I've been looking forward to this interview for over a month now. I love this author, more than that, I admire this woman. I've read her memoir, "Stripped Down: A Naked Memoir," but have yet to write a review that fully conveys just how amazing this book is. It sweeps you up in emotion, ties you down with brilliant writing that keeps you turning the pages, and sets you free with inspiration. It is most definitely worthy of 5 kisses! Well, I guess that was sort of a review, huh? I'll stop rambling and get on with the good stuff. Welcome, Stacey Keith! I'm thrilled to know you.
Writing a
memoir is an emotional ride, as I know from experience. There were times I
shelved it because I questioned opening myself up for the world to see and
judge. Did you ever consider not pursuing this project? If so, what motivated
you to keep going?
Great
question! A few years ago when I first started writing STRIPPED DOWN: A Naked
Memoir, I really struggled. Every word felt as though I’d wrestled it through a
garden hose. The narrative was stilted, and there was nothing organic about the
way I was telling the story.
After weeks of frustration, it finally dawned on me that I was attempting to manipulate readers’ perceptions. I posed, hid, distorted and omitted in a craven attempt to make myself more palatable to the reading public. And if there is one thing I won’t easily accept in myself, it is cowardice.
So I started again, this time with the idea of really stripping emotional truth down to the bones. I knew that if I had the huevos to tell not just historical fact but personal insight, I could breathe life into a stale narrative. And some people might connect with the story in a way that had nothing to do with shared circumstances and everything to do with shared experience.
After weeks of frustration, it finally dawned on me that I was attempting to manipulate readers’ perceptions. I posed, hid, distorted and omitted in a craven attempt to make myself more palatable to the reading public. And if there is one thing I won’t easily accept in myself, it is cowardice.
So I started again, this time with the idea of really stripping emotional truth down to the bones. I knew that if I had the huevos to tell not just historical fact but personal insight, I could breathe life into a stale narrative. And some people might connect with the story in a way that had nothing to do with shared circumstances and everything to do with shared experience.
What do you hope people take away
from this once they read the words "the end"?
I
did a Spoken Word/Electronica concert in Italy recently with jazz artist John
Arnold. The ongoing refrain of the poem
I’d written was, “There is no Other, only you.” And that perfectly encapsulates
what I wanted to put forward in this project.
I wanted to expand on the idea that we are all human, irrespective of
circumstances. That the human condition is fraught with insecurities,
self-destructive behavior, and the occasional breakthrough. A crack-addled hooker working the wharf bleeds
red just like we do. Conversely, even
people who look as though they have it totally may be as fucked up and
conflicted as all the rest of us.
How did you feel on release day?
Terrified!
I couldn’t sleep. I was convinced that everyone would heap scorn and contempt
on me for having been a cover girl and centerfold and stripper. The irony is
that I am far more naked in this book than I ever was onstage. By the time
reviews started coming in, I felt some reassurance that people understood the reasons
why I decided to come forward with the story. It has universal themes, this
story does. I think most people can relate.
Where do you find inspiration?
Being a writer
is odd. So much of a writer’s life is isolation and butt-in-chair tenacity, and
yet life experiences and human interaction are the two most important
contributors to richly-textured prose. As weird as this may sound, I don’t
write with just my heart, my mind, or my soul. I write with my vagina. Not
literally, of course, although that’s an interesting mental image! But the
source of all my creative juice flows from that sacred channel. When I shut down sexually, my writing shuts
down, too.
I know you're a savvy relationship expert. What are some of
the most common relationship problems you've seen?
Ah, yes. That infamous book. I wrote DRIVE YOUR WOMAN WILD IN
BED when I was nineteen, if you can imagine anyone having the stones to do such
a thing. No surprise, the book sucked.
But it sold remarkably well, in large part because of the talk shows I went on
to promote it. My publishing house, one of the Big 6, didn’t do much more for
me than to arrange a newspaper interview. It was on me to publicize the book,
so I did. I’ve never really understood that about heritage publishing, why
their PR Department seems vapor-locked in the Dark Ages. Why trouble yourself
to acquire, edit, and release a book if you don’t take the time to promote it?
Their business model is absurd.
Back to the memoir, after reviewing your life through a
magnifying lens, what piece of advice would you give to your young self if you
could travel back in time?
I would change nothing. Not because I was by any means
perfect. But because I screwed everything up so badly. Those are the lessons
that stick with you. I traveled some, but I wish I had traveled more. If I had
known then what a truly adventurous soul I was, I would have honored the
impulse to test my limits rather than shy away from them. Odd, isn’t it? I
could shed my clothes and model for magazines without batting an eye. But
putting on a backpack, hiring a Sherpa and trekking through Nepal filled me
with terror.
Outside of writing, what do you do for fun?
Fun?
What is this “fun” of which you speak? I work all seven days of the week, teach
sixteen Strength Training, Yoga, and Pilates classes, and try vainly to have a
life outside of the gym. I think when you become a parent, you find your joy
but lose all sense of fun. Having said that, I travel to Italy a few times a
year to visit my boyfriend who lives in a fantastic medieval village
overlooking the Treja Valley. That’s pretty fun. I have a lot of great friends.
Mostly, I try to get out of my comfort zone as often as possible. I find that
for me, it’s good medicine.
When they write your obituary, what do you hope they will
say about your books and writing? What do you hope they will say about you?
She told
the truth, even when it wasn’t flattering or convenient. She had a moral
compass. She had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and adventure.
“She had a
good run, but is worm’s meat now.”
What a wonderful interview! Thank you for taking the time to share that with me, Stacey. Now let's look inside the book with its blurb and great excerpt.
Cover blurb...
Whether skipping school to
binge-read Falkner or losing a wet tee-shirt contest by claiming the Reverend
Jesse Jackson as her biggest influence, Stacey Keith has struggled to reconcile
her perception of the world with its expectations of her. STRIPPED
DOWN: A Naked Memoir is her deeply personal, unflinching look at growing
up in America with “breasts that hold men spellbound”. In her journey from
Texas naïf to international men’s magazine sensation, Ms. Keith takes readers
on a no-holes-barred romp through the warped misogyny of Playboy to the secret
S&M dungeons of the Pacific Palisades. Her story captures the tragicomic
reality of what really gets stripped away as a covergirl, centerfold, Feature
Performer and Hollywood starlet. In the process, she reveals who’s really
behind curtain number three and makes some startling observations about sex,
feminism, and the seamy underbelly of America’s adult entertainment industry.
Excerpt...
It’s one of those
parties where you don’t know the host, you never meet the host, because there
are three hundred people there and a third of them are the catering staff. Ice
sculpture in the living room (the usual nude, sweating tits, ringed by a display
of red, engorged fruit). Floor-to-ceiling windows showing the rocky slope down
to the Pacific.
I’ve been in L.A.
two months and believe me, I’m intimately acquainted with that rocky slope.
But that doesn’t
make things better. Already I feel sick and stunned and fat. You always feel
fat at parties in the ’Bu, regardless of your dress size. And if you engage in
conversation with any female for longer than ten seconds, you will hear the
hair-trigger regurgitation of her resume—like a special form of bulimia—which
is always more impressive than yours, and you will rightly feel like a failure.
A fat whale plus a
failure = whalure. Anyone can do the math.
This house is all
white like it’s been scoured, with big oversized “statement” paintings full of
turbulent color. Couches: white leather. A white shag rug lies beneath a coffee
table. Around that table, half a dozen bare legs are crossed in coy invitation.
You see things in lightning illumination: fingers holding champagne flutes;
glossy curtains of hair; tanned, bony shoulders that resemble arthritic
knuckles; and lots of teeth, bared in one giant rictus.
I swipe a flute of
Tattinger just to give myself something to do with my hands, although champagne
tastes like ass to me, and the stuff hisses angrily, flecking my wrist. I’ve
probably debased my taste buds with too much Diet Coke. I wonder why I’ve never
been able to do anything hip in my whole life, like drink absinthe or smoke a
Galloise or enjoy a party. I’m not even sure why I’m here. And then I remember.
Gordon had regaled
me over the phone with some shop-worn tale about a Playboy model from Missouri who did the party circuit, met Oliver
Stone, and got a part in one of his films. This model must be one of the
thousand headshots papering Gordon’s office, his private harem of holes
(“Fucked that one and that one and I’m gonna fuck that
one ...”).
“Go so you can get
yourself invited to other parties,” he tells me. “Dress to make their jaws
drop. And if anyone asks if you’re into chicks, what do you say?”
I think a moment,
remember what he told me, then decide to mess with him anyway. “The truth?”
“Fuck the truth.
Haven’t I taught you anything? You think it’s going to help, being so uptight
in your thinking? Bi is in. You might try it sometime.”
I can imagine him
picturing this. The gleam in his eye.
Pushing him from
my mind, I sip the Tattinger and hope to appear sophisticated. Jesus, I hate parties. I recognize no one.
How am I supposed to know who’s Important? It’s not like Gordon presented a
flow chart and said, here, memorize these names and faces. Plus, at parties I
tend to pull all sorts of weirdoes into my gravitational orbit: cross-dressers
and CGI geeks and the occasional free-baser. My usual luck is to get
buttonholed by some broke dick named Bill who does poetry slams down at the
Waffle House.
My boobs are
sweating as I head over to the hors d’oeuvres. I wonder how many mini quiches I
can hide in my purse. I’m hungry and hormonal and the anxiety of being here
isn’t helping.
Three of us are at
the cheese tray, spearing assorted cubes with the tiny javelins of our
toothpicks. Champagne fountains gurgle nearby. An old guy with an obvious rug
lobs a smile my way. He looks like someone Important, and if I had any snap at
all I’d know who he is, even though his pussy roster probably dates back to the
Civil War.
He reaches across
the table (okay, who the hell is he?
It’s killing me), and almost brushes against my chest. When I don’t flinch, he
launches into his pitch, delivered with all the subtlety of a carnival barker.
Him: (gesturing
vaguely to my chest) You carry a license for those?
Me: (laughing)
Maybe an Operator’s Permit.
Him: Bet you’ve
got a lot of guys wanting permission to operate.
Me: (laugh
accompanied by noncommittal shrug and mildly creepy feeling).
Him: You an
actress?
Me: Uh ...yeah.
Him: You should
drop off your resume and headshot sometime this week. I live just a couple of
doors down. Jon Peters is a good friend of mine. I could get you in to see him.
And there it is,
the sick feeling in your stomach because you can see the carrot (an appointment
with Jon Peters!). But the hand that holds the carrot is fat and oily-fingered
and bristly with coarse hairs. Already you can feel those pervy fingers
fumbling for your crotch. You can smell the Tic Tacs on his breath. You can see
the look of smug expectation in his eyes (“Am I driving you wild yet? Do I know
how to turn a woman on, or what?”). The second pillow on his extra-firm,
lumbar-support bed will have a dent in it from his wife’s head, his wife who’s
probably the real hitter in the family, only now you’ve gone and slept with her
husband, and he (invariably) has a premature ejaculation problem or erectile
dysfunction from whacking off to the only kind of skankoid porn that does it
for him anymore, usually something having to do with three tumescent assholes
and a donkey.
Hell, I’m fresh
off the boat and I know this.
So then you say,
“Yeah, I’ll drop by sometime this week,” only his eyes slit in obvious
suspicion and you know that he knows you’re full of shit, and you traipse off
feeling (again!) like a whalure because any actress/model worth her bikini wax
would have popped a Valium and slept with the guy, and she would be sitting in Jon Peters’ office right now, laughing.
But not me.
I never get it
right. Just never. I’m like some hopelessly dorky white guy trying to bust a
street move on the dance floor. As Bets often tells me, “Know what your problem
is? You think too goddamn much.”
Jesus, I hate
parties.
Is there a switch
I can pull? Brain OFF. I picture myself navigating through the party—and
life—with the ease and self-sufficiency of a shark, all rabid survival
instincts, never worrying about doing the right thing, just the expedient one.
I yearn to possess this
single-mindedness of purpose. People like that don’t waste time worrying if
some guy is married or a sex weasel. They snatch him up by the balls, shake him
down, then walk away with the keys to the Lamborghini. And fools like me are
left with their big boobs and their bewilderment, clutching stupidly
pretentious glasses of Tattinger. I jettison mine on a side table and head for
the safety of the bathroom. I can hide there. Hey, according to Zack, I’m good
at hiding.
The bathroom,
which reeks of pot, is done in muted gold foil and black marble. It looks like
a 1970s bachelor pad. There’s a faux-mink (it is faux, right?) toilet cover and framed comics featuring a busty
blonde who resembles me, only lobotomized. In every picture a different horny,
slavering idiot is trying to get his hands on her rack.
Gazing at the
comics gives me a clammy feeling. I don’t really have to pee, but I lurk there
anyway and retouch my makeup without the slightest hint of irony. I am, after
all, twenty. I’m at a party. I’m on a mission.
Mingle, Gordon told me. Make shit up.
Talk about how much you dig anal.
I head down the
hall, make a wrong turn, and wind up in a bedroom. A man and a woman are
screwing on the floor in front of a wall mirror. The man has a hairy ass and
the woman’s breasts are as taut and shiny as Saran Wrap stretched over two
grapefruit halves. What shocks me is not the screwing, which seems to be a
plodding, joyless enterprise, but the fact that both of them are staring at
themselves in the mirror. Not each other. Not their congress. Only careful,
neutral self-assessments that send a chill down my spine (“here I am with my
knees at a ninety-degree angle”; “here I am with my brand-new, zero-gravity
tits”; “here I am with my manly, thrusting buttocks”).
It is this flash
into their bleak narcissism that has me stammering apologies and backing out
the door. Rattled, I manage to find my way to the living room again, which is
twice as loud and twice as full as before, more emaciated women accompanied by
short, troll-like men with golf tans. I’m sweating pretty hard now, and it
feels like someone’s holding a pillow over my face. Everything’s too bright,
there are too many competing fragrances, and I can hear sniggering, which tells
me people are speculating about the authenticity of my chest. Or deploring my
fashion sense. Or thinking I’m fat.
I step outside to
get some air.
Typical California
sunset, gorgeous, just gorgeous, the infinity pool reflecting the deep blue
shell of the sky. Below, the sibilance of waves. Despite the fact that I’m miserable
and out of my depth, the beauty of this place takes my breath away. In a
petrochemical armpit like Houston, we’ve got spectacular sunsets, but they’re
usually obscured by billboards and refinery smoke.
I spot Warren
Beatty looking like a thirsty old vampire next to his date, a glum, underage
Morticia. Someone shouts, “Hey, Leo!” and sure enough, it’s Leonardo DiCaprio.
He spares me an appraising glance as he ambles by, but doesn’t stop to chat.
James Caan looks
snarly and drunk, attended by a man in tennis whites. A chaperone? Maybe they
have to issue him one at parties.
There’s Vanna
White wearing a Versace jumpsuit and snakeskin peep-toes, the price of which
could finance the overthrow of a small banana republic. I wonder if she would
sell me a clue, one fucking clue how I’m going to ingratiate myself with anyone
who can get me a job, because I could use that Big Break pretty soon, rent
being what it is, and I’m getting pretty goddamn sick of taking my clothes off
in front of cameras. What will I do when I turn forty and no one wants me to take my clothes off? I’ll be
a grotesque parody of myself, one of those women with glitter lashes and
smeared lipstick and tits that look like tires gone bad.
On a hot spur of
fear, I sidle up to three Brits conversing by the pool. They look Important. I
give them my best smile and ask if they know the host. See? I can do this.
Behind one leathery English chap wearing a Madras shirt, two women peel off
their bikinis and touch each other. You can hear them giggling. The suction of
wet flesh on flagstones as one of them wriggles back and spreads her legs,
exposing a fleshy, hairless pudendum.
Am I actually
seeing this?
I whip my gaze
away, air-raid sirens going off in my head. Red alert. Out of your depth.
RETREAT!
They’re both
blonde, indistinguishable except for the butterfly tattoo on the backside of
the chick doing the chow-down. They’re enjoying each other in a loud,
Vaudevillian way that’s impossible to ignore. Only, to my stunned amazement, no
one is watching. No one. Madras shirt actually backs into the tattooed chick,
says excuse me in his excessively polite English way, and continues his
conversation. What, are they all fucking blind?
And then I
realize: not blind. Jaded.
In one spectacular
flash, I get it on a whole new level. A level deeper even than the one I
experienced when I realized Gordon expected to sleep with me. In Hollywood,
see, women aren’t actual people.
They’re for personal use! They’re a rail of coke. They’re trafficked as human
cargo. And I can’t figure out if they play along to get along or if they’re
powerless to change the rules or if they’re too narcissistically wounded to
question the rules in the first place. But it’s obvious to me that these poor
bitches could set themselves on fire and no one would take the trouble to piss
them out. And knowing this makes me sick.
My circuits are
overloaded. When I stumble back through the living room, I’m dizzy and
dehydrated and there’s a midget in my head pounding my brain with a meat
mallet. The exit is in my sights and I claw my way toward it. I must leave.
Now. I will go home, yank out the phone, pull on a pair of sweat pants, and
re-read Anna Karenina. Even the
Russians and their suffering are more fathomable than this shit.
At the door, the
guy who knows Jon Peters lays his wet, hairy mitt on my shoulder. I can barely
conceal my revulsion.
“So listen, babe,”
he says, too close to my face. ”Sorry. Gotta ask. We all want to know ... Are
they real?”
What are you waiting for? If you're not reading this memoir, then you're seriously missing out.
More about Stacey Keith
Writing
under various pseudonyms, Stacey Keith is a multi-award-winning author of
Warner Books' popular self-help book, DRIVE YOUR WOMAN WILD IN BED. In her
previous incarnation as a men's magazine model, she was the most photographed
cover girl and centerfold of the mid 1990s, a notoriety she parlayed into
B-movie roles, Feature Performances, and days off to perfect her writing. She
has been seen on over twenty talk shows, including "Montel Williams",
"Real Personal with Bob Berkowitz", "Geraldo Rivera", and
"Joan Rivers". Interviewed by five hundred radio stations, Stacey has
lectured throughout the United States and Canada, as well as the University of
Toronto.
Her fiction career has encompassed two Golden Heart nominations, a Maggie, two Silver Quills, a Jasmine, a Heart of the Rockies, and over fifteen other first-place wins in Romance Writers of America contests. Her most recent work of erotic fiction, CATWALK, written under the name Angelika Helsing, is available online or in paperback.
An avid writer of fiction, nonfiction, short stories and poetry, Stacey refuses to own a television, but reads compulsively--and would, in fact, go bonkers without her books--of which there are plenty to be found in her house. She now lives in Houston, Texas, with her teenage son and daughter, two cats, mountains of laundry, and a passion for teaching weightlifting, Pilates and Yoga.
Her fiction career has encompassed two Golden Heart nominations, a Maggie, two Silver Quills, a Jasmine, a Heart of the Rockies, and over fifteen other first-place wins in Romance Writers of America contests. Her most recent work of erotic fiction, CATWALK, written under the name Angelika Helsing, is available online or in paperback.
An avid writer of fiction, nonfiction, short stories and poetry, Stacey refuses to own a television, but reads compulsively--and would, in fact, go bonkers without her books--of which there are plenty to be found in her house. She now lives in Houston, Texas, with her teenage son and daughter, two cats, mountains of laundry, and a passion for teaching weightlifting, Pilates and Yoga.
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