Page 66 - AVN November 2022

“You learn the most about people when they’re in need. My connections with people were really important and it helped me become an adult really fast.”
“There wasn’t no nervousness or ‘I don’t know,’” Royal continues. “She never doubted herself and she took it like she already had that confidence as soon as she came in.
“Because you’re always worried about that first scene, like how is it going to go? But you would think she was doing this for years.
“That really surprised me, I ain’t gonna lie.”
Royal adds, “When I look at her performing style, I think about the ’80s and ’90s porn, like those
ebony stars. It wasn’t about the money, it wasn’t about nothing but just showing up and having great, passionate sex. That’s how I would describe her performances.”
Born and raised in New Haven, Mystique spent a lot of time hanging out in Brooklyn, N.Y., before she began her life on the move.
“There’s nothing like New York for me,” she says.
Ebony admits she got into her share of trouble as a teen—“not fighting or nothing, just not
listening to the rules”—getting kicked out of high school and continuation school in Connecticut and then doing some of her studies in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Mystique says she was in Job Corps., in Springfield by the time she was 16 and then moved to northern California when she was 17. That was when she became interested in enrolling in a CNA to RN program, which facilitates candidates going from nursing assistant to registered nurse.
Then everything changed.
“By the time I was 18 I was able to enroll in the school and that’s how I became a nurse before
I was 21 because I had did that program,” says Ebony, who earned her degree at San Francisco State.
She reveals that her first nursing job was on a neurosurgery floor at what now is called Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
“My instructor from nursing school got me that job,” Ebony says.
She would go on to dedicate the next 13 years to her career in the medical profession, working
as a critical care nurse in ICUs and more recently as an advice nurse.
Ebony clocked 12-hour shifts in hospitals all over California, including in Napa Valley; Florida;
Nevada; Connecticut; and Utah, among other places.
During her time as a nurse she learned about being “totally selfless” and about human nature. “You learn the most about people when they’re in need,” Ebony says. “My connections with
people were really important and it helped me become an adult really fast.”
Still, she yearned for more “autonomy” in her life and in her profession, so she got into celebrity
styling and fashion design in her spare time—a passion that was funded by her nursing job. “I’m still my fashionista self,” Mystique says. “I’m still my nursing self. ... I’m still licensed to this
day. I’m always gonna be licensed.”
66 AVN.COM | 11.22 | EBONY MYSTIQUE