“We can do this in our headscarves if you want to,” offers the cheerful voice coming from my computer screen. Honestly, I’m tempted… and a little touched. It’s the first time someone I’ve interviewed has invited me to get comfortable in this specific way, and it makes me feel very seen. But Hurricane Fury (just Fury to her friends, including Cosmo) showed up to our Zoom wearing her trademark vibrant eyeshadow, hair in glossy waves perfectly parted down the middle. The least I can do, I decide, is proceed without my bonnet.
Plus, I’m in the presence of erotic entertainment royalty. For the uninitiated, Fury is the veritable queen of squirting—a Pornhub Award-nominated fetish star who claims to have once climaxed 13 times on the hydration of a single Capri sun pouch. Reader: I believe her.
The sploosh skills and onscreen work are just the surface of a one-woman production studio. She’s also the editor, engineer, and publicist of her no-holds-barred brand Fury Strikes Back, with 200 million video views and counting. “More than Mariah Carey’s album sales,” she points out during our video call.
You can easily get really burnt out, feeling like every dollar is supposed to be yours, and it’s not. It’s okay to sit and just watch some bullshit on TV.
Okay, so maybe the Mimi comparison is a teeny stretch. What’s not up for debate, though? Fury’s entrepreneurial drive would make most people (hi) feel lazy as fuck. As a freelancer myself (albeit in different industry) I’m here to learn her self-employed secrets to a six-figure income. But what starts as a crash MBA session quickly shifts into a seminar on self-care.
Take Fury’s handling of the pandemic. People at home + plenty of downtime = skyrocketing porn consumption, i.e. performers working their asses off to make the most of a crazy situation. (Case in point: The night before we spoke she was up cutting footage until dawn.) Turning off is tough when every moment you’re not working is a minute that could have been monetized—especially when the demand for your attention is constant. “People think that just because they paid $12.99 per month”—her base level subscription fee for clients—“that you belong to them, that you’re always supposed to be accessible.”
To keep up, Fury typically films for a week at a time and then stockpiles footage, editing three or four videos per day. Then she uploads content to sites like xHamster and ManyVids to amp the view count, blasts them out on social media, makes trailers, updates banners across platforms, films a few extra topless “thank you” messages to customers who tipped her our on OnlyFans, and edits her email newsletter… and then the cycle repeats. To keep herself sane, Fury adheres to the following mantra: “This is just a job. I am not my career.”
Turning off is tough when every moment you’re not working is a minute that could have been monetized.
“You can easily get really burnt out, feeling like every dollar is supposed to be yours, and it’s not. It’s okay to sit and just watch some bullshit on TV,” she says. So when she decides she is done, she is done. Off the clock, you’ll find her cruising through the mountains with the windows down, blasting trap music. Hanging with her 18-year-old daughter in their house or FaceTiming with friends. Writing in her manifestation journal. Binging 90 Day Fiancé. Doing whatever she wants—and not feeling even a little bit guilty about it.
Fury also earmarks time to work on things that might not benefit her bottom line directly, but ultimately result in a bigger payoff. Like working with other women in the industry to solve personal problems and also systemic ones—specifically, the opportunity, equal pay, and representation gaps disproportionately faced by Black performers.
Her goal is to teach others how to use the sites so they can maximize earnings and views, because there is definitely enough work to go around. “I didn’t have any of that help, so I’ve always wanted to be the help I didn’t have,” she tells me about her early days in the business—which, by the way, she never refers to as “sex work,” even as she champions those causes on social media. (“That term is dry as hell,” she explains, flashing a grin but dead serious about the semantics. Cheeky terms she’s coined for herself include “internet hoe coach,” or a “fairy whore mother.”)
Speaking of sharing expertise, hell yes I asked for tips on female ejaculation. And Fury was more than happy to share them. “You don’t have to go deep. It’s a gland about the length of your finger at the roof of your vagina,” instructing interested parties (hi again) to ignore the I-have-to-pee feeling at first. “When you feel that sensation and you’re about to orgasm, do a Kegel… and splash!” she instructs. (Sex hack: Put down a reusable tarp beforehand. Also file under: Brilliant.)
By the end of our call, I feel armed with some new tricks for the bedroom, but also with some much-needed real talk takeaways. Listening to Fury rattle off all the ways she makes time for her own pleasure, it hits me that my vibrator is getting dusty somewhere in a drawer. This past year, many of us have been putting ourselves under so much pressure, to prove that we could not only weather the shit storm but also emerge with something shiny to show for it. Personally, I’ve obsessed over my Instagram, YouTube, and speaking engagements, all while working up a plan to launch a commerce platform and break into more lucrative gigs. At some point, I forgot that I needed to take care of myself as a person, not just a personal brand.
“You can still be a hustler and enjoy your life,” she tells me before we sign off, with that same kind of I see you vibe as her offer to chill in our bonnets. Right after we hang up, I make a mental note to buy AAA batteries and also to order one of those tarps she was raving about. I’m confident Fury would be proud.
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