Article

PORN AGAIN?
Tracy Lords
By Rand Marsh
​
Nora Kuzma was a sweet little girl just like so many other young girls-well, maybe not just like the girl next door.  But what's a girl to do?  You're being abused nightly at home in your canopied bed among your stuffed animals so you look for an escape route.  The pretty young thing runs and runs not to grandma's house, but into the open arms of the hard-porn business.  Sweet young Nora Kuzma is then disrobed as Traci Lords.  Traci took her new-found occupation like a sexy-duckling to water, starring in such memorable classics as New Wave Hookers, Beverly Hills Copulator, and Lust in the Fast Lane.

Shortly after her 18th birthday it was disclosed that she had made most of her 100-plus lusty skin flicks while a minor, some even before she turned 16.  The legal repercussions of that scandal reverberated for years even reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, which last November upheld a child pornography law used to convict a distributor caught peddling tapes from Traci's early days.  "A victory for children everywhere," says Traci. "You know, I'm always really wary of doing interviews.  I hate it, because it just seems like journalists are fucking stupid, and they write things that aren't even true.  I've always said that I don't even understand why I have to give interviews, when the journalists have already written them before they've even seen me."

Traci was born Nora Louise Kuzma in Stubenville, Ohio.  Her adopted name comes from, Hawaii-Five O's Jack Lord.  "Yeah book'em Dan-o!...He's the first man I ever masturbated to.  It's true.  I was 10.  I didn't know what I was doing but it felt good.  I had a poster of him above my bed."  Lords and her three sisters were brought out west to Redondo Beach when she was 12 by her mother.  "My life has been a really wired trip.  When I was 14, I was a runaway; 15, I was a drug addict and a centerfold; 16 and 17, I was a porn star; 18 I was in a rehab; and at 19, I became an actress.  When I was in high school-which didn't last long-the thing to do seemed to be, take speed and go to the gym.   Hey!  Wow! look how fast I can run!  I didn't realize I could keel over at any minute.  When I was 18, I almost OD''d.  For me, it was a spiritual experience.   I had a total breakdown and came out the other side.  I realized how stupid I was being.  It made me mature really young, but I think pain does that."

Lately, Traci's been dabbling in music and has just released her first album, 1000 Fires.  Her first full-length CD is a collection of dance music produced by Mike Edwards of Jesus Jones, Tom Bailey and Allanah Curry of the Tompson Twins, and Ben Watkins of KIF and Juno Reactor fame.  Though few have heard the album, the media has already started on Traci.  Reports came in that she was working on a rock-and-roll album.  Hits magazine wrote that Radioactive would be handing out latex gloves and Vaseline with each purchase.   "They'll take cheap shots because they don't really know anything else yet.  They just automatically dismiss me as a slut trying to capitalize on my fame.  I wrote or co-wrote virtually all of the songs on the album, which has been two years in the making.  I worked really, really hard.  I turned down acting roles to work on it.  I spent six months living above a coffee shop in fucking Hampstead, all this just to record tracks in old basements across London. 

But I enjoyed being in London, the best part of it is that the rave scene is part of the culture there...it's all about the future.  The past is really fucked and the present is rather mediocre.  I either run really hot or really cold.  I hate being warm, warm is a comfort zone, and I don't want to be comfortable.  I want to be either really excited and crazy and out of my mind or really depressed and find something inspiring in that.  That's the way it works for me.  That's what I think techno is all about.  It's a total extreme."

The album features a wide variety of dance music; techno, house, rock, ambient tracks.  One of the ambient tracks is about rape.  "I haven't always been a big fan of ambient music, though I've always been interested in it.  One ambient track was written from personal experience, rape, that was really powerful and which I feel has had a great deal to do with who I am today...it really fucked me up. This is the first time that I've ever told that story.  The track is Father's Field and I think it's one of the heaviest tracks.  It's about an experience I had when really young...about being raped when I was eleven.  The lyrics describe just what happened to me.  I didn't tell anyone.  The scary thing is, I haven't told my mother yet.  She knows there were reasons why I had so much trouble as a teenager, but she doesn't know what they were specifically.  I guess I haven't told her because I don't want to hurt her.  She'll think it's somehow her fault.  I was one of those after school specials:  the little Ohio farm girl who ended up in the big citgy wanting to be a movie star, a singer.  I was built like I was eighteen when I was fourteen, I had people around me who were very manipulative, I did a lot of very stupid things."

"I hate the phrase former porn star.  That part of my life was a long time ago.  I wish people would think of something else to call me."  At 26, Traci has been battling to free herself of her X-rated boudoir fame trying to cross over to legit films.  First Traci starred in B flicks, Roger Corman's Not of This Earth, Shock 'Em Dead and Raw Nerve.  She took bit parts on episodic TV (Wiseguy MacGyver).  She also had a supporting role in campy John Waters movie Cry Baby.  She finally hit the prime time with a strong part in 1993's Stephen King mini-series Tommy Knockers.  Come 1995 and Traci has just joined the
cast of Melrose Place.

"I'm successful in spite of my past, not because of it.  I have talent.  the character of Rikki, the name of my new Melrose Place character, is a sexy but scary cult member who becomes Sidney's roommate.  It's a cool part.  I start off being nice, but you can see something lurking behind my eyes.  I turn into a monster.  The role is scheduled to run for five weeks.  Nobody turns on Melrose Place for the acting but if I couldn't act I'd stand out like a sore thumb."

So much for her career.  What about her thoughts and beliefs?  "I don't believe in censorship.  I think everybody should have the right to choose, because where do you draw the line?  Something that's offensive to one person might not be to another.  But I never rent porn and I never would, because it will always be there in the back of my mind, and having it there is plenty.  I try to help in my own way.  I still work with Children of the Night for runaways in Hollywood, because this is the place where kids go.  They see pictures of Marilyn Monroe and a pink cadilac, and they think, 'Wow I could be a star too. I could actually be somebody'.  I thought that I should have stayed home and married dear Billy Baker next door."

Lords feels that the American woman is still getting a raw deal.  "Abortion?  God I think it's ridiculous to even argue over a woman's right to choose.  Teach the girls a little self-respect and the boys a little responsibility, then maybe you wouldn't have as many pregnant teenagers.  Likewise I think the concept of judging a person based on sexual orientation goes with this obsession to control other people's bodies and minds.  It's ridiculous.  I
​don't judge people on their sexuality or sexual history.  Maybe that's because I've always been judged on mine and I know that's total crap."

Although marriage is not on the immediate agenda, she confesses, "I love men.  I'm in love with one of the sexiest men in the world.  He's a prop master.  When I first saw him, he was carrying all this heavy equipment-but he was wearing red lipstick, fake eyelashes and a feather boa.  He was just goofing around, but I thought, cool."

"No matter what happens to me as an actress or as a performer, no matter what anybody says about me, they can't say I sold out-because I didn't.  These are my thoughts. These are my ideas and my feelings.  So whatever people say or whichever way things go, I know that I haven't lost.  I've just been me all along."