At my door, Ben said, “Oh, can I see your room?”
“I’m really tired,” I said, awkwardly holding the key card.
He looked at the card until I put it in, and I didn’t open the door all the way. Just enough for me to slip through. As I got behind it, keeping my face out, I noticed he’d raised his hand to rest it on the door.
He pushed lightly, I pushed lightly. Did he know he was leaning on the door? Was he just steadying himself?
“Can I come in?” he said.
“I’m just so tired,” I said.
“How about a good night kiss?”
“Well, no, I am here with your friend,” I said, literally trying to play the Trump card. “I just feel weird because I am going to be doing some business with him.”
I was terrified. I am rarely terrified.
“Come on,” he said.
“Maybe I’ll call you when I’m in Pittsburgh,” I said. We were each using the same amount of force to keep the door exactly where it was.
Stop being polite, Stormy.
In one move, I suddenly increased the pressure enough to slam the door and throw the latch.
“Good night!” I said, keeping a smile in my voice.
He stood outside, not leaving. Every now and again he’d knock, rapping his knuckles in a line low along the door. “Come onnnn,” he repeated in a singsong voice. “I won’t tell.” He stayed a few more minutes.
Let’s be completely up front. If he wanted to get in that room, he could have the second I put the key card in the slot. If he didn’t want the door to close, he could have put his foot right on the threshold. I am only describing my intuition.
I can’t know what Trump intended when he sent me upstairs with Ben. I kept thinking of what Trump said: “What did I tell you about this one?” Had he told him, “Hey, she’s down?”
I have no way of knowing, and I don’t want to speculate.
I went back to L.A. the next day and life went on. Alana called to apologize for ghosting, and I said something vague about Trump wanting to have sex, but I didn’t elaborate. I said something similar to Moz, leaving out the fact that we’d actually had sex. I didn’t tell anyone, and gradually the night with Trump at Harrah’s just became another anecdote. I had always wanted to write a book like Chelsea Handler, and mine would be called Why Me? This would just have been a goofball chapterlet about “My Night with The Donald.” He gave me a number to reach him through his secretary Rhona Graff. I never called him.
But he kept calling me. The number always came up as UNKNOWN, but he was the only one who bothered to have an anonymous caller ID, so I always knew it was him. He had an uncanny knack for calling while I was in the studio doing a photo shoot with Keith. Or I would be on set, directing a film, and I would say to everyone there, “Donald Trump is calling me.” He didn’t call weekly, but on an average of every ten days. I would put him on speaker, which he knew, and he would say, “Honey bunch! How’s your day?” I did this at least a dozen times, his distinctive voice filling the room. None of these people knew I’d actually had sex with Trump, and I also didn’t let anyone know about his plan to put me on The Apprentice. I was convinced that Jessica Drake would snake her way into my spot if she knew it was even a possibility. I actually sent him to voice mail quite a bit, because I didn’t feel like dealing with him when I was busy.
“Honey bunch, I just saw you on a magazine cover,” he would usually say. “It’s fabulous. I was walking by and saw you.” He used this as an excuse to call me. “I thought to myself, That’s my honey bunch. She looks fabulous, I have to call and let her know. I can’t wait to see you.”
He let me know, constantly, that he was working on getting me my spot on The Apprentice. And he had an idea.
“I’ve been thinking about your Apprentice thing,” he told me during one of his calls, and he then proceeded to lay out a plan that he would bring up again and again in our phone conversations and in-person meet-ups. “Here’s the thing, honey bunch,” he said. “We can’t just get you on the show. If you get on the show and then you lose the first episode, that’s actually worse than you not getting on at all.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said. Going home right away would just solidify the notion that I’m a dumb porn star who couldn’t hang. The show was built around contestants split into two teams, called “corporations,” challenged with a new business-related task in each episode. Each episode ended with Trump judging the performance of members of the losing team and eliminating the weakest link in the challenge with “You’re fired!”
“Every episode you’re on is better for ratings for me and more money for you,” he said, before taking a long pause. “Gotta figure out a way to keep you on…”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll figure out a way to get you the challenges beforehand,” he said. “And we can devise your technique.”
He was going to have me cheat, and it was 100 percent his idea. He was going to tell me what the tasks were ahead of time, then devise a strategy to win. He never said he would rig it so I would win the whole thing, but he wanted to supply me with an unfair advantage. I felt very uncomfortable with it.
For six months, we talked on the phone and the plan came up repeatedly. He never once used the word “cheat”—he would talk about strategy and technique. “We have to make sure you stay on, honey bunch.”
I didn’t see Trump in person again until the next year. He invited me to the January 17, 2007, launch of Trump Vodka. The party was at Les Deux in Hollywood, and the crowd was a gaggle of wannabe stars, including Kim Kardashian, who was two months away from the release of the sex tape that would make her a star. I had just been in Las Vegas to accept the Contract Star of the Year honors at the AVN awards.
I was smarter now, so when he invited me, I brought along my friend Tera Patrick, who is also an actress in adult film. I wore dark jeans and a gold embroidered top. After we did the red carpet, Trump waved me over as soon as I walked in and kissed me on the mouth in front of everyone.
“You made it, honey bunch!” he said, his hand on my waist. He was wearing a pale platinum tie and a navy suit. I looked around for any sign of Melania, but she wasn’t there.
“I did!” I said. I introduced him to Tera, and he brought me over to meet his son Don Jr. Don was there with his then-wife Vanessa, who was pregnant with their first child. I know from recent reports that Karen McDougal was at the party. He didn’t introduce us, but as I go back in my memory I think I remember her in the VIP area. My hat’s off to him for having the balls to juggle two women at the party.
Trump told me he was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel and asked if I would come to his hotel later that night.
“Oh, I can’t,” I said. “I’m flying out of LAX tonight.” It was actually true. I was heading to a dance booking.
“When can I see you again?” he asked. “When are you coming to New York?”
“I’ll actually be there in a couple months,” I said. I had a dance booking set for the week of my birthday in March.
“Well, call my office,” he said. “I want to make sure I see you. And we can discuss our project.”
There was the Apprentice bait again, and I took it.
I called Trump’s secretary Rhona when I was in New York and she said to be there at twelve thirty that day. I didn’t want to go alone, so I brought this girl Yoli, who was working for me as an assistant. We went right up to his office on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower. He met us, so excited to show us all the memorabilia in his office, which seemed cluttered.