The Internet truly traverses time, its information shifting effortlessly from the present to the past and the future with a few clicks of a mouse. For example, I've been reading a lot of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's work of late, so I Googled him and, inexplicably, came across the name Suzi Suzuki. Yes, that Suzi Suzuki (aka Cherry Blossom), the now retired Japanese pornstar I met years ago at the 1998 East Coast Video Show (ECVS) when Scott "Unpainted" Huffines and I were in Atlantic City to shoot an episode of our defunct public access TV show, Atomic TV.
1 Degree of Separation:
Suzi Suzuki and Kookie Haruki
It's Cherry Blossom Time
Turns out the Tokyo-born Suzi Suzuki has read every one of Murakami's books, so she turns up in a Google search (honest, I wasn't looking up porn when I ran across her name! Well, not this time...). (A Google search also turns up a German music DJ named Suzi Suzuki, which is yet another odd coincidence.) It shouldn't have surprised me that she was familiar with the quirky writer many call a literary David Lynch, as I remember that Suzi was one of the most intelligent and culturally sophisticated women I had ever met (plus both are considered "outsiders," Suzi for being an adult film star and Murakami for being a Westernized pop writer living apart from the Tokyo writers clique). For that reason alone, aside from her "body" (34C-24-36) of work, she is my all-time fave pornstar - and one of the nicest people I've ever met, period.
Let me stand next to your fire: Tom (moi) and Suzi at ECVS '98.
Suzi raises her cups to join me in a toast at Planet Hollywood.
If You Knew Suzi Like I Knew Suzi...
As our cameraman cinematically ogled her, I was discussing the films of Takeshi Kitano and Akira Kurosawa with her, as well as writers Edogawa Rampo and Yukio Mishima and J-Pop bands like Pizzicato Five and Puffy. Yes, the star of such genre films as Asian Trashy Ass, Anal Hanky Panky, Yin Yang Oriental Love Bang, Suzi Bungholee-0 and The Twin Peaks of Mount Fuji, was a surprisingly well-read bookworm with a sophisticated ear for music, a cineaste's eye for quality arthouse movies and a charismatic conversationalist. OK, I did find time to frolic and mug for the camera with her, as well (as pictured below). Yes, I know: most shameful and regrettable behavior on my part.
Nurse Suzi gives a prostate exam (top) while Dr. Tom checks for hemorrhoids (bottom)
Incredibly charismatic, Suzi - the only authentic Japanese woman working in American hardcore at the time - became the unofficial star of our 1998 porn convention episode, an episode that aired on Baltimore public access TV but, to date, has never been released on video or DVD (probably for the best for the reputation of the now-retired Ms. Suzuki, who resides in San Francisco).
Scott, Suzi and Tom at Atlantic City's Planet Hollywood
Motley Crew: Atomic TV's Scott Huffines, cameraman Chris "the Plumber" Jensen, and Tom put the squeeze on Suzi.
Anonymous man (left) also tries to put the squeeze on Suzi, taking advantage of sudden photo op.
This was the year at ECVS that I got violently ill from food poisoning (probably from an ill-advised dining experience at Hooters) and spent an entire night retching into the toilet. The Atomic TV crew joked that had I had intestinal fortitude, I could have had sex with Suzi, who seemed to like me. After all, we hung out with her at the ECVS Planet Hollywood party, where I gave her a foot massage (her feet were sore from walking around all day in her "red f***-me pumps")...
Suzi puts her best foot forward...
and Tom takes the hint, one heel playing footsy with another's
...and she later invited us to an after-hours, invitation-only "insider's" porn party. We escorted her up the Boardwalk to the hotel and...
There we met Ron Jeremy and other adult film industry stars. Many of the female stars there asked me for foot massages on Suzi's recommendation. (Like Suzi, they all had sore feet from walking around in heels all day! Other appendages would get sore later, as the party later turned into a photo/video shoot with the crabby Christy Lake in the adjoining bedroom...but that's another story for another time). Scott likes to remind me that this was my foot fetish phase, well-documented on Atomic TV.
While foot massage trainee Scott Huffines observes, Tom files down an anonymous porn starlet's bunions
"Next!": Another starlet places her foot in the lap of luxury while a line forms to the right.
Tom toes the line for Blondie.
Seeing all the women lining up for foot massages, this copycat decided to horn in on my porn-podiatry business
Anyway, I ended up getting sick, which was probably for the best, because as far as potential romantic liasons with pornstars go, I had a girlfriend at the time and, besides, the Fan Sex (aka "Play Dates") with Suzi Suzuki story has already been written - see Peter Davis' "My Date with Suzi Suzuki" article in 2001 for Salon.com. magazine.
I recall exchanging contact information with her and she gave me a signed copy of her cabaret/jazz torch songs CD, Looking for Louis (1995, F. Stop Four Records), with the dedication: "Tom and Atomic TV, Enjoy my voice, too." Yes, besides her obvious oral skills as an adult film star and as a polylingual tongue-fu master (she's fluent in Japanese, English and German), Suzi also sings. In fact, she's released three albums. She sings mostly in English (or Engrish, as the case may be) on Looking for Louis, whose title I suspect is a reference to Ol' Satchmo, Louis Armstrong.
Front cover of Looking for Louis
Back cover of Looking for Louis
Liner notes for Looking for Louis
According to her liner notes for Looking for Louis, she became a professional singer when she was 18 years old (as Suzi was born on May 3, 1972, this would place her singing debut around 1990), singing in Tokyo night clubs and loving the thrill of singing in front of live audiences. Maybe this is where she got the exhibitionist bug that enabled her later to perform sex acts before a camera crew. Here are her liner notes:
I was born in Tokyo, Japan but I spent my early childhood in Germany. I've always had an interest in many different languages because German was really the first language I had to learn how to speak. I became a professional singer when I was eighteen years old and started to sing in Tokyo clubs. I was working in the clubs that made me love live audiences. I'll do just about anything to be in front of a live audience!
Music expresses every mood the human soul experiences. As a voccalist I interpret songs that contain messages in new or traditional ways. I change the rhythm for impact and sing in more than one language, essentially to encourage and entertain. Sometimes we're blue and sometimes we're happy and sometimes we can change our feelings just by listening to music from blues to happiness.
This album included a cover version of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," which I thought was a rather ironic song title choice given her career choice at that time; I think the self-deprecating singer was in on the joke, as she also included versions of "Love For Sale" and "The Lady Is a Tramp." We later used her version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" for Atomic TV's 1999 holiday special episode, "Underdog Battles Satan Claus." "Calypso Shower," which Suzi wrote herself, was later included on the 1999 compilation CD Porn To Rock.
She later sent me a very professional thank you letter thanking Atomic TV for interviewing her, thanking me for "the sexy foot massage," and mentioning that she sometimes visited the East Coast between New York and the Washington, D.C. area and to give her a call (was this a hint to hang out or did she think Atomic TV was an adult film production company she could shoot some scenes for? The mind boggles.). Anyway, I later got postcard and a Christmas card that, in the holiday spirit of giving, also contained some nude pictures of her slipping out of a kimono. The photos were apparently taken by her photog husband, so it was almost like one of those family Christmas cards you get in which people give you a recap of the their year.Subsequent to writing this piece, I learned how little I really know about Suzi. I learned that not only did Suzi sing and read Murakami novels, but that she has many more interesting hobbies and interests. Like bichon frisé dogs, collecting Navajo Indian rugs and Southwestern art, and creating and selling Japanse dolls made out of wool and cotton.
Suzi retired from the business and shut down her website in 2004, leaving this parting message on her website:
"After a lot of thinking about it I have decided that I want to close my web site for the time being. There are a lot of reasons but the one that is most important is that I made a promise to myself about seven years ago that I would only do the adult business, the video and the pictures, for five years and at the end of the five years I would stop. Well it is now about seven years and I think it is a good time to stop."
As I recalled my experiences with Suzi Suzuki, it got me to thinking about the other adult film stars I had met over the years at the ECVS in Atlantic City. Like Samantha Sterlyng and Stephanie Swift who, like Suzi, were two of the smarter cookies in this biz (maybe it's something to do with porn stars whose initials are "SS," I dunno). Those reminiscences go back a good 8-10 years, which is like counting dog years for a porn stars. Most of the women have retired from the industry (nothing makes you feel older than realizing that the youthful porn stars of yore are retired). I realized how little I really know about these people, who have a depth most of us will never know, perhaps because the very nature of pornography is to objectify and de-personalize to the point of abstractness. I mean, once you start thinking about someone as someone's daughter, or sister, or mother, they become more like what they are - real people - and less like fantasy objects.
Samantha Sterlyng
I had been thinking about Samantha because one day at Daedelus Books I was thumbing through a photography book called Pornoland- the photos weren't much to write home about but the accompanying essay by novelist Martin Amis was pretty good (especially the interview in which John "Buttman" Stagliano explains the popularity of anal sex in three simple words: "Pussies are bullshit!") - and the last picture in the book was an uncredited Samantha Sterlyng. I instantly remembered she spelled her last name funny, recalling that she spelled it with a Y because, in her words (making an inverted peace sign and then flicking her tongue between it), "That's my favorite place to eat - at the Y."I remember meeting Samantha several times at the East Coast Video Show in Atlantic City, the last time being in October of 2001, just one month after 9/11. She stood out in my mind because she bore an uncanny resemblance to a Texas blonde I used to work (and have a brief, awkard romantic involvement) with. We were filming an Atomic TV episode focusing on Black Porn Stars - our "Black History Month" episode that aired in February 2002 (also, alas, never released on video or DVD) - and Atomic TV gal reporter Stella Gambino and I were interviewing Chaos, the New Orleans-based star of a video production called Ghetto Booty. Samantha Sterlyng was signing photos and box covers in the booth right next to Chaos, and wandered over to do a station ID for us. When I asked her what was new, she directed the camera to her chest, where she had just had some "fun bags" installed. I recall that she let me feel her new boobies to verify their craftsmanship. I feel stupid now, because I subsequently found out she developed some health problems (more on that shortly) - who knows if the two were related.
When I subsequently Googled her, I found a Wikipepdia entry that informed me of her retirement from the biz in 2004 and how she got her RN in nursing. But what really threw me that was I never realized she was a local yokel - born in Hagerstown, Maryland (April 1, 1978), and presently living in West Virginia. Or that her attempt to reenter the biz has been twarted by endometriosis and ovararian cysts (I wonder if her medical problems were caused by being in the biz in the first place). On her MySpace page, called "Ask Samantha," she's even posted this "Support Sam" announcement to accept donations and emotional support:
Her MySpace blog discusses her illness in detail:
I have debated on whether or not to make a post but I feel that it is something that I want to share with you:
I am having my second surgery on Friday August 10th for ovarian cysts (1 of which has a high possibility of being cancerous and is rare in women under 50) which is also complicated by Endometriosis- a disease of the female reproductive organs which causes pain, painful intercourse and possible infertility all due to scar tissue formation.
I am sharing this with you because it seals my fate and now guarantees my return to the business will be short lived.....Many of you have been asking how you can help so I wanted to post this information for those who were asking:
Paypal donations can be made to samanthasterlyng@yahoo.com and Blank Money Orders can be sent to PO Box 657 Shepherdstown Wv 25443.
I want to thank all of you for your support over the past few years. It has been my pleasure to meet some of you! You can also support me with clip purchases or posters...
In 2007, Samantha released a viral video called "Samantha Does the Bush Administration," proving her mind was still sound even if her body was 'illin':
Stephanie Swift
AVN's 1997 Performer of the Year, Stephanie Swift (born Melody Clark on February 7, 1972 in Louisiana) also retired from the biz in 2004 at the relatively advanced age of 32. A scant two years later, Stephanie was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame - an old-timer at age 34. A self-proclaimed "mutt" in terms of ethnicity (Cajun, Irish, English, French, Spanish, Filipino and Norwegian), her dark hair and almond eyes gave her a slightly Asian look, enabling her to be marketed to the Asian porn niche. Since she also wears glasses, she also turned up in a lot of the popular girls-in-glasses fetish videos and DVDs. Perhaps because of the glasses and her intelligent demeanor, she was often cast as the good girl bookworm or, as Wikipedia phrased it, the "prim and proper professional woman who goes bad."
A Good Girl goes Bad, Swiftly
Scott and I first saw her in Gregory Dark's 1996 masterpiece Sex Freaks, in which she had sex with a circus clown, and subsequently met her at the 1997 ECVS convention in Atlantic City.
According to her Wikipedia entry, "Despite a lack of new releases, she still has an official website and makes appearances on the exotic dancing circuit as a featured performer, thanks largely to her notoriety and built-in fanbase from her adult film days."
Digging through my old video tapes, I came across an E! Channel trip to the Cannes Film Festival co-hosted by E! darling Jenna Jameson. This must have been sometime between 1996 - the year Jenna won Best New American Starlet at the Hot D'Or Awards in Cannes (the European adult industry's version of the US's AVN Awards and a porn version of both Cannes' Palm D'Or and Hollywood's Academy Awards) - and 1998, when Jenna won Best American Actress for a Wicked Pictures feature about horny fire fighters (I think the latter, because Stacy Valentine - future star of Christine Fugate's doc The Girl Next Door - was also there to pick up Best New American Actress). One of Jenna's gal pals along for the porn celeb junket was Stephanie Swift (Serenity - who also did some E! broadcasting work - was also along for the trip). Stephanie was never mentioned by name, but it looked like they shared the same room and she turned up in a lot of footage with Jenna, especially clubbing and at parties.
She must like to party with celebs, because an animated version of Steph and Cheech Marin smoking a doobie turns up in the YouTube video "Cheech and Steph Sharing One":
Bizarre!
Anyway, my memories of Stephanie are of her talking about her love of Scooby Doo (she had a cute Scooby watch on one year) and her hatred of George W. Bush. The latter was far from knee-jerk adult industry liberalism; it was thoughtful and deep-felt. I was impressed by her awareness. Stephanie stood out for possessing a swift mind in an industry not especially known for deep thinking (AIDS? who's gonna get that?). I gotta dig up that footage because a fully clothed Stephanie Swift ranting against the Bush Administration contains more heat and passion than any of her naked hardcore work. Maybe because it's heartfelt and real. Or maybe I've just reached the age when politics turn me on more than scantily clad young women. After all, the brain is the sexiest part of anybody's body.
Related Links:
Suzi Suzuki (Wikipedia)
Samantha Sterlyng (Wikipedia)
Stephanie Swift (Wikipedia)
Samantha Sterlyng's MySpace Page
Stephanie Swift's Official Website
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