The Other Hollywood (19 page)

ERIC EDWARDS
:
I never really hung out with “the” crowd, but I went to Bernard’s. You’d walk in, go down a couple of steps, and pick a table on your left-hand side.

The bar is on the right—and there you would see all the faces that you probably just “worked with” for the day: Kelly Nichols, Vanessa Del Rio, Tim Connelly, Marlene Willoughby, Susie Nero—and all the girls coming off their shifts at the Melody.

RHONDA JO PETTY
:
I went to New York, and the only time you’d see me out was on a set or at Bernard’s—that is, in the bathroom at Bernard’s doing cocaine. You could always get cocaine at Bernard’s.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Tina Russell had been a pretty hot looking chick, right? You know, having seen her face in pictures and on billboards in Times Square, I was thinking I was going to meet this beautiful little wood nymph.

But when I walked into Bernard’s with Marc Stevens and Helen Madigan, Marc said, “Oh my God. Tina’s here.”

Helen said, “Oh, shit.”

I asked, “What’s the matter?”

Helen told me, “Tina’s in bad shape.”

FRED LINCOLN
:
Maybe a year before Jason hooked up with Jean, Toby Ross did this film starring Tina Russell called
Not Just Another Woman
. Toby had billboards on Broadway and on Sunset Boulevard with Tina’s picture on them. Tina—she was gorgeous. Oh, she was beautiful.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Tina was estranged from Jason at that point because he was with Jean Jennings. And she was just a mess. She smelled, and she was fat and bloated from booze and dope—it was like Anita Pallenberg, you know? Just horrible. I mean, you could feel the negativity coming off her. I thought I was going to meet this beautiful girl. Instead, I met this troll.

FRED LINCOLN
:
I used to say to Jason, “You know, how come Tina’s not working?”

He’d say, “Oh, she doesn’t want to.” But that wasn’t true at all. Jason just didn’t want her around. Jason just abandoned her for Jean. It was pretty sad. That’s what broke Tina’s heart, and she just started drinking.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Whenever I saw Tina in Bernard’s after that—which was like three or four times—she was on dope and drunk every time. You know, just fucked up. It was scary because she was completely bloated. I think she was trying to kill herself. Slowly.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Yeah, Jason really upset Tina because when he fell in love with Jean, he made Tina work as Jean’s makeup person. What the fuck was that? Tina could still work; Tina could still make movies. She was incredible.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Jason Russell was a little intimidating, and I could see how he could be controlling. I mean, I never worked for him again after I came in Helen’s eye.

I can still hear him barking at me: “Come on her mouth!
Come on her mouth!
”

FRED LINCOLN
:
When Jason left Tina, she just fell apart. She just couldn’t deal with it. It broke her heart; it really did. And she just hit the bottle. And drank herself to death.

I think she was in her twenties.

NEW YORK CITY
1976–1977

FRED LINCOLN
:
I was working as a production manager for Gerry Damiano and his partner, Vince, another hairdresser from Queens. They were making a movie called
Satisfiers of Alpha Blue,
and Tiffany Clark was one of the people Gerry had brought in to star in it.

TIFFANY CLARK
:
When I got off the plane, and Fred Lincoln picked me up, it was love at first sight. Well, to be honest,
lust
at first sight. Fred dropped me off at my hotel, and it was the usual boring things: “Do I know my lines? What will I wear tomorrow? And how the hell am I going to get this man to fuck me?”

There had to be a way. I mean, he was only human, right?

FRED LINCOLN
:
I picked Tiffany up at the airport, and she was wonderful. So full of life, so…

TIFFANY CLARK
:
The next morning Fred came to the hotel to pick up some of the other girls who had to be on the set early. When he got there I was downstairs waiting for him—casually sitting in the lobby smoking a cigarette. When he approached me, I told him I just wanted to make sure I knew what time my call was.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Tiffany was wearing her sexiest outfit. The connection was instant.

TIFFANY CLARK
:
Fred is not a stupid man. By the way I was dressed it was obvious I wasn’t concerned with work; I was interested in getting laid. Fred played my game. He told me he’d be back at noon to pick me up. I
smiled and returned to my room. I knew by the look in his eyes that until noon I would be close in his thoughts.

FRED LINCOLN
:
When I came back to the hotel, Tiffany was really flirting with me.

TIFFANY CLARK
:
When we got to the set we were both too busy to pay much attention to each other, but Fred found a moment to ask me out later that evening. I, of course, accepted, seeing that he made it sound so innocent—I mean, he asked if I’d like to see some of New York before I went back to L.A.

FRED LINCOLN
:
We went to Bernard’s—and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, so eventually that was the end of the tour.

TIM CONNELLY
:
I was hanging out at the Melody, watching Helen Madigan strip, and I went into the bathroom to take a piss, and I hear this porn actress I know in the next stall selling a vial of urine to a guy.

He’s going to pay a hundred dollars for this vial, but only if she can pee in it while he watches.

I just thought, “I love my life!
I love my fucking life!
”

KELLY NICHOLS
:
I started as a makeup artist in L.A., but then I did a girl/girl scene to get money to go see my boyfriend, Barry, in New York City. So I did not see this as being a career move. This was just something to make money, like nude modeling.

But when I got to New York, Barry didn’t look like Barry. He’d completely cut his hair, and bleached it bright yellow. Real punk. He lived in one of those godawful apartments on Seventy-first and Columbus—you know, you walk in and there’s the bunk bed and a bathroom over here and a window to jump out of—except it’s facing bricks, ha, ha, ha. And if you don’t get along with the person you’re with, oh God help you!

This is what I walk into: Barry needed money for rent. He’s two months behind. So already I’m right back in the pattern. We go to his work. Well, the theater he’s working at is Show World. And he’s not a projectionist; he’s an actor on stage. And he’s been fucking Serena, who I knew when she was a nude model and was with Jamie Gillis.

I’d given up everything I had in L.A. to come out to New York. I wasn’t prepared for this.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Helen would be the feature dancer once a month at Show World and then she’d dance periodically at Mardi Gras on Saturday. And I learned early on—don’t ask. Because I’d go meet her on a Saturday afternoon, and she’d smell like cigars and have, you know, a purse full of one-
dollar bills and some coke, and all I really cared about was, “She’s got coke! She’s going to buy me lunch!”

But Helen always seemed to want to take a shower right away, before we jumped into bed, which was fine with me. So I looked the other way. I didn’t really know what she was doing, and I didn’t want to.

KELLY NICHOLS
:
When I get to New York, I’m just with Barry. So whatever he says goes. I will follow his lead. If he snorts it, I’ll snort it. Well, we meet some people, and they decide to take me to an after-hours place, the Nursery, where we meet up with some old girlfriend. They lay out some lines, and I don’t like coke, but I do it ’cause everybody else is doing it.

I snorted what I thought was coke—and that was the end of me. Barry says I walked away with somebody. I don’t know; I was so angry with him later on, but I realized he was also under the influence. But he should’ve protected me. I don’t know what I expected, but I ended up with my clothes off, in a room apparently under the club. Some poor guy was handing me my clothes and trying to get me outta there. I don’t remember any of it.

I just felt really sick and violated and—and just awful. It was the first time I got raped. My pants and panties were torn; I had to use my shirt to cover myself. I had no money. I didn’t know how to get to where I lived from the Nursery. The guy took pity on me and gave me some money, and I think I must have given good enough instructions to get me to Columbus and Seventy-first.

TIM CONNELLY
: I’m sure there were probably some guys, some good-looking guys, and after a couple of vodkas during Mardi Gras, Helen probably grabbed some cock and went a little bit further than I would have been comfortable with.

But I just felt like I had to look the other way because who the fuck am I to judge? I’m dating a stripper. How can I say,
“You can’t spread your pussy that wide?”

At the same time, if I’m in Bernard’s waiting for her and a stripper walks in and takes me in the bathroom and wants to fuck me, I’m gonna nail her, you know?

KELLY NICHOLS
:
Some time in the morning, I stumbled home and sat outside the door. Barry finally came home three hours later. And again, there were no apologies.

He was angry with me for some reason—I don’t know why. I was the one that got abandoned. So Barry talks me into going to work at Show World.

TIFFANY CLARK
:
The next day I was supposed to leave. Fred drove me to the airport, and when I got out of the car—then came the tears. He was a wonderful man—what could I do?

Fred held me in his arms and told me not to worry; if we were meant to be together we would. Well, as it happened, when I got to the ticket counter they told me there was no plane until the next day. I called Fred, and he came back to the airport. Fred and I seem to spend a lot of time in airports.

When he came back, he told me he could get me to another airport in time to catch another flight if I wanted to. I asked what he meant by “if I wanted to,” and he just smiled. Well, I never answered until the last minute, when Fred had to make a decision—either go straight or turn to go home.

We both looked at each other at the same time and said, “No airport!”

KELLY NICHOLS
:
It was kinda fun working at Show World; it was like I was in theater. Barry was a good actor. It was funny. He put on some little shorts and put a collar on my neck with chains. I wore some little Danskin spandex thing, which would later be torn off of me. And some whips and stuff. But it was not sex. It was just goofy stuff.

They were paying us sixty dollars a show or so, but Barry had a friend there named Tim Connelly and his girlfriend Helen Madigan. Helen and Tim were doing the sex shows, and they were cool as cucumbers. Tim was in a rock band. Helen was gonna sing, and she was a stripper on the side. I started to feel okay after I’d met them; seeing another couple that acted like all this was normal
made it
more normal. Tim was just really pragmatic: “Okay, I gotta do another show.”

TIM CONNELLY
:
Helen and I were on-again, off-again. She was living with her sister sometimes and staying with me part of the time. That’s when I met Kelly Nichols, who I really liked and we really hit it off. Unfortunately for Kelly, her marriage to Barry was crumbling.

KELLY NICHOLS
:
Basically, Barry got us thrown out of the apartment on Seventy-first and Columbus, so basically we were on the street. I was paying the rent; we’d go to nice restaurants, and I’d pick up the tab. I wanted it to be okay between us.

At some point, though, I ran outta money. Then Barry heard that somebody was gonna do a porn film. It turned out to be this sweet little gay guy named Chuck Vincent. Chuck took a look at me and said, “Oh, this is great. You’re a Penthouse Pet,” which I had been when I was nude modeling. I started off working with Hal Guthu, who also did nudes of Demi Moore. And Chuck Vincent loved the fact that I could do dialogue.

Chuck said, “We’re gonna shoot all around Europe. We’re gonna do Florida. We’re gonna do San Francisco. We’re gonna shoot all over.”

But Barry and I, who are married at this point, are literally on the streets, living in a hotel off of Forty-second Street. A real divey Times Square place that smelled horrible. One day I got on the elevator and an old lady jumped on my back and started hitting me on the head. Just insane.

The Chuck Vincent film had a real complicated plot, so Barry insisted that we get four thousand up front. Chuck was very cool; he gave us the four grand. He was going to pay me sixteen thousand, so we could get a fresh start. This was a good thing.

Well, Barry flips out. All of a sudden he gets righteous: “Now we have the money; let’s split.” He wants to leave. It was really weird; I still had a moral code—these people had paid us money. They deal with banks. They could lose more than their asses. And we made a promise. You make a promise; you stick with it.

We ended up having a huge fight, with him crying on the floor screaming at me, begging me not to be in porn. So Barry’s outta my life. He just goes away.

Then I was alone. Just on my own.

TIM CONNELLY
:
One day Helen and I were doing shows at Show World, and Kelly Nichols came to see us—and ended up on stage with us. Kelly was high, really high—speed or coke or PCP or something. I was really high, too; it was one of those moments where I just thought,
I’m going to be in trouble later,
you know, because I’m letting this whole thing happen around me.

Here’s Kelly, this available woman who wants to fuck. And here’s my girlfriend, who’s really high and is throwing herself into the moment because she can feel this energy exchange between us and she just wants to be in the middle of it because otherwise she’s going to get left out. I fucked Kelly onstage. It was weird; I didn’t like it. It wasn’t what I wanted. But then Helen had to go on the road for a couple of weeks…

KELLY NICHOLS
:
I’d met Tim through Helen, who I became friends with while I was with Barry. Tim used to ask me to come see him play; the two of them would call me when they were out at the clubs. So I went out and hung out with them as a couple. What I didn’t know was that things were blowing up between them. Tim was working hard as hell to play drums, and he was a great drummer. Helen was partying a lot. And their scene was quickly deteriorating.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Did I fall in love with Kelly Nichols? Absolutely, immediately. She was the love of my life at that point.

KELLY NICHOLS
:
Tim was working at a restaurant by day and being a rock and roller at night. He invited me out once to hear him play, and I found it fascinating. I really liked the rock and roll scene. I had been involved with this goofy disco shit in L.A., largely because I could get away with it. You know, cute girls and gay discos go together.

But with a rock club, you needed a reason to go inside, unless you’re a groupie—and that wasn’t really my gig. I’m too shy to be a groupie. But when I went to see Tim, I had a reason to be there. So we quickly kind of fell together. We were two lonely souls who hadn’t found ourselves yet, and our view of life was that it was just the two of us against the world.

So Helen moved out, and I moved in.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Tiffany and I had the most idealistic relationship any couple could have. She was with me for two weeks. We never fought. We were never jealous.

We went to the Hellfire Club, and these Swedish twins were hitting on her. I mean, these guys looked like models—you know, ripped abs, big muscles—and she was like, “Wow! They want me to fuck both of them!”

I said, “You know what? If there were girl twins here, and they wanted me to go home with them, and you didn’t let me, I would never forgive you. So go! Enjoy! Have fun! This doesn’t happen every day.”

Tiffany was back by 5:30 in the morning. She said they weren’t as much fun as me. What can I tell you? That’s the kind of relationship we had.

KELLY NICHOLS
:
Angel dust was my drug of choice. I turned Tim onto it ’cause I found out he wants to run and be real rock-and-roll skinny, too. So he smokes it and goes running. Half the time you go running. And half the time you’re stumbling around in the dirt. Then we both find out we like to fuck on it.

But I’m going through this kind of weird moral quandary because I have a girlfriend who’s hooking, and she wants to know if I want to try it. So I try it a couple of times but don’t like it. Tim was just like, “Whatever brings the money in.”