PORN KING

The Autobiography of John C. Holmes

by John Holmes

(with Laurie Holmes)

Preface

THE LEGEND CONTINUES…

Before John died, he felt that because he had led such an extraordinary and unusual life, in which he was truly a landmark in American society and filmmaking, it was his responsibility to candidly share his life experiences once and for all. Throughout his career there had been many tall tales told of John Holmes. Some of them John even created himself in the interest of keeping his private life a mystery. However, John knew that someday he wouldn’t be around anymore and that this was his last chance. In his attempt to do this, he left behind many cassette tapes and writings, hoping that someday his fans would know exactly who he was and how he came to be something that some years back had no place or title of being. However, forty years since his first film and having starred in over 2,000 additional films and many compilations since, John Holmes is undoubtedly the King of Porn.

Following the horrific experience of my husband’s passing and the events that took place directly after, I became very disenchanted with people and society as a whole. I withdrew inside myself, figuring that people were only going to believe what they wanted to believe anyway, so it didn’t matter. The industry in which John had fought so hard and eventually died for had turned their backs on him before and after his passing. The other society in which we never quite fit in, I was struggling with more than ever. I was too stubborn to subdue to its ways.

In my heart I knew that it was my husband’s wish to have his book, Porn King, published. However, it wasn’t his family’s wish that the book be printed, so between the aching emptiness in my soul and the overwhelming feeling to not hurt those who loved John dearly, I decided that immediately after his passing was not the time for me to proceed in publishing his extraordinary story.

After many years of struggling with what I felt in my heart was my destiny, and in spite of any hurt feelings it might have caused, I was committed to sharing John’s story, as he told it, with the world.

Never in my wildest imagination did I ever realize that in my fight to tell John’s story, my story would be destined to become an extension of his. This book has been updated to reflect the years since the book was first published in 1998.

– Laurie Holmes

1

It took less than five minutes to get from the men’s gym to the art building on the UCLA campus—unless I detoured through the women’s gym. Then it took a lot longer. The women’s gym was a good place to study, and a great place to get turned on. On the second floor, at the back of the building, was an outside walkway that stretched from one end to the other. No one ever came up there; it was always deserted. Yet the view was incredible, overlooking the huge swimming pool and grassy area bounded by high brick walls. Except for those rare days when the weather was bad, the pool and surrounding deck were almost always crowded with nubile coeds in clinging swim wear. Some took to the water like trained seals, playfully bounding in and out before emerging exhausted along the sidelines. There they stood, hands on hips, drawing attention to their rounded bottoms, flat stomachs, and high, heaving breasts. Others took to the grass, sitting cross-legged on towels while massaging their young bodies to glistening with globs of lotion, or stretching out in seductive positions to soak in the sun.

The entrance to the girls’ locker room offered an even better view, particularly when the double doors swung open wide. From the corridor, it was impossible to see past the wooden half-doors that had been installed at eye level just inside. Opposite the entrance, however, was a stairway leading to the second floor. By sitting midway up, on the six or seventh stair, it was easy to look over the half-doors. The panorama was ever changing and often spectacular. I’d often eat my lunch on the steps, or spend my study hours there casually flipping through books that seldom got read. I never considered myself a voyeur. I didn’t peek through windows or go on the prowl to catch glimpses of ladies in various stages of undress. I looked openly, enjoying the passing parade from near and afar. There weren’t many girls taking gym classes at UCLA in 1965 that escaped

1 my glances as they wandered into the showers. Few of them bothered to wrap themselves in towels.

Not a day passed that I didn’t think about sex. In fact, my overactive libido had gotten me in trouble before, and it would again. I was about to start a new job, one that demanded absolute composure and concentration. For a few hours, at least, I had to keep my mind relatively free of everything sexual. That meant going directly to the art building without dawdling in the women’s gym. I didn’t need the tension. What I did need was the job, and I couldn’t afford to screw it up.

The classroom door was closed and posted with a sign that read— DO NOT ENTER! But I went inside anyway. A pale, fleshy, middle-aged woman with Lucille Ball hair and Cleopatra eyes was lying stone naked next to a potted lily on a wicker settee at the far end of the room, stretched out with one ample leg propped over a paisley print cushion, the other hanging over the side. If she noticed me, she didn’t let on. Except for her surging breasts—two partially filled sandbags studded with backup lights—she remained deathly still. Not even the slightest eye movement or the fluttering of a heavily-mascaraed lash. The twenty or so students who faced her at their easels ignored my arrival as well, thank God. With their backs to the door they probably didn’t hear me. More likely, they were too engrossed in capturing the breathing still life on canvas. Only in the instructor, a tall, flashy dresser who had ‘GO’ written all over him, turned in my direction. He approached looking somewhat quizzical.

“I’m the model,” I said flatly.

“Of course,” he replied. “You’re Mr. Holmes.” He smiled faintly and checked his watch. I tried to return his smile but one wouldn’t come. “Looks like I’m early,” I answered instead, trying to sound nonchalant. The attempt backfired as my throat suddenly turned dry. Either that or an errant heartbeat had escaped from the pounding in my chest and had gotten in the way. Instead of sounding like a mature twenty-year old, which I definitely considered myself to be, I came across as a crackly-voiced, sputtering adolescent.

“Not at all,” said the instructor, reassuringly. “We’ll be breaking in a few minutes; you might as well get ready before Miss Nichols needs the ro om.”

“The room” was a dimly-lit storage area adjoining the classroom, little more than a windowless closet crammed with books, old files, and canvases, some rolled and piled on makeshift shelves, others stretched on frames and stacked against the walls. The air inside was heavy with the smell of turpentine, linseed oil, and paint; not a bad spot, actually, for anyone into breathing fumes. The stench was so strong in fact that lighting a match could have been dangerous. A dusty fluorescent fixture supporting three tubular lights dangled from the ceiling, held by fragile chains. The one light that still functioned sent out a flickering bluish glow accompanied by static buzz.

The storage area was a poor substitute for a changing room, but not worth complaining about. The building’s days were numbered, at least as far as the Art department was concerned. An impressive new structure, the nine-story Dickson Art Center, was rising on the north side of the campus. Within a few months, beginning with the fall 1965 semester, classes would be held there.

Outside, the library chimes were signaling two o’clock. A sudden clatter in the next room, mixed with voices, told me the class was breaking. I found a hanger and quickly stripped down, removing everything I had on—shirt, jeans, shoes and socks, even my wrist watch—until I stood bare-ass naked among the file cabinets. An old bathrobe that looked and smelled as if it hadn’t been washed since the year one was hanging on a hook. Luckily, I’d brought a clean towel with me from the gym. No sooner had I wrapped it around my middle when the door to the storage room opened. There stood Miss Nichols, all 220-plus pounds of her, wearing a brightly flowered kimono that hung loosely over her shoulders, untied and open at the waist. The slightly parted fabric revealed a view infinitely more tantalizing than the one that had been on open display.

“They’re waiting for you,” she said wearily, moving inside.

I brushed past her mumbling a barely audible “thanks,” my heart racing all over again at the urgency of her words. After spending time in a dingy changing closet, the classroom seemed uncomfortably bright. Natural light, sunlight, streamed through a wall of glass, which may have been ideal for the artists but not for me. My eyes have always been extremely sensitive to light, and they water easily (they turn red and ugly). No way could I sit facing the windows, staring into the glare. There was another concern, an even greater one. The majority of students were girls in their late teens, very attractive California beach types. The thought of sitting before them with everything hanging out was embarrassing enough, but would I be able to control my often overactive imagination? It would take considerable concentration on my part to keep from becoming aroused. In a moment I’d be asked to remove the towel from my waist, unless catastrophe struck.

I found myself almost wishing for something devastating to happen—an earthquake, hurricane, or tidal wave—anything to delay the inevitable. The more I dwelled on the subject the more apprehensive I became. I could feel my scrotum tightening, and my stomach knotting up. What was I doing in the place? Why was I the only person in the room not wearing clothes?

Money, plain and simple! Money to eat, money to live, money for school… I’d been working for six months to save enough to attend UCLA, washing dishes and cars, waiting tables, taking odd jobs whenever and wherever I could. I had to keep coming up with ways to keep the money coming in. Modeling for a Life Drawing class wasn’t the greatest job in the world, but it was one of the most interesting and the pay wasn’t half-bad.

“It looks like we’re ready to begin, Mr. Holmes,” the instructor said, motioning for me to take my place on the high stool in the center of the room. In my absence, the students had rearranged their easels into a circular pattern, like theatre—in-the-round. I made my way through them, nervously fingering the terry wrapping at my midsection to check that it was still in place, and sat with my back to the window, purposely facing the ugliest male in attendance.

The instructor followed on my heels. “Strike a pose that’s comfortable for you,” he said. “Once you’re set you won’t be able to move”.

I positioned myself more squarely on the stool, resting one foot on a rug and bracing the other on the floor. Then I leaned over placing an elbow on my knee, sinking my chin into the cup of my hand. I looked like a poor substitute for Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

“That will do,” commented the instructor without much enthusiasm. (Did I sense some impatience on his part, or was he beginning to annoy me?) “But haven’t you forgotten something?” He added, “The towel. Just drop it on the floor. We’ll use it as a prop in the exercise.”

I stood reluctantly and loosened the towel letting it fall free. Exactly where and how it fell, heaped or in artistic folds, I don’t remember and didn’t much care. My mind was on the students and their reaction to my nakedness.

At this point in my life I wasn’t quite sure whether the Almighty had blessed me or cursed me. I only knew that I was “different.” And painfully sensitive! One crack, one sarcastic remark, and I was ready to bolt out the door. There were no words, thank God; none that I could hear, anyway. But I did detect muffled sounds about the room: a throat clearing, scattered murmuring. Or was that my imagination, too?

No sooner had I removed the towel then I was back on the stool, trying to duplicate my earlier pose. In my eagerness to resume the crouched position I must have turned slightly, for when I looked up I was not facing the ugliest guy in the class; he was off to the right. What I found instead was a young lady with lustrous, long dark hair, penetrating eyes, and full, sensuous lips. She was seated on a low stool, her easel angled at her side, and she wore a paint spattered smock that covered her blouse but offered little protection for the rest of her. And the rest of her was sensational! Her tight little miniskirt riding up her thighs, her long smooth legs— and the shadowy recesses in between—made quite a show. Had she kept her legs motionless, the view would not have been quite so captivating. Although her feet were planted firmly together, her thighs seemed to pulsate, opening and closing like butterfly wings in super slow motion. She fanned them apart and then pressed them together. Spreading, closing, spreading: the movement was hypnotic. At times her thighs opened so tantalizingly wide that it was almost possible to discern the dark patch under her skirt. She appeared to be wearing panties. Then, again, she did not. It’s doubtful that any of the students saw what she was doing. She moved so slightly, so effortlessly in a subconscious way that it would have taken a prolonged, studied look to discover she wasn’t sitting absolutely still. Even then, because of their vantage point, they could not have noticed anything more than the most subtle changing of positions.

I followed her every move, no matter how fractional, and as I stared past the inner reaches of her smooth thighs into the blossoming, uncertain shadows, I was drawn uncontrollably into a wild sexual fantasy. God, it was starting! A tingling sensation raced through my groin, fed by the powerful juices of some unseen current. I felt myself hardening and rising until a part of me was pointing directly in the darkening depths, straight as a ramrod, as if to say, “I want you!” If her movements went undetected, mine did not. My dimensions had altered drastically; creating a stir among the young artists who sat facing me. They turned from their easels and began to buzz. The murmuring encircled the room like “The Wave” in a football stadium.

“Did I miss the bell—or are we taking a break?” An authoritative voice asked rhetorically from somewhere behind me.

An uncomfortable silence followed as the students straightened on their stools and returned to work. I willed myself to soften, but the more I concentrated on that seemingly simple feat the more I stiffened and throbbed. I felt flushed. Beads of perspiration formed on my brow; my hands and crotch grew clammy, the air felt suddenly stifling.

I began breathing uneasily through my mouth, parching my lips. I wanted to lick them but I didn’t dare, not with my eyes focused on her. In desperation, I shifted my glance to the back of the room, then upward toward the ceiling. Still haunted by the smoldering mental images, I began to count holes in the acoustical tiles. When that failed, I turned to a wall chart showing a sexless human form with its muscles exposed.

The discovery of the well-defined rendering had me wondering why Id been accepted to model for the class, for that matter, Miss Nichols as well? As a prerequisite for Life Drawing, the students had to complete a tough course in anatomy—similar to one required for pre-med majors— in which they had to learn the names and locations of all the bones, muscles and tendons in the body. Miss Nichols’s bones were much too padded to be a good subject. At 6’3” and 175 pounds, I was lean and lanky. The only muscle I displayed—more openly than I’d intended—unfortunately wasn’t illustrated on any anatomy chart.

Out of the corners of my eyes I saw the mini-skirted girl signaling for the instructor. Then he was at her side and I overheard her say, “The model has moved his eyes, sir, and I’m trying to draw them.” Her message was quickly passed on to me, along with a few reminders of his own that stopped just short of chastisement. His words had a chilling effect, just what I needed.

When I looked back at the girl, she had a playful smirk on her face. She was at it again. Now her legs were spread even farther apart, well beyond proprietary bounds. She didn’t even bother to close them. This deliciously humpy number was playing games with me, deliberately trying to turn me on!

Somehow I made it through the rest of the session without embarrassing myself more than I already had. Then I was off the stool, reaching for the towel and whipping it on. No longer was it my exposed front side that concerned me. After sitting in one position for nearly an hour, I had the uneasy feeling that I resembled one of those flame-cheeked African baboons.

“Next time we’ll try a different pose,” said a voice at my side. I turned to find the instructor clearing the area that had been my stage; he was working with several other students in straightening the room. After a slight pause, he looked up and said, “I think we’ll have you standing— what do you think of that? With your legs it should be interesting.”

He’d already answered his question so I just nodded. I doubted seriously, however, that my legs would be much of a factor if the sitting proved to be as “interesting” as the last one.

“Oh, before you get away, Mr. Holmes, I have something for you.” From the inside breast pocket of his designer jacket he retrieved an envelope that contained a voucher—not a check or cash, which I was expecting—and typed instructions that directed me to the cashier’s window in the Student Union. The thought of having to trek halfway across campus for a few bucks before heading home depressed me, but not enough to postpone the long walk till another day. I wanted the money now. I needed to feel my fingers wrapping around it. That was a fact of life, my life. I can’t remember a time when the promise of money hadn’t been a driving force in me. One that has too often led to trouble!

I had only to dress quickly and be off. However, it didn’t quite work out that way. No sooner had I stepped into my little cubbyhole, discarded the towel and reached for my pants than the door began to creek open, so slowly that I thought I’d neglected to shut it tightly. That wasn’t the case. Through the crack I saw two long, shapely legs and a miniskirt. “I’ll be right out,” I said instinctively, turning to step into my pants. The next thing I knew the door was opening wider, then closing, and she was standing inside, smiling vaguely and looking me over from head to toe. “I forgot something,” the girl said quietly. Her voice was soft and feminine, edged with a touch of desperation. In her hands she carried a small paint box and the canvas she’d been working on in class. At that moment, as I struggled with one of the pant legs, I couldn’t have cared less what she was holding. My eyes were on her gorgeous thighs, and my mind was filled with visions of gently fanning butterfly wings.

She leaned the framed canvas against the others that lined wall, then stepped forward to place the paint box on one of the narrow shelves. As she brought her hand down, it gazed my exposed groin, rather accidently, I figured, until it fell back again, this time lingering there. God, my classroom fantasy was coming to life! That, and a flashback to the time when I dreamed of banging my sexy third grade teacher, Mrs. Pryor, in the cloakroom. I’d never made it with “Pussy” Pryor, as the kids jokingly called her, but here I was with very much her equal—a younger version, actually—in much the same secluded setting. “Careful how you handle that, darling,” I warned. “It could get out of control.”

She wasn’t careful, and it did get out of control. Her craving for sex matched mine. We were two desperate animals in heat. We both knew what we wanted, and nothing could hold us back.

What were we doing? It was one thing to be naked in a dim campus closet with a knockout coed, and quite another to have her on her knees with her head buried in my crotch.

“I think we’d better make sure the door’s locked,” I gulped nervously.

She pulled away and looked up sharply. An impish grin crossed her face as she said, “And take away the thrill?” I smiled back, knowingly. She wasn’t the first girl I’d met who had been turned on by the threat of getting caught. It was like having sex in a car on Hollywood Boulevard in broad daylight. Not my idea of a hot time, but if that’s the way she wanted it I was certainly primed to go along with her.

We went at it for a solid ten minutes, oblivious to our cramped surrounding, before she drew back her head and let out a low, choking moan. My hand clamped tightly over her mouth as a searing sensation flooded my groin, jolting me once, twice, again and again with such driving, pounding force that we were left clinging limply to each other, struggling for air. A moment later she slipped quietly away without saying a word. I pulled up my pants and reached for my shirt. It wasn’t on the shelf where I’d placed it earlier; it was under my feet, having fallen to the floor unnoticed. Clean and freshly pressed that morning, it was now trampled, wet and sticky in places and gave off an unmistakable aroma. I held it at arm’s length, flapping it to dry. A few seconds of that and I gave up, put the shirt on, and flicked out the light. I’d already delayed much too long.

The race to the Student Union and back across campus to the bus station on Hilgard Avenue nearly did me in. I wasn’t in the best of shape anyway, thanks to the steamy session in the changing room. My legs felt weak and wobbly; I needed time to rest and recharge. I got more than I had bargained for at the bus station. Sometime between dropping my pants and cashing the voucher, my regular bus had arrived and departed.

Having to take the bus each day infuriated me. It wasn’t so much the ride as the wasted time. I had a car, a borrowed one that I drove to school. What I didn’t have was a permit to park on campus. Without one, and with the hundred-dollar parking fee, I was forced to park two miles away. I could have walked the distance, I suppose, but that too would have eaten into my schedule. Five nights a week, I washed dishes at a small hotdog stand in Hollywood. I was due on the job by four-thirty, which meant I had to hustle, not sit on bus benches.

The car belonged to my roommate, Linda, a magnificently put-together 22-year old with a sharp mind and a quick wit. Linda was a real crowd pleaser, in more ways than one. When we first met, she was working as a secretary for a high-rolling attorney in Hollywood. She was also on call for evening activities with her boss’s clients, a money sideline she kept to herself during the earliest days of our friendship. Apparently she enjoyed her evenings more than her days, for she soon left the attorney’s employ to concentrate on a less restricting career, one that put no demands on her shorthand and typing skills. Her office became the topless joints and clubs along the Hollywood strip, where she met an endless supply of horny men with money to spare. Linda’s new occupation worked fine for me, too. With her days reserved for sleeping, she had little use for her car.

One day, following the Life Drawing class, I returned to our apartment to drop off the car before heading to the restaurant. Linda was waiting for me, anxious to talk. “Not now,” I said, rushing. “I’m late for work.”

“How would you like to make a hundred bucks?” She asked with a sly smile. I slowed down.

“What did you say?”

“One hundred dollars,” she repeated, punctuating each word. “Quick and easy”

Money from Heaven, “Who do I have to kill,” I asked facetiously.

“I met a guy last night who makes dirty films for colleges and stag parties. You know, the kind where they show two people getting it on.”

“And ? ”

“Well, he wants me to be in one of his films. You and me! I told him we make a great team.”

Linda and I weren’t strangers in bed. Whenever she had a rare night off, we’d sleep together. She was totally uninhibited.

“One hundred bucks!” I could see myself driving onto campus with my permit and pulling into a parking space. It sounded too good to be true. Getting paid for a few minutes of sex with my roommate? Surely, there had to be a hitch. “Come on, who do I have to kill?” I repeated.

Clever, clever me, Where had I heard that line before? On television or a movie, spoken by Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson? They were words that pleased the silent majority of patriotic Americans who stood by the government’s effort in Vietnam, and sent chills through the hearts of draft resisters and flower children who proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and “Girls say ‘yes’ to boys who say ‘no’.”

“Who do I have to kill? Six words spoken in jest, certainly without malicious intent! They were words that would come back to haunt me in the years ahead.

It was close to 11:00 a.m. when the doorbell rang. Through the curtains in the glare of the porch light, I could see the shadowy figure of a man pacing nervously back and forth. He appeared short and grossly overweight.

Linda beat me to the door. She opened it and quickly steeped aside. “Come on in, Harry,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I’m glad you made it.”

“Why not,” the fat man asked as he struggled through the opening. He turned his bloated body slightly so as not to bang the equipment in his arms. He carried a large, battered suitcase, two long light standards, and a tripod.

“I was afraid you might have a little trouble finding this place,” Linda replied.

“Trouble? Don’t mention the word.”

“You know what I mean, Harry. Sometimes my directions are…”

“Listen, I made it,” he interrupted. Setting the equipment on the floor, he plopped into the nearest chair, letting out a great rush of air as he landed. For a moment, he leaned back, wheezing, looking out through heavily lidded eyes like a dog on the alert. “Stairs,” he gasped, “You didn’t tell me about stairs.”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Linda apologized. “I wasn’t thinking.”

A hacking cough jolted Harry upright. He learned over the edge of the chair, gagging, his enormous belly tugging between his legs, seemingly on the verge of throwing up. His eyes bulged and turned glassy; he grew flushed and sweaty. At last, he dislodged some foreign matter deep in this throat and brought it forward on his tongue, letting it rest between his thick, rubbery lips before wiping it away with a small, dirty rag from his breast pocket. That done he sighed agonizingly, mopped at his face, neck and, hairless dome, and returned the rag to his shirt.

“Would you like some water?” Linda offered.

“No,” Harry said, waving her off. He struggled to his feet. “I’ve got to get busy—it’s getting late.”

“I want you to meet John,” said Linda. “He’s the guy I was telling you about.”

With all of his distractions, it is doubtful Harry had really noticed me, even though I was in the same small room, sitting directly opposite him on Linda’s bed. At least, that was the impression I got when he turned my way.

He stared more at my crotch than at me. I was dressed so he couldn’t see anything, but he kept quiet. I had a sinking feeling that Harry didn’t approve, and the possibility of bringing in a substitute to work with Linda began crossing my mind. I hoped I was misjudging his lack of comment, because I’d psyched myself up for the job. At the moment, getting on with it and collecting my money was all that I wanted. In the thirty hours since Linda had asked me to participate in Harry’s little epic, I’d had time to think about what I was getting myself into. Having sex in front of someone didn’t bother me—I’d “performed” in front of people before, but only women. The thought of having a man looking on was something else.

Linda had tried to ease my fears. “He’s just a slob who works in a bar in Hollywood and sells stag films to people in back alleys,” she had told me. “He’s nothing but a big jerk… Don’t worry about him.”

I wanted to believe Linda, but I was apprehensive nevertheless—until Harry walked in. The moment I saw him I knew I’d do just fine. Harry didn’t qualify as anything quite human. How he felt about me was another matter.

“You’ve never seen anything like John in action, Harry,” Linda prodded. “He’ll have your eyes popping.”

“Good, good,” Harry drooled. “That I want to see.” He tugged up his pants and waddled over to the battered suitcase, pulled out a roll of aluminum foil, then scurried toward the large, curtained window.

“I’ll be in the bathroom,” Linda whispered to me. “Don’t do anything until I come out.”

I remained on the bed to watch Harry unrolling large sheets of silver paper. “What are you doing?” I asked.

He drew the curtain aside and pressed his fat face to the glass, scanning the street below. Pulling back quickly, he began covering the panes with foil. “The lights are like beacons at night,” he puffed. “If a cop drives by and see them, he’ll know what’s going on up here.” I knew that stag films were both very popular and highly illegal, but I wasn’t prepared for what Harry was about to tell me. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to start babbling. “The cops make it difficult,” he said. “They bust in during a shooting and do you know what you get? Ten years, that’s what. Armed robbery gets one year. Murder gets seven. Think about it.”

I did. Harry was making me nervous. The numbers he tossed out so freely made the paltry sum I’d be collecting—and indeed, everything else—seem incidental. I was so steeped in thought that I didn’t notice Linda until she was standing beside me. She had changed into a beat-up terry cloth robe, and she smelled delightful. “Are you going to get undressed?” she asked, nuzzling my ear.

“What?” I stammered.

She looked at me oddly, raising an eyebrow. “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“Who, me?” I asked, forcing a grin.

“Then come on. Harry’s almost ready.”

Over her shoulder I could see Harry shuffling around. He’d already set up the lights; now he was mounting an 8mm camera on the tripod. I kicked off my tennis shoes, unzipped my pants, pulled them down, and was working on my shirt when I felt her moist tongue slithering around my crotch. I became aroused immediately.

“Good… good,” Harry cried. “That’s what I need. Just keep it up… but get on the bed.” He snapped on one light, then the other, flooding the room with a blinding glare. “Now the camera,” he said. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I muttered, hovering over Linda’s waiting body. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do next, only that I was about to be in my first—and last—sex film.

Little did I know…

2

August 8, 1944

As the Nazi war machine continued its devastating march across Europe, leaving the Continent in flames, squadrons of Allied planes took to the skies above Cannes to begin their counterattack to recapture occupied Paris. On the home front that August day, Americans were buying War Bonds, doling out ration stamps, working in defense plants and tending victory gardens. Students crowded high school gyms at lunchtime to demonstrate the latest dance craze, the jitterbug. The taverns, malt shops, and jukeboxes blared The Trolley Song, Swinging on a Star, and other Hit Parade favorites for a nickel a play. Movie goers lined up to see Since You Went Away and Going My Way. GIs with crew cuts pasted pin-ups of Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner in their lockers. Teenage girls in sweaters, knee-length skirts, and bobby sox daydreamed of Frank Sinatra, Guy Madison, and Van Johnson. Oklahoma! was Broadway’s big show. And on a wooden table in the kitchen of a modest Ohio farmhouse in Pickaway County, my mother gave birth to her fourth child, a son: John Curtis Holmes.

No doctor was present in my introduction into the world. There was only a strapping neighbor lady who acted as midwife. The woman had assisted in dozens of deliveries, but from her reaction, she’d never seen anything like the long, hairless infant she held in her arms. After a scrutinizing once-over, her first words were not the customary announcement of gender or well being, but a disbelieving “This baby has three legs and two feet.” In the years to come, the midwife’s remark would be repeated countless times over, in varying forms and degrees of excitement. Her off-the-cuff reference to my middle “leg” was surprising considering the puritan surroundings. Any other euphemism, even clinical, would certainly have shocked my poor mother. As it was, she could easily have been led to believe that her latest-born was strangely deformed. The little framed farmhouse belonged to Mother’s folks, Carrie and John Barton, a hardy, hard-working, deeply religious couple who shared a love of the land and family; good, proud people guided by God rather than money and its rewards. The long hours they put in daily should have earned them more than self-satisfaction, yet they never complained. To their way of thinking, luxuries were playthings of the rich, of far less importance than the minimal necessities of life. In that regard they had everything they could possibly need. It mattered little that the “facility” wasn’t located inside, or that the wood burning stove in the kitchen was their main source of heat when temperatures dropped to freezing, or that running water came not from a faucet but from a pump that had to be primed.

For six days a week, from dawn till dusk, Grandmother Barton tended to chores in and around the house. She had more to keep her busy cleaning and preparing meals. In the spring, she planted crops in the family garden: sweet corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, squash, and more. In the summer and fall, she set the kitchen steaming with bubbling kettles filled with harvest to be stored in glass Mason jars for winter eating. And, always, there were pigs to slop, chickens to feed, and eggs to gather.

Grandpa Barton, a tall, fair-haired Scotsman with electric blue eyes, worked for a local railroad company. Each weekday morning at sunrise he could be seen walking the short distance from the house to the tracks where he’d await the early train that would carry him through the lush Ohio Valley into the big city, Columbus, some eighteen miles to the west.

Sundays were devoted to churchgoing and rest. It was also the day when the Holmes kids came to visit, which often made relaxing difficult, if not impossible. We were a boisterous bunch, and a houseful. In addition to me, there were brothers William and Eddy, and sister Ann. To help channel our energy and keep us out of the grown-ups’ hair, mother kept coming up with tasks for us to do. If she wasn’t sending us off to the railroad tracks to collect scraps of wood for the kitchen stove (which, thinking back, was like shooting us out to the freeway to play), she’d have us pulling weeds in the vegetable patch or cleaning the poultry pens. Each of the assignments wisely kept us out of doors, away from the house. If the truth were known, the plot to “keep the kids busy” was probably more for Mother’s benefit than for Grandma or Grandpa, who seemed genuinely delighted to have us underfoot. In fact, John Barton frequently took me aside to tell adventurous tales of his childhood. Having been named after him probably had a lot to do with our close relationship. He was also pleased that I was “the spitting image” of him as a boy, the only one of his grandchildren who had his fair hair and blue eyes. “If I’d had a twin brother when I was growing up,” he’d remark with a disbelieving shake of his head, “he’d have looked exactly like you. Why, having you around is like turning back the clock.” Then, poking a long finger in my ribs, he’d crack, “But don’t let that get you down.”

No such bond developed between any of the Holmes children and Father’s side of the family, and for good reason: we rarely saw them, nor was much ever said about them, at least in any complimentary way. Whenever one of their names came up, the word “hillbilly” always popped into the conversation. As for Father, well…Mother was always making excuses for him, especially when we’d go visiting. “Ed is finishing up a job today,” she’d explain to her parents, making him sound conscientious. Most often, however, she used a sympathetic approach. According to Mother, her husband had more colds, sore throats, and upset stomachs than a room full of kindergartners. She should have saved her breath. Everyone knew better, and they couldn’t have cared less.

Edward Holmes was average-sized man; around six feet tall, with dark hair and watery, red rimmed eyes, a poor excuse for a human being and even lower on the scales as a husband and father. He called himself a carpenter although he worked only when necessary, which meant when he was desperate for a drink. Whatever money he earned, every penny of it, slipped quickly through his fingers in Columbus’ bars and liquor stores. Beer, more than anything, was his passion. Memories of my father are hazy, mainly because his drinking, which was constant, but two things really stand out in my mind. My earliest remembrance is of an unshaven, sloppy and slobbery man with a horrible stench on his breath leaning over and kissing me. The other is that he secretly collected nudist magazines. One day, when I was no more than four or five, I came across a dog-eared issue of Sunshine and Health that he’d stuffed under an old cushion. By today’s standards, the photos inside, mainly shots of undressed adults and children wandering happily along wooded trails weren’t explicit, not even the shot of a bare-breasted girl posed artfully on a sandy dune. Seeing everyone totally exposed in the out-of-doors, and obviously enjoying themselves, must have been quite a revelation to me. No one in our family dared go anywhere without covering up, not even from room to room.

The discovery was much too important to keep to myself. Mother was taking a nap on the couch. She’d come home early; she was not feeling well. Not wanting to awaken her, I tiptoed to the living room window and pressed the magazine, opened to the naked girl on the beach, against the glass. It wasn’t long before some of the neighborhood children began to gather, pointing fingers and snickering as they strained to see. The next thing I knew, Mother was awake and standing over me. “What are you doing, John?” she asked sternly.

“Nothing,” I mumbled. Until then, I hadn’t realized I was doing anything wrong. But Mother’s sudden presence, and the sharp tone of her voice, had me shaking.

“We’ll see about that!” She snapped. Snatching the magazine from my hands, she quickly thumbed through it, her eyes growing wider with each passing page. Then she slammed it to the floor and grabbed my shoulders, holding firm. “Where did you get that trash?”

I started to cry.

“Tell me!” She demanded.

Somehow, I managed to point across the room and say, feebly, “Over there.” That wasn’t good enough apparently, because I soon felt her hand whipping my butt. It was one of Mother’s rare outbursts, and one that discouraged me for a few years, at least, from making a spectacle of myself over a naked lady.

Unfortunately, my experience had no effect whatsoever on my father, not that it really mattered. Leaving the old man behind was only one reason we looked forward to our weekly trips to the country. The biggest benefit by far was getting away from the crummy place we called home.

Like all of America, Columbus, Ohio had been devastated by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Most of the country had rebounded by the start of World War II, but Columbus still counted vast numbers of indigents, many destitute, living in makeshift shacks and shanties around town. A number of the poor and homeless even took to sneaking into the basements of other peoples’ homes at night for shelter. The crime rate was staggering, and climbing. In seeking a solution to the problem, the city fathers decided to round up all the poor and contain them within the industrial section of town, where the slums were located. A cluster of three-story red brick buildings covering four city blocks were constructed, providing jobs for some of the unemployed, and “The Project” was born.

From the outside, “The Project” looked like a prison: barren, cold, uninviting. It didn’t get any better on the inside. The rooms were minuscule, dreary little cubes with cardboard walls and squeaky wooden floors, insufficient lighting, and provide-your-own heating. In winter, temperatures within dropped so low that spilled milk froze before it could be mopped up. On hot summer days, the vile smell of uncollected garbage became so overpowering that even the flies wanted out.

The first six years of my life were spent in a cramped two-bedroom “apartment” (for want of a better word) in The Project. Eddy, Ann, and I shared one bedroom. Mother and Father, whenever he showed up, shared the other. Being the oldest, and most responsible of the children, William was assigned his own private domain, a corner of the living room next to the kitchen partition. By concentrating the needy and homeless within a few square blocks, the city officials must have figured they could keep a closer watch on the troublemakers. It didn’t quite work out that way. Crime in the streets did drop, but incidents within the housing project began to mount. In effect, The Project became a war zone complete with race riots, stabbings, beatings, and occasional flying bodies tossed from upper floor windows. Human screams mixed with wailing sirens of police cars and ambulances, which arrived and departed, were heard with frightening regularity. There weren’t many quiet moments. Most of the trouble took place during day light hours when the adults were away, either at work, wandering around looking for work or, in my Father’s case, scrounging drinks. (Even the ones who had no ambition whatsoever had enough smarts to break away whenever possible.) From 8:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night, the entire Project was literally run and owned by children—gangs of rowdy, street-smart punks who’d rather crack heads than baseballs. One of their favorite pastimes was throwing darts—not at dartboards, but at other kids. When I was four years old they had me running through passageways and dodging darts until Eddy, who was then fifteen years old, came to my rescue. He got in a couple of good licks, which gave me time to get away, but he paid a price. They pummeled him so thoroughly that he was black and blue for a week.

Mother had always been a very attractive woman. Not beautiful, but striking. She had a strong face, with high cheekbones, large eyes, and full, dark brows, framed by a mane of deep brown hair. Every time I see a Joan Crawford movie I think of my mother. It is to Mother’s credit that she maintained her good looks despite all she’d been through. Living with an alcoholic while raising four kids couldn’t have been easy on her. But there were added pressures. As Dad’s condition worsened, he began drinking away his earnings and the support of the family fell on Mom’s shoulders.

Mother had worked before, but never had her situation been so desperate; never had so many people depended on her. She got a job in a small restaurant where she waited tables and worked the counter and cash register. We lived off her tips. Eventually, she was promoted to manager.

Mother was at work when dad disappeared. I can’t recall his leaving, only that he was there one day and gone the next. He left without saying a word to anyone. Not even a good-bye. It took a few days to sink in that he was really gone; we were so used to his not being around. Mother cried a little; God knows why. I guess after all they’d been through together she couldn’t help but miss him. No one else did. From then on, for the next year anyway, it was just Mother, my brothers and sister, and I. Then, an astounding thing happened; astounding only because it came as such a surprise. Mother began seeing another man. She wouldn’t admit it, at first, but we knew. There were too many references to somebody named Harold.

Mother dating? How did this person come into her life? She was home every evening and went to work every day. Where did they meet? It was heavy stuff for a six-year old to try and understand. William, Eddy, and Ann couldn’t come up with any answers, either. The most logical explanation, on which they all agreed, was that mother had met Harold at the restaurant, where, over lingering cups of coffee, their relationship began to gel. Still, we didn’t know for sure and Mother wasn’t talking.

One evening, Mother arrived home following an eight-hour shift, looking as fresh and relaxed, and indeed, reborn. as if she really was Joan Crawford and had just come from makeup. She normally headed straight for bed, but this time was different. “Come on, kids,” she said, eagerly motioning us to her side. “Where do I begin?” She sighed, “How do I tell you about Harold?”

I had a feeling this was going to be big. I looked at my brother and sister, but they were concentrating on mother, waiting to hear more.

“Let’s see,” she began slowly, “You remember hearing me mention Harold, don’t you?” Heads nodded. “Well, he’s a wonderful man, a very handsome man, as tall as Grandpa Barton but much bigger”—she held her hands out wide—“and so smart. He was a communications expert during the war and now he works for the telephone company. Harold has an excellent job and he makes good money. A lot of money, actually, but it hasn’t spoiled him. He’s very stable and sensible and down-to-earth. I know you’ll like him very much.”

“What does that mean?” William asked.

Mother smiled again, a coquettish smile I hadn’t ever seen her display before. “Well, it means he’s asked me to marry him,” she said, pacing her word, “and I’ve accepted.”

“Marry him?” Ann repeated.

“Yes, dear,” Mother said. “I hope you’re all happy for me.”

“What about Daddy?” I piped up.

“Your father’s gone,” she answered quickly, her expression turning icy.

“But what if he comes back?”

“He won’t be coming back because we’re no longer married. I told you that, John, don’t you remember?”

I didn’t, not that it made any difference. At that age I wasn’t quite clear about divorce, let alone marriage. As it turned out, Mother wasn’t letting us in on her secret to gain our approval. It didn’t matter that Eddy supported her, which he did, or that William disapproved, which he did, or that Ann and I were confused, which we were. Mother had already made up her mind to marry Harold. She did find a way of gaining our full backing, however, by simply telling us that Harold had promised to buy her a house in the country, and that we’d be leaving The Project.

Harold kept his word. He bought a beautiful, white two-story frame house in a farming community midway between my grandparent’s place and Columbus. It was one of the nicest homes in the area, and a big step up for Mother and her brood. Instead of being surrounded by brick and concrete, we had woods and creeks, open lands, and clean, sweet-smelling air.

It didn’t take us long to adjust to our new outdoor way of living. Mother and Ann started a huge garden—we had an acre to play with— planting flowers, fruit trees, and endless rows of vegetables that would one day wind up as jams, jellies, and relishes. My brothers taught me to hunt. The woods and fields were alive with rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, and deer. I also learned how to set trap lines. In the wintertime, as I grew older, I set lines for mink, beaver, and possum. I’d often wake up at 2:00 a.m. to clear the traps, skin the animals, and salt and stretch the pelts before going to school. I’d run more lines in the afternoon on my way home.

My brothers and I caught so much game that Harold had to buy a freezer. It was a massive thing, and so was the price tag that came with it. But Harold didn’t complain. He was everything that Mother had described him to be—and a little bit more. It was the “extras” that caused Harold’s stock to nose-dive in everyone’s eyes but Mother’s. Harold had misrepresented his finances. Either he wasn’t as well off as he’d claimed to be or he’d over extended himself with the move to the country, or both. One thing was certain—his income fell short of what he needed to pay off the big house and support a large, ready-made family. As a consequence, we were forced to fend for ourselves whenever we needed anything.

“If you need new school clothes, or whatever,” Mother would mutter repeatedly, sounding like a tape recorded message, “then go out and earn them.”

By the time Harold’s finances became a real concern, I was an old hand at running trap lines. The money I made from selling pelts came in handy but it never seemed to add up fast enough. So, between chores around the house and my schoolwork, I baled hay, collected maple syrup, and shoveled snow, depending on the season. For food, the family relied almost entirely on Mother’s garden and hunting. I’d learned to hunt as a sport, and then had to turn to it for survival. Now, if anyone asks me to go hunting, I refuse. I do not approve of killing and maiming animals for sport. And I find it impossible to understand how anyone who calls himself a sportsman can stop at a McDonald’s on the way to blowing off some poor animal’s head.

Money, or the lack of it, was actually a minor problem in living with Harold. We’d managed on next to nothing before, thanks to Mother’s tenacity and boundless determination. The real problem was Harold himself. He had a dark side, an ugly sickness that no one suspected until it was too late. The first indication that Harold was “different” became apparent several months after he and Mother married, when he began to have trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. Physically, he appeared fine, but he no longer greeted each day with his characteristic burst of energy. He turned suddenly depressed and listless, almost impossible to budge. Mother was understandably concerned, and baffled. “I don’t know what to make of him,” she would moan. “He seems to have lost interest in everything.” Harold couldn’t explain the change in his behavior either; he didn’t even try to make excuses. He simply moved about the house like a sloth as he readied for work.

He never missed a day on the job. Whatever possessed Harold didn’t affect his performance at work. He functioned normally, his co-workers confided in Mother, offering a glimmer of encouragement. But they should have seen him at home. Night after night, he returned from the office and promptly fell asleep in his easy chair. When any of us called him to dinner, he waved us away. He even ignored Mother.

One evening, when everyone but Harold was seated for dinner, Mother announced that the meal had been served. Not getting a response, she called again. “Come, dear,” she said, “your food’s getting cold. We’re waiting.” Another moment of silence passed. “You must eat something, Harold,” she pleaded. Once again, he failed to answer. This time Mother pushed herself from the table and made for the living room. She found Harold’s chair empty. He had gone to bed. Just when it appeared that Harold would never snap out of his lethargy, his condition completely reversed itself. For months, sleep had been his ally; now it became his enemy. He’d go for days without shutting his eyes. He turned unpredictable and often violent, even showing signs of madness. Harold didn’t drink coffee or smoke anything, he wouldn’t touch alcohol and he didn’t take drugs. Nevertheless, he had all the symptoms of the worst junkie imaginable. Deprived of drugs, an addict will try to run over his best friend with a car, beat him with a club, strangle cats, and kill dogs. Harold was not only capable of doing those things, he did them. Once he even rammed his hand through a harvesting machine, cutting off his thumb and three of his fingers. When he woke up from surgery, he told mother, “I’ll never have to work again.” Harold was always gentle with Mother. He never raised a hand to her, but he sure beat the shit out of her kids. My older brothers and sister got the worst of it until they became of age and moved out, unable to take his abuse anymore. That left me as they only target around.

One day, Harold kicked me in the spine when I failed to respond to his order to take out the trash. “I shouted your name ten times,” he roared. “John! John! John! Your name’s John, isn’t it?”

“I guess I didn’t hear you, Harold,” I said earnestly. “I’m sorry…” Wham!

Another time he threw me down a flight of twelve stairs to the concrete floor of the basement. I had my head rammed into heavy oak doors more times than I care to remember. I got slugged in the face and knocked over backward, then picked up by the ankles and spanked while airborne. If he was really angry he turned me around and slammed a fist into my stomach.

It’s unfair to say that Harold had turned completely mad. For the first few years, he was up and down, alternating between manic and depressive states. We loved him when he was down because he was so harmless; he never even talked. But with the turnabout he became a horror. We could sense the switch coming. Watching Harold was like watching an animal before an earthquake. He grew restless and acted in a manner that was abnormal, even for him. Eventually, we were able to mark his changes by the calendar, as he’d go through exact six-month cycles.

When I was nine, Mother gave birth to another son, David, and from that day on my life at home was never the same. As Harold’s flesh and blood, David could do no wrong. Anything David wanted was his, even if it didn’t belong to him. To make certain that David always got his way, Harold taught him to scream at the top of his powerful lungs, which brought Harold running. David was never satisfied with his own toys. He wanted what belonged to me, things I had bought with my hard-earned money. David wound up with them and I was left with bruises.

“Why is Harold always hitting me?” I asked Mother one day as she pressed a cold cloth against my reddened cheek.

“He doesn’t mean to, sweetheart. It’s just that he can’t help himself.”

“Then why doesn’t he hit David? David can do anything and I get the blame.”

“David’s just a baby.” She replied, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“Yes, he does.”

“Let’s not make trouble, darling. Let’s try to be nice to David and Harold too. Harold needs all our help and prayers.”

Pray for Harold? Be nice to Harold? I couldn’t do that. It was much easier to hide whenever Harold was around. The dining room provided the perfect hideaway. We had a huge dining table, made of oak; that Mother always kept extended with three large leaves and covered with a heavy damask cloth that reached to the floor. The table was seldom used, except for holidays and the rare times we had company. We always ate in the kitchen. Every time I’d hear Harold’s car pulling into the driveway, I’d run for cover under the table. Some of my fondest memories are of listening to the family fighting, going crazy, while I lay peacefully on my back staring at its underside. Resurfacing without being seen took some planning. I always tried to wait until dinner time, when everyone was seated in the kitchen. At that point, Harold would inevitably bellow, “Where the fuck is that kid!?” With that I’d appear as if I’d just come in from outside. My luck held out for nearly two years. Then one day, for some reason, Harold looked under the table. I knew I was in trouble even before his big paw shot forward at me. “Damn you,” he roared. “I’ve been calling for ten minutes!” I felt myself being dragged out into the open by the seat of my pants, and the pounding began.

On Sunday mornings, I sought refuge in church. Harold attended church, too—he came from a strict religious family, Mother said—so I lingered long after the services for Sunday school. That went on for nearly twelve years. For my perfect attendance, I later received a certificate.

I discovered the town library as well. It was small and quiet and private, seldom occupied by more than five people at once. Following the dining room table incident, I spent most of my time secluded between rows of bookshelves. I became an avid reader. Historical novels interested me most, and anything that had to do with nature and ancient civilizations. To me, the real mysteries were not by Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner, but why archaeologists explored the ruins of lost cultures.

“Where have you been all day, John?” Someone in the family would ask when I returned home.

“Walking in the woods,” I’d reply. Or “hunting.” I didn’t dare tell the truth. The library had become my secret hiding place where I could weave fantasies without their interference. The first really happy time in my life, thinking back, was spent sitting by myself reading a stack of books.

The library happened to be located in what was known as Town Hall. The police department and jail were in the basement; on the top floor were administrative and mayor’s offices. The rest of the building housed the local movie theater. That was another good place to escape on the one day a week when it was open and I could afford the price of admission. We didn’t get too many big movies, mainly old Westerns and serials with Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. I especially liked the way Lash LaRue brought the bad guys to their knees with his whip. I wanted one like it to beat the shit out of Harold.

The really good movies played in Columbus, but that didn’t stop me. I’d hop a bus and I was on my way to the big city. With John Wayne or Spencer Tracy waiting at the other end, I would have trekked almost anywhere. I often saw their films two and three times, if not in one sitting then on successive weekends.

Not all of the movies that passed through town were wholesome and clean; some never even made it to Columbus. I’d recently turned twelve when I heard about a foreign film that was causing quite a furor across the country. The movie starred a young French actress, Brigitte Bardot, and from its title, And God Created Woman, it sounded rather pious. According to the paper, it definitely wasn’t. There were scenes where Bardot, who was fast becoming known as a “sex kitten,” bared her breasts while portraying a pouting child-woman who openly advocated freedom of choice in sexual partners. Members of our town council insisted on screening the film prior to scheduling it for showing in the local theatre, a practice they followed with every film. How else could they uphold the strict moral standards of the community? Silently, the council members probably enjoyed Bardot and her shameless sexual appetite (on film, anyway), but being responsible men, they blackballed the movie. The fuss they created in judging the film “dirty” undoubtedly left more of an impression on me than if I’d seen it.

Sex was not a subject to be discussed openly. The slightest reference to anything sexual at a mixed gathering brought gasps and glares from the women present, and a certain reprisal for the offending party later on. No one fondled in public; few people touched. Men told “shady” stories and talked of lustful escapades in private or in small groups at neighborhood taverns. Boys gathered in hidden places, like behind barns, to exchange secrets meant only for young ears. As kids growing up in Farm County, we all knew what was going on. We’d have had to wear blinders not to know. Everywhere we looked, animals were mating, constantly and without inhibition. Watching them became a natural part of our lives. My first sexual experience occurred when I was eight years old. I’d fooled around some before that, playing “stinky finger” with one of the little neighborhood girls, but nothing more serious than “let me touch yours and I’ll let you touch mine.” She touched—at time stroking my “thing” as if it was a pet snake—and I probed. We both giggled.

There were no laughs with Gloria. Every once in a while Mother and Harold liked to go into town at night. Mother hesitated leaving me alone after dark (my brothers and Ann were never home), so she lined up a baby sitter. Young girls who’d work for nothing weren’t easy to find, but Gloria didn’t mind. A few jars of Mother’s homemade preserves would be payment enough, thank you.

Gloria was a high school sophomore and very pretty, although slightly on the chunky side. She wore tight sweaters and skirts, which tended to make her appear heavier than she really was. “I’ve found a new diet,” she’d tell me each time she came to visit. Do you think it’s doing any good?” Then she’d stand before a mirror, suck in her stomach, and rub her hands along her ample hips, thighs and breasts.

One night, Gloria put me to bed and went directly into the adjoining bathroom, leaving the door partially open. I didn’t think anything about it; in fact, I tried to sleep, but Gloria had other plans for me. It wasn’t the light that bothered me, nor the sound of water running into the wash basin. It was Gloria herself. Gloria in action! From my bed I could see not only Gloria’s reflection in one of the full-length bathroom mirrors, but also Gloria peeling off her clothes. She liked to disrobe and admire herself. She was good at it, too. She performed one of the most erotic stripteases I’ve ever seen. The only thing missing was bump-and-grind music.

Standing before the mirror, as if in a spotlight, she unbuttoned her blouse and slowly let it fall from her shoulders to the floor. Then she unhooked her bra, shaking the straps loose one by one until her huge breasts were fully exposed. Unzipping her skirt, she stepped out it and pulled down her panties. Fully naked, she stood basking in her own reflection, caressing her body with smooth, tender strokes. Except for the photos in the nudist magazine, which I hardly remembered, I’d never seen a woman naked before. I knew I liked it.

Gloria could see me in the mirror just as I could see her. I pretended to be asleep, but she wasn’t fooled; she knew I wasn’t lying under a tent pole. It pleased her to know that her body excited me, even though I wouldn’t let on. “What do you think you’re looking at?” She shrieked, as if suddenly stunned to discover she was being watched. She held a towel primly against her breasts, even though she knew full well that I could see her breasts, even though she knew full well that I could see her exposed backside in the mirror. “I know what you’re thinking, you bad boy.” I was certain that God would strike me dead!

Once Gloria had her say she returned to the mirror for more self-examination and adoring caresses. When she tired of that, she moved to the bathroom sink, filled it with warm water, and began washing herself with a dampened cloth. This process took a good half-hour, most of which was spent on her breasts. Gloria worshiped her breasts, and they were magnificent, large and firm with dollar-sized pink disks surrounding the nipples. She washed over them, and around them, and under them, the repeated the cycle before moving down her stomach and between her legs. Finished at last, she disappeared momentarily. The next thing I knew, she was standing over me wearing only a towel, sarong-style. “Did you take a bath before you went to bed?” she barked. I had, but I didn’t want her to know. More than anything, I wanted to get in the bathroom with her. “No,” I fibbed.

“Well, you have to take one,” she ordered. Gloria marched out of the room and started filling the tub. I followed in my underwear and watched as the water began to rise. She squirted something under the faucet that brought forth a wave of bubbles. “OK, get in,” she said, “and make sure you wash everything.”

As I pulled off my underwear and stepped into the foamy tub, Gloria returned to the basin, dropped her towel, and began cleansing herself all over again. With her back to me, my view was obstructed, but from the position of her hands I could tell she was working around her genitalia. “What are you staring at?” she snapped, looking over her shoulder. “Nothing,” I gulped.

She glared momentarily before darting toward me to grab my ear. Tugging at it, she said angrily, “Don’t you ever wash these things?” Without waiting for an answer, she took the wash rag, the one she’d been using on herself, soaped it and stuck it in my ear—hard (Gloria had the strength of a bull). I started to yell, but she ran the soapy rag across my mouth, muffling my cries. “Now for the rest of you,” she said.

She lathered my head, than dunked it underwater. Then she ran the cloth down my back and around my buttocks, lingering around the cleavage, fingering it deeply. Her breasts grazed my arm. The nipples were swollen and taut. “Stand up,” she barked.

I hesitated. I was not in any condition to stand; part of me was already up, anyway.

“Get on your feet!” Gloria said, with a strange look on her face. As she grabbed under my arms and pulled me out of the water, her eyes suddenly grew wide. “What’s that for?” she asked, stepping back a bit to get a better view of my stiffened appendage.

“I don’t know,” I said naively.

Gloria looked at me savagely. “You play with yourself, don’t you?”

“No,” I answered emphatically. “That’s a sin.”

“Have you ever touched a girl before?”

“No,” I said, discounting my earlier ‘stinky finger’ experience. She looked at me sternly while soaping her hand, then wrapping it around the hardened rod.

Then she began stroking it. I had my first orgasm that night.

As Gloria was tucking me back in bed, she asked, “Are you going to tell your mother I gave you a bath?”

“No,” I replied, definitely.

“Did you like the bath I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, whenever you have to have a babysitter, make sure you ask for me.”

“I will,” I replied. I had no say in the matter, but I promised anyway.

“And never tell anybody what we did. Swear?”

“I swear.”

A few months later, shortly after my ninth birthday, I discovered what it was really like to be with a girl. Mary Kay was the daughter of a neighbor, and we often walked to school together. I hadn’t seen her in weeks, but we met one hot, steamy afternoon on a county road. She was wearing a little cotton sun dress, and looked terrific. “Want to take a walk?” I asked. “We could let our feet dangle in the creek.”

She brushed a wisp of blond hair out of her face and smiled. “Sure, that would feel good.” We made it as far as the bridge that crossed the creek— actually, into the cool shadows beneath the bridge. There, nothing grew except the softest, greenest moss; it felt like a carpet of velour under our bare feet. I had known Mary Kay ever since we’d moved to the country. She was a good friend, nothing more, but suddenly I felt a stirring between my legs. I turned on my side to face her as she lay on her stomach, and ran my hand along the gentle curve of her back. Her body quivered, and she rolled over. I placed my hand on her stomach, making broad, sweeping, circular motions until my fingers rested in the damp folds between her thighs. I’d never played “stinky finger” with Mary Kay before, and she did not seem to mind my starting now, although she kept her legs firmly together. I was leaning over to kiss her cheek when she came up with the oddest remark. Looking up, she said, “I was watching my sister kiss her boyfriend the other night and they were sticking their tongues in each other’s mouths.” “You mean she stuck her tongue in his mouth?”

“No, he stuck his tongue in her mouth.” I looked at Mary Kay and made a face.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “but do you want to see what it feels like?” I wasn’t quite sure, but I nodded anyway. To kiss, seriously, we had to get close, and when we did my penis brushed against the softness of her leg. The feel of her body against mine brought on a feeling I’d never known before, and I thought: There cannot be anything better in the world than being this close to another human being.

Mary Kay pressed her lips to mine and we touched tongues. It felt and I backed away. “No,” she said, “you’re supposed to suck on my tongue.” “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said, impatiently.

Again, we kissed and once again I felt her tongue in my mouth. “That’s awful,” I said, wiping my open mouth with the back of my hand. “No it isn’t! It’s OK—my sister does it.”

My interest in Mary Kay was slowly fading, but I didn’t want her mad at me. “All right,” I said, “we’ll do it.”

At that point I noticed a strange thing happening. As I worked on Mary Kay’s tongue, she began to spread her legs—like the unfolding of flower petals. Now my fingers could freely explore the soft, resilient flesh of her uncharted depths. Then I felt her hand. She had a death grip on my rod. “You’re squeezing too hard,” I said. It felt dead, but I still had an erection.

“Well, how do you want me to touch it?”

“Just hold it,” I said “but not so tight.”

“I saw my brother play with himself once,” Mary Kay whispered, “so I know how boys do it.” She loosened her grip slightly and began moving her hand slowly up and down. After only a few strokes, she stopped. Her eyes grew wide as she said, “I know an even better way. Want to try?”

“What do you mean?”

Mary Kay pushed my probing fingers away and spread her legs farther apart, lifting her knees into the air. “Closer,” she coaxed, “move closer.”

She pointed the object in her hand, guiding me inside. Then I was on top of her. And we kissed—with our tongues. I thought I’d gone to Heaven.

Our bodies locked tightly together for several moments, squirming unexpectedly at the wild and totally new sensation that gripped us. Then, suddenly and without warning, Mary Kay shoved me away. She was on her feet in an instant, reaching for her panties and sun dress and tugging awkwardly at the skimpy pieces in an almost desperate attempt to cover herself. She dressed with her back to me, without saying a word, and without so much as a parting glance she hastily departed the shadowy “scene of the crime” for the open spaces and sunlight.

Mary Kay’s quick departure didn’t bother me. In fact, I felt relieved to have her break away, and was grateful for her silence. Had she said anything, even in passing, I probably wouldn’t have answered; my mind was too filled with ugly, horrifying thoughts. The overwhelming joy that had raced through me at the height of our intimacy had turned to fear and shame. It was as if a dense, black cloud had rolled over me, smothering me with guilt. I had tasted Heaven. Now I was certain the Devil had taken me by the hand and was leading me straight to Hell. It was difficult for me to understand how something that felt so good could be considered so wrong, even evil. I needed desperately to talk to someone, anyone, but that was impossible. I couldn’t confide in my brothers or sister, and certainly not in my Mother or Harold. We were not allowed to think about sex, let alone discuss it. To admit that I had actually experienced sex would have been intolerable.

My feelings toward Mary Kay swayed from one extreme to the other. One moment, I wanted to see her again to try and make peace with her, and myself. The next moment, I blamed her for causing me so much pain, and pledged never to even mention her name. If it hadn’t been for that afternoon under the bridge, I kept telling myself, we’d still be best friends. Instead, we had become strangers. My guilt was so complete that I began to doubt whether I’d ever look at another girl (I was certain I’d never touch one). But, for reasons that were unknown to me at the time, whenever I thought of Mary Kay, which was almost constantly, I’d relive our few moments of innocent discovery and my body would throb with sexual tension. Once again, I’d be lifted sky-high with pleasure, only to come crashing down in despair that lingered long after the all-too-fleeting pleasure.

How could I ever be forgiven my sin? To my young mind, I had committed the greatest sin of all; one twenty times more deadly than masturbation. Mostly, I wanted to avoid Mary Kay. That was easy for a time, especially on week days. Because of summer vacation, there were no morning walks together to school, no sitting within glancing distance of each other in the same classroom.

Once school started in the fall, I purposely left the house earlier than necessary so that our paths would not cross. For safe measure I took short cuts, racing through the woods and across cornfields and meadows. In the classroom, Mary Kay sat behind me, several rows away. By getting to my seat first, and leaving last, I could go for days without seeing her.

Sundays were a horror, as our families made it a ritual to attend church together. There were so many of us that we usually took two cars, but Mary Kay and I, whom our well-meaning mothers regarded as “the two chums,” were often paired. That meant riding with her to church in the same car, sliding into the same pew next to her, and joining her in the fun and games between services and Sunday school. The only time we spoke was on the playground, where Mary Kay liked to ride the swings. Before the incident under the bridge, she didn’t mind where I’d put my hands to shove her back and forth. I like pushing on her soft bottom rather than her trim, little waist, and so did she. Then it was harmless; now it was dirty. “Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried, setting the rules for months to come.

“I won’t, don’t worry,” I replied. From then on I was careful to make contact only with the swing board.

Sunday was the day the smothering black cloud was at its worst, and it wasn’t all due to Mary Kay’s presence. Listening to the minister had a devastating effect on me. For some reason, his sermons always focused on sex, or some aspect of it. He preached about lust, and condemned people who “go’ a whoring” and commit ‘whoredom.’” He talked endlessly (or so it seemed) about wickedness and nakedness and immorality. I heard about incest and adultery, of men who “waste their seeds,” and of wicked, sinful places like Sodom and Gomorrah. Every time he opened his mouth I squirmed in my seat. When he gestured with his hands, as he often did, his finger seemed to point directly at me. It didn’t, really, but it took me many years to figure that out. His sermons were pure vaudeville, and he was playing to his audience. Where else could the people of this little of this little farming community hear sex discussed openly (it was the only x-rated show in town), and with the blessing of the church? Topics conserved forbidden not only kept the parishioners awake, but also had then returning every Sunday and filling the collection plate to overflowing.

The passing months did little to ease my conscience, or dim my memories of that steamy afternoon with Mary Kay. Winters in the Ohio Valley can be fierce, raw and blustery. But no matter how numbing the cold was, thoughts of our time together never failed to generate heat between my legs. One freezing January day, as I was returning from setting trap lines in the snow-covered woods, I spotted Mary Kay walking along the road. She was bundled from head to toe, but the sight of her fascinated me. I crouched low, not wanting her to see me, then began following her, careful to keep a safe distance between us. She turned into her driveway, bypassed her house, and then disappeared inside the barn-like tool shed in the back yard. I couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there, and I really didn’t care, but I suddenly found myself at the shed door, pushing it open. Mary Kay was sitting on an old crate, huddled next to a frost-caked window. She turned away from me and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, closing the door.

“Well, you’d better go.”

“I want to stay,” I said, stubbornly. The admission surprised me. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to be with her.

“Well, you can’t.”

“Why?” I moved closer to Mary Kay, stepping cautiously over scattered nails and bits of broken wood. “You haven’t really spoken to me since we were underneath the bridge.”

She raised her mitten to the frosty pane and ran her fingers in small circles, creating a blurred pattern. “You haven’t spoken to me either,” she said, finally.

“I’ve thought about it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” she sighed, her breath clearly visible in the cold air. “We’re not supposed to talk to each other.”

“Why? Who said that? Did you tell your mother?”

She turned slowly to look at me. Her face, the small portion that peeked through the furry trim on the hood of her parka, showed no sign of anger. “No, I didn’t tell anyone,” she answered calmly, “but what we did was wrong.”

“I think it was wrong, too.”

“You do?” she said quickly. She actually sounded relieved that we were talking.

“Yes—and I don’t think we should ever do it again.”

Mary Kay signed once more, sending a shaft of white air across my cheeks. “I don’t either,” she agreed.

I smiled and so did she. Then I sat beside her and we talked about our guilt, and unhappiness, and all the things we’d missed by avoiding each other the past months. We were completely open and honest, especially about sex. Somehow, the subject always came back to that. “Being with you was one of the best things that has ever happened to me,” I admitted. “Except Christmas mornings, nothing has ever made me feel so good.” Looking into Mary Kay’s eyes, I knew I wanted to feel good again. The pleasure she gave me, no matter how fleeting, made all the guilt seem worthwhile.

My hand found its way to Mary Kay’s thigh, and I began stroking it very gently. A moment later we were standing, unzipping our jeans, and pressing our warm bodies together. We didn’t even notice the icy cold that surrounded us.

I saw Mary Kay many times after that.

And Gloria!

There were other young girls as well.

In the four years since I began straying to escape Harold’s tirades, I learned that home was not the place for me. Home stood for pain and violence; fighting and bickering, anger and hiding out. In its place, I discovered a worthy substitute in sex. Sex brought a closeness of one-on-one comfort. It allowed me to be warm and caring, to kiss and touch and experience pleasure. It was, I felt, the perfect intimacy between the love and feeling that I should have been receiving at home. As such, any strange girl became more close to me than my own family.

As I entered my teen years, I turned more and more to sex. It was the only family I needed. I knew, too, that I had just about all of Harold that I could take for one lifetime. I needed to get away, but wasn’t exactly sure how to go about that. My young mind finally came up with a plan, and that was to join the army. There was only one hitch. Because of my age, I needed the approval of a parent. My mother didn’t argue. She signed the papers and I was gone.

Believe it or not, the army was good for me. I can’t honestly say that it taught me any morals or sense of responsibility; I had been raised with those qualities. I can’t even say that it taught me to be an excellent sharp shooter since hunting in the woods all those years had made me a good shot. But I did learn something, and it wasn’t in any manual. What the army taught me was that there was a whole world of sex I had yet to discover.

While stationed in Germany, I heard about a cathouse filled with voluptuous women of various ages and sizes. But just hearing about it wasn’t good enough for me; I had to check out for myself. It didn’t take long for the madam, a woman edging into her forties, to learn of my “talent,” and once she did she refused to allow any of her girls to be alone with me. I was hers and that was final; she made that clear to everyone under her roof. Being the young man that I was, I didn’t argue considering the nature of the place. Besides, I didn’t have to pay for any of the services as the other customers did. It was a great arrangement.

Whenever I had a night off, or a weekend pass, just about everyone at the base knew where to find me because I was always with Madam Helga. Everything was going smoothly until one day I arrived to find Madam away on an errand. A lot of the girls flirted with me whenever they had the chance, but few of them would cross the line for fear of losing not only their jobs but also their nightly romps with horny soldiers. But with Madam Helga gone, one hot little number decided the risk was hers for the taking and, given the circumstances, I wasn’t about to argue. We were going at it hot and heavy when Madam Helga suddenly burst into the room. That’s when I learned the meaning of the words, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Ranting and raving, Madam Helga dragged my lusty partner of the moment out of bed and down the stairs by her golden hair and out the door, all the while threatening that she would end up in a box if she ever returned. By the time Madam Helga came back for me, I too was gone, never to return to her establishment again. That confrontation left a lasting impression on my young mind for it was the first time I really ever experienced the wrath of jealousy. I guess I didn’t expect an “older woman” to react that way.

While in the army I met Tony. He was from New York City and he seemed to know all the ropes when it came to seducing women, sometimes for lust, sometimes to boost his ego, but more than anything, for money. Tony fascinated me with stories of his sexual escapades, and before long I found myself hanging around the young dark-haired fellow with the piercing blue eyes. How he could end up with the most gorgeous girls, then later brag about the money and jewels they would insist he have, absolutely amazed me. He had so many girls in love with him at one time that he could have given some young movie star stud a run for his money. I liked women, too, and I loved to have sex, but Tony gave a whole different meaning to “enjoying a job well done.”

Tony and I were released from the army together on August 24, 1964, sixteen days after my twentieth birthday. During our time together in Germany, Tony had invited me to go to Brooklyn with him to check out the sights before my return to Ohio. I wasn’t in a hurry to get back there anyway, and I hadn’t a clue of what I was supposed to do with my life. “Why not,” I told him.

Tony became a very good friend, and a very good teacher. He introduced me to so many people in the fast lane that I thought my head would never stop spinning. Why, there were more women in New York than there were farmhouses in Ohio! I thought I had been a sex-craved fiend before I returned to the states, now I knew for sure that that’s what I was.

The sexual revolution was clearly on its way in New York. I realized that once I had gone out with the sister of one of Tony’s girlfriends. At first she came off as being a petite, seemingly shy little gal, but she ended up being a flying nymph. Shy? I don’t think so.

The next day Tony approached me with an odd look on his face. Apparently my date told her sister of my unusual appendage, who was then on the phone to tell Tony. I was really embarrassed when he asked me if it was true that I had three legs (Tony had seen me naked but never with a hard on). My embarrassment soon faded, however, when he began to tell me how much money I could make with my “extra leg.” That was all it took to whet my appetite, and before I could change my mind Tony was teaching me the fine art of being a male prostitute.

It wasn’t long before I was having more fun than I’d ever had in my life. Who would have thought that little (big) “Johnny Buck” from Ohio could have his cake and eat enough of it to survive in New York City? It was a definite improvement from the life I thought I’d be returning to, without question. For seven months, I had all the sex I could handle; my pockets were always filled with money, car keys, jewelry, and all the night life I could stand, but I was living a fantasy that seemed to be spinning out of control. Satisfying as it was, I knew I couldn’t go on like that much longer without burning out or getting in deep trouble. There was something else. Strange as it seems, I had been raised with strong morals, and a voice within me kept saying. “This is really crazy.”

I had heard about the warm, paradise-like climate on the California coast. All the babes in their little bikinis soaking up the sun would be more welcome than the brutal cold I had grown so tired of. I could get a job, go to school and learn all about Hollywood. I halfheartedly joked around with myself saying, “Who knows, I might even be in a movie someday.” I never really believed that would happen of course, but the warm, sunny climate and the beaches filled with shapely women were enticement enough for me to seek the journey.

It wasn’t much later that I bought a bus ticket and headed west, first stopping to see my family. I had hoped to avoid Harold but I knew that if I wanted to be with everyone else I’d run into his sorry ass, too. I even visited Mary Kay while I was there. She was going through some really hard times and needed money desperately. I gave her all the cash I had but twenty dollars, figuring she needed it more than I did. I was certain I could get more where that came from. Maybe I felt guilty about the way I made the money and believed that helping Mary Kay would right what was wrong. All I know is that helping her made me feel better. After my short stay in Ohio I didn’t have enough money for the bus ticket that would take me all the way to California. I went as far as I could on fifteen dollars then started hitch-hiking westward across the states. From then on it was odd jobs along the way, whatever it took to get across the miles.

3

I thought I’d never get to California. I wasn’t in any rush, but there were times when I thought I’d never get out of Missouri. With no money, it seemed I was stopping at every farmhouse along the way to ask for a day or two of work, a meal and a place to sleep in the barn. “I just got out of the military,” I’d tell the farmers, “and all my money’s been stolen. I am trying to get home to California.” A blatant lie, but I had to earn some cash. Half the time I got lucky. A few good people even gave me five or ten dollar handouts as I was on my way again.

The pace picked up once I crossed the Oklahoma state line. As I was hitchhiking along the highway, a man in a new Mustang stopped to give me a ride. His name was Terry and he had recently left his wife in Virginia to head for Hollywood to try for a career in acting. When I heard where he was going I knew my days of roughing it was over. Unfortunately, Terry was also short of cash. By the time we reached Texas, both of us were stone-cold broke. This time I took the easy way out. A collect call to my mother netted us twenty bucks, enough to get us to California. We looked like a million dollars traveling in Terry’s new car, but we were counting our pennies the rest of the way.

I was hoping that Terry and I could share a room or small apartment once we arrived in Hollywood. He was an easy going, pleasant guy in his mid-twenties, and we got along great together, with no problems. But Terry had other plans. “I’ll be staying with friends in the San Fernando Valley,” he told me. “You’re welcome to come along. It’s a big house. They have plenty of room.” I thought I was doing the right thing by turning down his offer. Once Terry had driven away, however, I found myself stranded in a strange city with no place to go, and without any money.

Hollywood in March, 1965, was even more bustling than it is today. The streets were crowded not only with tourists eager to see all the sights, but with people who worked at the networks—CBS and ABC—as well as the local radio and television stations and nearby motion picture and recording studios. Then there were the movie and legitimate theaters with their glittering marquees, the restaurants and night spots, and the shiny stars of the Walk of Fame. Wandering about was fun for a time, but I felt totally lost.

I had one phone number in my pocket. It belonged to a family in Garden Grove, former neighbors from back home in Ohio. Where Garden Grove was exactly, I had no idea, but it sounded nice and it was in Southern California. As it turned out, Garden Grove wasn’t too far away, southeast of Los Angeles near Anaheim, the home of Disneyland. With an invitation to stay with our ex-neighbors, I found myself on the road again, hitchhiking to Garden Grove.

The family couldn’t have been nicer to “Johnny.” For next to nothing, I was put up in a small but private room with connecting bath, given kitchen privileges and a key to come and go as I pleased. Within a few days I landed a job as an ambulance driver, which had me cramming the Thomas Guide every night to learn where the hell I was going at full speed with siren wailing and lights flashing. I knew from the start I wouldn’t last long. If there’s one thing that really gets to me it’s seeing someone or something suffer—people, animals, anything. In the weeks that I stayed with the ambulance company I saw more gore than I thought I’d ever see again: freeway accidents, hit-and-runs on city streets, twisted, beat-up bodies in their homes -kids, grown-ups, elderly people. To get up every morning and know that I would have to face that at least once during the day was more than I could handle, so I quit and began a series of odd jobs that took me from a candy factory to selling furniture, then shoes, the Fuller brushes door-to-door. None of these jobs lasted long either, nor did they interest me. More than anything I wanted to study cinematography at UCLA.

By June I was back in Hollywood, this time sleeping next to a trash can behind the Cave Theatre at night and washing dishes at a hot dog stand on Hollywood Boulevard by day. I could have rented a cheap flophouse room somewhere, I suppose, but I was trying to save, not spend. I can be a real hoarder with money, especially when I have a goal in mind.

It was over the counter at the hot dog stand that I met Linda. A regular lunchtime customer, she worked within walking distance at a law office as a secretary. Within a week, Linda had a new roommate.

Living with Linda in her apartment was the best thing that could have happened to me. It certainly had its advantages, sleeping with her for one. We had such good times in bed she rarely mentioned the rent money we had agreed to split. Even when she did mention money, it was with a wink.

On weekends Linda went her own way and I went mine, no questions asked. I welcomed the time to make extra money washing cars, which meant my hands were in water seven days a week. I think I washed almost everything in Hollywood at that point, but I wasn’t complaining, as I finally had enough cash to enroll in the summer session at UCLA. To earn extra spending money, I applied for an on campus job as a nude model for Life Drawing classes. I did it as a lark, really. With my stringbean build, I knew I wasn’t the model type. Still, I felt I had something of interest to offer the would-be Picassos.

Linda was full of surprises too. One evening she arrived home from her office to tell me she’d had a fight with her boss and quit. I certainly wasn’t making enough money to support the two of us until she found another position. But Linda had more to tell me, news that she’d been keeping to herself. Part of her job with the law firm had been to “entertain” the wealthy clientele. Suddenly everything began to add up. No wonder her weekends were always booked. No wonder she wasn’t concerned about the rent money. She was raking it in on the side.

Linda didn’t remain idle for long. She had enjoyed her extracurricular life so much at the law firm that she decided to make it her calling, and soon she was working the clubs along the Sunset Strip. With Linda away nights and sleeping days, I was offered her car whenever I needed it. The only thing missing in our busy lives was a campus-parking permit for me.

It was at that point that I arrived back at the apartment to be confronted with Linda’s intriguing proposal. “How would you like to make a hundred bucks?” she wanted to know. All I had to do was screw her while a camera recorded the action for a stag film.

Hell, I wasn’t going into politics or planning on becoming famous. I just wanted to get my hands on some fast parking-permit money. As it turned out, performing with Linda was the easiest money I had ever made, and I didn’t have to get my hands wet. Within an hour Harry had peeled the silver foil from the window, dismantled the lights, packed up his Super 8mm camera and with a slobbering grin, handed me a check for one hundred dollars. I was smiling, too, until I discovered the check was no good.

4

Little did I realize that the one-time gig with Harry would land me a career. I did know one thing for certain, however: If I was to continue performing in Harry’s kind of filmmaking, cash was the only way to go. No more bounced checks for me! From that day on I began telling people that my middle initial, C, stood for cash, I never liked my real middle name, anyway.

My experience with Harry convinced me there was money to be made in modeling. The thought so consumed me that I began looking through classified ads in the L.A. Free Press in the hope of finding leads for part-time jobs to fit into my class schedule. Most of the listings were come-ons from characters that wanted up-front money themselves: “Give us fifty bucks…” It was the people who didn’t ask for handouts that caught my attention. As it turned out, they were looking for nude models.

I began showing up at Crossroads of the World, an attractive Hollywood landmark of sorts, on Sunset Boulevard. Behind the storefront facades, in darkened back rooms, were miniature sound stages. They weren’t anything fancy, just a few lights on tripods, a camera, scattered pieces of worn furniture, a rumpled bed, and backdrops. It wasn’t MGM, but something was obviously happening between the walls. Unknowingly, I had stumbled onto the pornography capital of the United States.

My first assignments were for magazine work. In the mid 1960s, a made model had to keep his back to the camera. I even had to keep my underwear on since showing a man’s ass was illegal—or so they told me. Then they began to get really chancy and off came the underwear. For one series of shots, I had to dry-hump a female model. Everything was simulated but it looked real in the photo, probably too real, for once the shots got into circulation, the photographer got busted. But, times were changing. The court decided the photos were not obscene, which led to more frontal nudity. It was a gradual process until the courts allowed even penetration to be shown.

Each of the shops at Crossroads had a porno shooter who shot everything from nude stills to live action 8mm “loops.” I remember walking into the shop shortly after my first visit to meet with a photographer named Dave, who had taken stills of two girls in a lesbian scene with a black guy. Dave was scared stiff, having just received a phone call to alert him that he was in trouble. Without another word, Dave started loading all his negatives and camera equipment into his Cadillac and sped away down Sunset. Not thirty seconds later, what appeared to be the entire LAPD Vice Squad swarmed Dave’s studio. He had gotten away just in time.

Sex was all around me. I was drawn to it, and it was drawn to me. The producers, if they could be called that, were anxious to get me away from posing for magazine shots and into film work. What made me valuable, they said, were my size and my ability to sustain an erection and orgasm on cue.

With film offers suddenly coming my way, I dropped out of UCLA. For the first time in my life I was making decent money, and I had found something I really liked doing. It was certainly more enjoyable, for me, anyway, than washing dishes, selling brushes, and chasing accidents. I was also getting an education in cinematography without having to pay for it. When I wasn’t performing, I visited other filming sessions at Crossroads where I learned camera techniques, lighting, make-up, and various ways to dress a set. It was all small-time, bottom level stuff, but it was a start. Actually, a few of the men were quite knowledgeable about filmmaking. At one session, a cameraman who had worked for Cecil B. DeMille during the early days of talkies befriended me. Meeting him gave me the feeling that I was headed in the right direction, despite the surroundings.

The movies being made at Crossroads were no different than the movie Harry made of me and Linda at our apartment that night. By today’s standards they weren’t really movies at all, but rather minute-long “loops,” short scenes of quickie sex action that have been shown for years at adult arcades for a quarter a throw. Loops had no real story lines, no sound, and were shot in black and white. Quick to make, and easy money!

Loops were hot stuff in those days. Shot on Super-8 film, they were reduced to 8mm and packaged in plain white boxes, which were delivered to an underground lab. There, five hundred to one thousand copies were made and the negatives destroyed. Today, loops would be pushed as “limited editions,” but at that time they were totally illegal and had to be sold undercover, usually out of the trunks of cars parked near magazine stands, bookstores, even bars.

In the mid-1960s, a loop sold for fifty dollars. Even a minimum sale of five hundred loops brought in big bucks. The only out-of-pocket expenses were for lab costs and the models. It was even more profitable when the models were given bum checks.

During that time it seemed everything was starting to come my way. I had plenty of job offers, sex (both on and off the set), and the money was getting better and better. The only thing I didn’t have in my life was stability, but I was hoping to feel that void, too. I had met a girl months earlier when I had worked for the Ambulance Company. Her name was Sharon, and she was a nurse at County-USC Medical Center where she worked on a team that was pioneering open-heart surgery.

Sharon and I had hit it off almost from the start. I began calling her again, then seeing her, and things got serious. I wanted to keep it that way, so I never mentioned what I was doing for a living. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed; I simply wanted everything to be perfect. Above all, I didn’t want to lose her. It worked out fine that way. Sharon and I were married in the fall of 1965.

I should have been honest with her because when I did admit to what I was doing; her reaction was exactly as I feared it would be. I can hear her voice even now as she said, darkly, “You’re having sex with other women?”

I told her they meant nothing to me: I had absolutely no feeling for those women. I was simply doing a job, my job. That was the way I made money. It would take a special person to understand what I was saying. Sharon was special in many ways. She was bright, attractive, level headed, and stable. But she could not accept my work.

Maybe I expected too much. Maybe she expected too much. I only knew that from that point on, our marriage was over. And while we remained married for the next nineteen years, we lived together for only a handful of them and rarely spoke to one another. During that time I never mentioned to anyone that I was married, legally or otherwise. It was my secret. Perhaps Sharon kept our marriage a secret too.

In my mind, I felt I had been faithful to Sharon. Outside of work, I was. But once our relationship fell apart there was no stopping me. I was on the ground floor of a booming industry, and I knew it. With work steadily coming my way, I performed in nameless 8mm loops, posed for magazine layouts, and even took stunt man jobs in the occasional television series. The more I worked, the more people I met who introduced me to increasingly important people in the industry, such as producers, directors, and money-men. They all had one interest in common: pornography.

Sex was taking over my life. Films, however, were no longer my primary outlet. Over the next few years I became involved in numerous personal relationships. There was a girl from San Diego, a fiery redhead. Within a few weeks I was not only seeing her but her two redheaded sisters. Then I found myself with their redheaded mother. It worked out fine for awhile; at least until they started to talk and discovered I was doing all of them. Red heads—talk about tempers!

Husbands offered me money to fuck their wives, sometimes while they watched. Wives paid me to come back when their husbands weren’t around. No matter where I went there was always someone new to meet, always some place to go, always a waiting bed.

New York was no different. I had thought my earlier stay there to visit my ex-Army buddy was living a fast life with nothing but girls, girls, girls. But that experience paled compared with what was to come. Since I had last seen Tony, he had managed to work his way into a circle of “the right people.” No pretending for Tony, only the real thing: the kind that drips money.

My entrée was immediate. I had no illusions as to why I was so readily accepted. I basically thought of myself as nobody. I wasn’t movie-star gorgeous, and I had few social graces. These women were after one thing, and I knew it. Of course, what they wanted came at a price, but the price was no obstacle and they were willing to pay handsomely.

The “circle” consisted mainly of divorcees and widows, patrons of the arts who seemed sympathetic when I’d tell them I was a starving actor trying to make my way into a Broadway production. The depth of their sympathy was of no consequence in their willingness to support me completely. At one point I was involved in simultaneous affairs with five dowagers. They were often less than satisfying but I was getting what I wanted, and I always gave my partners a good time. I had developed a technique as a teenager because of my size. It was during those years I discovered that, because of my size, I had to go slower and spend more time on foreplay than other guys did. If I just jumped in the saddle I caused a woman pain, so I learned to take my time with extended foreplay to make her more receptive to me. My rule of thumb came to be that when a woman pulled me to her she was sufficiently lubricated to receive me.

I learned too that while a flat, muscular stomach may appeal to women visually, a slight bit of stomach is more exciting in bed. That’s because even the slightest paunch adds friction and stimulation to the pubic area. The more padding around a man’s stomach, the more he will stimulate his partner. Beer, anyone?

Sexual gratification had never been that important to me, not while I was working, anyway. I was certainly working in New York, and the rewards were way beyond my expectations. I was on the receiving end of spectacular offerings: apartments furnished with priceless antiques, all leased in my name, Mercedes Benz automobiles, diamond-studded jewelry, and more cash than I could possibly spend. The biggest single haul came not from the daughter of a powerful crime figure but from a woman known to be “as rich as Rockefeller.” I would have cleaned up even more had her attorneys not offered me fifty thousand dollars to get lost. With the sisters from San Diego, I had begun to lead a double life. Now, I was immersed in complications that were becoming impossible to keep secret. I took the money and returned to California, but the good times were far from over.

5

Above the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills, a new club had opened. Its name was Eden and it catered exclusively to couples and single women. Open only on weekends, Eden was an immediate sensation, often turning away as many as 2,000 customers a night. “You’re a big reason for my success,” the owner, a former cop, excitedly confided to me one evening. “You’re the draw. People want to see you and meet you.”

I didn’t want to get caught up in the night club scene again when I was first asked to attend. I was filming, putting in long hours virtually each day of the week. But my weekends were free and I couldn’t stay away. My inquisitive mind got the best of me, and I quickly became a regular.

The action at Eden was frantic. People somehow found their way there from all parts of the country to be a part of the “swinging singles” experience that was sweeping America. Eden was swinging, to be certain, everything from singular groping and nudity to group sex. I met some fascinating people, among them a couple who offered me ten thousand dollars to father a child for them, a request I turned down.

Bored with the teeming activity, I began to stray from Eden to begin a series of relationships, fancying myself a romantic.

I was first smitten with an actress who was then with a well-known pop singer. When those pairings failed I began seeing a real knockout lady with a sensational body. A dancer, she had starred in films and was currently headlining in Las Vegas. She was also unhappily married. For that reason we agreed never to have intimacies at her house, only at the apartment she had leased for me. Six months into our relationship, she invited me to her home. It was safe, she told me; her husband was away on business. Besides, we’d been drinking and everything was fine with the world.

My leggy friend and I were in bed were in bed when we heard a sound at the front door. Jumping from her arms stone naked, I grabbed my clothes and ran for the sliding glass door that led to the terrace. Outside in the darkness, as I began to step into my pants, I heard gunfire. Then I felt the searing pain in my leg. The force of the blow hurdled me over the terrace rail and down the ivy-covered hillside. Still naked but now bloodied and in pain, I somehow managed to climb back up the slope to my car and drive to the nearest hospital, where I passed out on the steering wheel horn.

When I woke up I was facing two uniformed policemen who were full of questions about the gunshot wound. I was quiet for along moment as I strained to come up with a possible alibi. Nothing made sense so I said with all the sincerity I could muster, “I’m a stunt man in the movies. I was rehearsing for a scene when my prop gun went off. I didn’t know it was real.”

The cops looked at each other, shaking their heads. I’m sunk, I told myself. Then one of the men said, “Stupid. Be more careful next time.”

“You’re right,” I answered. “And I will.”

With that, they were gone.

I let out a sigh of relief and began to relax. No more encounters with the police, I vowed silently. No more! I wanted to take my vow seriously, but somehow I couldn’t. There was no way of predicting what the future held for me. I couldn’t even predict what tomorrow would bring. Not so surprisingly, perhaps, my dancer friend continued to remain in my life. Or, rather, I continued to remain in hers when she divorced her husband and moved me into her house. Being a dancer, she knew all about legs. I couldn’t have had a better therapist to get me back on my feet.

The relationship held yet another surprise for me, however. After nearly a year together she let one of her dainty shoes drop. She had secretly remarried and was supporting her new husband in Las Vegas. How was I to know she was seeing another man during her frequent trips away for headlining performances? It was time for me to move on.

More despondent than I cared to admit over the breakup, I became a regular at the bars of Beverly Hills’ posh hotels where I became chummy with the bartenders. “You get a lot of lonely, rich old ladies looking for some action,” I told them. “I’m the action. Fix me up and I’ll cut you in on the take.” I met some fascinating ladies and received the usual expensive gifts, including complimentary “vacations” for two to such destinations as London, Paris and Rome, but I was like dead meat on the rack. I had lost all enthusiasm for what I was doing. I was smoking and drinking more than ever,

The sexual revolution was reaching an all-time high. Within the Los Angeles area, a number of individuals were beginning to organize companies and invest huge amounts of money in making adult entertainment. Theaters were opening in major cities for the exclusive showing of porno movies. Following the release of such films as Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones, branded obscene but upheld by the courts, the public no longer seemed to have a problem with being seen in lines at porno movie houses. Unlike the days of seedy-looking men with long trench coats, it had actually become acceptable for couples, even groups of friends, to attend such places. Porn had suddenly become a part of popular culture.

Between all my running around and whoring, I had made a handful of feature films myself. The names of the earliest ones are long forgotten, but I believe The Ladies Bed Companion was among the first.

Feature movies were definitely a step above loop life. Scripts weren’t necessary to churn out a loop, and besides, scripts were evidence if found in a raid. Now we were given actual pages with storylines and dialogue to memorize. And we had shooting schedules of days instead of hours.

I had met Hawaiian-born director Bob Chinn in 1970. Now, several years later, I ran into him again. “I’m making another porn flick,” Chinn told me,” and I’d love for you to be in it.” What Bob had in mind, I didn’t know, but he certainly came along at the right time.

The chance encounter led to my being cast as Johnny Wadd, a nononsense, gun-toting private eye à la Dirty Harry, whose capers led him into more beds than dark alleys. At first, Chinn had no name for his character. We were standing around MacArthur Park in Los Angeles one afternoon when he asked me if I had any ideas what to call the film. “Why not name the lead guy Johnny Wadd,” I suggested, “and that could be the title of the film.” Being of Chinese descent, Bob didn’t immediately understand what “Johnny Wadd” implied, but after trying it out on a few people he got the message and decided to use it.

Johnny Wadd was my first real screen characterization and Johhny Wadd, Detective, my first film with Bob Chinn, was a great working experience for me. It had a plot with substance, a large cast and crew, a sixweek shooting schedule, a big budget, and location filming. For the first time I had a chance to work away from sheltered studio walls.

Bob and I made a good team. He allowed me to shape my character, whose trademarks were a big dick and a pinkie ring (an enormous diamond-encrusted dragonfly that had been given to me by a lady friend as a reward for “services rendered”), as well as giving me free reign in the creation of my sex scenes. I didn’t tell Bob how to edit and he didn’t tell me how to fuck.

Following Johnny Wadd, Detective, we made Ensenada Wadd on location in Mexico. Filming on location has its drawbacks, as we soon discovered. While in Ensenada to shoot prison conditions and squalid street scenes for background shots, we were threatened with arrest for working without a permit. Facing a possible five-year jail sentence, we were able to escape only because our newer, revved-up engines could outrun the posse.

While in Hawaii for Waikiki Wadd, I signed a contract to work nights at a dingy downtown Honolulu club performing simulated sex on stage with an attractive young partner. We never did anything but we were nude and the act was choreographed to such a point that it was highly erotic. The girl and I created such a sensation that the club owner kept renewing our options.

The act continued long after the completion of Waikiki Wadd. In fact, months passed before I had to return to Hollywood for the start of another film. I gave the club owner two weeks’ notice, but he would not let me go. The next thing I knew, I was being arrested on lewd conduct charges and heading for a trial which lasted five months. It seemed odd to me that while I was free on bail I was allowed to continue performing at the club. It seemed less odd when I realized that I had been set up by the club owner. With one phone call to a friend at the police department, he got what he wanted: more of me and a lot of free publicity.

Johnny Wadd pushed me into the limelight. I had more offers to appear in films than I could handle, and that wasn’t all. I was wanted for personal appearances at various Miss Nude USA contests, film premieres, and trade shows, as well as for numerous endorsements and magazine interviews. Whenever I showed up at a public event the atmosphere was like a carnival. People were lined up around the block to get my autograph. Men asked me to deflower their daughters. “How big is it?” Fans would scream.

“Bigger than a pay phone, smaller than a Cadillac,” was my stock reply.

I was traveling all over the world with all expenses paid and making thousands of dollars just to sign my name and promote movies. The women in other parts of the world were just as hot, if not hotter, than the women in America.

I had become the biggest name in adult films; the highest paid performer in the industry. The John Wayne of pornography! And I was working my ass off, often in risky situations. One producer got me stranded in the dead of night in a remote California desert. There I was, fighting off million of ants and bees, without any clothes on. Then there was the time a knife-wielding leading lady took the director literally when he yelled, “Cut!” I’ve been filmed having sex atop rocky ledges, rooftops, pianos, the hoods of cars, and a Paris Metro platform, aboard airplanes, boats, trains, and helicopters, and, of all places, at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. I love to work in bed, but I’ve gone through phases where they’ve put me in the most insane settings. That makes it more exciting for everyone, I suppose, except for the person who has to make it happen.

6

It was cash, always cash, even as my asking price began escalating out of sight. As a result, I had more cash than any human had a right to possess. Not being a spendthrift, it was important for me to invest the money wisely. I began putting together a stock portfolio, than added apartment buildings one by one. I also opened a combination antique shop and locksmith service, to be run by my half-brother, David. We stocked it with many of the riches I had accumulated in my trick pads along with some interesting pieces from my junk collections.

Some years earlier, David had started to visit me during his annual summer breaks from school. By the third summer, David was begging me to stay. He was only fifteen, but he didn’t want to return to Ohio to face Harold. Still unable to forget the brutal treatment I had received at Harold’s hands, I agreed to let David stay, but only with the approval of our mother.

Mom was terrific, just as sympathetic as she had been when I had decided to bolt at an early age. She even offered to arrange the transfer of David’s school transcripts. From then on David became my responsibility. I saw him through high school and financed his further education at a trade school. Now I was setting him up in business. I even had a hand in David’s sex education. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday he came to me wanting to talk. “I’ve never been laid,” he confessed with a hangdog look. Who better to solve his problem than Johnny Wadd?

A phone call was all it took to set him up with a younger lady whom I could personally vouch for as being quite lusty in bed. Never having observed any of my brothers at full mast, I was naturally inquisitive to catch the pair in action. Seeing David, it became obvious real fast that we had more in common than the same mother.

David taught me a lesson as well. For two years he had been pushing me to try marijuana. Because of a childhood illness, he had occasionally smoked a joint. I didn’t try to stop him because I knew that he had a fairly good reason to use the stuff when necessary, but it wasn’t for me. I’d had chances before, many times. From the time I got into adult films hardly a day passed that I didn’t have offers to do drugs. All I had to do was walk on a set. But David kept pushing and what do you know? I liked it.

The issue came up again on my next shoot, when I was hired for two films to be shot on location in France. One was a remake of Beauty and the Beast and the other, The New Henry Miller, in which I was to play the American writer delving into the vices of the French aristocracy. We had a seventeen-week schedule with a combined budget just below one million dollars, including my fee of fifteen hundred dollars for each day I worked and nine hundred dollars for each day off, plus all expenses.

Drugs, especially the lack of marijuana, became a hot topic of conversation among the Americans. Fearing a search at the airport and possible imprisonment in a foreign country, none of the cast or crew had dared to bring anything with them. Who knew that when you flew into de Gaulle Airport they had only one guy waving everybody through? I could have brought an atomic bomb into France and no one would have noticed!

We had all the wine we could drink, but that didn’t come close to satisfying everyone’s craving for weed. In desperation, we contacted an actress involved in the filming who was scheduled for a later arrival in France. “Pack a pound in a suitcase”, we told her. “It’s perfectly safe.” She agreed, but on arrival she was empty-handed, having backed out at the last minute. It was left to a black dwarf from Haiti, who was part of a Fellini-like orgy scene, to finally arrange a sale of African marijuana. After all that trouble, it turned out to be very expensive and no stronger than catnip.

The long overseas shoot was tiring, buoyed only by wine and the inferior narcotic. Many nights were spent alone in my chateau bedroom putting down thoughts and ideas that raced through my head, trying my hand at poetry and short stories. I went crazy in France. It was as though a writer from hundreds of years ago had possessed me. Eventually, the shoot ended and I came home again.

A heavy filming schedule was facing me back in the United States. Still, I was glad to see New York City, where I lingered for personal appearances and to visit a few friends. It was impossible to hit New York without seeing my old Army buddy, Tony, while I was there, but finding him wasn’t easy. I finally tracked him down at a hole-in-the-wall diner in an ugly neighborhood. He was working behind the counter. For a second I felt like I was back washing dishes at the hot dog stand on Hollywood Boulevard.

I don’t know what kind of greeting I expected, but a simple “hello” or a “glad to see you again” would have been nice. Instead, Tony’s first words were to ask me for a loan. That didn’t surprise me as much as his appearance. Once handsome and trim, Tony was now bloated, balding, and foul smelling. His hair, what he had left, looked greasier than the slop he was dishing out.

Before I had a chance to ask, Tony was telling me about his streak of bad luck: two failed marriages and two years in jail for forgery to feed his drug habit. The reunion was depressing, as were the phone calls I received pleading for money long after I returned to California.

Back at work, it was one feature film after another in rapid succession for me, partnered with such leading ladies as Marilyn Chambers, Candy Samples, Renee Bond, Uschi Dagard, Serena, and Seka. Feature length films gave audiences the chance to choose their favorite stars, and once a star was in demand, his or her price went up, up, up. I was lucky to be paired with the most beautiful and talented women appearing in adult films. Of course, it takes more than beauty and talent. Believability is a major factor. Some women can make a part so believable you don’t know they are acting. If a girl is there just to make money to pay the rent, or she hates being under hot lights, or she doesn’t even like guys, it shows. Renee Bond was absolutely the best, however, because she loved to give head. She sucked cock like a starving orphan with her first candy-cane. You were a gob of goo when she got through with you.

I was also lucky to be a male star. Men seem to thrive in the business for ten years or more, while women seem to last only several years, at best. Women get frustrated with the hours and the travel, and with having men constantly in their faces, or they run into guys who are worth millions and disappear. The hours and the travel can indeed wear you down, especially when you’re jumping from one film to another, hundreds within a single year. That didn’t bother me the first few years. I like being in demand, I craved it. I had something to sell, and sell I did.

One day, however, I confided to a producer, “I’m so tired I can hardly move.” His name was Bill. Being in the business we saw each other frequently, and it wasn’t long before we became fast friends. He even named me as godfather to his children. I began spending a lot of time at Bill’s big house on the hill; it was the perfect party pad. With Bill the producer, and me, Mr. Porno Stud, girls were drawn to us like bees to honey. His wild nudist romps, especially in the heat of summer around his pool, were the raging ticket in town. The girls didn’t mind who they fucked, just as long as we wanted them or they thought it would get them into movies. There was only one problem: sex, sex and more sex! I had done nothing but have sex for years, and I was getting tired. Tired of never getting any sleep, that is. But more than sleep, I needed an energy boost.

Bill smiled at my confession and disappeared for a minute. When he returned, he held out his hand. “Here, take this,” he said. It was a small rock of cocaine. “Try it and you’ll be back on your feet.” In the past I had always responded to such offers with a firm “I don’t do drugs.” Sure, I had smoked pot over the years but that was as far as I went. This time, however, I didn’t say no.

The first taste was awful, a real put-off. But then a wonderful thing happened, and that was the catch. I found that I was able to stay awake longer, think better, and be more stimulated sexually. “This is just what I need,” I told myself. “It’s not hurting me, it’s helping me.”

That was my early reaction. But within three months, I discovered that I had to increase my intake in order to achieve the same high performance level. The three hundred dollars a week I was spending on coke increased to five hundred, than one thousand.

Just as my craving for sex had spun wildly out of control over a tenyear period, so had my newly found habit. Looking back, it would be so easy to place the blame on Bill for offering me that initial “pick me up,” but unlike Linda Lovelace, I can honestly say that no one held a gun to my head. No one in the business ever forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do.

Once I had agreed to try drugs, they were everywhere I went, on the set and off. And, just like sex, no matter where I turned, someone was offering me a silver spoonful. At the height of my addiction, I was freebasing at a cost of $1500 per day. It took a few years, but I was on my way to losing everything to finance my addiction. First I sold the stocks and bonds, then the apartment buildings, then the stores. Because my attitude had changed, I even lost friends and associates.

For over fifteen years I had prided myself on being the most reliable performer in the adult industry. Now, I began showing up late on sets, looking glassy-eyed and gaunt and having dropped thirty pounds. Slim to begin with, I had turned into a rail.

It was during this period that I filmed Exhausted. The story line should have been a romp for me, as it was supposedly my story, a real semi-documentary based on my life. During the on-camera interviews I could barely remember my lines, or wait for the filming to end. In the middle of a scene I would disappear for long stretches, but my co-workers knew where to find me: in the bathroom doing freebase. I became the butt of jokes, which traveled around like wildfire. “To get Holmes to work,” they said, “you have to leave a trail of freebase from the bathroom to the bedroom.”

Things got worse for me. With money growing increasingly short, I began looking for things to steal. It started somewhat low-key by going through an old girlfriend’s purse. Soon I found myself rummaging through and even breaking into cars. I was always looking for things to steal. I couldn’t remember lines, but I knew the location of every pawnshop in town.

John “Cash” Holmes had become John “Crash” Holmes.

7

The brown-haired girl stood near a freeway off-ramp in Hollywood with her thumb hanging out. It was a warm spring afternoon and she was showing a lot of skin.

I’ll give anybody a ride as long as the person is female and fairly attractive. This one was both. She was also young, still in her teens, and wearing a clinging, off-white tank top that left little to the imagination. I couldn’t stop the van fast enough. “Where are you heading?” I shouted through the open window. She moved closer and peeked inside. Her eyes had a strange look about them. She may have been young enough to be a schoolgirl but no question; she’d been up and down the freeway, and a few other fast roads, more than once. Without saying a word, she opened the passenger door and hopped in beside me. “I know who you are,” she said, checking me over.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you’re the guy with the big dick. You’re in dirty pictures.” “Have you ever seen any?”

“Sure,” she answered smugly, as if they were required viewing. Then

she curled up in her seat, facing me, and stared long and hard. “Are you really that guy…John Holmes?”

“Want me to prove it?” Half jokingly, I reached for my fly.

“Do you do any coke?”

Do I do coke? Hey, kid, how would you like a quick rundown of all the money I’ve blown on the stuff? You think I look this way from wheat germ and alfalfa sprouts? I should have been as outspoken with her as she was being with me. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and nodded responsively—a conditioned reflex, no doubt; as my eyes scanned her enticing young body. Her nipples appeared to be small and firm as they poked against the flimsy material.

“So do I,” she said intently, “but I’m out.”

Under the dash, in a dark crevice, I kept a small plastic pouch. I withdrew it, and for the next several minutes we sat parked along the curb, oblivious to the passing traffic, exchanging “hits.”

Had I known what I was getting myself into I would have said a quick goodbye and driven away. Alone! But I didn’t, and when she wanted to know “Which way are you heading from here?” I got cute. “I asked you first, remember?”

Her blank expression told me she didn’t.

“Forget it,” I said, getting serious, “I’m heading west. I was on my way to pick up some coke when you came along.”

“How far west?

“It doesn’t matter. Where do you want to go?” I fingered the ignition key, and then turned it. The motor began to purr.

“Some friends of mine have the best coke in the world.”

“No, darling,” I countered, “A friend of mine has the best coke in the world. But who’s arguing, right? Just tell me where and we’re on our way. I’ve got nothing but time.”

She pointed down Sunset Boulevard and we were off, blending into the slow-moving procession of cars. At Laurel Canyon, opposite Schwab’s Drug Store, she motioned for me to turn right. The traffic lessened now as the road became more treacherous, a succession of hairpin curves that snaked upward into the hills. We passed residential side streets with Pollyanna names like Honey Drive, Lark Lane and Merrywood Terrace, climbing through wooded areas and open stretches of tinder-dry brush. I hadn’t a clue to where she was leading me, but I soon found out.

Reaching Lookout Mountain, a remote, narrow road several miles short of the summit, I was instructed to turn left. Moments later we were veering off onto Wonderland Avenue. My young companion straightened in her seat. “We’re here,” she said. “Stop!”

The developers of the area obviously had a dream that backfired. Wonderland it wasn’t. Not even Bel Air or Beverly Hills. There were no sprawling mansions of imported stone, marble or brick. I saw no vast grounds or landscapes punctuated by fountains, pools or lush plantings, no sweeping terrazzo driveways, no courtyards. Not even one porte-cochère. Here the homes were made of stucco and wood, crowded into the hillsides, neglected, and in need of paint or general repair. More often than not, the landscaping was Nature’s own; overgrown, running wild. The sounds echoing across the hills came not from catering trucks and gardeners’ mowers but from the barking of neighborhood dogs on the loose.

Slowly, I maneuvered the van up an incline before a bilious green two-story house. With a paint job like that it didn’t really need any further identification. It had some, anyway: four numbers—8763—marked with uncertain strokes on the doorframe. “I’ll be right back,” the young girl said, bounding from my side. “I want to tell everyone we’re here.”

“What do you mean we’re here?” I called after her. “I’m just dropping you off.” I had no intention of following her inside.

She stopped in the center of the roadway, the bright overhead sun playing against the soft curves of her body, and turned sharply. “Oh, please, she begged, “you’ve got to come in.” For the first time since we met, she sounded like a real kid.

The place looked deserted. “How do you know anyone’s home?”

“They’re always home,” she said knowingly. “They’re always shooting up.”

She painted a beautiful picture. Maybe this was wonderland after all.

In less time than it took me to turn off the ignition and roll up the windows, she was back, opening the driver’s door and tugging at my arm with youthful exuberance. “Come on, come on,” she prodded, excitedly, “they’re dying to meet you.” This time she didn’t get any feedback.

Inside, the house was a foul-smelling shambles. It was difficult to see much with the shades drawn, but neglect was evident everywhere. Sections of newspapers—too many for a single day’s delivery—were scattered across the floor and furniture. Half-filed glasses and dishes smeared with decaying remnants of meals past nestled on tabletops along with crumpled bags of potato chips, cigarette packs, and ashtrays filled to overflowing. In the empty spaces, overturned shoes, socks, and other odd pieces of discarded clothing appeared to substitute for bedding for the two raging Staffordshire terriers—pit bulls—at our feet.

“They’re all bark.” came a voice from above, “just kick them off if they give you trouble.” A light was on upstairs where three people stood gawking over a spindly balustrade. One of them waved us up and we made the climb. For the next few minutes I was grabbed, fondled, squeezed, hugged, petted and patted. I heard my name mentioned no less than a half-dozen times. The recognition and attention pleased me.

The one doing most of the feeling was a woman named Joy Miller. Like the house itself, she was desperately in need of a good once-over. She wore no makeup and her hennaed hair was stringy and limp; no telling when it had last been exposed to a comb, let alone soap or water. Her eyes were puffy and darkly lined, as was the rest of her face. Even when she smiled, which wasn’t all that often, she appeared tired and haggard. Old beyond her years!

Joy, I soon discovered, shared the Wonderland house with two men, Billy Deverell and Ronny Launius. No one shared Joy; she was Billy’s exclusive property. Billy and Joy were similar in several ways. Both were short and in their mid-to-late forties. It’s possible that Joy colored her hair to look closer in age to Billy. On the other hand, Billy’s jet-black hair was streaked with gray, which tended to make him more a match for his “old lady.”

Although Ronny, the baby of the trio, was seven or eight years younger than his roommates, the gap seemed narrower. His thinning blond hair didn’t help, nor did his cold, steel eyes and spacey expression. A tall man, six feet or more, Ronny towered over Billy. They made an odd combination: the Mutt and Jeff of the drug world.

Joy, Billy and Ronny each had a long history of arrests, a fact I didn’t discover until later. That probably wouldn’t have bothered me had I known from the start. My slate wasn’t all that clean either.

These people were scum, the poorest excuses imaginable for humanity, in my opinion—now, of course. Had I met them a year or two earlier I would have turned and ran. But times had changed. I’d changed. To my distorted way of thinking, they represented security and camaraderie. I was short on friends. When they reached out I wanted to grab hold. Getting close to the Wonderland threesome wasn’t at all difficult. In fact, I became part of “the family” that very afternoon. It happened the minute I forked over $500 for a quarter-ounce of cocaine.

Over the next few months, 8763 Wonderland Avenue became my hangout, my hideout, my crash pad. My apartment was gone; without a job, no money or offers coming in, I’d had to give it up. For the first time in over ten years, producers were snubbing me. I was poison. Unpredictable and irresponsible! It didn’t help that I looked like death warmed over. I couldn’t even sustain an erection. Nobody wanted a hophead—or a limp phallic symbol.

Money became so tight that I was forced to sell my van. With part of the money, I bought David’s beat-up Chevy Malibu. David accepted the cash on the spot, just as he’d accepted the car as a gift fresh from the showroom. My new best friends saw to it that my pockets were never empty. I became their star delivery boy—a drug runner making clandestine calls to some of Hollywood’s most famous addresses. Showing up at a bigwig’s house with a pound of cocaine and a hundred base pipes for his celebrity guests wasn’t unusual. Not all of my clients were in show business, but it didn’t matter what they did or who they were as long as they had the bucks.

Buying a stash from John Holmes (or “Betty Crocker,” my code name) became a real kick. See Mr. Big. See the Porn King. Fast-fading royalty, live—functioning, anyway—and in person. He really delivers!

For my efforts, I was paid in nugget-sized rocks of base worth a thousand dollars. The trouble was that I had to “earn” that much every day just to sustain my own habit—not that I was irrevocably hooked. I never believed that for an instant. Nor was I overly concerned about my expenses. By comparison, the two grand that Joy, Billy and Ronny each shot away daily made me look small time. We weren’t even close to being in the same league.

While making my rounds I became exposed to an underground that I never dreamed existed. Most of the people I dealt with on a drug level lived in quiet, residential neighborhoods. From the outside, their homes or apartments looked perfectly respectable. On the inside, however, they were armed camps containing entire rooms filled with crates of automatic weapons, shrapnel grenades and ammunition, suitcases packed with counterfeit money, boxes and bags crammed with jewelry and narcotics.

These people made their money by stealing, primarily Mercedes Benz cars, which they repainted and outfitted with new serial numbers, then shipped to other states and countries (Hawaii was a favorite destination). The cash that they received was turned over to me for drugs that they wanted or needed to buy something else.

There’s a subculture of trading in America that the general public knows little or nothing about. Each of the states and many cities within them have separate bands of burglars, armed robbers, car thieves, arms dealers, and counterfeit money traders. These groups have several common links: they’re all terrified of the police, they’re all resentful of authority, and they all deal in narcotics and money.

Narcotics and money are their stock in trade, and they need both to operate. For instance, if you want to buy a submachine gun, you can pay cash or trade drugs for it. To get the drugs you need money. To make money you need drugs. The two go hand in fist.

An endless supply of counterfeit money was available. At one point, I heard that $3 million in bogus bills had been pumped into the County of Los Angeles over a two-day period. The connection was offering to trade real dollars for counterfeit at a five-to-one ratio, and word had it that takers from as far away as New York and Chicago were lining up at his back door to make the switch ($10,000 in real money brought them $50,000 in hard-to-detect fake $100 and $50 bills). From the connection’s house, the fake paper made its way into the stores in exchange for such inexpensive items as chewing gum or cigarettes. The pressure was always on to make the exchange as rapidly as possible, and then back off before the Feds had time to find out where the dealings were taking place. Otherwise, they’d swarm in hot and heavy.

Guns were always prized and always in demand; they were often preferred as barter. Uzi and Thompson submachine guns could bring up to three times the going rate in counterfeit money.

God have mercy on anyone who created problems for the connections. Virtually every group had an enforcer to clamp down on troublemakers. The most common “victims” were customers who were unable to pay their huge and mounting drug debts.

Enforcers were known for their unique, persuasive methods of collecting money. One had a notorious reputation for using hot irons. If the customer wasn’t home, he would grab anyone who answered the door—usually the customer’s wife—strip her and tie her down on the floor, then place a steam iron on her stomach. He’d plug it in and walk out the door, leaving the iron to cook its way through her guts.

Driving from place to place I’d often see stores with massive “Going out of Business” signs plastered across the windows. The next time I’d pass by, the building would be charred rubble, burned to the ground. The stores had been torched for the insurance money, with the owner’s full cooperation. There was talk on the streets that one powerful dealer had “his man” torch two or three shops and office buildings a week.

In time, the Wonderland people had their own enforcer, a bull-necked, powerfully built and heavily tattooed wrestler type who’d spent more time in jail than out. His name was David Lind but he answered to “The Bounty Hunter,” a label he’d proudly pinned on himself. David Lind had two great passions in life, killing anyone who got in his way, and torturing women. To look at him, with his chilling, stone gray eyes, was like standing naked on a block of ice in a meat freezer. If David Lind came to the door selling encyclopedias, dressed in his Sunday clothes, you’d call the police.

Several months after I’d been invited into the Wonderland house, Ronny Launius and Billy Deverall began flying to Sacramento, “on business.” Actually, they’d gotten into some kind of trouble and had to appear in court. They were ultimately absolved, but they didn’t catch the first plane home; they lingered long enough to try and set up a big narcotics deal, dropping a bundle of money in the process. Infuriated, they took to a local bar to plot their revenge.

It was in the Sacramento bar that they met “The Bounty Hunter.” Lind had overheard their heated conversation, introduced himself, and offered to get their money back. Ronny and Billy were so impressed with Lind’s awesome presence and intimidating tactics that they invited him to Hollywood to strong-arm their debtors there. David Lind was accepted on the spot and Wonderland had a frightening new family member.

When I wasn’t making my rounds, I’d flop around the Wonderland house, half-stoned in faded jeans and a crumpled shirt, either watching television with Joy, a slovenly portrait herself in slippers and a tattered, shapeless housecoat (she’d lost both breasts to cancer), or hovering around Ronny while he sharpened his knives. Ronny had one of the biggest collections in Hollywood even before he’d had a walk-on in a Sylvester Stallone movie and ripped off half the props. His prize was a custom-made combat knife worth $3500.

Watching TV was impossible if Billy and Ronny happened to be in the room. They never stopped talking. If they weren’t planning drug deals or discussing persuasive methods of collecting bad debts with David Lind, they were boasting about their latest heist. Hardly a day passed that they didn’t knock over a gas station, corner market, liquor store, pawnshop or residence to bring in extra cash. For kicks, they’d often wrap up a successful outing by snatching a purse from some helpless victim on the street.

Life at Wonderland was seldom dull. The doorbell rang at all hours, day and night, pushed by shifty-eyed strangers after a quick fix or a takeout. Joy deftly doled out the drugs and raked in the profits. The majority of visitors stayed only briefly. Others, many of them regulars, lingered on to join in the evening drug feasts, which were wild and frantic, stereoblasting affairs that had the revelers (and nearby neighbors, no doubt) climbing the walls.

During the months that I spent at 8763 Wonderland Ave., so many people passed in and out the front door—hundreds upon hundreds—that faces became featureless blurs. Names, when offered, which was seldom, were soon forgotten. There were two notable exceptions. Susan Launius also came from Sacramento. Her reason for visiting the house was far different than Barbara’s, however. Barbara was David Lind’s girlfriend. Susan came to try and patch things up with Ronny, her estranged husband. They’d talk behind closed doors or go off together briefly to get away from the rat race. Then they’d reappear, unsmiling and silent once more. They never seemed to make any headway. Ronny had more pressing matters on his mind. We all did, like “basing,” and partying, and growing old.

One day, Billy carried a heavy-looking plastic bag through the front door. “What’s that?” Joy growled, staring at the bag through half-open lids. Sprawled limply across the living room sofa, she looked awful, worse than usual. She needed a fix, bad. So did the others. “This will get us feeling good again, babe,” Billy said. “We scored big this time.”

Joy struggled to prop herself up on an elbow. “Yeah? What have you got there?”

Billy set the bag on the floor beside her and pulled out a handful of glittering gold chains and three heavy handguns.

“Jesus,” she groaned, “haven’t we got enough of that shit already?”

“Nothing like this,” Ronny said. “The chains are solid gold and the guns are antiques. They’re worth real money.”

The guns did look old, but there was no way of telling if they were as valuable as Ronny made them sound. He called them “museum pieces” and said that they once belonged to “some historical figure.” He kept mentioning Davie Crockett’s name, although he had no proof.

“Well, do something with them,” Joy snapped, “and hurry up about it.”

Billy’s face twisted with rage. He tolerated Joy’s testiness during withdrawal only because he could so easily identify with what she was going through. Still, he often acted as if he wanted to slug her. He never did, as far as I know—not that she would have felt anything, being so out of it. He usually turned away, as he did this time, to toss the stolen merchandise back in the bag. Then he pointed to me and said, “Take this stuff over to your Arab friend and see what you can do.”

I was dealing mostly in cocaine and marijuana, but my Arab friend, Nash, had a tight heroin connection. Like the Wonderland people, Nash was hooked on heroin. He was also heavily into speed-balling, though not by injection. He’d freebase heroin and cocaine, mix them up and smoke the substance in a bubble pipe. (It was speed-balling that would kill John Belushi nine months later.)

It took approximately five minutes to get to Nash’s latest residence— he moved every other month, it seemed, for security reasons—a sprawling, spacious, very private one-story home. He too now lived off Laurel Canyon, although on the other side of the hill, overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Before leaving Wonderland, I called to make sure that I’d be welcome. Nash did not like visitors dropping in unexpectedly. Neither did the burly bodyguards who roamed about his place at all hours. The guns and jewelry brought an immediate expression of interest from Nash, along with a wariness to accept the merchandise. For several long moments, he paced nervously from one end of his enormous living room to the other, at times seemingly lost as his diminutive frame moved between huge, overstuffed pieces of furniture. When at last he came to a stop, he turned abruptly and said, “No, I don’t want what you’ve brought me. How am I going to handle it?”

More jewelry had passed through Nash’s hands than over the counters of Cartier. I’d seen coat hangers strung with hundreds of stolen wedding rings, and bags of precious stones—diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires—marked to be sold. The gold mountings that had held the priceless gems had been melted into bricks and sent to Iran in exchange for shipments of guns. I knew more about Nash’s operation than I wanted to share with him. “You’re the one with the connections,” I told him. “The guns are worth real money, sure, seventy-five grand maybe, but they’re too easy to spot. I could never unload them.” He started pacing again, working his way toward the huge picture window with its spectacular view of the valley below. He stood there for several moments, motionless and silent, with his back to me. “I don’t like this,” he said, sharply, “but here’s what I’ll do.” His eyes narrowed as he moved closer. “I’ll hold the guns and jewelry for seven days in exchange for an advance of one thousand dollars. You can take the money and get the heroin from somebody else to hold your friends over.”

“A thousand dollars?” I said, stunned. He was offering nothing—or, at least next to nothing. The Wonderland people could shoot up a grand of heroin in a few hours. “The merchandise is worth much more than that,” I argued. “You said so yourself.”

Nash’s expression hardened. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Movie Star. I don’t like dealing with heroin people. They’re not like cocaine people. When cocaine people run out of cocaine—and cash—they won’t try to kill somebody for the money they need to supply their habit. Heroin people are different. They’ll knock off a cop to get his badge if they think it’s worth anything. I know you understand.” He grabbed one of the antique guns and began fingering it.

“I understand.”

“Good,” he said, nodding. “Then I’ll advance you the money for your friends on Wonderland—but only for seven days. And if they start giving you a bad time, or causing you trouble, come to me. You tell me—is that clear?—And I’ll handle it.”

Nash was a great salesman. I’d come away with a paltry sum, not what I’d expected, but he made me feel as if I’d just negotiated a major coup. I had his complete backing, or so he said, and I wouldn’t be returning to Wonderland empty-handed. It sounded like a no risk situation. How could I lose?

Seven days passed, then fourteen. Nash’s financed supply of heroin at Wonderland was long gone. Everyone was growing progressively more desperate, getting sick on withdrawal, even though they were seldom without drugs for long stretches. Billy, Ronny and David saw to that. Over the two-week period they must have ripped off twenty-five people. They’d run shouting through the house while tracking down their guns, then tear off half-crazed to cruise the streets in search of money to feed their habits. On their return, the men would take a position on the second-floor balcony, their guns poised and their eyes riveted to the street searching for cops. A few minutes of that were long enough to satisfy them that they hadn’t been followed. Getting back inside, and slamming heroin, took priority over everything. They were in a constant frenzy, at times so filled with tension that I half expected their spines to shatter from the strain. It wasn’t all due to drugs, or the thought of being caught.

None of the stolen money was earmarked for Nash. Part of it went for heroin; the rest went to pay off another powerful drug source. I’ll call him Sam. The Wonderland people were into Sam for $125,000, and he wanted his money back. Hardly a day went by that Sam wasn’t on the phone to Billy or Ronny demanding to be paid in full. There were loud, screaming arguments followed by quick, desperate departures into the streets for money. One call ended with Sam demanding that they come up with the cash within a week. If they failed to deliver, he threatened to knock over the Wonderland house. Sam always made good on his threats.

As the due date drew nearer, Billy and Ronny, especially, became more frantic than ever. Raising the enormous sum of cash that they needed through their daily heists was impossible, which left them not only clawing at the walls, but at each other. There was only one way that they could make Sam’s deadline, they figured, and that was by getting their guns and jewelry back from Nash and fencing the goods for an astronomical amount. They became obsessed with the thought.

“There’s only one hitch,” I told them. “Nash won’t part with anything until you repay the thousand dollars he loaned you.”

Billy and Ronny weren’t the least bit concerned about the money. They wanted only to get their hands on the merchandise.

I listened but said nothing to Nash, not until the Wonderland men started making threats of their own. “Tell your connection that we want our stuff back or there’s going to be trouble,” they said. “Let him know we’ll pay up after the sale is made.” They were feeding me a line of crap, but I wasn’t about to argue with them, not with “Killer David Lind” breathing down my neck. Nash would never see his money. Sam would get it. Or they’d shoot it on drugs.

Nash took the message from Wonderland in stride. “Those assholes don’t scare me,” he said with a smirk. “They don’t even know how to find me—and you’re not going to tell them, are you?”

“No.”

“Good—then stay calm and stop worrying.”

That night, Billy, Ronny and David Lind devised a plan to get their merchandise back—by ripping off Nash’s house—and I was to help them gain entry. The idea was for me to get Nash to open his front door while they hid in the bushes. Once the door was open, they’d rush him and storm inside.

The plan was CRAZY—and full of holes. For one thing, Nash rarely opened his own door. For another, no one answered the door without a gun in his hand. Even if they were able to get inside, they’d run headon into Nash’s bodyguards, including his main man, a 300-pound black sludge named Diles.

“It won’t work,” I said, emphatically. “There will be a bloody shootout. You’ll never get out alive.”

“We’ll make it!” David Lind growled, flexing his muscles.

“Don’t count on it,” I said, sharply. “The guy lives on a cul-de-sac. The police will be there in thirty seconds. Even if you do get out, you’ll be trapped. The only way to make it work is to sneak in, and catch everybody by surprise.”

“Then figure out a way,” Billy said, anxiously. “Just get us into that goddamn house!”

“Yeah, you get us in,” David Lind snapped, “or we’ll blow your fucking head off!” He sounded desperate enough to do just that.

“Okay, calm down,” I replied. “I’ll see what I can work out.”

I had no intention of doing anything. I’d already done enough to help them. Too much!

Thank God Nash was on my side. “The Wonderland people are getting way out of hand,” I told him. “They want to come here and hold you up. Their serious and they are packing heavy and pissed off.”

The little Arab was on a freebase jag and hadn’t slept in ten days. “That’s your problem,” he hissed, half out of his mind.

“They’re coming to get their goods,” I shot back, “and they’ll do anything to get them.”

Nash’s face reddened. “Get the hell out of my life! The guns are mine now. The jewelry’s mine. Fuck off!” He started to lunge for me but I backed away, and then made for the door. It was no use arguing with him in his present state.

I couldn’t let the matter drop. Somehow, I had to make Nash listen to me. There had to be a way out to avoid the bloodbath that was set to take place.

I returned to Nash’s house twice more that day in the late afternoon to warn him once again (if anything, he was even less receptive), then in the evening to try a different approach. “If the Wonderland people can’t pay you,” I said, “I’ll raise the money. Let me pay off their debt.”

“Sure….fine,” Nash snickered, “but you waited too long.”

“What do you mean?”

“The agreement was for one week. Now the price has doubled.”

“How am I going to come up with that much cash, for Christ’s sake?”

“Wait another week and the price will be three thousand.”

“Damn it, we’re running out of time! Give me the guns now and there won’t be any trouble. I’ll see that you get paid.”

Nash started to curl up on the couch, and then changed his mind. Calling to one of his bodyguards, he announced, “Close up and lock everybody out. I’m going to bed.” Turning on his shiny, black elevated heels, he disappeared in the direction of his bedroom. The little bastard! Over the past year I’d given him over a half a million dollars. He’d taken everything I’d ever owned. He owed me, and yet he wouldn’t trust me for a lousy grand or two.

“Waiting for something?” a voice asked from behind me. It belonged to Nash’s top gun, Diles.

“I have to hit the head,” I told him, “then I’m out of here.” He shrugged and stood his ground to await my return.

The guest bathroom was at the far end of a long, dimly lit hallway. While I was in that end of the house I passed a dark, unused bedroom. I went inside and unlocked the sliding glass door that opened directly onto an outside patio.

“This is the gate,” I said, retracing the lines on a hastily drawn diagram with my finger. “Jump over it—don’t open it—and take the path that leads around to the back of the house. And here…”—I choked momentarily on the words; my throat and lips suddenly bone dry—“…is the door to the back bedroom. Just slide it open and go inside.”

My head throbbed. My body trembled with fear. No longer was I the gofer, running goods and messages between battlefields. I had willingly, spitefully, become an integral part of the plan. The floor felt like quicksand. With each move I could feel myself sinking deeper and deeper.

“Where’s our stuff? Where’s he stashing it?” Billy wanted to know. His words were slurred. He looked a mess.

“How the fuck do I know?” I answered, testily. “You wanted me to find a way to get you inside—and I did. Want me to go over it again?”

I looked into the faces of Billy, Ronny, David Lind and a young man they called Apache Kid, who’d been brought in as their driver. Apache Kid owed Wonderland a great deal of money; he had been told that he could pay off his debt, and make a few bucks as well, if he’d come in on the Nash job. The four men were staring blankly, as if I’d just spoken to them in some foreign tongue.

“Two things,” I said quickly. “Remember to break the glass and rip the screen on the sliding door to make it look like you broke in. I don’t want to be tied into this. And no rough stuff. No one gets hurt. Understand?”

Did I really believe that these people had heard a word I’d said? Or that they’d try to avoid a shootout? They were addicts, desperate and violent. Any one of them would have killed his own mother if she had gold in her teeth. The fact is, I wanted to believe that they could pull it off without any problems. In my own mixed-up mind, my future was at stake. The success of this job would be my ticket out. Once it was over, I’d never get involved again. Or so I kept telling myself.

“Something’s wrong,” Barbara said in a low voice. “Why are they taking so long?”

“Quit bitching,” Joy moaned. “I’m sick enough without listening to you.” She made a move for the television remote, and then pulled back. She didn’t have the strength; she’d been throwing up all morning.

It was nearly 9:30 A.M.; the men had left for Nash’s shortly after 8:00. Barbara had reason to be concerned. If things had gone smoothly, they should have been back before 9:00.

A half hour later, we heard the sound of screeching tires outside as a car roared to a stop. “We did it! We did it!” Ronny hollered as the men raced through the front door and upstairs into one of the bedrooms. They each carried huge plastic bags filled to overflowing.

By the time Joy, Barbara, and I joined them; the bags had been emptied on the bed. It looked like they’d cleaned Nash out. There were bundles of money, pouches of cocaine and heroin, bags of jewelry and precious gems, wristwatches, cameras, and the guns. Over a quarter of a million dollars in cash and loot!

“Did you cut the screen and break the glass?” I asked uneasily.

Ronny, David Lind and Apache Kid were too busy congratulating themselves to answer. Billy was on the phone calling every drug dealer in town. “We just knocked over that little Arab fart,” he shouted, “tied him up and told him he was maggot meat unless he handed everything over to us. You should have heard him whimper. He begged us not to hurt him.”

What the hell was going on? “Ronny, the sliding glass door!” I repeated. “Did you break it?”

Ronny ignored me. He was tuned into Billy, listening to the sordid retelling of the past few hours, and he was cracking up with laughter.

“Yeah, the little squirt got down on his knees and begged us;” Billy went on. “We should have shot him instead of that tub of black shit…sure; we shot Diles—left him in a heap on the floor!”

Jesus Christ!

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The worst had happened, the absolute worst thing possible, and Billy was letting the world in on it (Nowhere does news travel faster than in the drug world). He might as well have called in the reporters. I felt sick.

The story was told and retold, each time with more bizarre embellishments, before Joy finally yanked the phone out of Billy’s hand. It wasn’t his uncontrolled yapping that had her at his throat; she was used to that. Rather, she was desperate for her split of the drugs. The loot, all of it, was to be divided into unequal shares, the bulk going to the original members: Billy, Ronny and Joy. No mention was made of Sam or the $125,000 they owed him. Screw Sam! Screw Nash! Screw the world!

While the haul was being divided up, the room was chaotic. Everyone was shooting drugs and scurrying around, yanking clothes from the drawers and hangers, and wildly stuffing them into open suitcases. Billy and Ronny made calls to the airlines in a frantic attempt to arrange outof-town flights for the following morning (they were so stoned, and totally disorganized, that leaving that day never came up). Billy and Joy were heading for Hawaii; Ronny and Susan were going back to Sacramento. David Lind and Barbara were already halfway out the door to some unknown address in Pasadena.

I was going nowhere fast, and the thought had me in a cold sweat. The heist had turned into a monumental fuck-up. It didn’t take a lot of brains to know that my ass was in the wringer. NO, my life was on the line. Nash had to know of my involvement. And after the stupid phone calls, it wouldn’t take Sam long to make the tie-in.

I had to get away too; if not out of the city, then away from Wonderland.

8

Dawn and I had been involved in a lengthy, torrid relationship during the late 1970s. The hot times were over, at least for me, but we’d remained friends. I’d started calling Dawn, as well as other old girlfriends, shortly after I became a fixture at Wonderland, especially at night when the house rocked with strangers and blaring music. Time alone, or with no more than one other person, has always been important to me. I’d screwed up my life, but I still cherished moments of peace and privacy now and then. The calls had resulted in invitations to come over, and I’d stay for a night or two. Perhaps these ladies expected more from me than I could deliver; if not the old flame, then certainly a pilot light. Since I’d buried myself in drugs, no one could get a rise out of me. Dawn didn’t mind. That is, she didn’t complain and she made no demands. Her only request was that I come to her whenever I grew restless at Wonderland. The door to her apartment in West Los Angeles was always open to me; she made no secret of that. She seemed content just to have me back, hanging around, sharing her bed. Her craving for sex was relentless. Had I been into bondage, she would have made the perfect slave; she gave so completely of herself. Nothing pleased Dawn more than pleasing her partner. No matter what! No matter who!

After fleeing the Wonderland house, I turned in desperation to Dawn. She was staying with her girlfriend in a small apartment. I picked her up there and without a word of explanation, and no questions asked, we checked into a motel on Wilshire Boulevard near Santa Monica as Mr. and Mrs. Black. The accommodations weren’t much, a hole-in-the-wall room and bath furnished in 1940s California “modern,” but neither were the rates. Aside from that, the location was good. Across the street was a supermarket, open all night. Less than a mile away, on the other side of the Veteran’s Administration property, was the San Diego freeway and a fast exit out of town, if necessary.

The motel was a change of scenery and little else. I could not escape the sound of Nash’s voice or the penetrating stare of his eyes. He was with me constantly. Was I to disappear for the rest of my life, with images of Nash haunting me, or try to clear my conscience? Suddenly, I felt compelled to talk with Nash, to let him know that in spite of what happened, I tried to keep him from getting hurt. Above all, I didn’t want him blaming me—or coming after me! In the past, whenever Nash had problems with anyone, he’d ask me to “grab a piece” and come help him save his life. Now, there was no mention of trouble. “Everything’s fine,” he said, lightly. “Come on up.”

Everything’s fine? After he’d been tied, beaten and robbed? I knew he was putting on a face. I knew he was aware of my involvement, yet he said nothing. For five minutes, we played word games over the phone. He’d invite me to “come on up” and I’d be noncommittal. Finally, he insisted. I couldn’t refuse, nor did I want to. If I were to save my life, I had to plead my case.

Nash met me at his front door, not with a greeting, but with the butt end of a .357 across my face, splitting open my lower lip. Blood oozed down the front of my shirt, and Nash smiled.

His look was chilling and evil.

I stood in Nash’s doorway, momentarily reeling. The blow caught me by surprise, but I didn’t lose my senses. “You said you’d back me up and you didn’t,” I lashed out. “I tried to warn you three times. Three times! People were going to be killed, and I didn’t want that. I had to do something!”

Nash waved the pistol in my face. As I backed away, two of his bodyguards grabbed me. Greg Diles appeared from nowhere, looking fit as ever. He taped my wrists behind me. I was dragged into the living room, dropped into a chair, and held at gun point.

“Don’t bother to explain, you asshole,” Nash hissed. “Those fucking friends of yours told me everything.”

“They’re not my friends. They’re scum!”

“Scum like you! You set me up!”

“I didn’t want…”

“Shut up!” He shrieked, flapping his arms wildly. Suddenly, he dropped to his knees, cowering as he looked up at me. His eyes overflowed with tears and great gobs of saliva dangled from his open mouth. He cried uncontrollably for several moments before turning savage again. Leaping to his feet he began pacing like a panther in a cage waiting for the meat to be tossed in. At one point, he hurled a large cut crystal bull, worth many thousands of dollars, in my direction, smashing at my feet. I’d been around my stepfather when he had his raging fits. I’d seen heroin junkies at their worst—swinging in behavior from supreme arrogance to sniveling low-life without warning. But I had never seen anything like this. He stood before me, so close that I could feel his foul breath beating against my face. “Did you know your friends were shooting up while they were here?” His voice was low now, barely audible, as he growled out the words. “Did you know they were shooting my stuff, taking turns going into the back bedroom…the room with the unlocked glass door?” “The door?” I repeated, unconvincingly.

“Don’t give me that shit!” he blared, storming about the room again. “I know what you did. Your friends told me everything!”

“Nothing would have happened if you’d kept your word,” I pleaded. “Did you know they forced me to the floor and made me beg for my life…?”

“I saved your fucking life!”

“…and how they shot at Diles? The pricks would have killed him if they hadn’t been so wired.” Nash stopped in his tracks and raised his arm in Greg Diles’ direction. “Show him, show him!” He barked at the big black man. “Show this turd where they hit you.”

Diles kept the gun trained on me while he lifted his shirt with his free hand. I saw no sign of a wound, only traces of powder burns along one side just above his waist.

“I thought he was dead!” Nash screeched. “They tried to murder him. They humiliated me. They ripped me off!”

“I brought some of the stuff back,” I said. “My split to prove to you that…”

“What? Where?” he said quickly, cutting me off.

“Outside…in my car.”

Diles tore the tape from my wrists and shoved me out onto the driveway. As I climbed into the car to retrieve Nash’s goods, I noticed his small hand reach for something in the front seat. It was my address book, containing the names of every person I knew in the whole world: friends, relatives, business acquaintances. “That’s mine,” I said.

“Nothing is yours anymore,” Nash answered.

Diles led me back into the house, and for the next eighteen hours I sat with a gun pointed to my face. From one of the other rooms, I could hear Nash on the phone. He was making call after call in French, Arabic, English—he spoke six or seven languages—to girlfriends, customers, and business associates, telling that he was holding John Holmes captive (and why), and inviting them to “come on up” to see his latest prize. What was it with these people, I wondered, that they had to spout off like giddy teenagers after a hot date? Why couldn’t they keep their mouths shut?

Shifts of bodyguards took turns watching over me, threatening to pull the trigger no matter how still I remained. My life was over, that they made very clear. I would not live to see the sun rise. My body would disappear in the muck of the Torrance oil fields, never to be found.

I had every reason to believe them, but as the hours passed I began to doubt that Nash would have me killed in his own house. Too many people were wandering in and out to ogle “the double-crossing porn prick” and hear the lowdown on my despicable deed. Every one of them was a witness to my being at Nash’s.

Around 2:00 a.m. I was left alone with my bodyguard. For the next few hours, I didn’t see another soul; the house seemed deserted except for the two of us. Then, as the sky was beginning to brighten, Nash and his cronies calmly emerged from his bedroom. Nash had a gun in his hand. “Take this,” he said, handing it to me,” and go over to Wonderland. Get the rest of my stuff back and I’ll forget what happened.”

The proposal was insane. Wonderland was an armed camp. There was no way could one person do what he was asking. Perhaps that was Nash’s reasoning, too. It sounded like he was setting me up. By letting the Wonderland people kill me, his hands would be clean.

I had to go along with him if only to get out from under his thumb. Once away from Nash and back at Wonderland, I’d warn everyone then scramble over the hill. I even considered going to the police.

The gun scared the hell out of me; I didn’t want any part of it. “This gun’s no good,” I told Nash, fumbling for an alibi. “What do you mean no good? Hold it up to your temple, wise ass, and pull the trigger. You’ll see how good it is.”

“It doesn’t have a silencer.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“What about the neighbors? They’re all around that house. They’ll hear the shots.”

He looked about to explode. Then he did. “We don’t have a gun with a silencer,” he shrieked. “Just kill them the best you can!” As he handed the gun back to me, he added, “And to make sure you’ve done the job, I want to see everyone’s eyeballs. Take a baggie with you.”

Two cars filled with Nash’s hit men followed me to the Wonderland turnoff, and then parked near a school while I continued on.

The house at 8763 Wonderland Ave. was dark and strangely quiet; no sounds of voices or hard rock coming from within. It didn’t seem likely that everyone would be asleep. They’d just scored a tremendous amount of money and drugs. There should have been one hell of a party going on.

The front gate was wide open. Odd! I walked through then clicked the latch, but not before one of the pit bulls darted by, brushing my leg and yipping pathetically. I called out, but it kept running. The other dog was nowhere to be found.

I made my way along the walkway to the front door and knocked. When no one answered, I knocked again, repeatedly. The door remained shut. If I’d had a key I would have used it, but no one had a key to the house. There was no need for keys, I’d been told. Someone was always home.

From the first day I set foot in the house and became part of the family, Joy and Billy had stressed the importance of keeping all the doors and windows locked and bolted. There were no exceptions, no excuses. The thought of unsuspecting strangers, or worse, wandering inside had them paranoid with fear. It was that unrelenting fear that led them to buy the two pit bulls.

Another entrance to the house was located on the back side. I walked around and started pounding. As my knuckles landed, the door cracked open. It was bad enough that it wasn’t locked; someone had neglected to shut it tightly. Joy would hear about this!

A rush of foul-smelling, warm air greeted me as I started inside. I’d become accustomed to Wonderland’s stagnant air, even the occasional stench of garbage and un-bathed bodies. But this was different, worse than I’d remembered. It was as if all the toilets in the house had backed up. Defying Joy’s warnings, I purposely left the door open.

“Where was she?” I wondered. Where were Billy and Ronny, and the others? Someone had to be in the house. Unless they’d changed plans since I’d last seen them, they weren’t planning on skipping town until later in the morning. It figured that they’d slammed heroin all night and were lying in a stupor somewhere.

Near the downstairs bedroom, which I’d often used, I stepped on something soft. As I kicked it aside I noticed that it was one of Joy’s old housecoats. It hit the wall, leaving a long red smear, before falling again to the floor. The bedroom door was spattered with red. I reached out to touch it, and then stopped short. I didn’t have to get any closer to know that it was blood.

A trail of blood led from the door into the room. One wall was splashed with the sticky substance as it formed an icicle pattern on the plaster. Not far away, a long shape sprawled across crumpled, blood-soaked sheets. It was difficult to see in the dim morning light, but it appeared to be a body—a body without a face. Its head had been split open, pulverized into mush and drenched with blood. But the hair, the clothes…

God, it was Ronny!

My heart pounded as I ran back out into the hall, stumbling over the blood-stained clutter that lay scattered across the floor.

Joy… Billy. Where were they?

I made for the stairs, taking them two at a time. My legs felt wobbly. I was certain my knees would buckle at any time.

Lightheaded, I stood hanging onto the rail at the top of the stairs, straining for air. The heat was unbearable. And the stench! If anything, it had grown stronger.

The silence was deafening. I strained to hear sounds of life, but I heard nothing, only the rushing of blood—my blood—pulsating through my head.

I turned slowly to face Joy’s room. The door was open, but it was dark inside. Even so, I could see the ugly stains on the carpet, and the huddled shape of another body. It was lying in a heap, twisted and grotesque like a battered rag doll, not ten feet away. I didn’t want to look but I couldn’t stop myself.

The rumpled housecoat and matted, reddish hair were the only remaining identifying features. Joy’s head, what was left of it, looked like someone had run it through a shredder. Across the room, Billy’s lifeless form lay motionless on the floor. A gooey mess was oozing from the remnants of his open skull. His brains had literally exploded.

How many devastating blows with a heavy object, such as a club or lead pipe, does it take to rip open a human skull? One-Two-Three, at the most. The person—or persons—responsible for these heinous murders hadn’t stopped there. Joy, Billy, and Ronny had been struck forty or fifty times each. Maybe more? Their heads were mutilated, pulverized. Nothing remained but slime.

A crazy person had to have done this. A non-human! Someone consumed with unrelenting anger. The room was filled with anger. And blood. A vampire could have gorged for days on the drippings. Blood was everywhere, soaking the carpet and bedding, splattering the walls and furniture, staining the ceiling. It was as if an insane animal had sloshed buckets of blood over everything in sight. I was standing in a slaughterhouse. Or in a mad room, trapped in another dimension.

The smell of blood and human waste was overpowering. Nothing in the world smells like violent death. I’d scraped bodies off the freeways when I had worked for the ambulance company. I’d picked up dismembered hands and arms and legs, but this was a hundred times worse. I can still smell it.

I can still feel the anger.

Was my mind playing tricks on me? Was this a cruel hoax or just another setting for a grisly film fantasy? It’s Johnny Wadd—back in action! But where were the other actors, the cameras, the lights? Where was the director? Why wasn’t he hollering, “Great shot! That’s a wrap?”

I felt like puking, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do much of anything except wander about in a daze. My brain wasn’t functioning normally. I couldn’t see straight; my ears thumped with the sound of my own heartbeat. Run away? I hadn’t the strength. Go to the police? Not with three people dead.

In my stupor I thought only of clearing myself with Nash, making him believe that I had carried out his orders by bringing something back to him.

I began searching frantically through the bloody mess. The suitcases that had been so hurriedly packed after the burglary were now on the floor, open and empty, along with the discarded contents of closets and drawers. Lamps, clocks, magazines, and clutter had been swept from table tops and flung about like leaves in a violent windstorm.

Less than twenty-four hours before, the bed had been piled high with Nash’s riches. Now it was stripped bare. Even the mattress had been searched and left hanging limply over the blood-stained box spring.

Joy had always kept her good jewelry secretly hidden in the shoe box. Someone had known where to find it. The box was on the floor, its contents scattered and smeared with red. I pawed through the sticky strands but could find nothing of value. I scooped it all up, dumped it back in the box, and took it anyway.

On the carpet, half submerged in a small circle of coagulation blood, a solitary eyeball stared up at me. It was there for the picking. I felt a tightening in my stomach, and I turned away.

The other rooms in the house, upstairs and down had been ransacked as well. Every drawer was empty, every shelf swept clean. Nash’s coveted possessions had vanished. The guns that earlier rested within arm’s reach on every flat surface were gone. So was Ronny’s knife collection. I hurriedly retraced my steps, stumbling over tossed debris in the eerie light and grabbed what I could, all of it worthless.

What possessed me to wander through that horrifying house of death, knowing that the killer—or killers—might still be there, lurking around the corner or in the next room? I can’t honestly say. I only know that something was pulling at me, compelling me to go on. Perhaps I felt threatened by Nash’s men; I knew they were outside in their cars, waiting for me. As it turned out, they weren’t.

My hands pressed uneasily on the car horn, sending out a sharp sound that shattered the early morning stillness. Slowly, Nash’s garage door opened and I backed the car inside. Nash was waiting there for me. “You came back,” he said suspiciously.

“Of course I came back,” I replied. “Why wouldn’t I?” I tried to sound as positive as possible, under the circumstances, as though everything had gone as planned.

If Nash noticed the uncertainty in my voice, he didn’t let on. “Where’s my money?” He asked, changing the subject. “Where’s my coke?”

I opened the car trunk and pulled everything out: crumpled clothes, paste jewelry, boxes of used drug paraphernalia. “This is all that was there,” I said, pointing to the pile of junk.

Nash pawed through the stained odds and ends. “So much blood, he smiled, wiping his fingers. “You could have been neater.”

“I wasn’t trying to be neat.”

“And this is it? You got everything?”

“Everything”

“Well, that’s O.K.,” he said, with a toss of his head. “The important thing is you did it. You really did it!” He began jumping up and down, clapping his hands together, and shouting, “Good! Good!”

That’s O.K.? Good? Good? As welcome as those words were, I couldn’t believe that Nash was accepting my return—and the worthless delivery—as a fait accompli. Why wasn’t he more concerned about his stolen property? The man had lost enough cash and merchandise to buy 100 new Cadillacs. Why wasn’t he rummaging through my car to make sure I wasn’t holding out on him? Why wasn’t he demanding to see the baggie?

“Take this crap and dump it where no one will find it,” he told one of his men. “You know where.” Nash had a favorite dumping ground in the ghetto of Los Angeles. “Those cops never poke through the trash cans in that area,” he once confided to me, “and black people never turn shit in.”

For the next hour, Nash kept me by his side, congratulating me on a job well done. He put on quite a show. He almost had me believing that he’d bought my story. Almost! I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was crazy. Nash was much too intelligent to be conned so easily. He had to know more than he was letting on. Could it be that he—or his goons— had beaten me to Wonderland?

I began to blame Nash for everything. He detested the Wonderland people and had, in fact, threatened to kill them during one of his uncontrollable rants. The humiliation he’d suffered at the hands of Billy, Ronny and David Lind incensed him far more than the loss of his merchandise. He could always get that back, he said. But he could never regain his lost pride after they’d forced him to his knees to beg for his life.

It made absolute sense that Nash was responsible for the massacre. He and his bodyguards certainly had the time to hit Wonderland sometime after midnight when his house had seemed so strangely deserted for hours. He’d wanted me to believe that everyone was scoring in the back room. Yet no noise came from that end of the house. People on freebase make noise. They turn up the stereo full blast. They stumble into things.

All signs pointed to Nash—until I began to think about “Killer David Lind”. He was supposed to have gone to Pasadena with his girl friend— Susan Launius. Susan was the only survivor. I never saw Susan while rummaging through the house. Lind knew the house was loaded with cash and cocaine. He’d kill anyone for a gram of coke, and there were bags of it at Wonderland. He could have taken all the loot for himself and split. Whoever did this made damn sure those people were dead.

And what about Sam? What if he had made good in his threat to knock over Wonderland? Time had run out.

Shortly before noon, Nash told me I was free to go. As I hurried for the door he held out a hundred dollar bill. “Call me,” he said. “Keep in touch.” Somehow, I made it back to the motel and Dawn.

The horrific events of the past twenty-four hours had taken their toll on me and I headed straight to bed without filling Dawn in on where I’d been or what had happened. I hadn’t intended to nod off, but I did. Sleep: the great escape.

When I opened my eyes again, Dawn was propped in front of the television set, straining to hear; she purposely turned the sound low as not to disturb me. I felt awful, punchy and still a little queasy. As I turned over, trying to get more comfortable, the bed squeaked. Dawn was on her feet and at my side in a flash. She didn’t look so hot either. From her expression I could tell that the shit had hit the fan. Or in this case, The News. “Something awful has happened at Wonderland,” as her voice trembled. “You’ve got to see. They’re showing pictures and everything.” I asked Dawn to turn up the sound then run across the street for a newspaper. The images on the television screen sent chills through me. Cameras were positioned outside the Wonderland house, trained on the front door as grim-faced police and plain-clothes detectives moved quickly in and out. The coroner was seen briefly as he accompanied several shrouded stretchers, with their lifeless loads, beyond the yellow tape that cordoned off the house and out to the street, where they disappeared in the crowd of stunned onlookers. Not since the Manson murders, gasped an on-thespot newscaster, had there been such a brutal massacre.

Watching the television screen was like reliving the nightmare. I could handle that, but I wasn’t prepared for some of the details being broadcast. In the downstairs bedroom, one reporter noted, two battered bodies had been discovered. In the living room, yet another. He talked of five victims. I had combed the house from top to bottom and had found only three.

When Dawn returned, she was carrying a box of Van de Kamp’s donuts and two special edition newspapers, both headlining the killings. One of the papers had already put a tag on the bloodbath, calling it the Laurel Canyon Murders.

Every hour, it seemed, brought new information. The corpse in the living room had been identified as Barbara Richardson. The other victim was Susan Launius. She, too, had been bludgeoned, but she somehow managed to escape death after drifting in and out of consciousness for hours. If Barbara was at Wonderland then chances are “Killer David Lind” was, too! If Lind was there, why wasn’t he killed? Why was Susan the only survivor? The three bodies I had seen were brutally mangled— someone made damn sure they were dead—why didn’t they make sure that Susan was dead too?

It was the discovery of Susan’s lifeless body that had me completely mystified. In my fright, I could easily have overlooked Barbara on the dim and shadowy living room floor. But Susan and Ronny were reportedly found together.

NOTHING MADE SENSE!

For two days I sat riveted before the television set, listening to the latest developments. On the third day, I phoned one of my drug connections. The first words out of his mouth were: “The police have been by here looking for you—something about the Laurel Canyon murders.”

“Why me?” I said, indignantly. “Why would they be looking for me?”

“The word is that over 160 informers have called in with information. They’re talking to everyone who knows anything about what went on in that house. On top of that, the whole place has been fingerprinted. They’ve come up with a slew of prints, but only a half dozen or so have been identified. One of the sets was on the bed where Joy Miller was found.”

I’d touched that bed. I’d touched almost everything in the house! “Tell me something I want to hear,” I moaned.

“I’m telling you what I know,” he said flatly.

I’d heard enough. Of all the people who’d been in that house, the police were singling me out. Could it have anything to do with who I was? I wondered. Or had Nash implicated me?

One thing was certain: I couldn’t stay in any one place too long without being spotted. Someone was sure to recognize me, or track me down. Dawn and I departed the Wilshire motel within the hour.

We headed north on the San Diego freeway into the Valley, stopping briefly at Dawn’s father’s apartment in Burbank to pick up her dog. Our dog, actually! Dawn and I had raised Thor, a Chihuahua, from a pup while we were living together. When we’d split, her father agreed to take care of Thor for as long as necessary. Now Dawn wanted Thor back. “It’ll be fun having us all together again,” she said in a persuasive tone, trying to sell me on the idea. “Besides, he’ll be good company.” Having Thor along did make us seem more like a family, especially in the eyes of a Reseda motel manager, whose initial reaction to the arrival of “Mr. and Mrs. Black” was rather cool. He gave the impression that he was suspicious of all mid-day check-ins, particularly couples claiming to be married. The temperature in the Valley was considerably warmer than on the other side of the mountain, and our tiny room was stifling, even with the door and window wide open. Several hours in the hot box was all I could take. I had to get outside, if only briefly. It was either that or sweat away ten pounds, which I could ill afford. Dawn didn’t want me to leave. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” she fussed, more concerned than angry. “Just stay put!”

“I’ve got to get some air,” I replied, stubbornly. “And I’m out of cigarettes.”

“John!”

“Hey, don’t worry. I’ll be back in a minute. I’ll take the car.”

“What if somebody recognizes you?”

I had to laugh. “Looking like this?” My clothes were a mess. My face was sprouting stubble; I hadn’t been near a razor for four days. My hair was longer than usual, almost touching my shoulders. Sunglasses covered my eyes. People wouldn’t stare, they’d turn away. They saw my kind on streets all over town. I’d turned into a common commodity: a California bum. Wandering though the air-conditioned supermarket felt like a quick trip to Alaska. I could have stayed for hours, but that would have been pushing my luck, such as it was. A few minutes were all that I needed to round up some bags of nibble food and cigarettes before returning to the motel. Nearing the corner of Ventura Boulevard and White Oak, the signal changed. As I slowed to a stop, a car pulled up closely beside mine; much too close! The driver didn’t appear concerned; when I turned to look at him he was staring straight ahead. But in the back seat another man was growling at me through narrowed eyes. He held a revolver, pointing it my way. It all happened in a split second: his finger squeezing the trigger, the burst of gunfire, the whoosh of hot air racing past my head, the shattering of glass. I floored the accelerator and sped through the red light, careening in and out of traffic until I reached the motel driveway. No one followed me inside. Dawn nearly collapsed with fright when I told her what had happened, but she wasn’t too weak to help pile furniture against the door to our room. The flimsy lock was useless; a strong breeze would have blown it away. Building the barricade was only a temporary solution at best. There weren’t many options open to us: we had to get out of town, that much was certain. But where? After tossing around the names of several places, I came up with Montana. A distant cousin was living there. “Montana’s perfect,” Dawn nodded. “We could get lost in Montana.” We decided to leave after sundown.

With the door and window closed, the room became a sweltering oven. I was so drenched with perspiration that my clothes clung to me as if they’d shrunk four sizes; I couldn’t have been wetter if I’d fallen into a pool fully clothed and climbed out. One by one I began peeling off the sticky pieces until there wasn’t a stitch left on me. Then I dropped spread eagle on the bed. Dawn disappeared into the bathroom to take a cold shower. The running water must have drowned out the sound of approaching footsteps. I didn’t hear a thing until huge hunks of splintered wood were flying about the room. I bolted upright in bed to face the barrels of four revolvers, two shotguns and a rifle poking through a gaping hole in the door. Behind them crouched seven uniformed bruisers with coat-hanger shoulders, Clark Kent jaws, and squinty eyes. I heard words like “Freeze!” (which sounded oddly appealing at the time) and “Search him!” (which didn’t seem necessary, given my condition) as they crashed their way inside. The officers dutifully went about their business—plundering the room—with strong-arm efficiency. There they stood, casting sneering glances and an occasional snide remark in my direction as they moved within grazing distance of my vulnerable front and backside. Only one of the men, the cop who read me my rights, showed any compassion. When he saw my starchy complexion, now double-drained of its final bit of color by the surprise break-in, he commented, “You don’t look so hot, Holmes. Are you sick?”

“Hell no,” I snapped, “I’ve never felt better.” Actually, I could understand his concern. In the dresser mirror, I caught a glimpse of myself. I looked like a vanilla Popsicle, stick and all.

Dawn missed most of the fun, but not all. During the search, she was discovered in the bathroom and was told to dress. Then I climbed into my clothes. We were both handcuffed and put in a squad car, along with poor, frightened Thor. He’d been found under the bed, a quivering ball.

We were taken to Parker Center, the central police station in downtown Los Angeles. Dawn and Thor were released. I wasn’t. They wanted me to talk about the Laurel Canyon murders. I said that I didn’t know anything, which wasn’t the information they wanted.

“Then we’ll have to hold you,” an officer said.

“On what charges?”

“How about the stolen typewriter?”

“I couldn’t believe he was bringing that up. The typewriter was piece of junk! I’d found it in an alley next to a trash can when I was making a delivery several months ago. Thinking that I could fix it, and pawn it off, I’d stashed it in the trunk of my car. They’d found it during the search.

“The point is,” the officer went on, “we want to keep you in protective custody because we’ve received several reports about your death—one from Texas and another from Oklahoma. We have every reason to believe that someone is out to kill you.”

“That’s a damn good guess,” I hissed. “Let me tell you about bullet holes!”

The officer didn’t press on. He made a phone call instead. Soon, I was on my way to L.A. County Jail.

Perhaps the sight of other prisoners crowded into dingy cells, surrounded by steel bars and cold concrete, was simply a ploy: a taste of things to come if I refused to cooperate. I only know that my stay didn’t last the day. By late afternoon, I was being escorted to the parking lot where five unmarked black cars, each filled with cops, were lined up waiting. My escorts guided me into the middle car and we were off, slowly pulling away one by one.

The procession wound its way through downtown Los Angeles until it reached the shiny glass cylindrical towers of Bonaventure Hotel. Before I could set foot inside, however, four carloads of police swarmed the lobby to check for suspicious characters, a precaution that probably left the management and guests feeling somewhat shaky.

The police cordoned off an entire upper floor of one tower, and locked me alone in a room. I was advised to “stay put” and not to “try anything” because SWAT teams were not only occupying the rooms on either side of me but were on guard in the hall outside my door. Who’d be the first to put the hit on me, I wondered, the police for a statement, or some hired killer?

As it turned out, I wasn’t alone long. My first visitor was a public defender, an outgoing young guy who’d be representing me on the stolen typewriter charge. Shortly after he left, Dawn arrived (minus Thor; she’d taken him back to her father in the Valley). It was so good to see Dawn again, and to have her company. The two of us sat talking and watching television all night. I wondered silently if the room was bugged.

The next morning, I was transferred to a room in a really crummy hotel on the other side of downtown. One look at the place, and the awaiting crowd, and I knew that the kid gloves treatment was over. Dozens of people crammed the room. The FBI was there, along with members of the Food and Drug Administration, the LAPD and District Attorney’s office, secretaries and stenographers—and they were all waiting for me to make a statement. I told them what I knew, which wasn’t much, only to hear: “That’s absolutely no help at all. We need you to tell us who did it. Who is responsible for the killings?”

“I can’t tell you,” I replied. “I honestly don’t know.”

One of the officers stepped forward. “It comes down to this, Holmes,” he said patiently. “You were a regular in the Wonderland house and someone is trying to kill you.” He paused, his eyes studying me as he waited for a reaction. I nodded, feebly. “You’re safe now,” he went on. “Remember that. And you needn’t have anything to fear in the future. We’ll keep you hidden away somewhere under armed guard, and protect you until the trial come ups—in fact, until the killer’s in jail—if you’ll testify against that person, whoever it is. We happen to think you know.” He paused again; this time he got no reaction. The officer moved a step closer and said in a low voice, “If you won’t tell us who did it, we’re just going to have to let you go. You’ll be out on the street—and you’ll be on your own.”

The offer was appealing, but there was nothing I could tell the police that would satisfy them. I had no choice. I was going back on the street.

Knowing I was a marked man, I wasted little time in leaving town. First, however, I needed money. I called Nash; he gave me $150.00 on the spot and offered $500.00 more if I came back that night. I knew that Nash always kept a minimum of $10,000 in cash on hand so naturally I became very suspicious. I promised to return but instead I called my half-brother David. After all the years of supporting David, I felt it was time for some repayment. David came up with $50.

Believing I could not wait any longer, I dyed my hair and newly-grown beard black, put an eye patch on and headed for Montana with Dawn. We spent three weeks in a small town but with a turn in the weather Dawn began to long for Florida, where she was raised. With only three dollars in my pocket we returned to California, narrowly escaping a highway patrol officer along the way, to raise money for the long, cross-country trip. Back in Los Angeles, I paid Nash an unexpected visit. He gave me $500 and told me once again to come back that night for more. Another invitation to death?

Believing that the police were tracking me, I bought some cans of spray paint and repainted my car at frequent intervals en route to Florida. I didn’t know that the police had broadcast my license number to every small town, city and state across the country. Nor did I know that the FBI had contacted my family in Ohio, and had staked out the New York premiere of “Exhausted”, my last film prior to the murders, thinking I might show up. I didn’t realize that I had been put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list until later.

In Miami, Dawn and I checked into a sleazy motel that catered to traveling salesmen and prostitutes, convenient to the strip joints and bars across the road where we both started working to pay expenses. I also moonlighted on a construction job, but my earnings couldn’t even come close to covering the lofty repair bill on my car, which was being held behind locked gates at the garage awaiting payment. Frustrated and feeling trapped, I plotted to break into the garage one night, steal my car and take off for the southern tip of Florida—without Dawn. Several days later, after six weeks in Miami, Dawn took off on her own, leaving me with ten dollars and the rent due. Her departure came as no surprise. She didn’t say it, but I knew that once she got to Florida she’d take off. Before I had time to take off, however, I was apprehended by two Los Angeles homicide policemen, taken to jail, then court. I knew Dawn had turned me in. I did not fight extradition. Screw it, I hadn’t done anything. I just wanted to go home and get it over with. I was tired of running!

My attorneys had based their strategy on my testimony, in spite of the fact that I refused to talk. They held me for the robbery charge in Santa Monica and I received three-years’ probation. Then I was taken to court again on an unrelated drug case. The D.A. was grasping at straws. After all this I thought it would all be over with, but then I got subpoenaed before the Grand Jury. They were convinced that I still knew something about the murders and although I had my suspicions, for me to say anything (suspicions or otherwise) would have put my family and friends in danger. Once a week I was taken to court to hear the judge ask, “Are you going to testify?” My answer never varied: “No, your Honor, I cannot.” They told me that I held the key to my own jail cell. All I had to do was testify and I could get out of jail free. Yeah, I thought to myself “What is freedom if you’re dead or you have to live with the guilt of someone you love dying because you got a big mouth?”

At an interrogation in Los Angeles, I was given another ultimatum: Tell who committed the murders or be charged with them -- “because we don’t have any other suspects.” I stuck to my story that I didn’t know who was responsible and was hit with four counts of murder. That same day the police called my mother. They put me on the line with her in belief that she could get me to talk. She asked me if I wanted her to come out, I told her “No, the media will eat you alive. Stay away from me!” I thought that was the last time I would ever talk to my beloved mother again.

In court it was brought out that by pressing charges against me, it would put me in the position of having to talk. I remained silent. Although I knew nothing, I had my suspicions. But if I’d opened my mouth I might have involved hundreds of people. I wasn’t afraid. Being in jail, I didn’t give a shit. I did it as a matter of honor and a whole lot of fear. Because they said I had to talk, I wouldn’t. Besides, Nash still had my address book and if he was the one who was really responsible for the murders and I told the events as I knew them, it could endanger the lives of my family. I was incarcerated for eighteen months in a cramped cell in the maximum security section (called High Power) of the Los Angeles County Jail. I was miserable! Not many came to visit. I had a lot of time to think; it’s times like that when you realize who your friends are, or for a better choice of words, are not! The only visitors I had were my attorneys and the District Attorney, whom I believed had a vendetta against me (could it be he was after the most notorious porno animal in the world?). The trial seemed to drag on and on. At one point, a portion of a magazine interview I had done was read -- the part where I described how I came to be offered my first adult film and my off-the-cuff remark, “who do I have to kill?” It was actually brought out in court that I was willing to kill for money.

As the months passed, I became very depressed. I had been found innocent yet I was still imprisoned. I had pled the Fifth Amendment, my constitutional right, and yet I was still in jail. Maybe they didn’t think a “Porn Star/Drug Addict” had any rights. I had all but given up when I decided to go on a hunger strike. I dropped over 40 pounds, my teeth were starting to loosen, my hair started to fall, out and my eyesight was beginning to fade. Never before had I ever had the shakes like that. I was taken to County General Hospital to be fed intravenously. When a doctor threatened to put a hose down my throat and feed me baby food, you might say I had second thoughts about eating.

Three days later, back in High Power, I received a letter from my former drug dealer, Nash. He had been found guilty of processing cocaine for sale and was a prisoner in the same jail. “Do what you have to do,” it stated. “You’ve suffered enough. Say what you have to say to get out of here.” The fact that Nash had written me this note made me think that Nash hadn’t done it. I guess I’ll never know for sure who killed the people at 8763 Wonderland Ave. I have my suspicions, however. I do know that I never want to run into the person or persons that actually committed this horrific massacre.

At last I was out of jail. I was stone broke, and hadn’t even a place to go. As far as my plans for the future, I hadn’t a clue. I figured no one would even want to talk to me much less hire me! As far as my friends were concerned, I didn’t really think I had any. I did however have one place to go. After this whole ordeal and the pictures that taunted my mind, one might think I would never want to go near any drugs. Not so; I had to have something to erase the thoughts and the fear that never seemed to clear from my mind. I had done a lot of business with this old pal of mine; I had known him for many years. In fact, it was Bill that had turned me onto cocaine in the first place. He took me in and before long my drug debt to him was growing increasingly on the “high” side. Bill had many connections in the porn business as well and it wasn’t long before I was back on the set again. All the publicity that I thought was going to hurt me had somehow turned around for me. I was more in demand than ever and just as “high” too! “What did I have to lose”, I thought to myself…

9

Little did I know I would meet the girl who would melt my heart and change its course forever? Her name was Misty Dawn (actually Laurie). She was 19 and I knew I had to have her from the moment I saw her. I also knew she wanted me too, in a bad way. With her big brown eyes and long brown hair she had a special look about her, one that set her apart from the other girls and made her seem strangely out of place on an X-rated movie set.

Misty had other attributes that weren’t quite so obvious at first glance. In time, I discovered her tenacious side. It didn’t take long, however, to find out how persuasive she could be with the producer. We were shooting a film called Marathon in San Francisco when the news came that I would be doing a scene with her that wasn’t in the script. Through some quick manipulation, she trapped me into doing a scene. I was angry with her at first, but not as angry as some of the other girls on the set who, in their jealousy, accused Misty of ripping things off from their dressing room. I knew Misty wasn’t guilty, but one of the girls needed an excuse to cut up her face. These girls were rougher than the ones Misty worked with in Los Angeles, and I honestly believe they were angry at Misty only because they thought I was. But so what, Misty didn’t deserve what was about to happen to her. Her intentions were not bad, just mishandled. Seeing the way things were going, I found myself protecting Misty and telling the girls to leave her alone. Somehow, we got through it all. Misty even apologized for involving me in the situation, and when the shoot was finally over, I gave her my phone number. I knew she would call.

It was four or five days before I heard from Misty. In the meantime, I was having fun with everyone who wandered my way. As dog-ass skinny as I was, it seemed some things never changed. Girls were there for my picking.

In spite of what some people might believe, I am very attracted to women. It has been rumored that I am gay so I guess it’s up to me to set the record straight. Sure, I had participated in a gay film in the past, but that was out of necessity. I needed the money and it sure wasn’t all that pleasurable for me. I am not putting down what I did—I certainly don’t have anything against it. Different stokes for different folks, as they say. What makes us all unique is our right to choose whatever and whomever. Where would we be, and especially where would I be without the sexual revolution? The point is that I love women; the younger the better, as long as they are legal.

I could tell how much Misty wanted me. She began calling and asking about cocaine. She wanted some, she said. I knew she really didn’t do drugs, but business was business. Later, she confessed that she gave it to her friends. She even convinced a producer by the name of Hal Freeman to use me in the film California Valley Girls.

One night, on Bill’s birthday, I asked Misty and a friend of hers to come up to the house. While I was really beginning to feel something inside for Misty, I definitely didn’t want to get hung up on anyone. What better way to get rid of that feeling than by giving her away as a gift to Bill? Without saying a word to Misty about my “surprise,” she figured it all out. She definitely wasn’t stupid, even if she pretended to be at times. Needless to say she went to bed with me that night, not Bill. Little did I know at that time that she would be with me from there on out. I called her “Misty Sue Bell,” in private. The name “Dawn” didn’t sit well. Misty had a southern accent, it was cute, “Sue Bell” somehow, fit her.

Misty was special, she was very understanding as she had somewhat of a submissive nature and never asked too many questions. Having been around the porn business, she could relate to my life as a male prostitute. I never realized how much until the time she went to Palos Verdes with me, pretending to be my goddaughter. We were meeting a very wealthy older woman, who liked to pay guys to line up and “gang bang” her while an audience of her friends watched. Misty stood on the sidelines, taking it all in, not saying a word. She understood.

At home, Bill had a bedroom and connecting bathroom that adjoined mine. When Misty moved into the big house, she kept all her stuff in her room, but she slept with me. We had two separate phone lines so that there would be no confusion or conflict with all the business that was coming our way. One night I handed Misty a mirror so she could do a line of coke. I couldn’t believe it when she refused. That was the first time anyone had ever said no to me on that subject, especially in California. Misty’s excuse was that coke made her feel funny and unable to talk, that was why the few times that she had bought it from me she didn’t use it herself. I didn’t argue with her. I simply went into the bathroom and freebased alone for about five hours while she sat on the other side of the door wondering if I was ever going to come out. I thought a lot about what she had said and the truth was, the shit didn’t make me feel all that great anymore either. Even though my mind was all screwed up, I knew I had to get clean if I were to have any future at all. More than anything, I wanted that future to include someone in my life. Misty had far more willpower than I did. She was good for me; I needed her.

The two weeks that followed were very ugly as I went cold turkey. In spite of the monster I know I was, Misty stuck by me the whole way, and when it was over, I was feeling healthier and more vibrant than I had felt in years. We began to have so much fun together, and I believe she was feeling young again too. She had missed out on being a kid just as much as I had, so we were making up for lost time, doing all the things we seldom got to do while growing up. It also helped that we had some money at that time to do them. We had a wild, wonderful time going from one amusement park to another, seeing movies, soaking up the sun at the Biltmore Hotel in Palm Springs, gambling in Las Vegas—Misty even won fifteen-thousand bucks playing roulette once. We loved to take long walks on the beach. No matter where we went we laughed and basically made a spectacle out of ourselves. We didn’t care. We were living again!

There was only one dark cloud in our beautiful blue sky. I still had one hell of a debt with Bill, and one afternoon he called me on it. One of his pals in the gay market decided that a gay film with John Holmes would make several million dollars. The money sounded great, more than enough to get me off the hook. And while I didn’t jump at the suggestion, I knew I had to do it.

Leave it to Bill to run and tell Misty. She was shocked and couldn’t wait to call me on it. It helped that she had a submissive nature. It helped even more when she heard I would be making a million dollars on the deal. Not long before the offer, I had asked Misty to marry me, hoping to be able to get enough money together so that we could get out and away from the “business.” The truth is I knew I would never make a million dollars by doing the film; it was just a way to pay off an old debt. But I had to tell her something.

Because of my prior experience in a gay film, again because of money, I felt that there was only one way to get through it: I had to be high. In truth, even high, I really had a hard time doing this film. They even had to dress up a woman to look like a man to finish one of the scenes. How could I tell Misty I was doing drugs? She was so proud of me. She looked up to me. I was her “Daddy.” Thank God. She believed in me so much that as time went on she wound up being my perfect little alibi. The little money I made off the film, after Bill got the major share, was just enough to pay some of our bills for a few months. I told Misty that Bill and his pal had claimed they didn’t make the money they had hoped for, so there was no million to be had. Although she was disappointed, she seemed satisfied to hear that. And knowing we did make something, she believed an effort had been made to pay me.

With Misty under my influence she didn’t question my actions too much. Still, there were times when I had to make it appear that things were not quite as they seemed to be. If I learned anything from my dealing with Bill and his pals it was how much it bothered me not to be totally honest with Misty. In the past, the business had forced me to lead numerous double lives, especially with tricks. I once had four different apartments, four different cars, sets of jewelry and clothes. I was very skilled at subterfuge, but this was different because I really loved Misty. Nevertheless, if necessary I knew I still had to create a story to cover my ass for anything that might come up in the future. It usually worked out fine in the past, and it did this time, too. Misty not only believed the money story: she began to resent Bill. From then on, she never believed anything he told her.

It was several weeks after finishing the gay film that I almost died. I really don’t remember much about this time except that I was raging with fever and violent to the extreme, not at all myself, almost as if something foul had possessed me. If anyone set food before me I would throw it against the wall. My bedroom smelled of death for weeks. Finally, in a moment of weakness one evening, Misty was able to talk me into going to the hospital. That was fine until I overheard a nurse telling Misty she couldn’t lie down with me. Upon hearing that I ripped out the IV and demanded Misty take me home immediately.

The next day Misty got me to go back to the hospital where she talked a nurse into readmitting me, and just in time, too. They were able to get enough fluid through the IV back in my body to cool my brain so it didn’t fry. And while the doctors never told me what was happening, I knew. It was the drugs I had taken to get through the gay film. I had been clean for at least eight months before then, and now my body was rejecting them. I was going through “post-freebase blackout.” My lungs, my brain, even my sense of existing were fried to hell, and it was all because of my stupidity. One would have thought I would have had more sense considering the mess drugs had gotten me into before. This time, however, there was no snapping back. I did get better eventually and everything returned to normal.

Bill knew what was happening of course, because he was my connection. It was Bill who had turned me onto cocaine in the first place. He and I had an understanding about Misty; he knew better than to tell her I had been doing drugs. However, I later found out that he did try to tell her, but she didn’t believe him. It was just as I had hoped where Misty was concerned. The “game” was working.

Yes, I was doing drugs again, but not as heavily as in the past and not all the time, as before. If I had learned anything from my earlier experience, it was that there was a time and a place for me to get high, and one definite wrong place and time was during the production of a film. I’m not making any excuses but doing cocaine again became only an occasional thing following my illness. Most of the time I just smoked marijuana; Misty liked to partake in that as well.

Even though I was not feeling all that well, Bill told me it was time for Misty and me to get our own place. In other words, he was kicking us out. That was okay with me, he was charging us too much rent anyway. Misty soon found us an apartment in Encino. (It didn’t matter that our view was of the freeway directly behind the building.) She even went so far as to move most of our stuff all by herself. I could have probably helped her, but I was still very weak and she insisted she had the move under control.

Once we were settled in our new surroundings, I began to feel really badly about everything. Misty was such a trooper. She had endured so much from me, and yet she was still hanging there at my side. I think if she’d had known the games I’d been playing and involving her in, she would have run for any place she could find. But to her credit and my good fortune, she didn’t. And luckily, for her sake and mine, not long after our move my health began to return. It was a lot easier for me without Misty having to be around Bill so much. Soon after we moved to Encino, Misty’s three-year old son, Ian, came to live with us. We were a happy little family, full of love and laughter; it was great.

The porn business, which had changed so much through the years, was really booming. We were an industry now, and a very big one, at that. Years before it was primarily films shown only on movie screens in random theatres, and before that it was sleazy, middle-aged men selling grainy 8mm reels out of the trunks of their cars. Now, porn was seen almost exclusively on video. Making videos was faster, more economical, and more profitable. It was also safer as far as racketeering was concerned. We could get hundreds of videos across the states instead of just one reel of film to some unknown theatre. Video all but killed the theater business. Dozens of once-thriving operations folded, leaving basically only one theatre chain still operating. That was because it was owned—and I do mean owned, by some very powerful people who needed the “front” for other matters.

Back in the 1970s, the business needed “stars” like Marilyn Chambers, Seka, a few others, and me. The thought behind the “star system” was to familiarize the public with a favorite performer, who would sell the product. Over the years, however, the reasoning began to change. The bigger the actors’ heads got, the bigger they wanted their paychecks to be, and it was far easier to get unknowns to work for less. Actually, the public really didn’t care anymore. In fact, the appetite for new faces was greater than ever.

I was one of the lucky ones. Since I had more than a face to sell, the audience never seemed to tire of watching me slam the meat to some young starlet. Call it an animal type of sex, if you will, but it worked for me. Besides, I was “IN.” Having achieved more than a slight degree of notoriety provided me the opportunity to take care of other matters when I had to travel somewhere without anyone else knowing, and still have an alibi for my time if it was something important. Since the Wonderland episode I had become a great money collector for other people. Even though I didn’t kill those people at the Wonderland house, no one was really sure of my innocence. Because of that, no one wanted to mess with me. Between scenes, I could easily slip away without the wrong people knowing. They would just think I was resting in my company-paid hotel room, and since I had been escorted there, it wasn’t a problem. I had it made! At night after filming, I was able to pick and choose among the cast to “play.”

I had my favorite actresses; a few I even liked as friends. Ginger Lynn was the best around in the industry at this time, but there were others as well. I had a lot of respect for Ginger. Ginger was different; she had class. Not only was she sweet and very sexy, she was above all a real person. I really liked her as a friend, not just another “girl-toy.”

Along with my favorites, I definitely had my dreads. During the filming of California Valley Girls, I was so pissed off at Kimberly Carson that I almost ran her down with my car. Most of the girls were nice, or at least had something positive going for them. If I didn’t like someone, I’d try to forget the reason I didn’t care for her and focus on her one best feature. As pretty as a girl might be, if she were too much of a bitch for me to ignore, I would degrade her in my mind and make it as physically uncomfortable for her as I could. That might sound harsh, but that’s the way it was. I called it “venge-fucking.” Thankfully, this didn’t happen too often.

Although I have worked with many blondes during my career, I have always preferred small, petite brunettes with big dark eyes. I have found that most blonde, blue-eyed women have an attitude. They tend to act is if they are better than the other girls and they don’t try as hard. I find that brunettes give it their all and try even harder to please. Redheads are a lot of fun in bed but they have the tendency of getting crazy and are most likely to become obsessed. It must be something in their genetic make-up. From my experience, there is no crazier woman than a red-headed one. As for wild women, I would defiantly have to say Italian women are the wildest, and nastiest, in bed. In fact, from my experience, bed is the only place they like to be.

If I learned anything about porn actresses over the years it’s that the better their upbringing, the nastier they could be and usually were. Throw in a few extra bucks and a little attention and a producer could get them to do just about any degrading, nasty thing he wanted them to do.

The same basic theory applied to women outside the business, as well. To me, it confirmed the old “preacher’s daughter” theory. Usually, the preacher’s daughter was the biggest slut in the church, town or wherever she happened to be. When standards are set too high for a person to live up to, then that person has more fun being bad. There is no rebel like a horny one!

Drugs will definitely loosen a person up. Things that a person would never do straight, they are likely to do while on drugs. Drugs and the porn business go hand in hand. From what I could see, most everyone in the business was on drugs, mostly cocaine, but we all had our favorites. How freely drugs were passed around on a set depended on whom you were working for. With some producers and directors, drugs were a powerful way to control a situation, giving them an edge, perhaps getting a girl to do ‘favors,’ either for them or a friend. Most girls fell right into the trap, one they hadn’t a clue was being set for them. I have known very few actresses through the years who were smart enough to say no, especially if they thought it would get them closer to a person in power, such as someone who could land them future projects.

As for the male actors, the producers couldn’t have cared less if they were high or not, as long as they could get it up, and drugs definitely had an adverse effect in that department. During my worst drug burnouts I was no better than any other male actor, except that it was rather difficult to find a stand-in for me to “cheat the shot.” Sometimes they were forced to wait and wait, often being forced to go onto the next scene and come back to me when I was ready. Of course this cost them time and money, but nobody wanted to deal with me during a burnout anyway because I could be such an asshole. It was best to stay out of my face.

Bill had become a producer for one of the bigger companies, VCX, which meant I automatically had a job assisting in production and doing some directing. That was fine with me, except the added responsibility was little more of a cover up for him when he either had to catch up on some sleep or snap out of a drug induced lethargy. Bill did have his good side, however, and in his own way he did take care of me from time to time. He knew I had his back whenever necessary, even though I often disagreed with him. I guess everyone has a good side; it’s just too easy to get caught up in all the games we play sometimes. The one thing that really annoyed me the most about Bill was that he never missed an opportunity to put me in a situation in an attempt to bring him and Misty closer together. That happened way too many times and really bothered me.

It finally reached a point when I realized that Misty would have to get out of the business. Having her around would have made it too easy for my enemies to get their hands on her, which would have put us both in danger. There was another reason, as well. I wanted her for myself. I knew that if I were to marry Misty, or even just love her, then there was only one solution: she had to drop out of sight.

How could I tell Misty she could no longer work? How could I force her to stay home and become a housewife? And how could I say she could not touch another man when for years I had lived off my wild “open sex” reputation? Not only was I proud of my notorious acclaim, I liked to fool around with other women too. For me to tell Misty one thing and practice another would have me looking and feeling like a fool. After all, I never believed in double standards. While I knew that Misty really didn’t want to be with another man I also knew she was just enough the rebel type to seek whatever she was told that she couldn’t have. Had I told her she could only be with me, I could easily see her being with someone else. It didn’t bother me for her to be with other girls. In fact, I encouraged her because to me that was different.

With Misty not being around the business, it made it easier for me to guide her into my way of thinking. It was only when Bill was around her that I had any problems. He continually put thoughts in her head. However, I had more power over Misty than Bill did, and it really bothered him that his influence was slipping away. The seeds I had planted early on were taking root. With Misty thinking a certain way, I could easily get out of whatever he would tell her, turn it back on him, and he would never know it. Misty would always promise Bill that she wouldn’t say anything about the things that he would tell her but she always did and that gave me an upper edge over the situation. Misty proved to be a valuable asset.

By the end of 1984, the time was ripe for Bill and me to break away from our jobs at VCX and start our own company. It was time for us to make the big money. Pornography was more popular than ever and taking in huge profits, so it seemed only fitting that we open our own production company. Misty had become bored at home and since we needed a girl to help get our office organized, she seemed like a good choice. Her job was not supposed to last more than a few days so I didn’t believe there would be a problem working with Bill. Misty was really good around the office, she surprised everyone, especially me. Bill insisted she work full time. It didn’t sit well, but I agreed anyway. There was one big plus having Misty around the office—she could be my own little spy. I knew Bill had the same agenda. I tried to warn her of his games and that it could get confusing for her, but she said she could handle it.

I knew that Misty was smart, but I never dreamed she would become our office manager and bookkeeper. The business part of it was easy for her, but I doubt she fully realized that in her new role I would have to protect her more than ever. It was hard for Misty when people asked about her and I would say, “She is my secretary,” or even worse, “She is my maid.” I didn’t want people to know that we were seriously involved and about to marry. If that were to get out it might bring danger to her, it might also mess up some of my “playtime.”

“Why do you say those things about me?” Misty would ask, time and again. “Are you ashamed of me?”

“It’s for your safety, Baby Doll,” I’d tell her. “I love you, but it has to be this way.” That would be the end of it, until the next time. While she would go along with my excuses, feeble as they often were, she didn’t like to hear me speak of her in that way, even jokingly. Of course my efforts were often in vain. Bill seldom passed up the opportunity to tell people about Misty and me.

Despite some run-ins with Bill, Penguin Productions was moving along fine. The office and warehouse were running smoothly, thanks to Misty. She turned out to be very good at bookkeeping, sometimes too good. There were occasions when she discovered discrepancies in the ledgers that made no sense to her. Coming to me for help, I had only to say, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you, girl.” Her questioning ended there even though she once found me counting a floor full of money on our bathroom floor at home, money I had made doing a film—or so she thought. It was a lot of money. The entire bathroom floor blanketed with about ten inches of hundred dollar bills. I didn’t want her to know about it because Bill and I already had plans for it, and those plans didn’t include the company. So she wouldn’t suspect anything, I put the money in my brown valise and took her out to lunch, telling her I’d be going to the bank afterward to put the money in a safety deposit box.

The money was really intended for two men who were sitting in the booth behind Misty and me at the restaurant. When we left the restaurant, I “accidently” left my valise on the seat. We were half-way to the bank when Misty discovered that I had left the money behind. Slamming on the brakes I made a quick u-turn and raced back to the restaurant, but it was too late. The valise was gone.

I had led Misty to believe that the valise also held my set of keys to the office, warehouse, Bill’s house, our apartment and all the alarm keys too. We proceeded to Bill’s house in the hills of Sherman Oaks to give him the bad news. He was standing in the driveway when we arrived. In on the scheme, he played along.

“A man just called, John,” Bill told us. “He said he found your valise with your keys and our business card inside.”

“Thank God,” I said. “Did he say where he found it?”

“Somewhere along Ventura Boulevard,” he answered.

“He was riding his bike when he spotted it.”

Bill shrugged his shoulders. “No mention of any money.”

Of course there was no money in the valise. Misty always believed that some bus boy found it sitting on the seat where I had left it at the restaurant and probably quit his job soon after. As far as Misty was concerned, the money was no more. The plan had worked.

Our company was producing some pretty good flicks; the company was definitely in full swing. There was only one real concern on everyone’s mind: AIDS! The AIDS epidemic was staring to hit hard, and although no one in the business had been reported as actually having it yet, we were all starting to get worried. Bill and I, along with some other people including some screenwriters and still photographers, tried to organize an AIDS Testing Program within the business. Our goal was to form an organization that would require current HIV test results for every actor or actress we hired for a film. In 1985, everyone at our company, including myself, was tested for HIV. Our results were all the same—NEGATIVE! Funny, I tested under the name “Karl Marx.” Misty was “Betsy Ross,” and Bill was “Jack Daniels.”

In discussion and on paper, testing sounded like a great idea, but when it came down to it I was surprised that the other performers refused to take any test. They believed that such testing was an invasion of their right to privacy. HIV testing was also quite expensive. Even though our company offered to pay for their test, they still refused. HIV testing at the time wasn’t very good either and there were some grey areas as to the window period. The time between a person’s first exposure to the virus and when the virus would show up in a test was questionable. At the time, there was also talk about putting people with AIDS in the old Japanese Internment Camps to isolate them, much like lepers were at one time.

Misty was no longer making films, but I still was. Since we were unsuccessful at organizing HIV testing within the industry, I was still at risk, meaning Misty was at risk, too. I felt like every time we made love, we were taking a chance. I think it was on my mind more than hers. At times I found myself pulling away from her. I wasn’t as concerned for myself as I was for Misty.

There was so much stress in and around our lives, mostly brought on from the daily head games we had to endure at work and from Bill. In spite of all of this, I was determined to make our company work. All my life, I had made money for other people and other companies. Now it was time to capitalize on my own name and in my own company. I also looked at the opportunity of making some real dough, with the plan of breaking away from the business one day.

With the AIDS threat always in the back of my mind, I somehow found it easier to play around on occasion. As terrible as it sounds, I wasn’t as concerned with some playmate as I was for Misty. For some reason I had a bad feeling about it all and that turned out to be a good thing.

In the spring of 1986, I began to feel ill. I had a bad ear infection and I could hardly hear a sound. The doctor first insisted that this was because of the time I had spent in the army around heavy artillery. That made since at first but then I began to have other symptoms. I had a rash over most of my body. Even when I seemed to get it under control, every time I had sex the rash would come back—down there. To be on the safe side, I decided to take yet another HIV test. It took a week to get my results; only this time, the news was grim. I was HIV positive!

After finding out that I was sick, Misty took another test. Thank God she didn’t have the virus. While we were not having a lot of sex at this time, we had just had sex less than two-weeks prior. I can’t say how this was to be, only that I was happy she was negative. Months later she took another test and again, she was negative. We were both very relieved after the second test. Thank God I hadn’t infected the love of my life.

It’s been said that everyone has their own time and destiny and I could only believe that this was mine. “Why me?” I wondered. Why was it that the most famous and successful porn star ever would also be the first reported to have AIDS? There was a lot of other talent that were doing much nastier scenes than I had. None of this made any sense to me.

After I first received the devastating news, all I wanted to do was run away—from me, from Misty and from the entire world. I knew I would only be able to hide the news for a short time. My health was failing fast and all I could do was wait for the other shoe to drop. My doctor had told me that it was only a matter of time; if this were true then I wanted to do everything I could to ensure a quick death. I increased my cigarette intake and was now smoking up to eight packs of Marlboros per day. My drinking increased, as well. The Scotch really helped to clear the phlegm from my throat so that I could breathe better. Misty was always trying to get me to take vitamins, but I never took them. A wasted motion, I convinced myself. I didn’t want to prolong anything.

Nearly two months had passed and I was reminded that it was time for me to make my annual appearance at the VSDA (Video Software Dealers Association) convention in Las Vegas. I felt absolutely horrible and was sure I looked even worse. The banner above my head read “JOHN HOLMES, IN PERSON,” It should have read “JOHN HOLMES, THE WALKING CORPSE WITH A BEATING HEART!” I didn’t want to show up looking the way that I did but I couldn’t get out of it. Besides, I had to keep up appearances, such as they were. Our company was depending on me. I was so terribly self-conscious that I found myself repeatedly asking Misty if my makeup was alright. She would reassure my confidence and always with a smile. Only then could I face the world and act as if everything was “hunky-dory.” I had always loved doing these shows in the past. Now, just the thought of having to be around so many people terrorized me. Signing autographs for thousands of fans and taking pictures with them for the world to see could be somewhat demanding on a good day, but I did love my fans. I smiled and laughed and made it seem like great fun, but it really took its toll on me.

By the time I made it back to Los Angeles all I could do was fall into bed. My days of getting out of bed and going to work became fewer and fewer. I began to have all kinds of health problems. The doctor informed me that I needed hemorrhoid surgery. The procedure was rather simple and it didn’t concern me. However, I really wanted to keep my identity a secret. Discretion was most important in this matter. This wasn’t always easy as I was recognized everywhere I went. Confidentiality of medical records meant very little to me. If a nurse or an orderly or someone in the hospital were to recognize John Holmes as a patient, chances were good that they might tell a friend, who would tell a friend and so on.

The surgery was successful, however by this time my immune system had been so compromised that I wasn’t sure if I would ever heal. Sure, the hemorrhoids were gone but the pain was worse than before. With my noticeable health problems, instead of telling people that I had AIDS we told them that I had colon cancer and that they had taken out six feet of my intestines. I probably should have left the little bastards alone because the word of my failing health spread quickly. Now the press was banging at my door, wanting to know if it was true that I had cancer—or did I really have AIDS?

“AIDS?” I said with a tone of disbelief that they were even asking me this question. “NO WAY,” I replied. “I have cancer,” I tried my best to convince them.

We had other reasons for not wanting anyone to know that I had AIDS. The Meese Commission was going strong and Edward Meese was currently lobbying the White House in an effort to shut down the porn industry. If people knew of my condition they would use that against us. We had to protect the industry.

Eventually I did start to feel better and in the fall of 1986, I was invited to Italy to star in three adult films. It was a three-week gig and they were paying TOP dollar. First class all the way, all expenses paid. Ordinarily I would have been packed in an hour but this was a big decision to make, one I didn’t take lightly. I turned them down at first but after being approached several more times, I was persuaded to accept the offer.

After more than 20 years in the business, offers were still coming my way. I considered myself not only lucky but a survivor. Most of the performers in my line had disappeared after only a handful of films, burned out or washed up. The public was after new faces, new bodies and new thrills. I had walked a few tightropes in my time, even dodged a few bullets. In spite of my shaky reputation, however, my films were selling better than ever. The demand for theatrical releases may have slipped, but the hot video market had expanded both the audience and its demand for fresh product.

I really needed the money and was looking forward to the opportunity of seeing the hillsides of Italy one more time, a place I had always thought was so beautiful, with great food and wonderful people. Of course, there was the risk of infecting someone else. However, I had been told that they were flying everyone out from the San Fernando Valley. We all had sex in circles; I honestly believed that if they didn’t get the virus from me they were sure to get it from someone else. It wasn’t until after my arrival that I discovered that I would be working with someone new. Her name was Ilona Staller, better known as “La Ciccolina.” An Italian film star, she was also a member of the Italian Parliament. The movie was to be called The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress.

Filming in Europe can have its drawbacks. Some years earlier, while working in France, we had to shoot the entire production twice, once in English and again in French. As soon as a scene was finished in one language, we went back and did it again in another, line by line, until we got it perfect; then we would go onto the next line. It was somewhat of a bore and I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was saying in French.

The Italians were fifty times more professional. They had us work straight through, in English only, then dubbed the finished product. They also stayed sober on the set. The French crew was drunk by mid-morning and literally dropped the cameras while film was rolling.

Working with an Italian crew meant having a translator on set. The studio furnished us with a little redhead, the cutest thing since Oreo cookies. I wanted her in the worst way, but I knew I would be putting her at risk too, so I didn’t press it. Had I made a move on her I might have left Italy without my most strategic body part. We later discovered she was a Mafia princess.

One of the benefits of filming overseas is the side trips. This time, because of the long schedule, I was able to sneak off between pictures to as many places as possible during any free time available. I visited old friends in Germany, and wandered Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Spain.

Between work and running from place to place I had little time to relax. The pace seemed to agree with me and for the first time in months, I felt terrific. Not even the constant changes in food, water, and climate affected me. I had only one “off ” day, which I blamed on a night without sleep. I knew better, but I wasn’t complaining. For me to feel as good as I did was kind of a miracle. Nevertheless, I laid low for awhile. The production company simply cancelled me out that day and worked around me.

It wasn’t until the shoot was about over and I was about to leave Italy that I began to fall apart. I knew something was wrong almost immediately. I decided to stop in Ohio on the way home to see my mother, perhaps for the last time. It had been years since we last talked. She had called while I was incarcerated during the murder trial but I didn’t want to talk to her at that time. I knew she would have wanted to come to California during that time to visit me and I didn’t want her anywhere near that scene.

My mother is a very special lady. Through the years she had even earned the name “Mother Moses” because she always knew and felt things before they happened. I had hoped to surprise her by showing up unannounced. I hadn’t called, written or anything to let her know that I was coming to visit. When the doorbell rang, she asked, “Who is it?

“Jessie James,” I replied. The joke was on me when she opened the door, held out her arms then said, “I knew you were coming Johnny Buck.”

We had a wonderful visit but there were things that were purposefully unsaid. Before having gone to Italy, I had needed to get a new passport. I had lost all my personal papers when I had been on the run days after The Wonderland Murders. I had to send off for my original birth certificate. When my birth certificate finally arrived, I was only too surprised to learn the name listed as my father wasn’t Edward Holmes as I had believed all my life. Instead, it listed someone named “Carl Estes.”

“Carl Estes?” Who was this, I wondered. While visiting with mother I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I didn’t want her to be embarrassed or make her feel ashamed or uncomfortable. If she had wanted me to know she would have told me, I figured. Besides, that was Ed’s and Harold’s little game, not mine.

The stop-over in Ohio to see Mother was like an injection of miracle medicine for me. However, the high of being in her company, amid old familiar surroundings, soon faded as the miles stretched between us on my return flight to Los Angeles.

After returning home to Misty, it was more difficult than ever to return to my everyday office routine. The days of working 10-12 hours per day were long gone. At first, I would cut out just after lunch and make for home. Within several months, I wasn’t going to the office at all. Why even bother? I certainly wasn’t accomplishing anything when I was there.

My life is nearly over and I must face this. I have little motivation or energy to do anything except lie in bed. I drift in and out of sleep and everyday is just a little harder to face. I am growing more confused.

10

Days keep rolling by, and yet, time has no meaning for me. Lying in bed, day after day, I worry about money and mounting doctor bills and the rising cost of medicine. I worry about Misty. She comes home every single night with a migraine headache. She tries to tell me about the day but it’s getting harder to grasp what she has to say. I feel as if I am losing my mind.

Bill continues to play games with Misty’s head. She claims that he is trying to get her into bed, chasing her around the desk at work. Hearing this upsets me so, but I want her to confide in me, painful as it is.

“Bill has been talking to the Feds,” she says with eyes wide open. She is very frightened as to what he might be revealing to them. Our employees are even questioning Misty as to why Bill would be talking to the Feds in his office. Bill has always had somewhat of a big mouth and this was nothing new. Before, I was usually there to make sure he didn’t say things that he shouldn’t. Several porn warehouses around the San Fernando Valley have been raided recently but we weren’t one of the companies. Bill has hired his 16-year old daughter, Denise, to be our front office secretary. If we were to be raided and she were found it would bring us serious trouble. We have a 16 year old working the front office of a porn warehouse and distribution building. The Feds are questioning Bill in his office and yet for some odd reason, we don’t get raided? I can only fear the worst. If Bill were to implicate certain people, this could bring retaliation that could easily put Misty in harm’s way. Sad to say, I don’t think I’m just being paranoid.

Worry seems to occupy the time when I am awake. I worry, watch television, and sleep. When I awake, I repeat the cycle once again. Even while I stare at the television, usually watching some movie in a state of

141 some pharmaceutically-induced stupor, I can’t help myself from thinking only the deepest, darkest thoughts.

A John Holmes relief fund has been started to help pay for some of my medical bills and medications. We have received some donations from business associates and long-time friends.

Blooms, Caballero Control, Annie Sprinkle, Gloria Leonard, just to name a few, I can’t begin to express my gratitude. One of my medications costs over $80 per week and this is with my health insurance. This particular medication helps clear the phlegm from my throat and lungs so that I can breathe. My doctor has also prescribed Halcion pills for my pain. The amount I am paying for my prescriptions is nothing compared to how much I used to spend on illegal drugs. However, with me not working it is a real concern.

We have had to move out of our apartment in Encino. Without any notice the rent was raised to an amount more than the apartment was worth. Impossible! We moved to an apartment in Van Nuys but now our new landlord is giving us grief about our animals and we may have to move again.

Bill has cut off my salary at Penguin and has told Misty that I am out; he claims the company is all his now. We began that company as a partnership and there were a lot of people who gave us terms based on me. They are calling me at home now, wondering why they have not been paid. What is Bill doing with all the income?

The Halcion keeps me out of it most of the time. Sleep; the great escape! I continually up my dosage as I feel I need to. So much pain! My temper seems to flare often while I am awake so I tend to pop a handful before Misty returns home from work. Her son is in school during the day so I don’t have to babysit. Before, I used to love the time he and I would spend together, but now, I just don’t have it in me and I know he doesn’t really understand.

I have told Misty that she should find someone else; it will be easier for her that way when I am gone. Misty continues to be loyal in spite of the hell I am putting her through. I often take my pain and anger out on her. I don’t know why; I didn’t used to be this way. Living with me is definitely no picnic right now. She deserves much better and I truly want her to be happy.

I look at Misty and see so much confusion in her eyes. She is young, after all. I used to help her figure things out. I can’t figure things out now, how could I possibly help her? Bill is stressing her out with his head games. I am trying to persuade her to leave this place when I am gone.

I have told her to get as far away from Bill Amerson as she can. I have warned her that he wouldn’t make this easy for her.

It’s taking all the energy I can spare to record my final thoughts. I hope that one day everyone will come to understand the man I came to be and the long road of my final destination.

Things at Penguin have become increasingly worse. I believe it is time for Misty to sever all ties with Bill. I have told her to quit her job and contacted my attorney to serve Bill papers. He incorporated the company during my absence; in fact, he incorporated me right out of our partnership. I always knew Bill was greedy, I never thought he would be this way to me; after all, I am the God-Father to his children. Knowing that I am dying, the bastard has cancelled my health insurance. He has also been advising people that I don’t really need their donations and not to send money to my relief fund. He is telling people that I have been buying illegal drugs with their donations? Nothing could be farther from the truth than that.

I have no idea how I am going to pay for my medications now. Misty has found another job but she is barely making enough to cover our living expenses. I am questioning myself about filing a lawsuit against Bill; I won’t be around long enough to see it through, which would only mean that Misty would be left handling it. Even though she deserves the money from the company that we both worked so hard to create, it would prolong her time here in California. I am hoping that she takes her son, leaves this place, and never returns.

I have thought of suicide but as tempting as that sounds that would hurt my mother beyond belief. It would also dishonor the life insurance policy that I have left for Misty. More than anything I want her to have some money to create a life for herself and Ian when I am gone. One hundred thousand Dollars should be able to get them far away from here. Taking the cowardly way out now just doesn’t seem to be an option.

On the stretch to my final count-down, Misty is urging me to contact Mother. She believes that I should get in contact with everyone in my family, including my little brother, David. Before Misty quit Penguin I had already sent each member of my family a small token of myself to remember me by. Little things that Misty and I had collected through the years were sent via UPS out of Penguin. I had instructed Misty to black out the names in the UPS book after sending the gifts so that nobody would have my family’s addresses, a lesson I learned after Nash had once possessed my little black book.

The pain is increasing and I have decided to check myself into the Veterans Administrative Hospital in Sepulveda. Thank God I had once served my country and that I have this option, otherwise I don’t know how I could endure these times with no insurance.

Misty and Ian have moved to another apartment. They miss me, but I know this is for the best. The hospital has offered me AIDS medications but I don’t want them. I just want whatever morphine they can give me so that I may die in peace.

Mother is with me now; having her around is wonderful. She and Misty are getting along together fine. I have been a little worried as to how Mother would take to Misty before but then again, how could she not love her? I hear them talking when they think that I am asleep. Misty has asked all kinds of questions about my childhood and Mother is only too happy to reminisce. Some of the stories I don’t remember, very little makes sense to me now anyway. Sometimes it would seem as if she is talking about someone else. Mother continues on, telling Misty how I was such a special child. She says that I had the gift of bringing laughter even in the most depressing and dark times. Her voice sounds so soft, warm and loving. Having her around brings much comfort.

“I never regretted bringing John into this world,” Mother confesses, “even though the circumstances in which John was born were difficult. That’s why I could never blame him for the way he lived his life. I can never do that.”

Hearing Mother say those words has brought me a kind of peace that I haven’t felt in many years. How wonderful to know that she has found a way to accept the man that I came to be. Before, she had struggled over this. Even now, I don’t think she really approves and I am sure she had wanted my life to be different, but having her acceptance now is all I need.

How lucky am I? I am finally at peace with myself and I am in the company of the two women that I love more than anything or anyone in the world. They have both been a very special part of my life and an important part of my final days, as well. They are two very special ladies, indeed.

Epilogue

by Laurie Holmes

On the evening of Sunday, March 12, 1988, John Holmes died at the age of 43 from complications of AIDS. He had suffered from encephalitis (swelling of the brain). During his final months, John had many seizures which brought on hallucinations, and often he would black-out. He had never completely healed from his hemorrhoid surgery, which was probably more painful than anything we could imagine. During his last days he slipped into a coma. On Friday evening, after I got off work I came to the hospital to visit John as I always did. When I arrived, I saw John’s brother David and their Mother sitting at John’s bedside. I was wearing a brand new dress that I had bought—a black one. John woke up from his coma for a brief moment when he heard my voice.

“I like that dress,” John said, sitting halfway up in bed. “You look beautiful.” He complimented me, as he tried to swallow a big lump in his throat. John was awake for several minutes and he was attentive to our appearance, however, I had to leave to attend to my son, Ian.

“I love you, Daddy,” I said with tears in my eyes, standing in the doorway of the room painted so blue.

“And I love you, Baby!” John suddenly lay down and never woke again. This would be the last time I would ever hear his voice.

The next day I returned to the hospital while Mother watched Ian. I sat by his bedside for most of the morning. I had brought a tape player and played the song Everything I Own, by Bread. I believe that even though he was deep within a coma, he heard everything. I told him that I was going to proceed in dropping the law-suit against Bill and do as he wished. I was going to get as far away from California as I could. I know that pleased John. It was just heart wrenching seeing John this way. At least in a coma, I knew he wasn’t suffering as he had for so many months. I found a sitter for Ian on Sunday and Mother and I were by his side all day. At about eight o’clock that night, we left the hospital in hopes of getting some much-needed sleep. We couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour when the phone rang. John had died around ten o’clock that night. We immediately got dressed and rushed to the hospital. There, John lay dead within the walls of his blue hospital room. His blue eyes were opened wide as if he had looked up to God and said, “I’m ready Lord, take me.” I have never seen a more peaceful look in someone’s eyes before. I will never forget it as long as I live, either. Mother and I each took turns saying our good-byes. All night we waited for the coroner to come. The coroner didn’t show up until early morning at which time John was pronounced dead. The death certificate, therefore, read that John had died on March, 13, 1988.

As they wheeled John down the long corridor in a body bag, Mother and I fell to our knees and cried. There was nothing left of John Curtis Holmes. At maybe 60 pounds, there didn’t appear to be a body in that body bag, let alone our John.

I tried to compose myself as best as I possibly could for Mother’s sake. I took Mother to David’s house and dropped her off as I felt the need to be alone for a while. It wasn’t until I was driving away that I think it really hit me. That deep sinking feeling that my “Daddy” was gone forever and I would never talk to him again. Wow! All this time I had thought I had prepared myself for this moment, only to find such grief and despair. I have never cried so hard in my life. This death stuff was new to me, how could I have possibly known before it happened of the feelings it would bring? After all, I was only twenty-four years old.

I had tried to carry out all of John’s last wishes. John was adamant as to his last wishes. First, he insisted that he be cremated. He wanted his ashes to be buried deep at sea, beyond the polluted waters of the California coast. He insisted that I view his body to ensure that he was all there before putting his body in the oven. He didn’t want his most strategic body part to end up in a jar, sitting on some demented coroner’s shelf or sold as some prize collector’s trophy. I did exactly as John had asked, just as I always had. I lifted the yellow hospital gown and confirmed that all was intact. Then I placed a picture of Jesus on his heart and watched as they put what was left of his body into the oven. I stood there for what must have been a good half-hour, knowing that his body was being cooked to ashes just feet away.

On March 15, 1988, Mother and I, along with David, stepped onto an over-night fishing boat in Oxnard, California. I slept with John’s ashes that night. Nobody else on the boat knew who we were and what we were about to do. John had been insistent about NOT having a funeral. Between the three of us we couldn’t think of anything John would want more than to fish in his memory. In the past, John and I had often taken this very same boat out to and past the Channel Islands.

At about four-thirty the next morning, Mother came and woke me. It was time to lay John to rest. David had drilled holes in the urn and placed tape over the holes the day before. We said our final words to John, peeled the tape away and we threw the urn into the deep blue sea on the other side of San Clemente Island. We stood there alone in silence, breathing in the cool ocean air. We fished that day in his memory as planned.

A couple of weeks after John had passed, I went on NBC News as well as The Larry King Show and spoke out against the industry. I was angry, as the news had previously reported that insiders in the industry had claimed that John was a needle-junkie, that he was gay, and that he had caught AIDS outside the industry. None of this was true. Between 1985 in which John had first tested negative for HIV and 1986, when John tested positive, John had only done a handful of heterosexual films and almost every one of the movies was for Penguin Productions. His party days were all but over; he worked in the day and was with me at night. John couldn’t stand the sight of a needle, he had always hated the needle. We had often tried to track down where John had actually contracted the disease but were unsuccessful. None of the girls that John had worked with were reported as having AIDS. On the news, it was reported by industry insiders that it was actually safer to have sex within the industry than it was on the outside because people in the industry only had sex with each other. I felt as if it were my responsibility to set the world straight and so I did. I’m quite sure that I pissed off a few people within the industry but frankly, I didn’t give a damn.

Bill Amerson held a memorial for John up at Forest Lawns Cemetery, knowing damn well John never wanted that. He invited everyone in the industry to come and pay their last respects, everyone but his widow. Later, I was mocked for not even showing up, not that I would have anyway, that wasn’t what John wanted.

Through the years I have been criticized for not allowing anyone to visit John during his stay at the V.A. Hospital, something else that John had insisted. I merely followed his wishes.

I moved back to Albuquerque a month after John died. I bought a house with the insurance money that John had left and tried to go on about my life, raising my son. I started seeing another man and soon became pregnant with my second child. Years later after the relationship failed, I found myself alone raising two boys. The money was gone; I was working an office job and hardly making enough to support two kids and a household by myself.

I returned to a way I knew how to make money best—taking off my clothes for men. I began stripping at local night clubs. It was just another form of adult entertainment, and I was good at working the crowd for money.

There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about John or the life that we had both once lived. It was always a struggle between having a secret past and living in the present. My old friends from high school, who knew about John Holmes, looked at me differently from the way they used to years before. On one hand I wanted to shout out to the world about what a great guy John Holmes had been to me, and on the other hand once they knew they somehow seemed judgmental, as what they had heard about John Holmes on the news never sat pretty with them. I found that people seemed to want to believe the worst about John, yet what they had heard about John in various media was highly inaccurate. I was often made fun of when trying to defend John and often I became angry. It was during this time that I too fell to the addiction of drugs.

Before John had died, and while he was in the hospital, I had received a call from a nurse at the hospital. “The cops are coming to interview John,” she told me.

I took off from work and rushed to the hospital, running every red light along the way. I was worried as to what John might say because often in the final days of his illness he didn’t grasp reality.

“The cops are coming to interview you, John,” I said, somewhat hysterical. “Just lay there, act like you don’t know what’s going on,” I told him.

As I was looking down the long hospital hallway, I saw the doors at the end swing open and watched as they made their way towards John’s room.

“They are coming right now,” I screeched. Just like a scene out of an oldtime movie, John took one last puff off his cigarette, put it out in the ashtray and lay there moaning as the door swung open. Detective Tom Lange was there with some other officers in an attempt to get some sort of death bed confession out of John with regards to The Wonderland Murders.

John continued to moan as they asked him question after question and answered nothing. When they couldn’t get anything out of John, they turned to me.

“John never told me anything.” I firmly stated again and again.

Almost ten years after John’s death, the first of a series of movies inspired by different aspects of John’s life was released. In 1997, a film called Boogie Nights, starring Mark Wahlberg as John Holmes, introduced audiences to John and the 1970s porn industry. The movie was “loosely” based on John. Although Boogie Nights was somewhat entertaining to the public, I would have to argue against its similarity to John’s story. Although the movie was inspired by John’s story, it wasn’t factually close to it.

Toward the end of 1997, I was contacted by a producer that was making a documentary about John. I agreed to be interviewed and was flown back to the San Fernando Valley where I was interviewed for Wadd [The Life and Times of John C. Holmes]. What I didn’t know was that Bill Amerson had his own part in the making of this film. Just about everything I said was twisted to make me sound bad. The Amersons told the audience that I had tricked John into marrying me while he was heavily medicated, a blatant lie. John and I had called Bill the night before we left to Las Vegas to be married and Bill gave us his blessing, a blessing I think he may have regretted because John, in turn, left his estate to me. I believe that Bill had his own plans in regards to John’s estate. This ruined everything for Bill. I believe that Bill had used this project as his own personal tool and vendetta towards me. The Amersons also stated that John didn’t wish to be cremated, but I cremated John anyway—another lie. I do believe the Amerson children were influenced by their father in their testimony. The first part of the movie was pretty good, right up until it suddenly became the “let’s smear Laurie Holmes campaign.” They had interviewed many of John’s long-time friends and business associates. During Bill’s interview he also stated that I was a prostitute. He claimed that between filming scenes, I would go out and hitchhike and pick up tricks. Then they showed a clip from the movie Dreams of Misty, where I was walking down the street dressed up as a young girl in an effort to confirm this statement, but failed to mention that this little clip was taken out of a movie. I filed a lawsuit against the company that made the film. After all, prostitution is a crime in the state of California and I have never been charged with such a crime. I ended up later dropping the suit as I believed witnesses had been paid to testify against me. I could never prove this, however, and was advised to drop the suit. The producer of the film has since apologized to me. I still occasionally receive hate mail from someone who has watched this film.

Toward the end of 1998 I left my hometown once again after another horribly failed and abusive relationship. My kids had gone to live with my parents and I didn’t know where else to go, so I headed back to the San Fernando Valley where I once again re-entered the business. AIDS testing had recently been established within the adult entertainment industry; otherwise I never would have started making movies again. They were also using a new test called the PCR/DNA HIV Test. This new test claimed to have a window period of only two weeks. It was still no guarantee, but the chances of catching HIV were much less with this test and in this program. Nobody was allowed to work without a test within the last 30 days. Shortly after I moved back and re-entered the business I met Tony Montana, a Colombian-born actor who had been in the business since the early 1980s. We began seeing quite a bit of each other, on and off the set. We had just fallen in love when he was suddenly ill stricken with hepatitis C. About a month went by before he began to feel better. Ready to work again, he went to AIM Healthcare to be tested for HIV. He, too, was given the grave news of his condition. Everyone thought I was just going to run out on him. I never ran out on John, why would I run out on Tony? I really doubt that many of those people have the first clue about loyalty. I was amazed at the different medications and treatment compared to when John was stricken. I considered myself educated, after all. Tony and I were married in the spring of 2001. We separated some time ago. We make better friends than we do married partners. To this day I remain uninfected by HIV or hepatitis C. I count my blessings every single day.

Sometime in 1999, I had discussed the audio tapes with my public relations person. He advised me to take the Wonderland portion of the tapes to the LAPD as the murders were still unsolved and an open case. I didn’t want to be sitting on evidence in an open murder investigation. We took the tapes to downtown Los Angeles, Homicide Division. The detective listened to the tapes and then said that they didn’t need them. I asked the detective about David Lind and if he was still alive as John had always worried about David Lind coming after me. The detective typed David Lind’s name into the computer and a rap sheet a mile long began to print, one violent crime after another. However, sometime in 1988 the rap sheet just stopped. He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me if David Lind was still alive.

In 2000, a forty-page indictment was served on Eddie Nash in regards to The Wonderland Murders. John was once again mentioned in connection to the murders. Because I was sitting on the tapes which were used to compile this book and because I had gone to the LAPD just a year earlier, I didn’t want a gag order to be placed on the tapes. With my public relation person’s help, we leaked some crucial parts of the audio to the media. When the FBI heard about this, they seized the tapes from me. After reviewing the tapes, they cleared John once again of any wrongdoing pertaining to the murders. The FBI was concluding a five-year investigation on the Wonderland murders and incredibly, the LAPD never informed them of the audio tapes. The FBI agent was nice enough to return the tapes after their conclusion.

Shortly after the incident with the FBI, I was contacted by E-True Hollywood. They wanted to interview me as they were doing a “John Holmes story.” After talking to them as to what their agenda behind their project was, I came to the conclusion that I wanted no part in their story. I declined to be interviewed. I was mentioned in the flawed piece but other than that, I was skipped right over. I don’t regret not being interviewed, as I believe they would have attempted to misconstrue anything I might have contributed.

In 2001, I went to work for Sharon Mitchell at AIM Healthcare (Adult Industry Medical). I was initially hired for some data entry work but soon became a Certified Phlebotomy Technician. I was poking between 20 and 30 porn stars per day. I was later given the position of Office Manager. I really enjoyed my job and worked long hours to achieve the company’s mission statement of helping to ensure a safe work place for all performers. After all, this had been John’s dream long ago. However, in the spring of 2003, Sharon and I simply had irreconcilable differences and I left AIM Healthcare, forever.

Sometime in 2003, I received news of another movie being made about John and the Wonderland murders. The film was called Wonderland and Val Kilmer was to play the part of John Holmes. I contacted the producer and offered John’s personal tapes. However, the producer told me that he didn’t need or want the audio tapes. He claimed they already had their story line. Dawn and Sharon were telling their story. I feared the truth would be made far from clear and my suspicions were right. This was Dawn’s big moment to cash in on the John Holmes Story and she did just that. Claiming to be his victim, she continues the plot today, taking no responsibility for her own actions and continually contradicting herself. At the end of the movie, they showed someone in a scene beating the people at Wonderland with something that looked like a pipe. In a Rashomon fashion, the audience was led to believe that John had committed the murders. Never mind that John had been acquitted all those years ago, or that the FBI had again cleared John, some twelve years after his death. After all, this was Hollywood. The day the movie premiered at The Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd., I received a phone call from long time friend, Ron Jeremy. He had tickets to the premiere and wanted to know if I would go with him. I thought, “Why not?” I was really curious anyway. We strolled down the red carpet and mingled our way through the crowd. I spotted the producer and asked him why he didn’t want to use the tapes. He claimed he never heard of them. I had a bad feeling in my gut and honestly, I was required at a birthday party elsewhere. I left before the movie began. Later, after I saw the movie, I was glad that I had left the premiere early. Had I stayed and watched this horrible movie unfold before my eyes, I probably would have been on the front page of The LA Times the following day and it wouldn’t have been pretty. I was devastated after viewing the movie, Wonderland. I became very depressed and fell further into my own addiction. Shortly after Wonderland was released, I was contacted by the same FBI agent that I had dealt with in 2000 over the audio tapes. He stated that he had just watched the movie Wonderland and wanted to know what I thought of it. I told him that I didn’t believe the LAPD ever wanted to solve the murders and he agreed. He was shocked that they had practically made David Lind out to be the good guy in the film. The agent also commented that he thought everything about the film was wrong. It wasn’t until 2007 when I finally figured out that I had simply had enough. I was tired of my drug-induced lifestyle. I was tired of the “friends” that came along with it. I moved close to my family in the mountains of Colorado and cleaned up. I was determined to start a new life for myself, surrounded by clean air, clean water and new people.

Shortly after I moved to Colorado I was contacted by Jennifer Sugar and Jill Nelson. They were doing a John Holmes biography and wanted to interview me. I agreed to be interviewed only after I knew their agenda. Their agenda was to write a fair and balanced biography about John and they were interviewing many people. On August 8, 2008, John Holmes, A Life Measured in Inches was on the shelf. I attended the book signing in Hollywood, where I was greeted by many long-time friends of John’s and mine. Seka was unable to attend; however, she had written the kindest letter to be read out loud. She wrote:

I was so excited the first time I met John Holmes. Mr. Holmes was the KING for God’s sake and I was going to be working with him—yes, me—Seka and the KING.

The movie was Dracula Sucks and all of the heavy hitters were in that movie. It was enough to take your breath away. We got past all of the polite intros and then John came up to me and said, ‘Let’s take a little walk. I want to let you in on a few things.’ As we walked along, I was thinking of how nervous I was and then suddenly, I realized that I was not at all nervous. That was ‘THAT THING’ John had about him; the ability to put you at ease right off the bat. The most important thing I remember about that moment was something John said to me that day…

‘Look, Seka, do not ever do anything you, yourself do not want to do.’ Little did I know how important that single statement would be when it came to the set of that movie. There was something that I did not want to do and I remembered John’s words.

I DID NOT DO WHAT WAS BEING ASKED OF ME, AS I DID NOT WANT TO.

Thank you, John. Your advice has come in handy many times throughout the years.

To this day, I miss John very much. He is and was a wonderful person.

Laurie, you should also be told just how wonderful you are, as well, for I know John must have loved you very much. Thank you for standing by John through all the ups and downs and for staying strong for him then, as you remain strong for him to this day.

I love you, sister.

SEKA

Today I remain in colorful Colorado where I am dedicated to a drug and porn-free life. I work a normal job and get a normal paycheck just like everyone else. I try to remain somewhat anonymous about this story among my peers. What people don’t know simply can’t hurt me! Still, I struggle with this. After all, it’s everything you do in life that makes you who you are today. I have survived not only my own trials and tribulations; but also John’s. I have spent most of my adult life trying to commemorate the memory of my beloved husband. I continue to fight both of our battles. It’s a difficult journey to look down the demon of having a past in porn. Still, I hold my head up high and try to remember only the laughter. Approaching age 50 now, I doubt anyone can fathom the many miles of my grief. Someday, just like John, I too hope to look up to heaven and go in peace and someday I know he will be waiting for me on the other side.

I doubt that John would approve or think very highly of the industry today. It’s so ugly. The art of lovemaking has been lost somewhere in the many twist and turns the industry has taken through the years. There is no more “art” form; it’s mostly degradation and there are no more “stars,” instead a never ending appetite for new “talent.” The industry that John knew all those years ago is gone forever, as is the magic. I would discourage anyone from getting into the porn business today. I believe if John were still alive today, he would feel the same way. The porn business will chew you up and spit you out quicker than anything.

John was a fascinating, yet simple man. He had a heart of gold, but there were many times when John was lost somewhere between reality, fantasy, and the sexual revolution. He often spun wild stories of grandeur and elaborated on the truth. Like most of his peers, he found it difficult to live up to someone else’s fantasy. I will always remember the man that in spite of his own pain went out of his way to help a little old lady that was lost. The man that gave $20 to a homeless man and told him to go get himself a good Thanksgiving dinner; the man that comforted a little girl after her brother had been badly hurt in a car accident; the man that went to the pound to get a dog, picked one out one with every disease imaginable; bailed her and her six puppies out of the pound, nursed the dog back to life and found homes for every single one of her puppies. The man who became devastated after a pigeon he had tried to rescue had died overnight, the man that would run back and forth to the sink putting hot-wet towels on my tummy when I suffered from the cramps.

John may have made mistakes in his lifetime, but as anyone who really knew John can never deny—John’s best asset wasn’t his penis—it was his heart.

John C. Holmes 1944-1988.

The Monkey Tree

by John Holmes

In the Garden of Eden, the Bible tells us, there grew a tree with magical powers. Anyone who tasted its fruit was said to receive everlasting life.

In time the tree became a symbol of life itself; its roots representing the roots of mankind, its branches the many different directions that life can take. A tree can be shaken or struck by lightning. A limb can rot. Still, it stands strong.

Life abounds within the tree. Monkeys scamper about. Monkeys and man, we live on the lower limbs and outer reaches and soaring heights. No matter how sophisticated and intellectual we become, no matter what goals we achieve, we’re all monkeys in the same tree. Reaching, falling, climbing, searching, hiding.

There’s no escape from the monkey tree. We’re there always, placed somewhere by our own deeds and the opinions of others.

John F. Kennedy… Hypocrites… Charles Manson… John Wayne… Jerry Falwell. Where do they live in the monkey tree?

And John C. Holmes?

I’ll let you be the judge of that.

John’s poetry to his Lady Blue (Laurie) in May, 1987

Lady Blue

Though it seems ten lifetimes, it has only been ten months. And each day I spend less hours thinking of the things we’ve lost. It is only in the night when my thoughts are not my own When I can’t control my feelings—when my heart begins to roam. It’s these hours that I lay sleeping that my love returns to you. Can’t I let go these feelings—Oh how I love thee, Lady Blue.

The Charm of Youth

by John Holmes

When one grows old, his channels of interest are few: money, sex, security. But to be young and curious about everything is the energy and charm of youth. Whose searchings for knowledge satiate the thirsts of those who have found out such is the social structure of a race of beings still as surely locked into their primal past as those poor creatures whose own carrion fuels those who would devour its flesh. Is it wrong that like the mole who digs or birds that fly, we develop our particular talent for survival? But unlike the mole who learns to dig, then learns no more, or bird that is what is our gift leads us to learn. To learn, to seek and find is to fail—is to seek no more—is to teach those who seek. To fail there are no absolutes. To seek to find -- to seek to improve. Forever is never to lose the charm of youth.

Laurie Holmes, today.

Photographs

John Holmes… hands on promotion for VCA videos in 1983.

John, age 10, with his new pup in Ohio.

John, age 10, and his older brother Eddie.

John, age 7.

Promotion for VCX, Dreams of Misty

Misty Dawn, 1984 age 21.

John loved to fish off the Channel Islands, summer 1983.

Misty Dawn, 1983, age 20 in Bill Amerson’s back yard.

With all that was going on in John’s life, he took as much time as he could to play in the mountains.

Misty (Laurie).

John and Laurie (young Misty) 1983.

John and “His Boy,” Ian.

John had thrown a pie in Misty’s face, she was laughing so hard she wasn’t able to get him back.

“Get the message?”

John—Just kicking back.

John loved to work outside with his hands. This picture was taken in Bill Amerson’s front driveway in Sherman Oaks. He often helped Bill around the house.

John and Misty just enjoying life.

John loved his kitty.

John and Misty—Watching movies in their bedroom in Encino, CA. John was a big movie buff.

John, 1979.

Just another day at the office.

John in front of the Penguin booth at the VSDA convention in Las Vegas.

John signing autographs.

Premier of Girls on Fire, Pussycat Theatre 1985, John’s “Big” moment.

Misty, Sean Amerson, Bill Amerson and his wife being interviewed before the premier of Girls on Fire.

John and Ginger, Girls on Fire.

Naked City, Indiana Miss Nude USA contest.

John loved all of his fans.

More of John’s fans.

John just funning around.

Johnny Wadd.

John and Misty (Laurie).

The real John.

John’s Monkey Tree.

John and his dog, Charlie.

Ian with John’s dog lady and her six pups that he bailed out of the pound.

John and Laurie (Misty Dawn) January 24, 1987, fourteen months before John’s death.

Laurie (Misty) and Ian, January 24, 1987.

Laurie (Misty), age 35.

Promotional photo for Misty Dawn, age 22.

John had sketched his and Ian’s hands together.

Index

Adult Industry – 48, 54, 129-130, 135, 137, 147, 149, 150-151, 154

AIDS – 134-135-136-137, 144-145, 147, 150

Aim Healthcare -150-151

Amerson, Bill – 53-54, 75, 77, 88, 123, 134-135, 141-142-143, 145, 147, 149

Deverell, Billy – 60-61, 63-64, 66-67, 69-70, 111-112, 115

Diles, Greg – 108-109

E True Hollywood – 151

Estes, Carl – 139

FBI – 120-121, 151-152

Boogie Nights – 149

Bowman, David – 21-22, 51-52, 60,

121, 143, 145-146-147

121, 143, 145-146-147

24, 28, 31, 34

Carson, Kimberly – 130

Chambers, Marilyn - 53, 130

Chinn, Bob – 47

Crossroads – 39-40

Holmes, Laurie (Misty Dawn)-74-75, 129, 132-133-134-135-136, 139, 141-142-143-144-149, 145, 149, 153, 158, 159

Holmes, Sharon – 41-42, 151

Kilmer, Val – 151

King, Larry – 147

La Ciccolina – 138

LAPD – 40, 120, 150, 151-152

Launius, Ronny - 60-61, 63-64, 66, 67, 116

Launius, Susan – 63, 115-116

Lind, David – 62-63-64, 67, 69-70-71, 115-116, 150, 152

Lynn, Ginger – 130

Lynn, Ginger – 130

119-120-121-122, 126, 151

Seka – 53, 130, 152-153

Meese, Edward – 137

112-113, 117

Mitchell, Sharon -151

Montana, Tony – 150

UCLA – 1, 4, 36-37, 40

V.A. Hospital – 144, 147

VCX – 74, 132, 133

114-115, 117, 121-122-123, 143, 151

Penguin Productions – 134, 147

Wadd [The life and times of John C. Holmes] 149

Wadd, Johnny – 47-48, 51, 95, 113

Wahlberg, Mark – 149

Wonderland 66-67-68-69, 71, 107, 110-111, 115-116, 120, 123, 130, 139, 148, 150-151-152

Richardson, Barbara – 64, 69-70-71, 116

Copyright

BearManor Media 2012

Porn King by John Holmes

© 2012 The Estate of John Holmes Laurie Holmes, Executor

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles or reviews.

For information, address:

BearManor Media P. O. Box 71426

Albany, GA 31708

bearmanormedia.com

Edited by Michael Schemaille

Typesetting and layout by John Teehan

Published in the USA by BearManor Media

ISBN: 1-59393-685-0 978-1-59393-685-3

Content

PORN KING
The Autobiography of John C. Holmes
by John Holmes
(with Laurie Holmes)

Preface THE LEGEND CONTINUES…

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Epilogue by Laurie Holmes

The Monkey Tree by John Holmes

John’s poetry to his Lady Blue (Laurie) in May, 1987 Lady Blue

The Charm of Youth by John Holmes

Photographs

Index

Copyright