Array Seka - Inside Seka

Because my parents had none of the needed equipment to facilitate my new hobby/ love affair/ obsession, I had to walk a mile to the nearest Rite Aid to rent not only porn but also a VCR. Yes, Rite Aid rented porn in the eighties, and yes, I did write, “I had to walk a mile…” like I’m Abraham Lincoln. And, in a way, I was. He walked to go to school; I walked to pick up masturbation fodder — which of these is nobler is for you to decide. One disadvantage to renting from Rite Aid was the odds were good one of my grandmother’s friends would limp up to the counter just as I was handing Ultra Flesh to the cashier.

As the epitome of beauty and sexuality, Seka became the image against which all other women were measured. And they always fell short. Even if they were beautiful, you knew there was just no way they could fuck like her. The point is that Seka became the face of sexuality not only for me but also for an entire generation. It’s been almost thirty years and she is still the first name that comes to mind when I think of adult films. Reading about her life outside the business felt almost surreal. She’s just one of those iconic, larger-than-life performers who I forget had a viable existence before and after her career in movies. She played basketball, sold hot dogs, and missed being killed once because she said, “No, thank you” instead of “Yes.” Actually, that’s what I found most amazing: the real person behind the name. I loved the complete honesty and candor in every story. Seka doesn’t try and make herself look any better or worse than she really is. She tells the truth — the good, the bad and the ugly. And most importantly, none of it is predictable.

Now pull up your pants and put away your dick — it’s not that kind of book.

The old joke goes, “I came home from school one day, and my family had moved.” Well, it’s not that funny because it happened to me.

I lived in a little white house in the very small town of Christians-burg, Virginia, with my mother, stepfather, brother, and sister. I was eight years old in 1961 and my mom and dad had gotten divorced because she was cheating on him. While they were married, they both worked at Radford Arsenal, the biggest manufacturer of propellant powder for space ships in the United States, and nicknamed “The Powder Plant.” People would commute up to two hours to work there because the pay and benefits were good. It was the largest employer in the area and it’s still there. If you ever wanted to blow up a good part of the United States, that would be the place to hit.

Dad was small and thin, around five-six or five-seven and one hundred forty pounds soaking wet. He had bright red hair and big doe-like brown eyes with very pale skin. He couldn’t be out in the sun at all. I remember one time we went to the beach and within about ten minutes he became one big blister.

My mother reminded me of Jane Russell — a va-va-va-voom body and the most beautiful wavy dark black hair, olive complexion, dark brown eyes, and the straightest, whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. She was gorgeous with naturally arched eyebrows and long fingernails. And the woman knew how to walk in a pair of pumps.

My parents just couldn’t get along and decided to split up. Mom married a guy named Terry who seemed okay, but what did I know? I was a kid and I was supposed to trust my parents. He was very tall and skinny, with dark curly hair and dark eyes. He laughed a lot and was nice to us. Terry liked country music and would take my mom out dancing. Everything seemed good between them as far as I knew. He never scolded me and was never off-color, nor did he curse. He liked his cigarettes, cocktails, and cabareting, but he was a good man. He didn’t seem to hold a job very long though, as we were always moving.

My name was Dorothiea but everyone called me Dot. I was named after an old girlfriend of my father’s, some girl he dallied around with when he was in Germany in the service. Mom had no say in it and once she found out where he came up with it she was none too happy. Back then, women were knocked out during childbirth and the father came in and signed the birth certificate and settled up the bill. I wondered for years if that damn name wasn’t the cause of a lot of misery my mother sent my way.

I was a tomboy. I never, ever wore a shirt until the age of six. We’d go fishing, throw tomatoes, and play hide-and-seek and kick-the-can at night. We lived on the “other side of the tracks” because that’s where my grandfather’s job was. The railroad ran just in front of their house. I loved my grandparents dearly. My grandfather was secretary of the Norfolk and Western Railroad and my grandmother was a housewife. They were very kind people. My grandfather was of Viking descent. He was very short and bald, which probably doesn’t sound very Viking at all, but he had big blue eyes like robin’s eggs. He was round, very round, but didn’t seem heavy to me at the time because it was just so comfortable to sit on his lap. And he always wore a suit. I don’t think I ever saw him without a suit and hat. He was constantly smoking either a pipe with cherry tobacco or a cigar. I loved the smell of his pipe. Grandpa used a straight razor and kept a strap in the bathroom. It hung by the sink and us kids were deathly afraid of it because we knew he meant business if he ever pulled it out in anger. But he never, ever used it on us.

My grandmother was part Cherokee. She had soft brown eyes like clouds. She was very heavy and always smiling. Grandma had the biggest boobs of anyone I have ever known. As a little girl there was nothing more comforting than to put your head between her boobs and sleep. She was a great cook, which is how I learned how to cook. I was always sitting on the kitchen counter watching her at work. She made fresh biscuits at least twice a day. She’d have a cigarette in her mouth and the ash would be almost as long as the cigarette itself, but I never saw her drop the ash in the biscuit ever. Hell, maybe she did and that’s what gave it the taste.

I’d go down to my grandma and grandpa’s house on weekends because my mother was no cook. There were two bedrooms upstairs. My grandfather would put a piece of tin on the windowsill so the sound of the rain would be amplified. On clear nights we could hear the train in the distance. To this day, I can sleep so well when I hear rain or a train coming down the tracks, because it reminds me of my childhood.

My father’s side of the family was Irish and lived in a little place called Poplar Camp, way up in the Appalachians. I never knew my father’s father as he had passed away before I was born, but his mother was a very tall, thin, willowy woman. She had a very stern demeanor but she wasn’t really stern at all. She never cut her hair in her life. It hung all the way down to her knees and was snow white. From the time I was a little kid her hair was very white. She was blind and dipped snuff and was always laughing. They had only three rooms: a kitchen, a bedroom and the living room. She had a wood burning stove and no inside bathroom, just an outhouse. She’d be sitting in her chair across from the stove and there were four eyes where you put the wood in to heat it. She’d leave the lid off one eye so she wouldn’t have to get up to spit and would hit it from across the room.

My mother would do weird things to get attention. She would pretend she had taken all these sleeping pills and lay down on the floor and make believe she was about to die. She’d be groaning and you’d try to wake her up. Later we’d find out she flushed the pills down the toilet. I have no idea why the woman did the things she did but it was very scary. It wasn’t like she didn’t get attention, because when she walked in the room every head snapped around because she was so stunning. The woman could talk to a post and make it drool. In general, though, she was pretty even-tempered. Didn’t yell, didn’t get mad, didn’t scream. But every so often she’d just go off into another land — The Twilight Zone.