A source writes:
Let’s go back the time a few years… Vicky started to work for LA Ent. in August 1998 as the assistant to the accountant, Liza. Vicky answered phones and did the filing, however, Liza wouldn’t let Vicky do any kind of accounting. I guess Liza thought that if Vicky was taught anything more than simple things that she would be replaceable. After a while, Liza gave in and she let Vicky do more and more things.
In the office, Lynton had a national sales manager, Engle. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing in many people’s minds. He was the most dishonest and back stabbing person around. Engle talked shit about people behind their backs. In Engle’s warped mind everybody were assholes, cunts, or any one of a number of cute but demeaning names he had. He only liked people he did business with. Lynton and Engle had the same philosophy; you are only good as long as you are needed. He had a track record of being a lousy businessman. Before he started to work for Lynton, he’d run his own business, but it didn’t do too well and he ended up running it into the ground. After that, he couldn’t hold a regular job with regular pay anywhere because he owed a pot full of money to the IRS. Engle had a contract with Lynton, but no one was certain about what it contains. All anyone knew is that it guaranteed Engle a pay of $1,400 per week, whether or not he made a sale. He received commission on top of that.
Engle’s paycheck was written out in his wife’s name so that the IRS could not find him and garnish his wages for the money he owed on his previous business. His wife worked on the set of a big, well-known TV-sitcom; she was a hideous croak who looked more like his mother than his wife. They had no kids, only a dog that was treated better than any human being.
Let’s move forward to January of 2000. There had been the yearly adult film convention show in Las Vegas over the weekend. Lynton and his little entourage were back in town. Everybody that is, except for one, Engle. At the show, Lynton had made some business and was paid in cash. Engle had taken care of the money, $4,000 in cash. Now he was gone and so was the money. After a couple days passed with no word from Engle and no luck in contacting him, Vicky made calls to Sheriff’s department, the Police, and the morgue, but no Engle. Friday comes and Engle finally shows up. Liza is pissed because she knows that Engle took the money and she has a feeling that he does not have it anymore.
Engle and Lynton have a meeting in his office behind closed doors. Lynton is mad as Engle gives his “feel sorry for me” performance. He knows that Engle is an idiot, but he needs him for the clients he has. It’s a Catch 22, damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Lynton knows he’ll have to just deal with it because Engle sells for him but he also has a lot of baggage. Engle’s problems were many, drugs, gambling, and booze to name a few. This was his cup of tea, a dark and deceitful life. So expecting the money back was a fantasy at best for Lynton.
At the end of the day, Lynton held a staff meeting in the warehouse. Lynton, the shippers, Vicky, Cindy, who also worked in the front office, Liza, Engle, and the rest of his sales people were there. Liza was furious about Engle’s behavior. She was a true refrigerator, ice cold. She hated men so much that it made one wonder if she was a dike. Cindy, who worked with Liza and Vicky, was bit of a butch. She didn’t make a secret of her homosexuality. Vicky didn’t feel comfortable around her ever since Cindy made a pass at her. That was the end of normal co-worker treatment.
At the meeting, Liza didn’t make it a secret of what she felt about Engle and his despicable act with the money. She flat out asked him, “Where is the money”, but Engle didn’t say anything. Liza started to raise her voice and she called him a thief repeatedly while she waved her index finger back and forth in Engle’s face. She got a little bit too close and her finger ended up in Engle’s mouth. There was only so much Engle could tolerate and he got mad, so mad that he clamped his hands around Liza’s neck and started to choke her. He shook her back and forth and was about to finish her off once and for all. Everybody just stood there and watched this go on. Vicky and Cindy jumped on Engle in order to get him to release Liza. Engle let go of Liza and she ran into the front office to call the police. While she was making the call, Engle coached everybody in the warehouse on what to say when the police arrived. Vicky told him that there was no way in hell that she was going to lie to the police regarding what had happened. She realized that if that could happen to Liza it could easily happen to her.
Liza quit that same day and Vicky took over the accounting position for LA Ent. Lynton told Vicky that the money that Engle “confiscated”, so to speak, was to be deducted through his paycheck every week until it was paid back in full. Vicky was not signing the checks but they were posted in the checkbook and, from time to time, she got a chance to review the check register. To her surprise there was no money being deducted from Engle’s paycheck every week, not a dime. Engle was getting his full salary of $1,400 every week. This little charade caused Vicky to get her own opinion about Lynton. She began calling him “Styrofoam balls”, because every time something happened Lynton said that he was going to take care of things, but when push came to shove, he crumbled like a Styrofoam ball. In other words, he had no balls. Lynton relied too much on others to do his job. He was not a very good manager or CEO and was too much of a micro manager. He cared little about the day-to-day operations of his company.
He was doing many things himself, things that he had hired people to do for him. Under this strange business model, he had others doing his duties as the head of the company while he did many of the tasks his secretary, production crew, sales people, and accountants were hired to do. He paid everybody lousy wages. Every two weeks people were paid with a regular payroll check and in between, they were paid cash so he wouldn’t have to pay the payroll taxes on the wages. He made his employees come to him in his office and ask for their paycheck every week, he never simply handed them out on Friday. Lynton thought that the people should be grateful for getting cash and they shouldn’t complain if their payday stretched from Friday well into the next week.
One time a situation occurred after Lynton had struck a deal with a Sam Shaft to purchase some masters. The deal was that Lynton would pay half of the agreed upon price up front and the remaining half upon delivery of the masters. However, when Sam returned to deliver the masters and pick up the balance of the money, Lynton changed his mind and was no longer willing to pay the remaining amount due. Sam was furious, took his masters, and left the building with Lynton on his tail. The entire time Lynton was desperately trying to reason with the Sam.
Outside the building, Lynton and Sam started to play tug-of-war with the box of masters. After a few moments of this childish display, Sam eventually won the battle and placed the box in the back of his truck. While they were fighting over the masters, Rosie had quietly come outside and neither of them noticed her. While Lynton and Sam talked about the deal, Rosie ran up to the truck, took the box, and ran back inside Lynton’s office. What happened next is another story.
So, the problem with Lynton was that he did cutthroat business deals and that was not very “healthy” for him or his company. His company was called the “the whore” because he whored out products at such low prices that nearly no one could compete with him (Well there was one, but he was working with Lynton. The company on Nordhoff St. was called Nymph., but not too many people knew how close they were working with Lynton.). He bought product in the thousands in order to get a deal and then turned around and sold it at rock bottom prices that gave him a very low profit margin. Lynton was known by other names too. When voices were raised between Lynton and his colleagues in the industry, he was called a “Jewish mother fucker” and many other derogatory things. He made a lot of enemies, more enemies than friends to be exact. His so-called friends were only diplomatic to his face, but, as soon as he turned around and walked the other way, he was everything but a man in their eyes.
Vicky was on the phone with her hairdresser, he was a Hollywood-type who had worked on NBC soap operas as a makeup artist, even won an Emmy, but now he had opened his own little styling business in his home. Tonight he was going to come by the office and buy some products. He used to sell to some of the local stores in order to make some extra money.
Vicky introduced him to me and we talked for quiet a while. It turned out that he was of European descent like me. He offered to cut my hair and I took him up on his offer. A few days later Vicky and I had our hair done at his house.
At his house, he showed me pictures of him dressed up as a drag queen and pictures from other photo shoots that he had done posing as a woman. He also posed as a man in shoots for various modeling agencies. This man was a multi-sexual who could fool any camera lens. He was simply an adorable man with an extraordinary female face who could be sexy and charming either as a male or female. Vicky and I were laughing because we thought it would be a kick if we sent Lynton a picture of him as a woman. We would say that “she” was my girlfriend Vanessa. I scanned the picture into my computer at home and prepared for some fun.
I knew that Lynton had issues with the women he dated because they knew what he was doing for living and no one liked him for anything but his money. Lynton had learned that if he wanted to attract the attention of a woman all he had to do was flash some cash and spend, spend, spend. It was pathetic, but it was the best he could do and that made him less than happy. Yes, money can buy you companionship if you are lonely, but it can’t buy you love.
I held back a bit after sending the picture to Lynton. A few days after sending the picture to Lynton, I finally asked him in a casual manner what he thought of my girlfriend. He had no idea. Lynton asked me if he could meet her and I said that I would ask her if she could stop by the office just to say “hi”. He thought Vanessa was hot and started asking me all sorts of questions about her. The little devil in me came out and I laughed to myself because Lynton had fallen for our little practical joke – hook, line, and sinker. I called Vanessa later on and asked him if he was willing to play our little game and if he would come by the office and say “hello” to Lynton. He said that he was going to have to think about it. It was a big task to try and fool Lynton, but the pleasure would be seeing his face when he found out that he got a boner over another man. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for Lynton, Vanessa declined to play our game.
When you entered Lynton’s office, he usually had his feet thrown up on the desk and he was constantly rubbing his balls and his jock. I asked him once to knock it off and he simply laughed it off and said that it itched. I asked him if he had the crabs, but he didn’t say anything and tried to ignore my statement. I bet he did, with all the girls he had running in and out of in his office all the time I wondered when he ever had the chance to wipe off his groin.
I was laughing and thinking how naive the “little twit” (Lynton’s pincushion sales rep in the office) was who he fucked in his leisure time. Maybe she was scratching too. I never paid too much attention, but maybe I should have. He didn’t have too much respect for the girls that were in his movies either. One day he was watching a scene that Stefon had shot in which a young girl did a double penetration scene. Lynton really enjoyed backdoor sex and requested anal scenes most of the time. Stefon and Lynton sat and watched the raw footage. Lynton was laughing because the girl was in so much pain. I said, “What the hell are you laughing at, can’t you see that she is in pain?”
“Oh come on.” he said, she is just a whore.
I said, “That whore is the reason you are making money!” and I left. I was thinking how he would feel having his butt reamed wide open, but maybe he did from time to time. He was a deviant.
Let me describe Lynton for you. He has tar black, slicked back hair that he keeps in a girlish ponytail. The spud is about five foot six in heals, and wears a gold chain around his neck. He has a gay look over him most of the time, but he seemed to like girls. Maybe he was bisexual. Well, one can only speculate, but he sure was anal infatuated and that should ring some bells.
Chris Walsh was also supplying all sorts of things, hot naturally, to Lynton. For example, he provided Lynton with stolen equipment. One day, he came in with a yellow forklift truck, but there was no bill of sale, no receipt, and no questions. Not only was he providing warehouse equipment, he was also one of the suppliers from who Lynton got his drugs.
Drugs also came in on the daily lunch truck that came by twice a day. I remembered hearing Rosie scream in the speaker, “LUNCH TRUCK! THE LUNCH TRUCK IS HERE!” I looked at my watch and it was only around ten in the morning. The truck may have been early for lunch, but it was right on time for its “alternate” purpose. Lynton would get his Styrofoam lunch box from the truck and in-between his napkin and the box was his side order, in the form of speed, pot, or whatever else he had bought. Yes, a “Styrofoam lunch box” for “Styrofoam balls”, how appropriate. Maybe I was wrong and it was not a lunch truck after all, maybe it was a mobile pharmacy. Who knows? Either Rosie or George Washington, (another sales employee), as we called him, went out to the lunch truck and brought back Lynton’s supercharged ordered.
Rosie was not much better than Lynton was; she sat there and did a line, two, or twelve at her desk. She used to bring in small quarter bags of speed and provided Lynton with some. She was not too discreet about it and would even forget to wipe her nose after inhaling her lunch. Everyone could see that she was doing drugs at her desk. Yes, the lunch truck outside LA Ent. came with packages of white powder, but it was not creamer for the coffee.
Rosie’s husband was suspicious of her behaviors because she had done drugs in the past and had pledged to her husband that she was a good girl and did not do drugs any more. She was an awful woman who was cheating on her husband with other men on her lunch break. She had her 17-year-old daughter sit in the car and wait for her while she got her booty slammed. Rosie had an affair with Chris Walsh too. She constantly complained that her husband did not want sex with her and she had to have it, no matter who it was from. The first time she got caught fooling around was a time when Vicky had had enough of her and was going to tell Rosie’s husband everything, but Rosie decided to come clean with her husband on her own. After that, she went to counseling for her infidelity. She said that after all this had died down that she would go back and continue seeing the other men, especially Dirk, the one she used to hump during her lunch breaks.
A point that I would like to make based on my experiences is that the people in this industry are not to be trusted. I still hold this belief even after being a part of this industry. Remember, this is an industry where the norms include stealing from partners and competitors alike, rampant backstabbing, the using of others to meet one’s own needs, creating constant rumors about everything and everyone, and taking advantage of the actors and actresses. The adult film industry may be a legal business on the surface, but simply poke your head beneath the shiny surface and you’ll find a teaming underworld thriving on the dreams of others and a world filled with smiling predatory who eat, drink, and breath corruption.
You think you know someone and you really do not. It’s a classic example of this schizophrenic industry; it presents one “normal” face to the outside world and another dark and wicked face within it’s own seedy world. There are no “perfectly normal” people anywhere in this industry and if you think that there are, then you are a fool.
To anyone out there who wants to be a part of this industry I have one piece of advice; this is a one-way street going in the wrong direction, so stay off it. Know this, no one is your friend, and no one will stretch out that hand you need when you are deep down in the mud. They will ignore your pleas for help as they walk right over you leaving you and your shattered dreams scattered about behind them. It is all for one and one for none industry. In other words, the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many; no one covers anyone’s back and there is no honor amongst thieves. This is a thief’s paradise and nothing more.
What you have just read about Lynton Appleson is not a unique story about this industry; however unique that he still is in business, this is how things actually are and will continue to be. One thing it does tell me; this industry is only good to the few privileged czars who sit at the top of the heap. Yes, this is modern-day feudalism in practice, complete with individual fiefdoms, lords, and peasants. This industry has no conscious whatsoever and I do not expect any time soon that it will grow one either, it is as I said earlier, a cutthroat business.