Inside Seka - The Platinum Princess of Porn (43 page)

Nina Hartley. Yeah, I did her.

Decades later with Veronica Hart, who I helped break in, co-signing a
Seduction of Cindy
poster.

With one of the “new kids,” Taylor Wane.

With Ginger Lynn in 2010.

My dream threesome: Randy West and Herschel Savage — two nice Jewish boys.

It ain’t Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, but I’m immortalized in front of the Hustler Store!

Here’s a raunchy bunch: TT Boy, Randy West, Amber Lynn, Seka, Herschel Savage, Veronica Hart, Randy Spears, Ginger Lynn, (front) Kylie Ireland & Nina Hartley.

With Amber Lynn in Seattle. The puppet’s name is Maurice.

49.
On the Road, Fully Clothed

One of the ways I pay the bills these days is to go on the road to a variety of fan and industry conventions to sign autographs and sell product. It’s a combination of heaven and hell.

I don’t mind being on the road as long as I’m making money. At the Adult Video News (AVN) show — the “Academy Awards” of adult entertainment — they want you to come out and help draw people to their booth, but “we don’t have money to pay you.” This is a multi-billion dollar industry, mind you. So I won’t do one unless a company working the event contacts me and offers me a fee.

One year John Holmes’ widow, Laurie Holmes, who worked under the name Misty Dawn, contacted me about a signing at the AVN show. She worked for one of the sponsoring companies and she agreed to my terms so I figured I’d give it a shot. I’d never met her before and she turned out to be a very nice girl. We talked about John quite a bit and she knew I was one of the few people in the industry who continues to defend him. She was madly in love with him and still has to fight every day against people ripping off his estate by taking his name and likeness and putting it on t-shirts and other merchandise. I can certainly relate to being ripped off, so we hit it off famously and it was a good time.

Arthur Morowitz of Video-X-Pix is a wonderful guy and I was glad to see he was also at the event. Unlike many in our industry, he’s just plain honest. Whatever he says he’s going to do, he does. He’s also fun to be around — just a nice man.

When I heard he was getting ready to leave and it was so busy that I had yet to see him, I made my way over to him. He was talking to somebody so I waited for a minute, but had to get back to work. When he saw me he gave me a big smile, pulled me over closely, and said, “Do you know who that is standing next to me?” I had no idea whatsoever. It looked like a little old man with a cane. His hair was completely white and he was pasty and unhealthy looking. But there was a certain way he moved his mouth that made me finally recognize who it was.

“Holy fuck, say it ain’t so!” I thought I was absolutely going to crap my pants. It felt like I had seen a ghost. A chill actually ran down my spine and stayed there all day long.

It was Ken.

He started to say something and I simply went, “No, don’t do it,” and just turned and walked away. To this day, the man sells my old belongings on eBay. He’s still making money off me. And I continue to find out thirty years later about deals where he stole from me. I’ll meet an industry exec who’ll reminisce about “paying me well” for a film. I’ll respond by saying “I was paid okay.” Then the real numbers come out. Ken would tell me the pay and I’d say, “No problem.” But I found out decades later, I got a third of what the fee actually was and he’d put the rest in his pocket.

On a lighter note, I also met Seymore Butts at AVN and he’s a very nice fellow. He’s always a very busy boy who was surrounded by photographers since he had a Showtime reality show at the time. We did some kind of ribbon-cutting ceremony together — what it was for, I have no idea. But the publicity was good anyway. Seymore (Adam Glasser) introduced me to his Cousin Stevie, who was also on their reality show. He’s a little older than I am and he’s the funniest, nicest, sweetest person. His wife is just wonderful also and she thinks his career as a porn director/producer is a hoot. She’s very supportive considering there are naked young women having sex in their living room. Hey, it pays the bills.

In the booth where I was signing, there were four new young hot-bodied babes also doing promotion. I was extremely worried; they were so young and gorgeous I feared this old porn queen would be sitting there twiddling my thumbs. It was astonishing, though, that I had a steady line all day long for all three days. And these little girls didn’t know who I was! One of them said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never had lines like this for me.” One of my customers overheard her and said, “And you never will.… There’s only one Seka!” They don’t have a clue about who came before them or that we made it easier for them to do what they’re doing now. They were very naïve to the business and it concerned me they would be eaten alive by it.

Amber Lynn, Nina Hartley, and Candida Royalle were all there. Candida’s one of the best directors out today with her couples’ films. We always have nice conversations because we don’t see each other that often. One of the reasons we all lose touch is I’ve lived in Chicago and Missouri, and most industry people are in California or New York. I’d done layouts for
Club
with Amber Lynn, and a movie with Nina, but never really worked with Candida. We talked about each other’s lives, not so much the business.

Not too long ago I did the AVN Awards for Video-X-Pix, who picked up
Careful, He May Be Watching
for distribution. What was interesting about that show was there were so many people I had not seen in years. It was like a class reunion. Herschel Savage, Randy West, John Leslie, Serena, Kelly Nichols, Ginger Lynn, Amber Lynn, Veronica Hart, director Roy Karch, and Bill Margold were all there. I’d worked with and for all of them except Kelly Nichols. It was a lot of fun. We gabbed like old hens. Amber is working on getting her domain name back. She’s doing real estate and has returned to making movies. Ginger’s still doing films as well as radio. Veronica is producing and directing horror and sci-fi flicks.

John Leslie was directing tons of adult films in Europe. Things were better between us. We sort of patched things up shortly before he died. His death was, though, rather untimely — a stroke — so it wasn’t like he was consciously making deathbed amends. Maybe the soul simply knows more than the conscious mind does.

Randy West does some adult industry work, but not a lot. He lives in Vegas, where the lifestyle certainly suits him. Serena is somewhere in Northern California but I have no idea what she’s up to. Kelly’s a makeup artist. Nina’s still active making movies, too. The MILF thing is very popular now. I could lose a few pounds — or maybe even not — and get back into it if I wanted, and could probably command a pretty penny, but the thought of it just doesn’t do it for me. Been there, done that. Time for new chapters of my life to be written.

I got a lot of their contact information and ultimately it served me well because I got together a group of them for another signing in Seattle. That event wasn’t all fun, though. One nicely dressed, normal-looking fan wanted a picture taken with me. But as I posed with him I felt his hands sliding down my back. One of the things I do with fans when they put their hand around my waist is I get a firm grip on their thumb. If they try something, all you have to do is pull straight back on their thumb and they’ll go straight down to their knees.