Hindsight: True Love & Mischief in the Golden Age of Porn

by Howie Gordon

  I was eight for fourteen.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I shot a magazine for Paul Johnson. He was one of the very best photographers out there. Paul shot sex scenes just like loops, but he used his still cameras and made magazines instead of films. They were called The Connoisseur Series. They were very classy. He was very classy. Paul had a knack for putting the right people together and the sensitivity to treat them well. I had a wonderful afternoon working for him in a sex scene with two women. There were no problems at all.

  It was a good day at the office. And when a sex scene went really well, you could look and feel like this when you were done:

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Playgirl

  Back in 1978, Carly and I had a friend who wrote the advice column for Playgirl magazine.

  “You’re in good shape,” she said to me one day in a hot tub. It was an understatement. I was almost thirty years old and I was in the best shape of my life. I worked out seven days a week and I was chiseled like a statue. “Why don’t you do Playgirl?” she asked.

  Male centerfolds were still a bit of a novelty item back then. Hollywood mega-star Burt Reynolds had started it all when he did a photo spoof back in 1972 for Cosmopolitan magazine. The Cosmo piece was called “For the Sexually Active Woman” and it featured a tastefully nude Reynolds—his penis was actually hidden—reclining on an animal skin rug.

  The article created a media sensation. Less than a year later, up sprang Playgirl magazine in 1973 to cash in on this new phenomenon of male centerfolds.

  We shot some nude photographs of me, where my penis was tastefully not hidden, and sent them down to a friend of hers at Playgirl. They said they’d get back to us real soon.

  “…and visions of sugar plums danced in his head.”

  Playgirl. Playgirl was still the skin trade, but Playgirl was over the counter. Adult films were under the counter. They were X-rated. Playgirl was R-rated. It was out there, in the light of day, right there on the newsrack next to Time magazine and Newsweek and the Ladies Home Journal. Adult films were hidden in the back rooms or behind curtains, displayed with magazines like Really Big Bazzooms, Wide Open Beavers, and Astonishingly Red Asses.

  I thought that being in Playgirl could be a real career move for me. It could represent an astonishing leap from the gutter all the way up to the curb.

  I was all for it. Playgirl could be the launch pad for me to go back into the straight end of the industry. Hundreds of centerfolds had gone on to successful careers in movies and television, hadn’t they? Why not me too?

  I hadn’t even been picked yet and already I was retiring from the porn business. I wasn’t very good at it anyway. Nobody was gonna miss me. I’d had enough of trying to make it all work. The novelty had worn off.

  My original thoughts about being in porn as a way of getting extra sexual cookies beyond my married life had proven to be a cruel joke. Overall, the movie sex had been hit or miss. It wasn’t fun. It was very hard work. I was completely anxiety ridden and I was bumfuck befuddled when it came down to performing the sex. Enough. Been there. Done that. Who needed to do any more?

  Dear Diary, it was fun. I learned a lot. I picked up a few bucks and now, good-bye.

  I called John Seeman and told him that I didn’t want to do any more sex scenes. He asked if I’d still be interested in doing some straight parts in X-rated films. “Well, sure,” I told him, “that would be fine, just no more sex scenes.”

  I probably slept easier that night than I had in months. I wouldn’t have to lie to my parents any more. I was going straight.

  To that point, my porn career had been remarkably undistinguished and I figured that I was still flying under the radar. I didn’t think the few movies I had done would stand in the way of my renewed attempt at a more conventional actor’s life. I was waiting to hear from Playgirl.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Exactly two days later, John Seeman called me up and offered me not just one but two different sex scenes, in two different movies, for two different paychecks, all on the same day. After having just declared my “retirement” to John, it was not what I expected. I was flabbergasted, but like the moth to the flame, I found myself interested. I was challenged. Maybe John Seeman knew me better than I knew myself.

  No doubt the bank balances were low, because the idea of two paychecks sounded very good, good enough that I could ignore the potential for all the disaster and misery that might be involved in me earning them. I mean, how dare I try to do two come shots in one day?

  “Bravery is a man in search of test,” the Sufis once wrote. Gotta love them Sufis! Still hadn’t heard from Playgirl yet. I had already done eleven sex films. I didn’t think two more were gonna make much difference!

  I unretired, for the first time, and accepted the jobs.

  The first job required an audition. The star was a young woman named Tiffany. She only had one sex scene in the movie, and she was actually scheduled to do it with John Seeman. John explained that after they’d met, Tiffany didn’t want to work with him. She wanted someone else. She wanted someone more sensitive. John called me. If I wanted the job, I would have to come down to the London Lodge in Oakland where they were all staying and meet this Tiffany.

  I did. I drove down to Oakland and I met Tiffany. She told me all about her fears and I told her about mine. It was a fearfest. We had sex in her hotel room and she told the producers afterwards that she would be happy to work with me. I had myself a job.

  Tiffany didn’t belong in a fuck film. She’d done one previous sex scene in the business and didn’t like it. Why she let herself be talked into another attempt was beyond me. Could’ve been that her bank balances were low too, but I didn’t ask. She was young, cute, and adventurous. She was filled with bouncing off the wall energy. She told me that she was in nursing school, but liked flirting around the edges of a career as an actress too. Said she needed some kind of loving contact to feel at ease in doing a sex scene. I could certainly relate to that. We were well-matched for our tryst in Smutland.

  Our scene had no dialogue. I never saw the movie and I’m not sure how or why our characters came to be fucking, but they did. And so we did too.

  The scene was shot in an office space right at the hotel where they were all staying. We were to make love on top of a desk and then move to the carpeted floor. Foreplay was Tiffany sucking me until I got hard and then we went at the business of fucking for the cameras.

  It was odd. She was more nervous than me, and I was nervous. She took great comfort in caring for me. It gave her a focus other than her own fears. I was grateful for the concern. Our scene was mild by contemporary X-rated standards, but as I said, Tiffany was even more out of place than me. She was shaken by directorial cues such as having to open her vaginal lips wider while a crewman shined a bright light into her pubic area and they moved the camera in close, just inches away. It embarrassed her. It grossed her out to have to bend over and spread her ass cheeks for the camera. She wasn’t the first. She won’t be the last. I helped her get through it as best I could. I, at least, knew the terrain. This was all fairly new to her.

  She wanted to make love like we had in the darkness of her hotel room when we met. She wanted to be in love. I don’t know what she thought that she was getting into when she took this job. She had already been in one sex film. She should have at least been somewhat familiar with the drill, but she acted like she wasn’t.

  I had a guess where she was at. I could kind of smell it. She had heard only the good parts. She was going to be “the star” of a movie! There was gonna be a very nice pay check! She would get to pick out the man with whom she’d have the sex. And she had chosen to forget about all of the nasty little things that had freaked her out the first time around. There is a lot of shock and humiliation when you take something as personal and private as the sex act, light it up, and make it a public commodity. It can take some real getting used to.

  (A footnote: Shortly after
this film wrapped, Tiffany took Carly out for lunch, and confessed she was in love with me. She told Carly that the last man she had been in love with was a married man, who had made her pregnant, and that he and his wife had “forced” her to have an abortion, which she regretted to this day.)

  “If I had it to do over,” Tiffany told Carly. “I would have kept that baby.”

  Later, Carly asked me if I was sure this girl had used birth control, and I said I had taken her word for it. Carly said, “PLEASE never put your penis in this woman again.”

  I didn’t.

  Meanwhile, when we returned to the set, I got a message to call Playgirl. It was an art editor telling me that I would be Mr. November for 1978!

  I’m sure I told anyone who would listen, but there was little time for a lengthy celebration. I was due on the set of my next film. I had to make it from Oakland to San Francisco for my attempt at come shot number two.

  I sought out the director in order to get paid. He gave me $200. I told him that he was over-paying me. I had agreed to do the scene for $150. He just gave me his blessing and told me to keep it. Wow! Hell must have just frozen over, I thought, and I was on my way to shoot a loop for Bob Gunthner.

  John Seeman had told me that Bob Gunthner had been in the business for a long time. He was famous for making one-day wonders, the feature-length films that were shot in just one day. This job, however, was just gonna be a loop, one straight sex scene.

  I arrived at a private home in the Richmond District that was serving as our set and there on the couch waiting was my old friend Marlene. I had done my second loop with her, quite successfully I might add, and we were about to have a rematch.

  I joined Marlene on the couch. We waited for Bob to get his cameras ready. Marlene was all business. It was actually a welcome change from the coddling that Tiffany and I had done with each other. I wasn’t exactly horny, but I wasn’t terrified either. I was behaving like a seasoned veteran and I had myself pretty well fooled. I knew I was daring the Fates with this reach for a second orgasm. I tried not to dwell on that.

  When Bob was ready, Marlene went to sucking me into arousal. Lo and behold, life stirred anew in my cock. I viewed it as unmistakable proof of the so-called “Coolidge Effect” that Carly had taught me from her days in sex therapy training in reference to male sexual performance. As the story went, the President and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a farm where Mrs. Coolidge noticed that there was one rooster with six hens.

  “Does this one rooster service these six hens?” the First Lady was supposed to have inquired of the farmer.

  “Yes, m’am, every day,” the farmer said.

  “Would you please tell the President that,” directed Mrs. Coolidge.

  “Mr. President,” began the farmer, “your wife asked me to tell you that this one rooster services all six hens every day.”

  The President surveyed the situation and instructed the farmer, “Would you please tell my wife that those are six different hens.”

  The sex went well enough with Marlene, who, of course, was my second hen of the day. It just took me a wee bit longer to come, that’s all. Other than that, we had no real traumas. I squirted my squirt, got my pay, and went out to dinner with Bob, his crew, and some of the other actors who worked in some of the earlier loops shot that day. We went to the House of Prime Rib on Van Ness. It was serious meat.

  Two come shots in one day. I was proud! It occurred to me that my Basic Training was over. I had successfully completed “Beginner’s Schmuck” and now had become a “Regular Dick,” an experienced foot soldier in porn’s great army of slime! “Semper Tumescence!”

  On the way home, I noted that my batting average would be going up. I was now ten for sixteen. If I had been bright enough to do the math in my head, I would have known that I was now squirting at a more encouraging .625 clip. And not only was I batting .625 but I was also about to become a Playgirl centerfold. Hey, buddy, watch where you put that staple!

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Gordon Archive.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Climbing Mt. Narcissus

  I wasn’t ready to tell my parents that I had acted in some X-rated movies. I just wasn’t. And if I didn’t tell them, I thought it highly unlikely that they would ever find out. They would certainly not be frequenting any porno houses in Pittsburgh and the consumer videotapes, and the stores that would rent them hadn’t yet been invented. Besides, I’d been careful to keep my real name out of all the credits. I worked as McKinley Howard, Mark Howard, Mack Howard, Dewey Alexander, Rafael Sabatini, Dennis Leibovitz, Chang Kai-shek Jr., Barney Dinkin, and Hymie the Magnificent Worm among other stage names.

  Being in Playgirl, however, was going to be a different story. If I did Playgirl I would be using my real name. There’d be a buzz about it in Pittsburgh amongst a lot of the folks who grew up with me. I know because I’d be the one buzzing them about it, “Hey, look at me!”

  The whole community would know. My parents would eventually find out. It seemed I should be the one to tell them. Fact is, I felt I had to ask them. I needed to know if me doing Playgirl would be all right with them. If they’d have said, “No,” then I would’ve had to let it all go.

  “Burt did it!” was my mother’s response. “He talks about it all the time on Johnny’s show.” That would be Burt Reynolds, of course, talking to Johnny Carson about his centerfold posing on The Tonight Show. In my mother’s worldview, if it was good enough for Johnny’s show, it was good enough for America.

  I could see that my mother would be no problem. Though my mother would not herself openly approve of a magazine like Playgirl—women of her generation and upbringing were not likely to be ogling glossy pictures of naked men—she would nonetheless be secretly proud that her son was treading the same hallowed ground as Burt Reynolds. I didn’t tell her, of course, that Burt had posed in Cosmo, not Playgirl, and that he had discreetly covered up all the good parts that I would be proudly waving.

  I was waiting for my father’s response. He was also in on this phone call. While my mother went on about how appearing in the magazine had actually helped Burt’s career, my father was quiet. His silence was getting loud. His only offering came at the end of that phone call when he warned me to not let the magazine print my real address because there were a lot of crazy whackos in this world. I assured him that I would protect that information.

  I could tell that my father was in a bit of shock. When it came to sexual matters he was shy. It was from my mother’s side of the bed that I used to steal a copy of Fanny Hill for a few moments of frenzied pleasure during my teen years. John Cleland had written an eloquent novel featuring sizzling sex scenes. Thanks, Mom!

  By the time my father had geared himself up for what was to be his big father-son sex talk, I was already eighteen and told him that it wasn’t really necessary. We were both relieved. Mostly, he just spoke of the need to use protection. There was no AIDS back then. He was worried that I might get a girl pregnant and ruin my life with the consequences. I assured him that I would be careful. We were both awkward and ill at ease. Now, years later with this Playgirl thing, not much had changed.

  I knew he was wondering what on earth would make me want to do such a thing, but he didn’t ask. And though he didn’t object either, I knew that he was not thrilled. I had surprised him again. My father was surprised at my ability to surprise him, again. I could see him shaking his head and muttering. “I don’t know,” he would say. “My son, my son, I don’t know.” It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement by any means, but it was good enough. I went ahead full steam with the centerfold project.

  I didn’t think of my centerfold shoot as a day of work. I thought of it as a ticker-tape parade down Broadway after winning the World Series.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It was July 14, 1978. They had a second-degree smog alert that day in Los Angeles. The thermometer would go up over a hundred degrees. Angelenos were being advised to stay indoors.
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  There were five of us on the set. Theoretically, Sandy was directing. She was Playgirl’s brand new photo editor. I was to be her first centerfold. When I asked her why she chose me, she said that I was literally the first letter across her new desk. She liked that I didn’t have any tan lines. She had studied a lot of the previous centerfolds and saw that most of the male models had tanned bodies and white tushies. I was tanned all over. It was different. She liked that.

  Sandy had been charged to do three things with Playgirl’s centerfold section: upgrade the fashion, upgrade the photography, and present pictures of a man with an erection. She had told me about these things over the phone while I was still in Berkeley. She also babbled a lot about wanting to shoot some pictures of a naked man eating pasta. She claimed that would be an extremely erotic image.

  I figured that I could take care of the erection. The rest of it would be in her hands.

  Our shoot was being held in the studio home of Mike Ross, the still photographer. He had a plush, penthouse apartment, all chrome and glass. It was stylish in a young, successful, male Hollywood kind of way. Mike was a fashion photographer who seemed to be doing all right for himself. He was dropping a lot of celebrity names and I was suitably impressed. He clearly was playing in a different league than all the photographers I’d met in Pornoland.

  Apparently, he was doing a big favor for his old friend Sandy by shooting this first centerfold session for her. For him, I was guessing that shooting for Playgirl was like slumming. And I was also guessing that I was about to be his first naked man.

  There were two other women on the set that day and a dog. Leslie was our set designer. She was another friend of Sandy’s and Leslie was drop-dead gorgeous. She had the kind of beauty that made people do double takes, even in LA. She was stunning.