Pornstar

by Ian Gittler

  “I’m fucking starved,” she says.

  On the road I don’t even try to keep up. When I arrive Savannah is waiting near the entrance, drink in hand. Gladstone’s is a big seafood restaurant at the end of Sunset, on the water. It’s jammed with college kids, couples on dates, all pounding down tall pink and blue drinks with flowers and umbrellas. There’s an hour wait. Names are being announced over a loudspeaker.

  I convince the maitre d’ that Savannah’s famous. He buys it, half knowing who she is. Within five minutes we’re sitting at a table overlooking the water. Savannah orders a frosty, colorful daiquiri. The drink is gone in three hard sucks on a swirly straw. She orders another, and seems cheery.

  She watches three Jet Skiers traversing the surf in front of the restaurant. Spotlights illuminate the water.

  Savannah says, “I gotta pee.”

  She comes back as the food arrives.

  “I’m ready to go home,” she says. “Now.”

  Savannah doesn’t look at the food, couldn’t care less. She’s come back from the bathroom a little harder, a little less cheery, maybe wired. As we’re leaving the maitre d’ hands me his business card.

  The valet gets Savannah’s car first.

  “Follow me,” she says, then pulls over to the exit and waits. It’s pitch black out, except for headlights and taillights. Savannah drives faster than before. It’s stupid trying to keep up, but she wouldn’t give directions or an address.

  She zigzags through the freeway traffic, pulling way ahead. At seventy-five I’m still seven or eight cars behind. Each time I think I’ve lost her Savannah appears in the slow lane, laughing crazily, getting off on the speed, on freaking me out. This happens over and over during our thirty minutes on the freeway. I try to laugh about it, too, about the whole thing, how absurd, how vaguely pathetic, it is to be risking my life trying not to lose a porn star on a Los Angeles freeway.

  Finally her right blinker flashes. Savannah’s car slides from the left side across three lanes, then across another three lanes like it’s nothing—at ninety—then down the off-ramp for Ventura Boulevard.

  Savannah turns right onto Ventura, then again onto Valley Heart Drive. The curving, homey tree-lined street is a relief. It’s a joke, almost, that all that terror should lead here. Savannah pulls up to a garage entrance underneath a small, white modern apartment building.

  “Meet me at the elevator,” she shouts, then pulls in.

  THE THIRD-FLOOR APARTMENT is immaculate, hardly lived in. The wall-to-wall carpet is stark white. So are the bare walls. Savannah is proud of her home. There’s a bar off the kitchen, lots of shiny appliances, six stools, an eight-foot L-shaped leather sofa, a smoked-glass-and-metal coffee table. Everything that isn’t chrome is black. A Sony large-screen TV and VCR take up one corner. Five or six Savannah tapes make up her entire video collection. Four thirty-by-forty-inch Savannah posters, each in a fancy black-and-gold frame, lean on top of one another near the TV.

  “I still gotta hang those up,” she says.

  In her office there’s a gleaming StairMaster in one corner. Savannah laughs when asked if she uses it, like I must be joking, but I can’t tell if that’s a yes or a no. There’s a neat row of shoe boxes filled with fan mail on her black desk.

  “I have to answer those sometime,” she says.

  Savannah is being sweet again, like a kid who wants to share her toys.

  VALLEY HEART DRIVE

  The bedroom carpet is white shag. The bed takes up most of the room. The far wall is all mirrored closet doors. There’s a fluffy black cat curled up on Savannah’s comforter. I tell her I’m allergic to cats and she nudges it out of the room. I expected her reaction to be, “Deal with it, dude.” Savannah flops down on the bed and grabs the remote control. She turns on a big TV in a black faux-bamboo shelving unit at the foot of the bed, next to the bathroom. I sit near her feet, then move up. We lie there watching some show where Sandra Bernhardt pretends she’s Hugh Hefner. I click the set off.

  I ask Savannah if she has a condom. She points to a small bedside dresser. I pull open the drawer. It’s filled, ten inches deep and a foot back, with condoms and dildos and all kinds of sex toys, in every color, shape, size.

  Later Savannah gets up to go to the bathroom. She’s gone for a long time, maybe twenty-five minutes. She finally steps out in a long, frilly robe over an even frillier nightgown. It’s not sexy stuff—just the opposite. Both have long sleeves. It’s the kind of stuff third-grade girls dream of, the kind of bed clothes their dolls wear. Savannah’s makeup and lashes are gone. Even though I saw her without it when she arrived at the set of Sleeping Beauties, it’s still a shock. Savannah looks wiped out.

  “I’m going to sleep,” she says; no eye contact.

  Savannah’s out fast, in a minute or two, breathing heavy and steady.

  In the kitchen, the cat is circling the doggie bag from Gladstone’s. We share the salmon. There are Polaroids stuck to the refrigerator. In one, Slash is kissing Savannah. In another, she’s kissing his cheek. In the third, Slash has his arm around Savannah’s shoulder. They’re smiling at the camera. Savannah looks happy, like she’s in love. The pictures were taken in this room, on Savannah’s black sofa. The last shot is of Steven Hirsch, the owner of Vivid Video, standing next to her Miata. Jamie Summers says Hirsch bought it for Savannah, and this apartment as well, in a “been there, done that” tone of voice, but one maybe tinged with jealousy, too.

  The refrigerator is stocked with junk food. Artificially flavored puddings, fruit pies. I squeeze what’s left of the doggie bag into a corner. The freezer is the same: ice creams and Popsicles, some named after cartoon characters I’ve never heard of. The cupboard is brimming with a ton of different cereals, all family-sized boxes, Froot Loops, Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter, and twelve-box convenience packs. Pop-Tarts, Fruit Roll-Ups, various Jell-O pudding mixes. It’s the cupboard every nine-year-old dreams of. I turn out the lights and go back to the bedroom.

  Savannah’s bathroom counter is overflowing with toiletries. It’s kind of like the kitchen cabinets, except this is grown-up stuff, expensive stuff. Makeup, fingernail polish, a Rembrandt tooth-whitening system. Savannah’s teeth are very white.

  I lie next to her back for a couple hours. At dawn I try to say good-bye but she’s out cold, doesn’t hear a thing.

  Kelly O’Dell, a starlet, hangs around the set—a dentist’s house in the Valley—and waits to perform her first sex scene in a “real” porn movie.

  Marc Wallice, moments after his first scene of the day (the two thousandth or so of his career), will have sex with Kelly next. Marc admits he’s a premature ejaculator and says the technicians, the lights—all the distractions other actors view as obstacles to a successful performance—enable him to function reliably.

  Kelly proves she’s eighteen for the producer’s records.

  A soundstage dressing room.

  Director Jay Shanahan makes a cameo appearance in his video “Flesh for Fantasy.”

  Top left: Sean Michaels, a registered nurse from Brooklyn, is an actor and the director of “Girlz ‘n the Hood.” Top right: Tom Chapman says one reason he acts in porn is to piss off his dad. Bottom: Instead of trying to compete with the constant stream of young girls entering the business, actress Porsche Lynn revitalized her career by coming out with her own line of S&M tapes.

  Once a rec center swimming instructor back home in Montana, superstar Victoria Paris (pictured in her tiny Hollywood bungalow) came to Los Angeles with hopes of becoming a sports nutritionist.

  Taylor Wayne left her native England for Hollywood, where she has made a name for herself as a hard-core sex queen. Her fiancé is one of porn’s busiest video-box-cover photographers.

  Bad-boy actor TT Boy.

  Dominique Simone, one of the few black stars from her generation of porn, says the first time she had sex on camera it was “pretty bad,” but that as she did more scenes “it got better.”

  Madison on her bo
yfriend’s roof in downtown Los Angeles.

  LAS VEGAS

  MADISON IS SHARING A SUITE WITH TIANNA TAYLOR AT THE TROPICANA. SINCE I PHOTOGRAPHED her at her place in Hollywood last week, she’s taken me under her wing. She’s even secured me a cut-rate room at the Tropicana for the four days of VSDA ‘92, the Video Software Dealers’ Association convention. Madison likes being seen with a photographer from “outside the business” following her around. It’s a status symbol—an affirmation of her stardom.

  “If you want a lift to the Panty Auction at Pure Pleasures tonight,” she says, “be at my room at eight thirty.” Today was the first day of the convention, and this seems to be where everyone is going.

  Madison dresses like a hippie rock star, with peace-sign medallions, octagonal rose-colored shades, tight black bell-bottoms, macramé halters. Recently that image—plus a bunch of plastic surgery—has helped transform her from an Atlanta stripper, a house girl, into a major porn star.

  It is an image. Madison is likable, but she needs to move within the center of an entourage—this weekend it’s Tianna, one of Madison’s little errand boys, and a tall club DJ who looks like Morrissey. Madison bristles whenever her control is defied, no matter how trivial the breach. Tianna is also acting in porn, but it’s clear Madison is the leader of this gang.

  When I arrive she’s on the phone with Aaron, her boyfriend in LA, a rock drummer. He won’t be arriving in Las Vegas until one thirty in the morning, and Madison is pissed.

  Tianna checks herself out in a full-length mirror. She’s wearing tight white bell-bottoms and a white vest that covers less than half of an enormous, painful-looking tit job. “Do I look too much like a slut?” she asks.

  Madison’s group arrives at the small, white two-story building at the same time as Scott St. James, a stills photographer. After brief hellos they follow him in. Downtown Las Vegas feels far away. We’re in the pitch-black middle of nowhere.

  Still, Pure Pleasures is a typical sex shop and video arcade. Magazines, videos, and autographed posters of porn stars line the walls. The fruity stench of Professional’s Choice Spring Mist Odor Counteractant—used to mop down the booths—fills the air.

  Two thugs in tuxedos stand at the back door. When they recognize Madison, she and the rest are waved on through into a large tent erected at the back of the building.

  It’s a steam bath. Three hundred, maybe more, are packed into rows of folding plastic chairs, which are arranged on three sides of a shabby eight-by-ten-foot stage. Press photographers and other industry insiders are sprinkled throughout the front rows, but the vast majority of the audience is definitely fans. Some look like they’ve traveled a long way to get here.

  This is the premise: The fans have paid an admission fee for the opportunity to bid on the panties of their favorite porn stars. The stars, all girls, will be introduced and brought out one at a time. Each one will dance a little, maybe take a few questions from the crowd, and then the bidding will commence. The highest bidder for each performer wins a chance to join that porn star onstage and remove her lingerie with his teeth.

  Bill Margold, a perennial presence in porn and this event’s Organizer, is the master of ceremonies. Margold has produced, directed, or appeared in over three hundred adult films. Each year, as a member of the board of directors of the Free Speech Coalition, he throws this event in order to raise money to fight lawsuits involving censorship issues. The Panty Auction is a porn-world fund-raiser.

  Grandpa Al Lewis

  “Ladies and gentlemen, may all your wet dreams come true tonight. First of all, our thanks to Pure Pleasures for hosting, one more time, with me and the rest of the Free Speech Coalition board of directors, the VSDA opening-night Panty Auction! There are some very beautiful ladies in the house—I mean tent—tonight. I know you’ll know most of them pretty well, but there are also a few girls I’m sure you’ll want to get to know even better!” With each name the applause grows. After Nina Hartley’s name is mentioned the applause is intense.

  “Now you know the rules. I bring out a hot, sexy, curvy, lovable, fuckable porn star . . . and all you guys eat your hearts out! In fact, one of you lucky guys may get to say those very words tonight. It all depends on just how deep your pockets are. On a more serious note, it all depends on how much you value the right to purchase and use the materials of your choice in the privacy of your own home. That’s what this is all about. We need your help. If you want to keep stroking it to the stuff we’re putting out, you need your help. So tonight, dig a little deeper. These girls are ready to make it well, well worth it.”

  More cheers.

  BACKSTAGE, NINA HARTLEY is laughing while holding her bikini bottom to one side. Michele Capozzi, a short Italian Hachette press correspondent in a linen suit, and one of three journalists surrounding her, is down on one knee giving her a gentle, reverent kiss, as a peasant may have kissed the foot of a queen.

  The makeshift backstage area is an unfinished extension to the small cinder-block building. Some sections of the walls reveal insulation, others sheets of bare drywall. A single eight-foot fluorescent tube lights the space.

  Someone has unrolled crepe paper across a six-foot table and laid out Cheez Doodles, potato chips, and a couple bowls of ice with soda cans floating at the top.

  Sharon Mitchell is sitting on the end of a folded ladder, nude except for knee-high leather boots, assessing herself in a small mirror leaned against the wall.

  The rest of the girls who will be performing are hanging out, mostly undressed, sipping Cokes, comparing tit jobs, looking nervous, acting bored.

  “You’re my hero, totally. I’m honored to meet you.” Madison introduces herself to Nina Hartley. Nina has huge, friendly blue eyes. She responds with a warm smile. Nina is still surrounded by journalists, but she welcomes the attention from a new girl.

  MADISON IS THE FIRST star to hit the stage. There’s applause for the tiny stripper from Atlanta, but also that peculiar laugh you hear from porn fans—the one with the superior, judgmental tone.

  She’s in fire-engine-red, thigh-high, patent-leather stiletto-heeled boots and a red suede fringed bikini, and carrying a matching seven-foot bullwhip.

  She cracks her whip, dancing provocatively to a couple of songs, then Margold rejoins her onstage. They joke around. He pretends to fuck her from behind while she leans over the sound equipment—a brown Radio Shack—type stereo.

  “Let’s get down to business,” commands Margold.

  “Yeah, who’s got what it takes?” Madison shouts, grabbing the mike from Margold and flicking her pierced tongue lewdly, the tiny barbell glimmering in the spotlight. “Who’s ready to make a real political statement and get down on their knees and bite my panties!”

  More cheers and laughs.

  “Do I hear twenty dollars?” Margold crows. “That gentleman in the third row says twenty. People, people. Do I hear thirty? Yes.”

  Madison prances around the stage cracking her whip as the bidding climbs, grudgingly, up to seventy dollars.

  The highest bidder is a Mexican man who seems happy and a little confused. Now that he’s bid highest, he actually has to get up on the stage and perform. Madison waves him over, cracking her whip.

  “Life in the Fast Lane” is playing, and before the man can figure out where to begin, Madison is lifting his shirt over his head. Moments later he’s on all fours, with Madison, topless, riding him like a mule, pulling on the waistband of his underpants and using it as reins, her fringed bra draped over his face.

  Madison’s assault peaks with the man flat on his stomach, his arms and legs splayed. She’s still straddling him, clenching her fists, gritting her teeth, and shaking her fake breasts violently from side to side.

  The humiliation is almost complete. Madison allows the man, back up on his knees and visibly shaken, to sniff and snort his way through the ordeal of removing her G-string from behind with his mouth. He’s led off the stage, shirtless, G-string in hand, with a puzzled express
ion that seems to say, “Everyone is cheering and laughing, so I must be happy.”

  Madison’s performance sets the tone. All of the bigger names are intent on making laughingstocks of the males, while the lesser-known performers resort to kinky high jinks to try and prove themselves. A girl called Heidi Kat sucks off the director Seymore Butts while he films the act on a hi-8 with his outstretched arm.

  The tent stinks of sweat. The faces in the crowd look beat. The auction has already passed the two-hour mark, and the fans are ready for the main attraction. They want Nina Hartley. Some have begun chanting her name.

  “All right, everyone.” Even Margold is worn down. “A legend—Miss Sharon Mitchell!”

  Mitch slithers out to the stage, a real junkie grind. She looks wasted but her charisma is undeniable. She’s one of tonight’s most veteran veterans.

  After a hard-core lesbian act with Alex Jordan, a new girl planted as an audience member, Mitch’s routine ends with a tall Texan in his Jockey shorts wearing Jordan’s bra.

  “NINA! NINA! NINA! NINA!”

  Now all three hundred-plus sweaty, exhausted men are chanting her name.

  The rows and rows of token-booth peep shows on Times Square seem light-years away; the racks of porno magazines on display at the corner newsstand a memory. Dozens of minimum-wage laborers assembling videocassettes at plants in the San Fernando Valley, annual grosses surpassing $5 billion: these are abstract ideas.

  The spotlight targets a door thirty feet to the right of the small stage. Now the crowd is up and stomping feet in time with the chant.

  It has come down to the essence: a large tent behind a seedy sex shop a few miles west of downtown Las Vegas and three hundred fifty sweaty, exhausted men chanting her name.