The Secret Lives of Hyapatia Lee

by Hyapatia Lee

  In Las Vegas we got to open for rock legend Paul Rogers. He was the consummate professional. At sound check I sat in the back of the six thousand-seat theater in awe of his voice and stage presence, and he wasn’t even trying. What a lesson I was getting. That night was magical. We were so fired up by the large exuberant crowd that none of us could sleep for a long time afterwards.

  Holly introduced me to a friend of hers in New England. She had been involved in managing musicians for a number of years and as a result, had many connections. Before she moved to Los Angeles, she lived in Massachusetts. She still had many friends in the business in that area of the country. This man, I will call him Brian, was interested in distributing my CD under his record label and signing me to a contract to produce five more albums. I was to get pitifully little for the Double Euphoric CD I had paid to produce, and even less for the next projects, but at least it was a record deal, even if it wasn’t with a major label. I was still happy to get it.

  Brian seemed like a nice guy. He acted professional enough, and when I met with him in his office, he was a gentleman and talked to my eyes and not my breasts.

  I was trying to make a complete break from all things X-rated. Hyapatia didn’t take over as much anymore. I felt like my multiple personality disorder was fading. There were times I could remember details of what had happened when I was Hyapatia years ago. Memories were coming back and I was more comfortable and happy being me, aware and awake. I started a 900 line of Native American Herbal healing recipes, drawing from my training with Gladys Tantaguideon in Delaware, but music was where my heart was. If I couldn’t audition for movies and television since I wasn’t in California, at least I could pursue music. I flew out to LA every three or four months to try and keep my foot in the door and to play out with my band.

  Current Affair ran the segment they did with my music and me, complete with footage from our first live gig and recording the CD in the studio. It was in conjunction with a segment on Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn and I and how we are all aspiring to a career out of X. It promoted Traci’s appearance on the Jay Leno show and it mentioned the agent and manager who had been most instrumental in getting her on Melrose Place and in movies.

  I looked up the agent and called him to ask if he might be willing to consider representing me. To my surprise, he agreed to see me. On my next trip to LA, I had an appointment with him and he agreed to try and help me. He said he could promise nothing, especially since I lived so far away. Don Gerber sent me out on more auditions than any of my other Screen Actors Guild agents ever did, and he was always respectful.

  Brian, from the record company, was stalling on signing the contract. Although it had been to both of our lawyers several times, racking up a bill over $500.00 on my end, it was still unsigned. Brian was coming to town and wanted me to meet him by the pool.

  “Bring your bathing suit and we can sunbathe while talking about plans for your future.”

  “I would love to Brian, but I have an audition today.”

  “But I’m leaving town tomorrow and I still haven’t gotten to lay in the sun with you!”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I have some very important plans.”

  “I really think we need to talk about this contract.”

  “Brian, we have talked about it a million times, the lawyers have looked at it, we have all agreed to the points, what do we need to discuss?”

  “Well…maybe I just want to see you in your bathing suit.”

  I would try to laugh such things off and tell him to stop being silly, that I had to attend to the children. Then one day, while I was on the road dancing, he called my answering machine asking me to call him as soon as I could. He was on the road, too and there was something coming up he had to talk to me about immediately.

  I called after my last show, hoping it wasn’t too late at night. I was exhausted, but I wanted to show him I was responsible and a hard worker. He was still awake, but it sounded like he had been drinking a bit.

  “You said that something was coming up you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Yeah, my cock! Do you think you could give me a little phone sex?”

  I was so tired of this crap. It was always like this with anyone who pretended to be interested in helping me professionally. I didn’t quite know what to do. So many times before I had ignored it, laughed it off, put the guy down or made him feel like a fool, burst into tears and tell him how abused and used I felt, whatever felt right at the time, because all fit. I wondered if I gave into him if he would finally sign the contract. I was by myself. The kids had stayed home with a sitter due to finances. I decided to do it.

  The next day I got a call from his lawyer on my answering machine saying that the deal was off. His company was having some unexpected financial difficulties! I felt like it was all my fault because I had given into him. Then again, I know if I hadn’t, I still would not have had a signed contract. I never heard from him or anyone representing his company again.

  Bud came back to Indiana on a rare visit to see the kids and his family. We got along as well as can be expected while he was here. He stayed in a hotel and spent some quality time with the boys while I got to clean their rooms. One night, we went out to dinner together. While we were eating his cellular phone rang. It was someone Bud worked with and he looked kind of upset. When he got off the phone, I asked him what was wrong.

  “Savannah just shot herself”, he said.

  “She shot herself! Well, on purpose? Is she dead? Is she okay?”

  “No, she is not okay. She is in the hospital. She shot herself in the head.”

  Nancy Pera was Savannah’s manager. She had worked on sets I was on in the capacity of everything from director, to producer to production assistant. I knew her well, and of course, I knew Savvy. According to Nancy, Savannah had been out partying. She was known to do that quite often. On her wayhome, she had wrecked her car (drove it into a fence), and possibly broken her nose. She called Nancy to ask for her help as soon as she had gotten home. Nancy promised to be right over.

  When she got there a few minutes later, Savvy’s roommate had said she asked him to go walk her dog. When he came back, he found her in a pool of blood on the garage floor. Nancy called 911 and they took her to the hospital where she was placed on life support. She lived for over a day before they finally let her go.

  Why did she do it? Why was this the third actress in 7 years to do this? From what I understand, Savannah had a hard life from the beginning. Rolling Stone did an article on her, because she dated so many of the rock stars. Axl Rose, Greg Allman, and Slash all were known to have dated her, in addition to Pauly Shore. She was raised in a single parent home and from what I heard, her father was not around much. At 15 she was touring with Greg Allman and doing heroin. I personally had witnessed her do cocaine. She made no effort to hide it, or anything else, from those who disapproved. She had an abrasive personality to many, boastful and mocking. Why does a person develop such defenses? Because they are happy? I think not. She obviously had some very deep problems and not many people were surprised by her suicide.

  On the other hand, when Cal Jammer took his life, the first actor to do so, it was a shock to many. Not more than two months after Savannah crossed over, Cal was arguing with his fiancée. She wanted to leave, call it “quits”. He begged her to stay. As she got in the car and started to pull away, he said “if you leave me I will kill myself’ and then he did, right there. Again, a single gunshot wound to the head.

  Less than six months later, Alex Jordan, another popular actress, was found dead in her closet. She had hung herself. Many suggested that perhaps she was experimenting sexually with the deadly game of strangling oneself until you reach orgasm and at the last minute, letting go. Many people have died this way in all walks of life, and Alex was found with one handcuff attached to her wrists, perhaps suggesting sexual experimentation. Or maybe it signified how she felt bound by something and this was her escape. I don’t believe anyone real
ly knows for sure.

  Such a rash of suicides. Very sad and perplexing. Was there a connection? Was it the business? Or is it what happens in one’s lifetime that also happens to drive them to the business? Or is it what happens to a person in society after being involved in the business? How could it be stopped? Did anyone care to stop it?

  SUNDANCE

  My band was still playing out in LA whenever I could get there and our CD was selling well in the few stores I had been able to personally put it in. Whenever I traveled for dancing, I was sure to take some extra copies to local stores that might distribute it. I sold it through my fan club and after my dance shows, as well as whenever the band played. Adam and Eve, a mail order catalog of sexual movies, lotions and devices, was also carrying it. A gentleman named Paul Harvey, who is the single largest independent distributor of free condoms to third world nations, owns them. They took a couple thousand copies of the CD.

  Being so far away from the rest of my band made it impossible to work on any new material or record anything else. I was only able to get out to the west coast three or four times a year at best and I knew it would be even less as time went by. Whenever I was out there I felt my control on myself slipping away. It was mostly Kira, Lisa and Veronica that took turns controlling my body. There was little money out there for me, since none of us wanted to do X-rated movies or pose for magazines anymore. Dancing was getting harder and harder on my mind. It was difficult to be enthusiastic about my work after I realized the business I was associated with was so money hungry and disrespectful of it’s fans, workers and human sexuality in general. Hyapatia rarely came out at all anymore. In the past, Hyapatia just automatically took over almost all the time. Some of my memories of what Hyapatia had done were now blending into my conscious mind. I didn’t want to go back to calling on her in order to work but I knew of no other way.

  It was harder than I thought it would be to force myself to dance to feed the children. Everyone expected a sex party girl full of confidence to grace their stage but what they got was plain old me. I could not bring Hyapatia out on demand like I used to.

  I found the asthma I had developed from my three bouts with pneumonia could wreak havoc with work.

  Being stuck back in Indiana most of the time there wasn’t much hope for a way out. After scanning the local paper and finding out there was very little I was qualified for, I hit the streets. Naturally I didn’t want to put “porno star” under my previous jobs, so I settled for “self-employed entertainer”. I never knew just how famous I was until I found everywhere I went people refused to have their business associated with someone like me. I got strange looks, observed whispered secrets, glaring eyes and tons of rejection. I was being judged for something Hyapatia had done. They thought I was Hyapatia! The idea was so unbelievably evil and unfair to me and yet there was no hiding the fact I looked like her. To bleach my hair would be to deny my culture much more than just the cut and perm I once had. My grandmother would never forgive me. I would never forgive me! I tried every way I could think of to change my look but there was only so much I could do and it was never enough.

  Through networking I discovered an agent who could book my band on a tour for almost two thousand dollars a night. We would start in the Midwest, work our way to the Eastern Seaboard and back. This meant I had to find a band in the Midwest as we could never afford all the expenses associated with going from the Midwest to the east coast and back and four round trip air fares from Los Angeles. The tour had more down days for traveling than we did playing days.

  Chuck Kavooras from my LA band Double Euphoric flew to Indiana and we found local musicians to flesh out the band: Tony Medieros on drums, Steve Townsend on guitar, and Johnny G. on bass. This band, in my opinion, was better than the one in LA. They were better musicians and team players, a great bunch of guys. We rocked!

  The tour was a great success. We got rave reviews and were welcomed back everywhere. We all got along great. When we got home and everyone was paid, including my babysitter, I found I had slept three hours a night, rode thousands of miles in a hot van for a few hundred dollars. I couldn’t raise my family like this. It killed me to be away from the boys that long and Irealized I’d have to go back to living on the road fifty weeks a year to make enough money to live.

  Bud had found a girl he was serious about and they got married in Las Vegas. Asia Carrera was an actress in the X-rated movie business. Bud was still directing so it seemed natural they should be together. She was a good step-mom to my kids. They loved her and enjoyed her company. She was my oldest son’s favorite Nintendo competitor.

  Every summer, Swiftdeer hosts a traditional Sundance near the Navajo reservation and this year I wanted to go. I thought it would be a great chance for me to focus my energies on a new career path. I was praying for a vision and strength. I wanted to continue my healing and my apprenticeship. Sundance is a weeklong ceremony of the strictest kind. It is very sacred, or Wakan, and to go would be very good for my soul and peace of mind. Porsche and another friend of mine, Susan, were also going. I met Susan for the first time when Porsche and I went to Hawaii for a spiritual learning trip with Swiftdeer. We would all be camping together before the actual dance began, and dancing next to each other at the ceremony.

  For four days we worked building the dance and water arbors, putting up all the shields, and preparing the land. It was hot, strenuous work and those of us who had come from other climates were not used to the dry desert air. Each night we all did a sweat lodge ceremony.

  In the nude, the participants enter the low structure and circle from left to right around the inside until they are sitting as close as they can to the person who came in before them. To the left of the door is a pit where hot rocks are placed. Prayers are said over the rocks as water, enhanced with herbs, is sprinkled over them, bringing lots of steam. In the pitch-black darkness, you can not even see your hand in front of your face. The heat becomes intense as more than 20 prayers are said over the rocks.

  Each person takes their turn going around in a circle, stating their prayers and give-aways. We pray for others, our ancestors and ourselves. In between each round of prayers, the flap of the doorway is opened and we are given a brief bit of cool air and light. It is symbolic of being in the womb of the Earth mother. It’s a very powerful experience and extremely cleansing.

  After four days of this, a sweat for each direction, we were ready to start our dance. At sunset, we paraded around the arbor with our sacred pipes in hand. As we went through the entrance in the east, the drum team changed the song. We walked around the circle, to the south, then west, then east, to our individual lanes where we were to dance, sleep, and live for the next three days. There was no eating and no drinking. We were on a strict fast. Those who absolutely needed water or electrolytes only could do so at the water arbor built outside the Sundance arena.

  To leave the main arena to go visit the bathroom or the water arbor, you must go around the outside of the circle from your lane, in the direction of the sun, until you reach the eastern gate. When entering, you must also travel near the outside, sun wise, until you reach your spot. You must never turn your back to the tree that stands in the center of the arena. This is the Sundance Flowering Tree and it symbolizes light, goodness, all that is Wakan. When leaving through the eastern gate, you must walk out backwards.

  I made it two days without water. In the late afternoon of the second day, I couldn’t stand it any more. The rose quartz crystals we were allowed to suck on to stimulate saliva would no longer do. We had been hydrating ourselves with water and electrolytes constantly in the days before the actual dance in an effort to prepare our bodies, but at this point, nothing could have prepared me to make it through. It was the Arizona dessert, on a high plateau, dancing day and night with four hours off from midnight to 4:00 am. We danced to the tree with our Eagle whistles in our mouths and our plumes in our hands, blowing the whistle as we ran. Once at the tree, we said our prayers, perhaps tou
ched the tree or part of the deer skin or buffalo head or other items that hung from it. The Great Mystery made all things of this Earth, and in each of them, are reflected the Great Spirit’s fire. We honor them all. Then we danced backwards in our own lane, tooting in short spurts on our eagle whistles as we followed the trench made by our own feet to our spot along the outside ofthe arbor. From the sky it looked like a bicycle tire with all it’s spokes being our dancing lanes.

  There were Grandfather and Grandmother pipes, male and female pipes full of power, energy and mystery that were too big to lift. These had been carved long ago and the spirit I felt when ceremoniously smoking them in the Eastern Gate by the Children’s Fire was one of the most powerful and “real” things I have ever felt.

  Once along the outside of the arbor, we could take a break by stepping behind the line and into our small private space comprised of sleeping bag, change of clothes, warmer wear for night, medicine bundle, pipe bag and prayer sticks and/or corn paho. When a dancer was ready to resume dancing, they were to first take a prayer stick or pinch or corn paho to the tree where they would offer it to the four directions, state their prayer to themselves and then begin the dance.

  On and on it went. We prayed for our future, our past, the Earth, her future, our children, our ancestors, anyone and anything that was near to us. There were special dances for veterans, those who died in battle or service, and to honor many great leaders and help them stay in the light. I danced for everyone in my life, from my family, to Bud and others, even cashiers in stores who were nice and polite and waitresses that recognized me and didn’t look down their nose.

  I had many visions, that’s the idea. Most of them are private and personal, but the one that did make an immediate difference in my life was about my music. With the pow-wow drum beating constantly and the music of my ancestors playing loud and clear for all the Earth to saturate herself with, I was profoundly affected. I decided I had to get that sound into my music. After all, that was the heart of Native American music. “A-ho-li” is Cherokee for “heart”, “drum” and also “mouth”, so to speak from my heart, I would have to use the drum. I wanted to get a band together in Indiana and use a pow-wow drum and chanting to get an even more distinct “Native American Rock and Roll” sound. I’d hoped we could do work in a studio or at local clubs and I could stay with my children. Of course, making enough money to take them with me would’ve meant we’d gotten really popular and I was always open to that option too.