by Seka
The Indonesian ship wasn’t in very long. Ships would come and go, but the crews always found their way to our businesses because they’d hear from their buddies where to have a good time. A lot of them weren’t big drinkers, which made them gravitate to us since we didn’t serve alcohol at the pool hall or the bookstore.
Everything seemed to be going okay, but Ken started traveling a lot and I wasn’t crazy about being alone in that big store. I had to close up with four, five, six thousand dollars in my purse, which wasn’t the safest thing for a woman alone. I didn’t know anything about guns and didn’t want to know anything about guns. I was very nervous at midnight, putting that money in my car and driving home so I could take it to the bank the next day. I also had it in my house overnight, which only made me more paranoid. This put a strain on the relationship. One night we had an argument about it.
“Well, this is what a manager does.”
“Not this manager,” I responded.
I left Ken and went back to the Hopewell area. Back there, I bumped into Frank, my ex, and was actually happy to see him. It was a familiar face. After some small talk, we ended up going home together. Shortly after, he asked me to go to Vegas. I thought he was proposing a vacation. I had no idea his intention was to stay there. But money was getting real tight because I wasn’t working and he wasn’t doing too well either. Frank thought Vegas was the land of opportunity.
I went to the Dunes to apply for a job. The guy who interviewed me said, “Why don’t you be a poker shield?” I told him I had no idea how to play. He told me a poker shield was a pretty girl who sat at the table to lure the guys to stay and play. They gave me $200 a day to play with. I lasted three days. I was just supposed to place small bets and dawdle around; make the money last. It never worked. I simply had no damn idea what I was doing — I never played the game before. They fired me.
I thumbed through a newspaper and saw an ad that said Models wanted. Nude or semi-nude. Frank wasn’t having any better luck in the job hunting department, so I said, “What the hell?” I figured it wouldn’t bother Frank since he’d already tried pimping me out once before.
Having worked in an adult bookstore, the idea of being nude or semi-nude didn’t bother me. I’d begun to look at porno material with an educated eye. A lot of it was downright gross, and I’m not necessarily talking about the sex or the kink. The human body is beautiful. Some of these magazines were downright ugly. In real life, I wouldn’t touch some of those people with a ten-foot pole. The idea of doing it right, of being naked, but beautiful and classy, appealed to me. I thought that was how it should be — Hollywood-style glamour. And the money sounded real good. It was like $300 a day, which was a helluva lot of money back then. I had no idea where the pictures would end up nor did I care. I didn’t think about friends or family seeing them. People in my family didn’t read men’s magazines.
The shoot was in Vegas, which at that time wasn’t built up like it is now. It was in the outskirts of town, outdoors in a wooded area. I had on a deerskin vest that just had a string tied in the back, with little feathers hanging down from it. It was a hippy-ish thing that was pretty much what girls were wearing at the time.
There was only one guy. Pleasant. He seemed old to me, but he was probably just in his late thirties. He never came onto me. Very professional. It didn’t bother me to take my clothes off, as I knew what I was getting into. It wasn’t like going in to give massages and finding out guys wanted hand jobs.
I was a little shy, but the guy made me feel comfortable. “It’s okay; I’m not going to touch you.”
“I know you’re not, because if you do, I’ll kill you.” I was serious about that, at least in my own mind. I had more guts than brains, but if you can pull off a bluff convincingly enough, people buy it. Whether I knew it or not, I was establishing my reputation before I even knew I was going to have an adult career.
He told me which way to move; which way to look. Bend over and touch my ankles. Nothing distasteful. No inserting fingers into orifices or anything like that. It was like what would be in Playboy around that same era. It took about four hours.
All in all it was a good experience. With the 300 bucks, I’d eat another week. He handed me the cash and told me I did a really nice job and looked really good. But he told me he didn’t usually use models more than once a month. Overexposure.
I thought it was a one-shot deal. I needed fast dough, the car needed gas, I needed food, and it was so easy I would hardly even call it work. I doubted I’d ever be naked in front of a camera again.
14. Murder
My relationship with Frank wasn’t going well. Again.
He didn’t seem very interested in trying to find a job. I had no idea why. It was always hard to read that man. He told me he was looking, but I didn’t see any evidence of it. There was rent to be paid, food to be bought, everyday cost of living expenses to be met. And nobody was working.
My thought was to go back to Virginia because nothing was happening here. There wasn’t a lot of fighting or anything. I was just disgusted. I told him he could probably find a job there and I had my family. In my mind, it was a safe place for both of us.
We drove back and it felt depressing, defeated. Inside, I felt nothing for him. I’m not even sure why I hooked up with him again in the first place. Maybe it was just convenient comfort combined with loneliness and horniness — the devil you knew was better than the devil you didn’t. I dropped him off at his mother’s house and went and got a hotel room. I was tired and wanted to be by myself. I didn’t have a place to live and had very little money — basically nothing but the clothes on my back and a suitcase. But I was sure I was done with Frank for good this time. (The next time I saw him, years and years later, he was a Born Again Christian. After pushing me to give handjobs, and sponging off me in Vegas while he gambled, he finally turned to the Lord. Oh well, if it weren’t for sinners, the church would be out of business.)
I had no clue as to what I was going to do and figured I’d stroll on back to Ken, if only to scratch that off my list of options. So much for swearing off second chances.
He was over at one of the stores and nothing was really discussed except he hired me back on the spot. Outside of all else, I was a damn good employee and he knew it. We just picked up where we left off, no questions asked. Although I did have feelings for him, it wasn’t love — even more so now. Yet next thing I knew, we were back living together in the same place we had. Again, I was opting for familiarity. Some new guy would have been like diving into a whole new thing, with all the good discoveries and bad, and all the butterfly feelings you get in your stomach. I guess that didn’t set right with me at that point. I needed relationship comfort food.
There was a new guy working at the store. I would say he was fiftyish. His name was Woody — the second Woody in my life.
Woody was gay and had a little dog, a sheltie, a wonderful miniature collie that was always with him. Woody was kind of short with brownish grey hair that wasn’t always combed. He had a pockmarked complexion with oily skin and usually wore jeans with a plaid shirt or polo. He had a little bit of a tummy and black horn rimmed glasses that were always sliding down his nose, so he had to keep pushing them up all the time. There was always the scent of cheap drug store cologne on him, but somehow he was able to carry it off. He always had a smile and something pleasant to say to everyone. He was a very loving man, a sweet soul. I always enjoyed having him in the store to keep me company. He just loved all the Navy guys who came in. Cruising a lot, old Woody scored a lot of dates out of there.
Around this time, the cops started coming down on all the bookstores in the area. They’d make us take certain things off the shelves. It was starting to be a hassle and drove business away. It was the politics of the day. Community standards and all that. They decided that instead of a blanket law that you couldn’t have an adult bookstore, they’d instead leave it up to each community to set its own standards. We’d be forced to tak
e down the bondage films and equipment. They really could have told us to remove everything, but they only objected to the most bizarre. It was the seventies and for as much freedom as women were getting, some of our feminist leaders like Gloria Steinem were raising a lot of ruckus against pornography.
I felt it was all very hypocritical. There were men’s magazines on the newsstand like Playboy and Penthouse that they weren’t bothering with. And they didn’t do anything to the strip clubs in our area, what few were around. They were just targeting bookstores. As far as I was concerned, it gave the guys a place to go. Even if they were jacking off in the back, it was a release for them. And if two consenting adults are doing what they want to do, I don’t think it’s anybody’s business.
We’d take stuff down and the next day they’d pick on some other item. It became a hassle getting staff to work the store and I had to work a lot of hours because of it. We hired a black gentleman and immediately noticed the sales were going down and merchandise disappearing. Despite the coincidence, I just didn’t feel he was the kind of person to steal.
One night on the way home, I was in the car behind him at a red light. The light changed and he wasn’t moving. I sat there trying to figure out what was going on and finally got out and knocked on his window.
He was dead asleep.
Turned out the guy had narcolepsy. He would fall asleep all the time in the store. The customers were taking stuff right off the shelves while he was snoozing. One day, I actually saw him asleep while standing. Yes, standing. I took a newspaper and winged it at his head. It scared the crap out of him. I told him, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is going to work. You need to go home.”
I felt bad, but it wasn’t good for business. And it wasn’t safe for him. They could have knocked him over the head and did whatever they wanted because he was falling asleep pretty regularly. But as soon as we got rid of him, sales went right back up.
So we had to give Woody more hours. I walked into the store one evening and there were two other guys there with Woody, who was behind the counter. I could feel a bad vibe in the air. Woody looked really nervous when I arrived.
I asked, “What’s going on?’ Nobody said anything. I announced, “If nobody’s going to tell me anything, you two have to leave.”
Later, Woody admitted it was a fight, a love triangle. One of the guys didn’t know Woody was seeing the other. I said, “I don’t know what to tell you, but if you’re going to do this, you have to keep it away from the store. I don’t want your boyfriends bringing drama in here. It’s not good for business.” I didn’t see any of his boyfriends or tricks after that.
Ken and I were home one night and got a call from the police that we needed to come down to the store. Something had happened. I thought maybe Woody had another spat with a boyfriend, or the morality police threw a brick through our window or something. I didn’t know what to expect and was nervous the entire ride down.
When we arrived there was a detective standing outside. He said, “You may not want to go in right now.”
I said, “I do. What’s going on?”
Someone had murdered Woody.
I changed my mind; I didn’t want to go in.
It was a gunshot to the head at close range. The police said whoever it was just walked in, walked right up to him, and fired, execution-style.
No sign of a struggle. No robbery.
They told Ken to get Woody’s beautiful dog out because he wouldn’t let anyone near the body. Looking like he was in shock, Ken walked in zombie-like. I’d never seen him so visibly upset over anything before. He had been very friendly with Woody.
We went home after talking to the cops. It was a crime scene and there was blood everywhere.
The store was closed for days. While the store was closed, Ken had some guys do some carpentry work and move the counter to the other side of the store so it wouldn’t be right by the door when you walk in. We were that scared.
I was freaked out. I had never been close to a crime, let alone a murder. About a week later, we reopened the store and I started shaking the minute I walked in. I refused to stay there alone.
After that, Pops usually stayed with me in the store and I went and got a Doberman. She was a great dog named Tammy. Very protective. She was enormous and when she’d put her paws on my shoulder she’d be taller than me, and I’m no little girl to begin with. Ken added guns to the store as well. A .38, a .44, and even a .357 Magnum. I visualized the headlines: Female Adult Book Store Clerk Charged in Murder of Customer. I was scared of guns. And after the murder, I was scared to death, period.
They never found out who murdered Woody. We were left to guess whether it was personal or against the store in general.
Business got even slower. The cops came even more often because not only were they taking stuff off the shelves, they were questioning customers about the murder. And dirty bookstores are not the sort of place in which guys want to give their names and be interviewed. The police were killing us.
15. Porn Star
The Vegas photo shoot I did appeared in some no-name, run-of-the-mill adult magazine and we were stocking it back in Virginia. Ken knew about it and didn’t care. It was selling like ice cream on a hot summer day even though we were doing nothing to promote it by telling people it was their very own cashier on the cover.
We needed more product for the store and some more of that one magazine in particular, so I went back on the road with Ken to Baltimore.
The head guy at the warehouse had an air of sophistication. He had been in the business for a while and seemed very approachable yet savvy. He always wore nice clothing and smelled of quality cologne. He looked at me and said, “See, I always said you should do this. We can’t keep that magazine of yours in the warehouse.”
I kind of brushed it off. Not because I was embarrassed about it, but I didn’t know what to say. More than anything else, I think he was feeling out the situation to see how Ken would react. When Ken didn’t blow his stack, he followed with a nonchalant comment about a friend of his who was shooting loops that very day down the street. Suddenly he asked us both, “Would you be interested in doing one?”
I don’t know why, but I wasn’t stunned or offended. I looked at Ken and he looked at me and I said, “What do you think?”
“It doesn’t bother me, but I’d like to know what they’re paying.” That should have tipped me off about Ken.
He said, “Two hundred,” and Ken said that wasn’t enough. The guy just kind of looked at him inquisitively and Ken said, “Four hundred.”
“That’s not a problem. I’ll be right back.” Walking off to make a phone call, we kept shopping. It was that blasé.
When he came back he said, “If you want to do this, they can shoot right now. They have a guy you can do it with. Here’s the four hundred bucks” — and handed it to me, just like that.
This should have been one of those mega-moments in one’s life, a turning point where a person has a major ethical dilemma to wrestle with. It wasn’t. I’d posed nude on a whim because I needed the money, the experience had been pleasant enough, and now because I’d been so well received, some other people wanted me to appear in a movie — right that very minute, in fact. And I still could use the money, so what the hell?
I really wasn’t nervous. I don’t know why, I just wasn’t. Maybe because it was moving so fast and had caught me off guard. I mean, I didn’t wake up that morning figuring I’d be asked to star in a porno. Maybe being around it all the time in the bookstore made it seem less unusual to me. I saw the films and magazines constantly. Or maybe it was because I didn’t have any emotional investment in Ken. Our relationship was convenient. I enjoyed his company and had a nice time with him. But I was emotionally unavailable because of what had happened with my mother and then with Frank. I didn’t realize this consciously at the time, but that was the bottom line. Ken never “romanced” me. He wasn’t cooing “I love you” in my ear, nor did I desire hi
m to.
There’s a thing they tell young girls who vacillate on whether or not to do porn: “Do it now; you’ll never look better. Capture it on film.” I figured this was a chance to make money while I could. Maybe I was just being selfish, but I didn’t feel concerned about what anyone else would think. Also, I figured it was a one-time thing that nobody I knew was going to see, just like my magazine shoot. It would be hidden in little bookstores like ours. Of course, the light bulb didn’t quite click that the magazine had been seen by plenty of people and the same would happen here. Hell, my family didn’t look at adult material, so I didn’t feel I had to worry about that.
Back in the 1970s, most people didn’t make $400 in two weeks as opposed to two hours. If I liked it and Ken really didn’t, I could always do magazines or films and make a good living on my own. At the time, it wasn’t like I was fucking the boss in order to have a job in Ken’s store, but to the rest of the world, it may have looked that way. But this, this would be my thing. The thoughts passing through my head were not, “I’m being exploited.” They were, “I’m being liberated.”
I was strangely curious about the whole process. Working at the bookstore, I’d become kind of jaded. Detached. The magazines, the toys, the loops, they no longer seemed weird to me. If I thought about it at all, I wondered about how it all came to be — who made this stuff, and how did they know what would sell and to whom? I got a kick out of the customers, many who were regulars. Sex was important to them. It was less important to me. I didn’t sleep around. I was pretty damn monogamous and not very kinky or adventurous.