Array Seka - Inside Seka

No sign of a struggle. No robbery.

They told Ken to get Woody’s beautiful dog out because he wouldn’t let anyone near the body. Looking like he was in shock, Ken walked in zombie-like. I’d never seen him so visibly upset over anything before. He had been very friendly with Woody.

We went home after talking to the cops. It was a crime scene and there was blood everywhere.

The store was closed for days. While the store was closed, Ken had some guys do some carpentry work and move the counter to the other side of the store so it wouldn’t be right by the door when you walk in. We were that scared.

I was freaked out. I had never been close to a crime, let alone a murder. About a week later, we reopened the store and I started shaking the minute I walked in. I refused to stay there alone.

After that, Pops usually stayed with me in the store and I went and got a Doberman. She was a great dog named Tammy. Very protective. She was enormous and when she’d put her paws on my shoulder she’d be taller than me, and I’m no little girl to begin with. Ken added guns to the store as well. A .38, a .44, and even a .357 Magnum. I visualized the headlines: Female Adult Book Store Clerk Charged in Murder of Customer. I was scared of guns. And after the murder, I was scared to death, period.

They never found out who murdered Woody. We were left to guess whether it was personal or against the store in general.

Business got even slower. The cops came even more often because not only were they taking stuff off the shelves, they were questioning customers about the murder. And dirty bookstores are not the sort of place in which guys want to give their names and be interviewed. The police were killing us.

The Vegas photo shoot I did appeared in some no-name, run-of-the-mill adult magazine and we were stocking it back in Virginia. Ken knew about it and didn’t care. It was selling like ice cream on a hot summer day even though we were doing nothing to promote it by telling people it was their very own cashier on the cover.

We needed more product for the store and some more of that one magazine in particular, so I went back on the road with Ken to Baltimore.

The head guy at the warehouse had an air of sophistication. He had been in the business for a while and seemed very approachable yet savvy. He always wore nice clothing and smelled of quality cologne. He looked at me and said, “See, I always said you should do this. We can’t keep that magazine of yours in the warehouse.”

I kind of brushed it off. Not because I was embarrassed about it, but I didn’t know what to say. More than anything else, I think he was feeling out the situation to see how Ken would react. When Ken didn’t blow his stack, he followed with a nonchalant comment about a friend of his who was shooting loops that very day down the street. Suddenly he asked us both, “Would you be interested in doing one?”

I don’t know why, but I wasn’t stunned or offended. I looked at Ken and he looked at me and I said, “What do you think?”

“It doesn’t bother me, but I’d like to know what they’re paying.” That should have tipped me off about Ken.

He said, “Two hundred,” and Ken said that wasn’t enough. The guy just kind of looked at him inquisitively and Ken said, “Four hundred.”

“That’s not a problem. I’ll be right back.” Walking off to make a phone call, we kept shopping. It was that blasé.

When he came back he said, “If you want to do this, they can shoot right now. They have a guy you can do it with. Here’s the four hundred bucks” — and handed it to me, just like that.

This should have been one of those mega-moments in one’s life, a turning point where a person has a major ethical dilemma to wrestle with. It wasn’t. I’d posed nude on a whim because I needed the money, the experience had been pleasant enough, and now because I’d been so well received, some other people wanted me to appear in a movie — right that very minute, in fact. And I still could use the money, so what the hell?

I really wasn’t nervous. I don’t know why, I just wasn’t. Maybe because it was moving so fast and had caught me off guard. I mean, I didn’t wake up that morning figuring I’d be asked to star in a porno. Maybe being around it all the time in the bookstore made it seem less unusual to me. I saw the films and magazines constantly. Or maybe it was because I didn’t have any emotional investment in Ken. Our relationship was convenient. I enjoyed his company and had a nice time with him. But I was emotionally unavailable because of what had happened with my mother and then with Frank. I didn’t realize this consciously at the time, but that was the bottom line. Ken never “romanced” me. He wasn’t cooing “I love you” in my ear, nor did I desire him to.

There’s a thing they tell young girls who vacillate on whether or not to do porn: “Do it now; you’ll never look better. Capture it on film.” I figured this was a chance to make money while I could. Maybe I was just being selfish, but I didn’t feel concerned about what anyone else would think. Also, I figured it was a one-time thing that nobody I knew was going to see, just like my magazine shoot. It would be hidden in little bookstores like ours. Of course, the light bulb didn’t quite click that the magazine had been seen by plenty of people and the same would happen here. Hell, my family didn’t look at adult material, so I didn’t feel I had to worry about that.

Back in the 1970s, most people didn’t make $400 in two weeks as opposed to two hours. If I liked it and Ken really didn’t, I could always do magazines or films and make a good living on my own. At the time, it wasn’t like I was fucking the boss in order to have a job in Ken’s store, but to the rest of the world, it may have looked that way. But this, this would be my thing. The thoughts passing through my head were not, “I’m being exploited.” They were, “I’m being liberated.”

I was strangely curious about the whole process. Working at the bookstore, I’d become kind of jaded. Detached. The magazines, the toys, the loops, they no longer seemed weird to me. If I thought about it at all, I wondered about how it all came to be — who made this stuff, and how did they know what would sell and to whom? I got a kick out of the customers, many who were regulars. Sex was important to them. It was less important to me. I didn’t sleep around. I was pretty damn monogamous and not very kinky or adventurous.

A lot of it had to do with sex being such a taboo subject when I grew up. I was never part of a family that discussed it. The only thing I heard about it was “NO!” That’s not very informative. But at the store, I saw guys — and a few girls — who liked how it felt and did something about it. They weren’t bad people. They didn’t hurt anybody. I liked that.

He handed Ken the directions to the shoot and said, “They’re ready when you are.” It was about three or four blocks down the street. I was kind of shocked, though, when we walked into the building. I was born and raised in a small town, so to me, Baltimore was a big, glamorous city. But I thought this place was kind of run down and dirty. It was an apartment. We knocked on the door and my “co-star” answered. I don’t remember his name or even what he looked like. I think it was because I just didn’t care. All I remember is he was around my age and skinny as hell.

I was told this was the person I’d be working with. There was a bed with a flowered pattern that was God-awful 1970’s yellow. Seeing this dump, and having viewed so many loops back in the store, I could just hear that horrible porn music in my head — they all had the same bad music.