Hindsight: True Love & Mischief in the Golden Age of Porn

by Howie Gordon

  The denial apparatus of the industry kicked in with, “John Holmes was an IV drug user. John Holmes was a bi-sexual. It was an isolated case. It won’t happen to me. I won’t get AIDS.” The industry hardly skipped a beat. Being socially responsible was never its strong suit and John Holmes sadly represented that aspect of the business as well. Since his death, it’s been revealed that he continued to work for a time after having contracted the AIDS virus without informing his partners. How else can this be construed as anything but a desperate and despicable act? It is well beyond our reasonable comprehension to excuse. It leaves a sour taste and darkens the entire canvas of what otherwise might have remained a colorful story of an outrageous character.

  Be that as it may, somebody had to be the sexual Paul Bunyan and John Holmes, for better and worse, was it. I guess that there have been other colossal schlongs in porn history, I mean, really big dicks. Long Dong Silver and Dick Rambone come to mind. I once heard an old-timer talk about a guy named O.K. Freddy from the Thirties. He said Joan Crawford used to show him off at her parties. But in our generation, it was John Holmes who wore the crown.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Stormy Weather

  “Don’t know why,

  There’s no bone between my thighs,

  Stormy weather,

  Just can’t get my poor sperm together.

  They’re hiding all the time,

  All the time.”

  Q. “What do you call a porn star who can’t get a hard-on?

  A. An actor.

  Pizza Girls made it five in a row. There was no denying my slump. I hadn’t been able to have an orgasm in my last five movies.

  Ironic, don’t you think, that it would be so difficult for me to be successful in an occupation that was held in such low regard and contempt by the mainstream. One would have thought that it should have been a lot easier for me to ruin my life, but I really had to work hard to do it, so to speak.

  “Ooo, I wouldn’t do that,” they’d say. “I wouldn’t act in a porn film!” As if they could! As if they’d even been invited to try! As if there were something so easy to do about it that they deserved some kind of special medal for just resisting the temptation to do it.

  Well, I was busting my ass trying to do it and the best I could come up with was a .500 batting average. In the porn business, that stunk. If I hadn’t come along at a time when the producers were actually hiring actors who could deliver their lines as well as their boners, I would never have lasted in the business. I was only getting work now because I could act a little bit.

  Producers didn’t really want to risk hiring an actor who was only giving them a fifty-fifty chance of being able to successfully complete a sex scene. There were plenty of guys in the business who seemed to be batting anywhere between .900 and 1.000. That’s why you saw those same guys over and over again in porn. They were the reliable ones. It was not anywhere as easy to perform sex as most men would think. Hell, even the great Marlon Brando had dick troubles in the movies:

  I had one of the more embarrassing experiences of my professional career when we were making this film (Last Tango in Paris) in 1972. I was supposed to play a scene in the Paris apartment where Paul meets Jeanne and be photographed in the nude frontally, but it was such a cold day that my penis shrank to the size of a peanut. It simply withered. Because of the cold, my body went into full retreat, and the tension, embarrassment and stress made it recede even more. I realized I couldn’t play the scene this way, so I paced back and forth around the apartment naked, hoping for magic. I’ve always had a strong belief in the power of mind over matter, so I concentrated on my private parts, trying to will my penis and testicles to grow; I even spoke to them. But my mind failed me. I was humiliated, but not ready to surrender yet. I asked Bernardo (Director Bernardo Bertolucci) to be patient and told the crew that I wasn’t giving up. But after an hour I could tell from their faces that they had given up on me. I simply couldn’t play the scene that way, so it was cut.

  Marlon Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me

  Speaking of irony, I had already given up on a career in acting several years before I ever did my first professional sex film. Acting and trying to compete as an actor had just freaked me out too much. I could never get over being scared all the time and feeling too vulnerable. Now, trying to make it in the X-rated movies, the sex stuff so traumatized me that “acting” became the place where I could relax. Acting became the place where I could shine. No matter how badly my sex scenes had gone, producers and directors had generally been pleased with my character work.

  Then again, in porn…if you showed up…

  If you showed up…on time…

  If you showed up on time…and were sober…

  If you showed up on time and were sober…and had your lines memorized…

  Well! If you showed up on time and were sober and had your lines memorized, they treated you like you were Laurence Fucking Olivier. And since there was only a fifty-fifty chance that I would actually be bringing a dick with me to the set, I figured that it was the least I could do.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “If you’re normal, I don’t want to be.”

  Adeline Gordon, My Mom

  In high schooI, I thought I had done a pretty good job of trying to fit in. But by college, I sensed the distance between “normal” and me.

  The sixties didn’t help any. The sixties rewarded iconoclastic behavior. In the great counter-cultural revolution, “out” became the new “in.” The avalanche of psychedelic drugs only added fuel to the fire. And, of course, having had the smiling Buddha of my Uncle Izzy around as guru and mentor probably cinched my lifelong commitment to unrepentant foolishness.

  I was trying to grow up, but the conventional choices of Doctor-Lawyer-Dentist just weren’t going to work for me.

  Porn star, on the other hand, well, now, that had some panache.

  I took a vote. Even with the troubles, I still wanted it. It was that simple. Porn seemed like the right place for me to be. For whatever the ganglia of mixed motivations that were driving me, I became enamored of the challenge to be able to perform in these films.

  I figured I had already taken the best shots that failure and humiliation had to offer and I was still standing. They were still offering me parts. Perhaps I had bottomed out on my sexual nincompoopery. Maybe it was time now for Popeye to pass me the spinach and for me to release my inner boner. Yeah, and for that to happen, I knew I had to get the wreck of my libido into the body shop for some serious repairs. Cue the music! Call Shorty Long and the All-Stars! I had to get myself ready for the “Function at the Junction.”

  Carly had a good idea. She suggested that when it came time for me to do a sex scene, I should imagine balancing my fear against my desire as if they were the two sides on the Scales of Justice.

  If I felt that my fear was outweighing my desire, then it would not be a good idea to start the sex. The odds would be against me achieving and sustaining any kind of arousal. At such a point, my job would be to do whatever I could do to reduce the fear so that my desire would have a fighting chance.

  Given the proper stimulation, one’s body knew exactly how to experience pleasure. Sometimes, “one” just had to get “one’s self” out of the goddamned way. The great baseball sage Yogi Berra once said, “You can’t think and hit at the same time!” When it came time to touch, I had to get all those inner voices to shut the fuck up and let my body do what it knew how to do.

  Of course, all of this was a lot easier said than done, but just having had this conversation with Carly gave me a framework for beginning to approach the problem with something besides my own shame, rattled machismo and dread. We were gonna get this thing licked!

  Looking back, Carly was my first coach. At that stage of our relationship, it was enough for her to know that I wanted a career in the adult business for her to try and help me go out there and get it. And she did!

  Wow!

  Chapter Tw
enty-Four

  Talk Baseball to Me

  “Excellence is never a trivial pursuit, no matter how bizarre the medium for it.”

  Simon Barnes, Sportswriter, London Times

  I began keeping a box score. “In stress, we regress,” went the pop psychology slogan and I took it all the way back to Little League.

  Just as in the starting days of my baseball career when I worked on my hitting by keeping a detailed record of each at-bat, I looked back on the sex scenes I had played. I broke down each scene into its elements and began keeping my X-rated box score. I was hoping to recognize key factors that would enable me to improve my sexual batting average. Here’s what it looked like:

  1. Movie: The Candy Stripers

  Partner: Nancy

  Time: 5-6 hrs.

  Position: Standing — Oral

  Outcome: Erections —Orgasm

  Partner: Phaedra

  Time: 45 min.

  Position: Missionary

  Outcome: Erections — Orgasm

  2. Movie: Legend of Lady Blue

  Partner: None

  Time: 4 hrs.

  Position: Standing — Masturbation

  Outcome: Erections — Zero

  3. Movie: Loop

  Partner: Ronnie

  Time: 45 mins.

  Position: Kneeling — Doggie-Style

  Outcome: Erections — Orgasm

  4. Movie: Loop

  Partner: Marlene

  Time: 45 mins.

  Position: Many

  Outcome: Erections — Orgasm

  5. Movie: Sensual Encounters of Every Kind

  Partner: Chris Cassidy

  Time: 1 hr.

  Position: Many

  Outcome: Erections — Zero

  6. Movie: Candy Goes To Hollywood

  Partner: Carol Connors

  Time: 2 hrs.

  Position: Standing — Doggie-Style with Fluffer

  Outcome: Erections — Zero

  Partner: Carrie

  Time: 6-7 hrs.

  Position: Sitting — Oral

  Outcome: Nothing Required

  7. Movie: Telefantasy

  Partner: Christine

  Time: 3-5 mins.

  Position: Reclining — Oral

  Outcome: Zero

  8. Movie: Pizza Girls

  Partner: Candida Royale

  Time: 20 mins.

  Position: Standing — Oral

  Outcome: Slight Erection — Zero

  I was hitting four for nine, a .444 batting average. That’s actually worse than I remembered. Still, there were some clues there. I didn’t do well when I tried to have sex standing up. That was good to know. Also, though it didn’t exactly appear in the box score as a category, I could see by the partner’s names that I tended to do poorly if I thought that they didn’t want to be with me.

  Good luck on that one!

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Oddly enough, that’s his real name.

  John Seeman was the first male friend I made in the business. He might actually be a leprechaun. I’m not sure. He isn’t two feet tall with a thick Irish brogue, but he’s hard to pin down and he does have this otherworldly twinkle to his eye.

  Unassuming, you’d have to say, is the word for John Seeman. At first glance on the street, you don’t think porn star. You’d think banker, insurance agent, some job where an easy smile and a calm demeanor would go a long, long way in dealing with the public. He exuded competence. He looked like he knew what he was doing. He spoke like he knew what he was saying.

  When John took off his glasses and got naked, it wasn’t exactly Clark Kent to Superman, but he did reveal a taut, compact body that was always in tip-top shape.

  John was the first experienced actor I found who would talk to me about the dynamics of performing screen sex. It seemed to be a world of Live and Let Die among the other male stars I’d seen. “Why should they help the competition?” was the attitude. John was secure enough in himself that he could offer some words of advice to a struggling newcomer. I will be forever grateful.

  As a sexual performer, John was one of the steadiest guys around. Word was that even after he’d finished his own scene as an actor, the producers and directors liked keeping him around the set afterwards just in case another actor fell down on the job.

  John Seeman could play the stuntcock. Like the relief pitcher or the closer in baseball, he could come in there and get you a save for your sex scene. The director would come to the mound and take out the failing cocksman. In would step John from the bullpen. Zip-Zip-Zip, he’d get it up. Zip-Zip-Zip, he’d get it off. Hail, John, the conquering hero!

  With a wee bit of movie magic in the post-production, they’d edit in a close-up of John’s crowing cock to replace whatever limp dick had died on the shores of the female penetration. The audience in the movie theaters would never know the difference. It was said that John could do a come shot during an earthquake.

  By the time we met, John was already winding down his performing career and getting more involved behind the camera. I had run into him as the Production Manager (PM) on several shoots. We had fallen into some conversations about this and that and had gradually become friends. Along with photographer Vincent Fronczek, we became a frequent trio together, but we’ll get to Vince later.

  The role of the Production Manager was a key cog in the X-rated film production of the Bay Area in the seventies and early-eighties. A production company could arrive from Los Angeles and with one phone call could arrange to have their choice of all the available performers, crews, soundstages, equipment rentals, locations, caterers, or whatever else they would need to make their movie. The Production Manager was an extremely important fast lane job. If you wanted to work, you made damn sure they had your phone number.

  I don’t remember specifically how John got started helping me out with the movie sex, but he did. You know, it’s not easy for one guy to admit to another that he’s having problems with his dick, but my failures were already a matter of public record within the industry. I was drowning and I wanted to learn how to swim. When John took an interest in me, I was honored to be able to make my confession to him.

  We’d been on a few movie sets together and John offered the observation that he thought I was trying to play the game without exercising any of my own personal power. If the director had said to me, “Fuck the starlet doggy style while you’re standing on one leg and whistle ‘Dixie,’” then that’s what I would try to do. John suggested that trying to please everybody but myself might be getting in my own way. He argued that when I came to bat, I had to make things right for me. I had to arrange the scene so that I would be able to sexually function. There came a point, he argued, where it no longer mattered exactly what they wanted.

  “Because after all,” he said, “if you don’t get to your boner, there is no scene anyway.”

  In time, our conversations about movie making and the arousal process helped me to formulate these concrete measures that I could incorporate into my future attempts at doing a sex scene:

  • Get the director on my side. I could let the director know that I wasn’t confident about a particular scene. It might cost me a job or two, but I would get a lot of support when I did get the job. I could give the director information like if I had to get it up and down too many times—say, over seven or eight—I tended to break down. I would create the director as my ally.

  • Get the actress on my side. If she didn’t like me or I didn’t like her, we could go to the director right away and try to arrange for another pairing. Being certain of a willing sex partner would make a world of difference. I would create my sex partner as my ally.

  • Make the set comfortable. I could tell the director that I didn’t want to fuck standing up on a coffee table or underwater in a cold swimming pool. I could make input into the kind of scene they were asking me to do. I had to learn to respect my own limits. I had to learn how to say, “No.” I would make the environment an al
ly.

  • Remove troublemakers from the set. If a jealous boyfriend or wise-ass crewperson was wrecking my confidence, I could go to the director and let him know. They would be asked to leave the set while I was performing. There was one particular still photographer who used to really enjoy taunting and humiliating me. He would always flirt with the woman I was supposed to work with. That fucker would be gone.

  • Prepare for the scene. In my case, this meant refraining from orgasm for two or three days prior to a sex scene. This would leave me horny enough to fuck a Volkswagen bus. It also meant staying away from drugs or alcohol on the set, regardless of what anybody else was doing.

  Like with Carly earlier, the most valuable aspect of my conversation with John Seeman was the fact that we had the conversation at all. Most of the men of X behaved like roosters looking to dominate the barnyard. There were only so many jobs and one did not reach out to help the competition. Until I met John, “help was not on the way.”

  As the Catholic Church has known for centuries, confession is good for the soul. The confession of my sexual performance fears to John was made more meaningful because John had successfully navigated the very same waters in which I was floundering. I could never have spent ten years in the business without his help.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Babylove was played by Sharon Kane. I was Beau. It was my first male lead. The film was written and directed by Daemian Lee. I had already done a sex scene earlier for him in one of my first loops.