Array Seka - Inside Seka

After sleeping for a week and realizing my funds wouldn’t last forever, I called Fred. We talked and I told him what had happened. He said, “I wasn’t going to tell you to leave the guy, but he’s a jerk. I’m glad you did, though.”

To this day, the thought of Ken just scares me. I feel he’s dangerous and vengeful.

Fred told me if I came to Chicago he could help me out and I could live in his huge house in Barrington. I said “fine” and packed up what little belongings I had. The Swedish Erotica guys said they would take care of my car. I left most of my stuff in California and went to Illinois.

Fred picked me up at the airport and I had never seen a house like his before in my life. It was very reminiscent of a Frank Lloyd Wright. Fred had done very well for himself. He used to breed blue Afghan hounds and show dogs, which he was no longer doing at that point. And the make-up gig was very good to him, as he used to work with Rona Barrett, Fleetwood Mac, and others. In the late seventies and early eighties he was charging $500 a face, which in those days was a heck of a lot of money. He also worked a lot on adult sets.

He was a very interesting man and he found me very interesting. On my sci-fi film, Ultra Flesh, he put jewels over my eyes and I gave him various ideas regarding my make-up. He saw I paid attention to detail, which he appreciated.

And he desperately wanted to give me a make-over.

If you look at the pictures of me from the seventies, I had an older look. Fred made me appear younger and a lot more exotic and different than everyone else in the business — again. Very high fashion. If you compare the cover of Inside Seka to a later Club Magazine picture, there’s a dramatic difference.

I moved into Fred’s house and he made me start working out. I was also taking ballet lessons, along with singing lessons. I enrolled at Northwestern University to study diction and elocution. All of this helped me attain my goal of ridding myself of my Southern accent.

Fred was trying to bring me to a higher level, which would mean more pay. He was committed to updating my all-around appearance for the eighties. At the time, I didn’t know how to do my clothes. I started getting manicures, pedicures, and facials. After three or four weeks, he posed to me that he wanted to be my manager. He said since I was living in his house and he was paying for all of this, we should have a 50/50 split. At this particular point in my life I was learning a lot and feeling better about myself. Film work kept me busy and kept my mind off things. Besides, I knew Fred didn’t want to fuck me. At least not sexually. I wasn’t in the mood for any sexual pressure.

At that point, I wasn’t interested in sex unless it was on the set. After Ken, I just felt used. Fred was gay and did just fine on his own. His very pretty lover, Gary, lived with him. I liked Gary, but he wasn’t happy I was there. Plus, he was just nuts. He was an extremely jealous and insecure man who didn’t like that Fred was with me all the time.

Fred and I were on the way back from the gym one day when we stopped at a gas station convenience store for a pack of cigarettes. They had men’s magazines and Fred was intently looking at one. I curiously thought to myself, “Why is he staring at a girlie magazine?” Then he actually bought it.

“Why are you looking at this?”

I started thumbing through it and he showed me an index card-size entry form to win a contest to “direct Seka’s next movie.” I had no idea what this was about, as I had never worked for, nor even spoken a word with Club Magazine.

“They can’t just use your name like that.”

The first thing we did was to call my lawyer to have my name registered and trademarked. I didn’t own the rights to the picture they used, so I had no legal complaint there. But I called the magazine and asked, “What are you going to do when you have a winner and I don’t want to do your movie?”

“We thought we’d talk to you afterwards.”

I explained how bad it would make me look if they held the contest and I didn’t go through with it, so I negotiated a price with them. They came back with some ridiculously low counter-offer and I sued them.

Nobody in the adult business had ever sued anybody. It was unheard of. I guess everybody was afraid to because they figured they’d never work again.

I retained a lawyer who was absolutely ready to jump all over it. He was hungry because he was on a contingency and taking a third. He also knew he had a damn strong case. The Club Magazine people thought I’d let it go, but I didn’t.

Fred and I were ready to go before the judge when Club came to us and asked if we’d settle out of court. Fred demanded free ad space in the magazine, a retainer fee for a year, and multiple layouts for working exclusively for them, and that they could only use the shots of me once. Afterwards, I’d own the rights to every photo from that point on.

As for actual monetary damages, we agreed to settle it out of court for a dollar. The lawyer wasn’t happy because he was getting thirty-three cents. But I gave him the whole dollar. I’m generous like that.

This contract had a lot of potential for real money. It also set a precedent for women in the business and raised the bar for performers to make money. It proved we could say no to things without the fear of being blacklisted.

I was the first person to take control of my destiny in this business.

Fred did a great job. I learned a lot from him and we had a great time doing it. But like every other man who had been in my life, he started to get greedy. And it didn’t take long.

The metamorphoses had taken place. Thanks to Fred, I looked and felt better than I ever had. Meanwhile, Club Magazine ran that little contest to direct my next movie, although to the best of my recollection they didn’t use the winner the way they advertised. Club at the time also owned a company called Electric Blue, which produced R-rated films. They had been doing some work with Marilyn Chambers and they wanted me to do one of their Electric Blues for them. They did them in a numbered series and they were at 007, so I suggested they do a James Bond sort of thing, which they agreed to.

I think it got shot down because of the copyright and trademark on Bond. But they sent Fred and me to England because I don’t travel alone. He did all the make-up and what was so cool is they paid me a really decent amount of money and flew us both first class to Europe, which was a pretty expensive ticket.

After we did the film — and there wasn’t anything eventful about the shoot itself — we decided to travel through Europe. We took our tickets to American Airlines to see if we could go to Paris and Italy if we converted the tickets. They said we could do anything we wanted first class as long as we didn’t exceed the mileage from England to Chicago.

The first stop was Paris and I fell in love with it. I was this little country bumpkin and amazingly, there I was.

We were sitting on the Left Bank having dinner one evening and this hot little blonde boy walked by and I just couldn’t resist. I spoke no French. He spoke no English. It was perfect. He had beautiful blonde curly hair, big blue eyes, and was tanned and buff. Ironically enough, the friend he was with was gay. So Fred grabbed one and I grabbed the other and off we went. That was the event that snapped me out of my off-set abstinence after Ken.

The next night, Fred dragged me to the ballet. Frank Zappa was there and we had on the same Kensie sweater. He walked up, looked at me, and said, “Nice sweater.” I was so tongue-tied I just nodded my head. He said, “What’s up, Seka; cat got your tongue?”