Inside Seka - The Platinum Princess of Porn (15 page)

I knew in this business using my real name was out of the question. I thought for a few seconds. For some odd reason, I flashed back to when I had briefly moved to Vegas with Frank. Frank loved his gambling and was always “looking for work” but never managed to find any. Making matters even worse, he asked me to tell people I was his sister, because the big shots wouldn’t find you as attractive and hire you at the hotels and casinos if they thought you were attached. I truly believed he wanted me to support him.

We were living in a one-room apartment near the Sands. It was back when the Sands was really the Sands. The person who owned our apartment complex was a casino pit boss. He took a fancy to me because I was young, pretty, blonde, and all that good stuff. He had a live-in girlfriend who became a friend of mine. Either Swedish or Yugoslavian, she was a stunningly beautiful girl with natural platinum blonde hair, big blue eyes, a great body, and a wonderful personality to match. She was all that and a bag of chips with salsa on the side. The landlord tried getting the three of us into a ménage a trois, which made me flip out because I hadn’t done a movie yet and my real sex life was completely conventional. The idea of having sex with a girl or three people was just too much for me at the time. The vibe I got was he only cared about her looks and used her to lure people into his web.

Her name was Seka.

Being exposed to someone like her was so exotic; she made a great impression on me. I was a barefoot hick at the time. It was probably the first time I even met a girl born in another country.

The vision of this girl with the exotic name stuck in my head. As I sat on the set trying to think up a catchy stage name, for some reason I blurted out, “Seka.”

The guy asked innocently enough, “How do you spell it?”

“S-E-K-A. It’s short, simple, it’s a four letter word, and considering the business I’m in, I think that’s appropriate.”

He just looked at me. “No last name?”

“No. Just Seka. Like I said, four letters and nothing more.”

I watched him jot it down and I immediately knew I had something. I don’t remember if I knew anyone else at the time using just a one-word name. Cher might have just started moving in that direction at the time; I don’t recall. Madonna was still wearing a training bra. Ironically, the gestation period was about nine months from the time I met my inspiration to when I made my first movie.

I had given birth to “Seka.”

And to this day I wonder whatever happened to my beautiful muse.

18.
The Platinum Princess

I began life as a brunette and then went to the local beauty salon as a teenager with the intention of getting some frosting — highlights — and they pulled too much hair through the holes in the plastic net they place on your head and ended up as a total blonde. It was an accident, but because of it I won my high school beauty pageant and based on that decided to keep the same look. It was a sandy, beach girl kind of blonde — not very unique, but it looked nice and I adjusted to a life of people referring to me as “the blonde girl,” which took some getting used to.

Sometimes cash was tight or I simply didn’t make time to go to a salon to keep up with the natural darkening of my hair, so I’d buy a bottle of dye off the nearest grocery store shelf and do it myself in the sink. No big deal.

Once I began doing photo shoots as well as movies, I figured I should make sure the “carpet matched the drapes,” as they say. I’d put some of the dye on my pubic region so I wouldn’t have blond hair up top and a dark brown bush below. I’d seen enough of that on the loops I saw back in Ken’s store and I thought it looked ridiculous.

While I was down there, I would give myself a nice bikini trim. Some of the photo work required me to be in bikini bottoms and I didn’t want some big panty afro sticking out and looking gross. This was all part of how I felt about the material I sold in the store. There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and if you’re going to do erotica, make it sexy, make it nice. Look good.

One day I was scheduled to do a loop. It was in this motel in L.A. that was commonly used to film pornos. Everyone knew about the place and if you watch enough films from the late seventies, you’ll see the same damn furniture, carpet, drapes, and bedspread over and over again. The Sahara, I believe it was called, on Hollywood Boulevard. In fact, the motel was even featured in an A-list Hollywood movie called
Hardcore
with George C. Scott.

George C. Scott was a wonderfully talented actor, but the only other person I tip my hat to on that movie was the location manager, who found our motel. Other than that,
Hardcore
represented exactly what Middle America wanted to think about porn. Everyone in the business was lured away from their wonderful families, drugged, forced to perform heinous acts against their will, and then murdered by a guy in a black leather mask in a snuff film. I am living proof none of that ever happened. In every snuff film I ever made, the guy in the leather mask missed. Ha! But seriously, all that stuff is bullshit, yet it’s the tale America wants to believe in order to sleep well at night, so Hollywood keeps accommodating them by making movie after movie spinning that same, tired yarn about how no one makes adult films willingly and we all get murdered.

Anyway, I got to the set early so I could get ready right there. I mean, it
was
a working motel, so they had a full bath and shower. My hair needed touching up, so I brought along the dye to do it.

I don’t know if I got the wrong stuff in my haste, I left it in too long, whatever. All I know is when I rinsed it out, it wasn’t normal blonde. It was white. Platinum. From the roots to the tips, without a hint of any other color anywhere.

I screamed! I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the girl looking back. I thought for sure they’d fire me for looking like such a freak.

When the cast and crew got there, every jaw dropped. God, I knew I’d really blown it this time. No one made a sound. Finally, someone said, “Wow. Cool.” I still didn’t know what to make of it. Wow, cool, good? Wow, cool, bad?

We started to work. No one could take their eyes off me. As the female in the scene, that’s not uncommon, but this was more than usual. It was freaking me out. I figured I’d never work again.

In addition to the platinum blond hair, I always shaved my eyebrows. Oddly enough, even though my natural hair color is almost black, my eyebrows are very light-colored and fine. I also don’t have a lot of body hair, and what I do have is rather blond — again despite not being a blonde. I think some of it has to do with my being a sun worshipper, but even on my ass and other areas that rarely get sun, what little tiny hairs are there are extremely light.

I shaved my eyebrows because it was too hard to see them to pluck them properly. Then I’d fill it in with an eyebrow pencil. Shaving them off allowed me total freedom in shaping them any way I wanted, so I made them as perfect as I could — although I wasn’t always successful, in my own humble opinion. I look at some of the pictures taken of me and I scream, “I look like Gloria Swanson or Joan Crawford!” It was such a severe look, like I was frightened or something. Again, I thought I’d blown it. I was simply trying to compensate for my natural flaws, as I saw them to be.

After I’d done a few movies, some director came up with the idea that I completely shave my pussy. With my girl-scaping and dyeing, I never looked like I had much bush down there as it was, certainly nowhere near as much as most of the other girls of the era. But this was a whole new thing for me and I think they even put it in the script. The shaving itself may have ended up on film. I can’t say for sure because I hardly ever watched those things once I filmed them, but that’s another story.

So part of my look, literally from the start, involved me being either closely shaved and then dyed, or completely shaven. For an era that was otherwise known for big, dark bushes on both men and women, I was different. I liked that part of the look. I still like it today. I don’t think everyone has to be shaved and it’s a pain in the ass to keep up with, but it beats having a monstrous chia pet down yonder.

Today, everybody in porn is shaved like a newborn baby. Some have credited me with starting the whole trend, but I can’t say for sure I had much to do with it. I’ll leave that argument for the film historians. But to me, being trimmed down there even feels better. More sensitive. And guys seem to like it, which is an opinion supported by all the movie girls today being totally waxed and shaven.

After that scene that day, I figured I was done for in the business. Little did I know the opposite was true. Industry people screened it and said, “Oh my god! Look at that hair, those brows, that pussy, that makeup (I always wore makeup, even during this hippy-era when lots of girls were going with the “natural” no-makeup look)!” And, of course, “Those tits!” I’m a naturally large-breasted girl. So were most of the women in my family. Today, any girl can go out and buy herself big bazoongas, but back then all the girls in erotica were natural. Some were big, some were small, and some were in-between, but we were what we were. I was one of the big-breasted ones, and deep down, most men never lose that infantile breast fixation.

After my dyeing accident, no girl in XXX looked like me — none. My look was dramatic, glamorous, and bold. While other girls looked like the girl next door, I looked like…I don’t know
what
the hell I looked like, which scared the living crap out of me. But I quickly learned it sent shock-waves throughout the business.
Everyone
passed that film around and began asking about me. Ken’s phone — not my phone, but Ken’s — began ringing off the hook. This look, which was as much accident as on purpose, got me more bookings than I could handle. The “Platinum Princess of Porn” was born.

19.
Swinging

Ken was always there while I was filming and it was uncomfortable because he was always lurking. The photographers and movie guys didn’t like to have the boyfriends on the set because the girls didn’t like it, but he’d still sit through the entire shoot, clearly getting off on it. I didn’t completely mind him being there because I really didn’t trust anyone else. I thought he would protect me if anyone tried to do something to me that I didn’t want done. They agreed to let him stay on the set to appease me.

Swinging was starting to be a big thing in mainstream society and Ken pressured me to try it. This had nothing to do with the movie business; it was just something that was going on between couples all over America.

Quite frankly, after having sex all day on the set, I didn’t want to have it at night. I was also getting tired of Ken always talking about my on-set exploits while we were in bed the night after a shoot. He was all turned on, but I was not only tuckered out, I was skeeved out that he wanted to turn our bedroom into a live sex show.

For me, sex was one way on film, another way with a lover in private. They talk about that whole “life imitates art” thing. I had no desire to “make love like a porn star” at home. I like to cuddle. I like to be romantic, more than graphic. I like the lights off most times, which you can’t do on a movie set unless you film with night-vision goggles.

Ken was different. Ken watched the porn, and then wanted to
be
the porn — with me, the real life porn star! When was I ever going to get a break?! I didn’t want to be on stage all the time, performing all the time, talking dirty all the time. That stuff isn’t love; it’s lust. Lust is fine; lust is great. But what is life without love?

In the adult biz, we’d heard about swinging for quite a while. But then the dams burst open and it was being written about in almost every mainstream newspaper and magazine in America. It became all Ken would talk about.

After reading some stuff on this new lifestyle, I figured, “What the hell? I can meet some interesting people. I won’t do anything I don’t want to.” And maybe it would get him off my back.

It was the days of Plato’s Retreat. But in California they had swing parties in people’s homes. The first time I went it was in a big, gorgeous house in the suburbs of Los Angeles. There were probably sixty to seventy people there. They were upper middle class and a mix of all races, creeds, and colors. My reaction was like, “Oh my God, don’t these people have any modesty?” This, coming from me, the porn star! But I always had that separation between work and play. Furthermore, I wasn’t an actual star yet. My first party was after only being in California a very short time.

There were fully clothed and naked people throughout the house from the second I walked in. There were skinny people, heavy people, well-built folk — it was a cornucopia of anything you could imagine. People were talking, swimming, eating, and oh yes, having sex.

It was at this private swing party that I saw two women together for the first time, and it didn’t shock me. In fact, I was intrigued by watching them. Yes, I’d seen it on film, but with the little experience I had making movies at the time, I assumed the lesbian scenes were just actors doing their jobs. But these ladies were clearly having a helluva good time. To top it off, there was a circle of people around them watching, like a peanut gallery. And it sure didn’t seem to bother them.

Being in the business, I had become far more comfortable around sex and nudity, but I still felt uneasy here and didn’t know what to say or do. There was no script, no director! I didn’t want to talk to anyone and chose to just sit, watch, and decide if I wanted to participate or not.