Not Your Ordinary Housewife

21





The crippling 40 per cent tax claimed its first bankruptcy casualties. Most remaining X-video industry operators downsized, including John Lark, who vacated his graphic production office where we’d first met.

Paul, however, saw this as an opportunity for expansion. We argued about the wisdom of this, but he refused to heed my advice. He maintained that John’s office was three times the size of the Shoe Box, that we were running out of room and needed the extra space for the magazine plus all the mail-order goodies.

‘Yeah, but it’s three times the rent,’ I countered. I feared he was making that classic mistake of business failure: expanding too rapidly. But he was determined and snickered with delight at the turn of events that saw us about to occupy John’s old office.

Sadly, it was a really ugly trait he had that allowed him to laugh at someone’s misfortune; his sadistic streak was scary. ‘Even if you think things, it’s not okay to gloat,’ I said. I reminded him that John had been very good to us—if not for him, we wouldn’t have been making the kind of money we were.

‘Yeah, I know,’ conceded Paul pensively, ‘but eight months ago we were still doing the strip shows—and now we’re turning over millions.’

‘Yeah, well, don’t forget—it’s profit, not turnover, that counts. There’s a big difference.’ Paul had always struggled with the fundamentals of accounting.

‘Anyway,’ he said cockily, ‘that’s why we have Flora . . . and why we need to hire more staff.’

So we moved from 8A to number 11 Molonglo Mall, installing pastel pink blinds to keep away prying eyes. We were luxuriating in space, with separate storage and despatch rooms, a kitchenette and enough space for a dozen desks. Paul hired five new staff, including a graphic designer, as the orders continued to flood in.

In what could only be described as unfortunate timing, in the middle of all this we received notification that the lease on our house was to be terminated. With just weeks to find a new home, we settled for a tiny townhouse in Lyneham—a serene suburb north of Parliament House.

As soon as the dust settled, Paul began work on Movie 3, utilising John’s professional editing suite. Again, no new material was shot. The first segment used that perennial favourite: schoolgirl lesbian, with old footage of me and Lexie. Paul was sure the clients would love the scene where we f*cked each other with whatever was at hand: cucumbers, vibrators, a champagne bottle and a strap-on. Then, Paul put together another sandwich segment from more old footage we’d shot with Archie at one of our first meetings: with his artistic eye, he had been a perfect choice for cameraman, and concluded my double penetration with Paul and Tim by inserting his own nine-and-a-half inches orally.

Lastly we used material from our early days at Anzac Parade. This final scene featured Sue Metzenrath, a brothel colleague with whom I’d become friendly. Active in the prostitutes’ collective, Scarlet Alliance, she was doing her masters in geochemistry and even had a species of fossil fish named after her—Bothriolepis metzenrathis. We’d already done a rehearsal of sorts when a client booked both of us for a bi session: pampering him, we took turns to deep throat him as he lay back savouring the moment. The shoot had also included Paul in a three-way, although that footage was to be saved for another movie. The highlight was a 69 scene, where Sue inserted the anal vibrator while simultaneously licking me.

When Paul had finished editing and it had been officially classified, the master was handed over to John’s duplicating warehouse. This time, we photocopied a yellow version of our cover, which by now had become our trademark. Meanwhile, he was frantically working on the second issue of Flesh, which was to be bigger and better than the inaugural issue.




‘I’ve got an idea,’ Paul said excitedly. ‘I want to do a Christmas promotion using photos from that shoot we did years ago with me in the Santa Claus suit.’

This had been one of the funniest shoots we’d ever done. It had been a hardcore session with me in my old school uniform and him in a Santa outfit, complete with beard and boots. Reminiscent of those typical yuletide shopping centre photos, we had had a professional backdrop and Christmas tree. I remembered the hilarity on the day, but I couldn’t imagine a photo of me having oral and anal sex with Paul in a Santa suit gracing many people’s mantelpieces.

However, Paul had decided it would be softcore for a change. The photo he had in mind showed me sitting demurely on his lap, cheekily lifting my dress to reveal my shaven p-ssy—my face displaying an expression of mock shock. ‘We’ll send it out with a letter promoting our “X-mas fun pack”—we can have toys for him and toys for her . . . and gift vouchers,’ he enthused.

The photo reproduced perfectly and inside the card was an ‘X-mas’ message from Nikki McNeil with my trademark signature. So, in early December, some tens of thousands of cards, together with the promotional newsletter, were sent from the mailing house to our list. We waited for the response.

As always, the reaction was massive and we worked round the clock to despatch the orders in time for Christmas. Invariably, the clients loved our card and I was getting all manner of presents in response.

Tanya called me to her desk and handed me two overflowing in-trays: one she’d labelled Nikki Must Answer and the other Special Requests. She picked at random from the former, telling me that most of them just needed a quick thank you for whatever they’d sent me—everything from cash donations to pink condoms. ‘I could whip up a form letter if you like,’ Tanya suggested.

But I thought we should stick with the individual touch; after all, that was what made the business so successful. Besides, some of them were very personal. I read about how lonely one man was since his wife died; another had meticulously covered his envelope with exquisite pencil drawings of tattoo-style hearts and roses with a scroll saying Nikki forever. Many had given me their life stories; they were writing to me as a friend, often confiding secrets and sharing fears. Somehow, Paul’s marketing of me was eliciting a very personal response. ‘I have to reply to them,’ I said.

Tanya told me how I’d also received numerous offers of accommodation. ‘There’s one guy who sounded really sweet—where is it? . . .’ She riffled through the letters and pulled out one to show me. He wanted to fly me to Queensland so I could stay in his flat. ‘“Darling Nikki, how I’d love to feel you in my arms right now,”’ she read from the child-like script, wrapping her arms around herself with a blissful expression on her face. ‘“I could show you a great time without overstretching my pension.”’

Pension? Obviously he couldn’t afford this. He’d also sent me a horny story. ‘Oh, God, not another one,’ I thought, knowing I never had time to read them all.

‘Now, here’s by far the biggest pile.’ Tanya produced a wad of letters held together with a large bulldog clip. ‘These are guys who’ve given you a sob story about how their wife “doesn’t understand”.’

I never really knew what to say to such men, except just commiserate.

‘Most of them are whingeing that their wives don’t want to f*ck them any more.’

‘Yeah . . . seems to be a common problem,’ I said ponderingly.

In truth, it was an utterly farcical situation. Paul’s marketing of me as the Horny Housewife was so successful that clients were turning to me for advice on how to remedy their sexless marriages. Of course, our own marriage was consistently celibate, aside from trying to have a child, but I was nevertheless conflicted. Was I duplicitous in perpetuating the Horny Housewife persona, or was I merely feeding them the fantasy they craved? Wasn’t it a form of acting that most porn stars learn to do? I was, after all, seemingly making many men happy while simultaneously providing my family with an income. Although it would have meant instant death for the business, I longed to tell them the truth.

The other office staff gathered around Tanya as she read out some of the special requests amid squeals of laughter. There was everything from nipple and p-ssy weights to Lycra body suits and crotchless body stockings. There was a guy in Bundaberg who wanted baby clothes and plastic pants for himself.

‘Oh, no.’ I thought immediately of Donald and his penchant for all things infantile. ‘Apparently there’s a shop in London . . .’

‘And there’s a whole heap of guys who want your everyday knickers . . . not G-strings,’ added Tanya.

‘Yeah, panty-sniffers can be very fussy,’ I lamented. ‘We just can’t cater to all that.’

‘And you’ll love this one,’ said Tanya, reading from a typed letter on a plumber’s letterhead. ‘“Next time you cum, could you get a piece of paper and slap it against your cunt slit and give me a lasting impression of your hot box? I’m sure it would be worth framing.”’ Tanya took the letter and rubbed it against her crotch in mock imitation of an orgasm. We all collapsed in fits of giggles.

‘I’ll have to tell Paul to stop saying we can source all this weird stuff,’ I said.

Unsurprisingly, we were getting an unprecedented number of contributions to Flesh: cartoons and articles, but mostly horny stories. One in particular grabbed my attention: called Sex Invaders, it was a six-page sci-fi porn story. I didn’t even know there was such a genre. It had everything, from alien abductions, airlocks and a giant space dog to little green men with exploding nine-inch penises. Tanya started reading out one of the bits I’d underlined. ‘“After an orgy of tits and twats, the alien queen pleasured her victim with an electric toothbrush.”’

We all laughed hysterically. It certainly made a welcome change from the usual ‘You’re so hot, I wanna f*ck your brains out’ type of letter.



Paul was working furiously on issue 3. It was now 40 pages, four of which were full colour. This allowed for a centrefold (a still from Movie 3) and an accompanying horny story titled ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, in which I allegedly get seduced by two bisexual women at a swinger’s party.

For the first time, Flesh was sold in adult bookstores around the country—with a cover price of just under five dollars. It now had 169 contact ads, with accompanying raunchy photos making up the vast bulk of the magazine. All our advertisers were genuine, unlike some publications that placed fake ads in order to collect the reply money. We would still be giving it away free to Fun Club members so, apart from the reply money—five dollars for one reply or ten dollars for as many as they liked—we were reliant on video and merchandise sales to make it break even. Paul redrew many of the diagrams for the sex toys and transvestite wear, and was offering a range of new bedroom goodies. Paul’s blurb for a hospital-grade enema kit had me in stitches: It won’t leak—ideal for picnics.

As part of the expanded ‘Latex Lovers’ range, Paul sourced a wide variety of blow-up dolls, including a transsexual doll—never before released in Australia—and a ‘Wonder Wanda’ doll— looking like Wonder Woman, complete with funky headband. He excelled himself with his humorous blurbs: If the missus has a headache, whip out your inflatable date and never know the difference. (Sorry—that’s degrading to women. There is a difference: dolls can’t cook.) Likewise, his male doll copywriting made me cackle: Bring a man into your life with Big John. He doesn’t snore, he doesn’t dribble and he doesn’t expect you to wash his dirty underwear. He has two orifices and a constantly erect eight-and-a-half-inch vibrating penis. The perfect lover.


We were being deluged with responses to Paul’s call for people to star in porn movies. With numerous hopefuls—all men—on file already, he sought to dampen the response: Unless you’re extremely well hung, exceptionally good-looking, black, or a pre-op transsexual, don’t bother writing in—please. He did note, however, that we were interested in buying any amateur Aussie action footage, but put in a caveat: Please don’t send us footage of a single bloke masturbating (we’ve received enough of that already).

Meanwhile, I was still concerned that we weren’t keeping up with things. I told Paul we needed a new in-tray, for fetish requests. There were clients wanting us to source stuff on everything from nipples and breastfeeding to tickling and foot fetishes. We’d had a client with a hairy-arm fetish and another who liked only longhaired ladies; others wanted stuff on panty wetting and, incredibly, navels. I showed him a recent letter requesting Tied and Tickled magazine, plus tapes entitled Dungeon of Sir Michael, Spanked TV in Training and Milady’s Toilet Slave. ‘Just stop encouraging them,’ I urged.

But Paul saw it as proof that the clients trusted us. ‘Besides, it keeps them reading Flesh.’

Some Australian navy guys deployed in the Gulf War sent us HMAS Darwin T-shirts; presumably it was in appreciation for all the porn I’d sent them. I’d been writing to a few: apparently, there were plenty of blue movies on board, but they were wearing out from overuse. They’d written about how lonely they were, but they also sent me a photo of themselves on their gun mount; next to each neatly labelled name was the corresponding penis size—obviously for my benefit.

Paul later added a special section in Flesh titled ‘Hello Sailor’, while I continued to correspond with my Persian Gulf penpals.



Paul was still awash with ideas. He was organising Australia-wide swingers’ parties with a party hotline, working on a movie treatment entitled Shooting Porn for Fun and Profit: A step by step guide and writing new scripts for the 0055 Housewife Hotline, which I subsequently recorded. We also used the 8-track recorder to tape Paul’s script for what he humorously called ‘Home Grown Moans’. This was a 32-minute audio cassette of a male-female-male threesome story, complete with sound effects and a soft sell for our Housewife products. Duplicated en masse in John’s plant, Paul promoted it as ‘a raunchy recording—perfect for your car or Walkman’. I was having trouble keeping up with his boundless energy and creative genius.

Paul also commissioned the manufacture of what was effectively a cattle prod: a battery-operated dual-control masturbation aid he called ‘The Pulsator’. Bongo, our friendly Australia Post employee, and Paul designed the gadget with separate controls for pulse rate and frequency of electrical current. Bongo was a dab hand at electronics and carved out a profitable sideline supplying these portable pulsed-signal generators. Paul described it this way in Flesh: by taping one electrode to the base of the penis and the other behind the balls, the current flows through the prostate gland with an ‘unworldly’ effect, causing powerful hard-ons. Apparently it had a similar effect to electric devices used by stock breeders to arouse a reluctant bull’s interest in sex. Paul then warned consumers that it was a novelty only and ‘should never be used above the waist or by persons fitted with pacemakers’.

Meanwhile, Paul took time out to purchase some items for our new office. He returned from a shopping spree.

‘Guess what? I’ve bought a safe.’ We could finally store all our negs and master tapes without fear of them being stolen. ‘It’s fireproof, too.’

I watched as four burly men unloaded a huge safe from a truck. He’d also bought a bedroom suite.

‘What the hell do we need that for?’ I queried.

‘So the office can double as a location for our next movie,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s fully tax deductible—I’ve checked it with Deloittes.’ He explained that the Japanese-themed bed and manchester were very classy and the matching rice-paper shoji screens would hide the cinder-block walls.

‘Great,’ I said sarcastically. ‘We’ll have a porno film set in the corner of the office.’

‘Well, think of it this way—if you get tired, you can have a nap.’

Paul said that, for starters, we needed to redo the polaroid for the knickers: ‘I’ll take a colour slide of you masturbating on the bed, and we’ll use this to reproduce it.’ He pulled out a box labelled Slide Duplicator, telling me how it was on special at Fletchers. Apparently, it could spit out multiple polaroids from one transparency. ‘So now you don’t have to pose for individual shots.’

‘So long as I still put on my lipstick kiss and sign them.’

‘Yeah, yeah, don’t worry—we’ll still have the personal touch,’ he continued excitedly. ‘And I’ve ordered a shredder.’ Some salesman at the safe shop had previously worked for ASIO and could get one cheaply. So we’d have the same shredder as ASIO, which appealed to Paul’s sense of humour. He pulled out a sample from a plastic bag in his shirt pocket.

‘Here, have a look at this,’ he said, rubbing the fine fibres between his forefingers. ‘It spits out shreddings one millimetre wide.’ But I felt it was overkill—I didn’t think anyone was going through our rubbish.

‘We owe it to our clients to protect their privacy,’ Paul argued, ‘plus it’ll be perfect as pulp for your papermaking hobby.’ He had an uncanny ability to justify anything when it came to spending money, and always systematically overcame every objection I could raise.

He then decided to lease himself a late-model BMW, ignoring my protestations that we could make do. ‘Besides, I don’t feel right about driving around in a BMW,’ I said, explaining that they’d used slave labour during the war and manufactured engines for the Luftwaffe. If he wanted to get a second car, I thought it should be another Volvo. ‘The Swedes have an excellent war record.’

‘Yeah, well, the Israelis buy Mercedes tanks from the Germans, and they were the official car of the SS . . . so I think we can buy a Beamer,’ said Paul persuasively.

‘Yeah, yeah, you have an answer for everything.’ The fact was we couldn’t afford it.

‘Well, if it makes you happy, I’ll buy a Volvo for the office staff.’

So we acquired two cars, neither of which we could afford, in the space of two weeks. Paul proudly showed off his shiny red BMW, driving around with the sunroof open.

As if never satisfied, he also ordered a slate-base pool table with a professional pool cue. After discussing this purchase at length with Danny from Deloittes, he told me how it could be a legitimate tax deduction: it would come under props for movies—so long as we shot some footage actually on top of it.

However hectic Paul’s schedule was, he always found time to visit his confidante, Dr Roland. I accompanied him on one such visit, to confirm what I suspected: my second pregnancy.

I was overjoyed at this turn of events and, predictably, Paul was ecstatic.

‘Well, maybe we can do some pregnant porn.’ He chuckled. ‘I hear there’s quite a market for that.’