Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making it in Show Business, or Not!: A 'How Not To' by The Counter Culture Diva

by Dolores DeLuce

  Ginger always felt comfortable sharing details about her sex life, like we were best girl friends. As I organized her large closet adjacent to her luxurious bathroom, she would sit naked on the marble counter top and spread her legs in front of the mirror over the sink to shave her pubic area between Brazilian waxes. She’d tell me all about the rules she set down for Charlie when they had group sex with her girlfriends.

  “He can eat their pussies or fuck them but I won’t let him kiss them,” she’d say and then go on to discuss the delicate matter of the offensive taste of her best friend’s vagina. She even asked for my opinion on how to navigate around it. I began to think that sex addicts felt safe confiding in a maternal figure like me who had been there and done that and who would not judge them. Whether true or not, my career in the sex industry began due to this personality trait that other XXX stars noticed too.

  Before I ever worked for Ginger Lynn, I met John Stagliano, a well-known pornographer better known as Butt Man in the porn trade, in my jazz dance class. John learned I had been a wardrobe stylist among other skills; he asked to see my resume and began to employ me for a variety of personal assistant jobs. John had also worked as a Chippendale’s dancer and he took his dance training and his movie-making craft seriously. Not long after I started to work for him, Viva was about to turn sixteen and had the misfortune of learning that not every girl gets a male stripper at her sweet sixteen party. When she emphatically told me she did not want a male stripper at her party, I explained, “Honey, I can’t afford to offend Mr. Butt Man, he’s my best client. I’m sorry, but this is the gift he wants to give you. How can I not invite him?” So at Viva’s party John showed up dressed as Dracula and during his pathetic performance he chased Viva and her girlfriends around the room, trying to suck their blood. After that affair, Viva seriously threatened me. “Just don’t ever expect me to call him Daddy.”

  John was an Italian American, like me, and was drawn to my mommy qualities. Soon he easily coaxed me into designing sets and costumes for his first big budget movie beyond the Butt Man series.

  I jumped right into the world of do all and be all gal in the porno industry, all but for the fucking. I was fast becoming the loving mama on every X-rated set in the Simi Valley, where I met the likes of Ron Jeremy, Nina Hartley, Christy Canyon, and other big names in the ‘90s. I even began to feel a part of this Boogie Nights-like dysfunctional family.

  John always cast himself in the starring roles of his movies and wouldn’t think twice about asking me to trim his pubic hair since it made his dick look bigger. And I, not being a bit squeamish, like a bedside nurse, would oblige. Over and above my set and costume work, I’d perform the tasks of cooking, craft service, dialogue coaching, and dildo washing—always being sure to wash my hands between tasks.

  Like a fly on the wall, I was privy to all pertinent information: best doctors for breast and butt implantations, best anal bleaching and waxing practitioners, best HIV testing locations, and the best guys to do anal scenes with, and so on and so forth. One day on John’s set he asked if I’d go over lines with a black goddess who was notorious for forgetting them. I gently approached the African-American queen while she waited for hair and makeup. On my first request to read lines with her she said, “Later, there’s plenty of time.” So I went on to another task. A half hour later, I returned to ask again, and once more was put off by the diva. When I told John she was not cooperating, he asked me to try again since her scene was coming up soon. Many porn stars like Tracy Lords and Ginger Lynn aspired to cross over to legit films, so I was surprised by her reaction. When I approached for the third time and suggested we read lines together, she jumped out of the makeup chair and threw one hand on her hip. Snapping her fingers and bobbing her head side to side, she shouted back at me, “Girl, get it straight, I am not an actress, I am a fucktress and proud of it!” I threw up my hands, left the makeup room, and knew that one day I would use that line in a story.

  On every shoot with John, he would offer to raise my day rate if I was willing to do a small cameo role. Always for comic relief, I played the silly laundry lady, the mean landlady, and a gun-toting, cigar-smoking Mafia mama in the Godmother, part one and two. In a dramatic scene of his biggest budget, Wild Goose Chase, shot on 16mm film, I played a bereft immigrant mom looking for my lost daughter. My performance was so good that I decided to use it on my legit acting reel, thinking I could pass it off as an episode of Law and Order. On camera I’m crying and pleading with a private detective to search for my missing daughter. My scene partner, the private dick, was Joey Silvera, a well-known porn stud. I figured, what the hell, if some casting director did recognize the X-rated star they would have been into porn and would get a kick out of my cameo.

  This performance led to other parts and even a nomination as “best actress in a non-fucking role.” Some of my best acting work can be seen on the videos of John Stagliano classics, as well as funny bits in the more upscale erotica directed by my friend, the lovely Candida Royalle of Femme Productions.

  Since Candida and I had been friends who worked in theatrical shows since the ‘70s in San Francisco, she would also hire me to create costumes and do set work on her shoots. I often collaborated with her on some of her film ideas too. My favorite film that I styled for Femme Productions was a comedy about a dress that got passed around between three separate women by the guy who was sleeping with all of them. After shopping for three identical dresses needed in three different sizes, I suggested that Candida call her movie One Size Fits All, and she did. The movie opens in a second-hand shop with me trying to fit the infamous slutty purple dress over my big boobs and Candida making a cameo in her own film, playing another customer, snatches the dress out from my hands and scolds, “It will never fit you!” Truth be told it was my overweight condition that made me turn down offers to have sex on screen from other directors.

  One would think that working with all that dick and pussy, I’d be getting some, but the more I saw of it the less interested I became. Yet, still like a virgin today, you can look me up on my IMBD page and find several XXX titles to my credit, but please don’t tell my agent.

  Chapter 10

  I Get By With a Lot of Help from My Friends

  I’ve been blessed to have many generous, successful friends over the years who were major supporters of my dysfunction at the junction. Friends like George McGrath, a three-time Emmy winner, writer/producer/actor who wrote for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and The Tracy Ullman Show, to name a few, became my employer for a spell. I had known George since 1979 when I signed up for my first comedy improv class with the L.A. Connection and he was my teacher. After a decade of success performing with The Groundlings and acting in films and writing for television, George became head writer and producer for a CBS kids’ series Riders in the Sky in the early ‘90s. It was cowboys meet Pee Wee’s Playhouse on the prairie. Despite his genius efforts and hiring fun fellow star improv artists from the Groundlings, like Lynne Stewart (Miss Yvonne from the Pee Wee’s show), and life-size puppets, the show was a hoot but a flop nonetheless. But thanks to George, it was one of the best jobs I ever had in showbusiness. It lasted for a full season of thirteen episodes. Knowing there was hardly ever a time when I didn’t need a job, George hired me to be his assistant. Since he was incredibly self-sufficient, and could type five times the speed of lightning without needing spell-check, my duties were few. All I had to do on most days was buy muffins for the cast and crew, walk his darling dog Chip around the CBS Radford lot, and the rest of the time I got to work on my own scripts and projects in my private office across from George’s and down the hall from the staff writers of the Roseanne Barr show. Every now and then George would pop his head in and say, “Isn’t it wonderful that CBS is subsidizing your art.” This was the best forty-hour-a-week job ever, because George would let me go whenever I had auditions and on more than one occasion he gave me a small part in some of the show’s episodes.

  There were other friends
in high places as well who saw to it that I maintained my magical lifestyle. Friends like Broadway director Jerry Zaks, who gave me free seats, 3rd row center, for every one of his Tony award-winning hits on Broadway. Jerry had been my buddy since our freshman year at Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, and had a fascination with what he knew of my unconventional life style. We stayed in touch throughout the years and I watched him climb to the top of his mainstream career and become the credit to his parents as our H.S. yearbook predicted he would be, while I had to hide much of my counterculture performance work from my parents’ eyes. But as we know, opposites attract and Jerry and I are still friends to this day.

  Clifford Olson, a famous L.A. fashion designer, is at the top of my list of mentor/friends who I owe big time. Clifford made leather and suede outfits and costumes for all the divas in Hollywood, including Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. I’ll never forget the day at his Melrose Avenue boutique as I sat at the feet of Tina Turner, handing him safety pins as he measured the hemline of a tight leather mini Tina would wear on the album cover of What’s Love Got to Do With It. I sat silently, listening to him joking with her. As he ran his fingers along her shapely million-dollar legs, he said, "Gee, Tina, it's a pity you don't have good legs," then raised the hemline even higher. Before Tina left the fitting that day, she bought the most gorgeous turquoise suede jumpsuit off the rack from Clifford’s collection. As soon as Tina left, Clifford celebrated his good fortune by sharing the wealth and gave me the only other jumpsuit, identical to the one Tina had just paid over $500 for. Hanging with Clifford was better than being at The Oprah Winfrey’s Favorite Things Giveaway Show. If it weren’t for Clifford Olson, I would have never had a career as a knit designer. Once Clifford saw my knit work, he brought me downtown to the L.A. Fashion Mart and introduced me to his sales rep. Overnight, I was selling my sweaters to Saks Fifth Ave and many other high-end stores across the country.

  As his star shone more brightly, he took me along as the tail to his high-flying comet. Clifford was also responsible for executing my design for the leather bullet bra, the one I wore in the Lois Standards video, for the Last Dance of the Couch Potatoes, in 1988. He can also be seen on screen in that video as one of the skinny rocker boys in the leather bullet jock straps he made for the music video. We were like two canned hams packed in the same tin.

  I watched and learned as he moved up the ladder, from his early days working at North Beach Leather, where I first met him, to moving into his own business at his studio on Sunset, to his first boutique on Melrose, to his factory in downtown L.A., to eventually our shared trip to China. He got me a job for a major manufacturer who took us both to Hong Kong and China to launch leather and knit lines for their successful business. That was my first trip to Asia, and it rocked my world. It was then 1993, and although I had had some minor successes in my design life, this opportunity was the once-in-a-lifetime, but for Clifford it would be another story.

  I was always grateful that I had met Clifford after he found sobriety in 1980. It was hard to imagine him, the wholesome, red-headed Richie Cunningham look alike from North Dakota during the years he spent as a heroin addict. Clifford was closer to me than a brother and one of Viva’s favorite fun uncles, too. I recall a trip that the three of us took to Murrieta Hot Springs. While checking in, we discovered the joint was under new management, a right wing conservative Christian group. They had a new policy that did not allow single people of the opposite sex to share a room. I told them we were married. Those Christians looked oddly at us. I signed the book while explaining that the fair skinned, ginger haired Mr. Olson was my second husband, and Viva, our black teenage child, had been adopted. They let us all check into one room, but they still maintained suspicion of the odd Olson family.

  The situation grew tenser after Clifford and I over-ate at their vegetarian buffet. Back in our room later, just as we got cozy in two single beds, Clifford and I started to outdo one another with deadly gaseous explosions that were more lethal than the broccoli casserole we had at dinner. We laughed so hard and loud over the farts that the management came to our room and threatened to throw us out if we didn’t quiet down.

  After all his years of fame in Hollywood, Clifford moved to Santa Barbara, to slow down when his complications from HIV started to show up. He had been HIV positive since 1980. During his so-called slow down years, he made many trips to Indonesia, India, and China and created a magnificent photo collage art show, compiled a magnificent short story collection, created a wacky alarm clock line and so much more. In comparison to me, his idea of slowing down made me look like I was dead.

  Into the ‘90s, I remained inspired by Clifford as I watched him survive TB and then a year later pneumonia, and then the year after that it was CMV virus causing him to start to go blind. And then it was Hepatitis A, B or C, who knew? On and on the list of infections would go that would take hold for a while, and he would valiantly battle and always emerge the victor. He was Santa Barbara's poster boy, volunteer of the year, the only person I knew who would hang his IV drip on his rearview mirror and take his dose while driving from Santa Barbara to L.A. for a business meeting. He was the best-looking, healthiest, long-term HIV survivor I have ever known.

  While suffering from all his AIDS complications, he created and ran the men's massage network that he founded after becoming a certified masseur to give free massages to others living with AIDS. And on top of all of the creative businesses, parties, and holidays we spent together, there was our trip to China: the hours of laughter waiting in a cold airport hangar at the Hangzhou Airport, while we told dirty tales to our straight business companions. And then there was the night we celebrated Clifford’s birthday with the Chinese company members in a restaurant in Hangzhou, while we watched the four-year-old daughter of one company employee sing Chinese karaoke to the video monitor hanging over our head. We ate drunken shrimp and many other delicacies our livers wished we hadn't, and as the Chinese sang “Happy Birthday” in broken English to him and as he blew out his candles, I thought, gee, this might be the last birthday I get to spend with Clifford.

  Not long after our amazing trip to China, Clifford and I attended a mutual friend's memorial. During the service, Clifford rested his head on my shoulder and whispered, "I wonder if anyone will be left to throw a memorial for me like this?"

  I made a solemn vow that I would be the designated bon voyage party hostess even though I hate going to a party when I'm not in the mood, let alone throwing one. As it turned out Clifford had more than enough friends to send him off with a grand memorial and I eulogized him with a story I wrote about him. It was the least I could do. His endless thirst for adventure, directed by his strong will and desire to live every ounce of life that he could possible fit in, is what I can only aspire to be and what I define as a truly successful life.

  Not all my helping hands were the hands of friends; there was often the kindness of strangers too who gave gifts unexpectedly to me. Like Ann, a Tell Mama client in 2004, who gave me airline miles so that I could travel business class to Hong Kong to visit my daughter Viva during her first year of working overseas as a singer. And Julie, the Chinese housewife I met on that second trip to Hong Kong, who became my good friend and made it possible for me to return to Hong Kong many times over since 2004 for my sweater business, while providing me with luxury housing in her amazing home, where she treated me like family. In exchange for knitting lessons, she treated me to daily hour-long foot massages, sumptuous meals, and gave me her live-in helper to assist me whenever I needed her to carry and set up my trade show booths. I have to admit, it wasn’t easy for me to accept the gift of having a servant, since I still thought of myself as servant class.

  To me, these were miracles that added great joy to living below the poverty line. I often wonder if I had been rich enough to afford these high-priced gifts that came from my fabulous friends I might not have ever learned how truly loved and supported I’ve been throughout this bumpy ride to st
ardom. In essence, the greatest gifts in my life have been my friendships.

  Chapter 11

  Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

  As I put the finishing touches on my cautionary tale, it’s January 2014, and I just got the last of my W-2’s, 1040’s and 1099’s for tax filing. They come from all my jobs and businesses, including my royalties from Amazon for the memoir that I self-published last year.

  My taxman Marvin is a sweet old Jewish retired schoolteacher from my neighborhood, who gives me a good deal because he feels sorry for me. Each year he says, “Ah bubeleh, what am I going to do with you? You have so many different jobs that your tax return is more complicated than filing for the CEO of Facebook, and yet I feel guilty to charge you more because I see you’ve got bupkis.”

  I tell him, “Don’t worry, Marvin, next year if I sell the movie rights to my book, I’ll give you a bonus for this mitzvah.”

  The good news is that I don’t owe the IRS, but the bad news is I didn’t even earn enough money in 2013 to collect unemployment benefits or get Botox, or a much-needed rest and/or a facelift. Well, just as well, I saw on the news last night that some woman jumped off a thirteen-story building in Beverly Hills the day after she had her face lifted. I wonder if she was an actress.

  Like so many bit players in Hollywood I paid my dues serving famous people in restaurants who all gave me good tips: “Don’t quit your day job.”

  I can count the principle paid acting jobs I’ve had over three decades on two hands. I made my film début with Emilio Estevez in the cult classic, Repo Man, directed by Alex Cox. By the time they got around to shooting my scene, the low budget film ran out of money but Alex shot my scene anyway. In the final cut it looks like I am saying my lines but in post production Alex cut the sound of my dialogue and used a principal actress who had already been paid for a looping day to dub my lines. That way the production got away with not paying me the SAG principle rate plus future residuals.