Tanya Tate, infamous porn star from Great Britain, is wrapping her mouth around something outside the Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip.
“I got no partners in Toluca Lake,” she says.
Tate, like many porn performers from other countries who regularly visit Los Angeles for work, is brushing up on her American by watching “Pulp Fiction.”
“I’m a Bad Ass Motherfucker,” she says.
It is fitting that I meet her outside this iconic establishment, because America’s core values of Free Speech and The Pursuit of Happiness are being practiced inside.
I tell the doorman I’m on the list.
“What’s your name?” he says.
“I am the Lizard King,” I say, quoting Jim Morrison, who first came to fame on the stage inside. “I can do anything.”
“It’s not here,” the doorman says.
“How about ‘Gram’?”
“Gram Pomegranate?” he says.
“Yes,” I say, and am wristbanded. Next time I become America’s Beloved Porn Journalist, I’m choosing an easier name. Like Teagan.
Inside, a shaven-headed Belladonna is tongue-wrestling Erica McLean over a dildo on a stick. In addition to inspiring a sentence I never imagined I’d write, Belladonna is a shoo-in to play the Natalie Portman role in “V for Vagina.”
I like that Belladonna gets a summer haircut like Jerry Mathers; for someone world-famous for abjectly dirty things, she always appears so virtuous and innocent.
But I’m worried about the beaver, so I go looking for it.
Tonight’s event is a fundraiser and membership drive for the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade group that struggles mightily to represent the diverse legal and economic interests of this fractured business.
“This is a good chance to show people we’re not the Axis of Evil,” says FSC Executive Director Diane Duke. “There’s a lot of camaraderie in the business — ” (onstage, there is a guy doing a spot-on imitation of Evan Stone, until I realize later that it is Evan Stone) ” — and we want them to know that this is an atmosphere that is fun and safe and non-judgmental.”
Good thing, because the event is open to the public, and actual adult stars are on full display.
Hustler Hollywood, the fundraiser’s main sponsor and the Whisky’s neighbor across Sunset Boulevard, provided gift bags containing wares from the event’s other sponsors, including Wicked, Hotmovies, Evil Angel, AEBN, Digital Playground, the Screaming O, Girlfriends’ Films, and bondage outfit Sportsheets. It was good to see the common people perusing Sportsheets’ fetish-lite “Sex in the Shower” products, which apparently encourage people to have sex in the shower.
Onstage the band Gang Bang was playing a Stone Temple Pilots song, and Evan Stone seemed to be interpreting a version of himself and William Shatner as the lead singer. That is the best way I can describe it; the crowd loved it.
In terms of supergroups, I liked them better than Azia.
Backing Stone up are Dale DaBone on drums and Barrett Blade on a green five-string bass. Blade is a solid porn director and performer (“this guy has fucked half the women in this audience,” Stone says between songs, “and the other half isn’t here”), and I knew that he was a musician but I hadn’t heard him play; he’s really good.
Upstairs, Sunny Lane is posing against a photo backdrop. The faces she is making seem incongruous until I realize that Erica McLean is poking her with a dildo. Either I am classy for just looking at Sunny Lane’s face or I am an awful photographer for not watching her crotch.
Searching my heart, I realize it is more of #2 than #1. What is also more #2, but in a different way, is the Suicide Girls movie.
The Whisky is packed and the joint is jumping, so Duke runs down a list of the more serious matters attendees might consider once they’ve had a good night’s sleep.
“Piracy is still the adult industry’s main concern,” she says, “and we’re working with tube sites to control and convert some of the revenue loss; we are letting the public know that the .xxx TLD is not sponsored by the adult industry; that the 2257 federal record-keeping requirement is oppressive; and that, in order to comply with Cal-OSHA’s blood-borne pathogens directive, you’d have to perform wrapped in plastic. It’s just not plausible for this industry.”
Duke is able to rattle this off without sounding like she has said it 300 times before this very evening, and I appreciate it.
Duke credits the evening’s success to FSC Membership Director Joanne Cachapero, who organized the sponsors, venue, stage acts, and porn star appearances. I only see Cachapero briefly as she, too, appears to be making out with Belladonna, and I want to give them some privacy. I see directors Lee Roy Myers and Cousin Stevie involved in some empire-building scheme. I see veteran director Roy Karch wearing some white flowing linen outfit like he’s George Hamilton playing Richie Havens; but Karch is talking to a woman so I don’t want to Karch-block him. Evan Stone gets offstage and he sweats on some women; I am jealous because I am never as successful when sweating on women.
The place is getting hot and I go outside, where I see “Glee XXX” star Chad Diamond (“I love musicals”), newcomer Nikki Daniels (“I am taking my career very seriously”) and dapper Jack Lawrence.
But now it’s time for me to go; the autumn moon lights my way. I stand on the corner and light the “A-Team XXX” swag cigar I got in the mail. I’m hoping the movie will be better. But it was a fun night, I haven’t been charged with obscenity by a jury not comprised of my peers, and my car has neither been ticketed nor towed from the Hustler Hollywood parking garage. I am riding the Snake.
The West is the Best.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: But it’s our clusterfuck; Why .xxx is a shameful choice; FSC Freedomfest; Outporning porn
I have got to start hanging out with you, Mr. Pomegranate.
Oh, and I hope that pic of Belladonna’s undies doesn’t end up on Fleshbot, under the trite headline of “What Color Are Your Panties, Belladonna?” ’cause, really… that’s just silly.