I’m no sex or drug expert but I’m fairly certain Brenda wouldn’t have given Dartanian an alley blowjob within moments of meeting him if she was sober. In my limited experience, women are only that forward in strip clubs where their flirtations are usually limited to surface encounters, and their motivations are as clear as their Lucite heels.
Dartanian and I were killing time in Ybor before heading to Thee Dollhouse for the first night of the 2013 NightMoves Awards Weekend. He confessed that, so far, the weekend wasn’t living up to his expectations after reading my coverage of FetishCon. And, it certainly wasn’t living up to the porn star name, "Dartanian," he christened himself with for the visit.
Dartanian had flown to Tampa in the hopes of using my loose connections to the adult industry to fuck a porn star. Despite my apprehensions about unleashing him at a work function, I couldn’t say no. He was my oldest friends. We shared an efficiency for four years in college. He had been one of my two groomsmen. In the end, I told him to come. I had just started dating Robin exclusively—my first foray into monogamy since my divorce following the AVN Awards in January—and I needed someone to fill in as my stunt cock for the weekend.
[jump]Dartanian and I met Brenda and Roxanne—(not their real names)—while walking to our car in Ybor. Roxanne recognized me from my second job bouncing at a St. Pete bar. She occasionally stopped in with her boyfriend to pick up a second woman for threesomes. Brenda was one such woman.
By way of saying hello, Brenda popped Dartanian's suspenders and complemented his mustache—both of which were peacocking ornaments inspired by his recent discovery of the pick-up Bible, The Game. Soon they were grabbing each other’s asses, then kissing, then retreating behind a box truck in the parking lot.
During their absence, Roxanne mused about how she loved watching her boyfriend fuck Brenda. Roxanne’s friends all assumed her boyfriend was manipulating her into having threesomes, but group sex was her fantasy. For her, sex was a beautiful thing. I nodded, though I wonder if she would use such glowing terms to describe what was happening in the alley.
Roxanne and I snuck around the box truck to see how the new lovers were getting along. Brenda was perched on the truck’s bumper with her skirt over Dartanian’s head. She mixed first-date chitchat with dirty talk.
“Give it to me,” she moaned. “So where are you visiting from?”
The couple moved around the other side of the truck to get some privacy, and so Brenda could return the favor. It took five minutes or so for the couple to realize they were in full view of the dumbstruck patrons at a tiny bar across the street.
Back at Roxanne's car, Brenda told Dartanian to enter his name as Darla in her phone. She was in the process of breaking up with her boyfriend. Meanwhile I texted Robin a photo of Dartanian and Brenda in the alley. My intention was to alleviate her fears of me misbehaving by providing full disclosure. I wanted to prove that I could be a passive sex writer who remained on the sidelines while helping my friend get laid. Her response was less than positive. I immediately reconsidered the efficiency of full disclosure in a healthy relationship.
Thee Dollhouse’s neon sign glowed in the Tampa night like carnival lights. This adult funhouse was filled with artifices of women shaped by silicone, heels, makeup, and stage lights. It was a playhouse where men could make-believe with living dolls.
Thirty porn stars crowded a side bar. Dartanian used my press badge and my SLR camera to imbed himself in this group. He took pictures of stars, saying things like, "Grab her boob. Don't worry It's cool. I'm a professional. I work for Creative Loafing."
One of the things I loved and hated about Dartanian was his ability to inhale the moment like a line of dirty cocaine. In that moment he truly believed he was a professional photographer. This troubled me for a number of reasons. Part of me worried he would give Creative Loafing a bad name, if only because he would lessen the effectiveness of using the same line when I introduced myself to porn stars.
Robin texted me, asking what I was doing. The alley blowjob had made her a bit less trusting of my profession. I invited her to join me. Her presence would make it more difficult to fish for a story, but I also had to show her that I wasn’t elbow-deep in an orgy. That and I was excited to have an appropriate outlet to direct my sexual energy.
Princess Felicity Jade grabbed my ass to say hello. Normally I wouldn’t have thought twice about this greeting; an ass grab in the world of adult entertainment is as meaningless as a handshake. But I was in a new relationship, with new rules. What if Robin arrived just in time to see this transaction? I sat in the corner to protect my coveted ass, but this only left me vulnerable to strippers who kept dropping in my lap like sexy grenades ready to decimate my new love.
When Robin arrived I gave her the background story on each porn star, trying to portray them as unique snowflakes. I explained how Bonnie Rotten had spider webs tattooed around her nipples, and how Brittney Amber got her start at The Bunny Ranch after seeing the reality show about the famed brothel.
“I don’t want to hear this,” Robin said. “Imagine if I started pointing out guys and saying, ‘He has a twelve inch dick.’”
She pointed to Flynt Dominick.
“His is actually only nine and a half,” I corrected.
She didn’t take this comment as evidence that my porn knowledge went beyond my personal tastes. I understood her objections, just as I knew how Brenda’s boyfriend would feel if he read the text in which she described Dartanian’s dick as delicious. Certain details should be omitted, particularly when it comes to knowledge of other people's genitals.
Dartanian bragged that he had just photographed the most amazing ass. He showed me a photo. I informed him that beneath this glorious ass lurked Mia Isabela’s ten-inch dick. He took a moment to reevaluate his initial assessment. I couldn’t tell what impressed me more about Isabela: her transformation into such a curvy woman, or her ability to conceal such a conspicuous remnant of her past.
In the ladies room, Robin overheard a few porn stars in their late twenties bitching about being cast as MILFs. In the midst of the conversation, she spotted Mia Isabela’s ass and asked if she could handle it. Isabela agreed. Robin said Isabela’a ass felt better than Christmas. She then grabbed Mia’s boobs, which were just as fake and nice. Even though Isabela was a genetic male, I wasn’t jealous. I also felt better about the fact that Prinzzess had handled my butt and likely described it to her sister, Cherokee, as feeling better than Flag Day and Thanksgiving rolled into one perfectly crafted man ass.
“I accidentally got two lap dances,” Dartanian said slumping down next to me.
A woman in lingerie asked if he wanted to have some fun in the back. He assumed she was a porn star who wanted to share some illicit substances. Of course when he realized that she was a stripper, he didn’t stop her from giving him a lap dance. After her performance, she asked for $40 as she had seamlessly danced through two songs.
“That’s tricky,” Dartanian said emptying what remained in his wallet.
“That’s not tricky,” she said. “That’s the business.”
At 1 AM Robin and I stood waiting for my car in Thee Dollhouse’s parking lot. Dartanian announced that he was going home with a porn star. Which porn star was yet to be determined. He would get on their shuttle bus and see where things went. He envisioned an after party, drugs, and an orgy or two. I started to voice a few objections, then stopped. Dartianian’s dick wasn’t one for listening to reason.
So, with equal parts horror and admiration, I watched Dartanian stroll onto a shuttle bus full of porn stars with the same impractical confidence he used to stroll into exclusive frat parties in our college years.
Around 4 AM that same night, I spotted Dartanian standing on the gravel shoulder of Adamo Drive with his thumb out. When my headlights hit him, a smile spread beneath this mustache. For a brief moment I seriously worried a cop would pull me over for suspicion of picking up a man-whore, and I’d have to explain the whole strange night, and Dartanian’s mustache, to the authorities.
As I drove back to St. Pete, Dartanian filled in the gaps of the night. Unbeknownst to me, one of his motives for this trip was to see if his dick was large enough to do porn. After halfheartedly trying to solicit a few professional opinions on the bus, one starlet called his bluff. She told him to whip out his dick for everyone to see. When he lamented that it wasn’t hard, she rubbed his crotch a few moments and again told him to whip it out. This time he did.
“I’ve seen smaller,” she said, and another starlet agreed. “Now put it away.”
When the bus dumped its passengers at their hotel, Dartanian followed his new friends through the halls. After a few wrong turns in search of an after party, he found himself alone in the lobby. Luckily he had been texting Brenda all night. She was on her way to pick him up. But, instead of Brenda showing up, a muscular man arrived looking less than happy to be there at 3 AM. This was Brenda’s husband, Bob.
Bob naturally wondered why Dartanian had been texting his wife all night. Dartanian claimed Bob had the wrong fellow. The husband called Dartanian’s phone. It rang. At this point, the NightMoves crew, who Dartanian assumed was on his side, stripped his press pass and escorted the men outside.
Bob assured Dartanian he wouldn’t kill him. He had children and millions of dollars he didn’t want to lose over an assault charge. All he wanted was the truth. The truth was, according to Dartanian, that he met Brenda downtown and they exchanged numbers. Nothing more. After some shouting, the man left. Dartanian didn’t have enough for a motel room, let alone the $100 taxi back to St. Pete, so he called me.
NightMoves hosted two strip club parties Friday night, but we could not go. Dartanian was the first person banned from the awards weekend. To get out some of his sexual energy, Robin and I unleashed him on downtown St. Pete. Armed with a single pick-up line gleamed from The Game, he asked every woman he encountered if she believed in magic. Such a line is only a provocative opener provided you have a few tricks up your sleeve to back it up. Dartanian had nothing up his sleeves but an astounding lack of inhibitions, and a 6 ½ inch dick, though I guess that had been enough to land him an alley blow job.
Saturday night, the NightMoves' caravan of adult stars infiltrated Déjà Vu. I fell into a conversation with Penthouse Pet, Angela Sommers. She remembered my name, which was a positive step in our relationship—I doubted she knew the names of half of her on-screen sex partners. That morning she had filmed an episode of the web-reality show, The Gold Show, with Seymour Butts, Cousin Stevie, Sophie Dee, and Mari Possa. The group took a tour of the Everglades on an airboat. To make things more interesting, all the women went topless. This seemed an obvious example of how video cameras pervert reality. Case in point. Sommers and I were having this conversation in a location where it was fully acceptable for her to be nude, and yet she had not felt the need to disrobe mid-conversation. This was why I liked writing. It didn’t require a camera crew who warped reality with their very presence. That and I could use the facts to shape reality into a more coherent story. I could make things up that seemed plausible while omitting detracting details. I could, for instance, claim that Sommers tried to rip off her shirt and mash her boobs against my face despite my protests that I had a girlfriend.
Seymour Butts didn’t trust me. I was the only guy at Déjà Vu in a suit, and certainly the only guy with my head bowed, ignoring Jessa Rhodes' stage show while scribbling in a notepad. He thought I was undercover, that I wanted to expose a biased view of the adult industry. I suppose I was, though my biased view involved far too many conversations with porn stars about everything but sex.
Kelly Shibari and I plotted our snuggle porn empire. As a serious joke, I often boast of my snuggling prowess to women I want to sleep with. However, I never mention my propensity to snore. Not subtle snoring. The kind of snoring that sounds like my throat is battling a massive dildo. I imagine snoring would go over about as well in snuggle porn as a limp dick in sex scenes, unless of course it was torture snuggle porn. This got me thinking. Snoring is one of the most commonly sited complaints in divorces. If I wanted an honest relationship, was I required to be upfront from the start about my snoring? And, What other demons was I required to reveal to women I hoped to seduce?
Mia Isabella’s PR rep told me the transsexual starlet used to be afraid of her 10-inch dick; doing porn helped her appreciate this side of herself. I imagine one of the toughest things about being transgendered is deciding when to reveal your genetic gender to potential partners. This is really a question we all have to answer. How honest about our former lives are we required to be with each new relationship?
“Why didn’t you bring your new girlfriend tonight?”Carmen Valentina asked. “I want to meet her.”
By meet Valentina meant she wanted to seduce Robin. I had seen her do it before. I suggested that not every woman wanted to fuck other women. Valentina scoffed. She believed that all women were sluts. They all wanted to fool around with other women. Porn stars were just seen as sluts because they were honest about this side of themselves.
Before I dropped Dartanian off at the airport earlier that day, Brenda called him one last time. Bob had spit in her face and called her every derivation of whore after seeing photos of her on her knees in an Ybor alley. Bob had hired a private eye to get dirt on her before their divorce. I didn’t feel too bad for Brenda, or her husband. If she blew Dartanian within minutes of meeting him, she was no stranger to random sex in public places—a fact her husband likely knew when he married her.
Many women hide their sexuality behind a veneer of respectability while “slut shaming” women who are more transparent about their desires. This is what I liked about porn stars—aside from the obvious. They had the ovaries to broadcast their promiscuity and were realistic enough about their philandering to get tested for STDs every two weeks.
Still, it's wrong to assume that porn is an honest representation of these performers' sexualities. In the end, porn reflects the consumers’ desires. Consciously or not, these women played roles assigned by male fantasies in the same way closet-sluts played the role of prudes in public.
Robin and her friends were soaking up a night of drinking with greasy food at an eatery in St. Pete when I returned from Déjà Vu. They had been out partying in honor of a friend’s engagement. Robin's friends reportedly kept asking where I was. Did she just say I was working, or did she mention the world-class sluts I was hanging out with?
Over mouthfuls of gyros, the women debated why a bartender would profess his love for Robin’s friend, Angela, when the two had never even been on a date. Some believed he really loved her. Others thought he was a liar. I was of the mind that he believed the lie his hormones fed him, that evolution equipped him with the ability to believe his spontaneous feelings of love in order to defeat women's innate bullshit detectors. Perhaps a better question was, were his hormones lying to him about being in love, and if so, what did this say about the nature of love?
While walking Robin home, I mentioned that part of what broke up my marriage was a string of other men who confessed their undying love to my ex, though she would later discover the limits of their love. This didn’t sit well in Robin’ stomach with the gyro and the night of drinking. She wasn’t a fan of how I referenced my former relationship. I needed to learn how to omit my ex from the previous decade of my life.
Robin also took the opportunity to inform me how uncomfortable my job made her. I just nodded while silently digesting this relationship revision. My ex too had pretended she was okay with my profession in the beginning. In the end she revealed it was a huge factor in our split. Next thing I knew, Robin would tell me my snoring was a much bigger deal than she originally let on.
When Robin and I talked about becoming exclusive, I laid out all of my major flaws as I saw them, including my monstrous snoring. I was blunt about the fact that I wrote about sex and love. Along with spending time in strip clubs, I'd have to mine our relationship for material. She was fine with this when it meant testing vibrators, but I wondered how she'd react when I wrote about the complexities of love. The truth is, it’s impossible to write completely faithfully about a relationship you are currently in. The truth is, the truth is incomplete.
The Gold Club was the only strip club in Tampa big enough to host the 21st annual NightMoves Awards. Inside the vaulted, windowless space, a perpetual neon night reigned. Smoke clouds rose around the dancing platforms. Strobes fractured time and the stage lights painted skin, facilitating the fantasy of flawlessness.
Off stage Katie Sutra looked like a hip-hop nerd moonlighting as a break-dancer. Onstage, she transformed into a horizontal ballerina. She delivered a commanding striptease on the multistory pole for the entirety of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Her performance shook the club, turning the encapsulated world into a snow globe in which money fell like confetti.
Joanna Angel, Aiden Ashley, Brandy Aniston, and Bonnie Rotten gallivanted about the club, all were as sexified woodland creatures ready to act out perverse bedtime stories. Rotten was a wolf—a wolf in a wolf’s clothing. Even the grotesque nature of her tattoos couldn't detract from the sex appeal of her tan, 20-year-old flesh. She bounced around the crowd with the enthusiasm of the cheerleader she was just a few years ago.
Many people criticize the adult industry for being superficial, for portraying unrealistic sexual fantasies. I suspect what actually disturbs people about porn is that it reflects male fantasies with no concern for political correctness. Porn only cares about what sells. In this sense, porn is honest.
Porn stars are the living embodiment of male desires, and like male desires, these fantasies quickly fade. Few performers would fare well outside adult entertainment, in say, the sterile florescent lights of an office building. It takes genuine resolve for women to make a lifelong career out of the adult industry. More importantly, it takes thick skin and the ability to realize that your flesh is a limited resource.
One of the women nominated for Best Ass thought it unfair that a fellow contender had ass implants. The performer in question also had breast implants, lip injections, and a body sculpted by the gym and diet. The question was, should one model be rewarded for her genetic gifts over another who made a conscious choice to change? Is plastic surgery dishonest, or is it an honest acknowledgement that appearances matter?
My photographer friend Al found me in the corner, scribbling in a note pad. He asked if I was writing another epic story subtitled, “How I lost another girl because of porn.” I said it probably depend on how late I got back to Robin's house that night.
On stage Ron Jeremy wore gonorrhea green crocs and the same stained, sweat pants as last year. He even ran through the same standup routine. He ended his set by pointing out that he was living proof any man could get laid. A publicist near me speculated that Jeremy was merely in the right place at the right time to become the face of porn, that his brand was built for him. Perhaps, but Jeremy also shared something I noticed when interviewing the younger, male face of the porn industry: James Deen. Neither seemed to change at all when they were on or off camera. They were as close to genuine as you could get in porn.
The same publicist commented on how dapper I looked in my suit, a suit that was a clear artifice, a projection of a person I wanted to be.
Gia Nova spun fire from her nipple tassels. She was intimidating, and not just because her giant tits doubled as weapons. A mix between Marilyn Monroe and Courtney Love, Nova laid down the kind of kinky burlesque act that would give straight men hard-ons and make gay men swoon. The most impressive thing about all these feature dancers was how they made every movement sexual. Behind her sinister smile, Nova perpetually concealed the strain it took to do something as physically commanding as elevating her body over her head. I could only imagine how good this skill had made her at manipulating men.
Gia Nova’s dual nose rings and back tattoo intimidated me. I studied her for a moment, standing alone, silently watching the other feature performers. I assumed she was ignoring everyone. It never occurred to me that she simply didn’t know anyone. When I introduced myself, Nova said she was just an exotic dancer. I asked why she was apologizing for just being a feature dancer. She smiled and shrugged and said she was the queen of awkward. I was having trouble reconciling the woman I had seen on stage with this personable, and shy, woman before me. Touching my suit, Nova said there is nothing sexier than a man who dressed up. I had assumed she would prefer guys with sleeves of tattoos as opposed to suit jackets, but, as I was learning, I was wrong about nearly everything I had assumed based on her appearance.
At the urinal next to me, a local porn producer leaned over to tell me he was tired of getting his dick sucked. Amateur adult models were crashing at his place, turning it into a disaster zone of makeup, panties, clothes, and dildos. I suspected he wasn’t so much tired of the blow jobs as the literal baggage these blowjobs brought with them.
After Chanel Preston won the fan’s choice award for “Female Performer of The Year,” I sat with her over a drink to get more details about her relationship status. She claimed she didn’t bother dating anymore. Most guys were excited by the fantasy of fucking a porn star but not the reality of dating one, and possibly all of the dildo-filled baggage a porn star came with.
A red headed porn star told me that she had married her ex because his family was rich, and presumably he would be too one day. She paid his way through school only for him to take a job making $30K. She divorced him, at which point he landed a job making $80K. At least that was her side of the story. There's something refreshing about gold diggers who are honest. Her flaw had been marrying someone for who she thought he would become, not who he was. Now she claimed she wouldn’t date someone who made below a certain income, though she would sleep with poor men on camera, for money of course. This was the best thing about making a meager salary; you never had to worry about a woman’s motives for being with you.
A NightMoves award winner asked if I was going to the after party at Thee Dollhouse. I had a flimsy excuse. She assured me that I would regret not going, that I would only be young and attractive and able to mingle with hot adult stars for so long. I nodded and said I had a girlfriend waiting for me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t try to get in your pants if you don't want me to.”
Perhaps, but if I was being honest, the only reason I had for going to the after party was the same reason Dartanian had for strolling onto a bus full of porn stars.
I crawled into Robin’s bed around 1 AM, my body mirroring hers.
“Why are you home so early?” she asked, sleepily.
“I missed you,” I said, which was true, and it sounded better than saying I did not trust my dick's reasons for wanting to stay out and party.
Follow Shawn Alff on Twitter or Facebook and email him here