Porn King

by John C. Holmes

  It was four or five days before I heard from Misty. In the meantime, I was having fun with everyone who wandered my way. As dog-ass skinny as I was, it seemed some things never changed. Girls were there for my picking.

  In spite of what some people might believe, I am very attracted to women. It has been rumored that I am gay so I guess it’s up to me to set the record straight. Sure, I had participated in a gay film in the past, but that was out of necessity. I needed the money and it sure wasn’t all that pleasurable for me. I am not putting down what I did—I certainly don’t have anything against it. Different stokes for different folks, as they say. What makes us all unique is our right to choose whatever and whomever. Where would we be, and especially where would I be without the sexual revolution? The point is that I love women; the younger the better, as long as they are legal.

  I could tell how much Misty wanted me. She began calling and asking about cocaine. She wanted some, she said. I knew she really didn’t do drugs, but business was business. Later, she confessed that she gave it to her friends. She even convinced a producer by the name of Hal Freeman to use me in the film California Valley Girls.

  One night, on Bill’s birthday, I asked Misty and a friend of hers to come up to the house. While I was really beginning to feel something inside for Misty, I definitely didn’t want to get hung up on anyone. What better way to get rid of that feeling than by giving her away as a gift to Bill? Without saying a word to Misty about my “surprise,” she figured it all out. She definitely wasn’t stupid, even if she pretended to be at times. Needless to say she went to bed with me that night, not Bill. Little did I know at that time that she would be with me from there on out. I called her “Misty Sue Bell,” in private. The name “Dawn” didn’t sit well. Misty had a southern accent, it was cute, “Sue Bell” somehow, fit her.

  Misty was special, she was very understanding as she had somewhat of a submissive nature and never asked too many questions. Having been around the porn business, she could relate to my life as a male prostitute. I never realized how much until the time she went to Palos Verdes with me, pretending to be my goddaughter. We were meeting a very wealthy older woman, who liked to pay guys to line up and “gang bang” her while an audience of her friends watched. Misty stood on the sidelines, taking it all in, not saying a word. She understood.

  At home, Bill had a bedroom and connecting bathroom that adjoined mine. When Misty moved into the big house, she kept all her stuff in her room, but she slept with me. We had two separate phone lines so that there would be no confusion or conflict with all the business that was coming our way. One night I handed Misty a mirror so she could do a line of coke. I couldn’t believe it when she refused. That was the first time anyone had ever said no to me on that subject, especially in California. Misty’s excuse was that coke made her feel funny and unable to talk, that was why the few times that she had bought it from me she didn’t use it herself. I didn’t argue with her. I simply went into the bathroom and freebased alone for about five hours while she sat on the other side of the door wondering if I was ever going to come out. I thought a lot about what she had said and the truth was, the shit didn’t make me feel all that great anymore either. Even though my mind was all screwed up, I knew I had to get clean if I were to have any future at all. More than anything, I wanted that future to include someone in my life. Misty had far more willpower than I did. She was good for me; I needed her.

  The two weeks that followed were very ugly as I went cold turkey. In spite of the monster I know I was, Misty stuck by me the whole way, and when it was over, I was feeling healthier and more vibrant than I had felt in years. We began to have so much fun together, and I believe she was feeling young again too. She had missed out on being a kid just as much as I had, so we were making up for lost time, doing all the things we seldom got to do while growing up. It also helped that we had some money at that time to do them. We had a wild, wonderful time going from one amusement park to another, seeing movies, soaking up the sun at the Biltmore Hotel in Palm Springs, gambling in Las Vegas—Misty even won fifteen-thousand bucks playing roulette once. We loved to take long walks on the beach. No matter where we went we laughed and basically made a spectacle out of ourselves. We didn’t care. We were living again!

  There was only one dark cloud in our beautiful blue sky. I still had one hell of a debt with Bill, and one afternoon he called me on it. One of his pals in the gay market decided that a gay film with John Holmes would make several million dollars. The money sounded great, more than enough to get me off the hook. And while I didn’t jump at the suggestion, I knew I had to do it.

  Leave it to Bill to run and tell Misty. She was shocked and couldn’t wait to call me on it. It helped that she had a submissive nature. It helped even more when she heard I would be making a million dollars on the deal. Not long before the offer, I had asked Misty to marry me, hoping to be able to get enough money together so that we could get out and away from the “business.” The truth is I knew I would never make a million dollars by doing the film; it was just a way to pay off an old debt. But I had to tell her something.

  Because of my prior experience in a gay film, again because of money, I felt that there was only one way to get through it: I had to be high. In truth, even high, I really had a hard time doing this film. They even had to dress up a woman to look like a man to finish one of the scenes. How could I tell Misty I was doing drugs? She was so proud of me. She looked up to me. I was her “Daddy.” Thank God. She believed in me so much that as time went on she wound up being my perfect little alibi. The little money I made off the film, after Bill got the major share, was just enough to pay some of our bills for a few months. I told Misty that Bill and his pal had claimed they didn’t make the money they had hoped for, so there was no million to be had. Although she was disappointed, she seemed satisfied to hear that. And knowing we did make something, she believed an effort had been made to pay me.

  With Misty under my influence she didn’t question my actions too much. Still, there were times when I had to make it appear that things were not quite as they seemed to be. If I learned anything from my dealing with Bill and his pals it was how much it bothered me not to be totally honest with Misty. In the past, the business had forced me to lead numerous double lives, especially with tricks. I once had four different apartments, four different cars, sets of jewelry and clothes. I was very skilled at subterfuge, but this was different because I really loved Misty. Nevertheless, if necessary I knew I still had to create a story to cover my ass for anything that might come up in the future. It usually worked out fine in the past, and it did this time, too. Misty not only believed the money story: she began to resent Bill. From then on, she never believed anything he told her.

  It was several weeks after finishing the gay film that I almost died. I really don’t remember much about this time except that I was raging with fever and violent to the extreme, not at all myself, almost as if something foul had possessed me. If anyone set food before me I would throw it against the wall. My bedroom smelled of death for weeks. Finally, in a moment of weakness one evening, Misty was able to talk me into going to the hospital. That was fine until I overheard a nurse telling Misty she couldn’t lie down with me. Upon hearing that I ripped out the IV and demanded Misty take me home immediately.

  The next day Misty got me to go back to the hospital where she talked a nurse into readmitting me, and just in time, too. They were able to get enough fluid through the IV back in my body to cool my brain so it didn’t fry. And while the doctors never told me what was happening, I knew. It was the drugs I had taken to get through the gay film. I had been clean for at least eight months before then, and now my body was rejecting them. I was going through “post-freebase blackout.” My lungs, my brain, even my sense of existing were fried to hell, and it was all because of my stupidity. One would have thought I would have had more sense considering the mess drugs had gotten me into before. This time, however, there was no snapping back.
I did get better eventually and everything returned to normal.

  Bill knew what was happening of course, because he was my connection. It was Bill who had turned me onto cocaine in the first place. He and I had an understanding about Misty; he knew better than to tell her I had been doing drugs. However, I later found out that he did try to tell her, but she didn’t believe him. It was just as I had hoped where Misty was concerned. The “game” was working.

  Yes, I was doing drugs again, but not as heavily as in the past and not all the time, as before. If I had learned anything from my earlier experience, it was that there was a time and a place for me to get high, and one definite wrong place and time was during the production of a film. I’m not making any excuses but doing cocaine again became only an occasional thing following my illness. Most of the time I just smoked marijuana; Misty liked to partake in that as well.

  Even though I was not feeling all that well, Bill told me it was time for Misty and me to get our own place. In other words, he was kicking us out. That was okay with me, he was charging us too much rent anyway. Misty soon found us an apartment in Encino. (It didn’t matter that our view was of the freeway directly behind the building.) She even went so far as to move most of our stuff all by herself. I could have probably helped her, but I was still very weak and she insisted she had the move under control.

  Once we were settled in our new surroundings, I began to feel really badly about everything. Misty was such a trooper. She had endured so much from me, and yet she was still hanging there at my side. I think if she’d had known the games I’d been playing and involving her in, she would have run for any place she could find. But to her credit and my good fortune, she didn’t. And luckily, for her sake and mine, not long after our move my health began to return. It was a lot easier for me without Misty having to be around Bill so much. Soon after we moved to Encino, Misty’s three-year old son, Ian, came to live with us. We were a happy little family, full of love and laughter; it was great.

  The porn business, which had changed so much through the years, was really booming. We were an industry now, and a very big one, at that. Years before it was primarily films shown only on movie screens in random theatres, and before that it was sleazy, middle-aged men selling grainy 8mm reels out of the trunks of their cars. Now, porn was seen almost exclusively on video. Making videos was faster, more economical, and more profitable. It was also safer as far as racketeering was concerned. We could get hundreds of videos across the states instead of just one reel of film to some unknown theatre. Video all but killed the theater business. Dozens of once-thriving operations folded, leaving basically only one theatre chain still operating. That was because it was owned—and I do mean owned, by some very powerful people who needed the “front” for other matters.

  Back in the 1970s, the business needed “stars” like Marilyn Chambers, Seka, a few others, and me. The thought behind the “star system” was to familiarize the public with a favorite performer, who would sell the product. Over the years, however, the reasoning began to change. The bigger the actors’ heads got, the bigger they wanted their paychecks to be, and it was far easier to get unknowns to work for less. Actually, the public really didn’t care anymore. In fact, the appetite for new faces was greater than ever.

  I was one of the lucky ones. Since I had more than a face to sell, the audience never seemed to tire of watching me slam the meat to some young starlet. Call it an animal type of sex, if you will, but it worked for me. Besides, I was “IN.” Having achieved more than a slight degree of notoriety provided me the opportunity to take care of other matters when I had to travel somewhere without anyone else knowing, and still have an alibi for my time if it was something important. Since the Wonderland episode I had become a great money collector for other people. Even though I didn’t kill those people at the Wonderland house, no one was really sure of my innocence. Because of that, no one wanted to mess with me. Between scenes, I could easily slip away without the wrong people knowing. They would just think I was resting in my company-paid hotel room, and since I had been escorted there, it wasn’t a problem. I had it made! At night after filming, I was able to pick and choose among the cast to “play.”

  I had my favorite actresses; a few I even liked as friends. Ginger Lynn was the best around in the industry at this time, but there were others as well. I had a lot of respect for Ginger. Ginger was different; she had class. Not only was she sweet and very sexy, she was above all a real person. I really liked her as a friend, not just another “girl-toy.”

  Along with my favorites, I definitely had my dreads. During the filming of California Valley Girls, I was so pissed off at Kimberly Carson that I almost ran her down with my car. Most of the girls were nice, or at least had something positive going for them. If I didn’t like someone, I’d try to forget the reason I didn’t care for her and focus on her one best feature. As pretty as a girl might be, if she were too much of a bitch for me to ignore, I would degrade her in my mind and make it as physically uncomfortable for her as I could. That might sound harsh, but that’s the way it was. I called it “venge-fucking.” Thankfully, this didn’t happen too often.

  Although I have worked with many blondes during my career, I have always preferred small, petite brunettes with big dark eyes. I have found that most blonde, blue-eyed women have an attitude. They tend to act is if they are better than the other girls and they don’t try as hard. I find that brunettes give it their all and try even harder to please. Redheads are a lot of fun in bed but they have the tendency of getting crazy and are most likely to become obsessed. It must be something in their genetic make-up. From my experience, there is no crazier woman than a red-headed one. As for wild women, I would defiantly have to say Italian women are the wildest, and nastiest, in bed. In fact, from my experience, bed is the only place they like to be.

  If I learned anything about porn actresses over the years it’s that the better their upbringing, the nastier they could be and usually were. Throw in a few extra bucks and a little attention and a producer could get them to do just about any degrading, nasty thing he wanted them to do.

  The same basic theory applied to women outside the business, as well. To me, it confirmed the old “preacher’s daughter” theory. Usually, the preacher’s daughter was the biggest slut in the church, town or wherever she happened to be. When standards are set too high for a person to live up to, then that person has more fun being bad. There is no rebel like a horny one!

  Drugs will definitely loosen a person up. Things that a person would never do straight, they are likely to do while on drugs. Drugs and the porn business go hand in hand. From what I could see, most everyone in the business was on drugs, mostly cocaine, but we all had our favorites. How freely drugs were passed around on a set depended on whom you were working for. With some producers and directors, drugs were a powerful way to control a situation, giving them an edge, perhaps getting a girl to do ‘favors,’ either for them or a friend. Most girls fell right into the trap, one they hadn’t a clue was being set for them. I have known very few actresses through the years who were smart enough to say no, especially if they thought it would get them closer to a person in power, such as someone who could land them future projects.

  As for the male actors, the producers couldn’t have cared less if they were high or not, as long as they could get it up, and drugs definitely had an adverse effect in that department. During my worst drug burnouts I was no better than any other male actor, except that it was rather difficult to find a stand-in for me to “cheat the shot.” Sometimes they were forced to wait and wait, often being forced to go onto the next scene and come back to me when I was ready. Of course this cost them time and money, but nobody wanted to deal with me during a burnout anyway because I could be such an asshole. It was best to stay out of my face.

  Bill had become a producer for one of the bigger companies, VCX, which meant I automatically had a job assisting in production and doing some directing. That was fine with me,
except the added responsibility was little more of a cover up for him when he either had to catch up on some sleep or snap out of a drug induced lethargy. Bill did have his good side, however, and in his own way he did take care of me from time to time. He knew I had his back whenever necessary, even though I often disagreed with him. I guess everyone has a good side; it’s just too easy to get caught up in all the games we play sometimes. The one thing that really annoyed me the most about Bill was that he never missed an opportunity to put me in a situation in an attempt to bring him and Misty closer together. That happened way too many times and really bothered me.

  It finally reached a point when I realized that Misty would have to get out of the business. Having her around would have made it too easy for my enemies to get their hands on her, which would have put us both in danger. There was another reason, as well. I wanted her for myself. I knew that if I were to marry Misty, or even just love her, then there was only one solution: she had to drop out of sight.

  How could I tell Misty she could no longer work? How could I force her to stay home and become a housewife? And how could I say she could not touch another man when for years I had lived off my wild “open sex” reputation? Not only was I proud of my notorious acclaim, I liked to fool around with other women too. For me to tell Misty one thing and practice another would have me looking and feeling like a fool. After all, I never believed in double standards. While I knew that Misty really didn’t want to be with another man I also knew she was just enough the rebel type to seek whatever she was told that she couldn’t have. Had I told her she could only be with me, I could easily see her being with someone else. It didn’t bother me for her to be with other girls. In fact, I encouraged her because to me that was different.