Hollie Stevens is a futurist.
“I am going to have the Best Set of Titties Ever,” she says at Kink.com’s Armory headquarters in San Francisco, where she is waiting to don a wig and take off everything else for a cam show. “But I have to get through the chemo first.”
Stevens was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after her 29th birthday this January. “My friend Mandy was feeling up my boobies and noticed something,” she says. “It’s not the worst way to find out you have cancer.”
Stevens, who will be the guest of honor and beneficiary of a Lingerie Roller Skating party thrown by her friend January Seraph on July 29, was at first hesitant about letting people know her diagnosis.
“No one wants to jerk to that,” she thought, but soon decided “I’m not going to be ashamed about it.
“The reason I got into porn is because I don’t care what people think of me,” she says.
But she does make a couple of concessions, both to her fans and to the cancer, which leaves her feeling weak, especially immediately after bi-weekly chemo sessions.
“For one thing, I can’t wrestle anymore, which I miss (Stevens is a star of Kink’s Ultimate Surrender site), and I put on a wig when I go on camera.”
But at 5’9″, the dominating Stevens looks good bald.
“I’ll be at a club and some guy will go up to my friend and ask about the ‘hot bald girl’ and she’ll just say, ‘That’s Hollie, she has cancer.’ It gives us a little room.”
It was August, 2010, when her friend noticed the lump. But Stevens was about to embark on a 36-state road trip.
“Then it was Halloween, and then it was Thanksgiving, and then it was Christmas and AVN,” Stevens says. “And I didn’t really pay attention. I went in for a Depo (Provera) birth control shot after my birthday, and the lump was big. {When the lab results) came back, the doctor said, ‘Do you have anyone here with you?’ and I was like, ‘No,’ and he told me I had breast cancer, and I just went into the bathroom and screamed.
“But I got a hold of myself. I’m tough.”
Stevens receives chemotherapy every other Monday, and will until the beginning of August.
“Monday afternoon I’m fine. I get all my stuff done. Then I go to bed and I wake up the next morning like a fucking truck hit me. I go to the bathroom every two hours. I tell my friends not to call me for a couple of days.”
I meet Stevens on a non-chemo week. We walk a mile or so up and down hills to dinner (with Laura Laskey of Solace SF) and she doesn’t break a sweat. Other than there being more real estate on her scalp, the only noticeable difference is that her voice is scratchier.
“But I get restless at the same time I get tired,” she says. “My doctor tells me I shouldn’t do too much, so I’m kind of stuck. My friends say I should do yoga, but yoga is for pussies.”
Stevens does try to slow down and occupy her time with arts and crafts, and has plans to custom-build a Hitachi Magic Wand.
“I want to fill the inside of mine with those little plastic army guys so they can battle for my vagina,” she writes on her blog.
On the second floor of the Armory, Stevens gets into some lingerie, adjusts a wig that looks just like her old hair (“it’s made from humans,” she says) and spreads herself out on a bed in one of Kink’s several cam studios.
“I hide the BDSM shit before my session,” she says, referring to industrial-grade sex toys that she doesn’t have the strength or inclination for. “I just have a nice Hitachi ready and I tell people that I’m a domme. It’s easier being mean.”
And the people logging in to her cam show seem to like it.
“I could make you my sub,” writes one.
“Oh no you couldn’t,” says Stevens.
Stevens believes she will have a mastectomy in late August, after which she will have reconstructive surgery. I can’t know what it is like as a woman or as a porn performer to lose two such charming and valuable companions.
“When I got diagnosed,” she says, “I accepted that this year was gonna suck. I’ve gone in with low expectations and I’m pretty happy with how everyone has responded and how I don’t feel like shit all of the time—only some of the time. But I’m gonna get a new pair of boobs out of this, and that’s pretty rad.”
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Hollie Stevens needs help bitch-slapping cancer; January Seraph, your kinky friend; Enter the Adrianaconda
See also: Hollie Stevens
Hollie, I wish you well and hope that you can beat cancer and come back to porn full time if you want to continue. Good luck in whatever you choose to do.
Wow, this is a bsd year for Kink’s talent health-wise. There was another cancer diagnosis regarding one of the Upper Floor’s stewards earlier this year. I certainly hope no more cancer hits Kink’s talent this year.
“Gossip columnist”?
Thank you Gram, for such a nice article on Hollie’s behalf.
I hate to admit it, but I have a “baldie” fetish and fucking love her bald head…