Catching Up With Lana Smalls

LOS ANGELES—Lana Smalls used a sex swing for the first time in her recent scene for POVR. “I liked it,” Smalls says. “It was like full fuck-toy energy. It was like literally being used by a pocket pussy. I was fully there to be fucked.” Lana started her porn journey in September 2021, leaning into the more hardcore scenes from the start. Now 70-something credits later, the former psychology student from the Bay Area tells AVN she loves “the crazy gonzo stuff” where she gets to show her all aspects of her personality rather than playing a character. “I just get to be real weird,” Lana says. “I like to see if I can trigger new kinks in people or the people watching. “My favorite thing to do in porn now is the shock value.” That’s why snorting cum has become one of her specialties. “Lately, I’m kind of known as the girl who snorts,” Smalls confesses. “I fully commit to the bit. They cum on the plate and I snort it up. I clean my gums with it. I’ve always done fun cum-play things.” The first time she snorted cum was in late 2022 for a content trade. Smalls says this year marked the first time she snorted it in VR. “I pretty much jumped into the fun crazy stuff pretty quickly,” Lana tells AVN. “My first couple scenes were for HookupHotshot and he pissed in my cowboy boot and poured it all over me. “I did a gangbang and blowbang in the same day. So I was already making that name for myself as someone who enjoys those intense sexual situations.” She continues, “I’ve always been a whore. I’ve always had a lot of sex. I’ve always liked these rough things and trying new stuff. I’ve always done DPs even before I started porn. I haven’t even done it in porn. After doing the porn industry I saw how far you could really go with things, how open other performers are. I think it just pushed it further. “I went deeper into that mindset. I already was doing some weird stuff. I was getting peed in by an ex-boyfriend…” Some of Smalls’ credits this year include Swallow Bay, RealJamVR, Bellesa, Dogfart, Nubiles, MYLF and POVR She worked with Sage Roux for POVR. “He was so nice, so sweet. I had never worked with him before. I had a lovely time with him,” Lana says. “Lately, I’ve had the urge to ride a guy to start choking him or give him a couple good slaps. “I could definitely see myself exploring that side of me.” Smalls says she wanted to be a sex therapist while she was a college student in Portland, Oregon. COVID hit during her freshman year, so she had to finish that year online as well as her sophomore year. Then she started an OnlyFans to support herself and see where it would lead. “I was already struggling so much with school and I was realizing I was pretty good at sex work and I would kind of like to pursue this,” Lana explains, adding that a sleeping disorder was preventing her from excelling at college. “I have some sleeping issues. I have something where I’m stuck in that deep REM state. I can sleep up to 18 hours undisturbed.” The 23-year-old performer tells AVN she plans to go back to school and finish a degree in business or finance at some point. But for now, the adult biz feels like the right fit at the right time. “This is just an opportunity to take a break from the stress of school and be in control of everything I am doing, my schedule,” Lana says. “Honestly, I’ve never been happier. I was struggling pretty hard to be happy, but I’ve just been happy.” Smalls says she met fellow performer Scarlet Skies while she was doing her first scene with a studio based in Portland—and it was Skies who encouraged her to try mainstream porn. “The big catalyst was Scarlet Skies. She came to Portland to shoot with that company and I met her and I loved her energy. I loved how happy she looked. I was so interested in what she was experiencing,” Lana says. Smalls started out with another agency before joining Veronica at Zen Models after being connected by industry veteran Sam Phillips. “And I absolutely love her. Veronica is a wonderful fit,” Lana says. Now Lana is roommates with Scarlet. “I really love her,” says Smalls, who moved to LA in March 2023. “She was my first friend in the industry.” Lana, who reveals that sex work was her first job, tells AVN that her OnlyFans handle at first was CowgirlCummies. Now that’s her Fansly name and her backup X account. “It was an era,” she jokes. “I was definitely very much in my cottage whore era, wearing cowboy boots, vintage dresses, dressing up and fun things. I still kind of miss doing that kind of content now. I’m kind of bringing that back.” Smalls even set up her @CowgirlCummies X before she started on OnlyFans. “I was kind of curious of the sex work side of Twitter (X),” she recalls. “I started kind of posting things when I was in college. I already had a sugar daddy I was seeing and I would post what I was doing with him and stuff. When COVID hit that solidified it.” She created funny videos for TikTok to market herself. “I had a couple that went viral,” Lana says. One of her viral TikTok’s entailed her sitting outside of a U-Haul office, where she said, “Would you fuck me on a U-Haul?” “That one did really well with the boys,” she says She reenacted that TikTok with her friend, Jak Knife, who played a moving guy. When she thinks about what adult performing means to her now, two words come to mind: “Absolute freedom,” Lana says. “It’s incredible the way I can do so much now with my life compared to what I was able to do then. I’ve gotten pretty familiar with the business side of things and I’m trying to play it smart with my money. I want to take care of my parents when they retire, make some goat cheese with them." Smalls continues, “There are lots of ups and downs in the industry. It’s really about finding your safety and comfort level with doing what you can with who you want. I’ve been able to work out that equation. “I feel really safe and really happy.” She wants to stay in adult “as long as my body would allow me to.” “There are a lot of things I do want to. I want to be a writer. I want to work in comedy. I want to run businesses,” Lana says. “We’re all multi-faceted. “Porn is one of those wonderful beginnings. I’m already going to have a name going into whatever else I choose.” Photography by Tristan Seagal