hexafu

One afternoon, I was asked to read a monologue from a play, set in the 1950s, about a girl who refuses to join her schoolmates in a bomb shelter.

The girl runs across the playground convinced that the world is about to end. Pleading to the sky, she asks God why she can’t live longer. She confides in him that she wants to make love at least once before she dies.

She continues on, talking about how she needs to know what it’s like to have her legs parted and a man enter her. I finished the reading to stunned silence and then applause. Afterward, I was congratulated by my classmates who, one after another, commented on how brave my performance was. My teacher had pushed me toward the subject I most feared: sex.

We worked like dogs throughout the picture, filming twelve to fourteen hours a day and completing the whole project in just ten days, which I was told was unheard of in legitimate films. Then the Roger Corman machine went to work quickly editing and completing the film. They wanted to get it out as soon as possible to benefit from the ongoing publicity around the Traci Lords scandal.

Not of This Earth opened in a theater in Westwood only four months later, and people said Corman and Wynorski had done the impossible, putting an ex-porn star in theaters across mainstream America. The Hollywood Reporter’s review read, “The answer is yes. She can act.” I was ecstatic and thought I was finally on my way to leaving the past behind for good

Fueled with a newfound confidence, I agreed to promote the film. Corman and Company jumped at the opportunity, setting up several interviews in the days to come and taking full advantage of the press’s desire to speak to me. Having no experience with the press or doing interviews, I trusted all the wrong people, agreeing to speak to Hard Copy and A Current Affair about my past as long as they focused on my present life and the new movie. I spoke candidly about my struggles with drugs, pornography, and the pain of recovery-really deep issues that I had never shared before. And I got knocked flat on my butt.

Both programs broadcast footage from the illegal porn films, showing clip alter clip of explicit photos with the smallest blockers allowed on prime-time television to cover my private parts. They referred to me as “the porn princess” and claimed I’d starred in more than a hundred porn movies, as if twenty weren’t enough. They even interviewed people from the porn world who either didn’t know me or barely knew me, and they all swore I was some kind of child genius who’d deliberately plotted to destroy them.

How could I have been so stupid? God, it hurt. And the worst part was my mother knew about the new movie and the TV interviews, and I was sure she’d seen it all. Once again I’d screwed up, shaming myself and my family in the process.

I was a wreck, and it nearly drove me back to drugs and out of the film business for good.

For the next few months I existed in a transitional prison. Tabloid photographers were still staking out my apartment, so I closed every blind, locked every window, and was glad I lived on the second floor.

Peering through cracks in the blind one day, I searched the trees closest to my balcony for men with cameras. I had a full day’s schedule and couldn’t wait any longer, so I made a mad dash to my Camaro in the garage.

Reaching the car door, I was almost home free when they appeared out of nowhere.

“Come on, guys,” I pleaded, “give me a break.” I struggled with my keys, modeling portfolio, and the morning’s coffee, my patience wearing thin.

“The movie closed ages ago!” I yelled. “I’m old news.”

Ignoring my misery, they snapped away. There must have been four or five of them pushing at one another to get to me. In addition to the tabloid guys there were the autograph hunters. Those vultures were the worst. Pissed that I refused to sign nude photos, they thrust explicit penetration shots in my face in retaliation. “How about this one,” one said, presenting a photo of my young face with a penis stuck in my mouth. The guy just laughed.

I wanted to rip his eyes out.

I roared away in my car, cursing at people as I made my way through traffic. Was this shit ever going to end?

nothing. It had been his idea. People magazine ran the photo with the caption “Guns and Poses” that implied Slash and I were an item. I was amused, Although Slash wasn’t my new boyfriend, I did secretly like him.

He was a rock star and I was intrigued. It was exciting playing a part in the early days of Guns n’ Roses, even if I was only there as a press stunt. It was the kind of energy that sucked me in, and I couldn’t resist saying yes when Slash asked me out and scribbled his address on the back of an empty cigarette pack.

The following afternoon at five, I arrived at Slash’s rundown apartment above Sunset Boulevard. Evidently rock stars don’t get paid much, I thought as I stepped over the smoldering cigarette butts embedded in the carpet outside his door. Knocking softly, I wondered what I was doing there.

Could this go anywhere or did he just want sex? It had been a year since my fling in Canada and I wasn’t interested in a one-night stand. This bizarre guitar slinger was kind of sexy. Perhaps this could be something more?

He answered the door looking like he’d just woken up and smelling faintly of last night’s booze. He had company, another one of the guys from the band. He apologized for running late and invited me to have a seat while he and his friend went into the back room to finish up their business. I was settling into the sofa, feeling uncomfortable at being alone in Slash’s living room, when something cool slid across my back. I turned around and there, slithering across the back of the couch, was the biggest snake I’d ever seen in my life.

Freaking out, I jumped up and ran out of the apartment as fast as I could.

I hate snakes!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the time I got home my fascination with Slash was a thing of the past.

My brief glimpse into his world was enough to make me realize he wasn’t for me. It was a little too fast, what with the snake, cigarettes, and rock and roll. I wanted a simpler life. He left a message on my answering machine saying he was sorry he had kept me waiting, thinking that was why I had left, and asked me to come back over. I didn’t return the call, and I never told him about my encounter with his slithery friend. Instead, I chose to simply remain a fan of one of the greatest guitar players of our time.