Former underage porn queen Traci Lords chats about how Ronald Reagan saved her life, dressing like a pony for a Japanese spanking party, and how she's helping teen girls out of the kind of life she led.

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Aug. 1, 2003 | The book party mob rushes the small woman and begins smacking her with light. Press photographers -- freelance, wire service, Weegee wannabes -- corner her in the back of a railroad car-narrow bar in New York. Men and women are shouting, "Traci, look at me! Traci, smile! This way, Traci, this way!" Their prey is Traci Lords, former porn star and now author.

She was born Norma Louise Kuzma and took her last name from Jack Lord, star of "Hawaii Five-O." Lords was never a choir girl, but she now holds herself like a woman from a more innocent time. Maybe a young silent movie star -- Mary Pickford crossed with Lillian Gish. Traci teases the shutterbugs by holding her new memoir, "Underneath It All," over her mouth and peering at her attackers with impish eyes. She knows the camera loves her. In publicity photos Traci Lords always appears as a radiant woman. She's too beautiful to care about her notorious past.

Almost.

Back in the Reagan era she would sprawl naked, legs akimbo, before some unshaved schlub clutching a Nikon. She'd let herself be filmed performing every form of sexual act except -- as she assures us -- anal sex. Those were pre-video days. You couldn't watch Traci in your living room with a Bud and a bag of chips. Guys had to slink into creepy movie houses, sit on sperm-stained seats with their raincoats bunched in their laps. Some of her fans turned out to be FBI agents. One night the feds busted into Lords' Hollywood pad and carried the screaming girl off to redemption. You see, the Traci Lords oeuvre -- which climaxes with the nymph being dressed in a red devil suit going down on some dude's firepole -- had been filmed when she was just 15, 16, 17 years old. "I have to thank Ed Meese [Reagan's anti-porn crusading attorney general] for saving my life," she says, speaking with both sincerity and irony.