No Holding Bac

The first thing that struck me about Vivid's offices was how big the building was compared to Arnie's small studio. It looked like a big brown warehouse type deal, and I later learned that there are 5 rather sizable rooms inside used as sets for the video shoots, along with editing facilities, and the shipping department, from which all of Vivid's tapes and other products were mailed out to customers.

Sometimes Vivid directors took their shoots out of the building and did a video 'on location' in the woods or in some rich guy's backyard so they could use his pool area, but mostly all indoors type scenes were shot here.

I parked the Mustang and went in through the big glass double doors at the front and paused at the reception desk, where a pretty short-haired redhead girl was talking on the phone. She hung up as I approached and smiled up at me, her eyes going over me. I was wearing a polo shirt, dress slacks with a black belt, and tan loafers, and she was obviously undressing me out of them with her eyes.

Guess she's seen a lot of guys come through that door, I thought as I smiled back and said "Hi, I'm Brad Armstrong and I'm here today because Mr. Richards asked me to be."

She dropped her mouth open, her eyes going wide. "Ohhhhhh!" she said, her eyes involuntarily dropping straight to my crotch for a split second. "YOU'RE Brad!" Her smile returned, much wider now. "I'm Vicki, the receptionist here."

"Hi Vicki."

She looked down at an appointment calendar in front of her. "OK, you're expected in the makeup department at 9 o'clock, so your a few minutes early. Most of the crew and the models won't really start coming in until around 10 today, so I guess Marc wanted you here early since it's your first day ."

"Good idea." was all I could think of to say.

She stood up, and gestured to me as she moved off. "Let me show you where makeup is, and get you situated."

I followed her down a hallway, turned left, and she stopped in front of a door that was helpfully labeled 'Makeup Specialists'.

"I'll be at the reception desk if you need anything." Vicki told me with another friendly smile, and then she was gone. I went through the door and found a long, narrow room with chairs set up in the middle facing a room-long mirror that ran down the entire wall on the right. A counter also ran the length of the room in front of the mirror, with all kinds of makeup brushes and powders on it. Two women were in the room, one a thin brunette the other a tanned blonde.

Both turned towards me and stopped a conversation they were having as I stopped hesitantly in the doorway.

"Uh....hi." I ventured. "My name's Brad Armstrong and I have a shoot going on today."

"Well HI!" said the tanned blonde, moving forward and taking charge like the pro she was. "I'm Darcy, this is Linda, we do the makeup for everybody here, so have a seat right there!"

So I sit down and the the first thing Darcy does is reach down and start pulling off my Polo shirt.

"Uh............don't you guys just work on the face area?" I asked as she folded my shirt and put it on the counter.

Darcy grinned at me. Actually we do the whole body, son. Sometimes a guy has a pimple on his ass or something and we have to cover it up. Got any pimples on your ass?"

I immediately sensed this girl was a joker, and she was trying to set me at ease. I worked. I grinned back at her.

"Not that I know of."

"All right then," Darcy said, turning my face to the mirror. "You are one good-lookin' fella and I can see already there's not much Linda and I can do to improve your looks. You got a great tan, so we don't need to pancake you so the cameras will pick up your skin better. I guess I'll just play with your hair some then."

"OK, but be gentle, it's my first time!" I said, and they both laughed.

I had a collegiate style hair cut back then, not short but not long either, and as I sat in the chair and relaxed, Darcy ran her fingers through my hair and played with the part a little bit.

I of course, had showered and soaped myself up good that morning. I had shampooed, shaved, brushed my teeth twice, flossed, gargled with Scope, trimmed my fingernails, checked for any errant nose and ear hair, and had applied a good dose of aloe vera lotion to my entire body, then topped it all of with just the right amount of Old Spice cologne. That was the same routine I had fallen into on days I had a photo shoot at Arnie's, and I still do it today.

You would not believe the condition I have seen some guys show up in for work. Dirty underwear, unshaven, hair uncombed and oily and full of dandruff, teeth unbrushed, breath stinking, dirty cracked fingernails, bloodshot eyes, pale dry scaly skin, you name it, I've seen it.

I've also seen those guys disappear.........FAST. Because the girls let the directors and producers know in no uncertain terms that they do NOT want to see that creep again.

I could tell Darcy was impressed by my grooming. She even asked my what I shampooed with since my hair smelled so nice.

She was layering my hair with a comb and showing me how I could make it look thicker when the door banged open and this guy came striding into the room, a pretty brunette girl in his wake.

He had a big prominent nose, a bushy mustache that went down past the corners of his mouth, and slick back, thinning black hair.

He was wearing one of those fancy purple dress shirts with the open V-neck to show off the thick gold chain and his chest hair. Coupled with the black slacks and the shiny black dress shoes he looked like a bad disco dancer way past a prime that never was.

"Hey, you bitches snap to it!" he barked, "Get Kara taken care of her, I gotta go make a phone call!"

And with that he turned and strode off, almost knocking the brunette model over as he self-importantly brushed by her and disappeared through the door. Which he of course, neglected to close.

You know how you get vibes off of somebody, and you just instinctively know right away you either are gonna get along great with this person, or you are not? With me and this guy it was a great big ugly 'NOT'.

The brunette named Kara just stood there for a second until Linda sighed and pointed to one of the empty chairs and said "Honey, why don't you take a seat right here?"

The girl, who couldn't have been more than 18, shuffled over and sat down.

She didn't look anybody in the eye as Linda started working on her hair, which was long and curly.

Now I had not been in the business very long. There was a lot I didn't know. But one of the first things you learn about adult videos is that there are some VERY unsavory people who are drawn to the industry.

For these people, sex equals easy money. Especially when it's somebody else that is getting screwed and not them.

I'd been to the strip joints, and seen the girls there dancing for their boyfriend/managers. It was no secret that most of the guys were using the girls, taking most of the money and then ditching the girls when they got too old and going off and finding some new young gal they could get to dance for them in the clubs.

They always find some girl with low self-esteem, who's young, hasn't been around the block yet, who they can easily impress with a few shopping sprees and some nice dinners in the finer restaurants. Then they put the girl to work and live off of them.

Well I shouldn't have been shocked to discover that the adult video industry has it's own share of that. One look and I knew that guy for exactly what he was.

He was nothing more than a pimp. And I hate pimps.

The vast majority of the girls in the business today are doing it because they want to; they may have a boyfriend or a manager, but the guy isn't really running the show. But it's true that back in the 70's and 80's there were some guys that were doing this kind of thing.

And it showed in the limpid, half-hearted, sometimes visibly reluctant scenes their girls turned in.

I only worked a handful of times with girls that I could sense were not really into it. I've been lucky. Peter North has stories he could tell you. Every guy that was working back then has them. Some asshole boyfriend pressures his girl to do a vid that she really doesn't want to do, and right in the middle of a scene a girl can break down crying or something. It's happened.

And I don't like it. This industry isn't for everybody, and if a girl doesn't want to, nobody should try to make her.

There are two kinds of girls the guys in the business don't want to work with:

The girls who are only doing it to make money for their boyfriends, and the girls who are cold fishes that are only doing it for the money.

Have you ever been with a prostitute that just lied there, did absolutely nothing, then took your money and left right after it was over? I have never paid for sex.......but I have an idea what that's like because I have worked with girls that had that same exact attitude. And the only times that happened was because I wasn't able to figure out what the deal was until the scene was being shot. Sometimes you can't tell until the clothes come off and the cameras start rolling.

I could tell by looking at this girl as Linda worked on her hair that she did NOT want to be here. Linda was whispering to Kara as she worked on her hair and I could see the younger woman shaking her head from side to side.

Right then, as Darcy continued messing around with my hair, I made a mental note to pull Mr. Gold Chain aside and have a word with him.

I told Darcy that my hair really DID look thicker and more full and thanked her for the tip.

That's when Marc Richards walked in, three female models in tow. One was Ginger, who was making eyes at me as Marc introduced me to Christy Canyon and Traci Lords. Christy was a pretty brunette who had out of this world big hair, like a country and western singer, plus a top-heavy figure with a bust that was almost 40".

Traci..........well Traci. Everybody wants to know about Traci. She was just hitting her stride in those days. If Ginger was the reigning Queen, Traci was the Princess waiting in the wings looking to steal the crown. She was wearing a red tank top and white shorts that did nothing to hide one of the most impressive bodies that porn in the 80's ever saw.

We all know now she was underage, of course. She fooled everybody with one of the best fake I.D.'s ever. Even the US government gave her a passport on the basis of the now infamous fake driver's license that said she was 19. She wasn't. When I met Traci Lords she was 17 years old and had been making adult videos for over a year.

There's a lot of bad feeling towards Traci by those in the industry back in those days, and it's not surprising considering the amount of legal trouble that ensued for a whole lot of people once her true age got out.

But that was all in the future. All I saw was a pale redhead with Farrah Fawcett Majors hair, a pretty face and a very curvaceous figure.

I looked at those three models smiling at me knowingly while Marc made small talk, telling me some things about them......and my cock started lengthening against my thigh.

That's when Mr. Gold Chain in the Purple "I Wanna Be John Travolta" shirt came up behind them and began brushing his way past.

As I have mentioned before, this was a narrow room, so with the chairs and the counter, there was room enough for somebody to stand behind you as you got made up in one of the chairs, and that was about it.

Linda's working on Kara's hair at the far end of the room, so this guy starts edging his way along.

He blurts out "Hey Marc, what's happenin!" (Marc looks at me and rolls his eyes), manages to give Christy a full body frontal brush as he goes by (she turns her head away and grimaces), reaches out like he's losing his balance as he goes by Traci and gives her shapely left tit a BIG squeeze as he passes (Traci glares at him and he quickly lets go) and he fails to get any action from Ginger at all because at the last second she nimbly side steps him and give him a pretty good shove to help him on his way.

Flushing a bit, he elbows his way past Darcy and catches my eye in the mirror as he goes past. You ever waited at the velvet rope outside a really hot club and see how the doorman looks at the dweebs that show up with their hats on backwards and their underwear showing? That clearly unimpressed "I'll have to die before you get in here!" kind of look? That's the look he gave me.

Now I was REALLY gonna have a talk with this guy.

He marches up to where Linda is still working on Kara's hair, his hands wide in an exaggerated 'Hey, what's going on here?!" pose.

"She's not ready yet? What are you doing, listening to her life story or something?"

Linda muttered something like "Back off, creep!" but I couldn't be sure.

The guy looks at his watch and then puts his hands on his hips and actually taps his toe on the floor.

"First this bitch wakes up late and now the make up is taking too long. Look babe," and here he addressed Kara, "I gotta take off. Give them a nice scene and I'll pick up up later."

Kara look startled. "But you said......."

He held up a hand, cutting her off with a glare. "Hey, hey, none of that. C'mon now, I worked hard getting you this shoot. Don't let me down! Something just came up across town with the dealership and I gotta go straighten it out. It's no problem. I'll be right here after 4 o'clock to pick you up."

And with that he turned and edged his way out again, only this time Marc and the girls had exited the dressing room and were standing outside the door, so he didn't get any 'accidental' action.

As he disappeared down the hallway, I heard Darcy mutter under her breath, "What a prick."

"Asshole." That came from Christy.

I stood up and turned to Marc as he re-entered the dressing room. He had an apologetic look on his face like he knew exactly what I was going to ask.

"Who was that guy?"

"He's an agent. Actually he's Kara's boyfriend, but I didn't know that when I signed them. He represented himself as her agent."

"The prick runs a whole stable of girls," Traci informed me. "I don't think some of them know about the others. Kara certainly didn't."

I turned to where the lithe brunette sat silently in her chair.

"Then why is she still here?" I asked loudly, and she jumped and looked over at me piteously. I immediately felt like a bastard. I was pulling my polo shirt back on as Marc answered.

"Because of the contract. She's under contract for 8 pictures and they've only done 6. Plus she's real popular with the fans. Some of her scenes have been really good." I could see Marc was rationalizing.

"If she's only doing this because he's making her, and she didn't know about the other girls he was running, I'm not working with her." I told Marc that flat out. "And you should tear that contract up and kick his ass out of here."

Marc held his hands out defensively. "Look, you're right and in a way I agree with you. But she says she needs the money, OK? I'm doing her a favor, even if it means he makes money too."

I shook my head. "You know guys like that will end up with all the money in the end. He's just using her."

Marc sighed. "You're new to the business Brad, and if you had been in it at long as I have, you know the best way out of a situation like this is to let the contract run it's course and then try to resign her without him being involved. If I break it things could get nasty. If you don't want to do any scenes with Kara, that's fine with me. We'll work something out. But this production today has already been cast and it's too late to bring in somebody else. There's 4 girls and 4 guys in this production, so we can work it out."

I gave a defeated shrug. "All right. I'm new here like you said, and I don't want to rock the boat, but if I see something I don't like I am going to say so."

Traci grinned and punched me on the arm. "Right on!"

Marc tried to get things back on track. "Well, I'll take Brad over to the set while you girls get your make up on and introduce him to the crew."

I followed Marc down the hallway, passing several ordinary looking type offices where people sat at desks and in cubicles. Then we passed through some double doors into a cool, very spacious warehouse, and all four corners of this huge room had enclosed sets, with another one in the middle.

An enclosed set is a four walled room like structure that from the inside looks like a bedroom or an ordinary kitchen or what have you. The contents of each room was interchangeable, because walls could be removed. Need a bedroom that looks like it belongs to a teenage cheerleader for a sex scene between a model playing a cheerleader and her girlfriend's older dad? No problem. The set decorators will put a frilly, laced four poster bed in there, rock posters on the wall, a pink girl's dresser, girl's clothes in the closet, you name it they will think of it. Once that scene is over, now the next director needs a room belonging to a oil field worker who is going to get worked over by his boss' sexy wife. So the crew removes the wall, takes out the four poster bed, and in less than half an hour they will have transformed it from a teenage cheerleader's room into that of a oilfield redneck: girlie posters on the wall, clothes hanging out of a man's chest of drawers, a simple single bed, etc.

Doing it this way was far cheaper and less time consuming than having to shoot on location, where you have to hire catering, move all your filming equipment, and usually rent the location from someone.

I looked to where four different kinds of beds were set against one far wall, along with all kinds of different furniture and appliances.

"We'll be using all four sets for the shoot today," Marc informed me as we headed for the furthest one, which had about 10 people grouped around it. "We hope to get all the interior shots done today and do the few exterior shots tomorrow out in a park over in Brentwood."

"You ever have anybody ask what you're shooting?" I ventured, and he laughed.

"We just say we're shooting an erotic film. Because it's true. I just never tell them it's a hardcore erotic film, that's all. Besides, many of the girls we're using now are so hot, many people don't really believe girls that pretty do adult video."

He stopped just a few feet from the group standing around and clapped his hands. "Hey folks, gather around, meet our new guy."

Everyone came over and stood there staring at me. If you have ever wondered what a adult video film crew looks like, let me clue you in: they look like your next door neighbors. Two guys were fat, three were thin, one was tall and four were short. Two were women, and eight were men.

Marc quickly introduced me to everyone in one of those things where the names and handshakes come so fast there's no real way to keep track, but it's the polite thing to just keep nodding your head.

"This is Brad Armstrong, our new male co-star. Brad, this Jay, he's our primary cameraman...........and Zack, our secondary cameraman..........Michael is the third camera man...............Diego is our boom mike guy..........Alex handles the lights and the electric stuff............John here is the director, he's been with us a long time.....Milton heads the set department and he's also our primary carpenter........Deidra there is the script supervisor...............and Amy is the set decorator who also handles costumes."

I shook ten hands, mumbled stuff I don't remember, and we all stood around self-consciously for a second. Then Marc clapped his hand again.

"Well are we ready for today's shots?" He looked at John and raised an eyebrow.

John nodded. "We've just been going over a few last minute touches here, but basically we can shoot right now."