Traci Lords Read online

  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.

  That evening he told me tales of his marine corps days and confided in me that he’d been AWOL for nearly a year. I wondered if being AWOL was a crime and stored away this drug-induced confession. I was pretty sure something would happen if I were to tell on him, but what? Could this be my out? Who would I tell? The police? No way! I was a sixteen-year-old runaway nude model—I wasn’t going anywhere near cops. I was afraid of what they’d do to me. What would they do to me anyway? Was nudity a crime? Stop it! I ordered myself, snorting another line and searching his blue eyes. Wow…he was in the same boat as I was—on the run and always looking over his shoulder.

  Sonny rambled on about the jagged three-inch scar that crossed his face, saying his father had given it to him. Apparently, he’d been taken away from his parents several times as a child and was only four years old the first time one of those beatings sent him to the hospital. I listened as his body shook with emotion, feeling that I understood him now. His pain flooded my heart with sympathy, pity, and total rage. How the fuck do these things happen to children? I wanted to tell him that I understood what he felt, but stayed silent, stuffing the words back inside, doubtful I’d ever tell my deepest, darkest secrets to anyone. I knew then that I would never hate Sonny. But I also knew that the time bomb ticking in this man was even closer to exploding than my own, and I was terrified of being around when it did.

  Besides Roger, Sonny was the only person who knew how old I really was and what I really did for work. He was an adult—six years my senior—and I believed he had to understand the world better than I did. He’d known my age for a while, and although I hadn’t intended to tell him what I did, it just sort of came out one evening.

  Tim North was pushing me to go further in my modeling sessions, and I was rattled by the pressure, so I scored some blow to take the edge off. Sonny came back later that night and sometime during our private coke party, I confessed to being a nude model. Waking up the next day, I had a pounding headache and totally forgot it had happened until my boyfriend reminded me he knew my secret. Instantly, I regretted telling him, scared he would use it against me—and later he did. He got off on it and started bragging about how he was dating a centerfold girl.

  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 wrap 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, I 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 all 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.

  I abandoned the thought in favor of liquid. My mouth was twitching from the coke. I needed to balance it out and ended up at my designated perch on the patio of the Poop Deck. I was just finishing off a pitcher of Budweiser, grooving to the soothing sound of the Eagles and feeling like nothing really mattered, when Sonny came waltzing in. He picked me up out of my chair and wrapped me in a hug. He kissed me softly, singing “My angel is the centerfold” loud enough for the whole bar to hear.

  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 bestselling 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.

  Needing the cash, I agreed. North told me it was a soft-core porn film for cable. I was hired to walk around looking pretty, and was asked to bring several bikinis and a selection of high heels. Stopping by the liquor store on the way there, I stashed a couple cans of premixed vodka and orange juice in my backpack for courage.

  The movie was being filmed in a mansion deep in the San Fernando Valley. When I arrived on the set early, I couldn’t find anyone who knew where I was supposed to go. I was told I should look for Richard, the director, who would tell me what to do. Continuing my search up the stairs, I crossed paths with several half-naked girls with very large breasts. They were laughing and seemed to be having a good time. I thought this was a good sign and continued along the hallway feeling more at ease.

  I’d sat in traffic for almost two hours and I had to pee like a racehorse. Pleased to find a bathroom in the direction of the noise I was following, I walked in and was greeted with what looked like the hygiene aisle at the drugstore. There were condoms, jellies, foam, and douches of every flavor on the counter. An empty beer bottle sat in the sink and from the smell in there, someone had been smoking pot.

  I relaxed even more. These people were just having a good time, partying and hanging out. As for all the products, I guessed someone had serious hygiene issues. I was a bit creeped out by that, but I put it out of my mind and laughed at my lack of experience with such things. A guttural moaning coming from somewhere down the hall startled me.

  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 oj 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.

  The image of all those breasts and asses, arms and legs wrapped around each other was fresh in my mind. It was a bizarre tangle of flesh, which I found erotic. The people had become a sea of groping, groaning bodies and I was amazed at the very matter-of-fact way the women acted. They stripped without any hesitance whatsoever and spread their legs without any hint of shame. What did they know that I didn’t and how di
d they find out?

  As I poured myself a vodka, the stud of the moment, Tom Byron, walked in and started flirting with me. He asked if I lived around there and how long I’d been modeling, and though he seemed nice enough, I told him nothing at first. But he had this sweet, dopey puppy-dog thing going on and I let my guard down. 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.