One morning when she was just 24 years old, Casey Kisses woke up in an intensive trauma unit. “I was in a really bad car accident, which took me six months to recover from,” she recalls. “I spent that time in a wheelchair. I broke my ankle, my clavicle and two ribs. I also lacerated my liver.”
But in the immediate aftermath of the accident, there were no feelings of dread, fear or sadness. Instead, Kisses felt a wave of relief. “Right before that happened, I was working a dead-end job,” she explains. “I was transitioning in the workplace, and I was afraid to come out to my co-workers because I constantly heard them bashing trans women.” Kisses now sees the crash as a catalyst — left temporarily unable to walk, she had no choice but to give up her apartment in Miami (close to her hometown of Hollywood, Florida) and move to her aunt’s cottage in Panama City, where she was given her first month rent-free.
It was there that Kisses first dipped her toes into the world of webcam porn, initially earning around $30 for a two-hour show. Almost a decade later, she’s one of the world’s most famous trans porn stars. In fact, in 2020, she became the most-viewed trans cam model on Chaturbate, where her shows regularly draw in thousands of viewers who tip big bucks just to bask in her beauty.
These years of experience are evident in Kisses’ Zoom setup. The vast, white bed behind her is strewn with decorative ivy and a purple strip light, the mirrored walls speckled with the reflections of carefully-draped fairy lights. In the center of the screen sits Kisses, her light-brown hair curly and blown-out. Dressed-down for the interview, she wears a simple black vest top that shows off the intricate swirls of a rose tattoo on her left shoulder. “I might have done a few of these interviews before,” she laughs.
This, of course, is an understatement. She’s been on the media’s mind ever since she earned a string of porn awards earlier this year — including her first AVN Award for Favorite Trans Cam Model — as well as a regular spot in Pornhub’s monthly list of most-searched trans performers. There are even plans to release a cast of her cock in dildo form (more on that later).
Currently, however, she’s riding high on the release of a semi-autobiographical feature film, Casey: A True Story, directed by alt-porn legend Joanna Angel. Initially, Angel approached her to ask if she’d be interested in playing the role of a hot biker chick in another film, but before long, they’d spent hours discussing Kisses’ background in a motorcycle club, as well as the various drug busts, debauchery and chaos she witnessed firsthand. Immediately hooked on her story, Angel called Bree Mills — CCO of adult streaming site AdultTime, where the film can be watched in full — who greenlit the pitch straight away.
The full-length feature film is truly a ride, in more ways than one. Gay porn star Dante Colle plays Cameron (pre-transition Casey), who devotes himself slavishly to a bunch of guys in a biker club who regularly take his kindness for granted. Kira Noir plays his frustrated, increasingly distant girlfriend, but the relationship really begins to strain as Cameron starts to understand himself as trans. It’s billed as a “coming of identity story,” and it’s a pretty heavy watch — there are nasty slurs dropped left and right, as well as some particularly violent scenes. It’s a gritty, uncensored depiction of Kisses’ life as a trans woman left to fend for herself at a young age after her father went to prison.
Films like these are a rarity in the porn industry. And so, to land a feature-length film as a trans porn star is a pretty huge deal, one that involved some difficult decisions in terms of laying out Kisses’ backstory. “I really didn’t put this out there to shame anybody,” she explains. “I still keep in contact with the biker club and I’m trying to build a relationship with my father as well, but I wanted people to see that they can become the happiest version of themselves.”
In Kisses’ eyes, her current happiness would never have been possible without sex work. “Camming saved my life in some ways,” she tells me. “I can’t imagine what my life would have been like in a vanilla workplace as a beginner trans woman living close to Alabama.” Likewise, it helped her pay for hormones and surgeries and boosted her confidence in her earlier years when dysphoria made camming particularly difficult. “It was definitely hard because I was ashamed of my body, and I was seeing other women with more followers and thinking it’s because of the way they look,” she says. “That’s totally untrue — they were just camming more consistently and building a following.”
Soon, Kisses started treating her cam shows as a full-time job. “I feel like getting more into camming really strengthened my confidence in my own beauty,” she tells me. “It’s kind of hard to feel bad about yourself when hundreds, sometimes thousands of people are paying to masturbate to you.”
Overall, she has a good sense of humor about her rising star status — some scenes in the film are shot in Texas, a dig at the incorrect Google info that lists the state as her birthplace (“I have no idea where that rumor came from and I spent months trying to get it taken down, so thanks to whoever did that for making my life harder I guess!”) — as well as her on-set experiences and the progress being made in terms of trans representation.
“Most studios will ask trans women if they can produce cum,” she says, alluding to the impact hormones can have on ejaculation. “If you can’t, there are ways around it — I’ve seen some girls shoot cum lube inside their dicks, which I definitely wouldn’t recommend because it sounds painful as hell.”
For the last few years, Kisses has also been gaining experience as a producer — and her lived experience seemingly makes trans performers feel at ease with her behind the scenes. “If a model can’t produce cum, we’ll figure out ways around it,” she says. “We can do a fake internal pump — so it looks like you bust in someone’s mouth, but really we cut the scene, put some cum lube in there and then make it look like the model just swallowed a hot load.”
She’s also been hard at work creating a cast of her own cock, which she hopes to transform into a silicone mold for horny fans keen for even more Kisses in their lives. In fact, she’s spent long nights online researching the various implications of different materials for sex toys. “I don’t want to kill anyone with my dick,” she laughs.
Meanwhile, in her personal life, she’s primarily focused on her relationship with fellow trans performer Kylie Le Beau, who makes an appearance in a threesome scene at the end of the R-rated version of Casey: A True Story (there are two versions of Casey: A True Story — a relatively SFW version and a sexed-up full-length with a handful of hardcore sex scenes, available only to Adult Time’s paid subscribers). “I’ve been producing a lot of cum this past year and a half, as I’ve been off hormones trying to have a kid with Kylie,” she explains. “Working with her is one of the best parts of the job. I’ll even be mad at her while I’m on cam sometimes, but then I’ll pull up her profile and be like, ‘How can I be mad at her when she’s so damn pretty?’ I’m cheesy like that,” Kisses laughs.
There’s obviously a real irony in the fact that a tragic accident sparked a chain of events that led Kisses to porn, which in turn gave her everything she loves. Casey: A True Story shows her journey was far from easy, but she doesn’t regret the endless hours of work she’s put into creating the life she has today. “The best advice is to always be consistent with whatever you do,” she tells me, a coy grin spreading across her face. “You know, if you’re gonna invest 5,000 hours into anything to become a pro in it, you may as well spend it masturbating!”
Jake Hall
Jake Hall is a freelance journalist, fashion features editor and author. Their debut book 'The Art of Drag' is scheduled for release in May 2020.
