Meet Missy, Republican Porn Star!

Not long ago, Elisa Florez was stumping for Ronald Reagan as a diligent Republican National Committee operative and working the phones in the office of conservative Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a strait-laced Mormon. Today, she can be seen on video screens across America, being ravished by hoofed and hairy-thighed man-beasts and a swarm of lusty vestal virgins wielding industrial-strength vibrators. For Elisa Florez has lately become Missy, star of the campy "safe sex" porn film Behind the Green Door--The Sequel, the follow-up to the 1972 X-rated classic. What do we have here? Another wholesome girl from the heartland, corrupted by drugs and sold into the flesh trade? Don't bet on it, says 24-year-old Florez, who prefers the moniker Missy. She insists that she is still a political activist, but now she campaigns for freedom of sexual expression and the judicious use of latex in the age of AIDS. "You've heard of Reagan's freedom fighter? I am," declares Missy in her characteristically blunt but sweet way, "a freedom fucker." America is a land of born-agains and quick-change artists. We are all well acquainted by now with the stories of the virile athlete, the holier-than-thou Congressman, the celebrity drug fiend who suddenly changes his sex, confesses his craving for boys, finds God--or does (continued on page 178) Meet Missy all three. Nevertheless, when Elisa abruptly turned herself into Missy, colleagues from her past were flabbergasted. Missy's family of well-connected Republicans from Utah promptly banished her. Senator Hatch, more gracious, was no less flustered. "I remember her as an excellent worker," a perplexed Hatch told the wire services. She "worked long hours trying to elect Republican candidates."

Later, someone from Hatch's office called Missy to make sure she did not intend to "embarrass the Senator or the President." The born-again porn queen assured Hatch's aide that she remains a loyal conservative. In fact, when Missy gets rolling on the positive aspects of the Reagan reign, she sounds like George Bush on Ecstasy: "Reagan has given America a powerful image in the world again. We're not going to take any more abuse from people like Qaddafi." Reagan, she continues, her eyes aglow with that it's-morning-in-America look, "has also returned a sense of initiative to people"--in cheery contrast to the Democrats, whose policies "fostered dependency."

Where the Reagan Administration has gone woefully wrong, Missy tells her former co-workers and anyone else who will listen, is in launching a feverish assault on pornography in a fit of intolerance that shreds all its fine words about individual freedoms. "The Republicans had such a great party--we were having so much fun--then Ed Meese had to get ugly and spoil it," says Missy. She characterizes Meese's war on sexual arousal as a "blatant political payoff to the party's lunatic right wing. Those people decided they couldn't nail abortion or bring back school prayer, so they went after an easier target--the porn business."

Missy thinks the party-poopers are out of step with most Republicans. "Talk with Goldwater conservatives in Arizona or with small businessmen in Ohio or with cowboys in Wyoming--none of them wants the Government telling him how to have fun. Americans put down money for 65,000,000 X-rated videos last year--that's a lot!"

Contrary to liberal folklore, adds Missy, Republicans are not, as a whole, prissy about sex. In fact, she came across some of the bawdiest people she has ever met during her days in the G.O.P. "There were some wild women working for the Republican National Committee when I was there--one with her nipples pierced, another with a diamond stud in her genitals. There was a wild orgy one night with a well-known randy singer. Working there was a blast." Still, she says she herself didn't indulge in wild behavior during her Washington service.

So how did this young Republican--whose fashion tastes run to Nancy Reagan hairdos, pink sweats and Recboks--make her switch to porn on film? Although she prefers to keep the conversation focused on politics, she'll admit to another motivation--as all-American as that of Lee Iacocca or Chuck Yeager. She wanted to stand out. She wanted to be somebody. And for Missy, the way to do that was to become a sex symbol.

"I have two beautiful sisters and a beautiful mother," she says. "I was always the intellectual, the ugly duckling in the family. Then I moved to California and started working out two or three times a day. I became addicted to a fitness regimen, I went to a tanning salon, I changed my entire appearance. My mother and sisters, who had been fashion models, had always said I was too busty. Now I began to see this as an advantage. In California, away from my family, I was able to transform myself into Missy. I loved my new identity."

And what better way to demonstrate her new attributes than in a porn film? While some feminists, including a few of her friends, are obsessed by what they see as the exploitative aspects of pornography, Missy sees porn as something to be exploited for her own ends. There is power--both psychological and economic--in being desired, says she. "The sex business today gives women the same opportunities that sports have traditionally offered minorities," she contends. "It can be a way for a woman to move up, a way to make a lot more money than she would as a waitress or a librarian. It certainly has been a way for me to get ahead."

Despite her transformation, Missy says she remains at heart a Yuppie with a sharp eye for business opportunities. She sees her porn debut as a savvy career move. Her next goal--and she sees nothing incongruous about it--is to become an investment broker. "I know I'll be great at it. You need lots of self-confidence to make it in that world, and after working in the sex business, I've got plenty of it. You're selling yourself, not some copying machine, every minute in the porn trade. Your ego is constantly on the line."

Missy's adventure in the Eros factory was made more agreeable by the fact that she was lucky, or shrewd, enough to work with Jim and Artie Mitchell, two brothers who run a porn-film operation as freewheeling and picaresque as the city in which it's based--San Francisco. The Mitchell Brothers established their name in the porn world with the original Behind the Green Door, starring Marilyn Chambers, another fresh-faced young woman who made a jolting leap--from the sweet innocence of an Ivory Snow box to the famous scene that gave new meaning to the word swinging.

The Mitchells have a better reputation than many porn-film makers when it comes to taking care of their staff, which includes a smorgasbord of lesbians, Filipinos, punks and graying hippies. Parties at their San Francisco theater draw a similar range--local literati, celebrated roués, liberal politicians, gay cabaret stars. Not long ago, Hunter Thompson worked a stint as night manager there to pick up material for a book in progress.

It was one of the Mitchells' more beguiling acquaintances--Margo St. James, founder of COYOTE, the prostitutes'-rights group--who talked them into making a porn movie that promotes the idea of safe sex. "I first approached them when the Meese-commission hearings were being held in Los Angeles," recalls St. James. "I said, 'You guys should take the offensive here before they shut you down. Show that you're responsible citizens--help men get over their prejudices against rubbers. Make it smart and sexy to wear them.' "

The Mitchells bought St. James's argument, and now have become true believers: "The sequel to Behind the Green Door makes other porn films obsolete," declares Jim. "If the other porn producers don't like it, tough luck. It's a whole new sexual world out there, and they're going to have to change with the times."

Missy and the other performers in the new Green Door followed strict safe-sex guidelines during the making of the film: All cocks were sheathed in latex and, for good measure, erogenous zones were slathered with lubricants containing nonoxynol-9 (a mild spermicide that has been shown in lab tests to kill the AIDS virus and garden-variety venereal scourges). Much of the movie is played for laughs: The centerpiece orgy scene swarms with Felliniesque characters. When a bearded hermaphrodite is submerged between the billowing thighs of a rollicking fat lady, using a thin latex dental dam for protection, the movie skids beyond porn and sex education into lunacy.

Missy insists that she and the Mitchells are deadly earnest about the film's safe-sex message. She has seen young gay friends in San Francisco wither and die, and she says it sometimes feels as if the city is in danger of becoming a ghost town. In fact, she's donating a hefty portion of her modeling fee to the Rita Rocket Foundation, which provides Sunday brunches and entertainment for patients on AIDS wards at San Francisco General Hospital. Yet, despite the crisis, she says most heterosexuals remain unconcerned.

When she launches into her AIDS-is-not-a-gay-disease speech, Missy sounds like a politician at a whistle stop. "I wouldn't have performed in this movie if it weren't a safe-sex film," she says. "The Mitchell brothers deserve a lot of credit for taking a chance with a movie like this. And we're planning to distribute safe-sex samplers, containing condoms and related products, with the video cassettes. If you can't find the movie at your video store, write to the Mitchell Brothers at 895 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, California 94109."

Is safe sex really any fun?

Well, OK, she concedes, it was kind of difficult keeping all those male porn stars cocked and ready, particularly with the condoms. "On porn-movie sets, they usually have a 'fluff girl' to get the men excited before the scene begins," says Missy. "But we couldn't use one because of our safe-sex restrictions, so I had to get all the men hard by myself, put on the condoms and go to work on them before they lost their erections. It's time-consuming, and time means money in moviemaking--lots of it. With the lights on and the cameras rolling, I was under pressure."

The fact is, says Missy, she genuinely enjoyed herself during much of the filming. When the comely vestal virgins, wearing flower garlands and translucent gowns, surrounded Missy and fell upon her with their vibrators, she lost herself to the moment. "I had a screaming orgasm," Missy says. "I mean, if you can't get off with six people using vibrators on you, then there's something wrong with you."

Spoken like a true Republican.

"'There were some wild women working for the Republican National Committee-- one with her nipples pierced.'"