LOS ANGELES – The blog is called Becoming Jennie: 8 years of Porn, and I forgot my real name. Hi. I’m Jennie. It has only 3 posts thus far and belongs to the person who used to be Penny Flame, an adult performer and notoriously wild party girl who apparently has retired from the business.

There already is a thread about it on an industry chat board, with the usual wise cracks questioning her motivation and demeaning her character, but also more than a few supportive comments from people who know the former-Penny Flame and like her. It is common on adult boards for people to mercilessly denigrate performers who decide to leave the industry.

Many retirees express disdain for a business that provides little in the way of life or career support, and many make an aggressive move to God on the way out as a way of healing the psychic wounds they feel the business inflicts upon all but a few of the young women who commit themselves to porn stardom. More than a few of the religion-seekers are returning to God, however, from whom they had fled in the fist place. Religion, it seems, is a revolving door both into and out of porn’s confusing embrace.

Jennie does not seem to be making that choice for herself, but instead is in the beginning throes of a profound attempt at rediscovery.

“Today is a big day, as every day has been since my release upon the world,” she writes. “Its funny. I went to jail a couple years back for an OUI, had to do a 24 hr stint in the big house, and upon my release, I put out press saying ‘Penny Flame is freed upon the world again.’ This release feels entirely different. It feels like Penny Flame was never free. But I suppose she wasn’t. There is nothing free in existing within a persona created for the purpose of other’s enjoyment. There is nothing free in playing a character that isn’t you. There is nothing free about being someone other than the person you are. And this is why I have decided to leave Penny behind, and move forward in life as Jennie.

“The person I started this world as, and the person I will be leaving this earth as. Because one day Jennie will die, where as Penny Flame can live forever. Especially since I’ve shot enough content to have new releases coming out until the day Jennie dies. The things we do in the midst of an addiction never cease to amaze me.”

As with many performers who becomes disillusioned with porn, Jennie takes a few swipes at the industry. “Every year hundreds, probably thousands of girls come to this valley to be the next Jenna. The next Bella. And now, perhaps they will come to be the next Penny. Unfortunately, none of these people are real people. Jenna has a real name, and life, as does Bella. And now I can too.”

But the complaint is somehow half-hearted, a little hollow, as if Jennie is worried that she may not regain the ground she feels she lost during her years performing. “The first reason I’m having trouble finding my voice is because I’ve never actually used it. This is an entirely new arena for me, this speaking out as Jennie Ketcham and not Penny Flame. And due to the fact that I’ve only recently remembered that I am Jennie Ketcham, I’m not quite sure how to speak, or think, or act, or feel. The last being the most important. I don’t know how to feel.”

Penny Flame entered the industry in 2003 at the age of 19. She has announced her retirement at the age of 25.