Penthouse: What do you think about the fantasies some white women have of black men making the best lovers?

Summer: I don't know ... it's certainly more than the fact that black men put it somewhere and it feels good. It's the color, the hair texture, the smell, the difference in the feel. It feels different to make love with a black man than it does with a white man. It's just a different touch. It's aesthetics. I suppose for a white woman to imagine a black-skinned man pouncing on her bones... well, the contrast is a stimulation, I think. I know I attract blond men like flies. One of my record company people who was traveling around Europe with me once said, "My God, I never saw so many blond men flock around anybody in my life!"

It's the contrast, the look of it. But, purely sexually speaking, there's no difference having to do with race. It's just a fantasy that a black man's penis is longer or bigger or more potent or anything like that- excuse me for being so technical. And I can't really say that black women sustain longer. I mean, I really don't know.

Penthouse: Do you have any idea why you're so popular in the homosexual community?

Summer: Not really. It's funny, but one of my very first boyfriends was homosexual. He didn't know it at the time, but I had always felt he was very sensitive. I've always been attracted to homosexual men- I mean physically as well as in other ways. And sometimes I think my attraction for them is that I'm motherly.

Penthouse: Donna Summer is motherly?

Summer: I think I have a strange kind of earthiness that might be alluring for a man who isn't really into women sexually.

Penthouse: What kind of emotions do you go through when you're recording or performing your songs and having to exude all that sexuality?

Summer: "Love to Love You" was approached as an acting piece, as what I imagined it to be like for a man seeing his wife for the first time, or for a woman seeing a man for the first time. I've been in that situation. There wasn't anything to say. I was in ecstasy without even being touched. I was breathing heavy just from the thought that my dream was right there, in front of me. Ecstasy comes in many forms; it's not just physical. But my song conjured up physical fantasies for people. My acting was done well, and people believed the story I was acting.

Penthouse: You did all that heavy breathing, faking that orgasm, without thinking any sexual thoughts?

Summer: I know it sounds funny. During the recording of the record, I had much more romantic thoughts than the record led you to believe. You know, there are ecstatic moments in life that are physical, that are like an orgasm. For a mother, I should think, there are moments - touching her child, realizing that this miracle is hers- that are ecstasy.

You know, that record flopped twice in Europe. I was a clean-cut, funny American girl who was in Europe doing top European music. That was my image. They didn't even acknowledge that record. It fell off the charts twice before it was released the third time and hit. It was hysterical. I just made up the voice for that song. I found a hole in the market. I found a loophole, and that's how I got my foot in the door. That was a big foot, I'll tell you that- not your basic, ordinary foot. And it boosted me up a long, long way from my Boston roots.

Penthouse: What kind of family do you come from?

Summer: I was one of seven children. I came from a lower-middle-class black family in Boston. My mother and father worked real hard. My father worked three jobs. He struggled like hell to keep our house. He was a real dominating father but a very good father. He was a butcher during the war, so we always had meat. He was also an electrician and a janitor, and in his spare time he took care of buildings. There were times we didn't have anything, but my parents just never let us down.

There were times when my girl friends would all be going to school with new skirts, new this, new that, and I didn't have anything new. But I never envied them. I was always a little different. When everyone else was thinking about getting married and talking about the debutantes' ball, I'd be thinking, "Why am I different? Why don't I care about those things?" I didn't care, because I knew I was going somewhere in my life.
- Even as a child, I knew I was going to be something. I mean, I've got to tell you that I got credit in my neighborhood store just because everyone believed that one day I'd be successful. I could go down and take anything I wanted, and they'd write it down on a bill and say to me, "You're going to be famous one day. You can pay it then." I think I grew up with a very good outlook on who I was, who I was supposed to be. I lived in a very mixed neighborhood: Irish, Italian, Catholic, doctors, teachers, students, regular families- a real melting pot.

Penthouse: Did you ever get involved in drugs when you were young?

Summer: When I was about sixteen, I went through a pretty heavy drug scene. That was the Janis Joplin part of my life. I was in a rock-'n'-roll group, the only female and the only black person in the group. I was the lead singer. It was that whole psychedelic period when everyone was trying and testing new things, and I just went overboard. I finally went so far that when I was eighteen I said, "Enough! God did not intend me to live my life this way!" And so I quit, abruptly, after two years, and I really haven't indulged in drugs since. Now I'm unusually sensitive to any type of drug or medication. I have a hard time taking Tylenol.

Penthouse: Was your introduction to sex during this period too?

Summer: I first had sex when I was eighteen or nineteen. It was quite disappointing. Reminds me of the song lyric that goes, "Is that all there is?" It was really a mistake. You see, I was in Boston at the time, and I fell madly in love- was just infatuated with a man who was very special. He was sensitivity personified. He was poetic, and I was just more than in love with him - I would've, committed suicide at thinking that I couldn't be with him.

In any case, we finally broke up, and most of the reason was because I wouldn't have sex with him. I said I didn't want to until I was married, blah, blah, blah. So then I was so disappointed, and I thought that maybe that's what you had to go through to hold on to somebody you loved. So I had sex with the next man I went out with after the first fellow went away. I wasn't as much in love with him, but I thought maybe I just had to do it, that it was what growing up was about. My heart and soul weren't in it- I was just afraid of losing him. But I was real disappointed.

Penthouse: How happy are you with your life, now?

Summer: I'm always slightly depressive. My whole life is work, and it's always been work. Even when I'm home relaxing, I'm playing the piano or singing. I've always got to be doing something creative or constructive. I hate the feeling of doing nothing. I was on tour for eight months last year and for about four months this year. I started getting so speedy that I couldn't sleep at all anymore. I was in a state of permanent insomnia. I would go from filming to recording, to this, then that, then something else.

Penthouse: What compels you to be this way?

Summer: I think it comes from the fear of dying, in the sense that I feel that God gave me a reason to be here. I'm very religious in the sense that I think there is life after death and that everyone has a karmic debt to pay back; and whatever that is, I want to pay it back before I go. I want to do things for other people- and I'm getting to be in a position where I can achieve things for others. I believe that money talks. Everything else is okay but money speaks, and if I can save X amount of dollars to build a community center, for example, I am really doing something.