Inside Seka - The Platinum Princess of Porn (41 page)

Believe it or not, these are candid shots of me washing my uncle’s car in Virginia in the early ‘90’s.

Washing my uncle’s car in Virginia in the early ‘90’s.

My sister, Christmas Eve, 1986.

My brother Ray.

My mother. Gotta love the beehive.

With my Uncle Hardy, the Baptist minister. A great man who never judged me.

47.
Webmistress

I’d run a mail-order business for years, which was promoted by print ads, mostly in
Club Magazine.
But as time went by, magazines turned to e-zines and almost all mail-order businesses moved to that new-fangled thingy, the Internet.

Two close female friends bugged me for the longest time to do a web-site. They believed in me, felt there was a market for it, and put up the money which I didn’t have at the time. Since I’d been out of the public eye for quite a while, I feared it would blow up in our faces. Making matters worse, neither of my partners was wealthy. I didn’t know how or even if I could pay them back. We had to buy all kinds of equipment and pay strangers good money to get it off the ground.

We started out by getting my pictures from
Club Magazine
and scanning everything. It was labor intensive and I didn’t know jack shit about it. Hell, I didn’t even have a computer. My nephew bought me one to start the site. The
Club
material I had was mostly R-rated and I didn’t have much new material to put up. I wasn’t sure people wanted to see a fat old broad, since I was about sixty pounds heavier. I had become complacent and just didn’t care.

I was very hardheaded and wanted to protect my image as best as I could. It felt like I was being pressured to be out in public before I was ready. Unlike my partners, I was also concerned with copyrights and registrations and “minor” things like that.

It was extremely tough and slow in the beginning. It seemed like it took forever to even get a single member. Complicating matters, someone else had the
www.seka.com
URL and I didn’t know how to get it back. They had pictures of me on there and they were even saying they had my signed pictures for sale. But I was fortunate that on Google my
www.officialseka.com
was climbing in the rankings. I eventually hired a lawyer who cost me five grand I really couldn’t afford, to win the rights to the domain name
www.seka.com.
The folks originally behind it just kind of went away.

When the income started trickling in, I saw it did have possibilities. It became my job, my focus, and my passion. I would be up practically all night going on different search engines asking people to do a banner exchange. I had Yahoo Groups and did anything I could to try to get the name out.

It finally began to grow and was doing well enough where I was able to relax somewhat and pay my bills. None of us were making any “real” money on it, though, because it was split three ways and the others also had their day jobs to focus on.

I wanted to give the girls something for their troubles, but just couldn’t pull money out of the business at the time. I would pay for meals, entertainment, and business trips. But one of my partners wanted more control and seemed to be scared to give us space. Maybe we’d “run away,” I don’t know. For example, I had the opportunity to go to Florida to basically hang out. She wasn’t too thrilled with that nor did she like it if I had a relationship or even a casual tryst with someone. It always bothered her tremendously. She was just very jealous and insecure.

As deeply indebted as I was to them, I knew this partnership just wasn’t working. Eventually, lawyers came into the picture. I ultimately offered to buy them out. With one of the partners it worked out amicably. The other, of course, felt rejected. But I had found a way to make a living for myself again. And now I didn’t have to answer to anybody else.

One day I got an e-mail from a company called AEBN and they wanted to do a custom theater on
Seka.com.
That’s pay-per-view where people can go in to look at videos. I get a cut as an affiliate whenever someone clicks on and watches a piece of a movie. And if they don’t want to watch me, they can go in and watch whoever they want.

As owner of the site, how do I feel about making money off someone
else
having sex? Well, people have been doing it to me long enough, so it doesn’t feel exploitative. And unlike most in this cutthroat industry, I try to help my peers. I will always give an actress advice on where to get content, advice on who is honest in the business, and how to protect themselves legally.

I’ve always wanted the site to have style and class, without having to stoop to just going all out to get people’s attention. My vision for the site is to portray myself with dignity and respect. I won’t put violent sex on it — no choking and gagging. That wasn’t a part of what I did to begin with. It’s not something I personally like because I think it’s degrading to women — unless, of course, it’s something they’re actually into. But I don’t think it’s very sexy. I don’t even think it has a lot to do with sex. I think it has everything to do with control.

I get comments like, “Why don’t you have more anal? Why don’t you have more S&M?” Yet I stick to my guns with what I have up there. My own footage is tame in comparison to the rest of the industry.

I fully realize there are people who are always going to look at the site as nothing more than smut. And I know better than to argue with someone whose mind is already made up. But I honestly don’t see anything wrong with someone escaping online and getting away from his or her problems for a bit. And if they get off on it, maybe that release is actually something positive rather than perverted or dirty. But who am I to judge these things?

The bottom line is I now have a job behind a computer keyboard rather than in front of a movie camera. And at this stage in my life, that’s definitely a blessing.

48.
Desperately Seeking Seka

Out of nowhere, I got a phone call from my friend Joey Mondelli, who owned an Italian restaurant named La Scarola’s in Chicago. He said two foreign guys were looking for me but he wouldn’t tell them anything.

“We told them we didn’t know where you were, but if they came back in a few days we’d see if we could find you.”

I have some very protective buddies.

Turns out these two Swedish fellows named Christian and Magnus had been conducting interviews about my career because they were doing a documentary on me. They looked everywhere but couldn’t find me. Seems I was their “favorite.”

Travelling around the world to track down an adult film star seemed a bit odd even to me, but I gave Joey permission to give them my number. When we finally spoke they had really heavy accents and I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying. I met them at La Scarola’s. I wanted to screen these fellows to see if they were legit and just what they were offering.

Both were in their early thirties and very European-looking. One was kind of blonde and a little balding. I wouldn’t say they were terribly attractive; both were average-looking guys. But their personalities were just sparkling. They had on big, heavy coats with red and white Arabian-looking checked scarves. They were all bundled up for our cold Chicago winter. All the while, Joey kept his eye on them.

They spoke enthusiastically and I was flattered. I liked the idea of the documentary so I asked, “What are you going to call it?”

“We think the best name would be
Desperately Seeking Seka,
because that’s exactly what we have been doing here in the States.”

They told me about the people they had already interviewed like Veronica Hart, Ron Jeremy, and Ron Sullivan, who is better known as director Henri Pachard. And now they wanted to interview me. But when they told me the miniscule amount of money they were able to pay, I blurted out, “Be real!”

We eventually agreed on a price that was actually more than a couple of hundred bucks. Since Seka was desperately seeking some cash,
Desperately Seeking Seka
was a go.

They needed to come by my place to photograph me for the project. Feeling self-conscious about my weight, I figured I might as well film at my house where I felt most comfortable. I cooked them a nice dinner and the stage was my living room.

I thought they did a nice enough job, although they didn’t ask me anything I hadn’t been asked before. They were pretty pat questions like, “Who was your favorite male co-star? Who was your favorite female costar?” It was actually kind of boring answering the same questions I’d heard so many times over the years. But I had the money in my pocket and did my best to appease them. I honestly didn’t think much would come of the project. Here were two guys going back to Sweden to produce and distribute a low-budget film. They seemed professional enough with the cameras they were using, and were certainly determined, but the idea that it took them a year to find me made it seem like, “How big could it really be?” It wasn’t like I was Howard Hughes or something. I never went out of my way to not be found.