Nick East Interview

I first heard about Nick East in the October 30, 1995 Susan Faludi New Yorker article on deceased porner Cal Jammer.

Nick East lent his memoirs overnight to Susan. She later wrote: "It turned out to be less an account of a life than a mystical wish fulfillment, in which a "guardian angel" materializes one day as Nick's driving cross country and promises to be his divine guide through life. The angel first appears to a grateful Nick East in the clothes and guise of his father."

In 6/96, Nick said: "Susan Faludi didn't understand my book. She crapped on it because she's writer. She was jealous. You can't expect a feminist to understand a man's thoughts. I thought that for the most part, her article was accurate. I just wish she hadn't thrown those jabs at me. I had done nothing to deserve that.

"Susan left out a lot of details that would have made sense of what I said. She just left in the more shocking things. She said that I claim that the government tricked American women into working, and that's not what I was saying. I tried to point out that when I was a kid, my dad - with only a highschool education - could afford to have a wife, three kids and buy a house and my mother didn't have to work [outside the home]. Now, in the '90s, that way of life is impossible. Both the man and the woman have to work to get by. That means the work force has doubled and the pay is less. The question Susan Faludi originally asked was, 'Why do I think so many young women are willing to take their clothes off to make a living?' And I said because they all have to work these days."

...........

I call Nick November 14, 2004. Ten days earlier, I'd seen him at World Modeling. Nick East Nick East

Why did you leave the industry in 2001?

"I wanted to attempt to have a real life. A normal life. I was in a relationship. It was going sour due to my occupation. I always wanted to settle down and have kids anyway. I moved back to Ohio. I was going to send for her when I got a job and got things squared away. Well, within a month of me getting to Ohio, she was pregnant with someone else's kid.

"I stuck it out there for three years. I was installing satellite dishes. My past started to get in the way. After three years of being in the real world, I realized there was no such thing as leaving porn and being able to lead a normal life. I had some people that would be jealous and other people would be prejudiced. Then there would be the people who felt that I'd had it so easy for so long, that I should have to pay the price for coming back into the normal world. I wouldn't get the same routes as other installers who were my equal. They would send me to the far end of Ohio to do one job while the guy next to me would be right down the street.

"When you go into the real world, they don't make it easy. The people in the real world don't want me there. Then you'd have the people who would be questioning: Why did he leave? He says it was for love but what was it really?

"I finally realized that there was no such thing as making it in the real world. I was never going to live down my past. Being stuck with a label that was going to be with me the rest of my life, I decided I might as well make the most of it and go back to doing what I enjoy for a living. When I was installing satellite dishes, there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't sit up on somebody's roof and think, what am I doing here? One day I got up and said, I'm going back to LA. As soon as I had it all squared away to come out, it was May. I'm walking by the television. CNN is on. The announcer says the porn industry is shut down. What? I was packing.

"I waited an extra month. When I got the word the industry was running again, I came out in July. I love my job but I won't have to be doing it for much longer."

Why is that?

"Because I am getting published.

"After I finished writing the book, some strange things happened that scared me to the point where I hid my book. It took me ten years for me to come to grips with everything that happened after I wrote my book and say I was going to get it published anyway. The first publishing company I sent it to [Publish America], jumped on it.

"The name of my book is The Orion Compass. It's a spiritual autobiography. I could easily be put in the Guiness Book of World Records for having the most number of strange coincidences that all tied together. They all point to the same spot -- that I am being used. By something."

Extraterrestrials?

"No. I have a guardian angel."

What implications does it have to have a guardian angel? How does it affect your life?

Nick can't think of anything.