Insatiable: Porn — a Love Story (12 page)

Almost a year went by, when Raven switched to an all-vegan diet and started drinking alkaline water, and suddenly, miraculously, was cured. Her doctors informed her that her body was free of cancer. Around this time, someone on Twitter asked her why, if she had lost all the hair on her head, did she still have eyebrows. A few days later, she posted a picture of herself with no eyebrows.

Just as suddenly as she was cured, her boyfriend left her, deleted all of the cancer-related tweets, and posted a final tweet, that his girlfriend was a liar.

“Do you think . . . ?” I carefully, yet excitedly questioned Dana.

“We called that shit first,” Dana said, smiling.

10
No Sex in the Champagne Room

“Assume the position, ma’am.”

Pause.

“And I use the word
assume
, because I
assume
—”

Pause.

“—that you’ve been in this position before.”

The crowd of two-hundred-plus horny ladies went wild.

This was my first encounter at a male stripclub. My thoughts on such a place had always been simple: Male strippers are gross.

We were there for Anita’s birthday. My friend Ellie’s cousin’s ex-husband owned the club, so she had hooked it up for us. We thought the experience would be fun in a totally ironic way—like, “Ha-ha, look at these Fabio dudes dancing! What losers!”

We were wrong. These men were hot as fuck.

Onstage, “Nico”—dressed in stripper police gear, complete with Ray-Ban sunglasses and an artificial-hormone-fed figure—was standing behind a woman he had bent over the chair. Laughing, blushing from a combination of embarrassment and drunkenness, the woman would be somebody’s wife tomorrow. Tonight, though, her girlfriends had signed her up to simulate sex acts onstage with a man wearing a thong under his cop uniform.

As the theme from the show
Cops
played, Nico tore his uniform off and danced around the stage. The crowd cheered on as he did backflips in nothing but shoes and a small piece of cloth covering his dick and asshole. A frumpy woman, presumably an employee, came onstage to escort the bachelorette off as more Nico-looking men, only dressed in tearaway prison outfits, joined in on the act.

Ellie had gotten us a booth right up front, so we could enjoy the show with the best view in the house. But the real show was behind us.

Women yelling, banging on the tables, jumping up and down on the chairs. Out of context, you would have thought we were monkeys in a zoo at feeding time.

If I were a man working at this club, I would be terrified of women.

I mean we were frightening.

The show had opened with six shirtless men dancing to 50 Cent’s “In da Club.” The lights beamed off their oiled muscles, making the women scream so loud I thought it was a tape recording to get the crowd going. I had never heard noises like that in my life.

I was screaming, too.

Some of them danced better than me. Scratch that. All of them danced better than me. A couple of them even did pole tricks, which I don’t do at all. I wondered how much they make. Had any of them done gay porn? I wondered if they were all just flaming homosexuals outside of this club. These men were too aesthetically pleasing to be straight. Gay retail clerk by day, women’s sex object by night? Straight for pay?

A few men, for their solo shows, danced to the same songs I used to dance to when I was stripping. I wonder if the same things ran through their heads while they dance.
Why am I here? How many more minutes until my shift is over?
Did they hate this job as much as I had?

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy dancing. It’s not even that I didn’t enjoy the men I was dancing for. In fact, once I was onstage, once I was interacting with the crowd, once I was giving lapdances, I enjoyed myself. It’s the late hours, the dirty clubs, the million cigarettes I ended up smoking in the dressing room . . . Too tired to do anything during the day, not wanting to eat too much before going naked in front of hundreds of men . . . Unrolling the filthy dollar bills thrown at me before finally washing all the grime off my body in the shower at 5 a.m.

My saving grace was Maury, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sugar daddy. I had been dancing for a few months at the Hustler Club, and Maury was a known big spender.

“If he likes you, he’ll take you to the champagne room every night. You don’t even have to be dirty.” The host winked. He took my hand and walked me over to an elevated VIP table.

“Come sit with us!” Maury shouted over the music. There were already a good five or six girls sitting with him, all laughing, all beautiful. It seemed almost cartoonish, these long-legged, Jessica Rabbit–looking women surrounding this fat, gray-haired Jewish man. They had the desperateness of wanting cash written across their faces, but they all seemed to be familiar with and even to enjoy Maury’s company. The Hustler Club in New York City is somewhat different from the average titty bar across Middle America; it’s a “gentleman’s lounge,” a whole other breed of stripclubs. The ceilings are high, there are three stages, and the seats are clean, free of holes and stains. There’s a cigar lounge upstairs on the roof, which is lit by tea lights and looks out over the Hudson River. The women are dressed in long gowns instead of bikinis, and one-dollar bills are not crumpled up and thrown onstage. Money is made not on the stage, but in private dances, and mostly in the Champagne Room.

“Hi, Maury. I’ve heard so many good things about you from all of the girls. I’m Akira.” That was the stage name I used back then.

We had some small talk before he eventually signaled the host back over, telling him he wanted to take me to the Champagne Room. At the words “Champagne Room,” the energy of the group shifted. Every girl sitting with us sat up a little taller, paid attention a little closer.

“I’m gonna go with Akira tonight,” he said as each face fell.

Maury paid the host with cash. Four hundred dollars for the club, the “hourly room fee,” and an additional six hundred dollars for me.

Once we were alone in the room, I didn’t know what to expect. Some guys, I had to hint at a blowjob to get in here. Of course, once we got into the room, I would spend the next hour putting off the promised oral sex, instead just giving a lapdance that lasted too long for both of us. With some guys, I turned into their therapist; they’d complain to me about their wives, girlfriends, mistresses, and I just became a helping ear. Some guys just wanted company while they snorted coke for an hour, cutting their lines with their corporate credit cards.

This wasn’t the case with Maury. I undressed, danced a little bit for him, and then we talked about random things while chain smoking, me naked, him fully clothed. I did come to find out he was an Orthodox Jew, unhappily married with two kids, and he owned a successful business in the city. For the most part, though, our conversation was that of two friends, just shooting the shit. Maury didn’t drink; I didn’t, either. I was on Oxys, but at the time he didn’t know that.

We ended up exchanging numbers that night before we left the Champagne Room and went home separately, both feeling we had made a new friend.

From that point on, any night Maury was at Hustler, which we jokingly referred to as “H,” I was there, too. I lived two blocks away from the club, and he would text me as soon as he arrived. I’d throw on some makeup, pop an Oxy, and head over to the club in my pajamas. Some nights I would head up to the locker room to change into my stripperwear; some nights I didn’t even bother. He always, always took me to the Champagne Room.

More often than not, Maury would hire another girl to come into the room with us. There was a roster of ten or so girls that he liked. Sometimes, if it was a girl I was attracted to, he’d watch us fuck. The hottest girl was Jacqueline. She was a Puerto Rican Barbie doll. She got too drunk sometimes, but Maury didn’t mind. It was part of her charm. Many nights, Maury would take me out from the club, paying me my hourly Champagne Room fee, to go eat, hang out at his office, or even go to another stripclub. We’d pick up my two best girlfriends, Dee and Gianna, on the way to wherever we were going. Seven a.m. would roll around, and he would drop us off at our homes and head straight to work, or home for a nap. I never knew what he told his wife. Maury was truly my friend; only, he paid me.

Eventually, Maury made a proposal. We would stop with the Champagne Room business and he would pay for all my bills and give me an allowance—for the exchange of my company a few times a week. It wasn’t much different from what I had already been doing; it just meant Maury wouldn’t have to pay the club their fee. I agreed.

Shortly after the agreement, Maury took me and Jacqueline on a business trip to Florida.

We stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, and Maury had gotten Jacqueline and me a room to share, and he had a suite next to us. Jacqueline and I had become close, so this was no problem. Our first full day there, Maury had to work, so Jacqueline and I went down to the pool. That night, we went out to a nice dinner and ended the night back at the hotel, Maury in his room, us in ours.

The next day, Maury was free. We went on a shopping spree, where we got thousands of dollars’ worth of clothing. Maury was happy to see us happy.

“By the way, I hired some girls for tonight if you guys wanna join.” We were eating lunch after our shopping spree when Maury dropped this on us.

“Actually, my friend Toby lives here, and he’s been hitting me up. I was hoping we could meet up with him.”

So it was settled. Maury would see the escorts that night, and Jacqueline and I would go out with Toby.

The night with Toby is a blur, but I remember enough to know it was one of those perfect nights out that only happen when you’re twenty-one, old enough to be an adult but young enough to be free of responsibility. We were all fucked-up, but no one went accidentally overboard. I remember him and his three friends coming to get us. I remember popping a couple of Oxys before we left. I remember doing lines of coke throughout the night. We hit a few clubs, getting into each one for free because of our outfits. We definitely went skinny-dipping at the beach. I vaguely remember the boys dropping us off at the hotel, and making out with Toby before I got out of the car.

Jacqueline and I woke up the next afternoon wearing the boys’ collared shirts. Maury was sitting at the edge of my bed.

“I took the liberty of going through your camera,” he said sadly.

I looked over at Jacqueline, who I could tell was trying to put the pieces of the night together.

“Oh, cool,” I answered. It was weird he went through our stuff. For half a second I started to get offended, but then quickly decided I was too tired to try to care. “How was your night?” I asked.

“It was good. You guys look like you had fun.” Maury’s voice made me feel guilty for having fun.

“I don’t even remember what we did last night.” It wasn’t totally true, but somehow I thought it would make him feel less left out.

We ordered breakfast to the room, and Maury was quiet. We went out to drive around Miami, and he was quiet all day. At one point his wife called. This was the first time he answered her call in front of me.

“Hey . . . Nothing, just work. How are the kids? Good. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He almost hung up, when he blurted, “Wait—I miss you.” Pause. She didn’t say anything back. He hung up.

We went back to the hotel, and I started to roll a joint.

“Maury—you wanna smoke?” I knew his answer would be no.

To my surprise, he answered, “Sure.”

Jacqueline and I looked at each other. Maury had never done any type of drug before. Not that I consider weed a drug, but he had never been high.

The best thing about getting someone high for the first time is that it takes you back to the time
you
got high for the first time. All the new surreal sensations, the silly ideas, the finding everything hilarious . . . It’s contagious. There’s a great deal of my early teen years that I don’t remember, but the first time I got high is one memory that plays as vividly as one that happened yesterday. I was in Central Park with my girlfriend Jenna and four boys. The first image I saw high was a man sitting on the park bench reading a newspaper. It was summertime, so he was wearing no shirt; his newspaper covered his shorts, and it made him look like a naked man reading the newspaper in Central Park. After laughing for what could have been five seconds or five hours, Jenna and I left the boys to go to FAO Schwarz. We played with the toys, lay among the stuffed animals, and walked around in a hysterical daze until we ultimately got thrown out for eating the candy out of the tubs in the candy store. We went back to Jenna’s house with one mission: Find more weed.

As we passed our third joint around, Jacqueline and I decided to put makeup on Maury. I took out a skirt and draped it around his head like a turban. We all fell to the floor laughing. We ordered room service and the boy who brought our food joined us briefly, taking pictures of “the strippers” to send to his friends.

From that day forward, Maury was hooked. He started smoking before he went to the office, and didn’t stop until it was time to go home at night. He went to H less and less, and eventually even stopped seeing me. He told me him and his wife had started smoking together, and even had sex for the first time in over a year.