by Ian Gittler
Later, in an alley, they romp on a discarded mattress. There’s a rip in the crotch of Jeanna’s pants. She tugs at Sikki’s fly and sucks on him for a minute. They both laugh. The rain starts coming down hard.
Back in the room, Jeanna fills a shopping bag with “Jeanna Fine” promotional material. Posters, video cassettes, fan-club flyers. She packs a Polaroid camera, lots of film, and a Sharpie to sign the photos.
THE VIDEO STORE is empty. It’s dark now, still pouring. Jeanna acts positive. She and the owner know each other from an appearance here a few months ago. Jeanna will get something for just showing up.
Sikki sets her stuff up on a folding card table, and they stand around waiting. A balding, middle-aged man in a tan raincoat emerges from the back of the store. He’s been in a twenty-five-cent-token video booth since before Jeanna arrived. He approaches the star.
“Are you Jeanna Fine?”
“Yes, I am. How do you do?” Jeanna replies.
“Uh, fine,” he says. “I mean good. Uh, are you doing Polaroids?”
“Sure. One shot for ten, two for fifteen, or three for twenty.”
“I’d like two please.”
Sikki has the camera in his hand. Somehow the man knows to give the money to him.
“How do you want me?” Jeanna asks.
“Topless? Would you take your shirt off?”
“Sure.” Jeanna removes her leather jacket, pulls down her top. She stands in front of the man with her back to him.
“Here,” she says, taking his hands and pulling them around her. “You hold my tits, OK?”
“OK,” he says, gingerly cupping Jeanna’s tits under her nipples. He looks totally un-comfortable, but manages a weak smile when Sikki says, “Say cheese.”
For the second Polaroid the man sits on a chair and Jeanna straddles his lap. She stands just high enough to press her chest into his face. He turns red. Sikki snaps the shot.
Jeanna gets off the man and they both stand. He straightens his coat.
“Can you sign those to Rob, please. R-O-B.”
“Sure, Rob,” Jeanna says. Rob laughs nervously.
Jeanna writes, “For Rob, Good Fuxx!” then signs her autograph. Rob thanks her, mumbles something about loving her movies, then leaves.
That’s it for the in-store appearance. The store is now officially empty. The owner comes over to check on Jeanna. She asks him to shoot one of her with Sikki and me.
IT’S 6:45 P.M. and Jeanna wants to do her shift at the jack-off parlor alone. She makes that clear.
Sikki drinks Guinness in an Irish tavern and eats fish and chips. Sikki met Jeanna at the Consumer Electronics Show, CES ’91, last January. He and a friend drove from Boulder to Las Vegas for the convention.
“We knew there’d be porn chicks,” he says.
He stood in line for Jeanna Fine’s autograph. Jeanna signed the poster and asked him to meet her later that night. His friend went back to Boulder alone. Jeanna took Sikki home with her to Hollywood.
“And the rest is history,” he says. “I PA’d a little, then made the jump into acting. One day I was a fan, the next I was a porn star.”
THE ROOM is still a mess. Sikki forgot to take the DO NOT DISTURB sign off the door knob. He’s not too worried about it.
He shows me five or six T-shirts with the names and logos of obscure hardcore bands printed on them. Sikki says he has a band with Tom Byron in LA, but that he wants to form his own band where he’s the only singer.
After the release of Edward Penishands, in which he had the lead role, the producer received calls from Tim Burton, John Waters, and Johnny Depp.
“They wanted me to autograph their tapes,” he says.
Sikki wants to start working behind the camera more.
Jeanna said Sikki had to take off his condom in order to finish a scene with a young black actress named Dominique Simone. Jeanna said she wasn’t happy about it but that she understood.
“That’s what I told her,” he says. “The truth is, I was really into doing Dominique. I didn’t want to spoil it with a rubber, y’know? I knew Jeanna would be pissed ‘cause she’s working so hard to get everyone in the business to, y’know, send out the safe-sex message.”
Jeanna returns looking worn out. She’s still fidgety, still talking fast. Under the spotlight, in front of the camera, Jeanna is uncomfortable. She’s unhappy with her makeup and all shifty. She apologizes for the way she looks, more than once. She’s still wound up, but now she seems vulnerable. Somewhere along the way, since we last saw her, Jeanna lost her angry confidence. She doesn’t bring up the jack-off booths, and I don’t ask. Neither does her boyfriend. After a few rough minutes of slow shooting Jeanna sits up.
“Look,” she says, “I really think I should take my shirt off for this shot.”
She pulls it over her head then lies back. Jeanna does have confidence in her doctor. She lets go. Her eyes drift, soften, like for a minute her life isn’t all about a fight.
THE PEOPLE I’m staying with up here—friends of my girlfriend—think I’m weird, I’m sure. I show them the Polaroid Jeanna gave me, but cover everything except Sikki with my palm.
“God, who’s that? He’s cute,” one says, sort of surprised I’d be in possession of anything she’d like, since I’m not “goth” at all.
“Is he in a band?” the other one asks.
They can’t believe Sikki is a porn star. Then they see the rest of the picture, and probably can’t believe a topless biker chick has her gigantic tits pressed into their best friend’s boyfriend’s side.
SIKKI AND JEANNA ARE HANGING OUT WITH PORSCHE LYNN, ANOTHER PORN STAR, IN a suite Porsche is sharing with some friends at a different hotel.
Porsche looks like a bad girl, but forty. She’s going to the ball as Elvira. Sikki has a realistic gunshot wound in the center of his forehead. He’s wearing a baggy Charles Manson T-shirt.
Jeanna Fine is going as Jeanna Fine, porn star. Her costume: pumps, leopard-spot stockings, satin bra, G-string with rhinestones, satin gloves that cover her arms, and a miniskirt with the word FUCK printed over and over. She has a black bolero hat and a red feather boa.
Jeanna’s in Porsche’s bedroom. The bed is littered with hair-spray cans, pins, the odd pair of panties, et cetera. There’s a hand-held mirror with “powdery residue.” Jeanna covers that with a paperback book—The Yeast Connection—as I walk in.
JEANNA BARES her tits and panties for a snapshot in front of the hotel, ignoring a passing group of elderly theatergoers in black tie and evening gowns. They ignore her, too.
The closer the taxi gets to the arena, the more congested the streets are. A quarter mile from the entrance the driver refuses to go on. It’s forty degrees and really windy, but the streets are filled with pedestrians in risqué outfits, lots of exposed flesh, all kinds of bizarre getups.
The place is a mob scene. The air reeks of pot and cheap beer. When Nina Hartley first mentioned the Ball, it sounded like an intimate, sad little attempt at keeping the torch of the swinging seventies burning. Then the Ticketmaster agent said it was $38.50 a head. The event is a cross between an AC/DC concert and a New York Rangers hockey game—except that everyone is semi- or completely nude.
One guy is in a diaper and bow tie, carrying a baby bottle filled with beer. Jeanna spots a six-foot walking penis. The parade is endless. A fat, fat lady in stockings, garter, and high heels—that’s it—walks her fat, fat nude husband on a dog leash attached to his studded collar.
There are a few imaginative costumes that are skillfully, expensively executed, but mostly the arena is filled with trashy exhibitionists and voyeurs, and lots of tough guys in togas.
It turns out Jeanna is here with a purpose. Two $10,000 prizes will be awarded; one for the best costume and one for “sexiest lady.” Jeanna intends to win the latter. The judges—a couple of local DJs—will gauge the audience reaction to decide the winners. There must be five or six thousand people here, but a short guy in leather (not
hing wild, just a look) emerges from the crowd, takes Jeanna by her hand, and leads her back-stage for the competition. Jeanna tells Sikki, like a mom, all stern and focused, to meet her at the mezzanine bar after she wins her prize. Then she disappears.
Sikki has a drink in each hand, alternating between sips from both plastic cups. He looks happy. Strangers compliment his gunshot wound. He’s buzzing.
Porsche appears. She’s hooked up with two broad-shouldered, nineteenish guys dressed in black, head to toe, with black and white paint covering their faces. They’re leading Porsche around on two thin, silver chain leashes attached to her leather collar. Her Elvira dress is pulled open to show off her tiny tits and pierced nipples.
THE BALL
Porsche and her teenagers drift off into the crowd. Sikki positions himself at the railing of the mezzanine, overlooking the orchestra section, to watch the stage.
A nine-foot-tall space creature wins for best costume, then it’s on to the girls. There are a bunch of contestants, but in a matter of minutes the competition boils down to three women sticking their asses out for applause. Then it’s two: Jeanna and a tall, blonde Texan. They’re called back to the center of the stage to compete for the noisiest ovation.
The Texan is in white. She’s radiant. She never even shows the crowd her tits, but the applause is decisive. Jeanna is the loser.
She finds Sikki. Jeanna is bitter.
“That bitch isn’t hot,” she says, spitting. “Fuck. If she wasn’t a blonde, she wouldn’t even be up there. It’s bullshit.”
Jeanna acted in porn movies as a bleached blonde for six years, built her career as a bleached blonde. She and Sikki continue drinking hard. Jeanna begins flashing her chest for random passersby. In a minute a crowd of sweaty, half-naked men has formed around her.
They snap pictures and lewdly assess her body. Jeanna swings her FUCK miniskirt around and tucks her G-string off to the side, showing them her shaven pussy. She is totally into it, not like she enjoys it, just like she’s into it. She eggs them on. Jeanna turns to Sikki, who’s standing back five feet or so, and says, “This is out of hand.”
Suddenly the crowd bursts apart. A young guy in a toga reels back, holding his face as blood runs out of both nostrils. Jeanna punched him right in the nose. She takes a step toward him, and he takes three quick ones backward then disappears into the crowd.
“That fucking asshole grabbed my tit,” Jeanna says, looking pumped. The group has dispersed. Sikki holds her hand. He’s so out of it. His lazy eye is twisting off into another direction, no hiding it now, and his face is green. His makeup is smeared around a peculiar, frozen smile.
Jeanna looks him up and down. Her eyes dart in my direction, then away. She turns around, looks out at the mob. I offer to get her and her boyfriend out of here, but Jeanna is transfixed. She doesn’t want to leave.
She takes a couple of steps forward. She begins luring men in with her body, again, just like before. Jeanna Fine can get a crowd. Fast. I can’t tell if these guys know she’s Jeanna Fine or just like standing near her naked parts. The new Jeanna Fine—black hair, tattoos, nose ring, new, big, fake tits—is a whole different thing.
“Wild, man. This is a strange trip,” Sikki says.
I agree but he corrects me.
“No, man. I dropped acid.”
This zoo is a bad trip sober. Sikki’s peculiar frozen smile is intact.
Jeanna has surrounded herself with leering, drooling guys all over again. In the same instant someone’s hand makes contact with Jeanna’s ass, her elbow is already slicing into the perpetrator’s neck. She grabs his hair as he goes down, punching the side of his head twice and stomping on his stomach with a spiked heel as two of his buddies, both wearing penis masks, drag their friend away.
Sikki is dazed. This got through. His mouth hangs open; he is not able to deal. The scene is ugly. Jeanna makes it look like sport. She can fight, that’s obvious. I wish I hadn’t seen this, or come here at all.
A shirtless, tattooed, six-foot-four biker dude is at Jeanna’s side. He has a press pass—Easy Rider magazine—clipped to the strap of his Nikon F4. He knows Jeanna and shields her. Jeanna gives him the OK—for a second it’s uncertain if she will—and the biker eases up, lets Sikki step close.
Jeanna laughs like nothing has happened. There are fights breaking out. The crowd surges dramatically when someone shouts, “He’s got a knife!”
The house lights are turned on. There’s no air, just the sour smell of cheap beer, piss, and vomit. Security guards in riot gear charge into the crowd.
Jeanna and Sikki make their way toward the exit.
It’s freezing outside. Sikki is visibly shaking, but Jeanna still looks rushed-out on adrenaline, or speed, or both.
“Those fucking guys were completely out of hand. Totally,” she says, exhilarated. Her words squeeze through a clenched jaw.
Sikki, beginning to calm down, says, “Man. Wild. It was really wild.”
A quiet, benevolent smile passes across Jeanna’s face when she looks at him. A second later, though, it’s, “Hey, why the fuck are you going this way?!” as she orders the taxi driver—not happy about the freaks he’s just picked up—to take a different route back to Porsche’s hotel.
Two friends of Sikki’s who drove in from Boulder are already there. They were at the Ball, too. She’s a student and he makes brass instruments. They’re tripping. Everyone’s in the kitchen of Porsche’s suite eating Halloween candy. Jeanna goes on about the contest.
“Blondes. It’s just the same shit. To tell you the truth, I think my applause may have been louder. But those judges, I guess they’re just programmed to vote for blondes.”
“You were so hot up there. You won, really, as far as I could see,” Sikki says.
The door to the suite swings open and Porsche calls out, “Hey everyone, I’m home.”
She appears in the kitchen doorway flanked by the two boys she picked up at the ball. Porsche surveys the scene in the kitchen, smiles, then leads them to her bedroom and shuts the door.
Porsche’s screaming—total howling—cuts through the walls. For half an hour. Nonstop. No one in the kitchen ever acknowledges the noise. The conversation just goes along, with Jeanna doing most of the talking.
“That scene was really fucked. I mean some guys just don’t have any control. They see a pair of tits and they just lose it,” she says.
“Of course, baby,” Sikki says. “When I see your body I lose it, too. And I see it every night.”
Everyone laughs.
Then the suite is quiet. The noise from Porsche’s room has stopped. The bedroom door opens and she comes out in a tiny blue towel. In her timid baby voice, Porsche asks if anyone has a condom. Jeanna shrugs. Try in there, someone jokes, pointing at the sliding doors to the second bedroom.
She does. Porsche slips into the dark room where her other friends are already asleep, then emerges, a second or two later, waving a single condom packet. Then Porsche’s moaning resumes, louder than before. No one in the kitchen lets on that they even hear it.
LOS ANGELES
“I’M TALKING TO SOMEONE AT WILLIAM MORRIS ABOUT A BOOK DEAL. YOU KNOW, ABOUT my life. I need to find a writer. Do you think Bret Ellis would be into it?”
Tom Byron’s place on North Stanley, the half-house he shares with Jeanna and Sikki, is underfurnished and poorly lit, like an off-campus flop. It’s cool, in a college way, as long as you don’t walk around barefoot. A couple with a nine-year-old son live on the other side of the kitchen wall. The place reeks of freshly smoked sensimilla, years of it. There’s a rusty bench press and some weights on the patio outside the living room. A slate path cuts through the backyard.
“That book by Jerry Butler is bullshit,” Tom says, referring to another porn star’s autobiography. “I mean all he really does is put down everyone in the business. He’s an asshole. My book will be about my life. Y’know, I’ve done over a thousand movies. I mean that’s pretty interesting. My l
ife is pretty different from the average guy.”
Tom isn’t fully convinced himself, judging by how bored he looks.
His bedroom is the suburban bachelor pad part of the house: drawn miniblinds, black carpet, arching floor lamp hanging near his big bed, black comforter and pillows, Frisbee sitting in the middle with a Baggie full of weed. The fireplace mantel is lined with awards, porn-style Oscars. There’s an X-Rated Critics Organization Hall of Fame plaque, and a little red bong. His big TV and VCR are set up in a corner near the window.
Tom has some tattoos, a pierced nose, and a pierced nipple. His rocked-out image might be the influence of Sikki and Jeanna—Tom’s is less authentic—or maybe it’s just the beginning of a trend in porn to look like Guns n’ Roses. For most of his career, Tom has looked like an innocent kid—played the pizza delivery boy, the nephew who gets seduced by his wild aunt, roles like that. Underneath it all he still looks boyish. But for the pictures Tom puts on his best bad-ass face. He mugs like a hardened ex-con, putting an unexpected amount of energy into projecting, like being in front of a camera is nothing new for him. His torso is soft and he asks that his belly not be “highlighted.” Once the camera has been put away Tom reverts to boredom mode.
I ask about Traci Lords.
“That whole thing is bullshit,” he says. “I mean she used this business and loved it—no one made her do anything. But when the whole thing came out about her age the business changed. Since then the IRS has been on my back nonstop. It’s a fuckin’ drag.”
“Did you work with her?”
“She was my girlfriend. We were in love. I mean I didn’t know she was thirteen at the time. Yeah, we worked together.
“You guys all want the sensational stories. That isn’t really what the business is about. Day to day it’s just like anything else. No one seems to get that.”
Tom’s cautious reply regarding Sean Michaels’s Halloween party is, “I might be there.” Then, “Hey, don’t forget to ask your friend if he wants to write my book.”