Porn scenes from an Italian restaurant

Belladonna, Kimberly Kane, Kristina Rose, Sasha Grey, and Joanna Angel took me out for pizza and a good cause last week and we all learned a little more about ourselves and each other.

Kane and Belladonna recently threw a fundraiser for Adult Industry Medical (AIM) that netted about $7,000. Part of the benefit was an auction for a group date with the two organizers plus Rose, Grey, and Angel at the Sunset Strip’s Rainbow .

I was lucky enough to tag along since my band, Fogelfoot, played the benefit and because the shady Hollywood exec who bid on Kane did not want to be photographed with his porn idols for fear of a Disney backlash.

It was the type of low-key Hollywood affair that helped me remember my love for Los Angeles. We met at the bar at 5 on a rainy afternoon, logs burned in the fireplace, parking was simple (L.A. has already started to empty for Christmas), and I demanded Belladonna and Kane drink Toasted Almonds because those are girly drinks that fill one with three kinds of alcohol and Christmas spirit.

“Oh my God,” said Kane, referring to both the drink and the Baby Jesus, who appeared to all of us.

Kristina Rose escorted Belladonna’s sporting a moustache. While there was never a reason to not like Kristina Rose, she shot up 25 spots on my Favorite Porn Performers list that day. She walked into the Rainbow just daring anyone to mess with her.

Joanna Angel, who is both the darling of Heeb Magazine and celebrating her birthday the same day as the Messiah, was the lone Chosen person at the table. She told us that the opening 7/8ths of Hanukkah weren’t big present days while she was growing up.

“We’d just get things like pencils and pieces of chocolate the first few days,” she said. “It wasn’t until the eighth day that we got the good stuff.”

Oddly enough, no one at the table had appeared in Adam & Eve’s “The 8th Day,” which would have made for an excellent segue.

Regardless, Sasha Grey ordered clam chowder. The rest of us had ordered large pizzas, but Grey said that she’d had pizza earlier that day. I mention this not because it was noteworthy to either Grey or anyone else at the table but because I am sure at this point that there is a small network of people who are looking for insights into their own lives by following everything that Sasha Grey does.

Then there was Belladonna, who had nice things to say about everyone and who laughed at everyone’s jokes. She’s special.

I think people are a little starstruck by Belladonna because she is so positive and kind. Rose had given Belladonna a corsage and the latter looked like a 40’s blonde bombshell in the red Rainbow booth. I ducked out to put quarters in the meter and the busboys were whispering that Belladonna was in the restaurant. Then they gave me a dirty look. I was fleetingly grateful I hadn’t valeted my car.

Kane was my official date, and she expressed sorrow that I did not have an iPhone to retweet everything that was happening.

“I just have an iPod Touch,” I explained, “to listen to Gordon Lightfoot and steal other peoples’ WiFi.”

“You should get an iPhone,” she said.

I believe her, and I admit that the convenience of a constant Internet connection is appealing, but I’m like one date and Kimberly Kane is trying to run my life.

Photographer Jeff Koga, who has a camera that looks like a detonator, took the high-contrast, rich pictures. He also gave the girls Sephora gift cards. Now that’s classy. I just got them drunk.

As I ease into elder statesmanship within the porn community (I am now 23), I am relaxing my earlier prohibition on taking pictures with porn performers. I have always been a little wary of appearing to approach them with the covetous nature of a fan (no offense, fans), and they look better than I do, anyway. I also throw up a little in my mouth every time I see a cameraphone-wielding doucheroo grabbing porn girls at conventions for self-portraits.

But, I have been thinking lately, what will I put on the walls of my Trattoria di Famiglia Ponante when I finally quit being America’s Beloved Porn Journalist? So now and then I ease that self-imposed restriction to take a picture with a porn star.

The biggest surprise of the evening came when Joanna Angel and I learned that, in the year 5741 of the Hebrew calendar, our families lived two blocks away from each other.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “You knew Rabbi Lebow at Temple Beth El?”

“Yup,” she said.

Our pizzas arrived and we ate them solemnly, knowing that the next time we were all in the same room it would be in Las Vegas, and I would be running around with a horse’s head, Belladonna would be flanked by bodyguards, Sasha Grey would be enveloped by a ring of documentarians, Kane would be inaccessible in New Sensations’ “Sex Files” stretch Hummer, Kristina Rose would probably have a full beard, and Angel would be immersed in her family’s genealogical data to see just how we are related.

As the rain fell outside, we thought of the Season 1 finale of “The Sopranos,” where the family eats together in a candlelit restaurant. My eyes began to mist as I looked at the picture of Ronnie James Dio watching over five of our nation’s most riveting porn stars.

Belladonna would be leaving for Fitchburg, MA the next day.

“Someday soon, you’re going to have families of your own,” Belladonna did not say. “And if you’re lucky, you’ll remember the little moments, like this, that were good.”

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Sasha Grey – the end of innocence; How I learned to stop worrying and love strippers; What we can learn from “The Barbary Coast”; Joanna Angel’s sausage factory; “The Sex Files: A Dark XXX Parody”; Anatomy of an oil orgy
See also: AIM, Joanna Angel, Belladonna, Sasha Grey, Kimberly Kane, Kristina Rose