In Lust We Trust: Adventures in Adult Cinema

by Gerrie Lim

  Tabitha had courted immense notoriety following appearances on everything from Howard Stern (several appearances, to nobody’s surprise, since Howard loves her type) to The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (the latter particularly memorable for me, since she was on Leno’s ‘Street Jams’ segment and I’d recognized her immediately!) and two Entertainment Tonight stories, one about the adult film industry and the other about cosmetic enhancements (she admitted to being a “plastic surgery junkie,” having spent up to US$200,000 on everything from botox, rhinoplasty, liposuction, and several revisions of her 34DD boobs).

  But mainstream fame wasn’t her game. Having previously been a B-movie sex-and-gore scream queen with Troma Films, the New York cult company (Eve’s Beach Fantasy was the one most people remembered her in), she seemed to mirror her penchant for perversely lowbrow fare even in the adult world. She had been in such titles as Blonde Brigade, Booby Call, Babes Illustrated #9: Cyber Sluts, Take 69, Texas Dildo Masquerade and that less infamous but infinitely more frightening, Ron Jeremy-directed, John Wayne Bobbitt vehicle (read: disaster) called Frankenpenis.

  And, lest we forget her return to her roots, the B-movie porn spoof The Bride of Double Feature, for which she was nominated for “Best Supporting Actress” at the 2001 AVN Awards. When I asked her if she had won any AVN Awards previously, she paused and didn’t seem sure. “I think I have,” she mused. “I wasn’t there to collect it. It was years ago, or at least a few years ago. I did a series called Fuck ’em All, for All Good Video, which won ‘Best New Series.’ Which was very nice to have, it was cool to have it and everything, but I would rather my fans be happy, you know? I don’t think the fans really give a shit about the awards. They’re about liking you and liking your performance. I love the camera and I love my fans. And knowing that they’re watching, that’s what gets me going. I know I’m going to do the best that I can for them. I’m not getting any younger, I’m thirty-one years old. I was twenty-five when I got into this business. So as long as my body can hold out and I look good, I’m not ready to quit right now. Once people start not liking their job, then they should quit.”

  What does she tell the young girls entering the business? “My first thing is, warn anybody who might find out. They will find out. And then, make sure you can be comfortable with it, you know, because there are ups and downs. Don’t come in because you need money. Don’t come in because you need to do drugs, or because your boyfriend’s making you do this. Come in with a strong, clear mind. Do this because you want to do it. There is such a thing as too much sex. You can get burned out. Sex is different when you’re on a set, because you’re stopping and you’re cutting, you’re doing this and you’re doing that, and you’re doing dialogue.”

  At that juncture, I spied John Decker still lubing and stroking himself, so that he could maintain his erection while Ava was resting outside, waiting to shoot again soon, most definitely in another position. I wondered how he managed to do this, day after day, week after week, without Viagra.

  Nobody hires young women in this profession because they possess the range of Nicole Kidman or the versatility of Meryl Streep. For the most part, they need to look like Ava Vincent, but with stronger

  legs.

  Four women in my own past sex life were blondes, and one of them somewhat resembled Ava (which might explain why I’ve always had a nostalgic thing for Ava, since porn stars often represent archetypes drawn from our own psychic baggage). But one look at John Decker, and I doubt I would ever want his job. Too much hard work, so to speak.

  It was at times like these that I really started to question just how in the world I got here. Of course, growing up in Singapore during the repressive 1970s held all the answers. Everything about it has already been best summarized in that oft-quoted William Gibson magazine piece about Singapore, which begat the famous catch-phrase, “Disneyland with the Death Penalty,” published in the September/October 1993 issue of Wired magazine. I always thought it interesting that so many outsiders armed with critical thinking could easily understand just why I spent so many years feeling frustrated when many at home didn’t get it at all. Critical thinking was, I can attest, not part of the curriculum at school.

  And so I spent my adolescence being forced to get my hair cut to a regulation length, simply because some know-it-all up high decided that that all male human beings in Singapore had to look one way and one way only. “Obsessed with short haircuts,” the novelist Paul Theroux described the Singapore government of the time; Theroux left Singapore after three years of living there, vowing never to return (he still has not, for the past thirty years), but I bet he never had a Led Zeppelin poster on his bedroom wall, the one with the four guys standing in front of their private jet, which represented for me all that was important in life. Freedom of expression, libertarian democracy, I already knew what all that was at age fourteen. But I was told to not question authority and, as I was indeed brutally told, to “shut up.” And so I decided I would leave Singapore the first chance I got and stayed away, with the odd visit back to see the folks, for a total of twenty years.

  Of course, the anti-hippie hair rule doesn’t apply anymore and rock bands with long hair play Singapore all the time now, the current administration seeking to project a more “hip” image of the country—loaded with electronic dance clubs galore, bar-top dancing in pubs, even a Crazy Horse burlesque revue, all aimed to impart some desperate sensation of “buzz”; and all this only after too many tourists had decided not to visit Singapore because it was, as most had described it, “boring.” Even Joan Didion, whom I wrote my Master’s thesis on, told me she had visited Singapore. “I found it a terribly empty place to live,” she said.

  And, according to the Singapore laws, anyone caught with a sizeable quantity of porn, even if you try to prove that it’s for your own consumption (and not for sale), can be fined S$500 (US$300) per DVD or a maximum of S$20,000 (US$12,500), or six month’s jail, or both. But you can still buy the bootleg stuff on the side streets around the city’s main drag, Orchard Road, or up in Thailand, so I love what this says about progress (and I still stash my stuff safely away in Los Angeles). It was perhaps inevitable then that I would end up in Los Angeles, citadel of Southern California, the city where everyone came to reinvent their identity, to remake themselves anew.

  I remember a music industry party, during the very moneyed early 90s, at Thunder Road, the famous Harley-Davidson biker café on the Sunset Strip. The music attorney friend who’d invited me told me that the porn star Lois Ayres would be there, and that he would introduce her to me. True enough, he did, and Lois became the first porn star I would actually meet in the flesh.

  I remember she was invitingly friendly, in the way of most celebrities, especially when they meet us media people at Hollywood parties. I had only seen her in one film—the Ginger Lynn classic Blame It On Ginger—and we had a pleasant enough conversation, of which I remember pretty much nothing. Later, I discovered that Lois had also been in The Devil in Miss Jones III and IV, Every Woman Has a Fantasy 2, and other self-explanatory titles like Bi-Bi Love and Nightshift Nurses, and had been written up by the adult entertainment journal Adam Film World in such glowing terms: “Originally known as Sondra Stillman, Lois changed more than her name in 1986 … Lois always looks like she just got fucked, and from what we hear, probably did. She comes across as a cock-crazed nymphomaniac who never gets enough. A sex performer par excellence, she virtually devours her partners.” (Devours her partners? I remember reading that and thinking I was surely in the wrong business.)

  There was another girl at the same party, though, who caught my attention. Her name was April, but she called herself Ivy. She told me she had moved to L.A. recently from the East Coast. “I want to be in porn,” she told me matter-of-factly, and asked me to dance. She was slim and slender, with reddish-brown hair and a movie-starlet face, quite attractive and blessed with a vivacious personality. On the dance floor, she reached into my shirt and flirtatiously pinched my
nipples, laughing gleefully and with a reckless abandon I found intoxicating.

  She also told me she used to be the roommate of the porn star Madison, and had learned much from her when they both danced at the same strip clubs. But Madison was a big star now, and she wasn’t. “Madison is always featuring,” she moaned. “I want to do the same.” I didn’t know what “featuring” was but pretended I did, nodding ever so sagely, since I didn’t want to risk losing her undivided attention. (She was pretty cute and, believe me, I can be as sex-brained a Neanderthal as the next guy.) Later, of course, I learned that strippers who become porn stars get to “feature”—they dance at the top of the bill for the night, and are announced as the club’s showcase talent, which always brings in top dollars. Ivy aspired to drag herself from the dungheap, following the stiletto heels of her former roommate, whom she confessed (after knowing me for all of ten minutes) she didn’t much care for. “I don’t like Madison, she’s a very mean person,” she whispered in my ear. Bitchy, bitchy.

  From that party, I went to yet another party, where I met several people from a Hustler film crew and spent most of the evening talking to a very attractive brunette named Sara Lee, who told me she could be seen in that month’s issue of Chic magazine, shot by photographer Matti Klatt. Sara was another Ivy, an aspiring porn starlet who hadn’t done much yet except for a few magazine layouts. She liked the fact that I had been writing for Playboy, and this opened her up to me about getting her feet (and other body parts) wet.

  “My parents would kill me if they knew,” she said. “I’m just doing this for myself. To see what I can learn about myself.” I was quite touched by her outward honesty, though I regrettably didn’t ask for her phone number. I did procure that issue of Chic, though, and was slightly disappointed to see that her appearance was in a mere six-page “girl/girl” spread, in which she cavorted on the hood of a car with a blonde. Still, it was an awakening of sorts for me—the first time I was seeing someone I had actually met completely naked in a magazine, her thighs spread wide open, her vulva openly on display. (This was 1992, and Sara St James and her masturbation video were another three years away.)

  Yes, Virginia, there is spiritual recompense. If I had stayed in Singapore, I would never have met girls like them. And my life would’ve been the poorer for it. I would not, for instance, have ever been to the AVN Awards in Las Vegas, which I attended in January 2001. It was Drew McKenzie at work, once more with feeling. I had flown up there because V.K. had asked me to pen a piece about what it was like to be there, at the infamous Oscars of porn.

  The thing to remember about the AVN Awards, as anyone who has ever attended will tell you, is that it’s never about the awards per se. Porn is about exhibitionistic sex, and the AVN Awards are really about putting porn as a genre on public display. The awards ceremony itself is usually an overly long, self-congratulatory affair. Too many people get too drunk to really care about who won what (unless you’re one of those who really, sincerely wanted to win but tragically lost). The real action, and the focus of the story I eventually wrote, is the red carpet entry before the actual ceremony.

  The Thai-British firecracker Tera Patrick ended up winning the Best New Starlet trophy that night, but most of the gawkers gathered outside the hall missed her completely since she was dressed far more conservatively than anyone would have expected, clad in a long-sleeved, black lace top with demurely see-through floral embroidery and simple beige slacks. The phalanx of photographers were aiming their lens at Nina Hartley, in an elegant red dress with black elbow-length gloves, looking like a bordello madam. Asia Carrera, in a yellow sequined Tadashi gown that she’d acquired from her neighborhood Topanga Mall boutique, came strolling in, one hand clutching her then-beau Clarke Irving, a tall and ruggedly handsome Englishman she would become engaged to but eventually not marry. And then there was Jessica Drake, wearing the outfit of the evening, a floor-length satin skirt cut dangerously low at the hip and, well, pretty much nothing else.

  Across her bare chest were two white strips of cloth studded with rhinestones, draped in a V-shape but barely covering her nipples, leaving the rest of her breasts bare and pretty much all of her tanned torso open for public viewing. Eyes popped, jaws dropped. It was the closest thing to being completely naked.

  Jessica told me later that she was nearly arrested for her outfit, or the lack thereof. “Hotel security did approach me and said that either I cover up or risk being arrested by vice, who apparently were in the hotel at the time. I politely told Mr Security that I was legally covered, because no nipples were visible. They were actually covered with make-up and taped. But he insisted. So I covered up momentarily with a shawl but then after some thought, I imagined what a great time I would have without it and dropped the shawl for the rest of the evening. So there!” Jessica would win, appropriately, the “Best Tease Performance” trophy that night.

  At 9.30 pm, with emcee Jenna Jameson still inside doing her thing, the first guests began their exodus out of the Venetian ballroom. A tall blonde I didn’t recognize, wearing a cowboy hat and a backless black pantsuit, sashayed out onto the red carpet and was immediately accosted by a young photographer. “Do a fashion shoot?” he asked. She nodded, and pulled open her low-cut top. Out popped her bare breasts with their ripe, pink nipples. The young guy snapped away with his camera, grinning at his good luck. Freelancers live for moments like these, for shots they know will sell.

  Another ripple surged through the crowd moments later. A tall brunette trumped that blonde by literally slithering out of her skimpy red dress. She untied her halter top and lowered it down to her navel, making unmistakeable the fact that she was wearing nothing underneath. She allowed the cameras to get as many angles on her naked breasts as possible, before bending down to aim her very round ass right into an outstretched zoom lens. The dress fell down low enough for me to get a glimpse of her brown pubic hair. She kept this position for what seemed like an eternity, before collecting herself and, still smiling, sauntering off before the cops could arrive.

  But my own favorite moment would have to wait until the next day, when I attended the AVN Expo trade show at the adjacent Sands Expo Center. At the booth belonging to Extreme Associates, one of the more outrageous companies, was their girl—a pretty, strawberry-blonde nymphette named Keri Starr, who wore an outfit that threatened to beat Jessica Drake’s from the night before—nothing at all except a makeshift thong comprised of stickers advertising the company’s Internet search-engine site (“Search Extreme: The Joy of Search—www.searchextreme.com”). The stickers were illustrated with pink lips emblazoned on a black background. She stood there signing autographs wearing two such stickers pasted over each nipple, and a bunch of the same stickers cobbled together as panties. She let the fans pat her otherwise bare derriere, grinning as the men stroked her bare skin with their palms. The crowd around her, predictably, was massive.

  I decided to come back later when the lines were shorter. I’d touched a girl before, I knew what a bare butt felt like, and I didn’t need to make a public spectacle of it. (I’m Drew McKenzie, you know.)

  I strolled the massive hall, stopping to chat with other porn stars, and then headed back to her booth. This time, Keri was wearing a brown halter dress, her nipples straining against the very sheer fabric, making it obvious she was still naked underneath.

  “The security people, they made me cover up,” she sighed. “They said I couldn’t sign wearing just the stickers.” But she winked at me and grabbed one of the offending stickers. “This one came off one of my nipples,” she said, “and you have to wear it.” With that, she slapped the sticker on the lapel of my jacket, and then pulled out a glossy eight-by-ten photo of herself. “This is my last one and I’ll sign it for you.”

  She smiled, grabbed a black marker, and wrote: “Gerrie—Next time you see me, you better cum on my face. Love, Keri Starr.”

  A few moments later, I was walking by the Wicked Pictures booth and ran into contract girl Stephan
ie Swift, a Eurasian beauty (one-quarter Filipino) who, in complete contrast to everyone around her, was completely dressed down in a simple cotton print dress and wore no make-up at all. She looked deceptively demure and quietly approachable, like a regular green-eyed brunette. “This has been my favorite year at the AVN convention,” she told me. “It’s the first time that I’ve really not been too nervous about everything. I’ve been doing this convention for seven years now, so it’s like a second home to me. I’m basically showing the real me this year. I’m not covering myself with make-up or outfits or anything like that.”

  Several people interrupted us to ask her for autographs, and she cheerfully obliged. Did that make her feel like a celebrity, I asked? “I always feel weird when people say that,” she replied, laughing. “I’m just used to writing my name. I’m really good at it.”

  Around the corner, at the Adam & Eve booth, Asia Carrera was doing the same, though her line was several times longer than Stephanie’s and a few women stood among the mostly male throng, some actually getting autographs not for their boyfriends but for themselves. (Asian girls are often seen at Asia’s signings, and many have told me what a role model she was to them.) At the awards ceremony the previous night, Asia had been inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame, that sacred place reserved for living porn legends. Her then-husband, the veteran director Bud Lee, was also inducted into the Hall of Fame. This was one for the record books—the first time a real-life couple had been ushered into the AVN Hall of Fame together, a rare achievement.

  “Bud’s pissed off because it took him twenty years to get his and it took me six to get mine,” she quipped. Asia had made her porn debut in 1994.

  Yes, I know, I said, “I just ran into Bud and he said, ‘You tell Asia I did it with my brains but she did it with her tits.’”

  “What, he said that? I’ll kill him!” Asia squealed, and immediately dissolved into peals of laughter. She stared at the AVN Hall of Fame trophy sitting next to her at the booth. “It’s nice to be appreciated for all the work I’ve put in but it also makes me feel old. Every time I look at it, I’m thinking it’s time to retire. I’m always afraid of wearing out my welcome.”