3 is not a Crowd

GRACE: I didn’t know this and neither did anybody else. And so as far as what I wanted to do with my life, well, I guess I didn’t think about it. I got through school and I drifted. The Coast, and then New York.

I was a pretty girl who put out. It’s very easy to drift when that’s what you are. There are always men around to do things for you. And it’s no hassle to make money. I was always lazy, you know, I had nothing in particular I was good at, no job I was interested in. No career, you know. And I don’t think it ever occurred to me that what I ought to do was go out and get a job. I mean, what for?

But for a girl who will do things there’s no need. Like pose for sex pictures. If you’ve got a fair face and figure you can make fifty dollars in a couple of hours of posing. You don’t even have to ball anybody. The photographer will generally make a pass if he’s straight, and I would ball him or not depending how I felt about him, but if you didn’t that didn’t mean you lost the work. It was optional — you do it if you want.

And you can get work in movies. I mean the sexploitation films, the nudies and “beavers” and like that. Let’s face it, I’m not an actress. I’m pretty pathetic, I can’t stand to see myself on the screen because of the way I deliver a line. Like completely wooden. But in these films it doesn’t make that much difference if you can act or not. The major parts, it helps, but there are always loads of minor parts for girls and they don’t expect Katharine Hepburn. You walk around with your clothes off, you pet, you pretend to be screwing—

WANDA: Don’t they ever really screw?

GRACE: Well, as a matter of fact, some of the sexploitation producers do insist that you actually screw, although they don’t show it on camera. There are certain things they can’t show, like a male with an erection, for example. They can show a penis but not if it’s erect.

PETER: Talk about castration complexes.

GRACE: The producers say this gives realism even if they don’t show it on screen. Now nobody believes this. Sometimes I think it’s easier to look as though you’re screwing if you’re not. But they get certain kicks this way. Watching, or some of them will act in their own films.

In the stag films, of course, anything goes. I’ve been in, I think, it’s six of them. What they call hardcore pornography. I have a print of one, I ought to run it for you sometime.

So this is what I did. I started off living with a guy in the city and when he split I kept the place myself. Just a couple of rooms in the East Village. The rent was like thirty dollars a month. Cheap. If I went a month without working it was no big deal. I would work for a couple of days and make a couple of hundred and that would last me a long time.

Sometimes I think that with my attitude it’s a wonder I didn’t start tricking. That I never became a whore. I did once go to bed with a man specifically for money. That was when I was living with a musician in L.A. and he said that this man had come on to him and wanted to ball me, that he would give me twenty dollars. I didn’t need the money but this man I was with, he wanted me to do it. He said he dug the whole idea, just that I should do it once. I did it to please him. It was no big deal to me one way or the other. Afterward he gave me the twenty and my man and I went right out to spend it. We spent the whole twenty on a tie for him and a scarf for me. I don’t know what happened to the scarf. I must have left it somewhere, I haven’t seen it in years.

The party scene, the orgies, it was natural that I would start getting involved with that. I was the type of girl you could invite to an orgy and figure she would probably go along with it. Just a typical stupid cunt without a thought in her head, and that nobody had to give a thought to.

PETER: The night we met. It was a small party, I think four couples and two extra girls. It’s so rare to find extra girls at those sets. That’s the way everybody I prefers it, but usually it winds up the other way around, with extra men. A man can’t get in without a girl — girls are called tickets in some circles — but sometimes a man will bring a girl who doesn’t know what kind of a party it’s going to be, and she leaves, and then you can’t really throw him out.

I’m getting away from the point. Well. I went to this set, got there a little late, and I walked into the room and looked around. Things were in the undressed-but-not-balling stage. People were sitting around talking, and on one couch I saw Grace talking to a guy with a beard. She was playing with him in a sort of casual way.

It was love at first sight.