Array Seka - Inside Seka

When Ken left my store, I never asked him where he went. I still thought of him as a boss as opposed to a boyfriend. I’d go out with him occasionally. It was very comfortable. We didn’t see each other on any set schedule. When he was in town, I’d go out with him if he asked me. And if he didn’t ask, I wasn’t hurt.

When he got back from his trips, it was payday and I got my check in an envelope. The first one even had a bonus. I said, “What’s this for?” For a second I was worried — like it was one of those tips I was offered at the massage parlor and he was paying me extra to sleep with me.

He said, “You took on more responsibility, so you get more money.”

Relieved, I thought, “Could this get any better?”

I don’t think I was ever in love with Ken, but we started going out more often. He needed a place to crash near the store I worked; I had a place, so we both figured it would be cheaper if he moved in and we shared the rent. He said it wouldn’t be like roommates, but rather boyfriend and girlfriend. I said, “I’m not sure how well that would go.” I hadn’t lived with anyone but Frank, and that was only after we were married. Other than that, I never even spent the night with a man, let alone shared a drawer or a closet with one.

When he told me he wouldn’t be around much because of his other stores, I figured, “What the hell? Why not? I could save more money.” But something inside me said this wasn’t a great setup.

At first everything was pretty good. After a short time we moved out of my little place in the country and into a nice house in Newport News, but it was kind of unsettling because I didn’t know anyone there. When Ken left for his trips, it was weird. I don’t get lonely easy. I’ve been a loner most of my life. But I get a little scared at night, afraid something bad might happen, like someone breaking into the house.

I worked in a different store he owned in Newport News. The other store was by an Army base, but this one was by a naval dry dock. The Navy guys didn’t have a whole lot to do since their ships were there to be repaired. They’d come to the store in droves.

The funniest time was when a ship came in from Indonesia. All the sailors were Indonesian and they couldn’t find anything to do in town. Right down from the adult store was a game room that Ken owned. The guys were always hanging out there, but they complained there were no ping pong tables, only pool tables. So we put in ping pong tables and they loved it. I learned to play, too. What more could a shipload of Indonesians like better than a big-titted blonde to play ping pong with? They would come in to see me, so I was reassigned to the game room. They’d spend more money that way. Besides, I thought it was a lot more fun.

I started organizing ping pong tournaments to keep them in the building. They were very competitive, but the guys who came in to shoot pool got pissed because they didn’t have tournaments. So we started one for them, too. It was an awful lot of fun, much better than getting flashed by old pervs or stopping guys from jerking off in the aisles.

There was a transient hotel above the bookstore and an old man lived there. Everyone on the street called him Pops. Pops would clean up the peep show booths for me. I sure as hell wasn’t going back there to clean that stuff up! Technically, he was a street person who made enough money for alcohol and a room by mopping up the booths. He smoked cigarettes and his mouth was kind of sunken in. He was never completely clean-shaven. He looked a little like Popeye and he got drunk and stayed drunk. But never so drunk he couldn’t mop the booths. He needed the wherewithal to do the job or he wouldn’t have enough money to buy his next bottle. He was a nice old man, wasn’t lazy, but made just enough for booze, cigarettes, and a meal or two a day. In his own way, he got exactly what he wanted out of life.

The Indonesian ship wasn’t in very long. Ships would come and go, but the crews always found their way to our businesses because they’d hear from their buddies where to have a good time. A lot of them weren’t big drinkers, which made them gravitate to us since we didn’t serve alcohol at the pool hall or the bookstore.

Everything seemed to be going okay, but Ken started traveling a lot and I wasn’t crazy about being alone in that big store. I had to close up with four, five, six thousand dollars in my purse, which wasn’t the safest thing for a woman alone. I didn’t know anything about guns and didn’t want to know anything about guns. I was very nervous at midnight, putting that money in my car and driving home so I could take it to the bank the next day. I also had it in my house overnight, which only made me more paranoid. This put a strain on the relationship. One night we had an argument about it.

“Well, this is what a manager does.”

“Not this manager,” I responded.

I left Ken and went back to the Hopewell area. Back there, I bumped into Frank, my ex, and was actually happy to see him. It was a familiar face. After some small talk, we ended up going home together. Shortly after, he asked me to go to Vegas. I thought he was proposing a vacation. I had no idea his intention was to stay there. But money was getting real tight because I wasn’t working and he wasn’t doing too well either. Frank thought Vegas was the land of opportunity.

I went to the Dunes to apply for a job. The guy who interviewed me said, “Why don’t you be a poker shield?” I told him I had no idea how to play. He told me a poker shield was a pretty girl who sat at the table to lure the guys to stay and play. They gave me $200 a day to play with. I lasted three days. I was just supposed to place small bets and dawdle around; make the money last. It never worked. I simply had no damn idea what I was doing — I never played the game before. They fired me.

I thumbed through a newspaper and saw an ad that said Models wanted. Nude or semi-nude. Frank wasn’t having any better luck in the job hunting department, so I said, “What the hell?” I figured it wouldn’t bother Frank since he’d already tried pimping me out once before.

Having worked in an adult bookstore, the idea of being nude or semi-nude didn’t bother me. I’d begun to look at porno material with an educated eye. A lot of it was downright gross, and I’m not necessarily talking about the sex or the kink. The human body is beautiful. Some of these magazines were downright ugly. In real life, I wouldn’t touch some of those people with a ten-foot pole. The idea of doing it right, of being naked, but beautiful and classy, appealed to me. I thought that was how it should be — Hollywood-style glamour. And the money sounded real good. It was like $300 a day, which was a helluva lot of money back then. I had no idea where the pictures would end up nor did I care. I didn’t think about friends or family seeing them. People in my family didn’t read men’s magazines.

The shoot was in Vegas, which at that time wasn’t built up like it is now. It was in the outskirts of town, outdoors in a wooded area. I had on a deerskin vest that just had a string tied in the back, with little feathers hanging down from it. It was a hippy-ish thing that was pretty much what girls were wearing at the time.

There was only one guy. Pleasant. He seemed old to me, but he was probably just in his late thirties. He never came onto me. Very professional. It didn’t bother me to take my clothes off, as I knew what I was getting into. It wasn’t like going in to give massages and finding out guys wanted hand jobs.

I was a little shy, but the guy made me feel comfortable. “It’s okay; I’m not going to touch you.”

“I know you’re not, because if you do, I’ll kill you.” I was serious about that, at least in my own mind. I had more guts than brains, but if you can pull off a bluff convincingly enough, people buy it. Whether I knew it or not, I was establishing my reputation before I even knew I was going to have an adult career.