Traci Lords: Underneath It All

by Traci Lords

  I didn’t know that sex and love could be one and the same thing, so sex became something that I both loved and hated. On the one hand, it made me feel scared and uncertain, since all my first experiences were violent ones, and on the other, it was power, so it gave me the only kind of control I ever knew. But I resented that price tag. It made me angry, and that’s what I showed the world.

  But on the inside, I was a mess.

  And I was vicious. Maybe, just maybe, if I gave my body away, then I would somehow win back the control that had been stripped from me all my life. So that’s what I did, and porn became yet another drug in my junkie life.

  15

  The Skin Trade

  Several weeks later I found myself on the set of another porn movie. Time had lost its meaning. The movies all blended together. I was like a passenger in my own life.

  The bathroom was littered with used douches. The scent of stale cigarette smoke hung thickly in the air. I could hear the groans of porn queen Ginger Lynn, having sex in a back room, and wished I were somewhere else.

  I was in between scenes. Barefoot and barely dressed, I searched the kitchen and found a bottle of tequila. Steadying myself as I did a shot, I snorted the last of the mashed-up downers I had. I stared at the photos on the refrigerator. The smiling faces of a young boy and little girl looked back and I wondered what it would be like to grow up rich in a mansion like this. Was it easier? Were the kids in the pictures really happy? Or did they receive nighttime visits like I had? What kind of parents let people film porn in their house anyway? Stupid? Desperate? Both? I didn’t know.

  Ginger’s moans grew louder. Didn’t she ever shut up? I was pissed off and disgusted by the thought of the upcoming lesbian scene I was supposed to have with this bitch on wheels. The thought of kissing her grossed me out, but I guess it’s better than having to fuck a fleshy hairball like Ron Jeremy, I reasoned, still feeling less than lucky.

  Moments later the downers took hold. I lit a Marlboro Red and found the enormous oval-shaped pool in the mansion’s backyard. It was pitch-black outside except for the candles floating in the pool’s shallow end. I dropped my robe and slid naked into the warm water feeling heavy, like I had ankle weights attached to me.

  Everything was blurry, hazy, moving in slow motion. I drifted toward the sound of laughing voices. As my body cut through the water, the voices grew louder and I reached for them, my hands pushing back water instead. I could see a gorgeous man standing waist-deep in front of me. He smiled, watching a goddess with long dark hair floating on her back, her small, perfect nipples pointing toward the heavens. I made my way toward her, and felt his hand glide across my back.

  I wanted to be held, needed to disappear in her arms. But would she let me? She wasn’t a porn star. She was better than that. None of these naked midnight swimmers did it on film. They were extras from some “real” modeling agency, not North’s, and the producers were thrilled to have them there. We were filming the porn world’s version of the movie Splash. I was supposed to be the mermaid, but in this version the mermaid liked to talk dirty. The producers of this film fancied themselves real Hollywood filmmakers because they had a budget that could actually afford extras.

  My naked body met the flesh of the swimming creature, and I startled her by boldly running a finger across her belly. Our eyes met and I held my breath, waiting for her reaction. She smiled and splashed water at me. She was long, lean, and full of life. Laughing, she pulled me close and wrapped her arms around me. Her cool skin pressed against mine. I breathed her in, holding on to her, finding refuge in her arms. She kissed me softly and I kissed her back. It was different from all the other kisses I’d given and received that day on film. I bit into her lip, kissing her harder. I lost myself in the moment.

  A wave of wooziness washed over me…. Where was I? I looked to the sky. The stars burned bright, telling me nothing. The woman bit me sharply on the nape of my neck and brought my attention back to her. I felt hands on my hips as someone slowly entered me from behind. I lost my breath, a sharp gasp escaping as he sank deeper into me. I was pretty sure it was the gorgeous man who had stroked my back, but the dark-haired woman’s hungry mouth kept me from affirming it.

  Moments later I was abruptly pulled from the water by a production assistant. He’d been searching for me for some time. Annoyed, he steered me inside toward the waiting film crew.

  I was wanted on the set.

  I was dried off, put back into makeup, and met with the smirking face of Ginger Lynn, the petite blond-haired blue-eyed twenty-something-year-old woman who had been the reigning diva of porn for the past year. She’d given me attitude from the moment I’d met her a few months earlier, clearly seeing me as competition. And she was right. Within months my tormented, aggressive sex acts and youthful good looks stole her flavor-of-the-moment title, and she made sure I knew she didn’t appreciate it one bit. I ignored the daggers she shot at me. We were scripted prostitutes performing for the camera. No emotions were ever attached. It was soulless sex by the numbers—one blow job, two positions, final cum shot, or some slight variation of that formula. Sex on-camera fed a very specific hunger in me. It was the best drug of all.

  Porn made me the kind of girl people both condemned and paid attention to, and that’s what it was all about.

  I was hailed as the Princess of Porn. They gave me awards at the Porn Oscars. Performers like Ron Jeremy spoke about how professional I was. Dicks for hire like Tom Byron bragged about how we were offscreen lovers. And the story of my poolside threesome spread through the porn world like wildfire, making me even more sought after in porn films. I was thought of as insatiable. But it wasn’t that I couldn’t get enough on-screen. It was that I got nothing. I was venting, releasing the garbage that polluted my mind in the only way I knew how.

  Over the next six months I starred in twenty X-rated films. That’s about twenty days’ work. Most of the films were shot in just one day. Only later did I find out that it was a common practice in the porn industry for these “sex scenes” to be repackaged, reedited, and made into a dozen other “new” films. The stars were never paid for the additional film compilations that exploited their services, but the companies made a fortune.

  I was said to be one of the highest-paid girls in porn at the time, earning about a thousand dollars a day. It seemed like a lot of money then, but I was hardly rich, earning about twenty thousand in total, which was just enough to pay the rent and feed my coke habit—a fact I would find impossible to explain to the Internal Revenue Service years later.

  Thanks to my status as the It girl of the moment, I was offered a guest stripping gig in San Francisco. My agent, Tim North, pressed me to take it. He didn’t have to work hard, as I needed a break from Sonny.

  The cracks in my Traci Lords persona were beginning to show.

  One month later in the spring of 1985, two months before my seventeenth birthday, I took the stripping gig in San Francisco. I arrived feeling like a cracked doll. I stayed high as much as possible and found it difficult to do the most mundane things like take a shower. I was strung out, twitchy, and irritable.

  I walked on-stage at the O’Farrell Theater stoned and drunk on cheap wine. But instead of feeling powerful and in control, I felt like a beaten little girl. I was a deer caught in the headlights, frozen in place as the horny crowd cheered for me to take it off. I couldn’t breathe and found myself backing off the stage. I panicked, breaking into a full-out run in my precariously high heels. All I could see around me were groping hands.

  In a heap in my dressing room, I sobbed uncontrollably, trying to explain to the club manager that I was not used to crowds of fans grabbing at me. He laughed as I cowered in the corner, begging to be sent home. Instead, he sat me down in front of the makeup mirror and told me to fix my face. “You’re not going anywhere until you finish up here,” he said firmly.

  “Look, baby”—he softened—“you’re a pro, go make some money.”

  Twenty minut
es and two shots later, I took the stage to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” A burning anger at being bullied into honoring my strip club contract replaced my stage fright, and I took my rage out on the patrons who’d scared me. It was a sellout crowd and I gave the bald businessmen what they wanted, wiggling in their laps and stripping naked as the tips came pouring in. I thrust my breasts in their faces, sold my panties to a guy in the audience, and then strutted from the stage, flipping the club manager the fuck-you finger as I slammed my dressing room door. I’d given them everything I had.

  Then I fell apart.

  A stripper named Raven who found me in my dressing room felt sorry for me and took me home to crash on her couch. When I woke up the next morning I was a basket case. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was strung out. Broke. Unemployed. And agentless, having fired North during a heated phone conversation about my unprofessional attitude the night before.

  Gathering my things, I got into Raven’s car, bound for the airport. I sighed deeply, dreading the wrath that awaited me in Los Angeles. I had called Sonny looking for a sympathetic ear but was given a tongue-lashing instead. He screamed at me over the phone, furious I had fired North, and demanded to know how I was going to support us now. I knew he was going to beat the crap out of me when I got home.

  As we soared down the highway, I told Raven the whole story. It felt good to talk to someone who lived in the same world I did. She drove in silence, listening to my sad tale. When I’d finished she told me I needed to get a grip and that North wasn’t the only agent in town. “That’s just what he wants you to think,” she said.

  She suggested I check out another agency in Hollywood that she worked with from time to time, saying it needed a girl for a video that afternoon in Los Angeles. It was an R-rated bondage video, and she’d only turned it down because the San Francisco club manager wouldn’t give her the night off to fly to L.A.

  I knew nothing about tying people up, but she told me not to worry. The Japanese clients were really nice and she’d worked with them many times before. That gave me a glimmer of hope. Maybe this could be my way out of porn? Giving me the address, she told me she’d call the agent to confirm, and I’d meet him after the job.

  I thanked her profusely, unaccustomed to receiving help from anyone.

  16

  Strippers, Tippers, and Pony Clippers

  I arrived in Burbank later that afternoon, nearly an hour late. The flight’s delay had made it impossible for me to be on time for the day’s shoot, and I only hoped my tardiness wouldn’t make Raven look bad. I was anxious and suffering from a pounding headache as my taxi finally delivered me to the location somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley. I scrambled to gather my things as the car pulled into a long dirt driveway. Wrestling with my luggage, I dug up the hundred-and-twenty-dollar cab fare and silently cursed Sonny for not picking me up, costing me my hard-earned tips from the night before.

  The taxi left me standing in a cloud of dust as it pulled away. I had no idea where I was, but by the looks of the sparse surroundings it was the middle of nowhere. Hobbling down the dirt driveway, I struggled with my bags, feeling weak and irritated from lack of sleep. I stopped to check the address in my purse, hoping Raven hadn’t sent me on a wild-goose chase. Up ahead I could see a weather-beaten red barn and some horse stables.

  According to my watch I was forty-five minutes late. Crap—so much for making a good impression. This was the first job I’d booked without North and I really wanted to start off on the right foot with Raven’s agent. I hoped the clients were still there and hadn’t reported my tardiness by now. Man, I hate being late!

  The dust from the driveway tickled my throat and I couldn’t stop coughing as I approached the barn. I couldn’t believe this was the place. Dropping my things, I gave the thick barn door a pounding. Helloooooooooooo! I was hot, sweaty, and wanted to get on with it. No one answered. I was screwed, in the middle of nowhere without a car or phone. I started to think Raven had tricked me when I heard some voices. Walking around to the back of the barn I saw a film crew standing in a field. I couldn’t believe what I saw next.

  San Francisco, 1984.

  The collection of Traci Lords

  There in the middle of the field was what looked like a large, circular clothesline attached to a six-foot metal pole stuck in the ground. Hanging down from four equally spaced positions on the line were black leather leashes, and attached to those leashes were women. Three spots were taken and only one was unoccupied. That’s my spot! I realized with horror.

  I stood gaping at these “pony women” trotting around in circles. It was a bizarre spectacle. They wore tall black leather boots, black studded leather G-strings, and black bras with the nipple area cut out. One had a horse gag in her mouth. A hooded man, well over six feet tall, stood in the center of the ring, whipping their muscular asses and ordering them to “mush, mush” as they trotted by.

  I was paralyzed with a mixture of fascination and disbelief. It momentarily struck me as funny, but my amusement quickly vanished as a tall Japanese man, who I later realized was the director, noticed my presence. Rushing to my side, he started rattling on in a language I didn’t understand. Then an unbelievably tiny Japanese lady, maybe four feet five inches, started circling me and tugging at my clothes as if I weren’t in them. I felt like I was on another planet. I couldn’t understand what these people were talking about, and although this tiny grandma of a woman wielded a rather ominous-looking riding crop, she struck me as harmless. Politely bowing, she offered me a leather straitjacket, which seemed to me appropriate, since I’d been feeling suicidal for months.

  A crazy laugh escaped my mouth as I glanced toward the galloping pony people nearby and wondered exactly what they had in store for me. I’d never seen leather work like this and was mesmerized by the sight of one particular pony girl with dark-chocolate hair. She was being spanked lightly and purred in pleasure. Was she for real? Did that feel good? I had no time to contemplate this further, as I was quickly undressed by the grandmotherly-looking woman and outfitted in full-on leather, studs, and a cat-woman mask. It was the middle of the summer, ninety degrees outside, and I looked like an X-rated Saturday-morning cartoon.

  The clients were dead serious about what they were doing, but their stoic demeanor made it impossible for me to keep a straight face. I felt as if I’d fallen into the twilight zone. Had the whole world gone crazy?

  Led to the post and tied up with the other “horses,” I suddenly gave in to a fit of laughter, the kind that shook my whole body. My “mature” adult persona completely fell away as I stood half laughing and half crying in my tall boots. I wondered if my giddy behavior somehow gave away the fact that I was only sixteen. But the other “models” trotted along obediently, oblivious to my hysteria.

  The shoot ended a few hours later as the sun went down, and I caught a ride to Hollywood with the chocolate-haired model I came to know as Cheri. We stopped off at a local Hollywood watering hole called Barney’s Beanery, and after several brewskis I dared to ask her if she liked her job. She erupted in a deep, throaty laugh and said, “We just made a grand apiece. What’s not to like?” She then polished off her beer.

  I could see her point. “Some people just have weird kinks,” she said, her Japanese clients being some of the oddest. She told me our shoot had been tame compared with some of the stuff she’d been booked for. I was curious. Really? Hmm…like what?

  Over the next half hour Cheri schooled me, telling me “splosh” videos were all the rage. “Sploshing” is getting tied up and then having food thrown at your naked body. Cheri’s only rule was that she got to wear sunglasses to protect her eyes.

  “Are you messing with me?” I said, squinting my eyes.

  “Nope.” She smiled. “Coconut cream pies smell nice and feel sexy when they slide down your belly.”

  Wow…. I pictured a cool pie sliding down my tummy. I didn’t really get the sexy part, but I found it amusing, and my new friend a
nd I sat giggling in our booth watching the traffic go by.

  An hour later Cheri dropped me off at her agent’s office in Hollywood.

  She’d already given me the lowdown on him. He specialized in rock videos, Playboy Channel soft-core erotic movies, and pinup-type modeling. He was an R-rated version of North minus some of the sleaze. Cheri told me she made a pretty good living for a nineteen-year-old who’d never gone to college. Saving her money, she hoped to one day make it big and star in a movie with Sylvester Stallone.

  “Whatever you do, Krissie,” she said, “watch out for the porn guys. They’ll mess you up bad.”

  My stomach dropped. I looked away. If she only knew…

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re beautiful. You’ll do fine.”

  I was taken aback—beautiful? I didn’t feel beautiful. She said she’d never done anything that she couldn’t live with, and I couldn’t help but think I’d never done anything that I could live with. Where did that leave me?

  She dropped me off minutes later, gaily waving good-bye.

  As I watched her drive away I wished I’d met her years earlier. She was like an older, wiser sister and I missed mine. Lorraine had always known the way out of tricky situations. Why couldn’t I go back home? How much worse could facing my mother and sisters be than this? I kicked a can and walked down the block to where I was safely out of view. I spat, disgusted with myself. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just fucking stop this crazy shit? I paced the sidewalk and tried to collect myself.

  I had to do something…something right. If I could just fix this mess, do one good thing…maybe, just maybe, I could face my mother again.