The
average size of the male penis is around 6 inches.
John Curtis Holmes had a penis that was 13 inches
long and 6 inches thick. He carved a legacy with
his overstuffed member that still throbs and drips
with as much respect and awe as it did some 25
years ago. He gave porno its first male superstar.
He stared in about 2,500 movies, sticking his
dick in just about every natural orifice one can
imagine. He made women cum and men proud, giving
them the chance to live the big dick life through
him. He took pride in his cock and his films,
deciding early on that porno would be his life's
work. He fucked with an honest, boyish approach
that contradicted his life off screen. Confident,
insecure, hard, soft, dedicated, slack, open,
closed, celebratory and tragic. He left a thick
trail of cum, cocaine, cries and questions that
still intrigue and surprise people, possibly more
now then when he was alive.
THE KID AND THE COCK
John Curtis Holmes was born on August 8, 1944
in Pickaway County, Ohio. He never met his biological
father. His mother, Mary, married Edward Holmes,
soon after John was born. John's stepfather was
an abusive alcoholic, who dealt with John using
his fists. John's first wife Sharon remembers
him telling her stories of his father throwing
up on him, his three brothers and one sister.
She believed this to be the reason for John shunning
alcohol in his pre-porn life. John put up with
his stepfather's abuse until he was 16, when he
punched his stepfather in the face and left to
join the Army. John spent three years in Nuremberg,
Germany, as a member of the Signal Corps. After
leaving the Army, John returned home to Ohio for
a few days, to see his mother, and then left for
Los Angeles to start a new life.
In the mid '60s, John hitchhiked to LA. He worked
odd jobs, including driving an ambulance, waiting
tables and working at a meatpacking plant. During
this time, he met Sharon Gebenini, whom he eventually
married, in August of 1965. Sharon was a strict
moralist, a virgin and a good-natured, caring
lady who truly loved John. It's safe to say that
she was one of the few, if not the only person
to see past his obvious attributes and feel the
real man behind the meat. While playing poker
one night, Holmes was "discovered" in a public
rest room. There, a man convinced Holmes to put
his prick to work. He started out in 8mm soft-core
stag loops and eventually made his way into hard-core.
During this time, John did not tell Sharon of
his newfound career. It wasn't until she came
home and found him measuring his dick that he
told her. She was predictably opposed, felt that
porno was a dirty business and didn't want him
involve, but John was set on it, and told her
that he wanted to make porno his "life's work".
What's amazing to me about this scenario is how
Holmes is found at home, measuring his dick. He
reacted to his wife finding him is by exclaiming,
"It's incredible, it goes from five inches all
the way to ten. Ten inches long! Four inches around!"
Had he never known that he was more of a man then
most? Was he so far removed from the world of
penis envy and sex that he never knew he had a
monster cock? Talk about your wide-eyed innocent
-- such a well of good intention just waiting
to be pissed in. John Holmes knew how to make
a lasting impression. For anyone who's ever seen
Holmes in "action", this attitude is not hard
to understand. In the realm of dicks, John Holmes
was the D-Day, the 1969 NASA moon landing, the
JFK assassination and the invention of television
all rolled into one big, giant cock. His penis
truly defined a dick generation that came, but
hasn't gone.
Holmes first showed his dick to Bill Amerson in
1969. Bill Amerson would soon become one of the
most important people in John's life. He was his
manager, producer and long time friend. Amerson's
meeting Holmes came by chance. Amerson put out
an add in a local newspaper for porn performers
and John answered it. Amerson was just getting
into the porn business, a business that was just
getting going itself. As the famous story goes,
Holmes showed up at Amerson's office, which was
hidden behind The Crossroads of the World in Los
Angeles. It was the end of a long day and Amerson
was ready to go home. He told John to take off
his pants for a Polaroid shot and bang! It was
the beginning of a beautiful relationship, to
say the least. At the same time, John's relationship
with Sharon declined, leaving them more or less
married roommates: Sharon the nurse, and John
the porno star.
And what a porno star! His dick became personified
with the porno industry and the porno industry
with his dick. It almost seemed that without one,
there could be no other. Holmes gave porno an
unimaginable novelty, a male star that guys and
girls could both like. In the industry, male porno
stars came and went and for the most part, continue
to come and go. They were like fodder, being thrown
in to get things burning, equally as interchangeable
as the next well-built guy with a hard dick. But
John Holmes acted as a big plug in the bursting
dyke of the male porn star. He gave off an unthreatening,
genuine feel. He seemed likable, and normal and,
well, kind of homely. He entered a room fully
clothed, and you barley noticed him. But once
his pants were off, his cock demanded more attention
then an 18-wheeler exploding into a fiery hell.
That straight men watched a porno movie just because
it had John Holmes in it speaks volumes about
his appeal. And for all the gay men and straight
women out there, he obviously gave them a bit
more to chew on then your average throw-away prop
dick.
A WADD OF FILMS
John Holmes made Johnny Wadd in 1971. It
was the brainchild of Bob Chinn, who wrote and
directed the film. It introduced the world to
the James Bond of porno and it made a lot of money,
much to the surprise of everyone involved. The
film was shot in a day, developed that night and
sent out to theaters in New York and Chicago by
the end of the week. Chinn let it loose thinking
it'd be nothing more then another fuck flick that
would make his money back and a little extra.
But it was a huge success. Unknowingly, Chinn's
mixing of Holmes' extraordinary dick with the
secret agent mystique probed peoples interest
and caused casual viewers to take notice. It was
Philip Marlow with a huge hard on, and it was
a workable formula. One could argue that this
was the porno industry's first breakout film.
It's certainly in the running with Deep Throat
as the most classic porno film, but I for one
find it more enjoyable.
More Wadd films followed, including Flesh of
the Lotus in 1972, The Jade Pussycat
in 1977 and The China Cat in 1978. The
Wadd films are historically important for a few
reasons, but mostly because they were the first
porno series, and one based on a character. John
was allowed to slip into a role that suited him
and that actually radiated a presence, although
that presence seemed minute at times compared
to the sex in the films. Half of the Holmes legend
actually comes from the Johnny Wadd myth, the
character that blurred and eventually snorted
up so many lines in John's life.
THE COCAINE
Before entering the porn community, John had never
smoked, drank or used drugs. According to Holmes,
and many of those around him, he started drinking
and using drugs in the early '70s. But in a 1973
interview Holmes had this to say about his experience
with chemical enhancement: "...everybody says
to me, 'Man are you on uppers, are you on speed?'
And I say, 'No man, I've just got this natural
kick-in-the-ass energy level. I never take any
type of narcotic, dope, no pills, not even aspirin,
not even Rolaids. I don't drink alcohol, wine,
nothing. The hardest thing I ever drink is coffee."
Now, keep in mind that Holmes was always lying
about his "real" life outside of his porn persona,
and everything he had to say about himself and
his habits should be taken with a grain of salt.
He had probably already started to use drugs and
alcohol by that time. According to Bill Amerson,
John began smoking marijuana and drinking hard
liquor in 1972. Pills and powders passed through
the bloodstream of just about every cock sucking
and cum pumping star that stepped on a set. Holmes
started out shunning the hard drugs, but by 1976
he broke down and joined the cocaine chain gang.
It was around this time that he met Dawn Schiller,
a 16-year-old girl that would become his mistress.
Dawn fell in love with John and he treated her
like a queen, for a while. Times were good for
him, his porno career was skyrocketing and his
life going smoothly. He was earning nearly $3,000
a day and his reputation was growing faster then
his dick. But, with all that money and success
came John's newfound love for cocaine, which would
eventually become one of his biggest mistakes.
John Holmes soon found himself addicted to cocaine.
Every 10 minutes, he needed a hit of coke. And
he needed around 50 Valiums a day to take the
edge off. In one very memorable quote from the
Rolling Stone article on Holmes, Dawn told reporter
Mike Sager, "When he did coke, he'd do it until
it was all gone, and then he'd scrape the pipe
and smoke all the resin he could find, then he'd
take a bunch of Valium. He'd have me make these
peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-brown-sugar cookies.
All the sugar helped him come down. He'd have
a big glass of milk, and we'd turn on the cartoons
and then he'd go to bed in Sharon's room. I'd
usually fall asleep on the couch." Dawn was quickly
pulled into John's whirlpool, using about as much
coke as he did, and at age 16.
Soon John found the drug abuse bleeding into his
professional life. His ability to get erect became
rare, leaving him hard to work with and incredibly
undependable. He would disappear for hours at
a time while on the set, delaying production.
In one incident, Bill Amerson remembers a shoot
where Holmes disappeared before his big scene.
His car was still in the driveway. A few hours
later there was a scream from the back of the
house. A girl had opened a closet and Holmes was
balled up inside of it, freebasing. John was scared
to death, not sure where he was.
Towards the end of the '70s, John's habit became
so large that he forced Dawn to turn tricks for
extra money for drugs. He started committing petty
crimes, like breaking into cars, stealing luggage
from LAX and he even spent up to $48,000 on appliances
a month on his wife's credit cards, to trade for
drug money. When he couldn't get work, thanks
to his limp dick, he eventually started running
drugs for the mob. He racked up considerable debt
to mobsters, which lead to his near imprisonment
in their world. He continually had to do things
for them, to make nice and repay his mounting
debts. This was when John Holmes met the infamous
and evil Eddie Nash.
THE CRIME
In early 1980 John sparked a relationship with
Nash, who was a narcotics dealer and strip club
owner in LA. His real name was Adel Nasrallah.
He was a notorious cocaine addict who had close
mob ties and a violent, reactionary temper. To
give you some idea of Nash's public persona and
erratic behavior, just watch the scene in Boogie
Nights involving firecrackers. Nash was based
on the Speedo-wearing, crack addict that Dirk,
Reed and Todd try to scam. Holmes' second wife,
Laurie Holmes had this to say about Nash in the
1998 Playboy article: "He was an awful man. John
told me he used to leave the bathrooms without
toilet paper, then offer the young women cocaine
if they'd lick his ass clean." John frequented
Nash's San Fernando home and eventually became
one of the star attractions at Nash's weekend-long
drug parties. Nash's home was like a danger zone,
complete with handguns, shotguns, crack, coke,
heroin, bodyguards and wall-to-wall fucking. It
was a place where John could get his hands on
drugs for cheap.
At the same time, John found himself in a very
compromising position. He had been running drugs
for the Wonderland Gang, a small group of very
mean drug dealers who lived on Wonderland Ave.
in Hollywood, the Wonderland Gang was made up
of three principle people: Joy Miller, William
Ray Deverell and Ron Launius. Holmes made the
idiotic mistake of smoking a few drug deliveries
instead of delivering them. He had no money to
cover the loss and was totally strung out and
desperate. Ron Launius beat him up with a walking
cane and threatened to kill him unless he made
up for his fuck up. Holmes told the Wonderland
Gang about Eddie Nash and the money and drugs
hidden within his home. He told them that he would
devise a plan to help them get into the house
and get Nash's dope and money trouble-free.
In late June of 1981, the plan went into action.
John hung out at Nash's until around 2 a.m. He
bought some drugs and left. On his way out of
the house, he unlocked the back door on purpose.
He then went back to 8763 Wonderland Ave., to
wait. Soon after Holmes' left Nash's place, Ron
Launius, William Ray Deverell and two friends,
Tracy McCort and David Lind, entered Nash's home.
They held Nash and his bodyguard, Greg Diles,
at bay using a .357 Magnum. Nash began crying,
begging for his life. Launius stuck the .357 in
Nash's mouth. He threatened to kill Nash unless
he gave him the combination to the safe. He made
Nash beg for his life while they stole all of
his drugs and money, right in front of him. The
Wonderland Gang left Nash's home with over $10,000,
$15,000 in jewelry, 5,000 Quaaludes, eight pounds
of cocaine and a kilo of heroin. When they returned
home, they found Holmes waiting there anxiously.
When he was given his cut of the take, he complained
that he deserved more. He was beaten up and thrown
out.
ROUGH STUFF
This is where the rough stuff comes in. On July
1, 1981, there was a report of four murders that
had taken place at 8763 Wonderland Ave. Four people
had been bludgeoned to death, their brains beaten
in with hammers. Those four people were Joy Miller,
Ron Launius, Billy DeVerell and a woman named
Barbara Richardson. Another victim, Susan Launius,
survived, although she suffered permanent brain-damage.
Investigating officer, Bob Souza, from the LAPD
was quoted as saying, "We'd seen it all, but I'd
never seen so much blood." And there was a lot
of blood. On the walls, on the floors, on the
beds, on the ceiling, everywhere. Around the same
time as the investigation, John Holmes staggered
home. He was covered in blood and shaking. He
told Sharon about the murders. He told her that
he had to watch, that he had to let it happen
or they would have killed him and his family.
Holmes was caught wearing a ring that was stolen
from Nash's house the day after the robbery. This
was how Nash found out he had something to do
with it. Nash told Holmes that he would kill him,
his friends and family unless he gave up the people
who robbed him. He did and he watched as Nash's
bodyguards beat five people into hamburger meat
with hammers and iron bars.
There are reports that say Holmes may have helped
out, by beating Launius' skull in. He hated and
feared Launius and everyone knew it. Launius repeatedly
ridiculed him and beat him whenever he had a reason
to. There was a bloody palm print found on a rail
above the body of Launius that matched Holmes'
print. Holmes' quickly became a prime suspect
in the Wonderland murders, more popularly known
as the Four on the Floor murders.
John quickly went on the run. He and Dawn drove
east in her Chevy Malibu, all the way to Miami,
John breaking into cars along the way to support
them. He got off drugs and to Dawn, he seemed
to be getting better. But things became even worse
once they reached Miami. John made Dawn turn tricks
again for extra cash. At first, she agreed, grudgingly
taking part. But when she made it very clear that
she would no longer do what he said, he started
beating her. In one extreme example of John's
over-reactive nature, he chased Dawn from their
hotel room and began beating her in public, by
the pool. Dawn got away and one week later, she
led the police to Holmes. John was sent back to
LA and put on trial for the murder of the Wonderland
Gang. Holmes was found not guilty for the charge
of murder but was held and sentenced to a year
in prison due to an outstanding burglary charge.
Holmes served 111 days of that sentence. When
he was released, he went back to Bill Amerson,
ready for work. Unfortunately for John, things
were beginning to change all around him.
THE CONTAMINATION
When John Holmes came back to porno, he found
things all out of order. Video had replaced film
and the money was less for everyone involved.
John went from making over $1,000 a day to around
$300 dollars a day, if he was lucky. Holmes' first
film after prison was Marathon. This was where
he met his next wife, Laurie Rose aka Misty Dawn.
Laurie was the anal queen in porno, she was known
for her gift of taking any and all dicks into
her welcoming ass. About John she said, "I really
want to meet John and I really want all of that
in my ass." Such a lovely girl, and so giving.
Soon John was fucking her in the ass off screen.
A few years later, in 1987, Bill Amerson got a
call from John, who was in Las Vegas. He was drunk
and he told Bill that he thought he had gotten
married to Laurie, but he couldn't remember for
sure. Soon after their relationship started, John
convinced Laurie to quit porno. Ironically he
was worried about her contracting AIDS. Their
relationship was anything but stable. John would
beat her, talk down to her and basically treat
her like dirt. But she continually spoke of John's
love for her. In the film Wadd, Bill Amerson remembered
a prime example of the love that existed between
John and Laurie. He heard Laurie crying and screaming
for help in another room. When he reached the
room, he found her tied to the bed. John had left
her there with cum all over her face. John was
nowhere to be found. Bill soon discovered that
John was out back, swimming in the pool. Now that's
love.
John's health continued to decline, and his cocaine
use continued to increase. He used to boast about
how healthy he was and how his new diet, the Cocaine
Diet, was the reason. Holmes, again, needed money
fast, so he made a film called The Private Pleasures
of John C. Holmes. It was a gay porno, in which
John played the king in a kind of Aladdin setting.
John only had sex with one guy, a gay porn star
named Joey Yale. Joey Yale died of AIDS not long
after the completion of the film.
In 1985 Bill Amerson and John Holmes decided to
put in motion the idea for mandatory AIDS testing
every six months for all porno stars. John and
Bill were the first two to try it. Six months
later, they both came back negative. Another six
months rolled by, and to show that they really
meant it, they tested again. Bill's test came
back negative but John's was positive. The doctor
told him that he could live for another 20 to
30 years if he just watched his health. He told
him he'd have to cut out all smoking, drinking
and drug use. John was destroyed by the results.
He thought that his life was over then and there.
The very idea of not being able to fuck made him
miserable. Instead of dropping cigarettes, drinking
and drugs, he doubled his entire intake.
John's test results were kept quiet; he said he
had colon cancer. He desperately wanted to work
again, but Amerson wouldn't allow it. John went
to Italy in 1986 and made the film Rise of the
Roman Empire with the Italian porno queen and
member of Parliament, Cicciolina. He had sex with
Cicciolina and a few other girls, all unaware
that they were fucking Death himself. Fortunately,
none of the people involved with the film got
AIDS. When Amerson confronted John about what
he had done, he told Amerson that he figured everyone
in porno was going to die of AIDS anyway, so what
difference did it make.
People have speculated for years how John Holmes
got AIDS. A lot of people believe he got it from
shooting up, but those closest to him absolutely
deny it, saying that John was deathly afraid of
needles. Others think he caught it in prison.
It has been said that Holmes had a lover in prison
that died of AIDS soon after John's release. Some
think he contracted it while making The Private
Pleasures but the chances of getting AIDS from
giving anal sex is practically impossible. My
favorite theory about Holmes' contraction of HIV
is Laurie Holmes' speculation in the book Porn
King: "John and Bill went to Washington, DC right
around the time John would of contracted AIDS.
It was also during this time that Edward Meese
and his "Meese Commission" were on a crusade to
shut down the porn industry. I remember hearing
that Meese showed President Reagan some porn movies
at the White House, one of which I was in. The
along came John and Bill and a few others to fight.
John even met one of Reagan's Secret Service men.
Could it be that John Holmes was injected or somehow
given a strain of the AIDS virus? Maybe it was
the United States Government, not God, making
an example of John to underscore the 'horror'
of pornography." Man, that's a good theory.
THE CREMATION
John Holmes died of AIDS on March 13, 1988. Laurie
was by his side. He told her that she had to make
sure that no one got his dick, that no one cut
it off and put it in a jar. He wanted to take
it with him. Laurie had John's body cremated and
scattered his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. Laurie
said that's what John wanted, but everyone else
who was close to John, said he had always wanted
to be buried. She also prevented other people
from seeing him in the hospital before he died,
then called them after he died, accusing them
of neglecting him in his time of need. Hmmm? Something
is wrong with this picture.
John's death sparked a big change in the porn
industry. AIDS was no longer a bad word, and it
was no longer ignored. His monumental effect on
the porn industry continued after he was gone,
resulting in what has probably saved many a life
and the industry as a whole.
John Holmes was one of most contradictory people
in pop culture. He seemed to have a different
mask for each person he met, worked with, fucked
and loved. The porno industry is what Holmes came
to blame for his downfall and death, which in
some ways, is very true. But knowing, from his
first wife Sharon Gebenini, that he never used
any unhealthy substances until he started doing
porn, one can't help but understand why Holmes
may have decided to blame porno for ruining his
life. But it also made his life and fueled the
porn industry. He blamed porno for his misguided
life, yet he chose each and every path he took.
On the other side of the pillow, he loved porno
for making him a superstar, yet he made porno
bigger and better then it had ever been, or would
be after him. John Holmes' legendary career continues
to grow each and every year, bringing in new fans
that crave to see his giant cock ramming into
holes the world over. There will never be another
John Holmes, there may never be another dick like
his or a myth like his. Holmes' said it best when
he talked about his job appreciation for the film
Exhausted: "A happy gardner is the one with dirty
fingernails, and a happy cook is a fat cook. I
never get tired of what I do because I'm a sex
fiend. I'm very lusty."
-Sam McAbee
