Yes, Ryan Keely; we’d watch you do anything, but your reading blows us away, too.
Keely, Penthouse Pet of the Month for July, 2011, arrived at Hollywood’s Bronson Bar in a trenchcoat. Like many models, she has the ability to look very small until she starts removing clothes, at which point she looks as big as a centerfold.
The occasion was “Sexy Tales & Other Intimate Acts,” a monthly salon hosted by my compelling friend Jamye Waxman and featuring famous and approaching-famous people alike talking about sex and the interesting ways people have it.
But as Talking About Sex has become both commonplace and a commodity (the shows “Bawdy Storytelling” and “Stripped Stories,” launched in San Francisco and New York, respectively, also pass through Los Angeles), it’s important to make these things entertaining because, like math, talking about sex is something that nearly everyone does but that doesn’t mean they’re good at it.
So it was that Keely, who told the story (which is also printed in this month’s Penthouse Forum) of a road trip to Vegas gone right, was instantly engaged with the 50 people in the room, cheerful, sexy, and Catholic.
“People ask me why I got into porn?” she said. “Bishop Blanchet High School, Seattle.”
Sexy Tales was launched last November, and Tuesday’s show was, in my opinion, the best yet. In addition to Keely, Nica Noelle, one of my favorite pornographers, read a story about a very nice thing she did for a boyfriend (Noelle is in a business where she can procure such things) and Nikol Hasler read a 3-part essay about her adventures as a transplanted Midwesterner in Los Angeles.
Hasler’s story was the most literary and poignant of the evening, not that it wasn’t dirty as hell. After all, she is Irish.
My band, Fogelfoot, played as it has for each Sexy Tales, and I also enjoyed former VCA (remember VCA?) publicist Mischa Allen’s version of my story “The Horse Lady Made Me A Man.”
But back to Talking About Sex.
I feel strongly that one shouldn’t write about sex if one is not having it. I feel the same about priests as marriage counselors. No amount of theoretical study compares to the single sense memory of knowing how to roll one’s partner over the wet spot.
That said, I also think that the fact of someone writing about sex for a living, or having sex for a living, doesn’t automatically make them interesting. As “We Did Porn” author Zak Sabbath tweeted a few weeks ago, “There’s something unsexy about people who talk about sex toys. ‘Here’s a 7″ rubber robot I fuck instead of you.'”
Sex bloggers, sex educators, and porn stars can be some of the most insufferably unsexy people you’d ever have the misfortune of meeting (I speak from experience); that is why Keely, Noelle et al were such a pleasure to watch.
At Sexy Tales, we briefly considered a ban on porn stars appearing, as we noticed a pattern: Some would show up without anything prepared, they would ramble, and in a couple of cases employed a dismaying defensive posture as if they thought they needed to prove to the audience that they weren’t “dumb porn stars.”
As it turns out, most audiences will forgive a lot from a porn star—porn stars are beloved celebrities, after all—but it is also possible to squander that goodwill.
But Keely and Noelle, along with Hasler, Allen, and a guy named Tmame Smith, who taught delighted guests how to tie up their partners in ten seconds using Texas Handcuffs, made this evening a real joyride of concentrated, and entertaining information. More than once I thought, “I would not be upset if this story were being told to me alone.”
And there was a full bar, too.
(I am grateful to The EMM Report for most of these photos—save for the picture of Ryan Keely in a cage, which I took—from this week’s Sexy Tales.)
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Neither Jethro Tull nor 38 Special expected this “Teacher” (but maybe The Police did); Bobbi Starr’s PepsiCo stock goes way up; What does Jamye Waxman know about love?
See also: Sexy Tales, Nikol Hasler, Ryan Keely
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