Inside Seka - The Platinum Princess of Porn (6 page)

The next thing I knew they were unpacking my clothes. It may have been the happiest moment of my life. It was hard for it to sink in, but this young girl finally had a home.

4.
Blonde

I knew my aunt and uncle would be good to me. What a wonderful feeling to be in a loving environment! There were even the familiar smells of food throughout the house. The next thing I knew I was being enrolled in school, so it all started to feel real. For the first time in a long time, I felt a sense of belonging. I knew I was going to be okay. My uncle let me do anything I wanted, but my aunt made sure my grades were good or I’d be threatened with losing certain privileges. Making it through eighth grade unscathed, I was just happy to be a normal kid. I had a new life and it was a happy time for me — even when I had to go to church on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. But I figured, what the heck? It was a small price to pay. Actually, it gave me some sense of structure. To this day, I’m not an atheist. I don’t think,
“Boom,
we’re here.” I think there’s a supreme being of some sort. There has to be some rhyme or reason to everything. The world’s a pretty spectacular place.

Then came high school.

I went to Hopewell High. A lot of the students’ parents worked in the factories. There was a Firestone plant in the area, the Reynolds Aluminum Company, and a factory called Hercules. It wasn’t a rich town by any stretch. There may have been a ritzy part of town, but it certainly wasn’t Beverly Hills. The kids were pretty normal. As the new kid on the block, I started to make friends.

I did well academically — usually a B average, which for somebody who didn’t work that hard was pretty good. I was actually having too much fun to study because I had this whole new life. We had elective classes and I was told I had to take Home Economics, which was kind of boring to me. I really wanted to take Shop. I loved tools. To this day, I get excited when I go to a Lowes or Home Depot. When I walk in, I don’t go to the curtains or anything like that. The first place I go is the tool department. That probably comes from my dad and Uncle John.

I was still a tomboy. I wasn’t interested in being a cheerleader. Instead of discovering boys, I found sports. My cousin Diane was on the basketball and softball teams, so I tried out for both. I made first string on both teams. I was a softball pitcher and the center on the basketball team. I ended up getting my cousin demoted to second string, but there was no friction between us. She still played, but she was much more involved with church and choir anyway. We were junior varsity in both sports in the ninth grade, ending up top five in the district. I also played field hockey. I loved those contact sports.

That year was probably one of the happiest in my life. I had a new home, a safe place to live. And although I didn’t really hang out with my teammates, we had camaraderie. My aunt expected me home to do my chores and homework. She didn’t allow me to date. At the time, I wasn’t interested in boys anyway. Sports were more important to me. I hadn’t had any urges yet. When she kept bringing up dating, I was like, “What is this about? Whatever.”

At the end of ninth grade, I found out I could skip tenth grade if I went to summer school. I had enough credits to be classified as a junior. So I did. Summer was pretty uneventful except for my passing with flying colors.

I was suddenly a junior, a true high schooler with dances and parties and a real social life. The sports were still there, but I had to try out again because it was a different grade. I made all the teams. We were division champs in basketball, which was very exciting because we traveled to different schools throughout the region.

And then came the beauty pageant.

There was a girl on the basketball team named Debbie, a very pretty Greek girl. Mind you, there weren’t a lot of “ethnic types” where I went to school. Just black kids and white kids. She had green eyes and beautiful long, thick, straight blonde hair down to her waist. She looked at me one day and said, “What do you think of this beauty pageant?”

I didn’t know a thing about it. Once she filled me in, I said, “I think it sounds stupid.”

She kept after me, saying, “We should do this, just for shits and grins. If we don’t win, we can’t shave our legs or armpits for a month. If we win or place, we can shave.”

That was a real threatening bet.

Neither of us wanted to admit that we really wanted to do it. But being contestants wouldn’t be in keeping with the fact we were jockettes.

We both tried out and made it. The day of the event, there were three judges and the whole school came. There were fifty of us on the large auditorium stage. There was no talent contest involved, which was good because I can’t sing or dance. I was contestant #32, which I still remember to this day.

I was nervous as hell. The lady who lived across the street was a hairdresser. Before the pageant, I went to her to get frosted blonde streaks in my hair. But the whole thing turned blonde. That was the first time I’d gone blonde. Ironically, I said to myself, “Oh shit, this screws up my chance of winning.” I wasn’t used to it. As I walked up on stage, I thought it was the dumbest thing I had done in my life. I was an athlete with what I thought was a bad dye job. I just felt stupid. But my teammates and the boys’ football team started screaming and applauding when I walked out, which kind of surprised me because I was still pretty unaware and uninterested in boys. It felt good but it also felt weird. I wasn’t crazy about wearing a dress, either. And it was hard to walk in high heels because it was something I’d never done before.

The judges started eliminating contestants. They went down to twenty. Then to ten. Debbie and I looked at each other incredulously. I never thought for a minute I’d win. I never thought of myself as a pretty girl. Just average. And if you told me boys were looking at me, I’d have said you were crazy. I had male friends because of sports but that was about it.

Suddenly, we were down to the final five. The whole thing seemed unreal to me. I’m thinking, “Holy crap, I may actually pull this off.” Debbie and I were looking at each other and laughing, “Are these people blind? Don’t they know what they’re doing?”

They eliminated number five.

If you won, you led the Junior/Senior prom and were crowned “Miss Hopewell High School.” Not that there were a lot of duties. You were in parades for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, those kinds of things. I looked at Debbie and whispered, “How is this going to affect our basketball games if we win?” She just laughed.

The final four were standing there and I started shaking like a leaf; I was so nervous. They called out the second place runner-up, which was Debbie. She just looked at me and gave me a thumbs-up.

Then they called the first place runner-up, which was the girl everyone thought was going to win.

There I was, standing next to the last remaining girl and the first thing that went through my head was that maybe being blonde wasn’t so bad. Debbie was blonde, too. But I was getting ready to walk off the stage.

And then they called my name. Yes, my name.

It was like something out of a dream. Everybody’s jumping on me and kissing me and putting a crown on my head and I actually said, “Debbie, what’s going on?” I just didn’t absorb it.

“You won, you crazy person.”

It didn’t sink in for two or three days, but it felt pretty damn good. I was starting to accomplish things. My time served had started to pay off.

5.
Beauty Queen

I was instantly popular. My picture was all over the school and local newspapers and suddenly everyone knew who I was. People acted like they liked me because I was the beauty queen. Ironically, this made me feel awkward because I felt I was on display all the time. I wasn’t a feminine, prissy girl. I was still a tomboy and I liked it that way. But whenever I walked by I would hear, “There’s Ms. Hopewell High School.”

People would point and whisper and I had no idea what they were saying, but I assumed it wasn’t good. I was suspicious and not at all used to being treated like a beauty. I never had any positive reinforcement that I was pretty. Being abandoned doesn’t exactly make you secure.

To me, all this fuss was over nothing. I just walked out on stage and people stared at me. They weren’t judging me on my abilities or anything like that. Going out for basketball, you were picked because you were good. But being picked on your looks, you didn’t have much to do with that except for genes, personal hygiene, and maintenance. I guess I cleaned myself up pretty good for that pageant.

I’d have lunch with a group of students, but except for Debbie and some of my teammates, I didn’t have a lot of people I considered friends. And I certainly didn’t have a best friend.

Looking back, I probably chose not to get close with anyone because it seemed that everyone who was close had abandoned me. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. There was always a simmering anger over what my family had done to me. Sometimes I was aware of it, other times it was subconscious. Teammates and opponents saw this and knew not to get in my way on the field because I’d kick their ass. And at five-eight and one hundred fifty-five pounds with big legs from running all the time, those little girls didn’t know what hit them. But mostly I directed it towards my mother, and even my brother and sister for not standing up for me. Why didn’t anyone ever say, “Where’s Dottie? How come she’s not with us?”

My aunt went to get her hair done every week and she found out about the Miss Southside Virginia Pageant. This event didn’t involve just girls in our high school but also from neighboring towns. The beauticians put it together to showcase their hairdos and such. My aunt had her heart set on my entering it. Reluctantly I agreed, especially since there was a bathing suit competition I wasn’t happy about. If I could have worn one of those big, long bathing suits from the twenties I would have. I knew I wasn’t ugly, but I didn’t instantly think I was pretty because I won Ms. Hopewell High. I picked a one-piece turtleneck bathing suit. I accepted that I had good legs. The rest of me, I didn’t want anyone to see.

It was in a small meeting hall. There was no stage. Chairs were lined up on either side of the runway. There were maybe fifty to seventy-five people in the audience. Nothing too glamorous — far from it. I was scared and I still wasn’t used to walking in high heels, but I was told they should to be very high because it made your legs look even better.

There were around twenty to twenty-five contestants and most of them were not very attractive. I kind of felt bad for them, and then I felt worse because I thought I was being egotistical.

I won.

I thought to myself, “I’m just glad it’s over. I want to go home.” I’d fulfilled my duties.

Now even more people knew me, but it didn’t change me in the least because it was more about making my aunt happy.

In the fall of 1971, I was still a junior, and as Ms. Hopewell High School I was expected to be in the Thanksgiving homecoming parade. My aunt had an old Cutlass convertible so she volunteered to drive me in the parade. As we were all getting lined up, out of the corner of my eye I saw a group of men in white outfits and hoods. I tapped my aunt on the shoulder and said, “Hey, what’s that?”

She said, “Don’t look. You don’t need to bother with that.”

She didn’t really look around, which I thought was pretty odd. They were all men and I looked again in spite of my aunt. When I did, one of them took off his hood and it was my aunt’s boss. He looked directly at me and it was the coldest, blankest stare I had ever seen. He had always been so nice to me. I turned back around, did not wave, and stared straight ahead.

I didn’t have a clue who they were or what they did. I was very naive. We didn’t study them in school or see a lot about them on TV back then. I knew the Klan existed, but I didn’t quite know what they looked like and never imagined they were in my town.

Although a lot of the townspeople and students were prejudiced, I never was. I may not have had much exposure to people of different races, but I would talk to anyone. I like everybody unless they prove to me they’re a blazing jackass. But I knew this wasn’t good. Deadness had come across the air. Somehow I knew they weren’t supposed to be part of the parade, but it was eerie with them standing there waiting. They seemed ready to march. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be part of this.

We got the signal to start and I went with the flow. As people clapped and shouted for the teams and bands and cheerleaders, in my youthful excitement I pretty much forgot about the Klansmen. When it was over and we ended up on the other end of town, I saw that they hadn’t been in it at all. I had no idea why.

When I went into the store afterwards, my aunt’s boss was never rude or mean to me, but he looked at me differently. The Klan didn’t want people to know who they were. That was the day I realized there was evil everywhere, even in small town America.

6.
Boys

Living with my aunt wasn’t exactly carefree. The oldest of four girls and four boys, she was sort of the matriarch of the family after my grandmother passed away. She was “Big Mama.”

There were certain obligations. I had to get good grades. Be a good girl. Not have sex. Not even
think
about sex. Be a nun, a vanilla wafer.