“When it comes down to it—who’s fucking what and who’s fucking who and whatnot—it’s all porn,” says Rico Steele, an African-American man from Detroit who was nominated for Best Non-Transsexual Performer at last night’s Tranny Awards.
Steele, who says he has made some “amateur straight videos,” was responding to the question “Is there a difference between playing the dude part in straight porn versus tranny porn?”
But while the outfits on display and the production value of the evening would be familiar to any fan of straight or gay porn, it was the fans who attended last night’s event that made it distinctive.
I’ll explain.
Earlier in the evening I was at Home Depot buying a mailbox. Because it was 7 p.m., there were no eager Mexican laborers waiting to get into my car on Sunset Blvd. Instead, appropriately enough, a transsexual prostitute approached me in the parking lot.
“Do you want a date?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “But I’m going to the Tranny Awards.”
“Oh!” she said. “Tell [I forgot the name] that Michelle says Hi.”
This would not have happened had I encountered a straight-servicing hooker while on the way to the XBiz Awards. First, she would not have heard of the XBiz Awards. Second, street-level prostitutes are farther removed from performers (at least the ones who get awards) in the straight porn world.
But I counted dozens of friendly interactions at last night’s event between men and transsexuals whose relationship had clearly progressed from fan/performer to client/provider.
“What are you doing after the show?” said one older gentleman to a performer as she left the red carpet after being interviewed by Domino Presley.
“You,” she said.
In fact, the show program’s back cover was a full page ad from ErosTranssexuals.com, “The Ultimate Guide to Transsexual Escorts.”
While there are certainly dozens, if not hundreds, of mainstream male and female adult performers who escort on the side, that sort of moonlighting is never celebrated in traditional porn world advertising.
There is a real spectrum of TGirls walking the short red carpet, where they are interviewed by the petite Domino Presley or the statuesque and bespectacled Brittany St. Jordan. Some look simpering and mousey, some are glamazons, some are bootylicious, some are elegant and regal, and some look like a combination of John Lithgow and Pamela Peaks.
The gentlemen circling at a respectful distance love each one of them.
Joseph’s Nightclub is situated on a gently rising hill north of Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, on the corner of Yucca and Ivar. It’s far enough from the flat expanse of Hollywood Blvd. that the Moorish building seems just a little exotic.
Inside, I realize that I’ve been here for porn events twice before, once for a Wicked party [UPDATE: Or at least I thought the Wicked party had been there, when in fact it was a few blocks east. But Jesus: THAT WAS SIX YEARS AGO AND I WAS A DIFFERENT PERSON] and, before that, a function for the late VCA seven years ago where I met Dana DeArmond for the first time.
Joseph’s regularly hosts events for transsexuals and their admirers, but Tranny Awards founder Steven Grooby, a Londoner who has been funding TS porn for 16 years, says that the venue was a happy accident.
“First we were booked in one place (El Cid on Sunset Blvd.), but they were getting sold, and so they booked us at Los Globos, but they suddenly announced that they were putting in an event after us. Then there were outrageous bar guarantees. So we booked this place just four weeks ago.”
El Cid is a beautiful old Hollywood club, but I imagine the carnage that would be wrought in the wake of dozens of tranny porn stars in heels falling down the dangerously uneven stone steps.
But Joseph’s easily made its nut, as it were, on the bar.
I am pretty tall, so I groined up to the bar. I ordered a double Jagermeister, neat, and a ginger ale in a separate glass. It cost $29.
“The Fuck?” I said, thinking I should become The Guy Who Carries A Flask. Seriously, if overpricing alcohol is supposed to make me stop drinking, I’m just going to look for a workaround.
“Do it for the trannies,” a little voice said, and I forked over the cash.
As I’ve mentioned, I see three distinct kinds of transsexual porn movies. 1.) The transactional kind, shot with Brazilian or Thai hookers, 2.) The glamorous kind these Tranny Awards were celebrating, featuring people who wanted to be indistinguishable from porn stars, and 3) The political kind, where transmen and transwomen use porn as a filmed manifesto.
Can you think of any other kind of porn with trends that are so divergent, where the stars are so accessible to their fans, but whose branches are so exclusive?
“I know (the other two branches) exist, but I don’t pay attention to them,” Domino Presley, who wins Transsexual Performer of the Year, tells me.
I bump into Ed Hunter, a director of tranny porn and an executive at Third World Media. Ed has people in Brazil and Thailand sending him content, which Third World Media puts together and sells.
“What’s the difference between Thai trannies and Brazilian trannies?” I ask.
“Huge difference,” Hunter says. “The Brazilians want to be over the top; they get their boobs and their asses done. They get on your dick and really attack it. The Asians are a lot more submissive and eager to please.”
I sit with Tod Hunter and Mark Kernes, former coworkers at AVN. Kernes is the only one of us who still works there. In the beginning of the evening we grab a table reserved for Rodney Moore, whom we know won’t be showing up. As the place gets more crowded, Grooby kicks us out of the table, saying it is for paying customers and that “you media are the lowest on the totem pole.”
He’s right, and he stayed on message by bringing it back to poles.
Within a few hours there are 300 people in the room, and even women are paying $30 to get in.
Speaking of, The Tranny Awards was the biggest sausage party I think I’ve ever attended, and that includes gangbangs and being an altar boy. I looked around for biological females and found stripper/porn performer/raconteur Alia Janine who, at 5’11” in bare feet, looked me right in the eye while wearing heels.
“I’m the kind of stripper who drinks beers with you,” she says. It made me want to drink beer.
Then I bumped into a woman who was so curvaceous, and who was wearing such a piece of outlandish equipment, that I just assumed she was up for an award this evening.
But no, it was merely—and fantastically—Kelli Staxxx—whose extra Xs stand for Brick House. She is the spokesmodel for MunkeyBarz, which is a set of handles that allow you to drive a woman’s ass like a motorcycle.
“You grab hold of the handles and just keep your balance,” Staxxx says. “Or if she’s on top of you, you have more leverage.”
I admit that I am intrigued and ask if I can grab the handles and take them for a spin with her in them.
“Sure!”
But what am I going to do, Readers, fuck someone named Kelli Staxxx on the floor of a bar which charges $5 for a ginger ale? I grab the handles and shake them a little, pulling them (and Staxxx) toward me, then pushing them away. They did not come off in my hands.
“Those are really cool,” I say. “Are they made in the U.S.?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” she says.
The MonkeyBarz are one of those marital aids that Paul Snider may have created had he the good of humanity in mind.
I watch Joey Silvera pick up a Lifetime Achievement award. Silvera basically invented transsexual porn more than a decade ago and is held in high regard by Grooby, who says Silvera “still sets the bar high.” Returning from shoots in Brazil, it was Silvera who made Vaniity the first American transsexual star. Vaniity also wins a Lifetime Achievement award.
Eventually the room gets so crowded, though, that I can’t hear. And as I feel like I don’t have a dog in this fight, I leave with a gaggle (let’s call them a Docking) of trannies, because we’ve parked (or we’re getting picked up) at the opposite corner.
“You have a good time?” I ask one lady, who looks beat.
“Yeah,” she says, “but I have to get up tomorrow.”
“Where you working?” I ask, thinking she’s going to be shooting for Third World or SheMale Yum or something.
“Home Depot,” she says. “I could walk there from here, but not like this.”
I never got her name, but I bet she knows Michelle.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Domino Presley is all that and something else; “She-male Police”—what happens below the waist shouldn’t be above the law
See also: Tranny Awards
I just imagine this would be a nightmare come to life for anyone with penis envy.
Well, it was definitely a nightmare come to life for a guy who knows how much a 750ml bottle of Jager actually costs…