Richard Pacheco (Howie Gordon) was the Johnathan Morgan nerd-type of the late '70s and early '80s, best known for his role as Lenny in Talk Dirty To Me.

During the mid '80s, when Pacheco insisted on using condoms, producers insisted on not using him. He retired.

"In the early '70s, those of us who were part of the drop-out generation were looking for ways to drop back in," remembers Howie Gordon. "I was doing manual labor ($5 an hour painting houses and breaking concrete) to make money. I applied to the Hebrew Union College seminary [to become a rabbi] with the goal of studying history. I also applied to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. I had worked for the Hollywood Sun Tattler in Florida in the late '60s. Then the opportunity to be in Candy Stripers came along.

"I had an interview with the one professor of electronic journalism. I met him at his car dealership. He was getting his Porsche fixed. He asked me for my favorite TV show. I said Beretta. He said Beretta was a pig… We didn't get along.

"Then came the rabbinical issue. It turned out to get into the rabbinic program you had to spend two years in Jerusalem studying Aramaic. Which was not what I wanted to do. So I chose Candy Stripers.

"Being a movie stud was not always the dip in the Hefner hot tub that most outsiders assume," says Richard.

At the beginning of Pacheco's career, the stud was a dud.

"You could put makeup on your face, you could do situps for your body, you could memorize all your lines, but you couldn't guarantee that you'd have a bone in your boner come game time." (HEVG)

Richard learned early in his career that having sex in front of a movie camera was like opening up a candy bar that somebody else was going to eat. "That somebody else was the director, the camera person, the lighting guy, and ultimately the audience. It was sex we did on camera but it wasn't real sex. It was theater.

"Performing sex was a game won by confidence. It resulted in an internal war between fear and desire."

Richard isn't an exhibitionist. He says exhibitionism is like a drug for some guys. "They got a kick out of people watching them."

Pacheco was so scared before his first sex scene that two weeks beforehand he broke out in huge red blotches (hives) all over his body.

"I knew a good deal about sex. My wife [they married in 1975] had been trained in Masters and Johnson techniques… I had the mistaken notion that the people who made the movies would know about sex.

"My first film was supposed to be half a day's work, a blow job scene in a closet. I worried about having to sexually function in front of other people. I wanted to be in movies to meet X-rated women for my own pleasure. I wasn't an exhibitionist.

"The scene begins with the director [Bob Chinn] saying to the starlet, 'you get on your knees and suck him until he becomes hard. Then we'll roll camera.' That was foreplay. The girl gets on her knees, starts sucking me and everything works.

"The day before I'd been wielding a sledge hammer for $5 an hour and now I'm getting blown for $200 for half a day. This is neat. I look into everybody's eyes. Welcome to my blowjob… Every three minutes, they'd have to reload the film magazine. This happened ten times. Every time I lost my erection… Finally, the director said to me, 'cum.' I couldn't… The scene lasted until 5PM before I finally got off."

It took Richard ten movies before he found another actor willing to give him pointers. Veteran John Seeman could do a cum shot during an earthquake.

He told Richard that he was trying to play the game without exercising any power.

John helped Richard formulate this battle plan: "1) Get the director on my side. Letting him know I wasn't confident about a particular scene might cost me a job or two, but I would get support when I did get the job. 2) Get the actress on my side. If she didn't like or I didn't like her, we'd go to the director and try to arrange another pairing. 3) Make the set comfortable. 4) Remove troublemakers from the set. 5) Prepare for my scene. Refrain from orgasm for two to three days before a sex scene.

"The most valuable part of my conversation with John was that we had the conversation at all. As the Catholic Church has known for centuries, confession is good for the soul." (HEVG)

"Anthony Spinelli was my mentor. He was a big man with a big appetite for life. He was family. He had a similar relationship with John Leslie who was the opposite of me. I thought of us as the two sides of Spinelli's sexuality. One was the stud that the girls fall down for, with a big dick and a big mouth, and the other was the guilty Jew who has to beg. By putting us together, he encompassed a wide range of female desire."

Anthony Spinelli directed 1980's High School Memories. "It was right before my knee surgery. I wanted to have my head shaved to play the savage. Spinelli said, 'don't do that. Just get a crew cut.' I remember we spent four full days on a school bus driving around Marin County. And I had to wear a helmut the whole time. It was 90 degrees in the bus and inside the helmut it was ten degrees hotter.

Pacheco played the hitch-hiker in Insatiable, getting blown by Marilyn Chambers. He also starred in Irresistible, Candy Goes to Hollywood, Inside Desiree Cousteau, The Seven Seductions of Madame Lau, and Ten Little Maidens.

"Marilyn Chambers was big box office. I did two scenes with her but I didn't feel like I got to know her at all. She was fun on the set. "

Pacheco participated in six sex scenes in Irresistible. "It wore me out. The Seven Seductions (director Charles de Santos) was also a sexual marathon.

"Gail Palmer was never more than a front person. She was an attempt to cash in on the woman's point of view. I don't respect her 'filmmaking.' Mostly directors promised a woman's point of view, then the woman turned out to be a man pulling the strings behind some pretty girl who got on TV to say it was her movie.

"Desiree Cousteau was a wonderful person early in her career then hit big time trouble. She hit a wall and moved on."

"Ten Little Maidens [John Seeman was the credited director] was fun. They had enough talent on that set to make 20 movies nowadays. They had twelve of us in this one scene that was the most astonishing scene I was ever in. Jamie Gillis, Harry Reems, Paul Thomas, Eric Edwards, Lisa DeLeeuw, Nina Hartley, Janie Robbins, Amber Lynn, Ginger Lynn… We sit around a table in this mansion. It was supposed to be Harry's big comeback movie but Jamie was being Jamie [wild and abusive]. In this huge food scene, Jamie was the waiter. He took this whole suckling pig and put it on Amber Lynn's back. It was her first movie. Jamie would f--- Amber then f--- the pig. Then he tore off big chunks of the pig and smeared it in Amber's hair. It just got out of hand. It was gross.

"There were three directors on that movie and none of them said anything. I guess they figured that you don't tell Jamie what to do. He was just making it up as he went along. Then Harry was not about to be topped by Jamie. He jumps up on a table and starts f---ing a cherry pie. I had Janie Robbins in that scene. I had bent her over and was f---ing her from behind. I felt like a Republican. When it was all over, Ginger Lynn was as white as a ghost. She had no idea what she had gotten into. Amber was doing theatrics, crying, and mad at Jamie."

The first headlines about the heterosexual transmission of AIDS arrived in November of 1984. "There was no talk about safe sex for a year after that," remembers Gordon. "Nobody knew what the hell was spreading the disease. They had it isolated it Haitians, drug users and anal intercourse. A mathematician friend looked at the projections, came over to my house and said, 'you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

"I had three [porno] jobs lined up in December for holiday money. When I came home, we were about to make love, and she said, 'are you sure this is a good idea? Don't you think it would be prudent if one of us remained alive to raise the kids?'

"That was the brick wall. I couldn't figure that one out. There was no way that I could risk her life and my life given that we had babies. I went cold turkey on the industry. In 1985 we started hearing about safe sex with latex. Then I dabbled back into the industry trying to promote safe sex. I was not welcome by many producers to even discuss the subject in front of others in the business. I did about four scenes [with condoms]… I was already of an age where erections were a problem, as they were most of my career. Putting my dick in a condom drastically reduced my ability to function. And I was the one guy saying, 'you should do this.' So I stopped performing sexually in 1985. I did acting roles afterwards. I served as an assistant director to John Leslie. Mostly what I did was hold his money because he trusted me.

"I found I did not like being on the set if I was not having sex because you just get bombarded with stimulation. If there's no release, it makes people crazy. I don't know how crews do it. You just have to become hardened to your own sexual function to do your job… Doing that 12-18 hours a day in insanity. Once John started shooting in LA, I quit [1986].

"The world was a different place in 1976 when I began my career. A more pleasant place in many ways. 'I love you' was not a death threat. None of us growing up in that era had any sense that the rose of sexual freedom would ever close again. AIDS was a shock.

"Morality is largely a function of human survival. The millenia old threat of life-ending diseases and unwanted pregnancy had virtually disappeared by the 1960s. For a brief period of time, there was a sexual revolution. We threw out the old morality and created a new one to suit the needs of the time. With the advent of herpes in the late '70s was a foreshadowing.

"I remember trying to get my wife pregnant. An active outbreak of herpes would've been the difference between a vaginal birth and a Caesarean Section. Also, the fetus was subject to brain damage. I started telling producers that I wouldn't work with anybody who had herpes. And I didn't.

"People underestimate the significance of AIDS in the overall scheme of things. I don't think it is any accident that the Republican revolution coincided with it. It gave the naysayers a finger of power to wave at lefties, 'See, I told you so. This is God's punishment.' My children have grown up in a time where sexual freedom is tantamount to stupidity. And it's made it difficult to explain to them who we were when we were growing up. They don't know that freedom."

I met Pacheco at the World Pornography Conference in early August, 1998. A week later he read to me over the phone his thoughts on the Conference.

"…Three ragtag armies, the sex workers, the mental health professionals, and the lawyers, each defenders of the flower… each used to operating on its own, each reeling under the continued siege from the plague of AIDS which threatens us all, from the Christian fanaticism which would rewrite much of the US Constitution, and from the anti-sexual ravings of broken women like Dworkin and MacKinnon, whose well-organized rage threatens to unleash a torrent of censorship.

"Each of these three armies (sex workers…) straggled to Los Angeles to meet each other and hold a summit on the controversial subject of pornography. The end result…was that each group departed the conference feeling rejuvenated and energized... with a sense of more purpose and hope than many of the participants had felt in years."

Luke: "The conference featured the happy pornographers rather than a representative sample."

Pacheco: "Absolutely. When they show us the new Oldsmobile every year, they don't show us the ones where people died in car accidents. There are tragedies in life.

"After being away from the industry for 14 years, when I walked back into that circle at the World Pornography Conference, I was welcomed back. They gave me a place of honor. I earned it. It was great to taste again. After you've put ten years of your life into something, then walk away from it, it's nice to be able to go back and harvest some of the quality moments…

"One does not like to have to fight for the same ground [freedom] twice. It's like trench warfare in World War I. The longer I live, the more I realize that these things are never over. AIDS has revitalized the madness. If you take AIDS out of the equation, and we would not have any of this going on.

"The only strong argument for criminalizing porn is people being forced to do things against their will. Your freedom ends when my nose begins… If there are no victims in the crime, there is no crime. The point where we all hold hands and draw the line is, what do we do about the children? [Richard has three.] The key issue there is what's appropriate as they progress through life. Pornography is not a subject I've ever dealt with [with Richard's children], as in… 'Here's my view on this.'

"I don't lead with that information [porn] and rub it in people's faces, because that's inappropriate. There are other places where it is appropriate.

"In the back of my mind is your ongoing conflict with the industry with the industry about your crusade to expose people who don't want to be exposed.

"As a matter of human courtesy, it's wrong [to publish real names]. Where it crosses the line is the danger zone, where you put people's lives in jeopardy. There are serious nut cases out there. And when they find out where you live and what your phone number is, disaster can occur. And that's the danger from putting that information up on the public domain. If any of these kids get hurt, you should end up in jail. I hope that I'm making some dent on your conscience. I've certainly had to change my phone number any number of times from crazies trying to get a hold of me. You've put people in jeopardy for no other reason than for you to become a journalistic star."

Pacheco reviewed porn movies for porn magazines during the mid '80s. He says he has yet to watch a good porn movie. He's seen some good scenes, even movies with a couple of good scenes. "I was an independent nation. Most of the reviewers work for magazines whose advertising for the movies pays their salaries. They're not free to tell the truth. It's foolish that we've entrusted our sexual art to criminals and amateurs.

"I thought that people of substance would become involved [in porn]. I thought there'd be some serious art invading that world… But with AIDS, it [sexual entertainment] became a disreputable field again. Dabbling in sexual freedom in this climate is akin to having a graduate degree from San Quentin.

"The industry is basically exploitive. I saw such an abuse of power… I lived like a mentch. There's enough that you're responsible for anyway, just by participating. And I found people of like mind, like Annette Haven. I'm proud of how I treated people.

"Annette was the first great beauty in porn… She shoots first and asks questions later. She knows the dark side of human sexuality and she has patterned her life and career as a way to embrace positive feelings and escape what had been horrific.

"When she was on a set, you did not see the same behavior that you saw on other sets. If any males were abusing any females around Annette, she'd have them fired. And Annette had the box office to do that. And she took care of newcomers. She let them know that they did not have to f--- everybody and that they did not need to do this or that… Smart, she's like an efficiency expert for IBM. She knows the movie business. And a talented actress. And she was great to have sex with.

"John Leslie is the best director in the business. He may be porn's only artist. He paints magnificent water colors. He learned the filmmaking business. We'd be in the middle of a scene and John would worry about the camera angles and we'd have to wait ten minutes while the director explained to John why he was doing what he was doing. John brings so many disciplines to the task of creating a film. That if you tried to buy that expertise you'd need four different bodies. Four different salaries.

"John's sexuality is the backbone of the industry. It's the male take-it-or-leave-it attitude. I've got it. I'm it. And I know it. Men like that and so do a lot of the women. Not the kind of women that like me… The women who liked me would say that John Leslie is the kind of man that every woman wants for 20 minutes. And then get them the hell out of here."

Howie Gordon married the love of his life in 1975. "I married the woman I've been married to forever. That's what it feels like. This is just another round on the planet.

"She thought my porn career was cute. She knew it was a fantasy of mine to be involved in that world. In the context of the '70s, it was a harmless experience. As time progressed, it changed from something cute that I did to something that she wished I not do. By the end of my career, it became something she was frightened of, because of the threat of AIDS.

"We once got a fortune cookie that read, 'you are doomed to be happy in wedlock.'"

Richard's trying to publish his autobiography. "I'll probably end up doing a one man show because I really enjoyed my time on stage at the Conference and discovered that I have a flair for it. It's not time yet. I still have kids at home.

"Annie Sprinkle was responsible for getting me to the Conference. She has a genius for simplicity.

"Spectator publisher Kat Sunlove is a brilliant, tough wonderful lady. I'm glad she's on our side. Nina Hartley is like my little sister. She's the Georgina Spelvin of this generation, the grand old lady of porn. And she has a political agenda that Georgina never had. Carol Queen and Susie Bright are great writers. For many of us writers, it's easier for women to get bigger quicker. Men writing about pornography is a dog bites man story. Women who write about it end up in Playboy and Esquire and we end up with the rejections. I'm jealous.

"There are things in my life that I am conservative about… You need a right and a left wing to fly."

3/25/01

Catching Up With Richard Pacheco, Jamie Gillis

In the January issue of Richard Freeman's zine Batteries Not Included (BNI@aol.com), Richard Pacheco talks about turning 40 years of age.

He says he photographs young and has kept his body in good shape and often thinks about returning to porn, even though he's married with teenage daughters.

Pacheco says he never retired from porn. He just stopped performing until there's a cure or vaccine for AIDS.

Richard complains that he's earned about 30 cents in the past three years - pointing out one of the more painful and least talked about problems with working in porn. It's no platform to other work. Most jobs are gained through working other jobs. Most jobs lead to other jobs, except porno.

Porno attracts anti-social people with minimal skills. This outlaw world allows those who dip into it for a few months or years the option of delaying reality. Porn provides little opportunity for refining the skills that make for life success.

Pacheco got to know Jamie Gillis "while working with the ogre, Svetlana, one of the worst people God ever put on this earth...and by far, the worst director I ever worked for. Jamie pulled me through that nightmare and I have loved him ever since."

Gillis is a wild man, with few sexual boundaries. Like Harry Reems and Rocco Siffredi, he delighted for years in sexually pummelling chicks.

Jamie tells BNI that he never officially retired though he did recently leave porn for a year for the sake of a woman he lived with. She hated porn. So Jamie left porn and in the process of a year with the woman, he went broke.

Gillis sold everything he owned. He wrote a few articles for different magazines, including "The Mad Satyr" for Screw.

"I was living with this girl," Gillis tells Pacheco, "who told me to give up porn and I said okay. Of course, the upshot of all this was...she had this broken down bum who she eventually threw out because he didn't have any money."

Scared of AIDS, Jamie moved to New York City where he drove a cab. "I used to freak out when I got on airplanes. I'd think, Oh, God, I'm going to cash, crash, crash... So, I think the statistics now for AIDS and heterosexual sex...one in 500 if you have sex once with a person who has AIDS..."

But these stats don't necessarily apply to Gillis as he does not necessarily restrict himself to heterosexual sex.

Fred Lincoln flew Gillis to Europe to do a couple of films. Then one night, a passenger in his cab worked for Bizarre Video. She suggested he call the company which he did. Jamie began hanging around in their offices and eventually became general manager.