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

by Howie Gordon

  I managed a wimpy orgasm for the cameras and we cut.

  Back in the dressing room afterward, Robin cried. I held her. Few words were said, but if I had to guess what she was going through, I’d say this:

  She was going through that stage-one door where the performer has just been exposed to the world of difference between personal and movie sex. She was feeling the shock and emptiness of having just had a wildly impersonal sexual experience. It was devoid of love, romance and desire.

  It was “de void.”

  It had been filled with performance anxiety. There had been harsh lights, unblinking cameras, leering witnesses, and, ultimately, shame.

  Paul had fucked her and I had fucked her. She had been fucked. She had allowed herself to be fucked. It’s unlikely that she got anywhere near orgasm. Her own personal desire had been teased, ignored, locked-up, submerged, and buried somewhere. It was not part of the job. Robin had been as helpful to us as she could be. Our orgasms had been the job. It had been difficult.

  I just held her while she cried.

  Of course, she hated Vosse. He had scared her. His direction in the sex had been coarse. The sad part was that he was treating her with kid gloves. He was probably being as gentle as he could be. After all, he was stuck with Robin. He needed her to make it.

  It occurred to me that we were actually lucky that Annette Haven hadn’t been in that scene. If Vosse had given some of that barking dog direction to Annette, well, she was very likely to have returned the favor — and then some. Annette Haven did not tolerate any disrespect. The whole set would have exploded.

  With Robin, we got the whimper, instead of the bang.

  Y’know, I’d made a lot of films in Vosse’s Studio. It was high up on the third floor of a huge warehouse in the industrial section of San Francisco. I’d spent hours and hours in that space. I knew Bob as the Studio owner, a host, and a provider of props. He was a real collector and the studio was filled with all kinds of interesting stuff. In that capacity, Bob was often a delightful, old, Texas-like curmudgeon with lot of stories and a long memory about life in the adult film business, but I’d never worked for him before.

  While I was grateful for the money coming in from this job, I knew that I would never work for him again. It was a waste of caring. He was strictly factory porn at the brutal level. He was hard on his actors and murderous on his crew. I had been around long enough to be able to handle it, but, seeing it fresh, through Robin’s eyes, it was just sad.

  When things calmed down, I tore off my costume, jumped into my street clothes, and was out of that studio in five minutes flat. I wanted to make it home before my eldest daughter’s bedtime at nine. I hadn’t even taken off my makeup or washed the blonde out of my hair. I flew to my car and raced across the Bay Bridge in the rain.

  I made it home by nine too, where Carly met me at the front door. She reminded me that the baby had been going to bed at eight-thirty now for almost two months. Oh, I totally forgot. It had been that kind of day.

  I worked two-and-a-half more days in this film. Paul and I got used to working with Vosse and Robin, and we began to enjoy ourselves a bit. We always used to sing on the set together. Paul was a truly great singer, and he would often carry me through a version of Don & Juan’s big hit, “What’s Your Name?” We sang it a bunch of times. He’d do all the harmonies and I’d try to hang with him and not choke. I always enjoyed working with him.

  Laurie Smith was there on Day Two. She was the last-minute replacement for Rachel Ashley who had flaked on showing up for the second female lead part of Princess Orgasma. I was happy to see Laurie this time. Compared to Robin, she was Meryl Streep. Laurie brought some confidence and fresh energy at a time when we all really needed it. That was the good news.

  The bad news was that Laurie had a tumor on one of her ribs. She was going in for surgery upon completion of the film. We weren’t scheduled to be partners in this movie, but we somehow came face-to-face right in the middle of the orgy scene. We kissed. It was surprisingly tender, and intense. In some crazy way, I had come to love her. The kiss was filled with all the anguish we shared over Colleen’s death. And it was also filled with all the hope and healing I could pass on to her in such a moment. It had nothing to do with lust. It had nothing to do with the movie. But that’s where we met. Right there in the middle of an orgy, we said what we had to say in the silence of that one surprising kiss.

  And once said, it ended there and we moved on to do our jobs.

  I started out with Robin and was once again having troubles keeping my penis involved. Along came Morgan Lee, I think that was her stage name. Just when I was beginning to feel like the only gear I had left for film sex was desperation, Morgan Lee had a zest for the sex that lit up all the lights on the Christmas tree. She was an amazing Amazon. Well over six feet tall, she looked like a cross between Liv Ullman and Sally Kellerman.

  She spent most of the movie in gold paint playing an alien who was in love with a robot. She played a second character in the orgy and happily found her way over to me. Usually, when a woman is taller than me, I turn into an asexual little brother, but this was something different. She was so much bigger than me, it was like an inter-species dating. It was a fairy tale. It was Rabelaisian. I was making out with a giant. I was the mortal man and she was the Goddess Athena. The sparks flew. It was juicy and exciting. It was such a relief to once again discover how easy the movie sex can be when both parties are getting turned on.

  It was so good and I was so revved up, that when I was redirected to finish the scene and have my orgasm with Robin, I had no trouble at all.

  Speaking of trouble, just before the orgy had commenced, I found myself locked out of my own dressing room. I knocked indignantly and was let in by two of the other orgy actors who were busily snorting up lines of cocaine. They offered me some, and I passed it by. The last thing I needed before movie sex was cocaine. They’d have to peel me off the ceiling and use a splint to keep my dick straight. Different people just used different things to be able to do the job. With me, lust begat lust and cocaine begat a breathless frenzy. No, thank you, I closed the door and left them to their party.

  Howard Darkley was the wildly talented writer, actor, and director John O’Keefe, a dean amongst the Bay Area avant garde. He was my friend, my former acting teacher, and he used to love occasionally slumming in porn, but always playing in a non-sex role so as to not compromise his “legitimate” career. It was fun for him and the paycheck didn’t hurt either. The porn producers I’d introduced him to were very happy to have him in their films. For this one, he had agreed to play the part of the half-human, half-robot villain for $300. When he was wrapped, they paid him $400. That was cool.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  When it was all over, I came home.

  I sat around the kitchen table with my wife and my parents and recounted some tales of the day’s adventures. They laughed at the funny parts and worried at the stuff they figured was weird. I felt unbelievably relieved and pleased that I could share as much as I dared share with them about my most unconventional and strange career in the world of adult films.

  Their love made me feel as if all the burdens of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. As I sat there with my wife and my parents and we watched the kids play, I knew that I was a very lucky man.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  For Love and Lust

  I had one day off from Sex Wars and then went right to work on Sam’s next video.

  For Love and Lust was the third in the trilogy of movies that I had set out to complete before the Christmas holiday season set in.

  Spinelli was doing two videos back-to-back. While I finished with Sex Wars, Spinelli starred John Leslie in the first of his two-day shoots. Now, it was my turn. This was a different Spinelli. I didn’t know about John’s, but for mine, there was no script!

  As Day One commenced, I took the pieces of the puzzle that Sam and his wife Roz laid out before me. There were the n
umber of characters the budget could afford, the constraints of the location, and the number of sex scenes that they wanted. I percolated on these facts and worked them up a cute, little story that I finished writing on our way to the set that morning.

  It didn’t win any awards, but it did provide the framework for the five or six sex scenes that helped them bring in their second video on time and on budget.

  Opposite Nina Hartley, I also starred in this movie, did three sex scenes in two days, and recruited most of the cast. By this point, my working for Sam Weston was a family affair. We seemed to get even closer after Carly and I started making babies. I tried to help Sam out wherever, whenever, and however I could.

  Sam insisted on paying me my full rate. I wanted him to cut it in half so that we’d have more money to spend on the production. Thank God he wouldn’t hear of it. He was trying to maintain the salary structure of the earlier film days when we were all riding high. Video had rendered that obsolete. Most performers were doing videos for a lot less than their earlier film rates. Most producers insisted on paying the reduced salaries. It was a Don Quixote-like gesture for Spinelli to still pay John Leslie and me the top dollar. Sam was trying to maintain some kind of standard against the advance of cheap crap, but the cheap crap had him completely surrounded.

  Still, I was grateful for his effort. And Roz even slipped me an extra $250 for “finders’ fees,” she said, for helping with the casting.

  My sex scenes were all great!

  There was strong heat and real, live, man-woman connection going on in all three of those scenes, but, if it is ever your misfortune to have to sit through this movie, you will discover that all three sex scenes have been completely destroyed by the insertion of up-tempo, Hollywood game show muzak that was insanely cut into the sexual action like a series of inescapably bad farts.

  Sam! How could you let that happen?

  Ladies and gentlemen, the threat of AIDS was about to end my career. This was not the way I wanted to go out!

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The kids had gone to bed. My parents had gone to bed. Carly and I were finally alone. She hadn’t wanted me to make those last three movies. I had made them anyway. I was home now. The work was finished. The money was in the bank. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had sex. I reached for her.

  “Do you really think we should?” she asked.

  “What?” I thought it preposterous that she would even ask.

  She said, “Don’t you think it would be prudent if one of us remained alive to raise the kids?”

  It was the brick wall. I crashed right into it. When I woke up, I was retired and monogamous.

  Gordon Archive.

  Miracle Releasing of Nevada, Inc.

  Pacheco and Chambers Round Two. Miracle Releasing of Nevada, Inc.

  Marilyn in my diary. Gordon Archive.

  Pacheco and Randy West. Summer Brown

  Gordon Archive.

  Based on the Herbert James Draper painting of Odysseus and the Sirens (1909). Gordon Archive

  Colleen. I was thirty-four. She was eighteen. Gordon Archive.

  Jamie Gillis. Gordon Archive.

  Hollywood Highland Motel.

  Gordon Archive.

  Maybe did the best Curly Howard I ever heard. Gordon Archive

  Tina Ross was working opposite Jamie.Gordon Archive.

  Monique Gabriel was Jerry’s love interest. Monique Gabriel

  Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive

  Laurie Smith. Gordon Archive.

  Laurie making up Jamie. Gordon Archive.

  Writing in my diary at the motel. Gordon Archive.

  “Look at me…” Gordon Archive.

  We had just passed the halfway point. Gordon Archive.

  And a Happy Yom Kippur to you too! Gordon Archive.

  A star was born that night! Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Howie and Baby Jo. Gordon Archive.

  Another baby! Gordon Archive.

  Dave Friedman. Adult Film Asssociation of America (AFAA)

  Gordon Archive.

  Left to right: Annette Haven, Seka, and Kay Parker, three of the top actresses of the day. Gordon Archive/Annette Haven/Seka/Kay Parker

  Seka makes her point. Gordon Archive/Seka

  “…they kept coming back!” Adult Film Association of America

  “You show ‘em the sizzle, not the steak.” Here’s Kay Parker tastefully illustrating Dave’s point. Kay Parker/Gordon Archive

  Seka, my next leading lady! Gordon Archive/Seka

  Carly told her parents. Drawing by Carly

  Always loved “The Awards.” Gordon Archive.

  The movie that never was. Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive/Seka

  Bob Ernst of The Blake St. Hawkeyes. Gordon Archive.

  “Just a little bit of love?” Vincent Fronczek/Gordon Archive/Seka

  I changed from the remodeling Daddy at home smoking a crayon and carrying around a baba of appa juice… Photo by Carly

  …and turned back into Pacheco the actor playing a detective in a movie. Hustler Video/LFP Video Group, LLC

  But eventually, he’d make good on it. Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive/Kay Parker

  Kay Parker. God save the Queen. Kay Parker

  POLLY! Gordon Archive.

  Mommy and Daddy. La Belle Dame Sans Merci — John William Waterhouse

  Adult Video News

  This year, it looked like the Awards Show would belong to Colleen. Adult Film Association of America/Gordon Archive

  Colleen was named Shauna Grant now. Vincent Fronczek

  Shauna Grant the X-rated movie star! Vincent Fronczek

  Vincent Fronczek/Caballero.

  But this is who she was without the war paint. Gordon Archive.

  Colleen was dead. Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Pacheco and Kay Parker. Gourmet Video

  Gordon Archive/Gourmet Video

  Pacheco and Kelly Nichols. Gordon Archive/Kelly Nichols

  Kelly Nichols

  de Renzy and crew. Gordon Archive.

  You don’t need me to tell you she was young and beautiful. Gordon Archive/Las Vegas Video

  Angel and the Prince. Gordon Archive/Las Vegas Video

  Gordon Archive.

  We called him “Glutman.” Vincent Fronczek/Hustler Video/ LFP Video Group, LLC.

  I was in the Elisha Cook part as “Wilmer the gunsel.” Vincent Fronczek/Hustler Video/ LFP Vidseo Group, LLC.

  I’d be working with Laurie Smith. Gordon Archive.

  Tina Ross. Gordon Archive.

  Don’t I look dashing? Vincent Fronczek/Hustler Video/LFP Video Group, LLC.

  Nina Hartley’s Anal Rehearsal. Gordon Archive.

  Maybe one of these days we’ll actually figure out how to market it. Gordon Archive.

  Left to right: Vincent Fronczek, Mark Focus, & Paul Johnson. Gordon Archive and M Joseph Shaller PhD.

  Our banquet was an All-Star parade of X-rated talent. Excalibur Entertainment, Inc.

  (L-R) Eric Edwards, Harry Reems, Paul Thomas, Richard Pacheco, and Jamie Gillis. Gordon Archive.

  Among the women, newcomer Ginger Lynn had top billing… Gordon Archive.

  …with Lisa De Leeuw… Gordon Archive.

  …Amber Lynn… Gordon Archive.

  …Janey Robbins… Gordon Archive.

  …and Nina Hartley. Gordon Archive.

  Harry and Jamie, a pair of Kings! Gordon Archive.

  “Janey Robbins,” I told him. There was no hesitation. Gordon Archive.

  “Janey Robbins,” I told John. “I want to work with Janey Robbins.” Gordon Archive.