Array Seka - Inside Seka

Bill had reddish-brown hair and at the time was thin and very pale, which I found extremely odd for someone who lived in Southern California. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses with some sort of Hawaiian print shirt that he still wears today. He wasn’t a particularly neat person, although he was pleasant enough.

After talking to him a few minutes, he said, “Okay, stand up and take your clothes off.”

I said, “Excuse me, why should I?”

“You might as well get used to people telling you to get naked,” he responded.

I thought there could have been a better way to treat a strange lady from out of town than “Okay, get naked.” It wasn’t the request that was shocking, but the presentation. I took my clothes off anyway and he told me to turn around. Bill exclaimed, “Wow, that’s the best body I’ve seen in Hollywood since Monroe!” He immediately said I would be the next big thing in the adult business.

Imagine that.

Informing me he would send me on calls for some still photos, he advised that I shouldn’t get burned out by doing every photo shoot and film that came my way. I had absolutely no idea this was a life-changing moment.

There was one person in particular he wanted to send me to. Bill believed he was “the best in the business.” It was Ron Raffaelli. Ron, in fact, was already a legend, acting as Jimi Hendrix’s personal photographer. He would eventually do tons of rock album covers, erotic art, and have his works displayed in major exhibitions.

Bill picked up the phone and said, “Ron, I have a girl you just have to shoot.” And just like that I was whisked away.

Ron was really strange. He was very tall, thin, and even paler than Bill Margold. I went from one really pale Californian to another and thought, “Is there something I’m missing here?” They all had jailhouse complexions like they hadn’t seen daylight in twenty years.

Ron was very much an egghead. Very intellectual. Smart and sweet, actually. He listened to the same type of music I liked at the time: Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and the Rolling Stones.

Living in a huge loft with a lot of photo equipment, it was like walking into a photo store. I was extremely impressed with his gear and figured he was really big time.

Showing me a bunch of his work, I loved it and realized he truly was a world-class talent. He told me he would take some test shots I could use in my composite book. I was trying to act all sophisticated, but had no idea what a composite book was. He said, “I like the way you’re dressed.” I had on a pair of chocolate brown silk pants that were slit down the side and tied in a knot around my ankle. It was like a pair of I Dream of Jeanie pants. My silk blouse was cream and beige. I figured this guy is a nude photographer, so I started to take my blouse off.

He said, “No, no… I want to shoot you with your clothes on.”

Now I was really confused.

He wanted mostly head shots and I didn’t know why other than I was going to have this “composite book,” which I was still too embarrassed to ask about. When we were finished, he said he simply wanted to see how comfortable I was in front of a camera. And I was extremely comfortable in front of him. Ron was so easy to work with. When he got a good shot he was very excited and vocal. He gave good directions. “Look over your shoulder.” He knew what he wanted and how to get the best out of a model.

All in all it was a wonderful day and I walked out very excited. Ron made me feel beautiful and I knew he’d create art with his shots. I was thinking, “Dang, this could be a lot of fun. And I get paid to do it.”

I never considered I would be the next big adult star, or even a star at all. Although by now I knew I wasn’t an ugly girl, I was still slow to come around to understanding how men really viewed me. Deep inside, I was still the tall, muscular girl who pulled down rebounds. The “pretty-pretty girls” were still somewhere else across the room. I wasn’t one of them, at least in my own mind. It wasn’t like I needed validation from people like Bill and Ron in order to pump up my self-esteem. I was secure in who I was as a person. I felt if you were clean and took pride in your appearance, even if you weren’t born a genetic beauty you had every reason to hold your head with pride, which I did.

I figured this was still just something to do, a rest stop in life for a week, a month, a year maybe. I could make a decent living until Ken found something else to do. But I had no idea he had already technically become my manager.

Ron was very pleased with the shoot and called me back wanting to do more for him. But now it was for pay. And the pay was real good.

He did a lot of photo shoots for Puritan Magazine, which also had a line of 8mm films, so Ron asked me to do both. I didn’t realize it, but I was in the midst of the beginning of my career.

I was on the set of one of my earliest loops when I was handed a model release to fill out. Hungry and tired, I was anxious to get out of there and was zipping through it until I read the letters “AKA.”

“What’s this?”

“What name do you want to be known as?”

I knew in this business using my real name was out of the question. I thought for a few seconds. For some odd reason, I flashed back to when I had briefly moved to Vegas with Frank. Frank loved his gambling and was always “looking for work” but never managed to find any. Making matters even worse, he asked me to tell people I was his sister, because the big shots wouldn’t find you as attractive and hire you at the hotels and casinos if they thought you were attached. I truly believed he wanted me to support him.

We were living in a one-room apartment near the Sands. It was back when the Sands was really the Sands. The person who owned our apartment complex was a casino pit boss. He took a fancy to me because I was young, pretty, blonde, and all that good stuff. He had a live-in girlfriend who became a friend of mine. Either Swedish or Yugoslavian, she was a stunningly beautiful girl with natural platinum blonde hair, big blue eyes, a great body, and a wonderful personality to match. She was all that and a bag of chips with salsa on the side. The landlord tried getting the three of us into a ménage a trois, which made me flip out because I hadn’t done a movie yet and my real sex life was completely conventional. The idea of having sex with a girl or three people was just too much for me at the time. The vibe I got was he only cared about her looks and used her to lure people into his web.

Her name was Seka.

Being exposed to someone like her was so exotic; she made a great impression on me. I was a barefoot hick at the time. It was probably the first time I even met a girl born in another country.

The vision of this girl with the exotic name stuck in my head. As I sat on the set trying to think up a catchy stage name, for some reason I blurted out, “Seka.”

The guy asked innocently enough, “How do you spell it?”

“S-E-K-A. It’s short, simple, it’s a four letter word, and considering the business I’m in, I think that’s appropriate.”

He just looked at me. “No last name?”

“No. Just Seka. Like I said, four letters and nothing more.”

I watched him jot it down and I immediately knew I had something. I don’t remember if I knew anyone else at the time using just a one-word name. Cher might have just started moving in that direction at the time; I don’t recall. Madonna was still wearing a training bra. Ironically, the gestation period was about nine months from the time I met my inspiration to when I made my first movie.

I had given birth to “Seka.”

And to this day I wonder whatever happened to my beautiful muse.