by Hyapatia Lee
“Little Sister, did your family teach you your heritage and your tribe’s traditions?”
“Not really,” I answered, “my great-grandmother Lee wanted to be as pale white as possible. She lived in Indiana during a time when our people were harassed a lot. She did not want to acknowledge her Native blood. That feeling has been sort of passed down. My grandmother taught me to love and respect nature, to treat the earth like our Mother and the Sun, our father.”
“What kind of father will you be, Little Brother? Will you do everything your child wishes, living for them, or will you expect him or her to bend in the wind of your wishes?”
“I will teach my children they have to learn to do certain things to get along in society, even though they might not want to. I will prepare them for the world.”
“Little Sister?”
“I remember what it is like to be very young. I want my baby to have a happy childhood. I know there are things they will have to do that they might not want to, but I will try not to make it too many.”
We continued like this all the way around the circle. Their perceptions and questions gave me insight and made my vision of myself and my future clearer.
When this was finished, Diane smoked the sacred pipe in such a way that she was making it a Karma pipe. She was able to see into my book of life and find my Karma and read if I were to have children or not. I held my breath as she read the book. If I were not to have children, the ceremony would be done, there would be nothing they could do and that would be the end ofthat!!! I wondered what I could have possibly done in another lifetime to not deserve children. Perhaps I was a dead-beat dad!!!
With her eyes closed as if in a trance, she told what she saw in the book. “I see a nest of snakes.”
“Oh no!” I thought.
Swiftdeer said, “That’s good.”
“It is?” I asked.
“Yes. Snakes are good beings that bring souls to this world.”
I sighed a big sigh of relief.
“Then it is meant for them to have children?” He asked Diane.
“If it does not deter you from your path” was the answer.
“What is the path?” Swiftdeer asked.
“To teach, to normalize sexuality, to unite the mind and body, to bring back to nature healthy sexuality.”
This was what my original vision quest years before, when I was in Helios, the halfway house, had told me.
“Good, then we can continue with the healing” Swiftdeer said.
I was asked to remove all my clothes and lay down in the center of the circle. Several women in the south (the direction of trust and innocence, children and music) started singing and playing a drum. As I lay down, Swiftdeer kept talking to me, asking me questions about my life and how I would change the way I was raised from the way I would raise my child. He talked about traditional philosophies and how I needed to get more in touch with that naturalness, the union with nature. He told me my path was long and wide, stretching over many streams that I could easily be swept away in, holes I could fall down in and get stuck. There were many rocks I could trip on. He said it was a much bigger and more important path than I gave it credit for and that it would be very hard but that I must always stick to it. When I follow the path, he said, Mother comes to greet me and carries me with her so I can accomplish my life work.
Three or four other women started balancing my charkas with crystals. One was charging me by sticking the point of her crystal into the bottom of my left foot. It felt amazingly good. There was a crystal egg I “gave birth” to with the help of the “midwives” in the center of the circle with me. I was wideawake and aware of what was going on, but it felt like I was being moved back in time. When I looked at the walls of the garage it was not the same as when I first entered it. With the drumming and the smell of the sage, I was no longer surrounded by Metis (mixed-bloods), but full-blooded traditional Native Americans in some sort of long house. There was even a fire that was not in the garage when I had come in.
They began to paint me and I felt the power of all of their energy focused on me. I was charging and I felt like I could glow, if I wanted to. Swiftdeer asked me how I felt and I said that I could swear I had just been picked up by a big bird. Everyone laughed at me and I felt so violated. I had been opening myself up completely for hours with this healing and I couldn’t understand why they were laughing at me.
“They are laughing at you, Little Sister, because she has just painted a bird on your forehead that you would have no way of knowing! We are all surprised that you’re so connected!” Swiftdeer said.
I felt much better.
He took a quartz crystal that was long and pointed on one end, rounded on the other. He pressed it to my chest bone hard and ran it straight down to my navel with great force.
“Ho!” He said.
“Ho!” everyone repeated.
I felt lifted, like I could breathe better. I was light headed When the entire ceremony was over, I was covered with paint. It was many hours later and I had laughed and cried several times. I was offered a room to take a shower in and I was happy to take advantage of that.
“As the colors go down the drain, let the water wash off all the bullshit too. You don’t need it. Wash it down the drain so it can go down, down into the ground and do something good for a change like turn to compost and grow some pretty flowers.”
After the shower, I gave out my medicine gifts, very worried now that they were too small for such an enthusiastic and longhealing. It was almost dawn, yet I felt lifted, revitalized, and full of energy.
Before we left, Swiftdeer invited us back into his bedroom with his wife and another couple. It was here that I was first introduced into the Chuluaqui-Quodoushka teachings, or sexual teachings. Traditionally, when a child reaches puberty, they choose a fire person. If they are a boy, they choose a fire woman, and if they are a girl, they choose a fire man. The child chooses her/his teacher and this is how they learn all about sex. There is a lot more to it than what we are taught. For example, the four levels of orgasm, the fire breath (how to achieve orgasm without self stimulation, including rubbing the legs together-it’s all done with the breath), the five different male and female anatomical types and how each prefers to experience sex and orgasm. It is quite a wonderful teaching that everyone should know before they ever have sex with anyone. It is never too late to learn. Swiftdeer and other members of the Deer Tribe give Quadoushka teachings all over the world. Bud and I were so amazed by all that we had seen and done, we were shocked to be so awake after being up all night. It was almost 10:00 AM when we left there. We went to our hotel room and made love, thankful to have until that afternoon before we had to be anywhere for work.
I never had another period, or moon cycle. I was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it had happened so quickly. I was overjoyed. This time I wanted my doctor to monitor my progesterone levels closely and be prepared to prescribe natural progesterone suppositories if my levels got low and I started to bleed. She agreed with me all the way.
At the ninth week of pregnancy, blood tests revealed a sharp decline in progesterone. I asked for a prescription. She told me to wait until I started to bleed or cramp. I was starting to get angry. This was on a Friday afternoon. By early Friday evening, I was spotting. I called the doctor and was told she was not on call. The doctor who was covering for her would call me back. When he did, I explained the situation and expected to be told when I could pick up my progesterone, instead, he suggested that if I lost this baby, they would know for sure what the problem was and THEN I could take progesterone if I needed it on the next pregnancy! I told him how my doctor had already cautioned me on the possibility of a malformed heart in my baby and the other risks of taking this drug to prevent miscarriage. I told him I had signed waiver after waiver. He still would not budge. I told him that if I lost another baby, I wouldn’t care to live anymore and I would be sure to hunt him down and take him with me. I couldn’t believe how insensitive
he was being! Finally, he agreed, against his better judgment, to give me the prescription that would save my baby’s life. How ironic that I had to fight so damn hard to keep my baby when so many people today are working to get rid of theirs. I felt so cheated and misunderstood. But I was still pregnant!!!
Soon after that incident we got a call from the Phil Donahue show. They were doing an episode on couples in the Adult Movie business and how they got along. It was to be shot in New York City and I had a major decision to make. Did I feel safe enough about the pregnancy to fly to New York? Bud and my doctor encouraged me and I decided it was okay.
Nina Hartley and her husband Dave were on the show too, along with Jeanna Fine and her fiancé’. Phil was very nice to us. Before the show started, he came back to the green room where we were all waiting and told us that he was basically on our side. He said it was a matter of freedom of speech in his eyes. If they censored us, he would be next. He said he would have to play the devil’s advocate, however, in order to make the show interesting and stir up controversy. He did not want us to feel he thought badly about us. I was very touched by his thoughtfulness.
The show went well. We had several conservative people in the audience who were aghast at our professions. They couldn’t understand why people who looked and talked like they were normal, would want to make explicit adult movies. This was a topic I was to discuss on many talk shows in the future. It is also one of the main reasons for this book.
When I got back home, I stayed in bed for three months, not getting up except to go to the bathroom and shower. I read the encyclopedia and several other books I’d been trying to find time for. I watched videos and listened to ballets and operas, all thosethings I’d been swearing I’d do some rainy day. It didn’t take long for me to get extremely bored.
After all that laying around in bed and doing little more than raising my food-filled hand to my mouth, I was certainly starting to look pregnant. I was not in any condition to make money off of my looks. A Playboy photographer that I had known for years, Dennis Silverstein, came to my house and shot a cover and centerfold layout of me in a merry widow, to hide the pregnancy. This was the last thing I did in the adult entertainment business for a year.
While I waited for my baby to be born, I studied the Cherokee language and some information that one of the girls, Lynn, at the healing with Swiftdeer had given me. I had an intense desire to learn more about the Twisted Hairs Council of Elders and all their teaching wheels and keys. Lynn offered to help me to learn some things. When my baby was born, she would be the first nanny we had.
Our meager savings was dwindling and I suggested that perhaps Bud could get a job of some sort. Bud, however, thought it would be better for him to stay home and take care of me. We had fallen into a pattern.
In a relationship, when one person grows, it affects that relationship. There must be an appropriate adjustment. There must be room to grow, and ideally, the two grow together. Each person needs to have their individuality and the relationship has its own individuality as well, so that it looks like two circles overlapping a bit in the middle. Our relationship wasn’t quite like that, we were codependent. Having worked and traveled together, never being apart for more than an hour or two, we were like Siamese Twins.
After nine months and a cesarean, I finally had my baby!!! Now I had a family. Now I would have my chance to know, at least on one level, what a real mother-child relationship was like. I believe one of the reasons I had such a hard time carrying and birthing my child was because I had negative feelings about my own gestation and birth. Some therapists believe what a child hears in utero and in the moments following birth will affect their whole life. I am sure there must’ve been many conversations about how I was not wanted, a mistake, a problem. Perhaps, subconsciously, my mind equated all pregnancies with the feelings of trauma, abuse, and despair, even though I wanted my baby more than anything in the world. It was so important to me to finally have a family. Words cannot express the need, the void that I had felt all my life that was finally comforted that day.
Now I was fulfilled. I thanked the Great Spirit a million times over and prayed for my son to be safe and healthy and live a long happy life for many, many years after I was gone. He was born two days before the fourth of July and as we watched the fireworks from the hospital hallway window, my heart mirrored their brilliance with its joy.
TRACILORDS, GERALDO AND TIMALLEN
My long time off work left us in deep debt. We had no insurance, we were self-employed and didn’t know where to go for any that would cover maternity anyway. The excruciating pain from the surgery made it impossible for me to do normal things, like go up and down stairs, for quite a while. Bud did not feel as though he should get a job. He preferred to stay home and help take care of the baby and me. It became obvious that I would have to go on the road again to make money just as soon as possible.
Considering my recent birth and the fact that all my abdominal muscles had just been cut through, not to mention my breast-feeding, it was necessary for me to have all new costumes. Nothing fit. My grandmother helped me with this.
My first dancing gig was in San Francisco at the Market Street Cinema. One of the ladies from my healing with Swiftdeer, Lynn, was to be my son’s nanny. I was so uncomfortable on stage. I could not simply let Hyapatia take over anymore. Victoria Cares For the Children. It’s not that Hyapatia wasn’t good to Kevin, she was, but Victoria Cares For the Children. She is the one who wanted him the most and worked so hard for a healthy pregnancy. It was hard to balance the two on the road. I was used to letting Hyapatia take over 99.9% of the time when I wasn’t home.
I really enjoyed the extra full breasts I had from the milk, as well as the special bond and closeness felt with my baby. It was as if he were back in my womb, almost. No one could take him from me or replace me. He was fed only my milk for the first six months of life, traveling with us everywhere.
It had been so long since I had done anything in front of a camera. People were starting to forget about me. In this business, yesterday’s video is easily forgotten when some months see well over 100 new releases. I needed to get something recent on the shelves in order to increase my demand on the dancing circuit and pay those hospital bills. After all the miscarriages and prescribed bed rest, I started the pregnancy with few resources to begin with.
Six months after the birth, I made my “come back” movie. “Saddle tramp” had high expectations, I had been working on the script for years. Originally, I wanted to use it when we did “The Wild, Wild West” for Essex. Vidco would be producing it under the eye of R.C. and our old friend, Mike. Bud would be directing.
R.C. should have worked for Essex. He was cut off the same bolt of cloth. By the time the project was shot, Mike and JD were directing, the script had been haphazardly butchered and the amount of money that was in the budget somehow never found its way to the set. The movie was thrown together and my only real sex scene shot uncommercially short. The total effect was devastating. It sucked.
Bud and I were mad and frustrated. After all we had been through with Essex, after all the work to get back in shape, we felt like it was a waste of time. Surely there was an easier way to heal and educate the masses about sexuality and satisfy myself with a little entertaining at the same time.
C. Zane of the Zane Entertainment Group offered me a few roles in some of his productions as a package deal. I wrote two of the movies and asked if Bud could direct them. There were many times when producers wanted to use more established directors. Most thought of Bud as just my husband. His presence on the set at all was barely tolerated. It was an uphill battle to get people to give him a chance now that Harry was out of the business. After holding out on my services, he usually got the job. If that was the only way they could get me, they would, but more often than not, his fee was included in my original offer. In other words, he worked for free, according to them.
These projects “Take My Wife” and “Uniform B
ehavior” were cheap one-day wonders, but I had fun. The people I worked with were great. Nina Hartley and Megan Leigh were always fun to work with. Sharon Mitchell and Keisha were also on the set. So was Brittany Morgan. It was a good bunch of people.
This was the first time I worked with Megan Leigh, a beautiful woman with a heart of gold. She lived with her mother and enjoyed her career. We took my son to Sea World together. She was very good with him and he fell in love with her. We became very close friends, keeping in touch weekly.
I had been doing live phone sex for the Personal Services Corporation for many years. They provide the only opportunity to talk to X-rated movie actresses live on the phone. This helped me support the family during my pregnancy. It is amazing how basic and normal 95% of the men are. A lot of them just wanted someone to talk to and reassure them their desires are normal. Some didn’t want to discuss sex at all, but just needed advice on how to impress and feel comfortable with women.
Geraldo Rivera was doing a segment on phone sex for Entertainment Tonight. Through Vivid Video, whom we were planning on doing a few projects with, I was asked to be involved. We’re like most people in that it is a thrill for us to meet people like Phil Donahue and Geraldo and we always take pictures. Geraldo even posed with the baby and me. He was a real nice guy, but once the cameras were rolling, watch out!
He asked me about children getting on the phone and running up a bill. I explained that Personal Services requires a major credit card and a telephone both listed in the caller’s name. A check is made on every single call. As for pre-recorded sex, kids have been abusing the telephone for years. Haven’t you ever gotten a call asking, “Is your refrigerator running? Well, you’d better go catch it?” or some such nonsense? This is just another way for kids to misuse the phone. If a kid is going to play with something he shouldn’t, I would prefer it be the phone over the medicine cabinet, knives, matches, or a gun.
“What about rape? Some people believe phone sex is responsible for many rapes.”