Saturday, October 16
You know how in those werewolf movies Lon Chaney Jr. always saw the mark of the pentagram on his next victim? Juliana Sterling bore the mark of the pentagram, as events of the next 24 hours would indicate. Sterling looked like a lost pound puppy pressing her nose at the LAX ticket counter.
Like some 40 other female porn stars, Sterling was going on the XXX-treme Mexico vacation to shoot scenes for Metro, have a good time and make some money in the process. Except Sterling, like adult video shoots generally require anyway, was told she needed two forms of ID. Sterling had neither a birth certificate nor a passport on her, all of which would have made things real simple.
She was directed to an official-looking nook where for twenty bucks she could solve all her problems and get some notarized papers that would make all the bureaucrats at the airport very happy. Dan, Sterling's boyfriend, acted as interpreter of her plight. He talked to Scott Stein, the organizer of the trip, about it, pleading, in an indirect way, for Stein's intervention
"Watch, she won't have twenty bucks," Stein whispers to Jim Malibu, an adult industry director, who this week will serve as recreation director-of-sorts in Mexico. Malibu, who wears a beard, Ulysses S. Grant-style, just kind of stares at the obvious brown circles under Dan's eyes, like, how long has this guy been up?
No sooner does Stein make the comment about the twenty bucks that Sterling's boyfriend returned with a lost puppy look on HIS face. "We don't have twenty bucks," he tells Stein. Stein gives Malibu a "What did I tell you" look.
"I don't know what we're going to do," Dan tells Stein. "We don't have time to go home, get her birth certificate than get back to the airport to make the flight."
Looking like a street-smart dude who just fell for the oldest trick in the world, Stein handed Dan twenty bucks. Dan returned several minutes later giving the money back to Stein. He said he didn't need it. Stein looked at the twenty. "This isn't the bill I gave him," Stein quipped to Malibu. "This one's got Paul Fishbein's picture on it!"
During the wait, other jokes are made about girls sneaking pot into Mexico in their tampons. "Yeah, like airport security didn't see that episode of Barnaby Jones, 1973," Stein cracks. Outside of Juliana, no other dire emergencies present themselves as cast, crew, vacationers and a select group of femmes de joie from Arizona board a flight to sunny Mexico. All for a weeks' worth of socializing and adult video filmmaking.
Metro director Michael Adams announced that, due to several "anal girls" being AWOL, he needed "colon volunteers". Rene Larue was one of the first to offer her butt. The girls that were scheduled to work, but didn't make the trip, were Danni Sexton, Bobbie Bliss, Blair and Melody Love. Metro's Quaserman aka, Mike McCormick, was particularly puzzled by Sexton, saying that she had $7,000-worth of work lined up for her in Mexico. Rumors circulated that Blair didn't go because she had an alleged run-in with one of the crew members several days earlier and didn't want to be anywhere near this guy south of the border.
On the bright side, there were no so-called secret meetings, talks about price fixing, no death threats and no Eddie Wedelstedt, all of which are part of the legend, now, of Cancun, Mexico. The Mexico we're talking about is out in the boonies, the beautiful boonies mind you, an incredible resort situated somewhere between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, on the Pacific Ocean side of Mexico. That somewhere requires, besides a three-hour plane ride, another three-and-a-half-hour bus ride to get to. The scenic excursion route takes you from the Puerto Vallarta airport and winds you, quite literally, through interminable curves of incongruous roadway.
"Wind" is not a word used casually, here. Jim Gunn, along for the ride to shoot internet footage for one of the vacation's sponsors, purehardcore.com told the story all week, in graphic detail, how he got sick on his bus. Mike McCormick commented, at one point, during the ride, "My buttocks are so numb, I could poop and not know it."
As butt-numbing Mexican hayrides go, at quick glance you might think you're taking a spin along Coldwater Canyon or one of the other scenic canyons that are part of the LA makeup. There's the Mexican equivalent of LA mansions dotted along the hills in the same way as you would see on Sunset Boulevard. And there are other resorts, white, gleaming and inviting, situated along the coastal waterways. There's one place called Night of the Iguana, which, one must assume, has relevance to the John Huston film.Then, comes unannounced stretches of dirt-poor poverty, stone shacks, old pick-up trucks and panting dogs with bones showing through their hides. To while away the time, Jurassic Park complete with Spanish subtitles is offered on the bus' TV monitor. Herschel Savage said he got to see Men In Black for the first time on his ride from the airport.
Brick Majors decides to take a snooze next to me with his legs wide open like an airport hangar, thus requiring my balls to be jammed into my groin as means of compensation for lack of space. Michael Adams suggests, laughingly, the best way to get along with Majors is to offer to oil his back in the gymnasium.
A darkness takes us into the final hour and a half to the destination. The resort itself has miles of its own private roadway before you even get to the front entrance. At which point, with the accompaniment of an eerie glow cast by the bus' headlights, McCormick began quoting chapter and verse from the Blair Witch Project using the spin about porno directors with their digital cameras. "And they were never seen again," McCormick intones solemnly.
Pre-recorded Mariachi music and a welcoming party headed by Chino, the Mexican equivalent of Kid Vegas, greets the bus. Director James Avalon and his crew had already been there several days and videotaped the arrival. The room assignments were already taken care of, requiring none of the taxing bullshit of having to check-in. You're given a room key to wear around your neck. That's it. The key quickly becomes your personal neck jewelry for the week. "What is your room, senor?" a bellboy quizzes me.
"61."
"Ah," he says and walks away. What did that mean. Ah? Another bellboy asks me the same question. Only this bellboy mutters something that lends the impression I'm located the next village over. "We will need the van, senor." Great. I am in the next village over. Turns out, I'm assigned a bungalow at the top of a hill, accessible by one of two means - said van, or a hike up 110 ascending steps that taxes the thigh muscles to screaming submission. Call it the Mexican equivalent of the Stair Master. I call it "the trail of woe".
When all were settled in their rooms, Stein gave a welcoming speech at the outdoor buffet. He said everyone was there to have a good time and suggested that buffoonery be kept to the quiet level of non-existence. I won't have any trepidations about sending someone home," Stein warned the gathering.
"I think I lost them when I said trepidation," Stein laughed after-the-fact. Stein, however, was true to his word. The first incident of the trip occurred in the resort's disco when one vacationer sucker-punched another in a manner that would make Mike Tyson blush. Naturally it was over an unidentified female. The orchestrator of the sucker punch was escorted to the airport. "I have zero tolerance for stuff like that," Stein said later.
