Greg replied, "So you want to negotiate, uh? What additional services would you provide for the extra two dollars per hour?"
I said, "Any odds and ends that are needed around the office and the studio. By the way, where is the studio?"
This was my second mistake, not clarifying what odds and ends meant or what Greg would expect me to do for paying the additional $2 per hour pay.
Greg laughed, "The studio is in this building. It is small but serves the purpose."
I was still not convinced that I wanted this job but I had come all the way from my home town and I was not going to give up on my aspirations of becoming an actor. Maybe like Greg said one had to start at the bottom and work their way up.
I said, "Okay. You want me to start now?"
Greg said, "Good decision. You will get paid every Friday at five in the afternoon. In your case it would be $480 gross pay. I am going home now since I was working last night. Why don't you clean up the office? There is a vacuum cleaner and liquid cleaners in the closet. Wipe the windows and table clean, take the garbage bags to the dumpster outside. Mop the studio floor and file this pile of paperwork into folders in the drawers. There is an old apron in the drawer somewhere. You can wear that over your attire."
I said, "Will do. How do I lock up when I am done?"
Greg threw me a spare key to the outside door and left the building. I started to work diligently. Around noon, I stopped as I was feeling hungry. I locked the front door and looked around the neighborhood. Apparently this area was called Van Nuys, somewhere in the LA area. I found a burger joint and ate a hamburger, fries and washed it down with cold water.
I spent the rest of the lunch hour wandering around the neighborhood and looking for possible places to rent. About two blocks from the studio, I saw a sign that read "Female Roommate Wanted. Inquire Within." It was getting closer to one in the afternoon. I knocked on the door with the sign. A tall, blond woman answered the door, saying, "Yes?"
I said, "I saw the sign about the roommate. How much is the share of the rent?"
She said, "Hi, my name is Rhonda. There are two of us girls here and we both work mostly nights. With a third person, it would work out to $500 per month."
I was shocked to hear such a big figure for a one-third share of the rent. But I had to constantly remind myself that this was LA, not some small town in Nevada. I said,
"Rhonda. I am Penny. I just took a job at the Sunset Studios. Can I see the place?"
Rhonda opened the door fully and let me in. It was not bad looking. It had three bedrooms, a living area, a kitchen and one and a half bathroom (the half referring to a small room with a toilet and a sink only). It looked like the occupants were reasonably neat and the house smelled clean. Rhonda said that her roommate was Wendy and she was currently sleeping in her room. I checked out my room. It had a small bed with an old mattress, a chair and a table plus a small closet to hang clothes.
Rhonda said, "You may have to get some sheets, a pillow and do some decorating on your own. You are lucky that we found what is here in a yard sale so that it is more or less ready to move in for the third person. So do you want it?"
I said, "The rent is a bit steep. Are there any other places in Van Nuys that may be cheaper?"
Rhonda sighed and said, "Places to rent are hard to find here. If you wait too long, this may be gone."
I said, "I'll take it. First of all, I don't get paid until Friday. Today is only Monday. Secondly, I need to get my stuff from the King's Inn over to here. Tonight's rent is already paid for so I can check out only tomorrow morning. Would you be able to give me a ride in the morning from there to here?"
Rhonda said, "I will pick you up at seven. For the rent, we still have three weeks left before the end of the month. Tell you what. On the last day of this month you can pay me $375 because it is only three quarters of a month. Afterwards, you pay me $500 on the last day of each month. Does that work?"
I replied, "Yes, thanks. That would give me enough time."
I hugged Rhonda saying, "See you tomorrow morning at seven."
Rhonda said, "You said you don't have a car. So you will have to catch the bus this evening to go to King's Inn. I will tell you how to get there by bus."
With that she drew a rough map and showed me where to catch the bus, the route number and where to get off. I then went back to Sunset Studios to continue my work.
In the morning, I had cleaned the front office if you could call it that of dirt and clutter and filed away piles of paperwork after guessing which category each should be filed under in the cabinet. I put on my apron and opened the door connecting the office to the rest of the building. The door opened to a long corridor which had two doors on the side opposite to the door I exited from the office.
Outside the first door to the studio, I saw what looked like traffic signal lights with red, yellow and green. The light was on green. I opened the first door and peeked inside. I guessed that the color of the light was an indication of whether one could open the door or not because movie shooting might be going on inside. I was expecting a large warehouse like environment with props and settings but was dismayed to find that the area had a low ceiling and just four rooms. The first room had a couch, a coffee table, a Lazy Boy like chair and some tall pots by the walls containing fake plants and flowers. It also had a fake curtain with floral patterns which was supposed to look like it covered a backlit window but there was no window; it was simply a wall on which there were two fluorescent lamps each four feet long. The room had a faint smell of bleach.
I stepped into the second room which was connected to the first by a doorway with a curtain but no actual door. Hanging on racks were clothes, mostly women's. Many of them looked skimpy and some were see-through like negligee. Toward the back were bins of bras and panties all of them skimpy. Out on one side was a tall dressing mirror with large bulbs surrounding it and a makeup table and a chair. There was another door leading to a third room and then to a fourth room. I opened the door to a bathroom which had a shower stall, a sink and a toilet. The other door opened to another restroom with a urinal, shower and sink. There was a door at the far end which was locked and presumably connected to rooms accessible by the second door off the main corridor. I opened the second door off the main corridor. Inside was a locked room on the left. The locked door probably stored cameras and other equipment needed for the shooting.
I returned to the office to pick up the vacuum cleaner as well as a rolling mop bucket with ringer, mop and floor cleaning solution. I first vacuumed the studio room and wardrobe room as well as the long corridor. Then I mopped both bathrooms, and scrubbed the showers and sinks. By 3 PM, everything was looking spic and span and smelling great.
That left me with two hours with practically nothing to do. I wandered around the office looking at what was posted on a cork board on the wall. There was a piece of paper with what looked like a schedule. Today was the seventh of the month, Monday. I saw that on Tuesday, under the movie column, the word "Heaven" was written. Across the row was Juan's name under "Camera" category and the names Misty, Monique and Mike under "Actors" category. There was no activity listed for today, but the rest of the week was filled with names.
I now came to the conclusion that this was no ordinary movie studio the way I had imagined but a place to shoot pornographic material. I went back to the filing cabinet and found files with the names Misty, Monique and Mike, along with Stormy, Lily, Rose and George apparently the "actors." There were also files under the names of Juan and Buddy, the latter probably also a camera man. I went though Misty's file. There were notations indicating she was paid $300, $500 and $350 over the past two weeks. I found similar notations of payments made to the other "actors" and cameramen. I went back to the "studio" and into the dressing room with "costumes" and looked through another set of drawers. I did not recognize many of the items in there, some looked like plastic models of male genitals with elastic bands, and others looked like small pointed cylindrical objects with small switches, a whip, some chains, handcuffs, and a variety of other things. All these confirmed my suspicion this was a place where they shot X-rated movies,
I went back to the office disgusted.
I thought, "What had I gotten into? I was brought up by my parents in a religious family. I didn't date any boys until my senior year in school. I had experienced sexual intercourse just twice in my life. I was not like some other "loose" girls. I was not on the pill. What I was going to tell my parents? The truth? Should I quit this right now before it got worse?"
Soon it was five in the evening. I locked up not looking forward to coming back here the next day. I followed the map that Rhonda had drawn for me and got on the right bus and finally reached my motel at 5:30.
Before I went to bed, I took the small figurine of Madonna with the child from my suitcase and placed it on the table in my room. I knelt down in front of it and prayed,
"I do not know what I am getting into.
Señora
, please guide me in the right direction and let me not do anything that displeases you. Please help me make the right decisions. Thank you! Amen!"
---continued in Pt 2---
