I was the center of attention for the first time in my life. I remember feeling important, even powerful. My sexuality had robbed me of so much, and now it suddenly gave me something that had eluded me in every aspect of life — control. I got off on the power my body held over that entire roomful of adults.
As I lay on the bed, the photographer showed me where he wanted my rear end. Then he asked me to really arch my back as I bent forward. Cupping my naked breasts, I slid my panties off, closed my eyes, and made the kissy face Tim North had taught me.
I spread my legs and caressed my breasts. Through a dreamy fog, I spotted Roger sitting in the corner of the studio, his hand buried beneath his coat, watching me. What was he doing? He caught me staring and immediately stopped. Was he masturbating? Disgusted by the thought of my honorary
“stepfather” doing such a thing, I avoided his gaze, and when we finished the shoot minutes later, I dismissed the incident as a vodka-induced hallucination.
I dressed quickly and, with the vodka buzz finally wearing off, felt unsettled by the afternoon’s events. I’d been turned on by the attention I’d received, and now it confused me. I became flooded with shame as I got dressed.
I had to get out of there.
Roger collected the two hundred and fifty dollars cash I was owed for the shoot. Apparently, the girls were paid at the end of the shoot in cold hard cash. I quickly lit the first of a series cigarettes I would chain-smoke that night.
Quiet on the way home, I listened to Roger cheerfully jabber on about how gorgeous I looked while I was modeling. I wondered what would happen if I said something about what I thought I saw him doing. Would he get mad?
Would he tell my mom I was a nude model? Would I be in trouble?
The beer was cold, the sun was hot, and I was drunk. When he offered me a ride home, I knew what he meant, I needed a place to sleep, and so I said yes. Sex was all I had to bargain with. I didn’t think I had anything else of value to offer, and wondered if other girls felt the same. Did all teenagers do battle with their hearts and bodies like I did?
I longed to matter to someone, to feel loved and needed. Was this man the one I’d been waiting for? Was he my knight in shining armor? As unlikely as that seemed, I was homeless and willing to sacrifice my body to bandage my soul.
He drove a motorcycle and I climbed on the back, both of us wasted. I let my dress blow in the wind, unconcerned by the gawking motorists.
He was a forgettable lover, and when I woke up the next morning, I crept out of his room ready to make a clean getaway. But I was busted by hisroommate, Eric, who greeted me with a “Good morning” cup of coffee and then asked about me. I told him I was a model, my name was Krissie, and I was looking for a new apartment. He was a sweet one. I wished I’d ended up in his bed while we sat for a while chatting until the blue-eyed stranger appeared in a towel.
Hell Is for Children
On a crisp fall day, only weeks after I’d first gone home with Sonny, I found myself washing his dirty underwear in the kitchen sink of a house we’d rented together in the modest neighborhood of Lawndale. I was now only about a dozen blocks from where my mother and sisters were living, and although I hadn’t spoken to any of them in months, I felt better just knowing I was practically sleeping in their backyard.
Homesick, I longed to push the pause button on the jagged life I was living.
I wanted to take it all back, to close my eyes and hear the voice of my history teacher, Mr. Atteberry, lecture the class on war. I was sure of only one thing: you can’t go back; you can only go forward.
I felt like a crazy person, terrified of what I’d do next. My tears soaked my boyfriend’s clean underwear.
Sonny was far from the storybook prince little girls dream about, but his presence provided me with a little comfort, making me feel I wasn’t totally alone in this big, scary world. There were things about him that scared the crap out of me from the start — his unpredictable temper for one — but for some reason I was still drawn to him. I was the moth — and no question, he was the flame.
Looking back, it’s clear to me I stayed in that relationship because I needed an adult in my life, someone who might save me from myself. Just about anyone would do, and Sonny picked up right where Roger had left off.
Life was about survival and drugs were my salvation. I used coke on a daily basis, as getting high was the only thing I looked forward to each morning.
My world was jagged and sharp, accompanied by a constant screaming in my head that needed to be stopped.
Sonny, my ever ready drug buddy, encouraged my partying lifestyle.
He was always fine the next morning, though, whereas the morning after our binges would find me feeling desperate, worthless, and utterly hollow inside. I was like a sleepwalker in traffic, unable to wake myself. Another fix would take me away from it all, so I moved through the days feeling like an outsider to my own body.
I went along with Sonny’s whims without a word of protest. I stood stupidly by as this twenty-two-year-old speed freak spent my money, slapped me around, and sadly made me feel right at home. But as much as I loathed the drama, I couldn’t leave him; instead, I confided in him and pampered him. I ignored the bruises and bloody noses he gave me, feeling like I deserved all the pain I got.
At age sixteen, I found myself living a version of my parents’ abusive relationship. And just like my mother, I was secretly plotting an escape.
Signing over my five-thousand-dollar Penthouse check to a car dealership in Torrance, I bought a shiny black ’67 Corvette. Since I hadn’t made it through driver’s ed before I’d dropped out of school, my driving skills were primitive to say the least, so I had to ride shotgun as Sonny took control and peeled off the lot.
The speed and power of that car both scared and excited me. I was wide awake, alert, had adrenaline pumping through my veins as Sonny tore through a middle-class neighborhood toward the wide open Pacific Coast Highway, where I would take a crack at mastering the gas and brake pedals of my future getaway car. We ended up celebrating my clumsy but accident-free arrival home by scoring some blow en route, and spending the rest of the night snorting coke.
As the weeks passed North continued to turn up the heat, pushing me to do hard-core stills and porn movies, and warning me that if I didn’t I’d be out of work. Panicked at the thought of not being able to buy food or pay rent or, more important, buy myself some peace-providing drugs, I sought Sonny’s advice. But when I told him I might actually be fired, he had a fit and threw a lamp across the room. He was unemployed and intended to stay that way. He said he needed time to develop his skills and slapped me when I asked exactly what those skills were. I realized I’d better change my tone quickly. You’re gonna pay, fucker, I thought as I put on my sweet sexy voice to smooth things over. It’s just a matter of time till I’m gone.
The next morning I called North and apologized for being difficult. I asked him for work, but he told me I was all “shot up” in the centerfold world. If I didn’t believe him, he said, I should look for myself. I did, and found out he was right. As I stood in front of the magazine rack in the liquor store on the corner of Inglewood Avenue, minutes from where I lived, I felt violated by the image of some freaky version of myself on the cover of several sleazy skin magazines. They didn’t even make me look pretty, I thought, feeling like the ugliest girl alive. God… I was hyperventilating. What do the pictures on the inside look like? Were they even worse than the “Pump Paula” pictures the jock at school had confronted me with? I couldn’t look.
Forget it .. just forget it. … North did this on purpose… He’s trying to fuck with me… motherfucker… Buying my beer, I practically ran out of the store.
What North said had been true.
I’d posed for every magazine on the rack by now, and the business was all
about new meat. I pictured myself lying in the butcher’s case at the supermarket, the plastic rap covering my body and a red “Reduced for
Sale” sign on my forehead. The image seemed very real. I was going off the deep end. I had to shake it before I ate a bottle of pills. I was thinking about death a lot lately, and that day I felt like I was daring God to strike me dead.
North’s words echoed through my head. Frantically, searched the house for drugs looking for Sonny’s stash. As I sniffed the white powder, my mind raced to thoughts of warm summer rain washing all the insanity out of my life, making it better. It’s just a transitional phase, I told myself. Any day now someone will find out about my magazines and tell my mom. She’ll go to the police and I’ll be in trouble, but I’ll live through it. I had no idea my mother had already made several trips to the police department. But no one had done much about it, since I was just another runaway lost in the system.
I fantasized about being able to tell all my secrets. It’d be like a dam breaking, and when it spilled, Ricky, Roger, porn … none of it would matter anymore. But what then? Would I be free?
I got high in our bathroom, paranoid that Sonny would come home from wherever he went and catch me doing his drugs. Screw him, I thought. It’s my money that bought them. He’d been living off me since we met, and I was over it. Unable to stand the thought of seeing him, or being seen by him, I raced out of the driveway and onto Pacific Coast Highway in my new shiny Vette. I soared along the highway blasting Pat Benatar on the stereo.
“Hell Is for Children” screamed through the air. Isn’t that the truth, I thought, wondering if I could bring myself to drive off a cliff and be done with it.
In his hands, he had a copy of the most recent Penthouse with Vanessa Williams on the cover. I only knew who she was because a few weeks earlier all of Sonny’s friends wanted to check out the swimsuit competition of the Miss America pageant and her name had come up. But at the time I had no idea how her girlie photos were going to affect my life. Now, there she was, Miss America, on the cover of Penthouse smiling with George Burns at her side, and while this normally wouldn’t have affected me at all, I was, in fact, the centerfold of that very issue.
I flipped to the center of the magazine. It really was me, and I was shocked to see how pretty they made me look.
I couldn’t remember taking those photos, but I must have because there they were. Sonny was jazzed to be with a Penthouse centerfold model and I was stunned at the attention directed my way. The bar was hopping with both men and women, and I was suddenly the main attraction. Patrons were going to the liquor store next door and coming back with their own issue of Penthouse for me to sign.
Signing my very first autograph as “Traci Lords,” I corrected the misspelled “y” to an “i” and felt important for the first time in my life, giggling about how they didn’t even spell my made-up name right. I was cocky and arrogant. Becoming the life of the party, I danced with Sonny extra sexy, showing off, and lifting my skirt as I’d seen fat Heidi do on my first visit to this bar. I was completely aware of the jealous looks from the women and lust from the men. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that perhaps I looked as silly to them as Heidi had looked to me. I only knew that I was “Miss Tracy Lords, September 1984 Pet of the Month,” and it felt good to be Her.
By the time my buzz wore off the next morning, the reality of what was going on hit. I knew there was something wrong with my body being available for the world to view in a porn magazine, and although it wasn’t the first time I’d seen myself in a nude layout, it hadn’t actually registered until that moment.
Still, I couldn’t stop myself. I was in way too deep and couldn’t possibly turn back now. I had North to answer to, Sonny to feed, and my unrelenting hunger for approval to satisfy. Besides, now I was a star.
That became the best selling issue in the history of Penthouse. While the TV reporters continued to gossip about the lesbian photos Miss America had done, there I was, right in front of the world, a naked fifteen-year-old girl staring up at them.
The attention that issue of Penthouse magazine brought me in the porn world sealed my fate. It was October 1984 when I graduated to doing porn films.
It just kind of happened.
The first time I walked onto a porn movie set I was wired. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before, and as I drove myself to the location I was exhausted and overwhelmed by the anxiety of imagining what it would be like. I had one line, which I’d practiced a dozen times the night before. North had told me my line was “I know what gets me hot,” but I had no idea what it referred to. All I knew was I was getting paid four hundred and fifty dollars a day with a guarantee of two days’ work and no nudity.
I’d made every excuse I could think of to North, trying to convince him that I was worth more to him as a centerfold model than a porn star. But it didn’t matter. My time had run out.
The movie was being filmed in a mansion deep in the San Fernando Valley.
Again following the noise, I found my director behind a camera watching a woman having sex with two guys. Blushing, I gawked at them. I had never seen anyone have sex before, and it was so aggressive, so primal the way this woman moaned that it scared the crap out of me. Oh my God, is that what they expect me to do!? I turned and ran down the hall to the front door.
I knew exactly what kind of movie this was now—and I wasn’t having it.
I tore out of the parking lot and was gone before anyone knew I’d arrived. I called North from a pay phone a few blocks away screaming at him for lying to me. He told me to “grow up,” pissed that I had left and saying I’d make him look bad. If I wanted to ever work again I’d better get my butt back there and apologize for being late. I hung up on him and sat in my car downing vodka and of at eight-something in the morning. I knew I had to go back. Where else would I go? What else could I do? I tried to imagine what having sex on-camera would be like, but I couldn’t even fathom it. I decided I’d just go back, at least apologize for quitting, and hope that North would still keep me on as a model.
By the time I arrived back at the house, I had a good buzz on and was feeling braver. This time everyone was waiting for me. I was rushed off to makeup where the director greeted me. I started to ask questions, but he interrupted me, telling me not to worry. All I had to do was walk around the pool in my bikini during the party scene. I searched his face to see if he was tricking me, but he seemed serious.
I felt better instantly. I’d gotten worked up over nothing and damn near ruined everything!
Sitting quietly having my face painted, I was glad I’d come back. Several women and a few men were wandering around, and every once in a while someone would pop in and say hello to me. When it came time for my scene I did just what Richard had said. I strutted around the pool in my tiny bikini as the scene was filmed from a bunch of different angles.
The next day during the final take of the party scene, all the people around the pool spent the afternoon having sex. As the orgy started I was told I was finished for the day and could go home. Collecting my things, I made a pit stop at the kitchen to get a drink.
83 of 256 hout any hesitance whatsoever and spread their legs without any
le. What did they know that I didn’t and how did they find out?
As I poured myself a vodka, the stud of the moment, Tom Byron, walked in and started flirting with me. I was wasted by that point, and since then I’ve often wondered if he’d been sent into the kitchen to seduce me or if he just got lucky. I’m still not sure why I let him have his way with me. I don’t know what I was thinking. All I can say is I never intended to be filmed having sex in that kitchen, and I only realized I was being filmed when it was nearly over and I had already given in to a feeling I had never known during sex—power.
And with that power came pleasure. I was blind to everything around me and I wasn’t acting for a camera. I was acting out.
That’s what porn did for me. It allowed me to release all the fury I’d felt my entire life. And that’s what got me off. Freedom, peace, revenge, sex, power.
I’d finally found a place to put my energies — I was vengeful, even savage, in sex scenes, fully unleashing my wrath. At the ripe old age of sweet sixteen, I was nothing short of a sexual terrorist.
Porn was a power trip for me. At the time I didn’t understand it, but in reality I was fighting to take back what had been robbed from me as a child.
There was a war going on in my heart and I was acting it out with my limbs. I was a sex-crazed, drugged-out wild child and I wreaked havoc on everyone I came across.
I had no one to talk to and nowhere to go. My drug habit consumed my every thought, and sex became a typical ending to most mornings, afternoons, and nights thanks to Sonny’s insatiable appetite. I’d grown accustomed to first pleasing him and then going about my own business, so sex became like this price I eventually had to pay for any measure of love I was going to receive, and that was just the way things were.
I didn’t know that sex and love could be one and the same thing, so sex became something that I both loved and hated. On the one hand, it made me feel scared and uncertain, since all my first experiences were violent ones, and on the other, it was power, so it gave me the only kind of control I ever knew. But resented that price tag. It made me angry, and that’s what I showed the world.
But on the inside, I was a mess.
And I was vicious. Maybe, just maybe, if I gave my body away, then I would somehow win back the control that had been stripped from me all my life. So that’s what I did, and porn became yet another drug in my junkie life.
hexafu 