Teagan Presley

In their latest issue, the Penthouse Pet of the Month was adult-film star Teagan Presley. The photos were very good, reminding me of how much I admire her work (as well as how she looks). I have done some careful research the last few weeks, taking a look at some of her films that I have in my collection (she's made over 100, so I have to be selective).

Though she is a wee lass, five-feet tall and 100 pounds, Teagan has a dancer's build, with long, coltish legs. Her background is as a dancer and gymnast. She grew up in the suburbs of Houston and moved to San Diego as a teenager, and to exact revenge against an ex-boyfriend, embarked on a career in porn. She has been in the business since 2004, but seems to me as if she's been a mainstay a lot longer than that.

I first saw her in my duties as a reviewer in a video called "Cum Drippers 6," and I was immediately hooked. She was nineteen then, and had that fresh-off-the-bus look that is very appealing. The director, Vince Vouyer, talks with her before the scene, and there is the sense that if he says the wrong thing she may bolt out the door.

Since then she has become a big star, and is a contract girl for a company called Digital Playground. This means that she works exclusively for that company, and instead of being paid by the scene, she earns a (considerable) salary and makes a certain number of films over the course of the year. Digital Playground has used her primarily in two ways--in their "Jack's Teen America" series, which normally has girls in faux schoolgirl outfits, competing for a mythical beauty pageant title, or their line of tony prestige pictures. Most of these have lots of slow-motion footage, ersatz classical music soundtracks, and soft-focus photography. The best example of this line is "Island Fever 4," which sent Teagan, among other performers, to the island of Bali to have sex on the beach. Mostly these scenes looked uncomfortable to me, what with the sand, the girls perching on rocks, or the woman standing on one foot, having coitus as if she were a flamingo.

Teagan has transformed herself over her career. She has, by visual evidence, undergone some surgical procedures, most notably a breast job that turned acceptable but relatively small mammaries into full, round and seemingly rock-hard appendages. They look like two pounds of sand in a one-pound bag, and while a lot of aficionados find these changes appalling, they apparently add to a performer's appeal in the larger sense, since these girls keeping having them. But beyond the boob-job, Teagan just seems to have a harder edge than her early days. One of my favorite scenes of hers is in "Surfer Girls," where she has a wonderful, sweet, college-girl appeal. But when I met her at the erotic convention last September there was nothing fresh about her--she looked like a girl who had wandered out of a strip club. She's still an amazingly beautiful woman, but the business she's in has taken a certain toll.