So there you have it: the story of a guy whose film career just happened to coincide with the beginning of the adult film industry. Perhaps I’ve written too much at this point. Perhaps I haven’t written enough. It has turned out to be quite a task to sit down and condense a whole life into a few hundred pages that some people might hopefully find interesting enough to read. I’ve been referred to as an icon and a legend so much in recent years that even I, myself, am beginning to believe it, but I really do know better. I’ve been called one of the pioneers of freedom of expression in contemporary cinema—that’s what it says on one of the Lifetime Achievement Awards that I received—but I don’t know at what point I abandoned my lofty ideals and started simply churning out the stuff that the paying public expected of a pornographer. I can offer no excuses because there are no excuses. I went into this thing, after all, with my eyes wide open. If I’ve made a mess of my life then there’s no one to blame for it but myself.
As you’ve probably concluded if you’ve read through this account of my life, I’m not really an intellectual, but I do have a certain degree of intelligence that allows me to get by. I’ve never been one to subscribe to abstract theories about life and why we do what we do. An intellectual female interviewer, whose name I shall not disclose, once asked me: “Do you see the women that you direct in your films as sexual objects?”
To which I replied, “No, I see them as people who, like me, are doing their best to make a living.”
After I started writing about myself, once I had determined that I was going to be brutally honest about what I had done in my life, I found it relatively easy to carry on. It was so simple to sit down and think back in time, calling forth in my mind’s eye things that had happened long ago that I had all but forgotten. I could even visualize the people and the situations and vividly recall what was done and said. The people I have known and worked with were all there in my memory, just waiting to be recalled. Writing this memoir has truly been enlightening. One can’t live their life in the past, but sometimes it can be fun to revisit it.
Interestingly enough, for me anyway, I have now come to realize that the happiest, most carefree time of my life was my childhood, and it was wonderful to relive all the joy and happiness of my childhood summers—invigorating, carefree days of youth when everything in life seemed so simple and easy and I felt as if I were immortal, able to do anything and everything. But now those days are long gone.
There is nothing more wonderful than having children and being there with them as they grow up. This satisfaction is an experience that I would not trade for anything in the world. I was blessed to have children who are now all grown up and have succeeded in life and who I am very proud of. But in my memory I still see them as the little children whom brought so much joy and pleasure into my life, not the adults that they have now become.
Those times seem to have passed all too quickly. But I consider myself extremely fortunate indeed. I’ve come to finally realize that I was loved unconditionally by my parents and my siblings, my wives and various women in my relationships, and finally and most importantly of all, my children. There seems to be too little love in the world these days, and I feel somewhat guilty because I have had the good fortune to be the recipient of so much of it.
Like many, I suppose, I was totally unprepared for old age. It crept up on me before I could even think about it, and one day I realized that it had just happened. Realization finally came when fast food places started automatically giving me the senior discount. I guess, to many of them, anybody over thirty is old enough to be considered a senior.
Having now passed the seventy-year-old mark, I’ve found that with each day more and more of the people that I’ve known or worked with have passed away. Many of them were much younger than me. I don’t know why I’m still here. I lead a relatively quiet life, but I still smoke and I still drink and occasionally I get the urge to go out and raise some hell. The only thing I can do, I suppose, is accept my old age gracefully. Life’s been one hell of a ride even though I never got around to becoming the millionaire I had set out to be when I was ten years old, but so what?
Times change, people change, and the old is replaced by the new. They say that with age comes wisdom. I’ve always wondered about that. Could I have possibly grown old without growing any wiser? It’s a distinct possibility. Getting old can bring you senior citizen discounts, but for better or worse the young people don’t seem to pay much attention to you anymore. But I’ve had my time in the sun and I’ve truly enjoyed it. I’ve lived life and life has been good to me. And someday, after I die, I hope that my ashes will be scattered over the Hanalei Valley on the island of Kauai. To me, this is as close as one can ever get to Paradise.
One thing I do hope is that this book will clear up the inaccurate information out there about me. Audiences and interviewers might have misunderstood some things that I said. For example, in my first interview with Cult Movies Magazine, I told the interviewer Coco Olson that I often used the name Robert Hussong as a pseudonym, but the publication claimed that was my real name. She had probably transcribed her notes incorrectly, and I thought nothing of this until I later saw that several other sources, in print and on the Internet, perpetuated this inaccuracy. I’ve never gotten around to correcting such things, so I’m just leaving it to this book to do so.
In some instances, I have embellished the stories I have been told about my ancestors and my parents with reconstructed dialogue that I imagine might have been spoken at the time. In the case of my own story, the dialogue that I have written is what I recall was said at the time, so please understand that the dialogue in this book may not be exact, but I believe it’s a pretty good approximation. If I’ve offended anyone with what I have written, I sincerely apologize. By the same token, if I’ve hurt or wronged anybody during the course of my life, all I can do now is apologize, ask their forgiveness, and try to move on.
Of course, what I remember now may not be the same as what others might remember. We each have our own individual way of interpreting the past. Each person has their own reality. What I have written here constitutes mine.
Now that I’m finished conjuring up the past, I can finally let it go and move on with the future. I suppose I’ve had a fairly interesting and rewarding life thus far, but somehow I have a distinct feeling that the best chapters are still yet to be written.