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

by Howie Gordon

  My last scene was shot in the middle of the night. We were in yet another of those cold San Francisco warehouses. I was lying in a puddle of actors’ bodies. Maybe six of us had just been machine-gunned to death in the climactic scene. It was exciting. We’d had exploding special effects and blood capsules. I recall being on the floor with the fake blood and the irony dripping down my face and thinking.

  “Oh, boy! I’ve finally been in a movie that I can take my kids to see!”

  Yeah, I was going straight. But I soon ran afoul of my own agent. There was talk of me continuing on with the company when they moved to the next location in New York City, BUT, I would have to sign a new contract.

  The problem was that they wanted to go on paying me as an extra. “Willie Cicci,” himself, told me that was complete bullshit. He suggested that I have them take it up with my agent.

  When I did, my agent surprisingly took their side. This was a non-union shoot and my agent apparently had made some kind of side deal just to deliver them bodies for a flat fee, period. My own agent tried to bully me into working for a lot less than what the part called for. I’m afraid I lost my cool.

  I didn’t sign the contract. I didn’t go to New York. And I no longer had an agent. So much for going straight.

  Chapter Seven

  Joan Rivers had me on her late afternoon talk show. They flew Carly and me to New York City and put us up at The Plaza. That was pretty cool. We even rode around Central Park in a horse and carriage. If I hadn’t been sick with the flu for the whole trip, it might actually have been some fun.

  They were having me on the show as Richard Pacheco, the porn star who was refusing to go to work because of the threat of AIDS.

  Beyond the serious moments created by the topic, I was pretty funny talking to Joan that day, especially about the great difficulties I’d had in getting erections for the camera.

  On a break during the taping, Joan Rivers generously said to me, “You’re very funny. You should be doing stand-up!” It was exactly the kind of thing that I was hoping would happen by my coming to New York. I was being “discovered” again.

  So, I said to Joan, “Fine, what do I do?” She pointed to a guy off stage and said,

  “When we’re done up here, you go over and talk to him. He’ll get you started.”

  “You are funny,” he said. He was an agent, he was a this and a that, and I’m not sure what else he was, but he told me he owned a string of comedy clubs across Canada and said that he’d love to put me to work right now. He’d start me out on the East Coast and then over a couple months, I’d work my way West across Canada and end up in LA.

  I was excited. But when I told Carly all about it, she was considerably less than thrilled. Did I tell you that we were pregnant again? Bobby was on the way. Our third was going to be a boy.

  “Oh,” Carly said, “is this the part where you leave me home alone with the kids while you run off to become a movie star? I don’t think so, asshole.”

  “Well, when you put it that way,” I said. But it made sense to me and I appreciated it. It made me feel the “us” in us.

  “My love,” she said, softening —

  But I was already hooked; she had me at “asshole.” I didn’t really want to work in nightclubs, though it was fun to think that I could! It was certainly flattering, but, nah, I didn’t want to be alone, on the road, working in smoke-filled, drunk-filled rooms until the middle of the night, and then sleeping all day. I knew me. I’d be out chasing women and just confusing myself. I wanted to be married and have kids — like I already was.

  “My love,” Carly said, “we have to find something for you to do that can keep you at home with us.”

  Chapter Eight

  Actually, the first job I took after AIDS drove me away from porn was clerking for my friend Andy at his Captain Video store. The job wasn’t bad, but I really didn’t fit into that scene very well. After a couple of weeks, it was best for me just to move on.

  Next up, I enrolled in a training program to become an AIDS Information Specialist. Daily we met in San Francisco where doctors, community leaders, and various people with AIDS held seminars about the disease and what they’d all learned about living with it.

  Some of those AIDS patients who lectured to us the first week were dead by the second. It was a pretty terrifying experience. Many of the AIDS patients were covered with the purple blotches of Kaposi’s Sarcoma. It certainly got your attention. In those early days, we didn’t really know if shaking hands, hugging somebody, or even being breathed on had the potential to infect you with the HIV virus.

  All over San Francisco, lots of people were dying. We knew so little about the disease. I felt like I had a scared fever the whole time I was in those rooms receiving the training. Then, I’d go home to my wife and babies and wonder what I might be bringing into the house.

  It was too crazy making. I lasted about two weeks and then I had to let it go.

  Chapter Nine

  I wrote a screenplay for Seka. She titled it, Careful, He May Be Watching and chose to both produce and star in the film.

  Wow! How cool was that! I would be directing my first film! Oh, I’d helped out Spinelli by directing a scene here and there, but this time, I was gonna be the Big Cheese. Seka was taking a considerable risk. She was a major queen of the industry at this point, a big-time player. As a producer, she was betting a lot of her own money on this one and she was offering me the reins.

  It would be my first time officially directing anything.

  Yeah, Seka was taking a risk, but she also was no dummy and this wasn’t her first rodeo. She hired Alex de Renzy to be my cameraman.

  What?

  Yeah, she hired Alex de Renzy to be my cameraman.

  Y’know, the story was that God once tried to hire Alex de Renzy to shoot some love scenes in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve; de Renzy turned Him down. Said he couldn’t stand the idea of working for somebody else. Alex de Renzy was a fiercely independent filmmaker and a legendary master in the X-rated domain. One would think Seka wise for having him at the ready just in case I faltered. I know I would. I heard Alex only took the job because he just happened to need some extra money when Seka called with the offer.

  It was presented to me as a fait accompli. It was a done deal. Alex de Renzy was going to be my cameraman! He had never before worked as anybody’s cameraman, ever. He had always been the director and shot his own films.

  Well, this would all, no doubt, prove to be very interesting.

  Regarding AIDS, it gave me some pause to consider the moral dilemma of how I could ask performers to do things sexually that I was no longer willing to risk myself.

  Well, there were all kinds of ways I could try to rationalize it, but the bottom line was that nobody would be forcing anybody to do anything that they didn’t want to do.

  My withdrawal from performing sex was a distinctly minority point of view amongst my fellow actors and actresses. Indeed, the business pretty well had its head in the sand on the AIDS issue and most wanted it kept that way. Nobody really wanted the goose to stop laying those golden eggs.

  For the time being, I was content to let every other actor and actress make their own decision. For my part, I would write the script and direct the picture.

  I put together my own little production team to get started. I hired the multitalented porn veteran John Seeman to be my Production Manager (PM). John had experience producing, directing, acting, writing, and knew every part of the adult business inside and out. Besides that, he was my friend. I trusted him. He would have my back.

  I also hired filmmaker Billy Rubin to be my Assistant Director (AD). Billy made industrial films for a living and was very familiar with all the technical aspects of directing, which I was not. He would be my go-between with Alex in the technical discussions of lenses and lighting and the like. Billy was also my friend. We’d been racquetball partners for several years. He was a tenacious bulldog. I trusted him to have my back
too.

  As director, like my mentor Spinelli, I saw that my primary job would be to get quality performances out of my actors. And I did think of them as my actors. That part didn’t take long at all. I had Seka, Mike Horner, Kay Parker, and Shanna McCullough in the leads. That was a good bunch right there.

  About a week before production was scheduled to begin, I tried to arrange a meeting with Alex and my team.

  Alex declared there would be no such meeting. He said everything would be much better, much fresher, if we worked out all of the little details on the set. Said he wouldn’t even read the script until we were on the set. It was not open for discussion.

  When I told Alex that I wanted Billy to work with him on technical matters, Alex simply said, “No.” He said the only person he would be talking to on the set at all would be the director.

  Oh.

  On the first day of shooting, one of the main actresses in the first scene was two hours late arriving on the set. We were already behind before we even got started.

  When we were finally all together, on the set, and ready to launch that first shot of the first day, Alex de Renzy completely ignored me and called, “Action!”

  I felt like I’d been slapped across the face.

  I don’t even know if he understood what he had done. This was Alex, after all, he wasn’t used to answering to anybody, but himself. We’d made a couple of movies together before. We’d been on the set together before. I was Howie, the actor. He was Alex, the director. It was just another movie. It was just another day on the set.

  But it wasn’t.

  And when Alex first started telling one of my actresses about how to play her scene, I could have run and hidden under a rock.

  But I didn’t.

  I wanted to fire him. Of course, I did. So far, he’d been making my job harder at almost every turn. I told him I wanted to use a zoom lens on one particular shot. He told me he didn’t have any zoom lenses. Said he didn’t believe in them. If we’d have had that goddamned production meeting a week before we started when I wanted it, I wouldn’t be finding that out now on the goddamned set and having to rewrite the whole goddamned scene.

  And another thing! The film in the magazines that he was using kept breaking in the camera. Something about being taped in the front and in the back of the magazines.

  What did I know? We just kept falling farther and farther behind.

  My first day as a director lasted twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes.

  When Alex had called that first “Action,” ignoring me, I could just feel the blood rushing to my face with the insult and the humiliation. That was hard to swallow, but I did — because I had to.

  In taking that job, my first allegiance was to Seka and making her movie. I was supposed to have her back! Even if I could have had Alex fired, the bottom line was there we would all be, Day One on the set, without a camera or a cameraman. It would be Seka’s movie that would end up getting fucked.

  You “don’t insult the alligator until you’re on the other side of the river.” At that point, we needed Alex de Renzy more than we needed me.

  Eventually, we made it to lunch. I found Alex and invited him to have a private word with me in a back room. It was just him and me.

  “Alex, I can’t compete with you out there, but I am the director. You’ve got to let me direct this thing.”

  “Oh,” he said matter of factly. “Okay, then, you direct!” And after that little conversation, Alex de Renzy really was my cameraman. He never stepped on my toes again.

  In fact, in one scene, after I had struggled with an actor through a whole bunch of takes to finally get him to give us what we needed, Alex de Renzy took me aside and said to me, “Hey, you really improved that scene!”

  It may have been the highlight of my entire directing career.

  Chapter Ten

  My son Bobby was born on January 8, 1986. He was a month early. He was in a hurry. He’s still in a hurry.

  Chapter Eleven

  By February of 1986, the AIDS landscape had changed. There had been some progress made in understanding how the virus was being spread sexually. They were pretty sure it was a blood-to-blood transmission, but other body fluids were still suspect.

  The term “Safe Sex” made its way into the national lexicon. And the practice of safe-sex techniques was gaining great momentum in the medical campaign to slow down and stop the spread of the disease.

  By now, experts were all pretty much agreed that sex with the use of a latex condom and having “no exchange of bodily fluids” would pose little risk to spreading or receiving the infection.

  Hey, I could do a sex scene like that! I could work again!

  And when Anthony Spinelli came to town to shoot The Red Garter, he agreed and invited me to begin my comeback. At this stage, Carly offered no objections either, provided we agreed to follow safe-sex practices in all of my scenes.

  I was back in the business!

  Hyapatia played the owner of a strip club. I was her attorney. In the foreplay to our lone sex scene, I sat at a table in her club. I was an audience of one. Hyapatia came out and did a strip tease for me.

  I was pretty nervous getting back into the ballgame after such a long lay-off. I had a lot of false bravado. When it came time for the touching, Hyapatia gave me what we called “the AIDS blow job.” She licked the sides of the shaft, but did not take the head of the penis into her mouth.

  “No exchange of bodily fluids.”

  For a while, it all worked perfectly. There was the usual starting and stopping for the cameras. I’d be hard. They’d shoot. They’d cut the take and I’d get soft. Then, here we go, up again and then, down again, several times. Soon, it was time to put on the rubber and get down to it.

  That’s when the first flicker of the panic wafted through. She was stroking and licking the shaft, just as she had done all those times before, but it stopped working. I wasn’t getting hard this time. Uh-oh, my stomach began to clench. I knew this Hell very well and I did not want to go there — but by the time you noticed it, you were already there.

  Hyapatia Lee was completely tuned into me. She felt my terror. On her own, she took my whole penis into her mouth and gently began sucking — like AIDS, and fear, and chaos didn’t even exist. It was a bold move and a brilliant rescue.

  I hardened in her mouth and the sun came out. I could breathe again. It began a lovemaking of calm and delicious gratitude. It celebrated a trust and a friendship that the world was safe and uncruel.

  It was also stupid, and wrong, and dangerous, but for the moment, we gladly ignored all of that. [2] In no particular hurry now, we made the transition into the condom and then I mounted her. Eye to eye and pleasure to pleasure, we soon began in earnest. When lust came, it came free and easy, and unencumbered by doubt. We were both pretty happy there at the end. There were times when this job was both a gift and a blessing. And right there, in the middle of all those scary other things, this was one of them.

  Chapter Twelve

  What did it say that we lost control and broke our own rules? We turned out lucky that neither Hyapatia nor I had the virus at that point, but we had risked everything before finding that out. Not unlike playing Russian roulette, this was not a comforting notion.

  What would happen the next time I had trouble maintaining an erection? Would the condom come off? In the heat of the moment, I saw how easy it had been to toss out the rules. In a blink! Should I trust myself to take that risk again? Should Carly allow me to take that risk on her behalf? There were three kids now depending on the two of us to go on living.

  Maybe if there hadn’t been such a long time between jobs I could have gotten myself back into a rhythm and gained some confidence. But it’s not like there was any great demand for an actor who insisted on “safe sex.”

  The bottom line, according to the producers back then, was that films with condoms in them made a lot less money than those without. And that pretty much put an end to the w
hole discussion. As far as most of the industry was concerned: there was no AIDS. It was all business as usual, and nobody was particularly pleased with me for even bringing up the subject.

  The “safe sex” jobs came weeks and months apart. In-between, I became a Mr. Mom. We lived off of Carly’s paycheck as a therapist, and I was the stay-at-home dad with the kids, doing the shopping, and the cooking, and the cleaning, and driving the kids to and from school and everywhere else. Oh, and in my spare time, I was trying to get the first version of this book published and find myself another line of work.

  On the one hand, the loss of my X-rated star identity was like having Shredded Ego for breakfast every morning, but on the other, we were keeping our little family together and finding ways to make it work. When I wasn’t pissed off, I was actually pretty happy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Candida Royalle called to offer me a part in Sensual Escape, I leapt at the chance. Finally, New York! Not only was it another lead role coming at the time like some manna from Heaven but it was also a chance to be part of a budding new direction in porn. Through Candida’s Femme Productions, I would be working with a group of experienced and talented industry women who were all intent and capable of bringing about some real change to Pornoland. I thought it an honor to be asked to work with them. In many ways, it was a dream job for me.

  I loved everything about the idea of going to New York to do this job, right up to the moment that Carly asked me not to go.

  Carly liked that I was “retired.” In the weeks and months of my inactivity, waiting for the infrequent safe-sex jobs, she got used to me being home. She got used to living without the tension of my going off to “connect” with some other woman at “work.” It had been monogamy by default. She lived with the illusion that I wanted things this way.