by Jiz Lee
Sex should be pleasurable, fun, and at times healing and transformative, and I want to be a part of helping people experience that. That is where you will see Betty Blac next. I continue to be the person I have always been: a writer, an activist, a social critic, and an informal relationship/sexuality advisor. I suppose one day I will have to have a grand coming out for that. Or maybe this is it.
THE CALL
Candida Royalle
In 1984, Candida Royalle stepped behind the camera, from porn star to director, creating Femme Productions in order to produce adult films from a woman’s perspective. Royalle gained international acclaim as a pioneer in female sexual empowerment and expression, and she became a sought-after speaker, lecturing extensively at such venues as the Smithsonian Institute, the World Congress on Sexology, and several universities and professional conferences. She has been a guest on countless TV talk shows and written up everywhere from the New York Times to the Times of London. Royalle was invited to become a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT); in 2014 she received a doctorate in human sexuality from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality for her life’s work. She is currently working on a documentary about the search for her birth mother with award-winning filmmaker Sheona McDonald. You can find her at CandidaRoyalle.com
I can’t remember what kind of day it was or what I was doing when the phone rang, but I was definitely at the home of my close friend, Joe Morocco, with whom I was staying, and this was before the age of cell phones, if you can imagine such a time.
It was August of 1979, and I was on the cusp of some major life changes, both personal and professional. I had just spent the last eight years in the wildly colorful gender-bending counterculture of San Francisco where, along with Joe, I performed in outrageously unconventional theater productions with many of the original Cockettes and other infamous glitterati born of the gay rights movement. Contrary to what many presume, this is where I became known as Candida Royalle. We were all coming up with aliases to perform under, and here was my opportunity to use the name a beloved uncle had always called me: Candida, the Latin derivative of my birth-given name, Candice, and which in Latin means “pure.” This uncle, whom I loved dearly, passed away when I was just thirteen. Having people call me by his special name brought me great comfort.
Although this uncle might have been somewhat amused had he been aware of how I eventually came to be known as Candida, I can’t imagine he would have been pleased by how I next came to use the name he had lovingly bestowed upon me. Looking for a way to supplement the income I brought in from doing free theater, singing in jazz clubs, selling the occasional art piece, and modeling for artists, I answered an ad for nude erotic modeling and ended up in a porn movie. It was, after all, the days of the so-called sexual revolution, and defying social conventions and breaking rules was all the rage. Daring as I may have been, however, I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of my Italian Catholic family finding out, so once again it was time to come up with an alias. Assuming my foray into porn was to be brief and unremarkable, I initially left the producers with the task of naming me and found myself being credited with ridiculous noms de porn such as Candice Ball and Candice Chambers. It was time to come up with something quick. Unable to top Candida Royalle, I said five Hail Marys and a Lord’s Prayer for good measure and began signing the model releases as Candida Royalle.
Contrary to what I assumed would be a few quick film roles to help pay the rent, I became a sought-after performer thanks to my ability to learn lines and carry a role. Performers nowadays might appear in hundreds of roles throughout the course of their career; I appeared in about twenty-five films during my five-year career, not counting the handful of “loops” I made, plotless quickies found in slot machines in Times Square and other red light districts. Don’t be fooled by those lengthy lists of features credited to me; most of them were created by pulling scenes from one movie to create another. Naturally, the performers were never paid for those additional “features.”
Manhattan in ’79 was alive with the hottest discos and sex clubs and, unaware of the scourge that was about to overtake the gay community and put the adult industry on alert, things were about to get even hotter in the ’80s, with lots more clubs like Area and Danceteria opening up. The porn industry, looking the threat right in the eye and refusing to take heed, was to explode in size and popularity, at least for a while. But for now, unaware of how I was about to have the ground shaken under me, I had plenty of reasons to feel happier than I had in some time.
One of the first things I did was have Joe Morocco take me to Studio 54. Joe was the perfect escort; he was a brilliant artist and performer who turned heads wherever he went. Using himself as a canvas, his outfits were as original as they were bizarre, and together we stole shows and took over dance floors. He had since moved back to our native New York City and into the Ansonia, an elegant old landmark building on the Upper West Side where he landed a fabulous three-bedroom apartment, one of the few grand old living quarters that hadn’t yet been divided up into smaller apartments and gradually sold off as co-ops. (A noteworthy aside: the original notorious Plato’s Retreat was located on the ground floor of the Ansonia when Plato’s was at its prime, a convenience wasted on me as I wasn’t particularly into swinging; but always curious, I occasionally ventured down there for a private party or a film shoot, managing to avoid the indoor pool.)
I hadn’t yet moved back to New York myself, but having just fallen in love with the hot and highly popular Per Sjöstedt, who had recently moved to New York from his native Sweden and who would ultimately become my husband and business partner, it would be just a few months before I moved back to the East Coast.
In the meantime, you could say I was floating on a cloud. I had been flown to New York City to work for some of the top producers and directors when New York City was still putting out some of the best adult features. My close friend Leslie Bovee, one of the sexiest and most in-demand porn stars at the time, had me cast in a supporting role to her lead in a feature being directed by Kamal. These were the days when you had to audition and read for a part, and landing a lead or a supporting role often meant working for a week at a substantial day rate, rather than being paid per sex act which, I’m sorry, just feels to me like being paid like a hooker. I understand the need for the change in how performers were paid: Once they started shooting one- and two-day “wonders,” thanks to the low cost of shooting on video, performers were suddenly expected to be in sometimes as many as three sex scenes a day for that same day rate. Something had to change.
Back then, you could still feel like you were in a “real” movie, negotiating daily and weekly rates based on your box office appeal. I understand that nowadays some of the talent resent being asked to act. They’ll charge extra for having to memorize lines whereas we delighted in the notion of being talented enough to be asked to carry a role.
Having decided this would be my last year in porn, I purposely targeted New York City, where I began getting juicy roles for some of the top adult-film directors, like Henri Pachard and Chuck Vincent. The unexpected bonus was falling in love with Per, who was working for Chuck as a promising young producer—until that phone call burst my bubble, and I was seriously outed.
It wasn’t unusual to get a phone call from my sister. The product of not one but two broken and loveless marriages, she and I had always had a close but difficult relationship. While we clung to each other for safety and support, our parents played us off of one another, as parents often do, setting us up for a lifetime of rivalry and misunderstanding. I was coming out of what I would describe as the lowest point in my life, having taken too many recreational drugs that sometimes led to bad behavior. About a year prior to this, I had done something to my sister that I would classify as a terrible betrayal, the sort of thing that feels like a nightmare, only worse because it’s real. You really did it and there’s no way to undo it and you liv
e in fear of being found out. No, I’m not going to disclose what I did; let’s just say it involved a man—her man—and a dangerous brew of party drugs, and I think you can get a pretty good idea of the nature of my shameful betrayal.
I can’t recall how the phone call began, whether she took her time leading up to it or she simply and immediately dropped the bomb. I imagine she had to have first informed me that she had learned about my terrible secret. Then: “I told Dad that you’ve been making porno movies, and if you don’t call Mom and tell her yourself, I’m going to call her and tell her too.” Then she gave me a set amount of time to do the deed, or else.
I don’t remember anything else about that phone call. I can only conjure up the look of utter shock and horror that came over me. Lips slightly parted but speechless. Eyes wide open but staring at nothing. Just complete, utter disbelief.
Five years before that, I had no intention of going into porn. Perhaps the greatest irony as I think back to that fateful day in 1975 when I decided to give it a try was this little bit of reasoning on my part: Who’s gonna see it? One day, all these film reels will be left in some dark, forgotten storage room to collect dust and fade away, and no one will even be able to recognize who’s on screen.
Now, five years later, I was about to take my final bow, to leave behind my swan song when fate interfered with my best-laid plans. I was about to get away with it, my secret safely tucked away and buried. If only my damned sister didn’t have such a monstrous temper, a frightening level of rage, and an ability to come up with the most hideous and vengeful ways of getting someone back. If only I hadn’t screwed up in the most, shall we say, Royalle way imaginable.
If only I hadn’t betrayed her in the first place.
But there it was. It was all out in the open now. There were other juicy tidbits of information she had shared with my father. Just the usual sins of the young, drugs and partying, that sort of thing. Nothing else quite as shocking as porn, though. That would be hard to top.
Facing the prospect of calling my mother and telling her that I had been performing in porn movies for the last five years was not something I was looking forward to. In fact, I was dreading it. But it was better than having my sister tattle on me. And so I resolved to tell her myself.
It wasn’t as if she were going to scream and haul off and slap me across the face like she did when I was a kid; besides, my parents were living in Florida by then, so there was little face-to-face contact. It was more the sense of shame I felt. I’d like to say I had a clear conscience and a strong sense of conviction about my porn career, but that came later, after going into therapy to make sure I was all right with what I had done.
It was also a different time back then. Not counting my friends from the counterculture whose reactions ran from mild amusement to wanting to know how they can get into porn and make a few extra bucks, people from the “straight world,” as we referred to them back then, didn’t know how to react. Although “porno chic” is a term that gets bandied about when describing the cultural response to films like Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones, pornography was still something that was barely discussed then. I certainly didn’t fit the image people had of girls who went into porn. I was neither a hooker nor a sad, strung-out loser with no other options or places to go. Something was terribly wrong with this picture.
I eventually came to terms with my choices and could honestly say there was nothing wrong with performing sexually for others to watch and enjoy. But I hadn’t done that work on myself yet, and so it was with a sense of dread that I picked up the phone and dialed.
I am not exaggerating when I say this was probably the most difficult phone call I have ever made. I dreaded having to come clean to my mother, who had spent her hard-earned money on dance lessons and one of the best art colleges in the States for me. I knew she would think I threw all that away on something shameful, inexplicable.
Much to my amazement, my mother, who had grown up a moderately religious Irish Catholic, turned out to be far more accepting than I could have ever imagined. Here is what I remember she said:
“I’m shocked to think of my little Candy doing that.”
“I envy you; you seem to have worked out your issues with men.”
“You’re still my little Candy and I’ll always love you.”
Never could I have imagined that my mother would respond with such love and acceptance.
The comment about men was more of a projection on her part. I did work through my issues with men, but porn had little to do with it. Spending several years with a brilliant therapist is where I put the credit.
Later on, once I had formed my production company and began to receive an unprecedented amount of media coverage and financial success, my mother expressed even greater respect for what I’d accomplished. She occasionally made comments like, “I wish you had gone into a field that I could brag about to my friends,” but she also expressed a sense of awe and admiration for what I had accomplished. Never one to manage her finances very well, I was living the life she had wanted: a successful, independent career woman living a glamorous life in Manhattan. Not that I always felt that way. I’m not sure she understood quite how hard I worked to be able to project that glamorous, successful image!
As for my father, we never did talk about the things my sister told him. But several years later, when I was at the peak of my media fame, my father, who had been living alone since my mother left him, caught me on one of the many TV talk shows I had appeared on. We spoke a bit about my work, which was unusual because my father and I never discussed anything to do with sex, and that included the work I did. Feeling a bit awkward, I told him, “I feel a little funny talking about this with you, Dad.” To which he replied, “You have nothing to feel bad about. With all the things people do in this world—politicians lying to everyone, corporations cheating people, people hurting and killing each other—all you’re doing is bringing pleasure to people’s lives.”
I can’t tell you how much this meant to me, but I’m sure you can imagine.
A few years later, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. That conversation would remain one of the greatest gifts my father left me with.
As for my sister, I knew I had hurt her and it was important that I make amends. Short of being able to undo what I had done, with the help of my brilliant therapist, I came to understand what had motivated my behavior and was able to ask for my sister’s forgiveness. She saw how hard I worked to get to this point and it meant a lot to her.
My sister and I still have our ups and downs, but having gotten through this particularly traumatic event showed us that nothing is insurmountable. Our mutual love, born of the bond that formed out of years of clinging together when nothing felt safe in a home devoid of certainty, was solid.
Perhaps the greatest gift was that an act meant to punish me in the cruelest way possible turned out to be a blessing in disguise: I no longer had any secrets I had to keep locked away, living in fear of being found. And although I can never change what was—not the turmoil that filled our days growing up, nor the choices I made that seem to others to be inexplicable—in the end, the truth was our healing. I know I was loved and am still loved by the people who matter the most.
SHARK’S TEETH
Casey Calvert
Casey Calvert is an award-winning adult actress and naked model who spends her free time as a writer, rock climber, and expert level napper. She graduated magna cum laude from film school at the University of Florida and moved to Los Angeles at the end of 2012. She is also currently pursuing mainstream production as her secret real-world alter ego. If she is not at home with her cats, dog, and partner, she is probably at work . . . or sitting in traffic.
“Different people are into different things.”
That’s all she said. That’s all I remember her saying. Sitting in the cold clutter of Miss Deborah’s office, reading the diplomas on the wall for the thousandth time, chewing a hole through the straw of
the Capri Sun she gave me, all I could really hear was the thunder of Absolutely Excruciating Embarrassment.
Miss Deborah was my brother’s therapist. I had my own therapist, but I outright refused to see him. I didn’t want to see anyone, but twelve-year-old me didn’t get a choice, because twelve-year-old me’s mom didn’t know how to handle what she had just discovered.
Long before twelve, I knew I was different. I don’t know how I knew. I guess it was just something I intuited as my friends talked about the boys they wanted to kiss, and I didn’t understand.
I wanted to do things with boys, but it certainly wasn’t kiss.
My fantasies were my Deep Dark Secret. Not a single soul knew.
It was the first day of band practice. It was also the last. We made it maybe an hour, but I guess that’s how it goes in seventh grade.
“Do you want to see something cool?” Audrey said, sitting down at my computer. She told me I was lucky, having my own computer in my own room. She also wrote the lyrics to our song.
Three’s better than two, and two’s better than you.
I had absolutely no idea what that meant.
“Sure,” I said.
The dialup tones played, and we were online. I looked over her shoulder, as she navigated her way past a screen that flashed “Adults Only.”
“Ever seen porn before?”
“I . . . umm . . . of course,” I mumbled, trying to be cool, actually having absolutely no idea what porn was.
Two naked, hard-bodied, harder-cocked men appeared on the screen. The blond one gave the other blond one a blowjob, and I had just watched my first porno.
I learned a lot of things that day. I learned what a hard cock looks like. I learned the word blowjob.
And I learned that you can find whatever you want on the Internet.
