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

by Howie Gordon

  Off-stage playing for the camera. Excalibur Entertainment, Inc.

  John said it would be fine if Janey and I worked together. He was right! Excalibur Entertainment, Inc.

  Dinner guests Paul Thomas and Amber Lynn. Gordon Archive.

  Acting as host, Jamie Gillis sat at the head of the table. Gordon Archive.

  If only she knew. Gordon Archive.

  Eating became “eating.”

  Gordon Archive.

  The hunger for food became the snarl for sex.

  Eric Edwards ended up with Lisa De Leeuw. No chicken leg was involved. Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Hello, Ginger. Gordon Archive.

  Uh-oh, there goes Jamie… Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Chaos! Excalibur Entertainment, Inc.

  “Could you please pass the salt?” Gordon Archive.

  Gordon Archive.

  Linda Wong. Gordon Archive.

  “The Legend” did return, but we had a hard time getting her out of the makeup room. Vista Video

  I was playing a nerd again. Gordon Archive.

  Do we look like a happy couple? Gordon Archive.

  Robin Cannes was her stage name. Gordon Archive.

  Paul Thomas was Brinker Duo and I was Mark Starkiller. Gordon Archive.

  Robin Cannes as Princess Layme. Gordon Archive.

  At the end of that first day, PT and I had a three-way sex scene with Robin. Excalibur Entertainment, Inc.

  And then it was my turn. Gordon Archive.

  Morgan Lee. Gordon Archive.

  My old friend Howard Darkley was in this film. He played the villain Lord Balthazar. Gordon Archive.

  Setting up the box cover shot: (L-R) Writer-Producer Arthur King, Laurie Smith, Paul Thomas, and Robin Cannes (along with a garbage can doing an R2-D2 imitation). Gordon Archive.

  Adding me to the mix. Excalibur Entertainment, Inc.

  Excalibur Entertainment, Inc.

  There was my mom playing with my baby Polly. Gordon Archive.

  And there was my dad at my desk reading an earlier version of this book. Gordon Archive.

  Gourmet Video

  I worked the first with Nina Hartley… Gourmet Video

  …and the second with Lili Marlene. Gordon Archive

  And Morgan Lee was dessert. Gourmet Video

  Gordon Archive.

  Part Six

  The After Prom

  “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn…is not to be making love and getting yourself stuck trying to hold in a fart.

  You can’t be letting go and holding on at the same time. It just doesn’t work.

  Actually, it may not be ‘the greatest thing that you’ll ever learn,’ but it’s way, way up there!”

  Richard Pacheco

  Chapter One

  C’mon, now, you didn’t really think my career was like “over” over. Did you? C’mon!

  Oh, there was no doubt that Carly had just knocked me out. I was retired and monogamous. Clearly, Carly had won that fight — but I figured there had to be a rematch. I mean, people liked to fuck, right? This disease wasn’t going to hold the whole world hostage from having sex for very long, was it? Or should I say reduce it to one where only monogamous couples would fuck. Somebody would soon be figuring something out!

  Yeah, well, that may be so, but it wasn’t going to be my old high school buddy, Dr. David Sobel. On January 7, he called to discuss who was going to whose house to watch the Super Bowl that year. It was a tug of war that we could not resolve. We decided to let our wives work it out. Then, I could hear David’s voice completely change as he slipped into his doctor identity.

  “Remember when you asked me last month if there was any safe way for you to continue to work in the sex films?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Well, there isn’t,” he said. “It’s time for you to retire. Not only that,” he said, “but it looks like it’s a great time to be monogamous too.” We both laughed hard. When the laughter stopped, there was an awkward silence.

  “Boy,” I said, “that sure puts a dent in the plans I’d made for the rest of my life!” And then, we both laughed again.

  That was it. The good doctor had merely confirmed what I already knew. I was retired and monogamous. Still, I was stunned. Again.

  Was this good-bye, Richard Pacheco, or what? It seemed unnaturally premature to think of myself as retired from the business. I felt like I was just coming into my own. It wasn’t fair!

  Wasn’t fair? Who was I kidding? I was still alive! A lot of people were already dead from AIDS and a lot more people were busy dying!

  Yeah, but they were all gay! Or needle users! Or Haitians! Haitians? What the fuck was that all about? God was so weird.

  And now AIDS was crossing over the sexual orientation border into the heterosexual world. Performers in the X-rated business, with all their multiple partners and all their wild-child behaviors, seemed like an inevitable and unavoidable target for this disease.

  I couldn’t keep my head buried in the sand on this one, not when I was endangering Carly’s life too, and the future lives of our kids. No. I didn’t have any more jobs lined up and I wasn’t going to schedule any more until this whole AIDS thing got itself sorted out.

  This was not Jerry Falwell or some other nutcase from the religious right preaching on the virtues of their self-serving, often hypocritical, fairy tale moralities. This was the President of the American Medical Association saying that there was a real honest-to-God shitstorm going on out there and people were dying. These were the scientists. These were the experts. These were the men and women that we were counting on to know.

  Alright, I thought, maybe this could be like a vacation. Yeah, I could take like a paternity leave! It could be six months, maybe a year, and by then everything would have settled down. Who knows? Maybe it would all just go away. Things could be right back to the way they were. It will all have blown over and I’ll be picking up my career right where I left off.

  Yeah, it’ll all work out, I told myself. I was cool.

  Chapter Two

  My cool lasted about twenty minutes. I stopped working out and I stopped going to the gym. I gained ten, fifteen pounds fast. I didn’t give a shit. I had no need to stay skinny. My vanity had been all about attracting women. It appeared to me that that game was over. At least for now, that ship had sailed. I shaved and showered about once a week and smoked a ton of pot. Groovy. My wife tells me that I wasn’t so much fun to be around.

  Chapter Three

  Of all the other actors and actresses I talked to at any length, only Annette Haven seemed to echo my concerns about AIDS. She was planning on getting married and retiring from the business soon anyway. The AIDS plague had just moved up her retirement date.

  Oddly enough, Nina Hartley, who had actually been trained as a nurse, looked over the medical facts and didn’t really believe there was much of a threat from being an actress in the business. I was surprised by this, but put it down to her newness and her huge desire to become a player in the game. I told her that I thought she was nuts. She told me that I was being overly cautious, but thought it understandable, given that I was a man with a wife and three young kids at home. She said that she was going to miss me.

  Paul Thomas waxed philosophical. “When it’s your time to go,” he said, “it’s your time to go.”

  Anthony Spinelli just took me at my word. He respected what I was doing and what I needed to do to take care of my family. It was always understood between us that family came first. He said he’d do what he could to offer me some paying work behind the camera.

  It was John Leslie who got downright pissy with me on the subject. I was taken by surprise. We were talking on the phone. I told him that I was only going to do non-sex roles for right now. I wasn’t going to do any more sex scenes until they came out with some kind of reliable test or v
accine for this new disease. He got angry and yelled at me over the phone. The gist of what he said was this:

  “Why don’t you just quit? You’ve always hated the business anyway! You never belonged in this business!! You should just quit and forget about it!”

  It made me furious. It was an old argument that John and I hadn’t had in years. He had always rejected my criticism of the business for being so overwhelmed with the theme of male dominance. As well he should have since it had been by playing that kind of sexuality that John had become a star. I was always after something else. I wanted a more egalitarian view of the sex. I wanted men and women to share the power. John shit all over that.

  It was the wrong time and the wrong place to be having this conversation — again. It turned out, as far as the business went, that we were both right. It wasn’t an either/or situation. There was enough box office for both of us. And when you put us together, we both won awards and the pictures made a lot of money. He was a centerfielder and I was a catcher. We weren’t really rivals at all. We were teammates. We had long ago proven that to each other.

  This AIDS thing had gotten us all on edge.

  “In stress, we regress.”

  So, John and I had this shouting match over the telephone. We were two little boys screaming at each other. Not a whole lot of listening was going on, either way.

  We knew each other well enough to hurt each other. And we did. We were all over each other’s raw nerves.

  Our conversation ended with him saying. “Well, I’m not gonna get AIDS! Can you dig it?” He was going to out-tough the disease.

  “Well, I hope you don’t!” I answered, but was angry enough to not give a shit if he did. If you were going to fight with John, you had to get your blood boiling.

  When I got off the phone, I was shaken. Carly gave me some needed perspective. She said that it would be a lot easier for John to dismiss my retirement because I didn’t like the business than it would be for him to accept that there really was a clear and present danger from AIDS out there.

  It was a good point. I calmed down. John could be a real hog fart sometimes, but so could I. I really didn’t wish him AIDS. I didn’t wish anybody AIDS. I just wanted the whole thing to go away.

  It didn’t.

  Chapter Four

  Hey! I thought I had a great idea! I thought it was a career saver! I would pick out one actress to be my sex partner and we’d agree to only work exclusively with each other. It would be like a business marriage. We’d also agree to live monogamously in our private lives where our mates would agree to live monogamously too. In this way, the actress and I could continue our careers and yet still remain insulated against any other outside threat of a sexual transmission of AIDS.

  Some trust would have to be involved. I wouldn’t be able to work as much as I once did, but it would still be better than not having any career at all. And hopefully, it would suffice until doctors and researchers could come up with a cure or a vaccine to fight this new plague. It was a plan.

  For me, it came down to a choice between Annette Haven and Nina Hartley. I leaned toward Nina at first. I thought Annette was going to be retiring soon, and besides that, she was very expensive. I figured that I’d probably get more work partnering with Nina. Carly said an emphatic, “No.”

  At the time, Nina lived in a three-way marriage that practiced a swinging lifestyle. Except for a couple of films a year, Annette, as far as we knew, lived monogamously with her soon-to-be husband. Based simply on the potential number of sexual encounters, Carly chose Annette. I didn’t put up any fuss. Annette was fine with me. I was just happy that Carly went for any of my idea at all.

  When I proposed my plan to Annette, she was very encouraging. She even had a few projects lined up in the not-too-distant future and said that she’d love to work in them with me.

  Annette and I both shared the anxiety that we’d already been exposed to the AIDS virus. At that time, there was no test available to the general public, but some kind of testing was not far off. State medical officials were getting ready to offer one that couldn’t exactly tell you if you had the AIDS virus, but it could tell you if you had been “around” it. If that test came up negative, the odds were that you did not have the disease. This was the mid-eighties. Our knowledge about AIDS was next to nothing. The latest research had theorized that AIDS could incubate anywhere from three to fifteen years before becoming active.

  Annette and I planned to take the test as soon as it became available. If we both showed negative, then we would work with each other. The newspapers said it was now only a matter of days before the test came out publicly.

  In the meantime, I got a call to work on a film for Essex being directed by Henri Pachard (Ron Sullivan). Ron told me he had a juicy part for me in a classy film. He said that he’d wanted to work with me for years. That was cool! Ron Sullivan/Henri Pachard was one of the best. He said paying my daily rate would not be any problem. Outstanding!

  I explained my concerns about AIDS. He said they were understandable. He said that I’d only have to do one sex scene and that we’d be able to work it out so that I felt safe. I suggested Annette Haven for my partner. Ron Sullivan said that Annette Haven would be great.

  Porn again. I shaved and showered and hit the gym hard to melt the fat. In three weeks, I was looking good and ready to go back to work.

  The problems started when Ron told me that Annette was unacceptable to the Essex producers. Annette had predicted as much. They’d had a previous falling out over something and Essex wasn’t about to hire her for anything. Annette’s feelings were mutual.

  Pachard proposed me working with Joanna Storm. I had never heard of her. After some bewilderment in trying to keep the project alive, I told him that the only way I could do it would be if the sex scene was conducted within “the safe sex” guidelines as defined by the AIDS Foundation. It was the first time I had ever heard the term “safe sex.” It meant “no exchange of bodily fluids and use of a latex condom.”

  Pachard said, “Fine.” Then he said, “the hell with it. We’ll shoot the whole scene simulated!” He really wanted me to play the part. And after reading the script, I really wanted to play it too! The role was outstanding! I would be a piano player in a nightclub who would age from being a young man in the roaring twenties, all the way up to being an old man in contemporary times.

  It was delicious. I had only to wait for them to negotiate a deal with Carly before I would start learning my lines.

  Annette wasn’t happy about me taking that job. Even a kiss, she argued, would put me at risk. She didn’t want to pay for my sins and I couldn’t blame her. The AIDS related virus test wasn’t even available. She told me that I was a fool to put myself and my family in jeopardy.

  I was willing to take a calculated risk. There was widespread disagreement among the AIDS specialists as to whether or not the disease could even be spread through saliva, through a kiss. [1] Besides that, Pachard had promised me that the sex scene could be simulated.

  Annette said that our plan was off. She decided to work only with her boyfriend, her husband-to-be, in any future sex scenes. Given her frame of mind, I completely agreed that it was the best course of action for her to take.

  When the Essex people called to cut a deal with Carly, their offer was about one-third of what Ron had said it would be. I was disappointed and relieved.

  We turned them down. When I called Ron to see what had happened, I never got past his assistant. She explained that the project had transformed from a big-budget special into what insiders called “a savage dog shoot.” All the budgets had been cut to the bone.

  They made their movie without me.

  Chapter Five

  Alex De Renzy called with an offer for me to work with a hot newcomer named Traci Lords. He was perfectly willing to pay my full rate, but he was not willing to make any concessions to the AIDS threat at all. There’d be no tests, no condoms, no nothing. Sexually speaking, it would be busine
ss as usual. “Take it or leave it, Howie.”

  I left it. When I argued that the business was putting its talent into life threatening situations, Alex said he understood. He also said that he hoped I wouldn’t make too much of a public fuss about it because “it could hurt the business.” I told him that the business should be put on hold until we figured out a way to make it safe for all of us to work. It made absolutely no impression at all — on Alex — nor hardly on anybody else who continued to work in the adult industry.

  Chapter Six

  It was at this point that I worked in Tragedy in New York, the Italian gangster film with “Willie Cicci” (Joe Spinell).

  I was hired to work as an extra in this movie, but they soon gave me a couple of lines in a scene and liked what I had to offer. I was given more scenes and more dialogue. I was being discovered again.