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RIP Joy Marks, vintage tickle model

tk86

TMF Expert
Joined
Jan 11, 2002
Messages
387
Points
16
I googled Joy under her real name a couple of days ago because the last I'd heard she was living in Florida, in the Naples area. With Hurricane Irma bearing down, I wondered if Joy was still residing there.

Turns out she wasn't. She had indeed been living there but I was shocked to find out that she passed away a couple of weeks ago.

About seven years ago, after I found her contact info on a female wrestling site, Joy and I exchanged a series of emails about getting together for a tickling session. She told me her real name fairly early on. At the time we lived around 100 miles apart so the session never happened due to that issue plus other logistical problems. I always regretted that we never had a chance to play. Her emails were beautifully written, full of life and wit. She was a true character, not getting into bondage vids until her late thirties or early forties. She had a romance with a fairly notorious public figure & ended up being included in a documentary about the guy. She created wearable art, was a dog lover & published author. Her life was short but colorful. I lost touch with her after she moved to Vegas & eventually, Florida.

Joy Marks did, as far as I can tell, just one tickling video. It was for FM Concepts in the early '90s, a one on one scene with the legendary Darla Crane. When people threw all the FMC models into one not-ticklish boat, Joy's scene was one I always pointed out as an exception.

I'm still rocked by this days later. No cause of death was available, pending autopsy last I heard.
 
I remember the FC scene, and agree it was a good one.

I regret the loss of your friend, and the above is a nice way to remember her. Thank you for sharing it.

Myriads
 
I remember the FC scene, and agree it was a good one.

I regret the loss of your friend, and the above is a nice way to remember her. Thank you for sharing it.

Myriads
Thank you Myriads. Joy always seemed to be chasing something she could never find, imo....I sensed a deep sadness beneath it all. Very complex human, not easy to forget.
 
'Sorry, tk86, for the loss of your friend. She certainly was much more than a tickle pro. <p>It's sometimes easy to forget--with all the playful fantasy of the Forum--the basic humanity of Community members, especially the ones, like Ms. Marks, with some celebrity. Thanks, tk86, for reminding us.<p>
A further reminder: Cherish playful laughter, and those who offer it.
 
>>'Sorry, tk86, for the loss of your friend. She certainly was much more than a tickle pro. <p>It's sometimes easy to forget--with all the playful fantasy of the Forum--the basic humanity of Community members, especially the ones, like Ms. Marks, with some celebrity. Thanks, tk86, for reminding us.<<

Thank you for the kind words. Humanity is what this is all about. I have one other friend who is a vintage tickle model, and she is as intelligent & remarkable in her way as Joy was in hers. In fact she just emailed me the other day to talk not about tickling, but the recent solar eclipse!
 
Even sadder...

Just got word from a very reliable source that Joy's death was a suicide.

I am not shocked as I always felt a sadness coming from her. It just feels even more painful.
 
Very to sad to read this.

I think it's so easy to forget that the characters appearing in fetish material of all types are actually real people with a life that exists beyond a few tickle scenes and there's always much more to them than simply satisfying the fetish of others - I suppose to some extent it's to be expected - given the nature of the material they work in, their private lives/public lives/fetish work do no overlap naturally so we rarely get the chance to get to know anyone beyond the material they appear in.
 
Very to sad to read this.

I think it's so easy to forget that the characters appearing in fetish material of all types are actually real people with a life that exists beyond a few tickle scenes and there's always much more to them than simply satisfying the fetish of others - I suppose to some extent it's to be expected - given the nature of the material they work in, their private lives/public lives/fetish work do no overlap naturally so we rarely get the chance to get to know anyone beyond the material they appear in.
I have one other woman friend in the fetish world with whom I communicate fairly often, and she is also super smart & introspective, a really interesting human. We session occasionally & afterwards end up chatting about everything from politics to astronomy. Fortunately she seems to be free of the demons that I could sense in Joy years ago.

There are all too many early deaths in the fetish/bondage world. A mistress in the Bay Area took her own life a month or so back and I have noticed quite a few similar exits, all too often suicides or drug related deaths. I don't think this is accidental. It's a deep subject & I wonder if anyone has done a formal study of the correlation between b&d workers & early death due to emotional/mental issues.
 
if we were more accepting and less self absorbed suicide wouldn't be so god damn prevalent in America. this really fucking makes me mad. Joy deserved better. And people that commit suicide are not WEAK and they are NOT eternally damned. God damn this fucking isolated society
 
I have one other woman friend in the fetish world with whom I communicate fairly often, and she is also super smart & introspective, a really interesting human. We session occasionally & afterwards end up chatting about everything from politics to astronomy. Fortunately she seems to be free of the demons that I could sense in Joy years ago.

There are all too many early deaths in the fetish/bondage world. A mistress in the Bay Area took her own life a month or so back and I have noticed quite a few similar exits, all too often suicides or drug related deaths. I don't think this is accidental. It's a deep subject & I wonder if anyone has done a formal study of the correlation between b&d workers & early death due to emotional/mental issues.

I don't believe any formal study has been done, but there are any number of articles and books about the adult industry as a whole. My personal experiences with working with models over nearly twenty years has made me conclude that a lot of them come to the industry with problems. It's not the majority, but a lot. These models usually don't stay too long. If they do, fans rarely know about their problems, but others in the industry usually do because it comes out in their on and off screen interactions. You get a "feeling" something isn't quite right. The ones that have personal problems always seem like they are running from something while looking for something. Most of the time they don't know what. I think that is the thing that contributes to such a high drug and suicide rate to the adult industry. It's kind of like a naughty Hollywood and we all know how screwed up that can be.
 
I don't believe any formal study has been done, but there are any number of articles and books about the adult industry as a whole. My personal experiences with working with models over nearly twenty years has made me conclude that a lot of them come to the industry with problems. It's not the majority, but a lot. These models usually don't stay too long. If they do, fans rarely know about their problems, but others in the industry usually do because it comes out in their on and off screen interactions. You get a "feeling" something isn't quite right. The ones that have personal problems always seem like they are running from something while looking for something. Most of the time they don't know what. I think that is the thing that contributes to such a high drug and suicide rate to the adult industry. It's kind of like a naughty Hollywood and we all know how screwed up that can be.
The A word--abuse--is the elephant in the room all too often with these people, the thing no one, or few people, talk about. It may be sexual or of another nature, but as LGZ mentioned in his eloquent post, people often arrive in this industry with problems. I figure abuse is very often at the heart of it all.

Thank you also LGZ for confirming what I perceived about Joy, that she was in search of something she never found. The fact that you mentioned this in describing too many others in this biz gives me a tiny bit of reassurance, that at least I wasn't crazy in perceiving this. The whole thing hurts. Remarkably smart woman, yet a tragic life.

Thanks also to Scarred Knuckles for such a wise, supportive post.
 
The A word--abuse--is the elephant in the room all too often with these people, the thing no one, or few people, talk about. It may be sexual or of another nature, but as LGZ mentioned in his eloquent post, people often arrive in this industry with problems. I figure abuse is very often at the heart of it all.

Thank you also LGZ for confirming what I perceived about Joy, that she was in search of something she never found. The fact that you mentioned this in describing too many others in this biz gives me a tiny bit of reassurance, that at least I wasn't crazy in perceiving this. The whole thing hurts. Remarkably smart woman, yet a tragic life.

Thanks also to Scarred Knuckles for such a wise, supportive post.

It's very rare for a model to come to this business with no problems and get screwed up. They usually arrive that way and develop more problems.
Again, this isn't the majority of models. I can think of only a few out of the hundred or so models I've interacted with that had obvious and serious problems. I'm sure others used drugs (besides weed) that were not so obvious, but I attribute that to a lifestyle a lot of models, even stable ones, get into: drugs, booze, partying. You have to remember, most of these models are very young. They want to have a good time in between gigs and are not particularly business savvy. I've even had a few models steal money from me for drugs and other personal problems they were having. Not the the smartest move, but let's be honest, how smart were most of us when we were 18? The ones that last usually mature and manage to make some money or have an exit strategy. The damaged ones either leave because they didn't find what they were looking for and go looking for something else to fill the void in their life, or they burn out. Again, this isn't the majority, but it is a disturbingly high number.
 
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