeles staple: Marilyn Monroe used to live there, Lindsay Lohan used to drink there, and outside on the sidewalk homeless men sprawl while Johnny Depp impersonators duel for tourists’ attention. The weekend after Valentine’s Day, Hearts invited Strong to the Roosevelt Hotel. “You’re my girls,” he liked to tell the women, according to Raven and Hearts. She takes dope-ass pictures,” Strong says. “Nikki does great fucking photography work. Strong recalls Hearts sending him funny Snapchat clips and photos she took. On set at the gangbang, Strong and Hearts exchanged numbers and stayed in touch. They are pretty - different pretty! They are unique.” I love the relationship they have with each other. “I really, really, really liked ,” he reiterates in our interview. Noticing the carefully orchestrated design of tattoos covering nearly her entire body, Strong told Raven he loved the ink. Hearts showed up on set with Raven, Strong tells me. One performer said she received $2,500 for her first interracial scene - $1,500 more than her typical rate. Studios typically pay white women more to have sex with black men on camera. Tobias Kohler, likens the condition to “a heart attack of the penis.” It could have ended Strong’s porn career, but he recovered slowly and returned to work.Įarlier this year, Strong starred in an interracial gangbang alongside Hearts. In an emergency procedure, a doctor administered anesthesia and drained blood from Strong’s penis with needles. Moreover, in 2016 Strong suffered what he calls a “dick injury” - the erectile-dysfunction drug Caverject had given him priapism, his painful erection lasting 19 hours. Like most porn stars, Strong’s pay has declined (slightly, he says) thanks to the popularity of free tube sites. Without appearing alongside Strong, he suggests, “You’re not a girl who can say she’s a star doing interracial.”īut it’s no longer the mid-2000s. “People don’t even recognize you in porn unless you work with Rico,” he tells me in a phone interview. Over time, Strong became one of the most prominent African-American male porn stars of the Bush era. He began shooting porn at age 18 to support his mother and grandmother, and within a few months he was pulling in $100,000 a year, he says. A 14-year veteran of the porn business, he had earned a reputation for professionalism and a sense of humor. Raven and Hearts had always liked Rico Strong. “Oh, my God, what just happened?” she cried out, according to Hearts. Raven, head shorn, heavily tattooed, burst into tears. “What’s wrong?” Hearts asked as they drove down the 101 Freeway. Hearts chatted with Strong for a couple minutes, the actor happy to be done with a six-hour shoot, and looking forward to decompressing with his candied vodka.Īfter they said goodbye, the two women drove off into the night. As Hearts passed him the bag of gummies, Raven got into the small red car and sat silently. Some 20 minutes later, Raven and Strong emerged together from behind a barred door. Hearts finished her panel, picked up the chewy candy, and drove to the industrial porn studio. She had worked and socialized with Strong before, and knew he had a habit of dropping gummie candy into his vodka. “Bring ya black daddy gummie bears please and ya smile.” “We good,” Strong texted when Hearts asked if all was well with Raven and the shoot. So she contacted Rico Strong, Raven’s male costar. Leigh should be done by now, she thought. The woman she’d married, fellow porn star Leigh Raven, was shooting a scene in the Valley, and Hearts hadn’t heard from her. Early this March, Nikki Hearts was preparing to speak on a sex-positivity panel in Los Angeles when a bad feeling hit her.
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