The Secret Lives of Hyapatia Lee Read online

  “The Secret Lives

  of

  Hyapatia Lee”

  by Hyapatia Lee

  Copyright © 2000 by Hyapatia Lee

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 1-58721-906-9

  ISBN: 978-1-4208-9773-9 (eBook)

  1stBooks-rev. 10/06/00

  About the Book

  The world is fascinated by sex and the sex industry. In the last 20 years we have seen X-rated movies go from a theater in the worst part of town to our own VCRs and on the menu of expensive hotels as in-room entertainment. Its stars have gone from being virtual unknowns in the early 70’s to doing appearances on Jay Leno and television talk shows. The adult film business has grown by leaps and bounds. In 1984 alone more people rented or bought an X-rated movie than voted for Ronald Regan.

  In this book I have given the reader an uncensored, inside look at all the workings of the sex industry from movies and magazines to men’s clubs and all the emotions that go along with it. By reading these excerpts from my personal diary, I share with you the anger, elation, sadness and fear that have comprised my life. I give an inside look at the many famous people I’ve met and their personal quirks. As the first Native American porn star, I show you how this line of work is seen in the eyes of my religion and culture and I share some of the healing ceremonies I have experienced.

  Why would a young woman decide to get into such a business? What is it like to make an X-rated movie or to dance nude on stage in a gentlemen’s club? Many women say it is empowering. What kind of lives did these women have before entering the world of X? Why do they say it increases their self-esteem? Is it REALLY healthy emotionally? Why have five of my colleagues committed suicide? What’s it like when your friends (and the Godmother of your children) are dropping like flies? Why would a sexually abused and abandoned child decide of her own free will to make X-rated movies and how could this possibly be a healing experience? Is it really?

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  IN THE BEGINNING

  BACK HOME

  PLEASE GOD, NOT AGAIN!

  BUD

  THE MICHIGAN CIRCUIT

  MY FIRST MOVIE

  BECOMING A PORN STAR

  LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

  ONWARD AND UPWARD

  SHAUNA GRANT

  AND BABY MAKES THREE

  MEGAN LEIGH

  DIVORCE

  AIDS IN THE BUSINESS

  MY FIRST CD, ROCKIN’’ AND ROLLIN’ IN LA

  MORE SUICIDES

  SUNDANCE

  UPIN SMOKE

  THE END

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  I have done many exciting things in my life. Quite a few of them could be considered controversial by some people’s standards. Most people find it difficult to understand why someone might do something they themselves would never do. That is one of the reasons for this book. Another is to give the reader an insider’s point of view of the workings of the adult film industry and the businesses that surround it, such as the adult magazine and nightclub businesses. There are many opinions on all sides of these topics and it is rare that a female performer is able to give her uncensored opinion about her experiences with them.

  After well over a decade working in these fields I have seen some pretty amazing things, some frightening, some awe-inspiring, and some tragic. I hope to expose many misconceptions and explain why so many people do the strange sexual things they do. I believe no one should ever judge another, but perhaps by hearing these true stories of the intimate workings of people’s lives, you can start to understand what it means to be a product of these histories. Since all actions are merely reactions, I hope that as you read about my life, you will see why I acted as I did and why others who experience similar situations might behave in the ways they do. One never makes decisions without being influenced by things that have happened in the past, whether it is a conscious overview, or one that occurs spontaneously.

  Cycles continue, and unless we are aware of the cycles that led to our current position, we are bound to unknowingly repeat them.

  It is often hard, if not out right impossible, to understand other people’s actions when their life is so different from yours and their decisions so far from what you might choose for yourself. If you truly want to understand it, you must first commit to having an open mind and secondly, you must try to understand how we are all products of our past and just what that really means.

  It is proven scientific facts that newborn babies who are given all the food, warmth and physical care they need die without love and affection. The medical term for such a death is “Failure to Thrive”. The human need, not desire, but absolute need for survival, to be held, talked lovingly to, smiled at and treasured, last long past infancy. Is it any wonder our elders who have been abandoned in nursing homes, not the ones who are remembered and visited, but the forgotten ones, die so soon?

  This book is about humanity, what society has done to our humanness and the on-going ramifications of separating the mental, physical and emotional aspects of a human being. We are living in a pain and death denying society. No one wants to admit fear, pain and sorrow. We are told to “get over it” and to “get on with our lives”, as though sadness and grieving are not a part of life. A buried emotion eats away at the inside. It festers until one day it explodes. How many times have we heard “You’re blowing this out of proportion”? How many times has a small splinter turned into an ugly infection, stomach pain to an ulcer, discomfort to cancer? A broken bone never properly set and left alone to heal itself, is never the same, never completely healed back to its former self. It may be painful to prosecute child molesters in the immediate family, or to admit our mistakes or put a child’s needs first before an adult’s desires, but the ramifications of denying such things are far reaching, “Unto seven generations”, my people say.

  Life is not a fair game. The good and honest are stricken with tragedies, the innocent children are sometimes born into a world of famine or abuse, thieves and murderers sometimes go free. No matter what God you pray to or how hard you try to believe that you are special and protected, there is nothing to save you from some mad man’s bullet. If your belief system were that tragedy is God’s way of testing you, why would a loving God test his innocent ones, especially children, to the point of death and broken spirit and body? The God I believe in does not wish pain and suffering on His/Her Children. How then, do you protect yourself from the shit that just happens? Not all of it is random, let’s do what we can to stop the cycle of pain and destruction of lives, and when we can’t stop it, let us doall we can to help those who have been touched by it, to heal, in any way they can.

  I have changed the names of many people in this book to protect both them and myself.

  IN THE BEGINNING

  The elders say that after death, a soul goes back to the Great Round. Years are spent reviewing ones lives and the lessons learned and all that is still to be learned on the road to enlightenment. The soul, knowing what is needed next on its path, chooses a womb to jump into. The elders say this happens in the fourth month of pregnancy.

  At birth, the Angel of Forgetfulness touches us under the nose and above the upper lip and we forget all about our past lives and time spent in the Great Round.

  This concept has at its heart, responsibility; responsibility for one’s life and the opportunities for growth and wisdom along the way. Adversity is a character builder. Those who are never challenged do not
know their strength. Those who live in perpetual comfort don’t exercise their soul to its fullest potential. Therefore, the more progress a soul wishes to make, the more challenging the environment it chooses. (I must’ve wanted to learn everything at once!) This gives power back to the person whose life is in question. The soul has chosen these opportunities for growth. It is of course, up to the individual whether a challenge will actually promote growth and enlightenment or crush ones spirit.

  This concept does not negate a newborn child’s innocence. All children are born pure, not carrying the mistakes of their past lives or their ancestors. The mistakes of the other dances (lives) have already been learned and atoned for in the Great Round. Anyone who has ever held a newborn and felt with their heart knows the Universal Truth that all babies are born innocent and pure.

  We are highly impressionable; the world we are presented with is the only world we know. It’s not until our teen years that we are able to see the differences and options around us of how to live and what kind of person to be. The things our environment teaches us about the world, society and our role in it, religion, government and financial survival, we take to be absolutely true until we are old enough to shake off the things we’ve been taught and decide for ourselves to re-adopt them into our core belief system or not.

  My mother, Mary, and my father, Randy, met in high school. My mother was 15 when she discovered, to everyone’s horror, that she was pregnant. I was born in the early 1960’s and it was customary for two teenagers faced with an unwanted pregnancy to get married and grow up as quickly as possible. They tried to do the right thing.

  When two teenagers become parents, everyone suffers. My mother and father were still children themselves.

  My mother stayed home with her parents and my father went into the military to make ends meet and to help pay for the medical bills associated with giving birth. After his basic training, he was stationed in Cape Cod and my mother went to join him while I stayed home with my maternal grandmother to give them some time to get settled in.

  During this brief time, my mother’s father, my grandfather, explained to my mother, that he had gotten another woman pregnant and would be divorcing soon to go be with the mother of his child. My mother felt a responsibility to be there for her mother, to help her through such a rough time. She didn’t want her to feel totally abandoned. She divorced my father and went back home. He was devastated; he really had wanted it to all work out. My mother’s half-sister was born soon after.

  My mother went back to school to get a GED and my grandmother took care of me. I didn’t see my mother very much while she was busy trying to pull her life together and grow up. With all the pressures of her school, work, raising a daughter and the ostracization she felt from her peers, she needed a break. Her release came in the form of a race track. Living right next to the Indy 500, it was a natural progression for her to develop a love of racing and subsequently, the men who drove the cars. She traveled all across the country to attend as many races as her work and school would allow, while I stayed home with my grandmother, whom I called “Mother”.

  Life with my grandmother had its ups and downs, but for the most part, it was a great way to grow up. I started dance and gymnastics classes when I was four. My grandmother had abusiness with her sister, Atchie. They made draperies for an interior decorator in their homes. Both of them had their workroom in the basement, which became the major living area in the house for Atchie.

  One birthday, when I was so excited about my dancing classes, Atchie and my grandmother made 6 different costumes for me to dance in. One part of the basement at Atchie’s was set up like a stage. She and her husband George had put up lights for me to perform under and whenever we went out there, which was three or four times a week for their work. I would always sing and dance to records they played. During their break, they would sit and watch me. I was quite the ham.

  It was my great-aunt Atchie and uncle George who paid for my voice lessons and much of my dancing lessons, and this was a way of showing them what their money was going for and if it was doing any good. They were all connoisseurs of the arts and had good constructive criticism that helped me improve.

  The four of us would go to the Cincinnati opera to see performances of THE MAGIC FLUTE, TOURANDOT, OTHELLO, FIDELIO and others. Every year, Atchie, Grandma and I would go to Michigan to visit Interlochen, the arts school for young people. They would put on shows and symphonies throughout the week or two we stayed there in a cabin on Lake Michigan. That is where I first developed an interest in the theater while watching a rehearsal of “Annie Get Your Gun”.

  When I was nine years old and in the third grade, my real mother decided to marry a man she had been dating for several months. He worked in the building next to where she did and they met when he came over to borrow the copying machine. His name was Don and he was a short, heavy-set, red-haired man.

  Although I had always dreamed of having a mother and a father like everyone else I knew, I had quite a hard time adjusting to this new family. I was not used to looking to my real mother for all my needs. It was hard to leave the woman I came to know as Mother and separate myself from her so suddenly and completely. We moved in the middle of a school year and the differences between the inner-city education I was getting and the lily-white, rich, suburban school system I was transferred to, were astonishing. Although I earned straight A’s before, I found myself far behind in every subject.

  Don and I did not hit it off right away either. There were serious problems when he forbade me to see my grandmother more than once a month and to call her no more than once a week. She had been my only constant source of love since my real mother had spent the first seven years of my life traveling around the country to car races with her girlfriends and growing up when she wasn’t working. I hated him for cutting me off from her so abruptly. What right did he have to dictate when I could make a local call to the woman who had raised me so far? He was a tyrant, a power hungry Hitler. He was the arrogant, pushy, sometimes out-and-out rude, type. He was “too good” to stand in a line, always cheating toward the front, even if it meant paying someone off. He was always right and his word was absolute and final. He enforced his rule with his fists.

  My weak, small-framed mother had no confidence in herself at all and even though she thought his manner was becoming more and more abusive, she could not protest. After all, she only had a GED. Don was a rich architect. The money he made allowed her not only to live without want of anything, but also to quit her job. She didn’t want to rock the boat, and by this time, she had gotten pregnant.

  Living with this strange man was quite a shock to me. Cherokees are Matriarchal. They see the feminine side as being equal if not superior. Women held property and ruled the house. When a couple married the husband took his wife’s last name. Our society is patriarchal; the predominant culture sees men as superior. The conceptual change was thrust on me quite abruptly. I had never really known my father or any other man. I didn’t even know the difference in genitalia. My grandmother would re-roof the house, paint the garage, do plumbing and upholstery all by herself, and quite well too. She spoke of how men always get women pregnant without claiming any personal responsibility and then take off and never look back. I was not used to being treated like a second-class citizen just because of my sex.

  It’s been scientifically proven that children accept whatever environment they are in as being the way life is. The movie “The Truman Story” is based on this premise. I had been raised to see the world as being one way, Don made it look completely upside down. It was culture shock. I was a nine-year-old child who had been torn from the arms of the one woman I knew as Mother and thrown into a foreign culture. The mind has many ways to protect itself during prolonged traumatic events. One such way is to split, to form an alternative personality that can face the world void of the memory of it’s alternative self. “Stacy” was born, the first of many to come. Stacy was a very sad little girl who bit
her fingers and pulled on her hair while crying hysterically for her mother, her “real” mother. Whoever that was.

  I remember one rainy night I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid of the thunder and lightening. I was scared and asked my mom if I could sleep with her and Don. She agreed and in the safety of her presence, I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke, she was gone and Don was on top of me with my legs spread. His hands were between my legs, and something else, too, although I wasn’t quite sure at the time what it was. My mother was nowhere to be found and it was still very dark outside. I screamed for her. I was ten.

  At first I thought maybe he was asleep and mistook me for my mother. I guessed that this was what “having sex” was all about, and that he was trying to do it to her. When I yelled, he did not appear to “wake up”. My mother did come though, and she calmed me, thinking it was fear of the storm that had made me call out.

  It was during this time that “Lisa Patrick” was “born”. There was just too much going on for one child to handle. Lisa was wild, like an animal. Nature was her confidante and her companion. No one would ever tame her. I did not tell my mother what had happened. I was very afraid of this strange man and knew from the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was wrong. It felt dirty, and that made me feel dirty. I also was never quite sure if he knew it was I and not my mom.

  After that I felt very uncomfortable at home and so I requested more dance classes to get me away from there. I guess the feelings must have been mutual because they complied and even went a step further by enrolling me in a junior civic theater acting class for the summer that ended in the production of a musical called “Twelve Dancing Princesses”. I was a proud little princess. My Girl Scout troop and family all came to watch a performance. I felt happy, accepted, normal and comfortable on stage, like in my dance classes, but much stronger. It was a special feeling of ecstasy and I strove from that point on to spend as much time on stage as I could. I cried for days when the production was over.