“Uh-huh,” I said, noncommittal.
“I’ve gotta think on this,” he said, sitting down on the couch next to me. “So, are you married?”
“No,” I said. “I was, but I’m not now. But you’re married. What would your wife think of you being here with me?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said. “It’s not a big deal, and anyway, we have separate bedrooms.” I took that to mean that he no longer saw me as someone to sleep with. By spanking him, I wondered if I had alpha-dogged my way out of his writing me off as a bimbo. As if to prove his intentions were now legit, he jumped up to grab a photo. “Have you seen my son?”
He showed me a photo of Melania holding little Barron, who was only four months old. It was adorable, and I could tell it made him genuinely proud.
He asked me about my family and I gave him the briefest of bios, but I was impressed that he was at least showing some give-and-take in conversation.
“I have to ask you a question,” he said. “It’s kind of offensive, so I apologize in advance if you’re offended.”
“Go ’head,” I said.
“What’s the situation on royalties in the adult business?”
I laughed. I was expecting a sex question of some sort. He added, “I’m familiar with TV, and I’ve been in lots of movies, and I get these checks.”
“There’s nothing,” I said.
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was,” I said. He was honestly beside himself. It started a series of questions about the ins and outs—that joke is never funny—of the adult business. Porn 101 at Trump University. But it was nice. We had moved past the foolishness with the pajamas, and we could respect each other’s insight as two career-obsessed people who happen to be extremely successful at what we do.
He asked how much money I made per scene and I explained that I have a contract. “If you’re freelance you can make thirty grand per month,” I said, “and you can get more for different sex acts.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, you get paid more for anal,” I said. “A bonus on the back end, so to speak.”
“Why isn’t everyone freelance?”
“That’s for the girls who get in the business and want to make as much money as fast as possible. They have a two-year plan or whatever, and they want to make that thirty grand a month and pay for college, whatever.”
“What’s the problem with that?” he asked.
“They get shot out,” I said. “There’s a very short shelf life in the adult business if you do too many films. You make a lot of money really quickly, your star rises really quickly, and then it’s gone. Getting a contract, you get a lot less money but you’re in it for the long run.”
“Well, how much money do you make?”
At the time I was making seven thousand dollars a month from Wicked, including my writing and directing fees.
“Well, that’s—” he said, making a face. “Why?”
“I make one movie about every six to eight weeks. There are girls who make six movies a week while I’m doing ten movies a year. I won’t get shot out, plus Wicked spends millions of dollars advertising me and creating my brand. I can go out and do dance bookings and say I am a Wicked contract star. But I own the name ‘Stormy Daniels’ and stormydaniels.com. If I leave Wicked, I leave with my name. Whereas this other girl makes a whole bunch of money the first year and then she’s out.”
“So, you are smart,” he said, nodding.
“Okay, I have a question to ask you that may be offensive,” I said.
“Ooh,” he said. “What is it?” I think he thought I was going to ask him something dirty, too.
I pointed to his hair. “This,” I said, taking a long beat. “What’s going on with this?”
“I know,” he said with a smile. “It’s ridiculous. Come on. First of all, I have a mirror. Second of all, I have had every celebrity stylist—even Paul Mitchell himself—wanting to give me a makeover. I could have whatever. I could basically have a head transplant if I wanted, okay?”
“Okay, well, why don’t you?”
“Everybody talks about it,” he said with an air of in-on-the-joke smugness. “It’s my thing. It’s my trademark. Plus, if I let this person do it, it will just piss off all these other people. ‘Well, why did you let him do it?’ I know a lot of people who would kill to do it. The best. The best of the best.”
“Easy, Samson.”
It was another shot at him, but he seemed to enjoy it. I wasn’t putting on an act—that’s just my personality and what I do to people who I work with. The Donald was no different. Just a bigger fish to fry, which made me want to turn up the heat. And while I had calmed down, I was still angry that I had to prove he couldn’t just order me up like room service. Where was this dinner he promised, anyway?
“What do you like to do for fun?”
Oh, you’re learning, I thought, like, how to have a normal conversation. “I ride horses,” I said. “I don’t have a horse right now because I am too busy, but one day I hope to go back to riding.”
“Oh, I am thinking of doing this show-jumping thing.” He actually was, and he ended up hosting the Central Park Horse Show at Trump Rink in New York. I told him I don’t do Grand Prix show jumping and started to explain three-day eventing competitions, but I took pity on him as I saw his interest fading.
“Well,” I said, “what else do you do besides golf?”
His eyes lit up when he heard “golf,” which I think was all he heard. He literally looked like he woke up.
“You golf?” he asked.
“No, my tits are too big to swing.”
“Well, if you ever want to check out one of my courses, they have fabulous restaurants. The best food in the world. If you ever want to, call me and I will set it up for you.” That got him talking—at length—about his plans to build “the greatest golf course the world has ever seen” in Scotland. He said he was having a hard time getting it started.
He was getting agitated talking about it, but there was nothing that made him seem as petulant and prone to tantrums as he has been as president. He was just run-of-the-mill insecure, which I find happens a lot with people with money that they didn’t earn themselves. They harbor this inner self-esteem problem that they try to mask by overcompensating. That’s him to a tee.
He asked me where I lived, so he could recommend a course, and I told him I was thinking about moving to Florida. “Oh!” he said, perking up again. “I’m building a new condo tower there. Tampa Bay. I’ll get you a good deal.” Mind you, there has been some confusion about that in the press. People, even my gay dad Keith Munyan, got the impression that Trump was going to give me a condo. No, he was going to sell me one.
“If I bought a condo from you, at least that might prove we met,” I said. “My friend Alana didn’t believe me. I said I would call her…”
“Let’s call her,” he said.
I dialed her number and she answered after a few rings. “I’m here,” I said. I mostly called her because she thought I was lying and I couldn’t stand that. “Come hang out with us.”
“I’m with Cindy,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”
I clicked off and he looked at me expectantly. “How do you know her?” he asked.
“She’s actually my neighbor in L.A. and I randomly bumped into her,” I said. “She’s in the business.”
“Is she a big star like you?”
“She’s not a contract girl,” I said, and he nodded. I smiled—I had taught him some of the language of the adult business.
“Have you worked with her?”