by Seka
Sometimes when I see a loop I was in, not only can I tell the sound isn’t synced up, I question whether it’s even my voice. There’s often no consistency. Hell, they might use my voice in a Vanessa del Rio scene and Vanessa’s in one of mine. But who knew and who cared? It was crazy.
If I ruled the world I would have taken greater care when it came to these sorts of things, but if you put me on the spot and made me defend the way it was, my answer would be, “Why are you watching this stuff in the first place? To get off! So if you’re watching it to check if the sound is synced up, or the bodies always match, or the camera shots are repeated, we must be doing a piss-poor job of getting you excited!” The genre does not exist for film critics. It serves a societal purpose of helping people masturbate, or couples get hot and get down.
This raises the question, “Did you watch your own movies?” The answer is yes, the dialogue parts. To me, that part was cool. I was pretending to be an actress. I never considered myself an actress — I was a performer — but when most of my clothes were on and I was talking, acting is what you would call it. I could fantasize I was on Charlie’s Angels or something like that. That was the sort of fantasies I had when I watched my movies.
But the sex scenes? I was never comfortable watching them. They made me bashful. Ironic, I know. I had no problem doing it, but don’t force me to watch it later. I could watch other people’s scenes, just not my own. I was too critical of myself. I was critical of my dialogue scenes too, but that was in order to improve. But with my sex scenes, it was more a case of, “When I turn that way, my stomach creases and I look fat,” or garbage like that. What the hell was I going to do about that kind of stuff? If the director said, “Turn this way,” it wasn’t like I was going to start arguing with him because it might not be perfectly flattering for me. I wasn’t that much of a control freak. So if one of my movies is playing, I leave the room when my sex scenes come on, and then come back when someone else is doing it.
Porn sex and real-life sex have little in common, but that is less true today because of the movies we made. The pulling out and cumming on a girl’s tits or face? If someone did that to me in real life back in the seventies, I’d have killed him. The dirty talk — when Ken did that to me, I hated it. But today, because of our films, guys and girls do that stuff all the time. I don’t know if we should be thanked for that or chased out of town with a pitchfork.
Anal. Now every guy tries to get anal sex from a girl. Back in the day, it was a more exotic and rare thing. We took it mainstream.
Do I like anal? No. Did I do it? Yes, it paid more. I’ve always considered that hole a one-way street leading out. But an anal scene paid $200 more, which for me, back in the day, meant a lot. Of course, here’s another trick of movie magic: it never lasted very long. If ever there was a time when they’d cut and splice film together, it was in anal scenes. Most of the girls felt as I did about it, so while we’d take the extra money, we’d only have the guy up there for two or three minutes or so, which would be looped and made into double or triple that time for the viewer. Two hundred bucks for three minutes of discomfort, back then, didn’t seem like too bad a deal. Even so, I rarely did it. Most days I simply wasn’t in the mood. Well, actually, I was never in the mood, but some days more than others. There may have been one or two girls who actually enjoyed it, but otherwise, the ones who did it more were just more prone to being short on cash.
I’m not into pain. That’s why I never did bondage or S&M. Being a tall girl with big tits and that severe look of mine I would have been a natural for those sorts of films, but you can only simulate pain just so much. I wasn’t taking a bunch of smacks to the ass or clamps on my nipples — no way, no how, no matter how much money was involved. Furthermore, since it was so against my nature, I was never a good enough actress to pretend I was into it.
There were a few actors who really did get off on that type of scene and I would sometimes watch their films or watch them do it live. It would be like watching a car wreck: you didn’t want to look, but you couldn’t help yourself. So long as I knew they weren’t doing it against their will, I would be fascinated, wondering how they were wired that this sort of thing turned them on. I almost wanted to yell, “Cut!” and go up to them and ask them about it. It intrigued me. But it wasn’t for me.
Girl/girl was pretty much mandatory. If you didn’t do girl/girl back in the seventies and eighties, you might as well not get into the business.
Quite frankly, I didn’t know anything about girl/girl sex before I started doing porn. I’d never been with another girl before. But it wasn’t unappealing to me because women are beautiful, sexual beings. They’re sensuous. So the idea didn’t offend me. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I must have been pretty good at it because all the girls I worked with got off. I figured, who is going to know better what a woman wants than another woman? I just did what I liked done to me. It was the Golden Rule.
I enjoyed it. It’s not a lifestyle choice where I did it and decided I was a lesbian or anything — not that there would have been anything wrong with that. And yes, after trying it on-screen, I did it off-screen as well. I’m not gay, though; I like guys still. I wouldn’t marry a woman and have a committed relationship with one where I never had sex with a man ever again. But having sex with a girl is fun. I don’t know if that classifies me as bisexual, but I wouldn’t correct anyone if they accused me of that. I have no clue and I really don’t care. Labels are worthless.
Did we fuck people we didn’t want to? In my case, no. I might not have been crazy about John Leslie on a personal level, but once I set limits with John we were able to do scenes together. Sometimes, I used how I really felt about him in the scene. I’ve heard people refer to that as “hate fucking,” though hate might be too strong a word for John and me.
Once, a director brought in a guy who absolutely, positively turned me off physically. He was new and I didn’t know him from Adam. But he had what I call a jailhouse complexion — grey, pasty, pockmarked — just not a good-looking boy. He may have been the nicest person in the world, but I’d probably have to spend a month-long platonic vacation with him before I could see myself warming up to him sexually.
I pulled the director aside. This wasn’t easy for me because I hate to hurt people’s feelings, especially if they’ve done me no wrong. I said, “Look, this guy does not do it for me and I don’t believe I’m that good an actress to fake it. It’ll be a bust for all of us. I’ll be miserable, he won’t be able to get it up and keep it up, and you won’t get a usable scene.” The director hemmed and hawed until I finished with, “Just look at him. Now look at me. In real life, would you ever see the two of us together unless his daddy left him a billion dollars?” That finally did the trick. I can’t recall if they sent him away or simply cast him in a different scene. In our movies, people were swapped around pretty easily most times, so I doubt I killed the poor fellow’s career.
Do porn girls cum? Yes, about as easily and often as any other woman. Unlike the men, there is no standard for achieving orgasm. Like anywhere else, there are some women who cum in two seconds every time, some who never cum at all, and some who cum after four hours of diddling, but only in months with five Tuesdays. Me, I cum pretty easy and pretty often, much to the pleasure of the men I’ve been with. Is it one hundred percent? No, of course not. Does it make a difference if a camera is halfway up my hoochie? No, believe it or not. I learned early on to block that out. Don’t ask me how, but I did it.
But here’s the rub — or lack of it. The guys all have to have that precious “money shot,” where they pull out and demonstrate they have indeed cum. Us ladies? We just get to groan. For the moviegoer, maybe we did and maybe we didn’t. Only we know for sure. Yes, we know we have to be loud about it, and we know that when the guy is about to cum we have to make like we are cumming, too. With me, sometimes it was actually real — simultaneous orgasm. Many times I came before the guy. But the girls never got to c
um after, because once the guy came, everything came to a screeching halt.
I, for one, would have liked to have my sexual needs taken into consideration, just like in real life. Off the set, if I was almost there and the guy was done, I’d expect him to be a gentleman and finish me off somehow. Ladies, demand this of your men!
But on camera, once the guy shot his load, everyone started breaking down equipment and moving onto the next scene. This pissed me off. On the rare occasion I didn’t cum, I was usually pretty darn close, so shutting everything down really left me hanging. This was an irritant I dealt with time after time, until one day I just boiled over.
I was doing a scene with Mike Ranger, my best buddy and roommate. Mike and I were like brother and sister off the set, yet we were able to turn it back on and be lovers when the cameras were on and we were being paid to do it. Mike was great. He was an excellent lover and a total professional.
We were in a feature called Anytime Anyplace, and we played a couple of burglars. Nobody liked the director, which may have contributed to me finally having my “female orgasm catharsis,” which was to come. Early on, we had an outdoor scene where we were live-miked. We finished the scene and they yelled, “Cut.”
I, being the idiot that I am, assumed the mics automatically shut off. They didn’t. Mike and I started chatting. I said, “I can’t stand this little sweaty troll piece-of-shit director,” and Mike agreed.
One of the crew came out and said, “Your mics are still live. He heard that.”
I was embarrassed, but consoled myself by adding, “Well, it’s true!”
But back to the female orgasm. Our next scene was the sex scene and it’s a hot day in a hot room under hot lights in Southern California. In other words, it’s a hundred twenty degrees and I’m supposed to be in sexual ecstasy. I’m dyin’. Mike’s dyin’. But we’re pros, so we get it on and do our thing.
Mike was one of those guys who could always give you a three-count before he came. This was incredibly important so the cameraman could capture the money shot. Like I said, he was a pro. He could stop and start on a dime; another thing that is so rare in real life and is another reason why there are such a small handful of great woodsmen in porn. These few guys were in every film, while it was more common for girls to cum and go from the business.
Mike did his thing, made his three-count, pulled out, came and, as always, the director yelled, “Cut,” and everyone started closing up shop. No one knew or cared whether I had cum.
Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was my dislike for the director, maybe it was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back, but this time I roared, “CUT, MY ASS! I’M NOT FINISHED YET!”
Mike looked at me and cracked up. I looked back at him and said, “Are you done?”
Mike said, “No.”
“All right. Everybody, out of the room. We’re finishing up.”
No one thought I was serious, but Mike had my back (or shall I say, my front) and we shooed everyone out the door and locked it behind them, then pulled down the shades.
Did we keep going and did I cum? No! After lights, camera, and action were over, Mike and I would no sooner make it with one another than your average brother and sister. We did it on camera and nothing else. But I was making a point. If they’d have just let me go for another three minutes or so — which Mike would have happily done as well — I would have gotten off and been a happy woman.
What did we do? We toweled off, broke open some cold sodas, smoked a few cigarettes, and chatted. We’d hear the crew outside the door and when we’d be silent for a while, they’d start knocking to come back in. Dummies. Didn’t they know we made sex sounds for a living? “Ooo, yes. Give it to me baby. That’s it; right there. That’s the spot. Oh, I just love it when you take me that way.”
It was all for show, just like the overdubs we did for the sound guy. And these clowns bought it. They thought we were having Tarzan marathon sex when all we were doing was chilling out and unwinding. This went on for about an hour and a half until we finally got bored and let them back in. The looks they gave us! They thought Mike was the stud of the universe — which wouldn’t have been far from the truth.
I’d made my point, but I only could have pulled it off with Mike, who was always up for fun and knew to follow my lead.
Oh, and one last thing — on the topic of sweaty, troll, piece-of-shit directors: There was a Hollywood movie about our Golden Age of Adult Entertainment entitled Boogie Nights. It wasn’t bad. Paul Thomas Anderson, the writer/director (not to be confused with Paul Thomas, one of my old co-stars who later went into writing and directing as well) definitely did his research. Some of the characters were based on real people I’d worked with, such as John Holmes and others. The story lines — the porn girl who lost custody of her child — were mostly all based on real tales from our industry.
I was asked to work on the film. The offer was rather vague, but by that point in my life (1997) I wasn’t interested in working cheap, and the offer was just that — cheap — so I passed. I say it was vague because it was unclear whether they wanted me to play the aging porn star, which would eventually be played by Nina Hartley, or to come on board as an advisor. I was often asked to be an advisor on projects having to do with adult films, but they always thought I would be so flattered I would work for nothing. Ha! You want me, you pay me.
One thing I had trouble with in that film is they cast Burt Reynolds as the writer/director. Burt did a fabulous job and the recognition he got for his acting in the film was well deserved. But even an aging Burt Reynolds looked nothing like the guys I worked with in real life. You want me to advise you on casting that part now (too late, I know)? Danny DeVito. That’s what most adult filmmakers looked like back in the day. Most all of them were sweaty little trolls, and Danny would have been magnificent in that part. Of course, many of my contemporaries like Candida Royalle, Paul Thomas, Veronica Hart, and Jamie Gillis eventually went behind the camera and I would never describe any of them as sweaty pieces of shit.
When people look for bad news about adult cinema, they try to make a case that the girls are all doing it against their will. I can’t speak on behalf of everyone; I can only speak for me. Some people thought Ken was forcing me to do things, since he was always on the set. Believe me, Ken never made me do anything, nor could he if he even wanted to. The only thing that came close to that with us was the swinging, and even then, it wasn’t like he was forcing me at gunpoint. That was more a case of the person you’re in a relationship with nudging you and nudging you about something until you said, “Fine, now get off my case!” If I’d have said no and stood my ground, there would have been no repercussions.
But other girls; who knows? For the ones I knew, it was never the situation, or else they never told me it was. Still, you have all these girls who do tell-alls later in life and they talk about people making them get into the business when they didn’t want to. Whatever makes you sleep at night.
The other thing are the girls who later claim they got into the business because Uncle Normy raped them when they were eight and it screwed them up in the head. If those tales are true, my heart goes out to them; it truly does. But again, I heard little to none of that first-hand when we were doing films together, so perhaps I’m a little cynical. I’m sure it definitely happened to some women because things like that happen to women all the time, sad to say, and we all cope with it in different ways. Again, I’m sympathetic. But there are definitely girls who leave the business and have to tell some tale in order to live with themselves and their neighbors. Whatever gets you through the night.
Which leads to the mob. I’m told a lot of the companies involved in our industry have or had mob ties. What did I know about it? Nothing at all. I’m not saying that because I’m watching my back. I sincerely never met someone I knew to be in organized crime when I was in the business. I’d read later that this one or that one was alleged to be mobbed up, but it was always years and years later, and at
that point it meant nothing at all to me. My end of the porn business never seemed that “organized” to begin with. It was a job. I did my thing, I got paid, I went home.
Did anyone ever threaten me if I refused to do something? Hell no! I turned down films when I wanted to, for whatever reason I chose, and no one tried to muscle me. No one got scary with me on the set if I didn’t want to do something. A few times, some director would blow his stack and yell, “You’ll never work in this town again,” but everyone in Hollywood has heard that at one time or another, and just like Hollywood — which has almost as many mob rumors — it is rarely if ever carried out mob-style, if at all.
We weren’t paid much, certainly considering how much money we were bringing in. But again, that never came off as a mobster thing — more like a cheap, greedy bastard thing. I’d bellow for more money and either I got it or I didn’t. I never woke up to any horse heads in my bed. The business knew better than to treat me that way because I made them money, and in the end that’s the only thing that matters.
All in all, the adult film business is a lot like mainstream Hollywood. Some of what you see is real and some less than real. It does what it sets out to do: make people hot. If it fails at that, it will be a hell of a lot less popular and lucrative.
One of my early glamour shots, wrapped in fur.
With Arsenio Hall and Alan Thicke on Thicke of the Night, 1984.
Interviewing me gets a young Oprah Winfrey in trouble.