Table of Contents
This book is dedicated to Harold whom without even knowing it made me a better person.
PROLOGUE
I HAD WANTED TO WRITE THIS BOOK
for years, but never knew quite where to start, and more importantly, if I even had a story that people would be interested in reading. Friends and colleagues kept pestering me to get it written, saying what fun it would be to have my name in print so that every time I popped into the local bookstore, I could glow with the knowledge that an autobiography with my name on it was sitting alongside such literary classics as Jenna Jameson’s
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star
or Ron Jeremy’s
The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz
.
The problem with my book wasn’t the title. I had thought of a title years ago:
Confessions of an Unlikely Porn Star
. I liked it, but there was something missing.
Out of the Blue: Confessions of an Unlikely Porn Star
. Much better! It conveyed the surprise I felt about being admitted into the inner sanctum of the porn world. Not only being invited in, but rising rapidly to the upper echelons of porndom, being on first-name terms with such legends as Jeff Stryker, Ryan Idol, Chi Chi LaRue, Gino Colbert, Matthew Rush et al. I had known these people for years through the magic of video. Now they knew me and I let their presences wash over me . . . their foibles, their tantrums.... I took it all in, knowing one day, when I had been cast aside, no longer buff enough to compete with the current crop of superstars, I would write a memoir of the adult industry—an exposé of the pallid underbelly of the Beast.
However, things didn’t quite happen that way. They never do. After a successful porn career in which I developed a big, dumb blue-collar persona (I realized this sold movies), I retired after winning Best Actor at the Grabby Awards in Chicago for my work in a movie I wrote and starred in called
Men In Blue
. Of course I didn’t retire, never to be seen again. That just didn’t seem to be on the agenda. I retired from acting and created my own production company, Big Blue Productions. I decided to write, produce and direct my own projects without anybody’s interference.
So here lay my dilemma: I wanted to write a tell-all book about the industry, but I was still smack bang in the middle of it. I have given this a lot of thought. Perhaps I will always be involved in the industry, writing salacious scripts when I’m sixty years old, asking nubile youths to undress in front of me so I can admire their creamy skin, forcing them to perform in front of my camera, giving me their most intimate parts of themselves, laying themselves bare for a piece of celluloid that will be forgotten in a year or two.
So then, when would I even get around to writing my book? Now seemed as good a time as any. If I succeed in capturing only a brief moment in time, it’s still a part, from my point of view, that hasn’t been captured before. Yes, now is as good a time as any.
CHAPTER ONE
“CAN SOMEBODY STOP that bloody Doberman licking Caesar’s balls?” I yelled. Eddie, my makeup man, ran over waving his brushes in the air.
“Shoo! Shoo!” he shouted. The dog ran off with a pack of five others that had been lying in the shade of a large oak tree, a pack including three Labradors, a giant poodle and a mutt of indeterminate breed.
“I thought it was the caterer,” shrugged Caesar, who had been in mid-thrust atop his co-star Dane Brando. I threw down my script and yanked at my thinning hair and for the tenth time that day wondered why I had ever even begun to attempt making a movie as epic as
Cowboy.
I’d written a script about a bodybuilder named Cowboy O’Connor who drifts across America using his charms to survive, the beauty of his physique belying the cruelty in his heart. Then I rented a 400-acre ranch in California, owned by a former porn queen, and we went into pre-production for
Cowboy.
I cast Caesar in the lead role, having already used him in one of my earlier movies,
Married Cops Do
. That one was about straight cops fucking each other. It made a fortune and launched the career of big, straight bodybuilder Duke Miller. Duke was a 280-pound Italian-American from Rhode Island. The night we met he told me over dinner how much in love with his fiancée he was. Later, in my guesthouse, I pushed every object that wasn’t nailed down into his arse while he knelt on the bed watching straight porn—
Gang Bang Girl #13.
Cucumber, champagne bottle, baseball bat, I had them all up there, and I had a bad crush on Duke after that . . . for a week.
Caesar and Duke had been a winning combination.
This was now two years later, and Caesar was a superstar. He was perfect for the role of Cowboy: 6 feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, 230-pounds of pumped-up testosterone-drenched muscle. Caesar was bisexual and lived with a pretty blonde lady. Like so many girls of the new millennium, she got off on the idea of sharing Caesar with another man. I imagine it was better than sharing him with another girl.
Caesar was an icon in the gay industry alongside such names as Ryan Idol, Jeff Stryker and Ken Ryker; all of whom I found to be totally fascinating characters. I’d spent six months Off Broadway starring in the play
Making Porn
with Ryan Idol, and due to our severe differences I swore I would never work with him again onstage.
However, we almost crossed paths again after Ryan jumped out of a five-story window and broke almost every bone in his body the night before he opened in a new Off Broadway comedy. The producers of the show phoned me and asked if I would step into Ryan’s role. They sent me the script. God, it was awful. No wonder Ryan jumped out of a window. If I was in the show I’d have been right behind him. Ryan, however, made a miraculous recovery and before I knew it, my cold glacial heart had melted, and we were both off to South Beach together to perform
Making Porn
at the Colony Theater on Lincoln Road.
Miami was sensational. It was July and very tropical. Wall-to-wall Cuban men: my favorite. And we were stars, darling! We stayed at a fabulous hotel called South Beach Villas, owned by a very jovial millionaire called Joe Pallant. Ryan and I each had our own villa that backed onto a pool that was always 120 degrees for some reason. It was like queer soup when all the gay boys were splashing around in it. Joe employed a stunning-looking staff to run the place. One employee, Javier, a dark-haired, dark-eyed lothario took a shine to my friend Keith, who played my best friend Jamie in the play. I loved him. He was Italian, and his mother looked like Gina Lollobrigida. She came to see the show one night in a backless dress that exposed the top of the crack of her ass. She was seventy. I fell in love with her too. Meanwhile, Keith and Javier began a sweaty, intense love affair that ended badly when Keith had to return to Manhattan. Keith worked part time in a hair salon there, and Javier flew to New York to be with him. Javier had the choice of South Beach and his own villa or sharing a studio apartment in New York with Keith. Keith was left crying over the Vidal Sassoon shampoo bottles.
Our production of
Making Porn
in South Beach got rave reviews. Ryan’s performance didn’t. His reviews stank. Mannie, the producer, (a 45-year-old with braces on his teeth) gave us strict instructions not to show Ryan any of the reviews. One night some of the cast got drunk and cut out the reviews and pushed them under Ryan’s door. Next thing we knew, Ryan turned into a raving drunk and on the penultimate Saturday night of the show turned up for the performance five minutes before curtain up. The show was sold out—350 seats, two shows—and Mannie raced around like a madman gnashing his braces.
“Where is he? Where is he?” screamed Mannie, as his boyfriend trailed behind looking every bit as skinny and pale as Mannie. They both lived in Detroit and Mannie’s boyfriend was a secret transvestite. When Mannie was busy, his boyfriend would put on high heels and a g-string bikini and vogue by the pool to “I Am What I Am” by Gloria Gaynor. Occasionally Mannie would catch him and there would be huge fights between them.
Back at the theatre, just as Mannie was about to implode, Ryan strolled in the stage door from the street looking cool as a cucumber but reeking of liquor.
“Where have you been?” Mannie screamed. Ryan, who had been out drinking all day with friends, simply rolled his eyes.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he snapped.
“How dare you show up so late, disrespecting me, disrespecting your fellow actors. I should fire your late ass!”
Oh no . . .
I thought.
“No need to fire me, I fucking resign!” snarled Ryan.
“You can’t resign! You have four more shows to do!”
“Then you fucking better know my lines,” snarled Ryan. For a second I envisioned Mannie’s naked skinny arse on the stage in South Beach where all those tanned, toned, unforgiving bodies would be horrified by the sight of his parchment-like flesh. I had never seen Mannie in daylight. He was like the living dead. His mother must have married Boo Radley. Pushing that thought aside, I realized that Ryan had every intention of not doing the show. He shoved past Mannie and began throwing his costumes into a cardboard box. By this time the audience was getting ugly. They had heard how good the show was. This, coupled with hearing about how Ryan could lose it at the slightest provocation, had filled the theater to the rafters. They weren’t going to be disappointed.
Ryan pushed his way through the curtains holding a box full of costumes, and the audience began to clap, thinking the show was beginning. Ryan stepped to the foot of the stage and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, there is no fucking show.” With that, he stormed off. Mannie’s anguished screams rang out in the theater. The tickets were selling at $50 apiece and we had two sold-out nights: a total of 1,400 seats and $70,000 down the drain. Mannie went nuclear. He phoned the Miami police and tried to have Ryan arrested for stealing theater property. They grabbed him outside the theater where Mannie met them.
“Tell him he has to do the show!” Mannie yelled at the cops.
“What exactly has been stolen?” asked a burly cop with great teeth and a big package. Amazing, even in times of trauma my libido was capable running wild. Of course, Ryan hadn’t really stolen anything, so the police had to let him go. Mannie, humiliated, had to refund everybody’s money, which must have killed him. I never did the play again with Ryan, which was a shame because by this time he had become rather good in the role and I had grown to appreciate his eccentricities. There definitely was never a dull moment around Ryan Idol.