Not Your Ordinary Housewife: How the man I loved led me into a world I had never imagined (30 page)

‘What crap!’ I argued. He would just have to get a normal job and work for a living, like everybody else. ‘You’ll have to study at night school while you work, like you should have done years ago.’

‘But the porn has so much potential, and we’re finally where we wanna be,’ he wheedled.

‘Yeah, where
you
wanna be. Exploiting
me
—making a living off
my
face,
my
body.’ Sure, his marketing of me was incredibly clever, but it was
my
image that was making the money.

‘Well, you couldn’t run the business without me,’ he said smugly. He had completely misunderstood—I didn’t need to any more. ‘I’m warning you,’ continued Paul, suddenly turning nasty, ‘you’ll be sorry if you go. Very sorry—I’ll make sure of it.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ I asked.

‘You’ll see.’ He scowled maliciously. ‘I’ll make you my hobby,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll regret it if you leave.’

Over the next few weeks, Paul and I argued incessantly. He hounded me relentlessly to reconsider. He went from anger to tears, professing his love for me and our daughter. ‘You don’t know how much you and Shoshanna mean to me. I can’t live without both of you. I’ll top myself—you’re all the family I’ve got.’ He had gone from threatening me to threatening suicide, in a kind of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transformation.

‘Please, I’m begging you. Don’t leave. Don’t desert me. It’s best for Shoshanna to have her father around. And I know what’ll happen if you move back to Melbourne—you’ll get a boyfriend, and before you know it, he’ll have moved in . . . And you know the statistics on child molestation.’

‘You’re crazy. You don’t know me very well if you think I’d move some bloke in.’

I was beginning to fear for Paul’s mental health. However remote the possibility, I did not want to be responsible for him killing himself. How could I ever explain
that
to Shoshanna? Or live with the guilt? I was torn between wanting to do the right thing by my child and my desperate desire to relocate to Melbourne. I agonised over my decision. Besides Shoshanna, there was the burden of responsibility I felt for Paul: it was true he had no family or friends, and it would be cruel to just cast him adrift. Maybe I was in denial about his psychopathic tendencies, but there were a lot of positives about him as well. I wondered what it was in me that allowed me to focus on the good in him.

‘Okay, here’s the deal,’ I finally told him, after exploring all options. ‘I’ll rent out the Balwyn house—which will break my heart, since it’s my spiritual home. And, because you refuse to move to Melbourne, I’ll stay living with you in Canberra—for Shoshanna’s sake.’

But it wouldn’t be a marriage in the conventional sense. ‘I’d rather be celibate than sleep with you,’ I stated calmly. ‘I don’t think I love you any longer and I know you don’t love me.’

‘But, pet, that’s just not true. I do love you . . . and I promise to reform. I know I’ve let you down before, but this time, I really promise.’

‘Stop with the bullshit,’ I snapped. As I saw it, people who loved each other didn’t get into serious exploitation the way he had with me. ‘You disgust me and I’m not having sex with you. That’s the only condition under which I’ll stay with you.’ I wanted absolutely no miscommunication about my position. Surprisingly, Paul said he could live with that, adding wryly, ‘I’ll just have to wank a lot.’

‘The only exception would be for you to inseminate me so we can have another kid—I’d hate for Shoshanna to be an only child like me.’ I told him that although I could get a sperm donor, I’d prefer all my children to have the same paternity . . . but that was up to him.

I longed for another baby and, but for our tenuous situation, would have become pregnant soon after Shoshanna was born. The urge to create a second biological child—an entire biological family—was stronger than any reservations I had about Paul or his parenting skills. No doubt this was linked to me not knowing my own heritage.

I believed Shoshanna needed a father, and that really was the clincher that overrode all other considerations. I knew she adored Paul—and vice versa—and I couldn’t bear to destroy the bond that the two of them shared. So I agreed to stay, even though I could have moved back to Melbourne and retired.

‘But I’m not making any more movies,’ I said. ‘Our marriage will be a farce, especially as you’re promoting me as this sex-crazed, horny housewife. How ironic.’

A few weeks later I received two letters, both from lifelong friends of Dory’s. One was an emotional letter from the Countess of Harewood; she’d seen Dory in Melbourne shortly before her death and had known before she’d opened my letter the news it would hold.

The other contained a newspaper clipping: accompanied by a Michael Leunig drawing, it was an article from
The Age
by Martin Flanagan, who had visited Dory just days before her death. He described how, with one night’s warning, she’d fled Austria while her family perished in concentration camps. He wrote of her intellectualism and compassion, describing her mind as ‘bright as sunlight off water’, and of the unfathomable life experience of this ‘brave’ person. She’d played for him with her arthritic hands and he recalled, ‘That afternoon, for the first time, I heard Beethoven live.’

I wept for the loss to humanity of the woman who was my mother.

17

Paul hadn’t exaggerated when he said we’d been deluged with responses to our ad. Each day the post-office box was filled to capacity. We were despatching the raunchy four-page freebie letter signed personally by me, freebie photo and all-important order form almost as fast as requests were pouring in. The system of using the R Category 2 warning stickers to seal the hardcore photos was working well and we were regularly ordering reprints from Fletchers. We were also meticulous with our requirement that clients should be over eighteen and would send back any unsigned forms to ensure we were beyond reproach.

The order form itself evolved into a slick soft-sell document: the euphemistically titled ‘Scratch ’n’ Sniff Set’ contained one of my pre-loved black lacy G-strings, complete with a polaroid of me wearing the item in question. Paul’s marketing of the amateur photo sets also showed his usual flair. With the tag-line
If they
showed more, they’d be X-rays
, he described each set: there was Masturbation (
After all the sex, I still find time for myself: ten
beautiful, dreamy but horny pix
); Lesbian (
Yours truly having fun
with a girlfriend, using fingers, tongues and toys
); Schoolgirl (
I look
very sweet, fucking and sucking in my old school uniform
); Oral/Cum (
My favourite oral pix: sucking and sperm-soaked cum shots on my
face, ass, pussy and breasts
) and Anal sex (
I love anal sex, and these
ten shots are extremely hot hardcore
). All were wrapped in a short story and sealed with the sticker warning that the material ‘may cause offence’.

The phone rang off the hook, with clients wishing to purchase the video and photo sets, and Paul quickly designed a phone order form with space on it to note individual requirements. (With one of his humorous touches, he put the heading ‘Pornographic Filth’ at the top of this form.) Some merely wanted to speak with me—usually with the phone in one hand and their dick in the other—repeatedly telling me what a thrill they got from hearing my voice. That they could actually call and speak to a porn star was a novel concept, which they embraced wholeheartedly.

I was becoming hoarse from the hours spent talking and Paul bought a telephonist’s headset so I could multi-task: often I engaged in erotic chit-chat with clients while simultaneously packing videos for the courier’s daily pick-up. Many clients wanted a horny phone call, and I was getting better at talking dirty. Occasionally I charged for these, but mostly I did it for free, especially if I liked them. Although I was not often lost for words, this was still one thing that I found difficult and avoided if possible.

Paul and I were working long hours. Through John’s company, we had access to their IT specialists and custom-made database. Data entry was a constant chore, but our mailing list was growing exponentially.

Paul returned one day from a trip to the CBD, telling me he’d just registered another business name—Fashions by Nikki. He waved the certificate in my face.

‘Jeez, what do we need that for? I asked, telling him that it sounded like a designer clothing label; but that apparently was his point. Admittedly, we could hardly have
The Horny Housewife
appearing on credit-card statements.

‘What would the wives say?’ he joked. ‘Our company name needs to be something totally innocuous . . . and besides, it ties in with the fantasy that the porn is just a hobby.’

Paul’s rationale was that the clients had to be able to explain their purchases to those wives who went through their statements. If questioned, they could claim they’d bought her a surprise present. He would set up a bank account and organise a credit-card merchant facility. ‘I’ve already designed a draft logo,’ he said, pulling out a piece of paper with a rough sketch. Underneath the business name was the subtext:
Fashion Accessories
and our contact details. It seemed he had taken care of every last detail.

As the business flourished, we were having difficulty keeping up with orders. We were getting weekly deliveries of videos from one of John’s companies, Capital Duplicators, which would in turn bill the joint venture. John suggested we hire a bookkeeper, and so one of his employees came to work for us—Flora, a middle-aged woman who possessed the required accounting skills.

Paul insisted on employing the accounting firm Deloitte Ross Tohmatsu as our auditors. We visited their city headquarters, and I was overwhelmed by its opulence: the green marble facade and plush offices. After our visit, we argued when I told him he was going overboard again; we didn’t need one of the world’s premier accounting firms doing our tax return.

‘You’re so Jewish—always tight with money,’ he sneered, sickening me with his prejudiced comments. Paul was always anti-Semitic when he was angry with me; when it suited him, he’d tell everyone that he was ‘saving up to be Jewish’ or that he wanted to learn Yiddish.

We’d only been in business a few months. Although we were turning over mountains of money, I didn’t know if things would remain viable long-term—I’d heard something on the news about new anti-porn legislation being mooted. Yet here we were hiring probably the most expensive firm in town.

‘But they’re the best,’ said Paul, completely missing my point. Thereafter, he would often steer conversations to a discussion of accountants, and then with great pride say, ‘Well, we’re with Deloittes’—as if this guaranteed our success. I cringed as I wondered what people thought of his puerile boasting.

It was at times like this that I wanted to totally dissociate myself from Paul and his values. The gulf between us was widening and I was finding it difficult to bridge the chasm that formed after the events surrounding Dory’s death. Nevertheless, our relationship reached a kind of détente. I was determined to take full responsibility for my decision to stay with him; I refused to succumb to a victim mentality—as he so often did.

Having decided to remain with him in Canberra for Shoshanna’s sake, I had to juggle being the best possible mother I could be while throwing myself into the business. Two separate personas began to inhabit my being: the real doting mother to Shoshanna, and the fictitious horny porn star to my clients. Neither my daughter nor my clients could know of this dual existence—my life needed to be perfectly compartmentalised.

The absolute separation of the office space within our home eliminated the possibility of Shoshanna being inadvertently exposed to porn—Paul’s wing was kept locked at all times. I longed to return to Melbourne with her, but she was now settled into school; also, part of me feared Paul suiciding . . . or police raids and another removal. I didn’t think any of us could cope with that.

I was determined to make the business as successful as possible, and I cannot deny that I enjoyed the energy that surrounded it. I suspected that Paul’s mental wellbeing depended on financial success, and our operation certainly provided a much-needed distraction from my grief.

I still hadn’t had time to mourn my mother’s passing; Paul hadn’t allowed that. Any references he made to her were still couched in derogatory terms—dark murmurings about her evil deeds or her anti-son-in-law will. I resolved to ignore such grotesque insults, preferring to focus instead on my relationship with Shoshanna and allowing her relationship with Paul to blossom. I spent my spare time sewing toys and knitting clothes for her, still attempting to assuage my guilt over her removal nearly a year earlier. I was homesick for Melbourne and miserable without friends, but she was my solace.