Full Disclosure

EIGHT

Maybe life was too good.

By the summer of 2015, Glen and I had successfully moved our family to Texas. Glen had stopped drinking and I was transitioning out of being a porn star and becoming known more as a director. My movies are known for having stories and good dialogue, and I would often have guys coming up to me to tell me, “Thank you, your movies are the only ones my wife will watch with me.” I had directed about seventy films by then and was gearing up to shoot my dream project, Wanted, a three-hour epic western I had been planning in my head for eight years. Wanted would win Best Picture and Best Director at the XBIZ Awards and Best Drama at AVN. It was the industry consensus that I was the best female director out there, and when New York magazine profiled me in an article titled “The Female Porn Director Winning All the Awards,” I got to ask them—and by extension my colleagues—“What does my vagina have to do with directing?”

Outside my film work, I was famous enough that I provided for my family with feature dancer bookings all over the country, but not so known that I was recognized everywhere. Our daughter would soon be going to school, and not a single person in our little neighborhood knew what I did for a living.

Close to my heart, being in Texas meant I could pursue a horse career. I had a new horse I had just imported from Ireland. My horse friends don’t care what I do. I had worked so hard to have the life I wanted.

Then it happened. On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign to make America great again. Seeing Trump on TV jogged people’s memories about all those times he used to call me on sets. I heard from castmates I hadn’t seen in years.

“It will never happen,” I would say. “He doesn’t even want to be president.”

I had a theory that he was a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton, just in the race to make it easier for her to win. It made sense, especially given what I overheard when I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the two friends happily discussing their plan. I didn’t put it past either of them. “How does no one remember how much he has donated to her and how much he supported her last time?” I would yell at the news shows. “How are you guys missing this thing?”

As he became less of a joke candidate in the Republican primaries, people started coming out from under their rocks. Good old Gina resurfaced, acting like we had just been chatting a week before.

“You should sell your story now,” she said.

“Why did you ghost me?” I flat-out asked her. “How am I supposed to trust you?”

She told me she had been threatened but didn’t elaborate. She said the magazine was threatened by Trump’s attorney, who she identified as Michael Cohen.

People in the industry called me, each thinking they were the first to suggest that I talk about how friendly he’d once been with a porn star. Brad Armstrong and Jessica Drake at Wicked were pressuring me to come forward because Republicans are seen as bad for the porn business. By then I no longer wanted to kill Jessica. I still didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her, but we could be civil. The things that initially made her my friend were still there: she is a smart businesswoman and committed to her work. Also, once I married Glen and had a child, a fight over some man just seemed childish.

Still, when she showed up on one of my sets one day while I was in L.A., my first reaction was What is this bitch doing here? But that’s mainly because I was directing, and I need complete control of my set.

“Hey, I need to talk to you for a sec,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. This was so strange that I figured it must be really important. We went over to one of the rooms I wasn’t using for fucking.

“I think you need to call this person,” she said, handing me Gloria Allred’s card. “I’ll back you up.”

“No,” I said.

“Just go and talk to her.”

I did, but I decided against coming forward. My life was perfect. I was very happy living incognito as the most accomplished director in the business, one who could also take her daughter to playdates. And on top of that, I still hadn’t told Glen.

Trump won Indiana on May 3, 2016. Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out, leaving him as the presumptive nominee. If I thought I had faced pressure before, it was nothing compared to what I got from my gay dads—well, my gay dad Keith Munyan and my new gay dad, JD Barrale. Keith and Dean Keefer had split, and it was like my parents getting divorced. They’d been together more than twenty years, so it was a shock. They hadn’t been happy for a while, and I never saw them be affectionate or even call each other honey. While Dean and I remain close, Keith was much more of a focal point in my life.

Keith had been with his fiancé JD Barrale for about five years, and if you ask, one will say that they met in a prayer group to cue up the other.

“Yeah, the Praying-to-Get-Laid group,” the other will say. They have that kind of playful relationship, and it’s sweet to see Keith so happy. Still, you don’t just waltz into my life. I have to haze you a little. When they first got together, I would wait until Keith left the room and I would joke, “I’ve got my eye on you.” As I got more comfortable with JD, we would have a moment and I would say, “You know you’re not my real dad. I don’t have to listen to you.”

I had only recently stopped hazing JD when Trump started to surge. Keith and JD each felt strongly that a Trump presidency would be a threat to them and asked me to do something about it. It was gentle nudging at first. Keith would bring him up and say a quiet, “You could stop him, you know.” I always said the same thing: “I don’t think his supporters would care. It’s no secret he’s a womanizer.”

But they amped up the pressure to come forward once Trump chose Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate in July. They called me on speaker from L.A. with a laundry list of things Pence had done to make life difficult for the LGBT community in Indiana.

“This shows what Trump really thinks of us,” said Keith.

“Trump could do away with gay marriage,” added JD.

“I don’t think Trump cares if someone is gay or not,” I told them. “Matter of fact, he probably hopes all the guys start fucking each other so there will be more chicks for him.”

I did understand their concerns about Pence—it’s kind of his thing to pick on gay people and get in their business—but Trump wouldn’t care. I told them I would think about it, but the answer was still no. Besides, I was convinced Trump had no real interest in being president. He would sabotage himself without me having to ruin the lives of the people in my family, thank you.

“Are you scared now?”

My friend said it as soon as I sat down. He is a lawyer and a straight shooter, always a good resource as I make business decisions. We had arranged to meet in one of my favorite cafés in Dallas. It was three o’clock and we were the only people in there.

“Why should I be scared?” I asked. It was so hot outside—Dallas in August, no surprise—but the café had the air-conditioning on too high.

“Well, he’s the Republican candidate,” he said. “He’s their guy now. It’s not just him making decisions. And look at what politics have done to other people who knew secrets.”

“What do you mean?”

He leaned forward and started reeling off names of people who died mysteriously. Mary Meyer, Vince Foster… he kept going, but I didn’t really recognize any names until he got to Marilyn Monroe.

“What are you trying to say?” I said. I didn’t put any stock in it and rolled my eyes at him.

“Stormy,” he said, “I’m not fucking around anymore. I’m completely serious.” From the look on his face, I knew he was. This was one of the most sober, reasoned men I know, and he was telling me I was a target.

“If you left here right now,” he continued, “and got in a ‘single-car accident’ or went home tonight and had an overdose…”

“I don’t do drugs,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “No matter what anyone said, there’d be a source in the paper saying, ‘She hid her demons so well.’ If you died tonight, no one would be like, Donald Trump or the Republicans did it. But now you’re their problem. They are going to go through his closet, find his skeletons, and get rid of them. They don’t want to, because they were hoping he wasn’t going to get the nomination because they don’t like him, either. But this is a real thing, Stormy. Think of your family. Because if a natural gas leak happens to make your house explode, there’s no grieving husband on the news, either.”

My daughter’s face flashed in my mind, and I shook the thought away quickly. “What do you think I should do?”

“You have to come forward.”

“There’s that ‘come forward’ thing again,” I said. “Why do people keep saying that? Did you all have a meeting and decide that’s how to get me to do something?”

“Okay, whatever the choice of words is, the only way to keep your family safe is for your story to be out there. You want it so they can’t blow up your house or cut your brake lines, because everyone would point at them and say, ‘It was you!’”

When I got out and started the car, I first felt the fear that I still have every single time I turn the ignition. I wait for the boom.

I went home and started down a Google rabbit hole of political conspiracies, starting with Marilyn Monroe. If there’s a mistress who died suspiciously, I read about it, and each one, no matter how far-fetched, fed my fears.

I was so serious about going public for safety reasons that at one point I was even scheduled to go on Good Morning America. I was in L.A. to shoot a movie when I told Keith and JD I was going to… dunh dunh dunh… “come forward.” They were thrilled but got scared once I told them I was doing it for my safety. It had become my obsession. Every day this stayed secret, I felt my family was in danger. I lay awake at night. This is gonna be bad, I said to myself, but if the alternative is my house blowing up…

And no, I still hadn’t told Glen.

On October 21, two weeks after the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” tape was leaked, Jessica Drake “came forward” in a press conference with Gloria Allred. She said that while we were at the Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006, Trump invited her to the penthouse. Jessica stated that she didn’t feel right going alone and that she went with two other women. “When we entered the room, he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without permission.” She also said that Trump invited her back to the penthouse and she was offered ten thousand dollars for sex. She said she declined, saying she had to get back to L.A., and she was offered use of his private jet. At the press conference, she was wearing a Wicked necklace, as well as glasses I had never seen on her before.

The Trump campaign responded, calling the allegation false. “Mr. Trump does not know this person, does not remember this person and would have no interest in ever knowing her.” I wondered what they would say about me.

Not long after, I was on set in Malibu, directing From This Moment. We had just finished shooting a big rain scene when I got a call from Gina. “I need to talk to you.”

“Sure.”

“I need to see you in person,” she said. “I can’t talk on the phone.”

“Well, I’m directing a movie.”

“What’s the address? I’ll come to you.”

“You can’t come to set, I’m directing a movie.” This is my three days a month that I’m unreachable. I call it the Bermuda Triangle. I come out and I literally don’t know what day it is.

“I’m coming right now,” said Gina.

“Fine,” I said giving her the address. What the hell was going on? Was there a death threat against me? Did she get threatened?

She called to say she was parked at the bottom of the hill. “I can’t come up because I don’t want anyone to overhear us.”

Okay, drama, but sure. I walked down and she had a guy with her who I had never seen before.

“What’s up?” I said.

“This is Keith Davidson,” she said.

I knew who he was by name, but I’d never met him. He’s a Beverly Hills–based attorney who specializes in claims against celebrities, and also the lawyer who Gina supposedly had gotten to contact The Dirty to get the initial Trump story taken down.

I later learned that Trump’s people had contacted Davidson after learning of the plan to go on Good Morning America. It was Trump’s counsel, Michael Cohen, who reached out to him, he said, offering me $130,000 to not tell my story.

I felt like this was a “win.” I got to stay in my home with my daughter and do the work that I love. I won’t be defined by Donald fucking Trump, and I won’t be branded a gold digger.

And they can’t murder me. And I don’t have to tell Glen!

Keith handed me a seventeen-page nondisclosure agreement and they opened the trunk so I could sign it right there under the light. I had no idea how they had arrived at that price for my silence, and I was too concerned about my safety to even think of wondering why Davidson didn’t push for more. This wasn’t about me being greedy, because if it was I would have sold the story for a million dollars three times already. This was about putting all this behind me confidentially and never having to worry about Trump coming after me or my family.

I just had to break it to Keith and JD that I wasn’t going to talk after all. They were disappointed but seemed to understand.

In the meantime, I went back home to where I live in Texas and I waited for the money. It said in the contract they had seven days to wire me the money, so every day I would check my balance, wondering if that was the day I’d get paid. And on the seventh day, I freaked out.

I knew just what a creep Donald Trump is. He would wait until after the election and then just not pay me. If he lost, nobody would care that he had sex with me. If he won, he’d be the president of the United States and could drop a nuclear bomb on me if he wanted.

They later sent me a new contract because the first one had been breached for their failure to pay, but I was alone in Texas. I took it to the notary near my house. If there weren’t already enough problems, the notary stamped it but didn’t sign or date it. She also notarized a blank signature line.

Ten days before the election, Cohen wired the $130,000 to Davidson, who then took out his and Gina’s share. He then wired the balance of eighty grand and change to Glen’s account, not mine, so if anybody looked at my bank records there would be no red flags.

And I finally told Glen. Well, I told him some of it.

“Look, I am getting this money from Donald Trump because I was in a hotel with him,” I said. “Nothing happened, but his wife would get mad, and having dinner with a porn star would look bad.”

He believed me. I had never lied to him before, so it didn’t occur to him to question it. He trusted me, and I have to live with that. He also believed me because eighty thousand dollars is just such a perfect amount, a ludicrous number for what really happened. People can say I am a gold digger and a liar, but I signed something giving me a paltry amount when I could have made millions of dollars. I am not that stupid. I just wanted it to stop. I used the money to buy a new horse trailer, and I thought that was the end of it.

Four days before the election, The Wall Street Journal ran a story about the National Enquirer paying former Playmate Karen McDougal $150,000 to tell her story about an affair with Trump, and then not running it. She’d had a ten-month relationship with Trump starting in 2006, the same year I met him. Welcome to the shitty club, sister. Her description of their “dates” sounds a lot like mine—a meet-up in Lake Tahoe, beauty pageants, and those damn steaks at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Except the poor thing had sex with him multiple times. Karen said that when she turned down his offer of money after their first encounter, he told her, “You are special.”

The WSJ reporters quoted sources who said the National Enquirer did a “catch and kill,” where they buy the story but bury it so it stays secret. David Pecker, the CEO and chairman of National Enquirer publisher American Media, Inc., has called Trump “a personal friend.” Later, The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow would get McDougal on the record talking about what a terrible deal she got. The National Enquirer had her locked down so that if she breathed a word about Trump to anyone, she would be sued for $150,000 in damages.

And guess who her lawyer was on this terrible deal? Say it with me: Keith Davidson. According to her account in The New Yorker, McDougal had a friend, John Crawford, who suggested she talk, and she gave him permission to pursue it after someone started blabbing about it on social media. Like me, she didn’t want someone else profiting off her story and getting the facts wrong. Crawford called someone involved in the adult film industry—let’s go with the alias Deep Throat—who then called Davidson. The New Yorker published excerpts of an August 2016 email exchange that sounded a lot like my interactions with Davidson. When McDougal asked about some of the fine print, he encouraged her to just sign the deal. “If you deny, you are safe” was his reply. “We really do need to get this signed and wrapped up….”

By the way, according to The New Yorker, Karen also got screwed when Crawford, Deep Throat, and Davidson each took their cut, dropping her check by 45 percent. She walked away with just $82,500.

I didn’t vote on Election Day because I couldn’t decide between Clinton and Trump. So, if you think I am some sort of Deep State Clinton operative, I am sorry to disappoint you.

And then the motherfucker won.

That night, when Trump won, my gay dads lost their shit on me.

“How could you do this to us?” JD texted me. “You could have stopped him.”

I disagreed and I stand by it. This is a guy who bragged on tape about assaulting women. Me saying I slept with him would just be another consensual notch on his belt that his fans could pat him on the back about. Look what happened to Karen McDougal: everyone knew she had sex with him and it didn’t make one bit of difference except, well, now everyone knows she had sex with him.

JD was scared that night. He said they were probably not going to be able to get married. “You don’t love us,” he said. Keith, a man who I hadn’t had a single disagreement with in twenty years, chimed in. “You’re dead to us. Don’t ever talk to us again.”

That’s when I started crying. Keith’s words gutted me. They are family to me—and now I truly felt disowned. I put the phone down. I knew they were wrong, but still, some part of me felt I had failed them. I was so afraid of my family paying a price for me talking, and now I’d lost them because of my silence.