Bobby Spector article Part Two
Luzdedos1
Anyone know how I can find Bill Landis aka Bobby SPector...?
The constant presence of Ron Jeremy, a fat, obnoxious failed Catskills
comedian, was a blight everyone lived with. I've seen girls screaming in pain
as he did anals to them. They didn't yell to stop. They'd just scream. Later,
during the editing, moans and music were cut in. After 10, 15 years in the
business, women get physically banged up--even with no anals--and suffer severe
gynecological troubles. Hysterectomies are the norm, and a few of the
better-off actresses pay for surgery to restore their vaginal elasticity. It
was heartbreaking to see how these women were damaged physically as well as
psychologically.
By 1986 I was paranoid about AIDS and drifted into the gray s/m world, which
required no sexual contact. S/M was an underground scene populated by
high-frequency personalities, far from the safe-sex cure-all it's seen as
today. I played in videos shot under the auspices of the legendary Eric
Stanton, America's most famed and prolific heterosexual fetish artist, although
Stanton wasn't personally present on the shoots. Nothing heavy happened in the
Stanton tapes. They were a throwback to the Betty Page days, what would now be
called vanilla. I had personally enjoyed Stanton's art as a horny kid, but
acting it out never turned me on. It only was a sad reminder of Kelly and the
jump rope. When it came down to cases, I was getting paid to be battered. I
later discovered that Stanton had not only shot a videotape, but created stills
and traced comic strips from the session. I received $75--my lowest rate--for
two hours of work. Although I've met guys who told me the would have paid for
the experience, bondage work is among the most exploitative and worst-paying
for men.
The last sets I made it through were very rough. Filmmakers no longer cared
about quality. Directors gave their sons jobs, and professional producers had
been replaced by indie fly-by-nights, causing many fights over payment.
Horribly, Josey Duvall and Ron Jeremy had both become directors, and needless
to say, both paid shit. George Payne had been taken off active sex duty by
Deirdre and I was relying on baby oil for the come shot. I was so tracked up
that my arms were filled with pinpoints on a road to nowhere; filmmakers often
had me work in long sleeves. As long as I could get the pop shot I didn't even
have to feign interest in my partner. I was dying from neglect. Drug addiction,
depersonalized sex, and the dark illegal realm I lived in had taken their toll.
My pictures were playing everywhere, from home video to the remaining Times
Square grindhouses, and were shown in softcore versions on cable TV. Like all
my colleagues I received not a penny in residuals. But I felt I was too
recognizable to go straight.
Now turning 27, I was refusing parts because I could no longer stand playing a
14-year-old boy to an old lady. David Darby called me like the pig he was,
asking me to accept a job taking a dildo from a methadone-addicted,
crack-smoking actress who worked as an escort. I told him to do the job himself
and slammed the phone down. I later discovered that this actress, who was a
nice person despite her plethora of problems, had died of AIDS. Soon the Meese
Commission was witch-hunting the porn industry. Performers were being
interrogated. I did not need this trouble.
The last job I pulled took place in Queens. I smelled trouble from minute one.
No one knew the filmmakers--they seemed like college kids--and the shoot was
being overseen by a director's son, so we were vague about who was in charge. I
was acting very passive aggressive, chewing codeine tablets and drifting into
seminods. I'd been told I'd be doing a straight fuck scene. When I got there,
it turned into sex on a rooftop with a crackhead I despised. She was so spazzed
she looked like she had Parkinson's disease. They said they wanted to get as
much open-air sex footage as possible. All I could see was a Post headline PORN
ACTORS BUSTED DURING ROOFTOP ORGY. This wasn't California, where you could get
away with outdoor stuff: it seemed like an invite to a bust. I talked one of
the filmmakers out of $100 and ran to the subway, fleeing back to Manhattan as
fast as the IRT would carry me. I did a roller-coaster of drugs--black-market
methadone, IV speedballs, codeine, and Valium. This binge started as a
celebration; fuck-you to a job I hated. In the end it almost killed me.
After I came out of a 24-hour stupor, George Payne gave me one more bit of
advice: find a girl and quit the business. He was right once again. Eventually,
I did find my wife in Florida, but she was a younger girl, not in the industry,
who really turned me on. I love her. We've been married nine ears. My sex life
isn't a performance anymore.
Since I quit the sex business, it's proven very hard for the survivors to talk
to each other. If you tracked us to our various hiding places and put us in a
room together, you'd get nothing but arguments, tears, recriminations, and
slammed doors. George Payne and I touch base from time to time, but it's
difficult to reach out even to people that you felt closest with. I don't know
if George remembers the night he saved my life during an OD, but I never forgot
it.
People need sexual fantasies, and I don't think all pornography is bad for
them. Unfortunately, it's bad for the people who make it. We're all deeply
upset individuals who entered the business with our own emotional baggage, but
the new scars never quite heal. If you try to talk to outsiders, what you went
through is so different from anything they've ever encountered that you can't
explain without shocking them or eliciting moral judgments. The empowerment
theorists, all wishful academicians or ex-performers with a hustle, have an
interest in suppressing any negative comment. I never felt empowered for a
second. What I did was nothing more than hooking, with the familiar business
expense of self-tranquilization through hard drugs. The only sense of power I
felt was a vicarious power over other men unable to live up to my image. A
hollow victory. My advice to any individual wanting to enter the sex industry
in any capacity is that old maxim: Is the fucking you get worth the fucking you
get?
No worries, mate
Luke Ford
For Sin in Sinema: www.lukeford.com
For God in the Galut: www.dennisprager.net