Porn King: The Autobiography of John C. Holmes

by Holmes, John

  Johnny Wadd pushed me into the limelight. I had more offers to appear in films than I could handle, and that wasn’t all. I was wanted for personal appearances at various Miss Nude USA contests, film premieres, and trade shows, as well as for numerous endorsements and magazine interviews. Whenever I showed up at a public event the atmosphere was like a carnival. People were lined up around the block to get my autograph. Men asked me to deflower their daughters. “How big is it?” Fans would scream.

  “Bigger than a pay phone, smaller than a Cadillac,” was my stock reply.

  I was traveling all over the world with all expenses paid and making thousands of dollars just to sign my name and promote movies. The women in other parts of the world were just as hot, if not hotter, than the women in America.

  I had become the biggest name in adult films; the highest paid performer in the industry. The John Wayne of pornography! And I was working my ass off, often in risky situations. One producer got me stranded in the dead of night in a remote California desert. There I was, fighting off million of ants and bees, without any clothes on. Then there was the time a knife-wielding leading lady took the director literally when he yelled, “Cut!” I’ve been filmed having sex atop rocky ledges, rooftops, pianos, the hoods of cars, and a Paris Metro platform, aboard airplanes, boats, trains, and helicopters, and, of all places, at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. I love to work in bed, but I’ve gone through phases where they’ve put me in the most insane settings. That makes it more exciting for everyone, I suppose, except for the person who has to make it happen.

  6

  It was cash, always cash, even as my asking price began escalating out of sight. As a result, I had more cash than any human had a right to possess. Not being a spendthrift, it was important for me to invest the money wisely. I began putting together a stock portfolio, than added apartment buildings one by one. I also opened a combination antique shop and locksmith service, to be run by my half-brother, David. We stocked it with many of the riches I had accumulated in my trick pads along with some interesting pieces from my junk collections.

  Some years earlier, David had started to visit me during his annual summer breaks from school. By the third summer, David was begging me to stay. He was only fifteen, but he didn’t want to return to Ohio to face Harold. Still unable to forget the brutal treatment I had received at Harold’s hands, I agreed to let David stay, but only with the approval of our mother.

  Mom was terrific, just as sympathetic as she had been when I had decided to bolt at an early age. She even offered to arrange the transfer of David’s school transcripts. From then on David became my responsibility. I saw him through high school and financed his further education at a trade school. Now I was setting him up in business. I even had a hand in David’s sex education. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday he came to me wanting to talk. “I’ve never been laid,” he confessed with a hangdog look. Who better to solve his problem than Johnny Wadd?

  A phone call was all it took to set him up with a younger lady whom I could personally vouch for as being quite lusty in bed. Never having observed any of my brothers at full mast, I was naturally inquisitive to catch

  51 the pair in action. Seeing David, it became obvious real fast that we had more in common than the same mother.

  David taught me a lesson as well. For two years he had been pushing me to try marijuana. Because of a childhood illness, he had occasionally smoked a joint. I didn’t try to stop him because I knew that he had a fairly good reason to use the stuff when necessary, but it wasn’t for me. I’d had chances before, many times. From the time I got into adult films hardly a day passed that I didn’t have offers to do drugs. All I had to do was walk on a set. But David kept pushing and what do you know? I liked it.

  The issue came up again on my next shoot, when I was hired for two films to be shot on location in France. One was a remake of Beauty and the Beast and the other, The New Henry Miller, in which I was to play the American writer delving into the vices of the French aristocracy. We had a seventeen-week schedule with a combined budget just below one million dollars, including my fee of fifteen hundred dollars for each day I worked and nine hundred dollars for each day off, plus all expenses.

  Drugs, especially the lack of marijuana, became a hot topic of conversation among the Americans. Fearing a search at the airport and possible imprisonment in a foreign country, none of the cast or crew had dared to bring anything with them. Who knew that when you flew into de Gaulle Airport they had only one guy waving everybody through? I could have brought an atomic bomb into France and no one would have noticed!

  We had all the wine we could drink, but that didn’t come close to satisfying everyone’s craving for weed. In desperation, we contacted an actress involved in the filming who was scheduled for a later arrival in France. “Pack a pound in a suitcase”, we told her. “It’s perfectly safe.” She agreed, but on arrival she was empty-handed, having backed out at the last minute. It was left to a black dwarf from Haiti, who was part of a Fellini-like orgy scene, to finally arrange a sale of African marijuana. After all that trouble, it turned out to be very expensive and no stronger than catnip.

  The long overseas shoot was tiring, buoyed only by wine and the inferior narcotic. Many nights were spent alone in my chateau bedroom putting down thoughts and ideas that raced through my head, trying my hand at poetry and short stories. I went crazy in France. It was as though a writer from hundreds of years ago had possessed me. Eventually, the shoot ended and I came home again.

  A heavy filming schedule was facing me back in the United States. Still, I was glad to see New York City, where I lingered for personal appearances and to visit a few friends. It was impossible to hit New York without seeing my old Army buddy, Tony, while I was there, but finding him wasn’t easy. I finally tracked him down at a hole-in-the-wall diner in an ugly neighborhood. He was working behind the counter. For a second I felt like I was back washing dishes at the hot dog stand on Hollywood Boulevard.

  I don’t know what kind of greeting I expected, but a simple “hello” or a “glad to see you again” would have been nice. Instead, Tony’s first words were to ask me for a loan. That didn’t surprise me as much as his appearance. Once handsome and trim, Tony was now bloated, balding, and foul smelling. His hair, what he had left, looked greasier than the slop he was dishing out.

  Before I had a chance to ask, Tony was telling me about his streak of bad luck: two failed marriages and two years in jail for forgery to feed his drug habit. The reunion was depressing, as were the phone calls I received pleading for money long after I returned to California.

  Back at work, it was one feature film after another in rapid succession for me, partnered with such leading ladies as Marilyn Chambers, Candy Samples, Renee Bond, Uschi Dagard, Serena, and Seka. Feature length films gave audiences the chance to choose their favorite stars, and once a star was in demand, his or her price went up, up, up. I was lucky to be paired with the most beautiful and talented women appearing in adult films. Of course, it takes more than beauty and talent. Believability is a major factor. Some women can make a part so believable you don’t know they are acting. If a girl is there just to make money to pay the rent, or she hates being under hot lights, or she doesn’t even like guys, it shows. Renee Bond was absolutely the best, however, because she loved to give head. She sucked cock like a starving orphan with her first candy-cane. You were a gob of goo when she got through with you.

  I was also lucky to be a male star. Men seem to thrive in the business for ten years or more, while women seem to last only several years, at best. Women get frustrated with the hours and the travel, and with having men constantly in their faces, or they run into guys who are worth millions and disappear. The hours and the travel can indeed wear you down, especially when you’re jumping from one film to another, hundreds within a single year. That didn’t bother me the first few years. I like being in demand, I craved it. I had something to sell, and sell I did.

  On
e day, however, I confided to a producer, “I’m so tired I can hardly move.” His name was Bill. Being in the business we saw each other frequently, and it wasn’t long before we became fast friends. He even named me as godfather to his children. I began spending a lot of time at Bill’s big house on the hill; it was the perfect party pad. With Bill the producer, and me, Mr. Porno Stud, girls were drawn to us like bees to honey. His wild nudist romps, especially in the heat of summer around his pool, were the raging ticket in town. The girls didn’t mind who they fucked, just as long as we wanted them or they thought it would get them into movies. There was only one problem: sex, sex and more sex! I had done nothing but have sex for years, and I was getting tired. Tired of never getting any sleep, that is. But more than sleep, I needed an energy boost.

  Bill smiled at my confession and disappeared for a minute. When he returned, he held out his hand. “Here, take this,” he said. It was a small rock of cocaine. “Try it and you’ll be back on your feet.” In the past I had always responded to such offers with a firm “I don’t do drugs.” Sure, I had smoked pot over the years but that was as far as I went. This time, however, I didn’t say no.

  The first taste was awful, a real put-off. But then a wonderful thing happened, and that was the catch. I found that I was able to stay awake longer, think better, and be more stimulated sexually. “This is just what I need,” I told myself. “It’s not hurting me, it’s helping me.”

  That was my early reaction. But within three months, I discovered that I had to increase my intake in order to achieve the same high performance level. The three hundred dollars a week I was spending on coke increased to five hundred, than one thousand.

  Just as my craving for sex had spun wildly out of control over a tenyear period, so had my newly found habit. Looking back, it would be so easy to place the blame on Bill for offering me that initial “pick me up,” but unlike Linda Lovelace, I can honestly say that no one held a gun to my head. No one in the business ever forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do.

  Once I had agreed to try drugs, they were everywhere I went, on the set and off. And, just like sex, no matter where I turned, someone was offering me a silver spoonful. At the height of my addiction, I was freebasing at a cost of $1500 per day. It took a few years, but I was on my way to losing everything to finance my addiction. First I sold the stocks and bonds, then the apartment buildings, then the stores. Because my attitude had changed, I even lost friends and associates.

  For over fifteen years I had prided myself on being the most reliable performer in the adult industry. Now, I began showing up late on sets, looking glassy-eyed and gaunt and having dropped thirty pounds. Slim to begin with, I had turned into a rail.

  It was during this period that I filmed Exhausted. The story line should have been a romp for me, as it was supposedly my story, a real semi-documentary based on my life. During the on-camera interviews I could barely remember my lines, or wait for the filming to end. In the middle of a scene I would disappear for long stretches, but my co-workers knew where to find me: in the bathroom doing freebase. I became the butt of jokes, which traveled around like wildfire. “To get Holmes to work,” they said, “you have to leave a trail of freebase from the bathroom to the bedroom.”

  Things got worse for me. With money growing increasingly short, I began looking for things to steal. It started somewhat low-key by going through an old girlfriend’s purse. Soon I found myself rummaging through and even breaking into cars. I was always looking for things to steal. I couldn’t remember lines, but I knew the location of every pawnshop in town.

  John “Cash” Holmes had become John “Crash” Holmes.

  7

  The brown-haired girl stood near a freeway off-ramp in Hollywood with her thumb hanging out. It was a warm spring afternoon and she was showing a lot of skin.

  I’ll give anybody a ride as long as the person is female and fairly attractive. This one was both. She was also young, still in her teens, and wearing a clinging, off-white tank top that left little to the imagination. I couldn’t stop the van fast enough. “Where are you heading?” I shouted through the open window. She moved closer and peeked inside. Her eyes had a strange look about them. She may have been young enough to be a schoolgirl but no question; she’d been up and down the freeway, and a few other fast roads, more than once. Without saying a word, she opened the passenger door and hopped in beside me. “I know who you are,” she said, checking me over.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, you’re the guy with the big dick. You’re in dirty pictures.” “Have you ever seen any?”

  “Sure,” she answered smugly, as if they were required viewing. Then

  she curled up in her seat, facing me, and stared long and hard. “Are you really that guy…John Holmes?”

  “Want me to prove it?” Half jokingly, I reached for my fly.

  “Do you do any coke?”

  Do I do coke? Hey, kid, how would you like a quick rundown of all the money I’ve blown on the stuff? You think I look this way from wheat germ and alfalfa sprouts? I should have been as outspoken with her as she

  57 was being with me. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and nodded responsively—a conditioned reflex, no doubt; as my eyes scanned her enticing young body. Her nipples appeared to be small and firm as they poked against the flimsy material.

  “So do I,” she said intently, “but I’m out.” Under the dash, in a dark crevice, I kept a small plastic pouch. I withdrew it, and for the next several minutes we sat parked along the curb, oblivious to the passing traffic, exchanging “hits.”

  Had I known what I was getting myself into I would have said a quick goodbye and driven away. Alone! But I didn’t, and when she wanted to know “Which way are you heading from here?” I got cute. “I asked you first, remember?”

  Her blank expression told me she didn’t. “Forget it,” I said, getting serious, “I’m heading west. I was on my way to pick up some coke when you came along.”

  “How far west?

  “It doesn’t matter. Where do you want to go?” I fingered the ignition key, and then turned it. The motor began to purr.

  “Some friends of mine have the best coke in the world.”

  “No, darling,” I countered, “A friend of mine has the best coke in the world. But who’s arguing, right? Just tell me where and we’re on our way. I’ve got nothing but time.”

  She pointed down Sunset Boulevard and we were off, blending into the slow-moving procession of cars. At Laurel Canyon, opposite Schwab’s Drug Store, she motioned for me to turn right. The traffic lessened now as the road became more treacherous, a succession of hairpin curves that snaked upward into the hills. We passed residential side streets with Pollyanna names like Honey Drive, Lark Lane and Merrywood Terrace, climbing through wooded areas and open stretches of tinder-dry brush. I hadn’t a clue to where she was leading me, but I soon found out.

  Reaching Lookout Mountain, a remote, narrow road several miles short of the summit, I was instructed to turn left. Moments later we were veering off onto Wonderland Avenue. My young companion straightened in her seat. “We’re here,” she said. “Stop!”

  The developers of the area obviously had a dream that backfired. Wonderland it wasn’t. Not even Bel Air or Beverly Hills. There were no sprawling mansions of imported stone, marble or brick. I saw no vast grounds or landscapes punctuated by fountains, pools or lush plantings, no sweeping terrazzo driveways, no courtyards. Not even one porte-cochère. Here the homes were made of stucco and wood, crowded into the hillsides, neglected, and in need of paint or general repair. More often than not, the landscaping was Nature’s own; overgrown, running wild. The sounds echoing across the hills came not from catering trucks and gardeners’ mowers but from the barking of neighborhood dogs on the loose.

  Slowly, I maneuvered the van up an incline before a bilious green two-story house. With a paint job like that it didn’t really need any further identification. It had some, anyway: four numbers—8763—
marked with uncertain strokes on the doorframe. “I’ll be right back,” the young girl said, bounding from my side. “I want to tell everyone we’re here.”

  “What do you mean we’re here?” I called after her. “I’m just dropping you off.” I had no intention of following her inside.

  She stopped in the center of the roadway, the bright overhead sun playing against the soft curves of her body, and turned sharply. “Oh, please, she begged, “you’ve got to come in.” For the first time since we met, she sounded like a real kid.

  The place looked deserted. “How do you know anyone’s home?”

  “They’re always home,” she said knowingly. “They’re always shooting up.”

  She painted a beautiful picture. Maybe this was wonderland after all.

  In less time than it took me to turn off the ignition and roll up the windows, she was back, opening the driver’s door and tugging at my arm with youthful exuberance. “Come on, come on,” she prodded, excitedly, “they’re dying to meet you.” This time she didn’t get any feedback.

  Inside, the house was a foul-smelling shambles. It was difficult to see much with the shades drawn, but neglect was evident everywhere. Sections of newspapers—too many for a single day’s delivery—were scattered across the floor and furniture. Half-filed glasses and dishes smeared with decaying remnants of meals past nestled on tabletops along with crumpled bags of potato chips, cigarette packs, and ashtrays filled to overflowing. In the empty spaces, overturned shoes, socks, and other odd pieces of discarded clothing appeared to substitute for bedding for the two raging Staffordshire terriers—pit bulls—at our feet.