by Howie Gordon
Okay, so Carly and I had saved up a little money to take care of us while we were having the baby. When I told her that I thought we should take about half of that and invest it with Sam, she stuck her foot so far up my ass I could’ve licked her toes. You don’t rock the boat of a pregnant woman.
Alright, so we weren’t gonna touch that money, but we still wanted to help out Sam. We decided to go to the Bank of America and took out a personal loan. For $2500 we became ten percent owners of Reel People. Wow, we were just like the grown-ups! Carly and I were now associate producers!
Shooting got underway Sunday morning, May 15, at the Circle S Ranch in Lafayette. They often held swing parties there. Place had a giant hot tub. It was a great location.
While Spinelli began conducting his amateur interviews, I was on standby with the other stars of the film waiting for him to match us up.
However, since I also was an associate producer whose personal money was now tied up with the success of this production, I also found myself sweeping floors, schlepping equipment, moving furniture, and even buying, preparing, serving lunch, and cleaning up afterward.
In the early afternoon, we hit a major snag. Spinelli took Ricky Frazzini and me aside and confessed that he was not feeling well. Ricky was like Sam’s personal assistant, his right-hand man. He also was another one of the producers of this film.
Sam was shaken and his color was not good. Spinelli was a veteran of open-heart surgery, but he didn’t feel the need for us to call 911. His plan was just to go back to his motel room and lie down. He wanted Ricky and me to continue and finish shooting the first day’s work. He gave us our marching orders and then quietly left the set. He did not want to alarm anybody else and he fully expected to be back in the saddle bright and early the next day.
Ricky and I were now co-directors. Between us, we had zero directing experience. We were not exactly brimming with confidence. Our first act was to call a production meeting and tell everybody else what had just happened. We didn’t think it was such a good idea, or even possible, to keep it all a secret.
Right away some argued that we should just shut the production down. The logic was that we hadn’t shot that much film yet and maybe it would just be better to quit right now before we wasted a lot of money. This was Spinelli’s movie. No one else really knew what was going on and nobody really knew if Spinelli would really be coming back tomorrow.
On the other hand, Spinelli had given us his orders. We knew what he wanted us to do for the rest of the day. If we didn’t get that done, it was guaranteed to push us behind schedule and over-budget even if Spinelli was able to come back and continue shooting tomorrow.
The consensus was to press on. We’d finish the day’s work and let tomorrow take care of itself.
Ricky and I began by interviewing Chuck. Our voices would later be edited out and replaced by Spinelli’s.
Chuck was an aviator who had the fantasy of having sex with two, beautiful, young women. What a coincidence! We just happened to have Gayle Sterling and Priscilla Shields all ready and waiting for him.
When Chuck dropped his drawers, he stunned us all. Chuck the mild-mannered aviator was hung like a donkey. When aroused, he was so big that he couldn’t even get himself into the tiny Priscilla, though she diligently tried every which way to take him in. It was Gayle Sterling who recognized Priscilla may have been in some danger of being stretched beyond her physical capacity, and she made it her business to come to the young maiden’s rescue. She redirected the ardor of Sir Chuck’s great beast to her own more accommodating sheath, and both Priscilla and the scene were saved from any harm. As the scene progressed, it seemed that Gayle and Chuck were being amply rewarded for their efforts.
It was late in the afternoon as we were putting the lovers through their paces when I was called off the set for a phone call. It was Carly.
“Come home,” she said, “labor’s started.”
I walked in the front door around 11:30 Sunday night. Our friend Karen was standing next to Carly with a clipboard. She was timing the minutes between the contractions.
Karen was a dear friend who had already given birth to two of her own children. Thank God somebody was there who knew what was going on because I turned out to be almost useless. I took all the La Maze classes with Carly, but when the real shit hit the fan, I was stuck doing bad Ricky Ricardo imitations in reruns of I Love Lucy.
Karen turned out to be the real labor coach. Thank God.
Y’see, we were gonna do natural childbirth. This was Berkeley. This was the revolution. We were reinventing every wheel there ever was. La Maze, Bradley, Natural Childbirth, whatever it was, bring it on.
For the “birth experience,” we had each invited best friends to be there to help us out, to back us up in the Alternative Birthing Center at Alta Bates Hospital. Carly had invited Karen and I had invited Bob Ernst. They were both gonna help us out with the birth. When the moment came, Karen was able to get there and Bob Ernst wasn’t. Thank God it worked out that way because Bob Ernst would have probably been as useless as I was in trying to help a woman give birth. Well, maybe not, he grew up on a farm. In any case, I was glad that Karen was there. She helped.
Look, would it be too much of a copout if I just stopped right here and spared us all the little details of me recounting the baby’s birth?
Carly labored for over thirty hours, and for most of that time, I was just freaked out, stupid and dumb with anxiety, wanting to be helpful, but running around like a catfish doing the hundred-yard dash on dry land.
I was born in the wrong generation. Like my father before me, I should have been out there in the waiting room, reading endless magazines, and pestering nurses, “Is it time for me to give out the cigars yet? Is it time?”
I had no business being in there with a laboring woman, especially my wife! You know what it was like? I’ll tell you what it was like. Every woman who has ever heard me say this just cringes when I say it, but that’s all because they’re not a man!
If they were a man, they might just agree with me when I say that being with your wife while she’s going through a labor pain is like watching God fuck your wife and you don’t know whether you’re gonna get her back dead or alive when He’s done with her. It’s fuckin’ scary. And if you’ve just taken six fucking La Maze classes, believe me, there’s nothing you can fucking do to stop all the pain! “Pant-Pant-Blow,” my ass!
Now, I know that I promised my mother-in-law that I would try to not to say “fucking” too fucking much, but there’s nothing I can do about it in this fucking chapter.
And I’ll tell you something else. If I could have gotten my hands on that fucking Natural Childbirth teacher when Carly was going through all those labor pains…I would’ve…I would’ve…I would’ve really hurt her feelings.
Back then, those natural childbirth classes were like some kind of political thing. They were adversarial. The doctors were painted as the bad guys. You wanted your new baby to be all healthy and holy, but the doctors were gonna hurt them with their corporate over-drugging birthing techniques.
“The doctors are going to tell you what you have to do,” the teacher would say, “but you’re gonna tell them, ‘NO!’”
Yeah, on the strength of my six fucking touchy-feely role playing sessions at the community center, I’m supposed to dictate medical procedures to the doctors and nurses who work at the hospital.
When the first labor pain hit Carly, all her plans for natural childbirth flew right out the window. She wanted drugs. Now. She wanted help with the pain. I wanted help for her from the doctors. The last thing on this earth I wanted to do was to argue with them. I was furious with our birth class teacher for all the absolute garbage she put into our heads.
It was malpractice. It was criminal negligence. It was sadism.
Carly labored over thirty hours. A lot of shit happens in thirty hours. It was dark. It was light. And then it was dark again.
When it was first time to go
to the hospital, we couldn’t get Carly out of the Barcalounger. It was the only place in the house she felt at all comfortable laboring in. She wanted us to carry that chair out to the car with her in it and then take them both to the hospital.
First off, Karen and I weren’t strong enough. And number two, it wouldn’t even come close to fitting into the backseat of a Camaro.
“Can’t we please take the chair?” Carly asked.
“No, honey, we can’t.”
I broke down around the fifteen hour mark.
I wanted to get out of there from the very beginning, but I made myself stay. I was the husband. I was the birth coach. It was my job. I had to stay. Carly couldn’t get up and leave, could she? How could I?
So, I stayed, but I was freaking out. I wanted to get out of there. Shut up! I was telling myself, for hours. You’re not going anywhere. Help Carly, you asshole! Just do it.
Hours, man, I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to get out of there. Karen was helping Carly and there were nurses there too. They were busy angels who came and went and you didn’t even know their names. I wanted to get out of there. Man, I wanted to get out of there. Hours passed like that.
Why? What was it? Seeing my wife in pain? Seeing my wife in pain and feeling like I was powerless to help her? Seeing my wife in pain and feeling like it was all my fault?
I finally surrendered around the fifteenth hour. Karen’s got this under control, I heard the voice in my head say. There are doctors and nurses here. I’m just gonna take a little break. It’ll be okay if I take a little break. I’m just gonna take a little break.
“I’m just gonna take a little break.” There, I said that one out loud. I don’t remember if anybody even looked up.
I got out of that room. After fifteen hours, I got out of that room, but I took my guilt with me. I let Carly down. I let myself down. I got out of that room and I felt like a spineless creep.
The hospital had a little courtyard. It was a wee patch of outside completely surrounded by the four hospital walls of the inside. There was a tree there and a bench. There was outside air. There was a square of sky. There was a bush. I think there was daylight.
I sat on the bench. I breathed the air. And then the tears came. Oh, man, did the tears come! I had failed everybody. I had failed myself. I fucking wept. It was a cloudburst.
And then I was done. And calm. And restored. And I was ready to get up and go back into that room. I was ready to go help Carly do whatever we had to do to bring our baby into this world.
The doctors didn’t want to administer any pain medication until Carly dilated to seven centimeters. The bulk of her labor was spent moving glacially toward that seven-centimeter dilation. It took hours, painful hours.
When they finally did give her some medication, the labor proceeded at an accelerated pace. It was exactly the opposite of what we’d been told. Pain medication was supposed to retard labor. With Carly, it had the exact opposite effect.
When labor exceeded the thirty-hour mark, a decision was made to administer petosin to stimulate contractions. Alarms went off as the baby’s heartbeat shot up over 200 and the room jumped into an emergency gear. Carly was rushed into an operating room. I was told they were going to do a C-section.
I thought the baby was dead now and they were trying to save Carly. I was rushed into sterile hospital garb and ushered into the OR.
When they took Carly off the petosin, the baby’s heartbeat had returned to normal. They backed off the C-section and were now urging Carly to just push the baby out. She was fully ten centimeters dilated. The next step was to push the baby out.
Carly pushed for another hour. The baby did not seem to want to come out. The doctor suggested that perhaps Carly might be too weak after all the laboring. A decision was made to let her try to push for only a little while longer before moving along to a C-section.
It was 11:37 p.m. on May 16. I was just behind Carly, holding her and encouraging as she struggled mightily with all the pushing. We were looking into a mirror placed at the foot of the bed for her to see. Came the moment and there was the baby’s head beginning to emerge and then crowning. Wow!
The baby’s full head was out now. It was shaped like a salami and covered with goop, but it was alive and crying. Juliana was being born. Her shoulders and the rest of her infant body soon followed. Then came all of her luggage and a brand new Honda Civic.
Relief, exaltation, the echo of fading terror, breath, and gratitude, this was a state of grace. There was much busyness and smiling. They cleaned up the baby and stitched up my wife. We were all in a bubble. It was a state of grace.
I stayed at the hospital until around two in the morning. Carly and the baby were asleep when I left. I came home and tried to sleep myself, but it wasn’t happening, too much adrenaline.
I hung around and enjoyed the haze. I rested. It was dark and then it got light out. It was a new day.
Ricky called me early in the morning. Oh, yeah, Ricky! I was in a movie. Sam’s movie! Sam was fine. They had been shooting it for three days now. Today was gonna be their last day. Sam wanted to know if I’d be able to work.
“Yeah, sure, I could do that.”
My call was to be there at noon.
For many years to come, Sam Weston would remind me of the smile I had on my face when I drove up to the set that day. He had three kids of his own. He knew exactly what that smile meant.
I gave cigars to everybody.
Spinelli had me scheduled to be in the last scene of the day. I wouldn’t get to work until 9:00 or 10:00 that night. In the meantime, he wanted me to help out wherever I could.
First up that day, Spinelli had put together a young, amateur couple who each had shown up separately with the fantasy of becoming a porn star. They both wanted to have sex and real orgasms in front of the camera. They were all smiles and eager when they went out on the set together, but when they came back off, the woman was in a huff and the guy was grumbling. He’d had his orgasm and she didn’t get hers. Now, they hated each other.
I took the woman back out on the set and asked Spinelli if he still wanted her to try for an orgasm. He said that he did, but that the guy was a real jerk.
I offered to stand-in. Our leading lady brightened at the prospect and so did Spinelli. I had my first job as a “stunt tongue.” With the camera in close on her face, I helped Milady get very, very happy.
It was all in a day’s work for an associate producer.
Marci’s fantasy was to have sex with fifty men. Spinelli couldn’t give her fifty, but I was told that she’d had about eight or ten guys over the last three days and I was to be her grand finale.
We didn’t start shooting until around 1:00 in the morning. I was heading into my third straight night without any sleep. I was a different kind of tired, but I still got hard and was happening when we started the sex. That’s when we hit about four hours worth of technical problems, chief of which, the batteries for the camera had run out. We had to recharge them. We had to wait until the batteries were recharged.
When we finally did get back to work, I was more worried about staying awake than getting a boner.
“Sit up, Howie!” Spinelli said.
“I am sitting up,” I argued.
“No, you’re not! You’re lying on your back dreaming you’re sitting up. Sit up!” He was right.
Marci was a nice enough woman. When we finally got it going, the sex was slow and smoldering for what seemed like a long time. At one point, I imagined my newborn daughter was there watching.
“What are you doing, Daddy?” she asked me.
“I’m fucking this woman, Honey,” I told her. “This is how Daddy makes his living.” I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just taken my first step toward monogamy.
When I got close to orgasm, Marci whispered in my ear, “I want to hear the noise you make when you come.”
Good Lord, it triggered this guttural bellow that began in my toe nails and worked its wa
y up and out of my mouth. I never heard a sound like that ever come out of me before. It was extraordinary.
I collapsed in Marci’s arms. Sam freeze framed on the happy smile she had on her face.
Spinelli hit problems in the postproduction and needed more money to complete his film for release. He had a new investor interested, but the deal hinged upon Spinelli’s being able to buy back the ten percent of Reel People that he had sold to me and Carly.
It was not a problem. We weren’t exactly “players” looking to make a big killing on this deal. We were just trying to help our friend get his own production company started. Sam paid us double what we had invested and we were delighted. We paid off our initial bank loan and then bought a whole mess of diapers.
“Life is not always all peanut butter and Jelly,” my friend Harold used to be fond of saying, and this saga of Reel People took a sad and bizarre turn several years later down the road.
We had a friend named Paul who was involved with a lot of sexual swinging communities. He had met Marci in one of those groups and they somehow had discovered that they had me in common. It was one of those “small world” stories Paul told me. He was in and out of our life periodically, but I never did see Marci again.
Sometime later, it was Paul who called me with the news that Marci had taken her own life. He knew her far better than I did. They had become friends and lovers. He told me this and that about her life. It was just sad.
Not too long after that, I was home alone when there was a knock on the front door of our cottage. When I opened it, there was Paul standing there looking very freaked out. His eyes were very large and he was covered with a chalky, white dust.
“I need to take a shower,” he said. “Do you mind if I take a shower here?”
After the cremation, it had fallen to Paul to take Marci’s ashes and to spread them upon the waters of the San Francisco Bay as had been her request. This, Paul did, but he did not account for the wind.
Sam Weston as Anthony Spinelli. Adam Film World
