by Hyapatia Lee
Abused and abandoned children often seek mass approval to make up for the lack of love by a significant caretaker (mother and/or father) earlier in life. They are willing to do just about anything for this acknowledgment and, feel they quite literally, need it. How many times have you been told about someone’s suicide attempt only to hear it followed by “they were just trying to get attention”? Is attention in such scarce supply that we do not feel that an attempt on one’s own life is enough to warrant giving it? Do people not realize that attention is such an important thing that newborn babies will actually die from lack of it? Failure to Thrive does result in death if not stopped soon enough. The infant, lacking physical touching and emotional bonding in the form of positive verbal reinforcement, will slow down his eating, quit exploring his environment and lose weight until he dies. Doesn’t this sound like a severely depressed adult? People who commit suicide are just acting on a natural instinct. Failure to thrive doesn’t happen with just abandoned babies. There ought to be some way our society can unselfishly give the mass approval and love to abused and neglected children that they need to heal.
Bad things do happen to innocent people, despite what your beliefs about God are. Swiftdeer says that 80% of everything that happens is related to karma. This could either be bad karma, or your soul’s need to experience a traumatic event in order to grow. According to the Twisted Hairs Council of Elders, all souls make a plan for their life before they are born. They decide how far they want to evolve in this lifetime and how much they want to accomplish. 20% of what happens is just plain luck, bad or good. Shit does happen.
The Wiccan belief is that hell and karma were designed by people in positions of power as a way to control the masses. Since we are all given free will, this was a way to make sure people didn’t walk all over each other. When bad things happen it’s an opportunity for our soul to learn and grow. People who hurt others will simply have to keep coming back in reincarnations until they “grow up”.
Bad people do go unpunished in this life and children and adults who have done nothing to deserve it are often victims of violence on the streets and in the home as well as accidents and financial disasters. Any one of us could become a paraplegic at any time simply by crossing paths with an irresponsible driver. Any one of us could lose everything we own in a fire due to no fault of our own and most people are not insured for what it would cost to replace everything, not to mention the stress involved. No one is immune to the many atrocities that could befall us, and yet our society tends to kick people when they are down. This is in an effort to deny any similarity between them and us
We feel so vulnerable when we look at a person in such ill health they can not work, we do not like this feeling, so we hide it behind thoughts like “They must not have taken care of theirhealth, maybe they did drugs or drank too much.” We look at a person in a wheel chair and think “they must’ve been doing something dangerous they shouldn’t have been, perhaps drinking and driving”. We look at the victim of AIDS and say to ourselves “they must’ve had lots of promiscuous sex”. Blood transfusions and non-sexual transmissions never cross our minds. We hear about a victim of rape and believe “they must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time” as if the victim is at fault. When a victim sleeping in her home is raped, we think of ways to deny her innocence in an effort to make us feel less vulnerable. It is the same way for all other bad luck. We want to go to church, pray, do all the ‘right’ things so that these things won’t happen to us. There are no guarantees of that, people all have free will and Spirit does not sweep his or her hand down to save the innocent children, men and women who are suffering in other war torn countries or from famine, why should he or she save us? Saying we should be saved because we are of some ‘special’ faith is a lie to ourselves we use to make us feel safe in a very unfair world. If we become a victim again, we believe we didn’t pray right. These kinds of beliefs set victims up for the continuous re-victimization they experience from society.
When a person needs help with their emotions and actively seeks out therapy, they should not be denied because of an inability to pay. Just as important as a person with a physical emergency, society should take care of these people, if not out of compassion, then out of self-preservation. These are the people who could snap, break the law and cause injury to innocent people. A parent can unwittingly pass on damaging behavior and the cycle repeats itself. If someone recognizes a need for help in themselves, they must really need it and should be helped. They should never be looked down on because very rarely, if ever, has a person willingly brought ill mental health on themselves. People’s minds do what any other normal person’s mind would do in such situations and it is strength to recognize a need for help. Even so, such people are often the brunt of stupid jokes, wise cracks and discrimination.
A victim of violence and sexual abuse, like myself, grows up seeing everything in extremes. This causes them to view life either as one way, or the other, there is no middle of the road. Either a person is the type to be a virgin on their wedding night and has sex only to bear children, or they are an over-sexed pervert. Society does a very good job of perpetuating this myth. If a person is sexually aware and open, they are treated like a tramp. A provocative dress will also land you in that category. Likewise, a high collar and low hemline will mark you a prude. Somewhere in the middle lies a healthy sexual attitude but there are few examples of that in our mainstream media and entertainment. It’s no wonder our culture is so hung up on sex.
The sex industry itself, from movies to most magazines needs to stop perpetuating the image that it’s models and actors are sexual freaks, always performing side-show sex every waking moment. Naturally society has its nymphos, but you’d be surprised how many actresses I’ve heard say they find sex painful and only do it for the pay check. I have never seen an actress performing sex for fun on the set sidelines because she ‘just couldn’t wait to get to work’, although I’ve seen stories like that in print dozens of times.
If the X-rated movie business refuses to do anything to protect it’s performers from AIDS and other STD’s, someone should. We have governmental rules and regulations to protect laborers in all lines of work. Large posters on safety are mandatory in all work places, but one of the most dangerous professions has been virtually ignored by a government that is afraid protecting it’s performers could be seen as advocating the business’s right to exist in the first place. If those in positions of power in the industry had common sense and decency they wouldn’t need someone to point out the obvious. In the meantime, people’s lives are in danger.
Some might argue that the few thousand people involved in such work do not warrant the government’s attention. The message it would be sending to the rest of the world, however, I believe would be worth it. To say that safe sex is that important, that these people do count like any other human beings, to admit that people are influenced by what they watch in these movies, would all be great things. It would be a step in the right direction to normalizing our societies views on sex andeliminating the pressure-cooker suppression of a normal function that sexual denial contributes to. This suppression has been proven to cause sexual crimes in many different studies.
Was my work in this business a good or bad thing? Was it healthy or harmful to me in the long run? Is the business damaging to the psyche of its actresses? Does it demean and use women? When I first started doing this work, it made me feel good about myself. I did not feel abused or used. Obviously I was not emotionally stable to begin with. Few, if any, X-rated actresses are. As time went by, I felt differently. Several things contributed to this change.
First, the business changed. In the beginning, I was treated with respect, budgets were higher, so we took more time and had a movie you could be proud of. I was treated like a star at opening galas and personal appearances. When budgets and plots were slashed and I was treated like “today’s special”, it felt cheap because I was treated cheaply. The longer I
was in it, the more obvious it was that the new meat on the market is what gets “seniority”.
Secondly, I became aware of how the glamour was to cover up being taken advantage of. When a movie can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars and the star is only paid $5,000.00, we’re being used. When the public buys these movies not for their artistic content, fabulous screenplay, large budget, special effects or director’s name, but solely on it’s female star’s attractiveness, and she is not financially rewarded accordingly, knowing she will be shunned by society for the rest of her life, she IS being abused.
Thirdly, I changed. I gained self-confidence enough to recognize when I had been taken advantage of. I also was able to see the number one problem with being involved in the business-everyone else’s reaction to it; from seeing your child’s dejected face as he tells you his friend’s mom won’t let him spend the night because she disapproves of your “lifestyle”, to being told you can’t be hired because it will give the impression this company approves of your past. The major abuser is this society whose cracks I fell through growing up and which throws stones at people like me and our families on a regular basis for choices made as a direct result of our childhood traumas.
Psychiatrists say that we all have different fragments or aspects of our personality. When my personality split, I did things I myself would never have done. This business provided an outlet for that. What would I have done if I didn’t have this business to turn to? I can think of no other job that I was capable of doing at the time.
If the business and it’s stars were respected by society, if safe sex and set guidelines were practiced and performers were rewarded financially as they should be, then perhaps it would not be quite so damaging.
The writing of this book has been a power struggle between a segment of society who has refused to respect honesty and my absolute need to be myself. At first, when the rumor got around that I was working on a book, an old friend named Roy approached me. He wanted to be my manager for the project. He brought in a friend of his whom had never written a book in her life, and had never been involved in the X-rated movie business, or dancing, and knew nothing about Multiple Personality Disorder, or Disassociative Identity Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. How typical of what I had experienced as Hyapatia Lee!
She sat me down and made me watch my movies with a tape recorder running for three days. She wanted me to talk about any experiences these movies brought up. I talked of Essex and getting ripped off by club owners, the struggle to bring out an alter who no longer wanted to be out and the pain of people’s judgments and expectations of me based on a job one of my alters had. She was deaf to my words. She wanted a juicy story of how I seduced the director or went to a swinging party or something. When it became obvious she not only wasn’t listening to what I had said, but took it upon herself to embellish my life’s story in a way that was totally fabricated, I quit.
I began to write the book myself. In a strong statement, my body began to bleed severely out of cycle as I wrote about my stepfather. My uterus was crying. It did not stop for over a month and I ended up getting four units of blood transfused.
Royalties only come in when one is still making movies, evidently. Every job I got dancing on the road would end one day into the gig as my medically unexplained bleeding would inevitably return with gusto. It was just too emotionally draining to force myself into this work that made me feel so used and abused any longer.
I severed ties with anyone and everyone who had ever known Hyapatia Lee. I had to, I could not be her anymore and none of them understood that. I changed my address and phone number several times and even my real name to throw off several ardent fans and stalkers. I’d had too many serious scares.
There was no more desire or need for anything that personality had formerly offered. I was NOT healed, as there were still several other alternative personalities on my personal island, but Hyapatia was gone and not missed at all there. I guess she had either served her purpose or it became apparent that the air of control, victory and success were a facade. I had merely been an ignorant puppet on a string. Though I would never dance that dance again, everywhere I went, people still saw me as that Hyapatia Lee role. It didn’t take long for me to avoid people altogether.
Like a battery whose charge had been depleted, my life force energy, or orende, was dangerously low. I had no hope or desire left. I truly felt everyone in my life would be better off without me. All the personalities left were switching back and forth at a ferocious pace. Back in intensive therapy, I am trying to learn more about the human mind, my mind, and how it functions after being shattered by abuse.
I have learned that first of all, I am not alone. There are many children who are abused and quite a few of them go on to develop DID. The condition is a normal reaction to an abnormal environment.
I have learned secondly that the emotions and mind control the body, not the other way around. The body is inside the mind as the mind determines how the body reacts and processes events. Traumatic events can and often do manifest in a physical issue at some point down the line.
I have also learned in how many different ways society blames its victims and how eager people are to look the other way when faced with unpleasantness. They distance themselves so far that their efforts to help become disassociated to the victim.
In trying to protect themselves, those that would help sever the one key ingredient that keeps the survivor going-that we are NOT alone!
I hope this book has given the reader a different perspective of the X-rated movie industry and all that goes with erotic entertainment. There is a good and bad in everything and I see both everywhere I have looked. Overall, it is not good or bad so much as it just “is”.
While I can in no way speak for anyone other than myself, it is my opinion that I am not the only X-rated movie actress with DID. In fact, I believe the incidence of PTSD and DID run amazingly high in the business. I believe those in positions of power in the industry are well aware that their actors and actresses are at the least, emotionally unstable. It is my belief that they use these actors and actresses instability against them to their own advantage. After all, isn’t that what America calls “good business”?
At some point, America has to wake up, smell the coffee and develop some compassion. Instead of saying “that won’t happen to me”, we should think “ I am so thankful that didn’t happen to me” because it could have. And while we’re at it, let’s think about how to help the victim survive and thrive!
So often I have seen people who simply can not imagine atrocities like those mentioned in the early part of this book. It is not a fun subject to dwell on and so their mind naturally protects itself by pushing such thoughts away. But until we mature, and evolve as a society to the point we can look at these things, the effects they have and how, at anytime down the line, we have the power to either add insult to past injury or to promote healthy healing, we will be condemned to repeat our mistakes. We shouldn’t have to know all the gory details of one’s past before we offer kindness and compassion.
The Dalai Lama says the purpose of life is happiness and that our common human bond is much stronger than people believe. We are all the same. We all want happiness, a good life for ourselves and our children, love and peace. I hope that people everywhere live their life with happiness and love for each other.
About the Author
Since starting in the sex industry first as a dancer in 1980, I have literally lived on the road for years, traveling from town to town, club to club. As the only two-time winner of the title Miss Nude Galaxy, I was popular when I first started making adult movies. I was the first actress to start the now popular trend of signing an exclusive contract with a production company, much like the old Hollywood studio days.
I was in the adult movie business for well over 10 years. I have received the “Legends of Erotica” award in 1994, Fan Favorite in 1993, Free Speech Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995, was
voted into the Adult Video News Hall of Fame in 1990, and won the award for Best Actress in that same year. Most recently I was honored as one of the top 25 actors and actresses ever to be in the business. In addition to X-rated movies, I have also worked in films with such stars as Tim Allen, Paul Bartell, John Savage.
I was elected president of the short-lived X-rated Actors Association, an organization formed to protect actress’s rights to work with condoms. This group was formed when some talent started getting positive HIV tests.
I wrote a sexual advice column for Cheri Magazine for five years, in addition to penning most of my own movie scripts. After leaving the business, I started writing my own songs for my bands Double Euphoric and Vision Quest.
Having been very close friends with almost everyone in the business who has committed suicide, especially Megan Leigh, who died with a photo of my oldest son in her arms, and Savannah, who loved my deviled eggs, I feel the world needs to know their true stories. Most will be very surprised.
As I have been the only person, to my knowledge, to do audience preference questionnaires at adult movie theaters and bookstores, I feel I know what the audience really wants and is really like. I have met them repeatedly face-to-face, from Quebec City, to Milan, to Auckland and Sydney and every state in the union. I’ve heard the audience on the dozens of talk shows I have been on, I understand their questions and how they think. This book is for them and everyone else who ever wanted to hear an insider’s point of view on the industry.
Not since Linda Lovelace has an actress been able to completely speak out about her experiences here. Alex Jordan was writing her book when she committed suicide. Many comic books have been done by and about the lives of several actresses in the business, but this book is a very complete, detailed, story of my life. I have kept nothing back.
